Speeches by Munt.

“Can I also ask about accessibility for those who are less mobile, people who might use wheelchairs or whatever? What percentage of our courts have front-door wheelchair accessibility? I have heard of examples where people are invited to go around to where the bins are. What is the level of accessibility?”

“You are a barrister. You would have been welcomed with open arms. If you are a minion turning up at court on the first occasion and you have never been to court before, I would imagine it is quite daunting. It is about the ability to make people feel welcome and not like they are not guilty the moment they walk through…”

“There are other systems, are there not? If I want to submit my tax return, I have no choice. Certainly, in dealings with Defra and all sorts of other agencies, it is online or die. You just have to do it. You can go to your local library and be assisted to do that if you do not have that capacity at home. It is intense…”

“Surely that is a simple transaction that can be changed everywhere. Every single time you send out an order, you can do it digitally, surely.”

“I am not at all critical of the staff. I suspect they are doing their very best in circumstances that must be very frustrating in some cases. This is about the systems. This is a systemic problem, is it not? We still send out orders by post. Is that right? Why do we do that?”

“Only yesterday we met with a group of people who really are at the sharp end: the solicitors, the barristers and the others who deal with this. They are unbelievably frustrated that they cannot phone somebody in a court. Do you really feel that the centralisation of your phone system and your call centre is a massive s…”

“As constituency MPs and people who are sitting on the Committee, people do not often send emails saying, “Do you know what? It is brilliant. Thank you so much.” They just do not. We are naturally going to hear the squeaky bits.”

“It is not really mine. It is everyone’s.”

“I thought we had done reform. We have spent a massive amount of money doing reform. You talk about end-to-end digitisation. When we went up to Northampton, I am pretty certain I heard that people were digitising stuff so that everything is electronic, but when they go to the next bit and send it to the court, they end …”

“We have heard from a number of people that the courts and the background to the courts is pretty impenetrable. You cannot phone anybody; you cannot email anybody. There is a huge number of inboxes in various courts. Things get siloed. Do you have a comment on that? It seems extraordinary to me. We have heard this from …”

“Is it more modern in Wales?”

“You used Wales as an example where you can pick up some slack from other places. I would imagine that covid had been quite a positive thing, in that one now understands that you do not necessarily have to be physically in a place to be able to work. Although there has been a push from all sorts of people that everyone …”

“I am Tessa Munt. I am the Member for Wells and Mendip Hills, which is in Somerset. Everything is as per my declaration, but I will just point out, for the sake of this session, that I am a director of WhistleblowersUK, which is a non-profit-making organisation.”

“My blood is boiling as I listen to the stuff coming from Conservative Members. If they had read the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, they would recognise that there are hundreds of thousands of people alive today—people just like me, white girls—who suffered at the hands of white men who have got clean away…”

“In July 2023, my constituent Alison claimed a refund of overpaid tax that was mistakenly paid twice. In February 2024, she was told that her claim would be assessed by 20 March, in July 2024 she was told that it would be by 22 October, and in December she was told that she could not have a date but that the department …”

“T4. The Home Office states that it takes fraud in visa applications seriously, but I know of a case involving a man who came here on a spousal visa, was then arrested four times for domestic abuse, and left the family home in October ’23. All this is backed up by police reports and social worker documentation. In his s…”

“The Secretary of State will know about the planned engineering works between Didcot Parkway and Swindon and in the Paddington area, which will cause significant disruption between London and Bristol and in south Wales this Sunday and next Sunday. Disruption on major routes causes massive chaos on the rural routes that …”

“Will the Leader of the House ask her colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care for a statement explaining the rationale behind a decision last month to alter the eligibility criteria for additional compensation in the infected blood compensation scheme? The special category mechanism was replaced with the …”

“20. What recent assessment she has made of the adequacy of passenger rail performance.”

“Could the Minister just clarify whether that group will consider the benefits of using natural remedies, or a combination of natural remedies, and of ensuring that people are fully aware of the benefits of that, and that that will be in some way quantified, as my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel…”