Courts and Tribunals Bill (Fourth sitting)

Linsey Farnsworth Excerpts

Tuesday 14th April 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Mullan]

It absolutely does—but the Minister is not doing what Sir Brian recommended. She is rejecting his approach, but when we want to reject his approach, she asks how we can possibly question what Sir Brian has to say on such matters. That is the reality of what is happening. It is a consistent flaw that the Government cannot undo.

My hon. Friend the Member for Reigate did a good job of illustrating the nature and seriousness of so many of the offences we are considering. She also sought a firm answer on, for example, the modelling of the increases in guilty pleas that we might expect owing to the increase in the length of suspended sentences.

We had a debate about, “Well, it’s in the explanatory notes, not in the impact assessment,” as if that was just immaterial. The Minister and her officials will know very well that there is a big difference between what goes into an impact assessment, given the statutory nature of that document and everything that the Government have to do before they put things into it, and what a Government can put out in what is effectively a non-statutory document. They could really put anything in there that they wanted to.

Of course we would expect the Government to be fair, frank and honest, but the reason why we have impact assessments—and the reason why, when Labour Members were in opposition, they hammered the Conservatives repeatedly about what did or did not go into an impact assessment in particular, as opposed to broader documents—is that it has a statutory footing and is important in its own way. I think my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate did a good job of illustrating what was absent from that impact assessment.

We talked about the Crown Prosecution Service, and there was an attempt to say that what a senior member of the management said, one would assume—

[Linsey Farnsworth (Amber Valley) (Lab)]

On that point, will the hon. Member give way?

[Dr Mullan]

I will finish the sentence, and then I will.

Of course, we would assume that they had done that in consultation with other leadership figures, so we might reasonably say that they speak on behalf of the senior leadership team of the CPS, but there was an attempt to say that their views can somehow be taken to represent the views of the many people who work across the CPS—

[Linsey Farnsworth]

On that point, will the hon. Member give way?

[Dr Mullan]

I will finish the sentence, and then I will.

As my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford pointed out, the CPS is a very big organisation, with a lot of people.

[Linsey Farnsworth]

Mr Guest was giving evidence to the Justice Committee in his capacity on behalf of the CPS. He was talking with authority from the CPS, on the organisation’s behalf, on its official policy position. It is fair to say that the CPS, as Tom Guest said, is in favour of the structural reform we are making, is it not?

[Dr Mullan]

Nothing that I have said is in disagreement with that. The point we are making is about whether that reflects the wider, individual views of all the people who work for the CPS. I am not aware that the CPS, for example, undertook an internal staff survey. Does the hon. Lady want to intervene and tell me whether the CPS asked people about that? I am not aware that the CPS undertook an internal consultation exercise. Did the CPS consult all the many people who work for it and say, “This is our position. This is what we think”? How did it come to its view about these decisions?

The hon. Lady is very welcome to intervene and talk about how the CPS formulated its position in the way that she sought to talk about it, covering all the different people who work for the CPS. As I explained to her, I know there are people who work for the CPS who do not agree. She may well know people who do agree, but some do not agree. I took the liberty of re-contacting one of the people who works for the CPS over the Committee’s lunch break. Their—quite rightly—anonymous and private view, which they are entitled to hold and express to me is that, as a prosecutor, we should all be very worried when a state prosecutor wants to do something that further curtails the rights of defendants. I might not express it in those terms, but that is how someone from the CPS expressed it.

The hon. Lady is absolutely right to say that the formal policy position of the organisation of the CPS is as she described, but she was not right to refer to it as being meaningful because it covers lots and lots of people who have had no formal engagement whatsoever in helping the CPS to come to that conclusion. It is a bit like the Minister getting up and saying, “The Ministry of Justice is a big organisation and we all think this is what should happen.” The Minister knows that her civil servants are asked to produce policy; what they actually think about it and whether they agree with it is totally irrelevant, and she would never use the size of the organisation to add weight to the strength of her argument, because it is nonsense. As I pointed out when His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service gave evidence, people are not allowed to give their individual views; it is a policy position that the organisation has to hold.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joe Robertson]

I thank the shadow Minister. I am probably not in a position to arbitrate between the two arguments; the hon. Member for Rugby will have to forgive me, as I come from the starting position that I back the shadow Minister, not least because he was wielding a particularly substantial file when he just spoke.

I want to address a provision that is not the immediate subject of this grouping, but which fundamentally determines the significance of clause 2—the reform of appeal rights from the magistrates court contained in clause 7. Currently, a defendant convicted in the magistrates court has an automatic right of appeal to the Crown court. That right is exercised in approximately—

[Linsey Farnsworth]

On a point of order, Ms Butler. I seek guidance on how we get back to clause 2, because we have veered off significantly from it. Clause 2 relates to provisions that have not yet come into force but could well come into force in the future, specifically in relation to how cases could proceed from the magistrates court to the Crown court by way of written submissions. The idea behind that provision was to avoid the need for a court hearing if everybody agreed. How can we get back on to clause 2, because I fear we are veering significantly away from what it is trying to do?

[The Chair]

I will give a little leeway, but I ask the hon. Member for Isle of Wight East to please go back to clause 2.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Mullan]

My final point in opposition to clauses 1 and 2 is that the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner), who is not here today, would have had a lot to say during our proceedings. He is a Labour MP who has quite literally never rebelled against the Labour Whip. Ms Butler, you have probably been here longer than all the rest of us, so you know that in our parties we have the usual suspects, who rebel when they get the opportunity and take any chance to disagree with the governing party—we all have a sense of what that means. The hon. Gentleman is not one of the usual suspects. He is a passionate practitioner. He will have dealt with clause 2 cases. He will have sat in court and dealt with the sorts of things that clause 2 covers.

[Linsey Farnsworth]

Clause 2 relates to measures that have not come into force yet, so my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East cannot possibly have any experience of that.

[Dr Mullan]

I am not clear that that is the case.

[Linsey Farnsworth]

It is the case.

[Dr Mullan]

Sorry—I am not clear that there will not be real-world consequences in the kind of ways that the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East will understand. The Minister nodded her head when I suggested that fewer people will get a Crown court trial as a result of clause 2. The Minister indicated from a sedentary position that it is correct to say that fewer people will get a Crown court hearing specifically as a result of clause 2. If the Minister can clarify that, I am very open to hearing her. I ask Labour Members to think very carefully about the fact that one of their own, who is not one of the usual suspects, is so vehemently opposed to the change.