Speeches by Russell.

“Ms Finch, you referred specifically to various terms of art that lawyers use. That got me thinking about the complexity of immigration law. My experience of immigration law and looking at it for a constituent—I am not an immigration practitioner; I was just trying to assess some fairly basic stuff—was that it looked re…”

“I am a solicitor with a current practising certificate. My full declarations are on the Register, but the most pertinent are that I am a member of various trade unions and that I chair the all-party parliamentary group on access to justice.”

“My local community energy company, which is run by volunteers, is incredibly keen to get solar panels on the roofs of local public buildings, but we are really struggling to get the permissions we need from the local authority to proceed with two schools. They missed the easter installation window, and have now missed …”

“Given that there is no apparent requirement for these people to be legally qualified, it seems likely that the most obvious pool of candidates for the new jobs is from Home Office employees who are currently doing casework. Do you have a view on whether that is a likely outcome, and do you think that would be a success…”

“I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi) for securing this debate, and for all the work that she has done on this issue. I see that Lord Best is in the Gallery; he, among many others, has been campaigning on these issues for years. I rise to draw attention to the experienc…”

“Q8. Dr Carly Mellor, an NHS dentist in my constituency, recently said the following to me: “Ministers had pledged to fix the failed contract we work to within this Parliament. The Government has begun discussions on a new contract, and promised a public consultation on it this summer. With a typical dentist now deliver…”

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“I thank the Government for the considerable progress that has been made on criminal legal aid and other matters within the estimates since we have taken office. The courts system, as we have heard, was in the most dilapidated and decrepit state, and we had a dearth of judge recruitment between 2010 and 2018. The net re…”

“Does the hon. Member have any figures disaggregating prison officers from the remainder of MOJ staff? Obviously, their working lives are very different.”

“Many thanks, Madam Deputy Speaker. My right hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) suggested in December that this might be worth looking at again, and many of us in all parts of the House would be grateful for such an approach.”

“Hello. It is nice to see you both. I am Sarah Russell, the Member of Parliament for Congleton. My interests are as on the register, but particularly pertinent is the fact that I am a solicitor, with a current practising certificate, although not currently practising, and I chair the all-party parliamentary group on acc…”

“Officials have been warned that closure of the conflict and security monitoring project, which was funded by the Foreign Office, will mean that we lose access to a database of 26,000 verified incidents in the middle east. This is quite significant. You just said you are not conscious of any loss of information, but the…”

“Good afternoon, Attorney General. In respect of this topic, you talked with pride about having set up a rule of law unit within your office. The Foreign Office unit that was tracking potential breaches of international law by Israel in Gaza, and more recently in Lebanon, has apparently been closed because of cuts withi…”

“I do not think that was a terribly satisfactory answer. Quite specifically, you said we have magistrates, but magistrates do not sit within, for instance, the police. The police do not do an investigation, make a decision and sentence someone, and then you put the police in place to determine whether that was a lawful …”

“Solicitor General, I have two questions about the unduly lenient sentence scheme. First, I understand that the scheme does not currently apply in the youth courts. There has been some concern that because youth courts make a decision about whether to escalate something up to the Crown court for sentencing, judges in th…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Alec. The shadow Minister asked whether this is really what Members came here to do, and I can say that I genuinely and literally came to this place to do this, so I am delighted that we are doing it. I was one of the people who joined Pregnant Then Screwed in its #Gi…”

“Thank you. The problem is that it is up to the youth court whether it does that escalation in the first place. If it decides not to, there is no mechanism or check and balance on that decision. So, yes, I would be grateful if you could please take that away. The second point that I wanted to make is that I have written…”

“Minister, could I press you on the second half of the question: what assessment has the Department made of the impact on trial time of unrepresented litigants in person, and how much does that cost within the system?”

“Minister, I have so many questions that I could ask, but I will contain myself for the sake of the rest of the Committee. You referred to the expansion of legal aid under the Hillsborough law, which I am sure everyone would absolutely agree will be a fantastic thing when it happens. My concern is that, when I discussed…”

“Minister Sackman, you referred to the fact that 48% of people are unrepresented in the magistrates court. In the Crown court, where people are accused of exceptionally serious offences, the total household income to entitle someone to eligibility is £37,000. That could potentially be two people’s earnings, not just one…”