Speeches by Russell.

“Leveson recommended that the Crown court bench division should be constituted as a judge sitting alongside two magistrates. The Government’s position is that the new Crown court bench division will be a single judge only. Leveson said that magistrates would “bring local community values and a measure of local accountab…”

“I absolutely agree with that point, but defendants from ethnic and religious minority backgrounds should not have their entitlement to a fair trial sacrificed because they are also from groups that happen to be disproportionately more likely to experience crime. They must be protected in both respects, not one or the o…”

“Surely, you could take out the identification of the court-level stuff, aggregate it all together, and then that would be inherently more anonymising.”

“I would beg to disagree, but I will hand over to my colleague.”

“With the greatest respect, judges currently have to give reasons for their sentencing decisions. None the less, we see disproportionality in sentencing decisions, which would suggest that having to give reasons alone is not going to solve this problem. David Lammy found in his review that the best thing for solving thi…”

“I do feel you rather are, with the greatest of respect.”

“I do feel you rather are, with the greatest of respect.”

“The overwhelming majority of child sexual abuse imagery produced online is still, very sadly, produced by children themselves, who have been groomed by adults in order to do so. What steps will the Government take to ensure that there are device-level protections to prevent children from taking and sharing nude images …”

“In my constituency, 19 people died on the roads between 2018 and 2024. It is usually assumed that that is because we have some motorway in the constituency, but in fact people are six times more likely to die on a rural road. I thank the Minister very much for the measures within the strategy. I know there will be thos…”

“Happy new year to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, your team and everyone else in the House. It is no overstatement to say that this is one of the most pressing issues of our time. I suspect that if we were not bringing forward this legislation it would only become apparent quite how pressing it had been when there was a maj…”

“Let us move on to the employment tribunal system. There are now over half a million open claims. Individual unresolved claims are up 33%, new claims in are up 33% in quarter 2 and claims resolved are down 10% in quarter 2. We are obviously producing significant new employment legislation, which of course, as a Labour M…”

“Lord Chancellor, the only people who can get family legal aid are those who have suffered from domestic abuse or whose children are being taken into care. I would strongly suggest that mediation is probably not appropriate in most of those situations, so £44 an hour is completely and utterly unsustainable. The same pos…”

“You referred to family law. In your introduction, you said that you were proud of the increases in legal aid rates. The current fixed fees in family legal aid are based on an hourly rate of £44. If we contrast that with the national rates recommended by HMCTS for solicitors in general, for solicitors with over eight ye…”

“Civil justice, so I have a question about the county court, if I may. Our recent inquiry into the county courts revealed a dysfunctional system full of delay, and we recommended a root-and-branch review. Although the Government has seen fit to commission major reviews on sentencing and the criminal court, the recommend…”

“I think it will significantly increase the speed of those trials, but we are talking about half of 3% of the total criminal backlog. If we want really to move the dial on that six years, what do we need to do, and are we going to do it?”

“I quite agree that the system will not produce that improvement if we are just dealing with efficiencies. I also question whether the proposed reforms would even touch the sides of moving that dial down from six years. I think the ambition is to see this start to come down a bit.”

“Lord Chancellor, I reiterate my question: what do you consider, in a civilised society and the seventh richest country on earth, to be an acceptable waiting time?”

“In terms of the targets that you are setting, when do you anticipate that we would reach that point?”

“I am Sarah Russell. Before arriving here, I was a solicitor specialising in employment law. I am on various APPGs, as you would imagine, and a member of various trade unions. I co-chair the access to justice APPG.”

“Lord Chancellor, you have spoken strongly about the importance of centring victims in this discussion, which I entirely agree with. At the moment, the average wait from reporting a rape to the end of a criminal trial is six years. What figure do you think would be acceptable for that period?”