Speeches by Mahmood.

“Who can say? I suggest asking any of the Conservative Members here whether they have an answer to that, but they appear to still wish to live on another planet and never reckon with their own track record in government.”

“I have already said that I am not interested in making a personal attack on anybody. I have a disagreement on a point of principle with members of the Sentencing Council about what is the proper preserve of policy and what is the proper role they should play. We have tried to resolve it. They have agreed to pause their…”

“My hon. Friend is right: many Conservative Members appear to have a very loose relationship with their own track record.”

“If the hon. Gentleman is concerned about the guidelines and what was brought to his attention when, perhaps people in his party should not have waved them through before the general election and welcomed them, as the shadow Transport Secretary did. I notice that none of them is engaging on the substance of that point. …”

“I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for his question. Of course, I respect the independence of the judiciary. I think I was very clear in my statement and the remarks I have made that I not only stand behind that principle, but have taken an oath that I fulfil and consider my duty to do so. Where I consider to be…”

“I thank the Liberal Democrat spokesman for his questions. He is right: as I said in my statement, pre-sentence reports are an incredibly vital tool for judges. In fact, the requirement is that they should ask for a pre-sentence report unless the court considers it unnecessary to do so. There is a strong push towards ob…”

“I thank my right hon. Friend for her questions—at least she asks some proper questions. She says that her view on the policy might be an unpopular one, but this is the place where views on policy, popular or unpopular, can and should be debated. That is at the heart of my disagreement with the Sentencing Council on the…”

“Dear, dear, dear me. It seems that the right hon. Gentleman’s amnesia is as bad as ever: 14 whole years appear to have disappeared entirely from his memory. He talks about parliamentary sovereignty, but when his party was in government and he was a Secretary of State or a Minister, he appeared never to know what on ear…”

“With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will make a statement on sentencing in England and Wales. As the House will be aware, new guidelines from the Sentencing Council on pre-sentence reports have come under scrutiny in recent weeks, specifically on whether an offender’s faith or the colour of their skin should …”

“In fairness to the Sentencing Council, it sought views from the previous Government and was told that the Government welcomed its findings, both in the consultation and the guideline. The Sentencing Council did not do anything wrong in the process that it followed. I invited it to consider that there had been a change …”

“The proper role of a pre-sentence report is to give a judge who is about to pass down a sentence vital information about the context of that offender—for example, whether there has been domestic abuse, their age and other vital factors relevant to the offending behaviour—so that the judge can make a decision about the …”

“My hon. Friend is exactly right. At no point has anybody on the Conservative Benches shown any humility or tried to answer the question of why they did nothing about it. As I say, the case of amnesia from which the shadow Justice Secretary is suffering seems to be as bad as ever.”

“We all agree across the House, I hope, that pre-sentencing reports play a vital role in ensuring that whoever is passing a sentence has all the relevant facts at their disposal. I do not believe that access to such reports, or whether a sentencer asks for them, should be dictated by race or ethnic background. They shou…”

“What I can tell the hon. Gentleman is that this Government have made faster progress than the previous Government on the deportation of foreign national offenders from our prisons, with numbers that are over 20% higher than the same time last year, and we will keep moving forward.”

“The hon. Lady raises an important point. That is why I set up the Women’s Justice Board specifically to make recommendations—I believe that these are policy choices that are properly made by directly elected politicians. We will make progress on the situation of women in our prisons, particularly those who are mothers,…”

“We have already pressed ahead with further measures on X-ray and baggage scanners, and we are taking action to deal with the problem of drones. My hon. Friend will be aware that, for security considerations, I am not going to give the detail of some of those mitigations and of our proposals for tackling drones, because…”

“I have already made my position clear. I have written to the Sentencing Council, and I will be meeting it later this week. I am reviewing the roles and powers of the council, and I will not hesitate to legislate if I need to do so.”

“I thank my hon. Friend. I am very much looking forward to my meeting with the Sentencing Council later this week. As I have made clear, I am looking into the roles and powers of the council, and I will not hesitate to legislate if I need to do so.”

“What I am shocked about is that we can see a disparity in the overall cohort sentencing outcomes. Everybody accepts that we are not quite sure why it is happening, and there has not been sufficient curiosity over the last few years to work out why that is the case. My view is that if we can see a problem or think we ha…”

“The law on joint enterprise has already developed somewhat since the previous Court of Appeal decision. I know that the Director of Public Prosecutions is keeping under review how prosecuting decisions are made. At this point we have no plans to go further, but I am happy to ensure that my hon. Friend can meet the rele…”