Courts and Tribunals Bill

Debate between Jess Phillips and Karl Turner

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

[Karl Turner]

I agree completely, and the hon. Gentleman makes the point very strongly indeed.

Clause 6 is on magistrates’ sentencing powers. I cannot support the idea of magistrates having powers to give sentences of between 18 and 24 months without a credible plan to address the dire, desperate need to recruit magistrates, legal advisers, court staff and lawyers. That risks just transferring the pressure rather than solving the backlog. That is the reality of what this Bill will do.

That brings me to the anomaly in the Bill. As currently drafted, it presents a fairly obvious problem: a defendant of good character, with no previous convictions and who has never been arrested, interviewed, charged, prosecuted or convicted of a criminal offence is likely, by virtue of the sentencing guidelines on an either-way offence, to be tried in front of a magistrates court, whereas a defendant with numerous previous convictions, by virtue of the fact that under the guidelines that offending behaviour exceeds the three-year threshold, gets the benefit of a Crown court trial.

Let us picture the scenario: a section 47 offence of actual bodily harm is triable either way. This is a serious assault in a domestic scenario. Defendant A has no previous convictions and has never been convicted by a criminal court—

[Jess Phillips]

Just because a domestic abuser has no prior convictions, it does not mean he does not have priors. It does not mean he has good character.

[Karl Turner]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. She is absolutely right, of course. In my experience, offenders who appear in incredibly serious cases of violence in domestic scenarios have often never had previous convictions.

Let us think about the fairness of this scenario. Defendant A, who has never been convicted of a criminal offence, is charged with a section 47 ABH and appears in a summary trial. It is a very serious assault, an ABH. Defendant B, who has had numerous convictions over his adult life—let us be honest, it is mainly men who commit domestic assaults; that is the truth of it—gets the benefit of a trial in front of a jury. How is that possibly—[Interruption.] Well, it is a benefit. I am hearing “Why is it a benefit?”

[Jess Phillips]

A longer sentence is the benefit.

[Karl Turner]

I am hearing comments from a sedentary position. I have an awful lot of time for my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), I truly have—she is a mate of mine, as it happens—but there is a benefit to a jury trial.

The reality is that when a defendant appears in a summary trial before a bench of lay magistrates or a district judge, it is swift, summary justice. The evidence is heard, but it is not heard and presented in the same way as it is in a Crown court. That is just the truth. A Crown court trial in that scenario would last four or five days, and potentially into a second week. There is an opportunity to call defence evidence. Legal aid is available for experts. There is the potential for reports by the defence and the prosecution. It is about equality before the law. That is the reality of the scenario, and I cannot believe that this consequence is intended by this Labour Government. That is why I say that I cannot possibly support clause 6.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jess Phillips]

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

[Karl Turner]

Well, I am not going to get into the whys and wherefores of this particular juncture of the debate.

There is an easy fix for the scenario that I have described. My amendment 47 states that where a defendant has no previous convictions and the court decides that the case is suitable for summary trial, that defendant should be entitled to elect to have their trial in the Crown court. I do not think that the numbers will be very big. It is probably impossible for the Ministry of Justice to do modelling. In the 16 years that I have been a Member of this House and have been involved in debating criminal justice issues, I have rarely seen MOJ modelling that has been anywhere near accurate. However, even if it could do the modelling—I suspect it cannot, because that data is not kept—the numbers would be tiny. Why? Because only 0.4% of all convictions in the magistrates court are appealed.

However, in 41% of that 0.4% of cases—it is a tiny number—the conviction is overturned in the Crown court, because there has been a wrong decision. The Bar Council has produced more up-to-date data, which suggests that that 41% has now gone up to 56%. More than half the cases that are appealed from the magistrates to the Crown court for a rehearing end up with a defendant who was convicted in the magistrates court being acquitted in the Crown court. Why do I say that there is a benefit to a Crown court hearing? It speaks for itself.

What could the Government do instead? There is plenty that they could do. They could implement the relevant recommendations of the Leveson review. They could improve co-ordination between the police, the CPS and the courts to progress and identify unnecessary prosecutions earlier. It happens to be a fact that prosecutions sometimes end because the CPS—the Crown—throws in the towel. There is lots to welcome in the Bill, and I do welcome it, but there is too much in it for me to support it at this time.

Finally, I want to say a few words of gratitude. I thank the Prime Minister, because from the very outset of my opposition to the worst excesses of the Bill, he was supporting me in the background. Similarly, Lord Sadiq Khan was there texting me, encouraging me and supporting me when it mattered. My biggest thank you of all is reserved for my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) for her bravery in standing up, waiving her anonymity and explaining her personal situation in the criminal justice system, in the face of all the pressure that was being exerted on Members who had the audacity to say that these measures were not suitable for a Labour Government to be implementing. We suffered the pressure exerted on us, and my hon. Friend showed real bravery and determination. For that, I will forever respect her.