Causing Death by Dangerous or Careless Driving: Sentencing

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

Wednesday 28th October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell.

I thank the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Mr Barros-Curtis) for securing the debate, and for the way in which he spoke about his constituent Sian and her daughter Keely; he made their case powerfully. Preparing for the debate has given me the opportunity to read more about Sian and her campaign, and about Keely. As the hon. Member described, Keely was just 15 years old when she was killed in May 2023, struck by a car while crossing the road. The driver was convicted of causing her death by careless driving and of causing death while uninsured. He was sentenced to 16 months in prison.

In my work with victims and campaigners, I have got to know that until we speak to a person individually, we do not always know the ins and outs of a case, and I would not want to say anything incorrect. However, I can say confidently that a 15-year-old girl died, a family have been changed forever and the sentence was measured in months, not years. I know how I would feel if my similarly aged niece was killed in the same circumstances, given the criminal background of the individual concerned. I want to speak out for Sian and the way in which she has campaigned. More than 11,800 people have signed her petition calling for tougher sentences and for changes in the way such cases are handled.

As other hon. Members have said, under the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, introduced by the last Government, the maximum penalty for causing death by dangerous driving and for causing death by careless driving while under the influence of drink or drugs was raised from 14 years to life imprisonment. I know that those were not the exact same charges involved in Keely’s case, but that penalty demonstrates an attempt to recognise such offences and the impact they have. However, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) described, maximum sentences are one thing and what judges give is another.

I will talk about a family with whom I have worked directly and about whom I can speak more confidently. Glenn and Rebecca Youens lost their daughter, Violet-Grace, in March 2017 when she was four years old. She was walking with her grandmother in St Helens when a stolen car driven at 83 mph in a 30 mph zone hit them. Violet-Grace died and her grandmother was left with life-changing injuries. The driver fled the scene. He was later sentenced to nine years and four months, but because he pleaded guilty he received a reduction and was released after around four and a half years. As Glenn powerfully described, the driver spent less time in prison than his daughter was alive.

I have been proud to support Glenn and his family. They are part of a group called Justice for Victims. In what I hope will be an inspiration to Sian, they also launched a petition and campaigned vociferously in their daughter’s memory, and they were a big part of why the maximum sentence for causing death by dangerous driving was increased. I also mention them because, like so many of those mentioned today, they really understand what it is to not get justice: they cared deeply and loved someone deeply, and they live in a country where they expected that if you do the right thing and someone does the wrong thing to you, the system will deliver justice for you. You cannot bring somebody back, but you do not want revenge; you want justice.

The concerns in these and many other cases demonstrate that, for many decades—this is not about one Government or another—the justice system in this country has not been delivering justice anywhere near as often as it should have been, particularly for serious offences and serious offenders who commit crimes again and again. During our time in government, we took some steps to try to address that. We did so in a major way by rolling back the automatic release point from halfway to two thirds of a sentence for some offenders. We have talked today about sentences, but we have to remember that the time someone spends in prison can be very different from the sentence that was passed down in court. Prior to that change, essentially everybody except those serving a life sentence served only half their sentence, so that was an important step.

Since then, this Government have taken a sledgehammer to victims’ ability to get justice by introducing even earlier release, at the one-third point of a sentence, for offenders sent to prison for most crimes. Prior to the later changes that we managed to help secure, offenders just like the person who killed Sian’s daughter would have been asked to spend only a third of their sentence in prison. That was disgraceful, and the Government’s aim was to make the release point even earlier, not just for those responsible for causing death by dangerous driving, but for those committed of rape and a whole series of other very serious crimes—this Government attempted to let them out of prison earlier, too.

The hon. Member for Cardiff West talked about whether Parliament listens enough. Very many MPs from different parties did listen to what people said about that and attempted to stop the Government doing it.

[Dame Siobhain McDonagh]

Is the hon. Member prepared to give credit to my constituent Miss Corkery, who campaigned tirelessly for death by dangerous driving to be excluded from the early release scheme, and to recognise that she and other campaigners were successful?

[Dr Mullan]

Yes, I will go on to speak about that in detail.

It is important for people watching and listening to the debate to know when the Minister gets up and gives us lots of warm words that he is the Minister who argued specifically to let people just like the gentleman involved in this case get out of prison after serving just a third of their sentence. It was only as a result of campaigners like Sian and the person that the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh) mentioned, who fought the Government and had to tell their stories again and again in public, which I am sure Members know is a deeply traumatic thing to have to do, that the Government were forced into U-turning.

All this was based on a set of plans for an independent review that did absolutely nothing to engage with what victims actually want from sentencing policy when it comes to justice. As I said, this issue has gone on for decades. There was an opportunity to grapple with it properly and seek to understand why there is such a big gap and why we see these campaigns again and again, in relation to not just driving offences but a whole series of offences where victims feel so badly let down. Nothing was done to engage with what victims actually want from sentencing. Even today, the Government describe those early releases as “earned releases” when in fact they are automatic. These people automatically walk away from prison even earlier. Thank goodness that because of the campaigners, that does not apply to those more serious offences. I welcome that.

It is not only on this issue that Parliament sought to improve the situation. A new clause tabled during the passage of the Sentencing Act 2026 would have provided for automatic disqualification of those convicted of causing death by careless or dangerous driving. Hundreds of MPs clubbed together to defeat that amendment, including, I am afraid, some of those who have spoken in this debate in support of the people who have been affected by these sorts of cases. I understand that the hon. Member for Cardiff West actually did not oppose that measure and saw the sense in it that many other MPs saw. I congratulate him on that.

The Minister has to answer some basic questions. Do the Government believe that the current sentencing framework and the way it has been applied properly reflect the seriousness of causing somebody’s death through dangerous or careless driving? If the answer is yes, the Minister must explain why so many families and members of the public believe otherwise; if the answer is no, he needs to tell us what the Government intend to do about it.

Other Members have described things that the Government could do in the short term that we support. The ULS should absolutely be extended to those who cause death by careless driving—surely, if an offence was so serious that it led to the death of a person, it should be eligible. We continue to want to see automatic disqualification of those convicted of causing death by careless or dangerous driving. There is absolutely merit in providing the police, for example, with an opportunity to ensure that someone’s licence is temporarily revoked as they consider the facts on the ground. The police seek bail conditions to restrict what suspects can do prior to conviction all the time, and I see no reason why that should not also be applied in this case.

There is a broader question that this Government and previous Governments have failed to grip and sort out. With these serious offences, there is a massive, yawning gap between the justice that the public, and victims and their family members, just like Sian, want to see, and the justice that they actually get in court. The Opposition have committed to seeking to address that if we get back into government, but whichever party is in government, we have to finally grip this—even if it is difficult or expensive—so that we do not see victims of serious crime deeply let down, again and again, by a system that they expect to be there for them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jake Richards]

I look forward to Debbie marching into my office. Victims do not want to meet with a conveyor belt of Ministers from all different Departments. It is important that we have those meetings, because it is important that victims are heard and it is important for us to understand that behind every statistic in every paper we get to read in our ministerial boxes is a human life and a human tragedy, and I look forward to meeting her in due course, but what victims want is action. I hope that as I develop my speech, she will be reassured that we are taking these issues seriously and taking action.

Many other Members, some of whom made interventions and are longer here, raised important cases. It struck me, having been a Member of Parliament for only just over two years, that MPs get exposed to aspects of our country that normal citizens perhaps do not, and one of them is the prevalence and tragedy of road deaths. MPs are often notified if there has been an accident or if a criminal offence committed on our roads has led to a serious injury or death, and that happens far too regularly in our country. When you meet the families, as I have done in my Rother Valley constituency, it stays with you. I am determined to play my role to try to bring about safer roads.

I turn to the sentencing framework, because there has been some conflation of death by careless driving and death by dangerous driving. I am certainly not trying to educate Members, but it is my responsibility to set out the regime as it is today. Hon. Members know that sentencing within the framework that is set out in legislation is rightly a matter for the independent courts. Judges consider the facts of each case, weigh up any aggravating and mitigating factors, and follow relevant Sentencing Council guidelines before arriving at a sentence that is just and proportionate.

Some of the issues that have emerged in this debate are perhaps less about sentencing—although some certainly are about sentencing—than about the charging decision. I discussed this with my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford and the Watermans. The CPS charging decision—the decision about what offence a defendant is charged with—is, and obviously should be, made independently of the Government, but the victims need to be involved in that decision. I am not saying that the CPS should do what they say, but it should involve them and communicate and engage with them. Too often, I meet victims of road traffic offences and other offences who simply have not been engaged with at all. I am talking to the Victims Minister to ensure that the CPS, where it can and where it is appropriate, is communicating with victims to make sure that the charging decision is the right one.

The law must reflect both the harm caused and how responsible the offender was for causing it, because while two drivers can cause the same terrible outcome, they may have done so through very different actions. That does not, of course, make one family’s loss any less than another’s, but the law has to distinguish between those different levels of blame.

Let me turn to the offences themselves. The most serious driving offence is causing death by dangerous driving. That is where someone’s driving falls far below the standard expected of a competent and careful driver, and where the danger should have been obvious. We are talking here about things such as excessive speed, racing and dangerous overtaking. For offences committed since June 2022, as mentioned by the spokesperson for the official Opposition, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan), the maximum sentence for causing death by dangerous driving is now life imprisonment. There is also a minimum five-year driving disqualification and a compulsory extended driving test before an offender can return to the road. Those are tough penalties, and rightly so. They give judges the power to impose the most serious punishment in the very worst cases. There is also the offence of causing death by careless or inconsiderate driving. That covers driving that falls below the expected standard but does not reach the higher threshold for dangerous driving. The maximum sentence is a five-year imprisonment, alongside a minimum 12-month driving ban.

I raise the issue of the CPS because, of course, what the defendant is charged with is what the judge and the court can deal with. The charging decision is often just as important to get right for victims, families and wider society as the final sentencing, which then may not seem fair or sufficient to victims. The distinction between dangerous and careless driving is really important in our law, although of course I recognise that it is difficult for grieving families to accept that when, clearly, the loss they have suffered is exactly the same.

I want to deal with some of the specifics that have been raised in the debate, in particular by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West, about driving disqualification and whether there should be automatic disqualification—I think the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills (Tessa Munt) also raised that. That is part of live discussions that I have had with the Department for Transport. It strikes me—I am very happy to put this on the record—that I have come across too many cases where driving disqualification is not taken seriously as part of the punishment. Often, a ban runs concurrently with a prison sentence, so there is the absurd situation that someone obviously cannot drive while they are in prison, and then they get out and they have never had any disqualification from driving at all.

I raised this issue in a meeting with the chair of the Sentencing Council; perhaps it was after the meeting with the Watermans that I raised it personally with the chair. I am not breaching any state secrets when I say that she was not persuaded, but I have asked the Sentencing Council to look again. The DFT is looking at the evidence to ensure that we have evidence-based policy, and I will continue pushing to see how we can ensure the judiciary use driving disqualification in a more muscular fashion.

The judiciary has the power to act. In this case, there is an issue about automating, but the judiciary has the power to implement lifelong driving bans, yet too often they seem not to be considered. I am not criticising our independent judges—I would never do that—but we must consider what we need to do as a Government and as a Parliament, while also considering the Sentencing Council’s role, in pushing this issue forward.

[Dr Mullan]

Just so the public can understand, there is a sentencing framework and judges have a role in applying that framework, but it would be totally within Parliament’s remit to make a ban mandatory—to make it automatic. We could do that. Indeed, a number of MPs voted for that last year, but it was blocked by the Government.

[Jake Richards]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that Parliament could pass a law to introduce an automatic driving ban, but I think he was referring to a ban after conviction for dangerous driving. Automating such a ban before conviction would be more complex.

There is a general principle. As a Government, like Governments before us, we try to allow judicial discretion. Every case is different. I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point; I am not trying to hide from the argument. The judges have the power. We need to get and understand the evidence on how often they use it and why they are not using it. Legislating to force judges’ hands can lead to further absurdities and injustices in very different ways. We allow judicial discretion because every case is different, but as I say, I accept the point.

[Jake Richards]

The hon. Lady is right to raise the duration of the period before trial or conviction; too often, it is far too long, but solving this problem is not as straightforward as potentially suspending someone immediately after the event. As she is no doubt aware, often very complex investigations have to take place. Of course, suspension can be a bail condition, and I am trying to assess why in too many cases it is not used.

I remember a case raised with me by my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich (Sarah Coombes), in which someone had been bailed for causing death by dangerous driving—I think that is correct. They immediately got in a car and were convicted of drunk driving just a few hours later. That is absurd. More generally, we have to start taking driving offences, whether they are low level or high level, more seriously. The road safety strategy seeks to do that, and we want to get on with it. I am pushing the Roads Minister to work with me to make sure that seriousness of these offences is reflected in sentencing guidelines as much as possible.

As well as sentencing, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West spoke about graduated driving licensing. I hope I have dealt with that issue; it is on the agenda. It is very much a DFT issue, so I do not want to comment too much on it.

On sentencing guidelines, I am in a constitutional dialogue with the Sentencing Council on lots of issues and that is one of them. I will be careful what else I say about it, but I am very much alive to it.

I am also very alive to the ULS scheme. The Law Commission is working on the ULS scheme, as my hon. Friend no doubt knows from his time working with the Law Officers. We need to assess whether death by careless driving should be added to the list of offences that can be considered under the scheme. I can commit today to doing that.

[Dr Mullan]

Will the Minister write to the Law Commission and ask it to ensure that it considers that issue as part of its review?

[Jake Richards]

I am happy to write to the Law Commission to ask whether to consider that specific issue. I am going to consider it anyway. I want the Law Commission to do it—evidence would be helpful—but we will work with the Attorney General’s office to do that none the less. There will no doubt be some effects to that, but let us see what we can do.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West talked last about prevention. Again, at its heart the road safety strategy tries to reach its 65% reduction target by through prevention. There is a serious amount of investment. This is the first road safety strategy in a decade, and it is backed with, I think, £18 million in prevention work, which is not an insignificant sum. We would like to do more, but I know that my hon. Friend the Roads Minister will work hard.

In terms of other questions from Members about the road safety strategy more generally, it is not my strategy, so it is difficult for me to comment on timings and when that will be. I will ask my hon. Friend the Roads Minister to write to Members who have raised specific questions and make sure that my office gets in touch with him on that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jake Richards]

I think the Lord Chancellor announced last week further action on getting defendants to face up to their actions as much as is possible. Frankly, that is what we are talking about. We cannot force a defendant to give answers if they do not want to, but that can certainly be reflected in the sentencing regime, and it is reflected in the sentencing regime. If there are any other suggestions about how we can go further, I would be more than happy to hear from the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills, as a member of the Justice Committee. She always gives me the signal that she will write to me, and I look forward to responding to her in due course.

[Dr Mullan]

On my central question, as does he, as a Justice Minister, think that the justice system is consistently delivering justice for victims of these and other serious offences?

[Jake Richards]

No. Too often, families feel let down by the justice system in lots of different ways, whether by the final sentence, by the way they were treated, or, in the case that my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West raises, by misinformation being given about options at the end. That can cause huge damage. I am not criticising the individuals in that case; they are hard-working individuals and it is a complex area of law. We just need to get some of the basics right to make the system as amenable as humanly possible for victims when they are navigating the most traumatic time in their lives. Too often it is not. I accept that point in relation to sentences as well. We are in a complex constitutional relationship. I am not going to criticise independent judges or the sentences given in any individual case—it would be wrong of me to do so—but I accept that too often victims feel that justice has not been done.

When I knock on doors in my constituency, road safety is top of my constituents’ priority list, and that is the case in so many places, especially in rural villages, as the hon. Member for Cardiff West said. There is a real disconnect between the prioritisation of road safety and how often we talk about it in this place. If we can all do our bit to raise these issues—with me, but also across Government—we will be doing a service to the country and even more so to victims. I thank everyone here today, particularly those in the Public Gallery. I look forward to continuing this discussion and to taking action in the coming weeks and months.

Controlling or Coercive Behaviour: Sentencing

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

Monday 19th October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I thank the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Irene Campbell) for opening the debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee. I join everyone who has spoken so far in paying particular tribute to Paris Shears, who is in the Public Gallery. She started the petition, which has now secured an extraordinary more than 105,000 signatures.

In my time as a shadow Justice Minister, I have had the privilege of working with several victims of crime, particularly female victims of crime, and they all pay a price for the campaigning they do. It forces people to relive their experiences and to talk about them in a way that can be deeply traumatic. I am deeply grateful to everybody who does that, Paris included. In telling us her story, in which her abuser changed his plea at the very last minute, she described how she felt “silenced again”. She said that

“it meant he controlled the narrative again”.

It took more than 530 days for Paris’s case to reach trial. That is 530 days of sitting, waiting, reliving, expecting and worrying, just to find at the very last minute that he takes back control by changing his plea and still manages to secure a discount in his sentence.

It is worth highlighting, as others have done, how the system works. A defendant who pleads guilty will normally receive a reduction in their sentence. That principle is long-standing, and the reason often given is one of cost and logistics, but the other reason, which is particularly important to me, is that it potentially spares victims and witnesses having to give evidence and be cross-examined. I have met victims who have found that process very distressing.

The detail of exactly how the reduction process works is determined by the Sentencing Council, not by Parliament, and the courts are required to follow its guidelines, under which the maximum reduction is a third. Unusually for me, I congratulate the Government on at least ignoring the plea in the Leveson review to increase the discount even further to 40%, which I think would be wrong and against the interests of justice.

After the initial reduction of a third, the discount is a quarter, falling on a sliding scale to a maximum of one tenth for a plea on the first day of trial. If the plea comes during the trial, the reduction should normally be reduced even further, and can even be zero. The court also has to explain whether it has applied a reduction and by how much. It is fair to say that the system already recognises that a late plea causes additional distress, and therefore secures less of a discount to the sentence. As I read it, Paris’s law, for which the petition asks, would mean that someone charged with controlling or coercive behaviour who pleads not guilty and then changes their plea receives no reduction in any circumstances.

I want to lay out my guiding principles. One of the main reasons why I wanted to become an MP was that I felt that our justice system did not provide sufficient punishment for all sorts of offences. Morally, I hate to see any person receiving any kind of reduction whatsoever. However, the Government’s response to the petition makes the important point that even when an offender pleads guilty very late, that can still spare a victim from having to give potentially traumatic evidence. If a is victim spared cross-examination, even at the last minute, that should be worth something.

As Paris’s campaign has pointed out, there is a real risk, in these particular types of case, of creating an incentive for a perpetrator who has every intention of ultimately pleading guilty to drag the process out. As the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller), pointed out, and as others have said, that can also happen as part of an attempt to wear down a potential victim to encourage them to drop their evidence. Both those reasons should cause us to pause when considering discounts.

I gave this matter a great deal of thought when considering the petition, because it is a question of how we weigh up two potential public goods, and something done in the interest of victims. Ultimately, how do we decide on the level of distress, discomfort and worse for people who have to wait and then see a discount with a last-minute plea, versus another group of victims who will perhaps benefit from the fact that they have not had to endure a trial? It is not easy to reach a firm conclusion on that. It has certainly given us all a lot to think about, in relation not just to the specific cause the petitioner has brought to our attention but to the general issue of coercive and controlling behaviour and violence against women and girls.

As other Members have mentioned, we know that every week women are killed—murdered by men—and we still have an epidemic of violence that should trouble everybody in this country and certainly troubles me. It is helpful to consider how the position has changed over time. The previous Government made coercive and controlling behaviour a criminal offence for the first time through the Serious Crime Act 2015. They also passed the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, which wrote coercive control into the statutory definition of domestic abuse. In 2023, new guidance was brought forward to protect people who do not live with their abuser from threats and intimidation. The Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 then introduced the powers that this Government have now used so that offenders who are convicted of controlling or coercive behaviour and sentenced to 12 months or more are managed under multi-agency public protection arrangements, which are used to monitor someone’s risk to other people when they are not in prison.

I welcome the Government’s use of those powers, but there is clearly more to do. There are several issues that it is important to consider, even if we do not all agree that the proposal in the petition is quite ready to be supported universally. What are the Government seeking to do to encourage earlier guilty pleas through other mechanisms? I have frequently heard that allowing the defendant better access to earlier advice, whereby someone can make it clear to them face to face that their chances of getting away with an offence are pretty slim, can encourage earlier guilty pleas. The Lib Dem spokesperson mentioned pre-trial hearings; I visited Liverpool Crown court, which instituted further preparatory hearings to encourage earlier pleas in either direction. Those are things that could be done without interfering with the existing arrangements in respect of early guilty pleas.

I am sure I am right in saying that even if the perpetrator in Paris’s case had got the full sentence, Paris, like many victims, would still not have been satisfied that it was anywhere near long enough, given the impact of these crimes on women. That is what I have drawn most strongly from my work with victims across the board, which is why I was particularly vociferous in my opposition to the Government’s reduction in jail time for a sweeping range of offenders. As has been mentioned already, the vast majority of domestic abusers who have been convicted for common assault will now serve just a third of their sentence, whether it was reduced or not. It was only because of vociferous campaigning from victims like Paris that a whole range of rapists, paedophiles and terrible abusers of women and girls will not be released after a third of their sentence instead of two fifths. Is the offence of coercive and controlling behaviour excluded alongside the exclusions that we managed to secure from the Government for rape and other offences?

One of the reasons the Gauke review was such a travesty in terms of dictating sentencing policy in this country is that it gave almost no thought whatsoever to what victims want to see or whether they think sentences are sufficiently just. My former Justice Committee colleague, the right hon. Member for Liverpool Garston (Maria Eagle), talked about concurrent sentences; they are the norm in our judicial system, yet I do not think I have ever met a victim who thinks they makes sense in the vast majority of circumstances. Some people are convicted for hundreds of offences, but even though sentences are ramped up when someone has that many convictions, they are still nothing like what they should be if they were not served concurrently.

We are committed to recognising that we did not do enough in government to ensure sufficient prison capacity so that we can actually engage with these issues. We want to undo all the damaging shortening of sentences we have seen under this Government and go further. On discounts, there might be better acceptance of them if victims at least felt that the ultimate sentences, even with a discount, were closer to what they consider justice, which in my experience they do not at the moment.

Even if we are not quite there on this issue, as Paris says on her website,

“Paris’s Law was never about one petition, one debate or one event. It’s about creating lasting change.”

There are many ways in which we can do that across the board when it comes to the abuse of women in all its forms.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jake Richards)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Irene Campbell) for securing this important debate.

I echo colleagues from across the House in thanking Paris Shears, who is in the Public Gallery, for bringing this issue to our attention and for raising it publicly. Like the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan), I have the great privilege of meeting lots of victims as part of my job. It is a difficult part of my job, but one that I enjoy. It is humbling to see people who have suffered a lot give up even more to try to change the world for others. Paris is another such person, and I hope that this debate will help to promote her views and that we can take this issue further in the weeks ahead.

Controlling and coercive behaviour is an insidious—that word was used a lot in the debate—form of domestic abuse. It can take many forms, including isolation from friends and family, depriving victims of their basic needs, and enforcing rules to humiliate, degrade or even dehumanise and control all aspects of day-to-day life. Too many people in our country, mainly women, experience this sort of abuse. As Members will be aware, the Government have committed to halving violence against women and girls in the next decade. Our VAWG strategy sets out what we are doing to reform the police response, strengthen the criminal justice system and empower victims with specialist support.

I want to address some of the points made in this very constructive debate. I agree with the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle, about victims coming forward and putting their head above the parapet, which is incredibly humbling. I also agree with him—we agreed on an awful lot in this debate—about the need for constructive early advice for defendants to encourage early pleas where appropriate.

I think the shadow Minister put it well when he said that it is a really difficult balancing act, and there is no easy answer to the central issue that we are debating today. It is about trying to encourage guilty defendants to plead guilty, but doing so in a way that respects victims and puts them at the heart of the system. That is a really difficult balancing act that the justice system has to grapple with, and that we as a Government and as parliamentarians have to grapple with. As I will come on to say, it is even more difficult because of the nature of this particular offence, which so many Members highlighted in the debate.

The Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller), is right about trying to create mechanisms within criminal proceedings by which a defendant might plead earlier and re-engage with their prospects. Of course, she will be aware that there are already two formal opportunities to do so, and at any point in the process a defendant can, through correspondence, intimate that they are changing their plea. We need to consider how we can encourage that as part of the process more generally. The statutory guidance on this particular offence is being led by the Home Office, but I checked in preparation for the debate and can confirm that it will be published early next year.

I understand the point made by the Liberal Democrat spokesperson about court staff training, but I think that that issue has been debated; I am very wary that this debate has touched on lots of other pieces of legislation that we have already debated extensively. That is essentially an issue of proportionality, and what we are trying to do through the Courts and Tribunals Bill, which has now gone to the other place, is not only to quicken the court process but to ensure that it is done fairly. Again, like the central issue that we are debating today, that is a balancing act between efficiency, productivity and ensuring that victims are at the heart. Efficiency and productivity are not for their own sake; they are for the victims’ sake. I know the Liberal Democrat spokesperson appreciates that, and she made important points.

The hon. Member for Eastleigh (Liz Jarvis) is doing what she should do, and clearly does, as a good constituency MP by raising the case of her constituent. She did so powerfully, and I thank her for that.

[Dr Mullan]

It seems that the Minister has moved on from responding to my questions, one of which was whether coercive and controlling behaviour is excluded from the early release programme.

[Jake Richards]

I have made it abundantly clear that I will not relitigate the Sentencing Act.

[Dr Mullan]

It is a basic question.

[David Mundell (in the Chair)]

Order. The shadow Minister should not intervene from a sedentary position.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Mullan]

Will the Minister give way?

[Jake Richards]

No, I will not give way.

As I have already touched on, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Matt Bishop) and others made the point that early guilty pleas and discounts must be considered very carefully in the context of controlling and coercive behaviour. It is a unique offence, although of course there are lots of other offences that involve issues of control and power, as my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Connor Naismith) powerfully highlighted. I can commit that the Government will look at these measures in the context of this particular offence.

Going back to the central balancing act that I have already touched on, we are not currently persuaded that the evidence suggests that victims would be best served by a scrapping of discounts just for this particular offence. Indeed, there is no other criminal offence for which that is the case, and at the moment—I say “at the moment” because this is an ongoing conversation—we are not persuaded that that is something we can do. My hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean also asked whether I would meet Paris. If she would like to meet me or the Victims Minister, we will of course meet her at the earliest opportunity.

Let me go back to the early guilty plea. Sir Brian Leveson did the modelling when he looked at this and encouraged us to offer further discounts, as the shadow Minister said. The evidence from his modelling said that it would encourage more people to plead guilty. We did not accept that recommendation, but it suggests to me that these discounts, however unsatisfactory or even unsavoury they are, do make the criminal justice system more expeditious, which ultimately serves victims as well.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Garston (Maria Eagle) raised the case of her constituent Hayley, which was very powerful and moving, and asked about non-fatal strangulation and sentencing. I meet regularly with the chair of the Sentencing Council and will raise that issue formally in my next meeting with her. My right hon. Friend also spoke about the victims code, and I will ensure that the Victims Minister gets a transcript of her speech. My right hon. Friend will no doubt speak with her as well—I know that she has already met with her—but I will make sure that it is very much on the Minister’s agenda.

I agree about the confusion, or perhaps the lack of knowledge, about concurrent and consecutive sentencing. We all have a job to ensure that the criminal justice system can explain that to victims during the criminal justice process. Judges and Crown Prosecution Service prosecutors have an explanatory role, to ensure that everyone knows what they are dealing with when they leave the courtroom, because they often do not. There is more we can do in terms of an education setting, for want of a better phrase.

The hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) raised a number of points, and I will try to deal with some of them. The interrelation of the family courts was raised consistently by other Members and is something that we are very alive to. I hope that we will publish the family justice strategy later this year, and I assure the hon. Member that dealing with some of these issues will be right at the heart of how we look at the whole family justice system. He and other Members are right that too often men—it is mainly men—are able to use the family courts to further compound misery and harm on women. It is not good enough, and I experienced it myself when I was a barrister in the family courts. I saw it with my own eyes, and we are going to try to change it.

The hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire also mentioned special measures. I am reluctant—simply because it is not my brief—to go into it too much. I am aware that we want to retain some court discretion. I am not suggesting that his proposal would not do that, but I am reluctant to comment much further, because it is not my area, to be blunt. I will make sure that the relevant Minister hears what was said by the hon. Member and by the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Chichester.

On the point that the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire made about the data protocol since 2024, I will go away and make sure that he gets a written answer.

My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West (Richard Quigley) raised really powerful stories about what has happened in his constituency. He mentioned some of the things the Government have done; I would add restriction zones, which can be really powerful for ensuring that if offenders are released from prison, there can be better protections for victims of domestic abuse. They are quite innovative in flipping the burden on to the offender rather than victim, so the victim can go on with their life and not have to worry about bumping into the offender, which is clearly a more acute issue in my hon. Friend’s constituency than others.

My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin) raised the cases of Chloe and Skye, which are very moving. Her questions to me and the Government were essentially about whether we are ensuring that victims of domestic abuse are at the heart of our reforms to the criminal justice system. Last week, the Courts and Tribunals Bill was before the House of Commons, and the gist of that legislation is to try to get the backlog down. Until we do that, all these issues are exaggerated for victims, so that is what the Government are trying to do. My hon. Friend will be reassured that the Victims Minister is playing a really important role in making sure that victims are at the heart of the criminal justice system and all the reforms we are making.

My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich has his own experience of the particular harms of this offence, and we have to consider them very carefully in terms of the early guilty plea. I will go away and do so.

I want to set out some of the things that we are doing to support victims. There is, of course, a technical argument in this debate about early guilty pleas and any discounts that might flow from that, but the heart of this issue is how we treat victims, particularly victims of domestic abuse and this insidious form of it. I understand that some victims and some of those who signed the petition will perhaps be disappointed with my central response to their ask, but we are, in my mind, taking huge steps to support victims and make sure that they are properly supported and protected throughout the justice system.

We are providing funding for a range of national and local services offering support to victims. Earlier this year, we committed £550 million to victim and witness support services over the next three years—the biggest investment in support for victims that we have ever seen in this country, which I am particularly proud of. That will go into offering specialist services around emotional, practical and therapeutic support, including counselling and advice around going to court. Too many times, I meet victims who simply have no support when they go to court; it is actually shocking. We are investing to make sure that we have that support in and around court for victims much more consistently and as less of a lottery.

I recognise the importance of ensuring that victims and their families have access to the information and support that they need. That is vital in helping them to navigate the criminal justice system. It is why the victims code is so important: it sets out what victims can expect to receive from criminal justice agencies in England and Wales. Earlier this year, we consulted on a new code to make those rights clearer and ensure that they are delivered more consistently. We also strengthened the accountability for those rights so that failures can be identified and addressed, rather than leaving victims without the support they should receive.

Of course, we must do everything we can to protect victims from further harm. In our manifesto, we committed to ensuring that the police have the right skills and training to respond appropriately to victims of violence against women and girls. In February 2025, the Home Office announced £13 million in funding to launch a new national centre for VAWG and public protection, which is designed to improve how police respond to violence against women and girls, including controlling or coercive behaviour, strengthen officers’ understanding of these crimes and help to ensure that victims receive consistent protection.

From February last year, offenders convicted of controlling or coercive behaviour and sentenced to 12 months or longer have been automatically managed under multi-agency public protection arrangements, which were mentioned in the debate. That requires co-operative working between the police and the probation and prison services to make sure that the risks posed by the most serious offenders are properly managed and that appropriate safeguards are put in place. That change recognises the significant harm that this kind of offending can cause by putting controlling or coercive behaviour on a par with other forms of domestic abuse. These arrangements are about preventing further abuse, protecting victims and ultimately saving lives.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran for bringing this important issue to the House, and I thank all Members for their contributions to the debate, which was constructive and grappled with a difficult issue that has no easy answer. The Government’s position on guilty plea reductions will not be what some are hoping for, but I want to reassure victims that their experiences matter and that this debate has given them prominence in the Government’s consideration of these issues going forward. Ultimately, nobody should have to endure controlling or coercive behaviour, and those who do deserve not only justice, but the right protection and support throughout the justice system and beyond.

Courts and Tribunals Bill

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Tuesday 13th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to take part in the further consideration of the Courts and Tribunals Bill as we reach Report stage. Not for the first time with this ministerial team, this Justice Secretary and this Prime Minister, what we were told was necessary has turned out to be unnecessary, what we were told was impossible is now possible, and what we were told was unavoidable was avoidable after all. This Minister told us again and again on Second Reading and throughout the Committee that each and every one of the measures in this Bill—each and every part of their proposals—was the only way to get on top of the court backlogs. But apparently not, because only days ago the Justice Secretary appeared on national television to announce a significant U-turn: the Government are dropping clause 3. We were told that their new division of judge-only trials was the only way the Crown court backlog could be brought down—that it could not be brought down without it. Yet now Ministers inform us that removing this very provision will actually allow the work to proceed faster.

The Opposition welcome this decision. I welcome the fact that the Justice Secretary put his name to our amendment removing clause 3, but how we got here matters. It is not the first time that this ministerial team and this Justice Secretary have let their Back Benchers defend the indefensible and then drop them in it. This same ministerial team and this same Justice Secretary told us that the release of various serious sexual and violent offenders was an absolute necessity, that they had no choice other than to put victims through the distress and upset over the summer. And then they did have a choice.

Why does this matter? Most of the time in politics in this place we are debating choices—which choice we should make as MPs and as different parties, weighing up the pros and cons of the options—but sometimes Ministers attempt to cut through that to secure the support of MPs by saying that they have no choice. When MPs resist and tell them their concerns over what the Government are proposing, Ministers have a fundamental duty to this House and to their own Back-Bench colleagues in particular. That duty is to test to destruction the proposition that there is no choice.

Only the Ministers have the army of civil servants, the data, the costings and the honest advice. When a Minister tells their own MPs that they have no choice, surely it must mean exactly that. That is how they secure the support of their Back-Bench colleagues. These Ministers have failed in that duty and have failed their colleagues. Ministerial credibility is a precious resource and this Minister has exhausted hers. If clause 3 was never truly required to tackle court delays, we must ask: what other assertions made by this Front-Bench team are equally unfounded? How can they expect their propositions of “no choice” to be accepted in future, and not just in future but on this very Bill before us today?

We must also be clear that, despite the headlines surrounding this partial retreat, the core damaging framework of the Bill remains almost entirely intact. The Government continue to press ahead with clause 1, which completely strips adult defendants charged with triable either way offences of their historic right to elect for a jury trial. At the same time, clause 6 doubles magistrates’ maximum sentencing powers up to 24 months. That means complex, high-stake cases—including sexual assault, actual bodily harm and burglary—will be retained in summary courts, exposing defendants to two-year prison sentences without ever having access to a jury.

Clause 7 and schedule 2 dismantle the automatic right of appeal from the magistrates court to the Crown court. Instead of a full rehearing before a judge and lay magistrates, wrongly convicted individuals will face a restrictive permission barrier on written papers alone.

It should be clear that, taken together, we are still facing a fundamental attack on the existing rights to a jury trial. The provisions still represent a sweeping contraction of access to jury trial and summary justice safeguards. The opposition from legal professions, victims groups and civil liberties organisations remains as firm today as it was on Second Reading.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham Yardley) (Lab)]

As somebody who has had someone elect to have a jury and now awaits a trial in 2029 on a simple order breach, I ask the hon. Gentleman: does he think, in his defence of jury trials, that a victim should be able to say whether they want the case to be tried by a jury, or should it just be the defendant? That is the system we have today. In the light of his desire to see jury trials, does he think that the system should be changed so that anyone can say, “No, I want it to be heard in front of a jury”?

[Dr Mullan]

What we are talking about is where we draw the ledger. I do not think the hon. Member is suggesting that we should have everything done by magistrates. Why not have everything done by magistrates? If it is fundamentally unfair to allow people to have a jury trial, why not let everything be done by magistrates? Then the victims do not have a say on whether it is a jury trial. The point we are clear about is that this is an unprecedented erosion of that right. It was not in the Government’s manifesto, it was until recently largely opposed by very large numbers of their own MPs, and it is based on a premise of necessity that I am afraid is paper thin. Ministers turned around and said that these were things that they had to do to get the backlog down. It turns out that they did not have to do that.

[Emily Darlington (Milton Keynes Central) (Lab)]

I think the hon. Member misses the point of the question that was just raised. The question he seems to misunderstand is the fact that the right to choose a jury trial is being used by perpetrators to continue the abuse of the victims and survivors. Does he think that the state should be party to continuing that abuse and allowing perpetrators to play the system through a jury trial selection or an appeals process?

[Dr Mullan]

I listened closely to the words that the hon. Member used: she talked about “perpetrators”. We heard the word again and again from Labour Members in Committee. May I remind her that defendants are not guilty until found guilty, and that this erosion of rights affects innocent people, too? Labour Members repeatedly forget that. Being accused does not make you a perpetrator. I ask the hon. Member to think about that carefully.

[Ayoub Khan (Birmingham Perry Barr) (Ind)]

Does the shadow Minister agree that justice must not only be done, but be seen to be done? One of the key cornerstones of getting justice is being tried by one’s peers, and giving that to a defendant builds confidence in a jury system.

[Dr Mullan]

The hon. Gentleman is right. As I pointed out at the start, and as Labour Members have highlighted, it is not just people concerned about defendants who have raised concerns about the proposals; victims have as well. Victims groups wrote an extensive letter to the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister, asking them to think twice about the erosion of jury trials. Any criticism that Members make of me will, I am afraid, also have to be levelled at the victims who do not agree with them. Victims are not all of one voice on this issue, and we should respect that, instead of assuming that every victim agrees with Labour Members, which they do not.

The erosions under the proposals are significant. This Government, in which trust is so low, also seek for themselves an extraordinary power to do what they set out to do in clause 3 through the back door, via clause 4, in which they are not only introducing judge-only trials in the Crown court for what they describe as lengthy and complex cases, but giving themselves the power to add to the list of eligible cases through order alone, bypassing the fullest scrutiny of Parliament. That is quite extraordinary from a Government who, when in opposition, concerned themselves greatly with the proper use of delegated legislation.

The Opposition remain as concerned as everybody else about the Crown court backlog. We know that victims and innocent defendants are suffering as a result of it, but so much of the Bill will not help, and may make matters worse. That is the reality. I notice that the Minister was happy to repeatedly say in Committee that opposing the measures does not suggest not having concern for victims; I hope that she sticks to that line during the rest of the debate, and I would encourage all of her colleagues to listen to the words that she said. Being concerned about the erosion of jury trial rights does not in any way mean that we do not care about victims, and I hope that the Minister repeats that later.

I was able to visit the Supreme Court yesterday, and I encourage any Members mulling this over to head to the exhibition space and take a look at the replica of Magna Carta. They should read for themselves the words illuminated on the wall: at its heart, the highest and best form of justice is justice delivered by your peers. That brings me to the position of Labour Members. Prior to this partial U-turn, dozens of Labour Back Benchers, including 37 MPs who signed a public letter, expressed deep opposition to the Bill’s proposals to curtail jury trials. They rightly described the stripping of jury rights as “madness” that

“will cause more problems than it solves”.

Labour Members spoke forcefully about the unique value of the jury, yet today, following the removal of just one clause—just one element of this damaging Bill—the Government expect those same Members to walk through the Lobby in support of it. I ask those Members: what has actually changed? Clause 1 still abolishes the right of an ordinary citizen to elect for jury trial. Clause 6 still pushes serious cases into summary courts, where backlogs are already surging, and clause 7 still cuts off automatic appeals. If removing the right to elect a jury trial in either-way cases was wrong before, it remains wrong today. Dropping one element of a bad package does not make the remaining elements good law.

In Committee, Opposition Members and Labour Back Benchers put forward a series of modest, constructive amendments designed to insert basic safeguards into the Bill, and the Government rejected every single one. We tabled amendments to preserve a natural justice exception, ensuring that where a defendant could demonstrate that a summary-only trial would result in a clear breach of natural justice, a jury trial would remain available. The Ministers defeated those amendments. We pressed the Government on the severe misalignment in legal aid—a defendant in a Crown court benefits from higher legal aid eligibility thresholds—but the Government rejected those amendments. Everything we sought to do to protect natural justice and lessen the impact of the Bill was blocked.

[Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)]

I thank the shadow Minister for being generous with his time. What did his Government do in 14 years to ensure that people were tried by their peers? That is exactly what magistrates are there to do. I know that all too well, because my dad served as a magistrate in Warwickshire for over 40 years, and I am proud to say that. Magistrates courts are the bedrock of our justice system. The shadow Minister’s Government did nothing to protect them, but that is exactly what we are doing: we are investing in more magistrates, so that more people can be tried by their peers, and we are supporting those magistrates in doing the job effectively.

[Dr Mullan]

The hon. Lady asked what we did to preserve the right to trial by jury. We brought the backlog in the Crown court down from the level we inherited from the previous Labour Government. Prior to the pandemic, our record on the Crown court backlog was better than the previous Labour Government’s, which is something that Labour Members all conveniently seem to forget.

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful argument in defence of jury trials. Members are rightly thinking about the impact on victims and defendants, but would he agree that the erosion of jury trial also has significant implications for the judiciary? In jury trials, for the public, the jury very often stands between the defendant, or the convicted, and the judge. If we remove that shield between the two, the judge, their prejudices, demographics and how they were selected become more a focus of public contemplation, and that may in the end lead to political interference in the selection of judges.

[Dr Mullan]

My right hon. Friend is right on both points. As he was speaking, the Justice Secretary said from a sedentary position that he removed that clause. Perhaps he does not understand his own Bill. You are retaining judge-only trials for complex and lengthy cases, and retaining the power to use delegated legislation to allow judges alone to sit on those cases. Exactly the sort of scenario that my right hon. Friend was describing would be produced.

Magistrates have a degree of confidence and community support that is in proportion to the use of their powers. If we significantly increase the use of their powers, the pressure on magistrates, and scrutiny of them, is also likely to increase. Picking up on that point, I want to make sure—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. That is the third time that I have heard the shadow Minister say “you”. It is not my legislation.

[Dr Mullan]

Lucky you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I take that point.

The schedule 1 powers that I have talked about are a significant Henry VIII power. Under proposed statutory instrument powers, the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State will have the authority to add further categories of offences to schedule 1 by secondary legislation. I am not aware of any time before in this place when the Secretary of State could use secondary legislation to erode and remove the right to a jury trial from a particular defendant. That is completely unprecedented and indefensible.

The Conservatives do not merely criticise this bad package of legislation; we have repeatedly sought to put forward practical, evidence-based alternatives that tackle the delays without taking a sledgehammer to our constitutional rights. The Government must fix the operational failures that currently waste thousands of court hours every year. Last year, between 23% and 26% of Crown court trials were ineffective. Rather than stripping citizens of jury trial rights, the Minister should be focused instead on failures in prisoner transport, which result in hundreds of trials being derailed, simply because defendants are late to the dock.

The Government must keep all existing courtrooms open and fully funded, and must use new artificial intelligence tools for disclosure and listing, and they must expand live-link video participation. [Interruption.] Ministers on the Front Bench chunter that they are already doing that. If that is the case, why is the Crown court backlog going up? They are clearly not succeeding with the measures that they are bringing forward, and a number of things are getting worse.

We must improve case management and incentivise earlier case resolution, instead of forcing complex cases into the overburdened summary courts, where there are backlogs too. Extraordinarily, the Minister claimed that there was no backlog in the magistrates courts. I do not know how she decides what is or is not a backlog. Cases going up by 10% in one year is a backlog by any measure. I visited Liverpool Crown court, where the wait for trial is roughly half the length of the wait for trial in other parts of the country. The Government should replicate the proactive case management model successfully pioneered in courts like Liverpool, Preston and Cardiff, where active Crown Prosecution Service case ownership and early trial-readiness reviews have driven down backlogs.

Our sunset clause draws attention to the true motivations of this Government. If the Government sincerely feel that these measures are a necessity to bring the backlog down, as they have argued repeatedly to their Back Benchers, our clause is quite clear that when the backlog is down to the pre-covid average for a period of four quarters, these damaging, rights-eroding measures should be withdrawn. I do not expect that the Government will support that proposal today, because fundamentally they do not have the same faith that we do in the importance and value of a jury trial.

The Government’s partial U-turn demonstrates that sustained scrutiny can force a rethink, but a partial U-turn is not enough. The central flaws of the Bill remain: the abolition of the right to elect trial by jury, the risky expansion of summary jurisdiction, the restriction of appeal rights and the creation of secondary powers to expand juryless trials. We should not erode centuries of procedural safeguards to achieve marginal administrative speed gains. I urge hon. Members across the House, and especially those who have previously spoken out against these measures, to stand by their previous words, to stand by their principles, and to reject these remaining clauses tonight.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Ind)]

May I begin by welcoming the Justice Secretary to his place, and thank him for his engagement with me over recent weeks? More particularly, may I thank him for appointing Holly Lynch, the former Member of Parliament for Halifax, who apparently—goodness knows why—is still a big fan of me, despite the fact that I have opposed these policies in previous months?

Goodness me, a lot has changed since I last addressed the House on the Bill, and not just in the Bill itself. I welcome the removal of clause 3, which introduced the idea of the Crown court bench division, but let us not pretend that its removal is because of rebels, or opposition from across the House, the Bar Council, the Criminal Bar Association and the Law Society—or indeed, I am told, from the Lady Chief Justice herself. The reality is that the CCBD was completely, unbelievably unworkable, as Members from across the House warned the Government. It would not—could not—have worked. It will never work.

I welcome the fact that the Government have done the right thing—they have listened to those of us who were bitterly opposed to the idea of the CCBD—but I regret to say that I cannot support the Bill today, in its current form. The backlog in the magistrates court is 380,000 cases and rising. The backlog in the Crown court, as I understand it, is 80,000, and it is fairly static; the number is probably falling. If we do away with the right to elect, the backlog will be transferred from the Crown court. The Government estimate that 25,000 fewer cases will be heard in the Crown court, and 5,500 trials will be moved from the Crown court to be heard at summary trial in the magistrates court. Well, that just removes a problem from the Crown court and transfers it to the magistrates court. I do not care what we call it, be it a backlog or something different; however the Government want to describe it, there are 380,000 cases and rising in the magistrates court. That is 380,000 criminal cases, in which complainants are waiting for an outcome—for their trial to be concluded.

I agree that a trial in the magistrates court is a lot quicker than a trial in the Crown court. Of course it is—it is swift, summary justice. But that is why we need to be very cautious about what category of case is heard before a bench of lay magistrates in the magistrates courts. That matters, because the rights and liberty of the accused are at stake. That is why we limit magistrates’ power on sentencing in the system in England and Wales. I cannot support clauses 1 and 2.

--- Later in debate ---

[Karl Turner]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the intervention. I will be honest: I did not know about the report, but I am keen to have a look.

[Dr Mullan]

As I said in my opening speech, a number of women’s victims rights groups were the leading critics of getting rid of jury trials. We cannot make out that victims have a singular view on this and that they are happy with it. There are different opinions among victims groups, and many of them agree with the hon. Gentleman.

[Jess Phillips]

None of them agree with you about the presumption of contact.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Smith]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention and for her powerful speech earlier. Ultimately, the impact assessment for this Bill says that there would be no impact, but I believe that the impact on families more broadly is not worth the change.

[Dr Mullan]

As my hon. Friend points out, the impact assessment says that this particular measure, on its own, will not make any difference to the harm done to children, but we absolutely recognise that the checklist as a whole, and the way that it works, does need to be reformed. We think a more wholesale reform of the checklist is more appropriate than just attracting interest in one particular element of it.

[Rebecca Smith]

Exactly. I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention.

My concern is that, in some cases, clause 17 will increase the state’s power to erase one parent from a child’s life, and we know that that is often their father. It will rebalance the relationship between parents and the state.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 11th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

I welcome the opportunity to give my personal views on this Bill, as colleagues in health have taken over responsibility for it.

I have spent most of my life as someone who was highly sympathetic to the cause of assisted dying and imagined that I would support it if I ever was an MP, but that changed in 2018 when I read the Gosport War Memorial hospital independent panel report published in that year. The report should be more widely read, and I often wonder why it did not get the attention that it deserved. It found that between 1987 and 2001, more than 450 NHS patients had their lives prematurely shortened by healthcare staff. They were mainly elderly—the average age being 81—but some were as young as 61, and more than 70% of them had been admitted to hospital not needing palliative care or being at the end of their lives.

The report describes what happened to some of them. One patient was admitted for respite care but deteriorated and became confused during his stay. Staff asked permission to give him diamorphine, but his daughter refused as he was not in pain. However, his wife later agreed, and he was started on diamorphine via syringe driver. He died the same day. A man admitted for dementia was started on a diamorphine syringe driver; staff asked his son for permission, and he gave it, but he felt that there was no explanation of what it meant to be given diamorphine. The dose was doubled, and his father died five days later. His son felt that the diamorphine had effectively killed him.

Why did that happen? It happened because the staff in that hospital and on that ward had developed a culture of prioritising convenience in looking after patients over the value of their lives. It speaks to something that we often do not like to talk about and might feel guilty about: looking after people is not only challenging but can sometimes be deeply unpleasant.

As a doctor, I have helped to look after people who, when someone approached them to give them care, would scratch or hit out at them. I have helped to look after patients who refuse to stay in bed even though it is in their best interests, and who continually wander the wards and need to be monitored all the time. Then there is something that perhaps seems benign but is sometimes very challenging: the patients who continually call out for help again and again and again, perhaps asking for a medicine or a meal that they have already been given, and refuse to be consoled.

Most of the time, that brings out the best in our nature, as we would want—to be kind, caring and compassionate —but it can sometimes bring out the worst in our nature: our impatience, our intolerance and even our cruelty. While I have seen that happen in hospitals, I know that it goes on in private homes up and down the country every day.

[Anna Dixon]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Dr Mullan]

I will not; there is not time.

While I do not seek to say that the Bill will be used in that way—to deliberately bring about an end to the lives of confused or elderly patients—my worry is about how it will insert itself into that battle in our country between the best and worst of our natures, in families, conversations and settings where people, as much as we do not like to believe it, actively, for selfish reasons, wish that their relatives were dead, and where those relatives know that their family wish that they were dead. I do not want a Bill, or a message from this Parliament, to go out to the wider country to say that not just Parliament but the mechanisms of the NHS—a wing of the state—will sometimes support and help them to end their lives.

I remain deeply sympathetic to the scenarios and circumstances that people have described, and I can personally foresee a situation where I would want to make use of this Bill and feel that it would benefit me, but we should not legislate for what we might want. We have to legislate for what is in the broader interests of our constituents and our country, not least because, as many have articulated, the Bill has serious flaws. There is, in particular, the arbitrary decision to implement it in four years’ time, regardless of what might be happening with our palliative care services, which have, even recently, faced new and very real funding challenges.

While I understand why people think the Bill would bring benefits for some people, and I acknowledge that it would, I think that the price we are asking some of the most vulnerable and in-need people in our society to pay, and the risk we are asking them to face, is simply too high.

Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

Tuesday 1st September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) on securing it and the hon. Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) on his previous efforts. I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) for his long-standing work in this area. It was helpful that he set out in his contribution that the issue is not new and that similar attempts to use the law in such a manner go back quite some time.

Free speech is not simply a “nice to have”—it is one of the foundations on which free society is built. It allows whistleblowers to come forward, victims of abuse and misconduct to tell their stories and be heard, and journalists and campaigners to hold the powerful to account. However, free speech is not real if it can be exercised only by those wealthy enough to defend it. When people are frightened into silence not because what they have said is false but because of the cost of being right is too high, something is fundamentally wrong. That is the danger posed by SLAPPs.

At their worst, SLAPPs are not really about winning in court but about using the process itself as a punishment. They are designed to make the journey to court so expensive and exhausting that the journalist, campaigner, whistleblower or victim gives up before a judge ever considers the merits of the case. That chilling effect is not accidental—it is the point. Claims that go all the way to trial can cost an enormous amount in legal fees. Even a defendant who wins can be left with thousands of pounds of unrecovered legal bills. The threat being made is not always “We will win”; very often, it is “We can afford this for longer than you can.” Asymmetry is the weapon.

We have seen that in some of the most high-profile cases involving British journalists and publishers. Catherine Belton and her publisher faced multiple legal actions after the publication of “Putin’s People”; Tom Burgis and HarperCollins faced litigation over “Kleptopia”; and Eliot Higgins and Bellingcat were pursued through the courts by Yevgeny Prigozhin. I pay tribute to those publishers and businesses who resisted that pressure and were willing to pay those legal bills that enabled those publications to survive, when we know others do not.

These cases show how wealthy and powerful overseas actors, including Russian oligarchs, Kremlin-linked figures and large foreign corporations have been able to use or threaten to use English courts to put pressure on British journalists who are investigating corruption, kleptocracy and misconduct. That should concern every Member of this House. We have to have a situation in which journalists can continue to act without fear or favour. We want charities to be able to raise concerns about wrongdoing and survivors of abuse to speak publicly about what happened to them.

I have spoken in the House before about how the UK is the most frequent international origin of legal threats against journalists, accounting for 31% of all such cases. There are lots of things that we can be proud of about our judicial system and its popularity around the world, but that should give us pause for thought. Around 30% of SLAPPs in 2023 were used to prevent reporting of sexual misconduct. We cannot think of that as an intangible threat to freedom of speech alone: it is being used to silence victims of some of the most personal violations imaginable.

The shadow Justice Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy), put it plainly in a previous debate on this subject:

“SLAPPs have been deployed by those with deep pockets against company employees, non-governmental organisations, campaign activists, survivors of abuse and people from many walks of life.”—[Official Report, 21 November 2024; Vol. 757, c. 423.]

He was right. This is experienced not only in Fleet Street, but by charity workers who have documented wrongdoing at care homes, by campaigners who have published evidence of environmental harm and by the victims of sexual violence.

Let me be clear about the Conservatives’ position: we support the principle of regulating further to stop abusive SLAPP litigation. It is not right that wealthy individuals, foreign oligarchs or large corporations can use disproportionate spending power and the threat of financial ruin to silence legitimate public interest. Any legislation must be well drafted and carefully considered. People must still be able to defend their reputations in court. If a person is genuinely being defamed or false allegations have been made against them, they must have access to justice. I am sure we have all had our own experiences. During a previous election campaign, a so-called journalist decided that my record as a volunteer policeman was entirely fantastical and made up, and that I was a criminal, and I had to get a solicitor involved to get that taken down. I am sure that we have all had similar experiences.

Clearly, at the moment the balance is wrong. The question is whether the courts should be used by those with the deepest pockets to intimidate critics, bury investigations and frighten others into silence. They should not. It is important, as many hon. Members have already done, to recognise the progress to date. The previous Conservative Government introduced the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 that provided the first statutory definition of a SLAPP and created a power to strike out abusive claims at an early stage in cases relating to economic crime. We recognise, as the motion notes, that those provisions were narrow, but they were a start.

The previous Government also ran a call for evidence in 2022, covering the wider landscape of SLAPP abuse, and supported the private Member’s Bill from the then Member of Parliament for Caerphilly that would have extended those protections significantly. That Bill fell before the election and a new version of it was not proposed by the new Government.

The current Government’s record on the issue has been underwhelming. The former Prime Minister, the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), described the abuse of courts by the rich and powerful as intolerable. In October 2024, the Justice Secretary promised legislation as soon as parliamentary time allowed, but it did not appear in the King’s Speech. We then learned that plans had been drafted and were ready to go, but they were reportedly shelved due to fear of the backlash from some lawyers.

Some 111 peers, including eight former Cabinet Ministers, signed a cross-party letter in April demanding action. In its 2022 model law, the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition set out a possible clear legislative framework and has been waiting for a response ever since. The co-chair of the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition described action on SLAPPs as “a relatively easy win”, not only for a Government, but for the protection of public interest speech and the overall health of our democratic society. I acknowledge the work done in the other place by Baroness Stowell of Beeston. For some time, the Lords have been an important advocate of legislation in this area.

The point I make to the Government is simple. They do not need to start from scratch; they have years of cross-party debate, expert testimony and the lived experience of victims. They have campaigners, journalists, lawyers and Members from across both Houses calling for action. The building blocks are there, and the Government have accepted the principle. The previous Prime Minister has called SLAPPs intolerable.

The Justice Secretary has said that legislation will be brought forward, but the King’s Speech has been and gone, so what is the Government’s plan? If the answer today is only warm words, I think the 111 peers who signed the cross-party letter, the editors of The Times, The Sun and The Guardian, the National Union of Journalists, the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition and every Member who has spoken in this debate are perhaps entitled to a little something more. People must be free to defend their reputations in court, but wealthy individuals and corporations must not be able to abuse that freedom and use disproportionate legal firepower to silence legitimate free speech.

Public Office (Accountability) Bill

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Tuesday 14th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

Let me begin, as I have throughout the passage of this Bill, by placing at the forefront my admiration for the campaigners—the families and friends of the 97 who lost their lives in the Hillsborough tragedy. On 15 April 1989 their lives were changed forever. Nothing could be done to bring back their loved ones after they were gone. Anyone who has lost someone close to them suddenly like that knows the experience of their world changing in an instant, when at one point the person they care deeply about is there, and suddenly, in the next moment, they are not. Afterwards, everything—everything else—is different.

While those deaths could not be undone, what could have changed and what could have been different was the truth about what happened to their loved ones being told to them, and it was not—not just as an act of omission, but as part of a deliberate cover-up by the police and others to protect themselves from the consequences of their failings. What might have been solely a tragic experience of grief that would of course never leave them, with a gap in their lives where their loved ones were supposed to be, was in addition turned into decades of torment as they fought so hard for that truth that was kept from them.

The Bill is born of that fight and of that torment, and it is a tribute to their determination. That is why, when I faced the Prime Minister across the Dispatch Box eight months ago, I made clear the good-faith desire of the Opposition to engage constructively with the Government on this Bill. I have sought to live up to that throughout its passage, not just for the Hillsborough families, but for the many others let down by the state and its institutions—the postmasters, the infected blood scandal victims, and those lost in the Grenfell Tower fire and other tragedies and scandals, as Members across the House have highlighted throughout the passage of this Bill.

I feel still the keen interest of the families as we reach Third Reading, but it is our job—mine, the Opposition’s and all MPs’—to both hold in one hand, sincerely and clearly, the experiences of all those people who have suffered so greatly and, on the other, our duty and responsibility to legislate carefully and in a considered way. I am deeply disappointed that this Prime Minister and this Government have made that task much, much more difficult than it needed to be. [Interruption.] I would challenge any MP—[Interruption.] Any MP, no matter—[Interruption.] I would challenge—

[The Prime Minister]

Will the shadow Minister give way?

[Dr Mullan]

No. I would challenge any MP— [Interruption.] Not yet, not yet. No matter how supportive of this legislation, with far-reaching—[Hon. Members: “Give way!”] No, I will finish this moment. With far-reaching consequences—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. The shadow Minister must be heard.

[Dr Mullan]

I would challenge any MP, no matter how supportive of this legislation—which has such far-reaching consequences for the operation of the Government—to say that its progress, particularly over the last 24 hours, is anything like careful and considered.

[The Prime Minister]

I just want to record that these families, and families across the country affected by the Bill, have waited years and years too long. I made a promise to these families. I looked them in the eye and said that I would bring this forward as soon as I could. I have kept that promise, and I am proud that this Labour Government are bringing this Bill in.

[Dr Mullan]

If the Prime Minister wanted to truly live up to that promise, he would not have introduced legislation with less than 24 hours’ notice on an issue of national security. As the House has alluded to, I would have wanted the opportunity to make this moment a purely positive one, but I am afraid that the Prime Minister has made it impossible for me to fulfil my duties to the House. To give less than 24 hours’ notice for consideration of a Bill before its Third Reading is simply unacceptable. The House, those families, this Bill deserve greater respect than that. There is simply no excuse for the series of mistakes made by the Prime Minister’s Government that have led us here—led us to a place where those of us who engaged in good faith, as I did, cannot possibly be expected to have any trust left on a Bill that has trust at its heart.

The Prime Minister announced this Bill at his party conference in 2024. The media were briefed and told that the Bill and how it would operate had the full support of campaigning families and their legal advisers. They were so supportive, in fact, that they had released statements to that effect—and we now know that that was not true: they had already explained their misgivings. Then, after the introduction of the Bill, a Minister told me directly that the families were entirely happy with how the Bill was being legislated. And that also was not true.

[Maria Eagle]

The Conservatives were in power for 14 years and could have introduced the Bill. Why did they not do so?

[Dr Mullan]

I thank the right hon. Lady for raising that point. It was on that basis that I sought sincerely to engage properly with the Bill, and the Ministers and officials who met me repeatedly would be able to attest to that. That cannot be sustained when a Government bring forward legislation with 24 hours’ notice of important matters of national security.

The Government say that they have now resolved the central tension that led to the Bill being pulled. After months of negotiations, the central claim made by their Ministers that it needed particular safeguards for the agencies working in national security has now disappeared—apparently no longer needed. A Government who have wilfully misled us repeatedly on this Bill now want us to set aside—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I think that the shadow Minister needs to be very careful in his use of language.

[Dr Mullan]

A Government who have, inadvertently, repeatedly misled us on this Bill now want us to take them on trust. I heard personally and directly from Ministers and officials repeatedly that independent safeguards were needed, and now, apparently, they are not. Supposedly, over the weekend, those concerns have evaporated, and that is totally unacceptable. We are suddenly setting aside in a matter of days what the security services have told us for 18 months, in consistent, sober, professional warnings, which coincides perfectly with the Prime Minister coming here to give his final speech on this matter. Are we really going to suggest that that genuine professional opinion has changed overnight? I do not think that it has.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

As an Opposition MP myself, I must say that my party and I have been critical of the handover of power that has taken place in the Labour party, but this particular moment, on Third Reading, should belong to the families. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] We can do our party political point-scoring whenever and wherever we like, but does the hon. Member not agree that this moment should belong to the families?

[Dr Mullan]

If the Government were so concerned about this Bill passing, they should have organised it. We have just listened to a raft of amendments to the Bill being nodded through in this House, with absolutely no scrutiny. [Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I will hear the shadow Minister. I appreciate that temperatures are running very high, but it is important that voices are heard in this House.

[Dr Mullan]

As I have said, this could have been a Bill that we supported without reservation, but I am afraid that we maintain reservations about it, entirely as a result of its mismanagement by the Prime Minister.

I want to conclude by saying that none of this takes anything at all away from the families. [Interruption.] Labour Members do not want to hear this. It does not take anything away from the Members who have done so much to bring this legislation forward, but what is clear is that the Bill is the legacy of the campaigners and MPs—nobody else is responsible for our being here. I welcome their campaigning over many years and thank them for it.

Early Release of Prisoners

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Hayes]

The hon. Lady is right. If you will allow me to digress for a moment, Madam Deputy Speaker, I am often asked by constituents—I imagine other hon. Members are asked the same question—“How on earth do you get on with people on the other side of the House?” I respond by saying that I get on with them just as well as I do with the people on my side when we come together to fight a battle, take up a campaign, or defend a cause that we believe is right and good. No party has a monopoly on wisdom. No Government get everything right. Governments make mistakes, as indeed do parties, and when we are big enough to acknowledge that publicly, we grow in respect; we are not diminished by it. The hon. Lady has grown today by her suggestion, and I hope that the Minister, too, will grow when he accepts it.

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

We will be in a bizarre situation: the House will come together and express an unopposed view on what we should do about this issue, but before we have even done that, the Minister has indicated at the Dispatch Box that that view is immaterial and will not make a difference.

[Sir John Hayes]

Before I deal with that directly, may I say that in championing the interests of victims, my hon. Friend has done the Conservatives and the whole House proud? He has a remarkable record of standing up for victims, having met victims’ groups and formed a connection with them that has rightly encouraged their trust. I always take his interventions on this subject seriously. He is right that there is space and an opportunity to have a mature discussion, not about where we have come from—that is pointless, as was said earlier—but about where we go from here. There are ways in which we could address the matter that would avoid our letting the most dangerous criminals on to the streets.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to close this crucial Opposition day debate, and I thank all Members who have taken part for their thoughtful contributions. Before I say anything else, I want to acknowledge the people I met earlier today, along with other MPs on a cross-party basis, and who were in the Public Gallery: Jade, Charlotte, Jessica, Sarah, Erin, Carly and Angela. I also want to mention someone who has not been mentioned today: Isabelle, whose daughter took her own life when she saw the perpetrator of her crimes released early under the ordinary early release schemes. I particularly want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) for reading out all the victims’ words, and letting everybody hear exactly what they have said. That was really powerful. I also thank him for acknowledging the many people watching at home, who are not here. They include Fiona Goddard, who was one of the first people to speak out after receiving her letter.

Those people are often referred to as victims, and they are victims, but they are not just victims. Being a victim does not define them. They are people with voices that they want us to hear. They came to this debate because, at the very least, they want answers from the Government, and they want MPs to support them by taking different decisions that will put them, their experiences and their welfare first. I want to say to them directly: we hear you, and I hope that by the end of this debate, the Government will have followed suit and heard you too.

When the Minister responds, I hope we will finally get answers to some of our basic questions. This Government have had eight months to answer these questions. When are people being let out, and what offences have they committed? Those are basic things that we still do not know. Instead, the Government have had to write to thousands of victims, not with answers and information, but with just enough to make each of them worry deeply about what might happen, and about whether their perpetrator will be released early; they did not know whether, or when, that would happen. That has made things much, much worse.

Victim Support, which supports thousands of victims every year, has a number of questions that it thinks it is important for the Minister to respond to, and I would like to ask them now. It wants to know how people who are not eligible for the victim contact scheme, or who have chosen not to sign up to it, will be able to access information. Those people will hear these stories and read these things in the press, and will see them discussed in the Commons. Who can they approach to find out the answers to their questions? Do the Government know what proportion of victims have been reached and informed about possible changes to their case? Are the victim contact schemes set up to be contacted? How many people are raising this issue with them? What questions are the schemes being asked? What themes are emerging? What extra support are the Government offering victims, to help them back into support services to which they lost entitlement because of the length of time that has elapsed since the offences?

The Government have not been honest with the public about this policy from the very beginning, or with MPs—not just once, on a minor point of detail, but on the three promises that mattered most to every victim who received one of these letters. The first promise was on what the Government described, and still describe, as an “earned progression model”. That framing was designed to reassure. If release must be earned through demonstrated rehabilitation, surely the truly dangerous cannot simply walk out. That is what the public were told, but that is not what the Sentencing Act ensures. Members do not need to take my word for it; the Library briefing note on the Bill said in black and white that release under these provisions is automatic, unless the prisoner actively disqualifies themselves through serious misbehaviour in custody. That is not earned release in any way, shape or form. It is automatic release, which is a fundamentally different proposition. Ministers knew that, and they knew the difference when they chose that language. I said that in Committee on the Floor of the House and on consideration of Lords amendments in January. The Government had every opportunity to correct that, and they have chosen not to.

The second promise was that the most serious offenders would not be included in the scheme. The Lord Chancellor said that, and the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Jake Richards), repeated it throughout the passage of the Act. I asked him directly, in Committee, whether Labour MPs voting against our amendment to exclude certain offenders would be able to say to the survivors of child sex abuse that they had supported a Government who wanted to classify thousands of child sex offences as being not among the most serious offences. There was no satisfactory answer from the Minister. The Minister has failed repeatedly, during the urgent question and during the debate today, to explain how it is possible for a Government to say that their release scheme excludes the most serious offenders, while including in it people guilty of offences such as rape, the rape of children and child grooming. That is for them to justify.

To make matters worse, the Government have now changed the wording they use, months after passing the Act. They now say that only “the most dangerous offenders” are out of the scheme. That is hardly any more of a justification. Do we really think that these offenders are not also dangerous? It is another example of this Government’s manipulation on this issue. That wording relates to the true exclusions—of those on extended determinate sentences, which are for perpetrators whom the judge feels are particularly dangerous. I told the Government during the Act’s passage that that did not exclude serious offenders, and they did not listen. Now they are using the right wording, so they are technically closer to being correct, but they are still deeply wrong in every way that matters.

The third promise, or the third way in which the Government rammed these changes through the House, was to pretend that the measures were a short-term fix to a short-term prison capacity crisis. They are not. There is no sunset clause in the Sentencing Act. This is not emergency legislation; it is a permanent change to the law. When the Act was passed, it did not set an end date. It does not state, “Once 14,000 new prison places are built, these provisions will lapse.” It is a permanent and profound change to our sentencing laws that will be in place regardless of how many prison places are available. Victims, MPs and the public deserve to know that.

The Government made three promises—three fundamental misrepresentations of what they were doing and the implications of the Act. Those are three questions that the Government did not have an answer for when the Act passed, and still do not have answers for now. We are just weeks away from the start of the releases in September, and we still do not know how many criminals are being released and what offences they have committed.

I have been asking the Government about this for months. My freedom of information requests in March and April 2026 were refused, and my oral questions in March and May were deflected. I tabled a named-day question after the commencement order was laid in June. The deadline was missed; it was only with the intervention of Mr Speaker that we got a response, but it was not an answer. It did not give us the figures.

[Sir Gavin Williamson]

My hon. Friend had a very important UQ here in the Chamber, and Mr Speaker himself asked that Ministers respond to Members of Parliament when they make requests for information about their constituencies. I followed Mr Speaker’s guidance and tabled those questions to the Minister as named-day questions. None of those has been answered, and it has been quite a number of days since the named day passed. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Minister should address these points and answer these questions as quickly as possible?

[Dr Mullan]

Mr Speaker could not have been clearer about the reasonable expectations of Members of this House in relation to the early release of serious sexual offenders and others into their constituencies.

What did the Minister, the hon. Member for Rother Valley, say during the UQ? He said that the numbers were in the impact assessment. He repeated that twice, and he was absolutely wrong. I have read the impact assessment. Every Member who has read it will confirm that it does not contain the breakdown of offenders and their crimes that we asked for. What it contains is a description of a qualitative process of internal discussion between departmental officials to arrive at a broad estimate of the effect on the overall prison population. There is no table showing how many rapists or child groomers are going to be released. We know that is not just an omission because the Prisons Minister himself, Lord Timpson, said on “Channel 4 News” last week:

“It is impossible for us to say who will be released, where and when.”

“Impossible”—his word, not ours. He was asked again and again, but could not answer. The Minister at the Dispatch Box told Parliament that the numbers were available to us all. The Prisons Minister told Channel 4 that it was not possible to provide the numbers. Only one of them is right. What is the truth? I think that they actually do not know. I think the Ministry of Justice did not model the eligible cohort by offence type before passing the legislation. It pulled a lever of this magnitude, affecting potentially thousands of the most serious offenders in our prisons and their victims, and it did not even know what sort of vile criminals it would be letting out of prison early. That is a disgrace.

[Robbie Moore]

We are in this ridiculous scenario where after a huge, long fight, we now have an independent inquiry focusing on Bradford and Keighley for the national grooming gangs inquiry, yet as that process starts, perpetrators who undertook some of those most heinous crimes are being released early. There is therefore a risk that those victims and survivors across the Bradford district will be less willing to come forward and give evidence and contribute to the inquiry. Does that not concern my hon. Friend?

[Dr Mullan]

I can tell my hon. Friend that it is not just a risk; it is a reality. A number of the victims we met earlier said that they were speaking to people who wanted to come forward, and to speak and contribute to the inquiry, but they saw what was happening to those who had spoken up and who had an offender sent to prison, and who now see that the offender will be released even earlier. They ask, “Why would I risk these people being let out even earlier than they otherwise would have been?”

[Sir Julian Lewis]

By coincidence, last night, BBC Three rebroadcast the three-part series about the online predator Alexander McCartney, who was caught when a victim reported him. It turned out that he had groomed 3,500 victims online around the world. In one case in America, he caused a 12-year-old girl to shoot herself dead; he knew that she was threatening to do that. The programme ended with the chilling statistic that out of 3,500 victims, only four had actually reported him to the authorities. It was one of those reports that led to the end of this terrible campaign. Back in 2024, the programme revealed that he had been sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum term of 20 years. What do the people who saw that series think about the fact that it now appears that he might be out in a fraction of that time?

[Dr Mullan]

The only comfort I can give is that there are some exclusions to the early release scheme. If someone is on a life sentence as a minimum term, or on an extended determinate sentence, release does not happen earlier; but we know that more than 90% of the offenders sent to prison every year for child grooming are on a standard determinate sentence and will be eligible for early release.

The Government have quite rightly highlighted the challenges around conviction rates, and I accept the criticisms that the Government have made about the reduction in conviction rates—it is an incredibly important issue—but people do not go to court for the sake of it. It is not done just for the hell of it. They go to court and want a conviction so that a sentence is passed that is an appropriate punishment. The Government take away people’s motivation to speak up when they undermine the outcome.

Let me be specific about what an assurance that serious offenders would be excluded from the scheme would actually mean in practice to a victim. We talked earlier about Fiona Goddard, a survivor of rape, sexual assault and child grooming, whose abusers were sentenced to between 16 and 20 years in 2019. I again pay tribute to her courage. Fiona received a letter from His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service, telling her that people who abused her may be released early. She talked to the press and went to the media, and a journalist raised her case with the Ministry of Justice. The Ministry of Justice said officially, in a quote that was read out on “Good Morning Britain” when Fiona appeared on it, that the most serious offenders would be excluded. It said that to a journalist, in writing, and it was broadcast to the nation, with this victim listening in. It was saying that Fiona’s abusers had not committed offences serious enough to allow her to be protected, and would not be excluded from the scheme.

Survivors were in the Gallery today because letters landed through their doors telling them exactly the same thing. When the Minister says that serious offenders are excluded, they are saying, to every single victim who receives one of those letters, “Those are not serious offences. They are not heinous crimes. They are included in the scheme.” That is absolutely appalling, and thousands of people have received those letters.

I say to every Labour Member that this is not a partisan observation. During the urgent question, the hon. Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips) said there should be more exemptions and that Members should work together on this, and the hon. Members for Liverpool Wavertree (Paula Barker) and for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman) have contributed to this debate. Let us be clear: there are hundreds of Labour MPs, and not a single one of them has come to the Chamber today to defend the Government’s policy and position. That is absolutely extraordinary and tells us what we need to know. It seems that the Government just want to keep their fingers in their ears and pretend this is not happening.

I want to be clear about what has actually happened under this Government. At the same time as this Labour Government have released over 60,000 criminals early, prison capacity has fallen on their watch, so we have roughly 500 fewer prison places under a Government who seek continually to attack our record on prison building. I accept the criticism—we should have built more prison places—but in their time in office, the figure has gone down. As with so many issues, from police numbers to teacher numbers, things have got worse under this Government.

We have more than 10,000 foreign national offenders in our prisons right now, representing around 12% of the prison population and costing hundreds of millions of pounds a year. The Government could have moved faster on deportation and freed up those places. As I said, I am clear about our failings in government, and I am happy to say it again: we did build more than 14,000 prison places, but we closed too many prisons that were not fit for purpose, and that has created challenges in the system. However, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) and I have said, and as Members on both sides of the House have said for a long time, the failings in the prioritisation of our justice system go back many decades, over many political parties.

I say this not to make a political point but to demonstrate that these are long-term issues. When Labour was last in office, it introduced the existing automatic halfway release for all offenders. Despite that, prison capacity was so tight that Labour released 80,000 prisoners early. When Labour was last in office, it made use of early release schemes because it failed to build enough prison places to keep people in prison.

[Sir John Hayes]

The concept of parole is age-old, but parole was based on merit; people were considered for parole if they were felt to be worthy of it. This is entirely different—this is about an automatic process, regardless of merit, and it flies in the face of both popular sentiment and natural justice.

[Dr Mullan]

As I said, we inherited the existing system of automatic release. During our time in office, we sought to raise the time served before automatic release to two thirds for some of the more serious offences.

I recognise that there are challenges in the prison population, and I am raising Labour’s record to make it clear that these have been challenges for multiple decades over multiple parties, including the Lib Dems when we were in coalition. That is why we have gone as far as we can with our motion to enable the Government to achieve the absolute minimum that we could ask. I do not want any serious offenders let out of prison before they have served their time. Again and again in the meeting with victims earlier, they told us how appalling it is to hear a sentence in the court, knowing that in the vast majority of cases, prisoners will never, ever serve it. I wish that people could serve even longer sentences than the ones we currently give out, but we all know we are not in a position to make those promises.

Our amendment to the Sentencing Bill was broad and sought to ensure that any serious or violent criminals—for example, people who kill by dangerous driving, people who commit manslaughter or people who commit child neglect and cruelty—were excluded from these early release schemes. The Government insisted that that is not possible, and Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs defeated us on that amendment. We are not even asking for that today. Our motion purely calls on the Government to exempt those convicted of sexual offences against an adult or a child—that is all we are asking for today.

The challenge for the Government is this. They say it is absolutely necessary to keep particular people in prison, but they do not even know how many of these people they will be letting out. For example, if they do not know that 500 rapists are going to be released, they cannot tell us, “Sorry, but we really need those 500 extra places—we don’t have the capacity” because they did not know that when they passed the legislation.

The incoming Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham), is reportedly exploring how to tighten the scheme for child sex offenders, and we welcome that, but I want the House to understand the timeline, because it is closing. The commencement order was laid on 8 June without a ministerial statement, a “Dear Colleague” letter or a response to any of the questions raised by the shadow Justice team. We do not know the details, but we understand from reporting that the first 700 offenders will be released on 2 September, and then a similar number will be released each month for the following nine months. We understand that the total number could be between 5,000 and 7,000 offenders, but we do not know because the Government will not tell us.

The House rises for the summer recess at the end of next week and any new Prime Minister will be in Downing Street shortly after that. When Parliament reassembles in September, the first criminals will be about to be released. In fact, the first Prime Minister’s questions that the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) will take will be on the day those offenders start getting out of prison. The Government, the Lord Chancellor and Ministers have had every opportunity to act differently. They could have excluded serious offenders, made a statement when the commencement order was laid and answered our questions and our freedom of information requests, but at every turn they chose not to do so.

I say with all sincerity that we know that Members on all sides of the House agree that a single sex offender released earlier than their sentence demands is one too many. There are Labour Members in the Chamber who we know agree with that. Indeed, 40 of them abstained when we originally divided on the legislation—they did not go into the Lobby and say that they believed that it was right to let rapists and child sex offenders out early. They all had doubts and some of them have spoken in today’s debate because of those doubts.

We have now descended into farce. We have been told that the Government will not oppose today’s motion and we expect it to go through, but the Minister made it clear that as far as he is concerned, that does not matter one jot and things will carry on as normal. Parliament is expressing its will today and there is an expectation that the Government should respond to Parliament’s will, but the Minister has already made clear his intention not to give a monkey’s. A vote in favour of today’s motion is to say that Parliament believes that rapists and child sex offenders should not be released early, and that victims deserve better after eight months of evasion and a commencement order laid without a word of notice to Parliament. A vote in favour of the motion would send a clear message that this House has come together to support victims.

To finish, I return to the victims I met earlier. It was a privilege to meet them. They asked us, MPs from different parties, whether what they are doing—coming here today, giving up their privacy, reliving their trauma and fighting for a conviction in the first place—was worth it? I told them that it was worth it and that it made a difference because the Government will not oppose the motion, so they have won and they have got the motion over the line. We are going to ensure that that is the case, whatever the failings of my party or the Labour party on the issues of justice, going back over many decades.

When I was frustrated earlier by the Minister’s failure and inability to answer basic questions yet again, the Minister told me to calm down. Well, I will not calm down. Whatever our failings and the Labour party’s failings during its previous time in office, victims of rape and child sexual abuse do not deserve to pay the price of political failure over many decades. We will carry on ensuring that this Government are held to account and MPs do not let down and betray the victims of some of the worst possible offences in our justice system because of misleading efforts by the Government to pull the wool over their eyes. The wool has not been pulled over the eyes of MPs from all sides of the House. It is time that the Government came clean about what they are doing and listened to the House, because this House says, “No, we do not want those people released”. The House will vote and tell the Government that, and it is incumbent on the Government and the incoming Prime Minister to listen.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Catherine Atkinson)]

I am grateful to all right hon. and hon. Members who have contributed to the debate. As Minister for Victims and Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls, I pay tribute to the victims and survivors of the grooming gangs scandal who have so bravely spoken about their ordeal, some of whom were in the Public Gallery today. Women and girls were systematically raped, exploited and abused, often over many months, and in some cases over years.

We have heard Members raise some horrific cases and we have heard some powerful testimony. The authorities that should have protected them and pursued justice on their behalf failed in those duties. Through Baroness Anne Longfield’s independent inquiry into grooming gangs, we must now get to the truth of what happened, because for far, far too long we saw a failure to act. I welcome the call of the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) for the implementation of recommendations that we have seen over many inquiries and investigations, including in the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, which conducted a two-year investigation into child sexual exploitation by organised networks. That report was nearly 200 pages long, and I read it. I pay tribute to the victims who gave evidence to that inquiry and to so many other investigations.

As Baroness Longfield has made clear, there have already been more than 800 recommendations by previous inquiries, investigations and reviews. I spent seven years doing public inquiry work. It is absolutely essential that we listen when recommendations are made, and that is what this Government are doing. We have already been taking action to implement recommendations, and we accepted all the recommendations of Baroness Casey.

Under this Government, prosecutions and convictions for child sexual abuse are at their highest levels. The Government have made grooming an aggravating factor so that the impact of these crimes is recognised in sentencing, but we must ensure that there is always enough space in prisons. It does not keep a single victim safe if we have nowhere to lock up offenders.

[Dr Mullan]

I have a really easy question. The Minister is talking about grooming gang perpetrators and the like. How many of them will be released as a result of this policy? How many spaces are they taking up that you need to free up?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. I know that this is a very sensitive debate, but we do not use “you” and “yours”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine Atkinson]

I trained to be a barrister and spent my first years in practice at a time when victims waited months for their court trials, rather than years. At that time, the previous Labour Government were delivering the prison places we needed, but I then watched from inside the profession as 14 years of Conservative-led Governments dismantled it, bit by bit and piece by piece. Cases were delayed for years, courts were shuttered, and offenders were released with nowhere safe for probation to send them. That is not a coincidence; it is a choice, repeated by successive Governments for 14 years.

[Dr Mullan]

Will the Minister give way?

[Catherine Atkinson]

I am going to continue to make some progress, but I will give way shortly.

[Dr Mullan]

Will she give way on that point?

[Catherine Atkinson]

I want to finish the point, because it is essential that we know where we started, which was with the cutting of 20,000 police officers from our streets. It took a decade to claw back what austerity destroyed in a few years. Conservative-led Governments closed 295 courts and tribunals, including 162 magistrates courts—half the entire magistrates estate—and part-privatised probation in a reckless experiment that every serious review called “irredeemably flawed”. It cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds to unwind that and bring probation back into public hands. That is on top of the 23 prisons they closed. That is the record, and it is the Conservatives’ record, not ours.

When Conservative Members ask why we have had to act, I ask them to reflect on what 14 years of neglect actually built: a prison system running at 99% capacity. At one point, it was fewer than 100 places from total collapse. Let us be honest about what that would have meant. If prisons run out of space, courts cannot sentence anyone to custody. If courts cannot sentence anyone to custody, they cannot function. If the system cannot function, police officers have nowhere to take the people they arrest. It is not hyperbole; it means the total breakdown of law and order, which is not in any victim’s interest, however serious their case.

[Dr Mullan]

I have tried to have a fair hand with the victims who attended Parliament today. I invited every Member to meet them, and I facilitated meetings with Labour and Liberal Democrat Members. So what I say now is universal. One of the aspects of last week’s urgent question that infuriated those victims was the Minister talking about our record. They said to us at the meeting that they had voted Labour in the past—that, indeed, they had voted for various different parties in the past—and they recognised that a lot of issues were involved, but they did not want to see again and again, having come to Parliament to ask about what would happen to them, a Minister getting up and attacking us. So I say to this Minister, “Do not fall into the same trap.”

[Catherine Atkinson]

No one in the Government takes decisions about release from custody lightly. These decisions affect public confidence, victims, communities, and those responsible for managing offenders in the community. That is why, at every stage, our overriding priority has been clear: protecting the public, while ensuring that the criminal justice system remains able to function effectively.

However, I also want to make it absolutely clear that release does not mean freedom. We are delivering tougher punishment outside prison. We are ramping up tagging to monitor offenders in the community to record levels, with thousands more subject to 24/7 tracking, curfews, strict licence conditions and exclusion zones, and with offenders sent straight back to prison if they break the rules. These offenders do not walk out of prison gates and disappear; where they can go, who they can see and what they can do is tightly controlled, and many remain under intensive supervision and monitoring right up until the end of their sentences. We are increasing probation and community punishment funding by up to £700 million, and we have recruited 1,300 additional probation officers this year. Let me contrast that with what was done by the Conservatives—not only their part-privatisation of probation, but the way in which they treated it.

Draft Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (Legal Aid: Anti-social Behaviour and Prevention and Investigation Measures) (Miscellaneous Amendments) Order 2026

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2026 General Committees

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak on behalf of the official Opposition in support of this statutory instrument. Over a million anti-social behaviour incidents are recorded by the police every single year in England and Wales. That is not a statistic that should wash over us; behind every one of those incidents is a pensioner who is afraid to walk to the corner shop, a shopkeeper who has been harassed and threatened, or a community that has been slowly ground down.

When the Government brought forward the Crime and Policing Act, we supported the creation of respect orders; in fact, we wanted them to go further. My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers) tabled amendments in Committee that would have lowered the age of eligibility from 18 to 16. We argued for a fine on a second order, for a maximum prison term of five years for repeated breaches and for those who receive repeated orders to be deprioritised on social housing lists. The Government did not accept all those amendments; I still think they were right and the legislation would have been stronger, but we are where we are, and what matters now is that the respect order regime works as intended and in line with our other measures.

What makes respect orders different from what came before is simple: a breach is now a criminal offence and police can arrest immediately. There are no more long waits for civil contempt proceedings and no more watching someone breach their order again and again with no immediate consequences; when someone is made subject to a respect order, they face serious consequences if they breach it. Their liberty is at stake, and it is right that people in that position can access legal advice in line with our criminal norms, not because we are soft on anti-social behaviour, but because a fair system is a stronger system, and an order made appropriately with appropriate legal process is an order that will stick.

This instrument, as the Minister explained, extends the legal framework for access to criminal aid not just to respect orders but to youth injunctions and housing injunctions under the Crime and Policing Act. We support that. Young people facing injunctions and residents facing housing injunctions deserve clarity on their rights. Although the position of the official Opposition is to support the SI, where we feel the intent and the legal aid provision are right, the Government must ensure that the police and court can handle what follows in the operation of these orders. Those of us who have been involved in policing and politics have heard various iterations of attempts to get anti-social behaviour under control over various Governments and many decades, and this is just the latest version of it. We need something that will work; communities across this country are tired of tolerating anti-social behaviour. Respect orders can be part of the answer, and the official Opposition will keep pressing to ensure that they are delivered as intended.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

One thing that we know children will contact victim support services about is the letters they receive telling them that their abusers will be getting out of prison earlier. Victim Support supports more than 814,000 victims every year, and its CEO, Katie Kempen, had this to say:

“Having already endured long waits for justice—often with their lives on hold—and the distress of going to court, many will feel shocked and frightened to learn that offenders may now be released months or even years earlier than expected.”

She is right, isn’t she?

[Catherine Atkinson]

It is important that there is transparency and communication with victims, unlike what we saw under the Conservatives; when they were letting people out, they did so with almost no notice, if any at all. I absolutely acknowledge the concerns from victims, but what is not in the interests of victims is having prisons so overcrowded that perpetrators cannot be housed in cells. What the last Government did to our prisons—leaving them so full that the entire criminal justice system was at risk of collapsing—is an absolute disgrace, and yet again, it is this Government who are clearing up their mess.

[Dr Mullan]

I am in wholehearted agreement with the Minister that transparency is really important. One thing that would help Victim Support and other organisations to plan their response is knowing how many people are getting out and what offences they have committed, but like us, they are in the dark.

I thank you, Mr Speaker, because your intervention yesterday prompted the Department into publishing a response to my question, but it was not an answer. Shockingly, the Government now officially say that they do not know how many people they are letting out in September. If the Minister and the Government refuse to tell us, can they at least let victim support services and victims know when they will tell this House, victim support services and the wider public how many perpetrators of serious offences they are letting out and when that will start?

[Catherine Atkinson]

The Government have published the victim impact assessment and are ensuring that people are communicated with. What is essential is that the Government have a violence against women and girls strategy, which will ensure that we are pursuing perpetrators, supporting victims and stopping violence in the first place. This Government, yet again, are clearing up the Conservatives’ mess, whether it is to do with prisons, backlogs or the investment we are making to support victims.

Prisoner Early Release

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

Monday 29th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice if he will make a statement on the early release of rapists and child groomers.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jake Richards)]

Those who perpetrate heinous crimes must face the full force of the law. Under this Government, convictions for child sex offences are at a record high. At the end of this Parliament, more criminals will be behind bars than ever before. However, this Government inherited a prison system on the brink of collapse—at one point, fewer than 100 places were left in the whole estate.

Without the Sentencing Act 2026, which received Royal Assent in January, the courts would be at risk of grinding to a halt, preventing sex offenders and others from being brought to justice. No space in prisons would mean no trials, no justice for victims and no punishment for offenders. That is the choice: strict licence conditions in the community for those who have already served time in prison under our reforms, or the entire collapse of the system, leaving sex offenders and others acting with impunity.

The previous Government added just 500 prison places to the system in 14 years, in stark contrast to this Government, who are delivering the largest prison expansion since the Victorian era. We have delivered 3,100 additional places in under two years, and are on track to deliver almost 11,000 more by 2031.

Under our reforms, dangerous offenders will continue to be locked up for a long time. More than 18,000 offenders serving life or extended sentences will not be affected by changes to release points and will remain subject to Parole Board decisions. Offenders who are released will face strict licence conditions, closer probation supervision for the most dangerous offenders, exclusion zones, tagging, 24/7 tracking and curfews. This is the biggest expansion of tagging in history, ensuring that dangerous offenders are monitored and the public are protected. If risk in the community becomes unmanageable, those offenders can be recalled to prison.

The previous Government left prisons on the verge of collapse. This Government are safely delivering the reforms needed to end the cycle of capacity crises and protect the British public.

[Dr Mullan]

Imagine being the victim of a serious crime—as serious as rape or child grooming—and receiving a letter saying that the perpetrator who harmed you is going to be let out of prison early. Appallingly, that is the experience right now for thousands of victims of crime, including the victims of some of the most serious crimes imaginable, thanks to the changes that have been made to our sentencing laws by this Labour Government, helped by the Liberal Democrats.

Before Labour MPs and the Minister tell us again, as he has already done, that this is being done as a result of prison overcrowding, I want every Member of the House to be crystal clear about the actual choice that this Government are making. The previous Labour Government released 80,000 prisoners early; the previous Conservative Government also operated early release programmes, as this Government have—that is not new. However, those schemes excluded serious sexual offenders. Do Labour MPs really want to tell their constituents that they support the early release of rapists and child groomers when there are existing schemes that could be used to avoid that?

I pay tribute to grooming gangs campaigner Fiona Goddard, who, like many others, refused to be silent when she received her letter. Fiona’s abusers were sentenced to between 16 and 20 years in prison in 2019; now, she says that the justice she got in that courtroom is being snatched away from her, and she is right. What did the Labour Government say to the journalist who raised her case? They said that the most serious offences would be excluded. Labour told a victim of rape, sexual assault and grooming that her offenders were not serious enough to be excluded from early release—disgraceful.

We are just a matter of weeks away from these serious offenders coming out, and we still do not know how many are being released and what crimes they have committed, so thank you very much, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question. The Government cannot cover up what they are doing to victims any longer; they must tell us today how many criminals—how many rapists and child groomers—are going to be released early, when they are going to be released and exactly what crimes they have committed.

I am confident that when the public understand what is being done in their name, there will be an outcry. Our incoming Prime Minister will have a choice: to act in the interests of rapists and paedophiles or to stand up for victims. What will it be?

[Jake Richards]

I have listened to the hon. Member speak about this issue a lot, and I must again remind him of his party’s record in government and why the Sentencing Act was an absolute necessity to keep the criminal justice system functioning.

When we came into office, prisons were at bursting point. Only 500 prison places were added in 14 years. Some 10,000 offenders were released by the previous Government, largely in secret. That is the key point, Mr Speaker. The hon. Member has quite rightly and understandably asked how the scheme will be delivered and how victims will be kept informed. Under the Conservatives, it was pure chaos. They lost their grip on the system and did not have a long-term plan for stability in the prison estate, which meant that when they did have to operate early release mechanisms, they gave the victims just a few days’ notice, if any at all. There was complete secrecy and complete chaos. We will not let that happen to the British public again.

There is a choice. No alternative has been offered by the Opposition to the prison crisis that they created. There is a choice: strict—

--- Later in debate ---

[Jake Richards]

We will not shy away from the difficult decisions needed to save the criminal justice system to ensure that we have prison places to put criminals behind bars. By the end of this Parliament, more criminals will be behind bars than ever before. This is not a matter of being soft on crime; it is a matter of ensuring that we can put criminals away in future.

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I genuinely seek your guidance and support. I have submitted multiple written questions and freedom of information requests. We have a named day question on this matter that was due to be answered on Friday, which the Government have refused to answer as they should. The Minister said that the information we are after is in the impact assessment, but that is not true. There is not the information on the number of offenders in terms of rapists and child groomers being released. How do we and the public get answers to these very basic, incredibly important questions?

[Mr Speaker]

I am sure that Ministers on the Front Bench have heard that an outstanding question should have been answered. I am quite disappointed if that is the case—it should be answered. Members of Parliament put questions down to Ministers, and Ministers are answerable to this House—not when they feel like it or when they get around to it. That is totally unacceptable. I hope that they will go back and check the records to ensure that letters and questions have been answered. But named day questions—it is in the title—should be answered on the named day.

The point of order has been heard, and I am sure this issue can be rectified today. If it is not, there are many avenues, including coming back to this House. I believe there are questions to be answered, and all MPs should be told not who will be released, but how many people may be released within their constituencies. I say to the Minister that this is bad for all MPs, and MPs rightly need to represent their constituents. The sooner we help them, the sooner this House will be in a better place. I will leave it at that for now.