Speeches by Mullan.

“The justice system depends on the belief that mistakes can and will be fixed. By restricting access to appeals and forcing successful cases back into the summary system, we risk creating a parallel system that simply displaces the backlog, while degrading the quality of justice. We must maintain the automatic right to …”

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“What is the alternative? It is important for those advocating against the change to put forward some alternatives. Both Parents Matter proposed in its written evidence a targeted amendment to section 1(3) of the Children Act 1989—the welfare checklist. Rather than repeal the presumption, Parliament could instead requir…”

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“The qualitative analysis involved 29 parents. I am sure that each of those parents gave us helpful and useful information, but that is a relatively small number of people to create a sample from which to draw conclusions. The review said that it could not determine how often the presumption was applied in judgments nor…”

“Another example of important evidence is from Dr Warwick Dumas, who obtained email correspondence from Dr Anja Steinbach, whose research was cited in the Government’s review. Dr Steinbach stated explicitly:”

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“and that her research warned only against 50:50 care under all circumstances. She was clear in her positioning but feels that the way in which it was reported in the Government’s review did not fairly reflect her ultimate conclusion. We received significant written evidence in support of maintaining presumption, but we…”

“I accept the Minister’s point that to insist on that being the remedy is not necessarily what the defendant would want. We absolutely want to support defendants who have been through the process of a trial and a successful appeal. Where they could have had a Crown court trial with a jury, prior to the Government’s refo…”

“I want to begin by acknowledging the gravity of what we heard in evidence in Committee. As the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Chichester, pointed to, the evidence from Claire in relation to her children will stay with all of us. It was so moving and so upsetting for anyone thinking about how they wo…”

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“We have heard about the need for judges to receive better training, but I observe that the CAFCASS officers and social workers who advise the courts are already trained. They are the professionals on whose expert reports judges rely. In every one of the cases we have talked about, those trained professionals were invol…”

“If the answer to those failures is training and systemic reform—and I believe that absolutely has a role—that reform should be directed at the failing institutions. We do not necessarily need a statutory provision that cannot, as we have heard from the Government’s own admission, be consistently shown to be the cause o…”

“An issue that has received insufficient attention in this debate—it was covered by the hon. Member for Chichester—is parental alienation. I will speak to it as sensitively as I possibly can, recognising that parental alienation is real and damaging, but also that there are unsubstantiated accusations of parental aliena…”

“On amendment 37, I have talked about the high rate of error and injustice that is being corrected by the current appeal mechanism, and I have talked about the unrepresented defendants who will have to navigate a more complex and subjective system, such as by reviewing transcripts. On the whole, we do not think that we …”

“We must give great weight to the evidence we have heard, but the Government’s own position is that it is unlikely to materially change outcomes; they are repealing a provision that their own assessment concedes will not make a material difference to what happens.”

““power is also never concentrated in the hands of one individual.””

“When we speak of the 450 children who have died in state care since 2014, we are also speaking of children—some of them at least—who were removed from their parents by a court order. We do not know if that was the case in every circumstance, but I would imagine it was for at least some, so we know that the state is not…”

“I understand the Minister’s criticism that the defendant making the appeal may be perfectly content to have their case reheard in the magistrates, and insisting that an appeal be reheard in a jury trial gives no flexibility in that direction—that is a fair point. In response, we will not press amendments 55 to 57 to a …”

“If the defendant is successful at appeal, we might say that they are doubly aggrieved: they have gone through the process and it has not worked for them. Surely we should want to do everything we can to support that group of people, so that they have a route to the mode of trial that they think is fairest, considering …”