Holding the Line Against Tyranny and Anarchy (Constitution Committee Report)

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as the director of the Free Speech Union.

One of the key findings of this excellent report is summarised as follows:

“Public confidence in the judiciary is vital for trust in the fair administration of justice. This requires that judges make decisions independently of bias and external influence, and that they are perceived to do so. However, the committee stated confidence was being increasingly challenged by political rhetoric that criticised the judiciary, and this was being amplified on social media”.


This is the aspect of the report I would like to talk about today: what is legitimate and illegitimate criticism of the judiciary, particularly the senior judiciary?

In chapter 4 of the report, in the section headed “Attacks on judges and the judiciary”, it rightly says that:

“The judiciary, as with any other state institution, should not be immune from scrutiny or criticism”.


The report goes on to say that, while attacks on judgments are fair game, attacks on judges are not. It particularly condemns attacks that claim a decision is based on a judge’s political views or bias. The Lady Chief Justice is quoted in the report as singling out

“newspaper articles about ‘outrageous judicial overreach’”,

and those which used the words “lefty” and “liberal”, and described decisions as “crazy”. The implication is that such attacks, which attribute political bias to judges, originate for the most part with the populist right, not the left. Frances Gibb is quoted in the report, as saying that, every so often,

“‘you get an eruption—often in the tabloid press—against judges’”.

However, it scarcely needs pointing that such attacks come from both sides of the political divide. I am thinking in particular of the attacks on the Supreme Court for the decision it made in the For Women Scotland case. Maggie Chapman, a Green MSP, who was the deputy convenor of Holyrood’s equalities committee at the time, accused the Supreme Court justices of “bigotry, prejudice and hatred”. We heard similar criticisms, if not quite so extreme, from Stonewall, Consortium LGBT and the Good Law Project. More recently, following this week’s judgment in the case against Associated Newspapers, the Duke of Sussex and the noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence, issued a joint statement attacking Justice Nicklin and accusing him of a “complete and obvious whitewash”, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett, pointed out.

I share the report’s view that, if the public are to maintain confidence in judges and the judiciary, there should be no perception of political bias. However, are such accusations always based, in the words of the report, on

“inappropriate, and often inaccurate, public criticism by politicians and journalists”

based on misinformation? Last year, Robert Jenrick MP, then the shadow Justice Minister, pointed out that over 30 immigration judges have links to open borders charities. He pointed out that one serving judge openly celebrated on social media the defeat of the last Government’s Rwanda plan. Surely this activity has played a part—perhaps a small one, but a part none the less—in the perception of bias in the decisions of the Upper Tribunal.

More pernicious are the requirements, as part of the process for selecting members of the senior judiciary, that applicants affirm their support for diversity and inclusion. In the Judicial Skills and Abilities Framework, against which the Judicial Appointments Commission assesses applicants, one of the effective working criteria is:

“Takes an inclusive approach to those with differences from themselves … Is able and willing to challenge inappropriate behaviour by others”.


Under leadership skills, it says applicants are expected to:

“Ensure an inclusive culture for all, irrespective of background”.


I am sure most noble Lords do not regard such requirements as political, but I remind them that Reform UK, for all its recent setbacks, is still leading in the polls. I suspect that many supporters of that party would regard these criteria as political. Do we not want supporters of right-wing parties to have confidence in judges and the judiciary?

The commitment that applicants for Silk are required to make is stronger still. The KC Competency Framework has five competencies. Competency D—

“Diversity action and understanding”—


requires that an applicant:

“Demonstrates an understanding of diversity and cultural issues, respects the needs and cultural wishes of others and is proactive in addressing the needs of people from all backgrounds”.


The indicators include:

“Takes positive action to promote diversity and equality of opportunity … Confronts discrimination and prejudice when observed in others; does not let it pass unchecked … Acts as a role model for others in handling diversity and cultural issues.


Is there not a risk that these requirements will contribute to the perception of bias, whether accurate or not? Take the requirement that applicants for Silk must take positive action to promote diversity. To some, that will sound like code for “take positive action to promote people who are not white men”.

The requirement to respect

“the needs and cultural wishes of others”

is, I submit, something of an ideological litmus test, requiring those wishing to take Silk to affirm their alignment with the principles of equity, diversity and inclusion. Note: it asks applicants not simply to tolerate the cultural wishes of others—which may be a wish that women should cover their heads—but to respect them.

It is worth bearing in mind that the latest batch of High Court appointments all took Silk before they were appointed. They all passed this ideological litmus test. Is it not wanting to have your cake and eat it to, on the one hand, insist that members of the senior judiciary should affirm their commitment to EDI at various points as they clamber the judicial pyramid—a contested ideology, I think it is fair to say—and, on the other, condemn journalists and politicians for launching political attacks on senior judges?

In 2024 the Bar Standards Board consulted about introducing a new duty to promote EDI in its code of conduct. That was rightly condemned by a broad coalition within the legal profession, including the Law Society. Surely the same requirement has no more place in the KC Competency Framework than it does in the BSB’s code of conduct. I was, I am afraid, disappointed that the report did not recommend its removal from the KC framework as well as its removal from the Judicial Skills and Abilities Framework.

I share the concerns of the report that critics of judges, and the senior judiciary in particular, should play the ball and not the man, but if we want to achieve that ambition, we have to stop insisting that the man affirm his commitment to a politically contested ideology.

Public Office (Accountability) Bill: Exclusion

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as the director of the Free Speech Union, which may well end up defending people as a result of the Public Office (Accountability) Bill, given that it creates a new speech offence. As we have heard, the offence is that of misleading the public. A public authority or public official commits an offence if, first, in their capacity as such an authority or official, they act with the intention of misleading the public or are reckless as to whether their act will do so; and, secondly, they know, or ought to know, that their act is seriously improper.

The problem is not that MPs and Peers are immune to being prosecuted for this offence but that the carve-out is not large enough. According to my reading of the Bill, MPs or Peers acting as public officials—that is, Ministers of the Crown—would be liable. This is a gold-embossed invitation to the Jolyon Maughams of this world. It will unleash a wave of politically motivated lawfare. Is that really what we want?

As the noble Lord, Lord Knight, just pointed out, the new offence of misleading the public is intended to replace the offence of misconduct in public office. Let us not forget that attempts have been made by political activists to bring private prosecutions against their opponents for committing that offence. For instance, in 2019, an outfit called the Brexit Justice Group brought a private prosecution against Boris Johnson for misconduct in public office because, according to the BJG, he had knowingly misled the electorate in the EU referendum campaign by claiming that leaving would bring a bounty of £350 million a week. It was an obviously vexatious case, but a magistrate issued three summonses against the then Prime Minister before the case was eventually thrown out in the High Court.

Should this Bill become law, we can look forward to a slew of similar cases. Rachel Reeves, for instance, might find herself in the dock for claiming that she would not raise taxes on working people, while Ed Miliband could have his collar felt for promising that household energy bills would fall by £300.

If the Bill is amended along the lines that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, wants, would not her party’s candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election find herself in difficulty—assuming that she becomes an MP? During her now infamous campaign video in Urdu, released a few days ago, she said that Reform UK wants to put higher taxes on people who were born abroad. That is misleading, to put it at its most charitable. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said there are safeguards in the Bill to prevent private prosecutions, but what is to stop members of the public bringing judicial reviews against the police for not prosecuting politicians for misleading the public?

The Free Speech Union recently defended an SNP activist and editor of a blog, “Wings Over Scotland”, who had supposedly said something transphobic on social media. A trans activist, Lynsay Watson, tried to sue Greater Manchester Police for not prosecuting him. I am happy to say that he failed, but that is not to say that others will not attempt to sue the police for not arresting lying politicians.

I do not want to see Hannah Spencer behind bars for misleading the public any more than I do the Chancellor of the Exchequer or the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero. Candidates campaign in poetry and govern in prose. If they fail to keep their promises or traffic in obvious mistruths, there is already an adequate mechanism for punishing them—the ballot box. Rather than extend the scope of the Bill to include MPs and Peers, let us limit it to make sure that Members of both Houses, in whatever capacity, are properly excluded.

I would go further and urge the Government to amend the Bill to exclude civil servants too—and not just those working in the intelligence services. As a recent piece in the Economist pointed out, making Whitehall officials liable for prosecution for misleading the public could have disastrous unintended consequences. It would mean fewer civil servants willing to take responsibility for decisions or giving ministerial advice, and more decision-making by committee to dilute liability. Rather than providing Ministers with timely, sensible advice, they will mitigate the risk of a prosecution down the line by obfuscation and delay. To quote from the Economist:

“Ministers complain that the civil service is bogged in a ‘sludge’ of slow decision-making. But officials will have an incentive to take more detailed minutes, keep more records and give risk-assessments even lengthier consideration to insure against future court challenges”.


I am reminded of the effect of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Rather than leading to greater transparency on official decision-making, it resulted in MPs, Peers and Whitehall officials abandoning email in favour of WhatsApp, with disappearing messages switched on—less transparency rather than more.

The intentions behind the Bill are undoubtedly good. The families of those who died in the Hillsborough tragedy deserve to hear the truth from public officials, particularly those testifying to various inquiries, but it is hard to legislate for candour. To pretend that the Bill will

“once and for all end the culture of cover-ups and hiding the truth”,

as the Labour manifesto promised, is, I am afraid, just another example of misleading the public.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I thank the noble Lord for raising the profile of our candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election. That is very kind of him.

Restriction of Jury Trials

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

The noble Lord makes an important point. There are delays between report of an offence and charge. The reasons for those can be very complicated. I used to work for the Crown Prosecution Service and I know how difficult it can be. An awful lot of investigation has to go on. Quite often, such investigations are looking at events that took place an awfully long time ago. It is probably fair to say that everybody thinks that we could and should do better. The Home Office deals with matters in relation to the police, but I will ensure that I write to the noble Lord and answer his question, which is a perfectly proper one.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

Will the Minister condemn the remarks of one of her colleagues in the other place, who smeared defenders of the right to trial by jury as men in suits defending a Magna Carta myth? In fact, the right to trial by jury dates to before Magna Carta, to Henry II, who, I point out, for the benefit of the Justice Secretary, came after Henry I and not before.

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

Oh dear. I feel that I did not even respond to the point of the noble Lord, Lord Gove, about me explaining it better than the Deputy Prime Minister. I am certainly not going to agree with that, and I am not going to be giving the Deputy Prime Minister any history lessons either.

This Government are completely committed to jury trial. There is absolutely no question of our doing away with jury trials. All we are doing is moving some cases down so that they will be dealt with in the magistrates’ court in order to free up space. We are not the only Government to have done this. The Criminal Justice Act 1988 reclassified three groups of offences—common assault, taking vehicles without consent and criminal damage—that had previously been triable either way as summary only. Does anybody want to take a history lesson on which Government were in power?

Criminal Court Reform

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I can reassure my noble friend that the consultation has been extensive. That does not necessarily mean that they agree with us or that all of them agree with us, although I observe—I say this as a practising criminal barrister myself—that it is a profession known for its caution; it is not always, shall we say, ready to adopt new ideas in particular ways. I am confident that once this system has had an opportunity to bed in, everyone will see the advantages.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the director of the Free Speech Union. If the Government are serious about wanting to reduce delays and backlogs in the Crown Courts, they should stop creating so many new criminal offences. In the Crime and Policing Bill alone, there are 65 new criminal offences. At the Free Speech Union, we have analysed Ministry of Justice data from 2017 to 2025, comparing the acquittal rates for those charged with speech crimes in jury trials with those for non-jury trials. The results are quite startling. For all offences, Crown Courts have acquitted 21.6% of defendants in the last eight years, compared with just 11.4% in magistrates’ courts. However, for speech-related offences, the acquittal rate in jury trials rises to 27.6%, compared with 15.9% in the magistrates’ courts. In the last three years, juries have been even more likely to find defendants not guilty of speech crimes—32.1%, compared with 14.1%. To protect free speech, will the Minister urge the Justice Secretary to retain the right to trial by jury for those accused of speech offences?

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord and pay tribute to his work in relation to freedom of speech, which is important to all of us. However, as I said in answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, we are not having carve-outs for particular kinds of offences or defendants. It would create a raft of unfairness and make the system so complicated that it would not be possible to run it.

Sentencing Bill

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 1st December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

I entirely agree with the noble Lord and the noble Baroness about the collection of data. What I am concerned about is the mandatory publication of all data, which risks being misused.

The noble Lord is quite right to suggest that my party supported Lammy. Indeed, I spent some time in this Chamber in debates on the sentencing guidelines Bill reminding the House of the Lammy Review on the inequality of outcomes based on ethnicity. That is quite different from saying that every single offence needs to be reported on and published, which can lead to unfortunate reporting.

Turning to Amendment 93B in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, like the noble Viscount, Lord Hogg, not only did I agree with almost every word she said, but I agreed with it profoundly in the sense of the benefits of participation in education, training and purposeful activity. I just have some concern about the use of the word “mandatory”.

In principle, all those things are sensible and beneficial for all the reasons that the noble Baroness gave. However, as we in this House know, many prisoners are struggling with addiction and mental health issues and some with problems of aging and illness. For those prisoners, the prospect of education, training, work and purposeful activity may be nugatory. I worry about too much use of “mandatory” in these contexts without consideration of all the effects. What is important, as it was in the last group when we considered probation, is flexibility and a personal approach so that offenders are dealt with having regard to their personal needs. That is an additional point to the one made by the noble Viscount, Lord Hogg, who talked about the availability of particular training opportunities—which were important as well.

On Amendment 127, I say yes to transparency of the Parole Board. Generally, the proceedings of the Parole Board should be public, should be heard and should be considered. Reporting of them is a good thing. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that there may be material that needs to be private. In these hearings, some discretion must be applied to enable the Parole Board to receive and take note of material that should not necessarily be made public. The hearing should make that decision. However, in general, the principle of transparency is one with which I and my party agree.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 86, in the names of my noble friend Lord Jackson and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, and will respond briefly to some of the points that the noble Lord, Lord Marks, just made in opposing that amendment.

It might be relevant here to consider the interim guidance published by the National Police Chiefs’ Council on 13 August, following consultation with the Home Office and the Crown Prosecution Service, to encourage police forces to disclose the ethnicity and nationality, although not the immigration status, of suspects charged in high-profile cases. That interim guidance is currently the subject of a consultation being carried out by the College of Policing, which is trying to decide whether to make the guidance permanent or to withdraw it. The Runnymede Trust and other charities have written an open letter to the Home Secretary and the chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council making many of the same arguments that the noble Lord, Lord Marks, made, opposing the interim guidance that publishing the ethnicity and nationality of suspects in serious high-profile criminal cases is dangerous, that it can lead people to draw the wrong conclusions and that it can fuel the rise of populist parties and so forth.

However, the reason for the introduction of this interim guidance was the speculation and misinformation about the suspect in the Southport attacks in the summer of 2024. The object of advising the police to publish information about ethnicity and nationality of suspects in high-profile criminal cases is precisely to avoid people speculating in that way and drawing the wrong conclusion, giving them the information to fill the vacuum that would otherwise be filled by speculation. The same arguments can be made in favour of Amendment 86. If the courts—

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but I invite him to clarify whether his objection to what I was saying is restricted to high-profile criminal cases, to which he has referred, or does he support the amendment in so far as it covers every case in the Crown Court and every case in the magistrates’ courts?

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

I support the amendment and do not think it is excessive to require the publication of this data in every case. Would the noble Lord approve Amendment 86 if it was amended, whereby it was just information about convictions in high profile cases that the amendment was asking to be published? Is the noble Lord’s objection just to the extent of the information required to be published, or does he object to any information being published?

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

The noble Lord sits down expecting a reply from me, and he will get one. It is that there is and ought to be a discretion about this sort of publication. To have a mandatory requirement for the recording of all information in every case—and it may be that it also goes to some high-profile cases—is to tie the hands of what is published in an unreasonable way. It may be that, in a lot of cases, publication is plainly in the public interest and should happen. I accept and agree that there should be the fullest possible recording, and then publication is a matter for the department.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

The risk of requiring Crown Courts to publish information in only some cases, but not all cases, and to expect the Crown Courts to exercise discretion, is that it could lead to public suspicion that they are suppressing data for precisely the sorts of reasons that the noble Lord articulated earlier: that it might lead to the rise in support for populist parties.

If the concern is that the publication of data showing the number of serious offences committed by people according to country of birth, nationality, ethnicity or immigration status might fuel a rise in populism, then surely the cause would be the fact that a disproportionate number of criminal offences are being committed by members of certain groups, not the fact that that information is being published. The concealment of that information and the refusal to publish it, or the concealment of some of the information, would, I fear, lead to greater public suspicion, speculation and, indeed, misinformation.

The argument made by the chief constables is that the public need to know this information if we are to avoid the kind of speculation and misinformation that fuelled the disorder in the summer of 2024. The famous Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis, said the best remedy for false and misleading speech is “not enforced silence” but more and better speech. Sunlight in these cases is the best disinfectant.

[Baroness Porter of Fulwood (Con)]

My Lords, I also support Amendment 93B in the name of my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe.

It is well established that the literacy and numeracy rates for those who end up committing crime are much lower than those in the general population. A Ministry of Justice report into prison education found that 57% of adult prisoners taking initial assessments had literacy levels below those expected of an 11 year-old.

In his review, David Gauke explicitly references the use of purposeful activity in the Texan system and positive engagement with it as being linked to serving less time inside prison; yet under these reforms there is no such requirement. My noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe has already referenced Charlie Taylor’s assessment of the current system. David Gauke also points out in his review just how much of a problem access to these services is in many of our prisons:

“His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons’ annual report for 2022-2023 found that standards of purposeful activity were rated poor or insufficiently good in all but one of the adult male prisons inspected”.


Despite the measures in the Bill, there will still be a growing prison population. This will make delivering these services even more challenging, but it has to be addressed. We need to make sure that people who are spending time in prison are spending it as constructively as they can. Focusing on this and prioritising resource to help reduce the chances of people reoffending is the best way of reducing crime over the longer term. I would argue accountability and mandatory requirements are what ultimately drive how we place resources.

Prisons: Early Release

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Wednesday 9th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords—

Sentencing Council Guidelines

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank the noble and learned Lord for his wise words, and for recognising that we could all do with a quiet period. We are all looking forward to the Recess in 48 hours’ time.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest in the Free Speech Union and apologise for accidentally omitting to do so at Oral Questions yesterday. It was my first ever Oral Question, and I hope noble Lords will forgive the omission.

I want to ask the Minister for his assurance about another two-tier justice risk; namely, the work that the Government have embarked upon to come up with an official definition of Islamophobia that they then recognise and incorporate into guidance. Can he reassure the House that that definition will not be incorporated into any advice given by the College of Policing to the police in England and Wales, nor in any official advice produced by the CPS, nor in advice given to the Courts and Tribunals Service, and that once the definition has been adopted, it will mean that anti-Muslim hatred is not treated any differently by the police, courts or tribunals from anti-Sikh hatred, anti-Hindu hatred or, indeed, anti-Christian hatred?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his second question. As I have said previously, the Lord Chancellor is committed to doing a full review of policies to ensure that none of them contradicts the important principles of equality before the law.