Speeches by Russell.

“What is your KPI for how quickly the email goes after the breach?”

“Do you have a KPI for how quickly that email gets sent after the breach?”

“Could my right hon. Friend the Minister please confirm whether any documents that were previously in the scope of the Humble Address have been deemed no longer to be within its scope due to the application of litigation privilege in respect of the dismissal of Olly Robbins?”

“It is on page 32. “HMIP’s Children in Custody 2023-24 report found that only 12% of unsentenced children took part in any interventions, such as offending behaviour programmes and in some establishments, interventions were limited to sentenced children in some establishments. This means that no meaningful work would ha…”

“It makes sense because they have not been found guilty.”

“Also emotional control, for instance: you do not have to admit an offence to accept that you might have a problem with emotional control.”

“It is accepted by many on the Government Benches that the Prime Minister did not know the outcome of the vetting, but the Cabinet Secretary came forward on Tuesday, having spent a month researching whether or not she could provide the advice that she did, so she had clearly thought very carefully about the information …”

“That is great, but fundamentally my question is about when someone instructs a solicitor, and they think it is going to cost £1,000 but then it actually costs £5,000 and that expectation has not been managed from start to finish in the transaction. They may get a retrospective explanation for why that cost escalated, b…”

“The reality is that if you have an ongoing legal matter and you need ongoing support, you do not want to upset your lawyer by putting in a formal complaint about them, let alone complain to the SRA in any way, shape or form. My gut feeling is that if you did some survey work of the type that you have described of peopl…”

“One of the elements of the report refers to the fact that judicial appointments were not apparently liaising in any way with the Bar Standards Board. Do you feel that indicates a failure on your part?”

“It might be. It depends if the AI is hallucinating. It depends if the AI is trustworthy.”

“What are you doing about costs? To put that comment into some context, I am a solicitor, but my experience of friends and family using law firms is that they have not received transparent information up front about costs and that they have been consistently surprised by the bills that they received. As a solicitor, I f…”

“The report was issued in September last year. What concrete steps have you taken in your organisation to change it to reflect the report?”

“The Bar Standards Board made decisions, such as those listed in the report, around male barristers who inappropriately touched and consistently harassed very junior female barristers—sometimes pupils—in ways that constituted public sexual assault. Those men were suspended for three months—the examples are all in the re…”

“What work, if any, are you doing on AI bias? How that will be managed within the sector?”

“Have you read Baroness Harman’s report, “Independent review of bullying and harassment at the Bar”?”

“You were established in 2007, so the SRA is a relatively recent organisation, but not that new. I got the impression from what you just said that it was probably quite innovative work for you to speak to people who had experience of using legal services. Is that a fair characterisation?”

“Perhaps, but as a regulator, that is quite a big assumption.”

“Do you think that that discloses any areas in which you should function differently?”

“Making bad decisions faster is not an improvement for the women who are on the receiving end of this harassment—I mean, it is a slight improvement, but it is not the wholesale change that will sort out the culture at the Bar. I understand that you cannot intervene in individual decisions—I would not expect you to—but i…”