Courts and Tribunals Bill

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 10th March 2026 Commons Chamber

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

It has been a positive debate in terms of the exchange of ideas, and there have been some fantastic contributions. I pay particular tribute to the hon. Members for Bolsover (Natalie Fleet) and for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) for the very personal way in which they made their cases. There is consensus that for victims, the current waits are terrible and an experience that they should not have to go through. It is not only damaging for them as individuals, but some of them drop out as a result. We see perpetrators who would have been found guilty walking away and escaping justice, and we see defendants who would have been found innocent having to wait too long to have the accusations over their head removed.

[Catherine Atkinson]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Dr Mullan]

Not yet.

We must have a serious discussion about why that is. It was disappointing for those who sought to put forward a credible analysis of what has happened that the Justice Secretary and most Labour Members did not mention the word “covid” once. In reality, the backlogs in the Crown court under this Government before covid were lower than those we inherited from the previous Government.

It is fair to say that for many years—25 years, as we heard from the hon. Member for Congleton (Sarah Russell)—it has been accepted that not enough political attention has been paid to our justice system. The question is, what do we do about it? There is no single answer to that question, because there is no single problem. A whole variety of things are going wrong in our justice system. We are seeing late pleas because of insufficient early advice, faulty courtrooms, a lack of reports from probation services, and problems with prison transport. All those problems, and others, cause the delays and other issues.

The central recommendation of the Leveson report was for more sitting days— 130,000—and that will require more venues, more court staff, more prosecution staff, more solicitors and more barristers. However, as I have mentioned, there are simpler things that we can do ahead of that, and we need look no further than Liverpool Crown court under the leadership of Andrew Menary. At a time when the national average wait from charge to trial is 321 days, that court manages an average wait of 206 days. As far as I am aware, neither the Justice Secretary nor any of his team has visited Liverpool Crown court to speak to the judge and hear how he does that. In fact, he achieves it partly through the use of early guilty pleas. Nationally, we lose court time because too many people—31%—plead guilty on the day of a trial. In Liverpool, the proportion is just 6%. Those are not bold reforms. They are not measures that allow a Secretary of State to give a grand speech and consider himself a great reformer. It is just hard work, or what one Member described as “pretty boring” stuff that gets the job done.

As was pointed out by the hon. Members for Warrington North and for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy), these reforms will not only fail to achieve what the Government claim they will; they will be an overbearing, destructive distraction from that sort of hard work. And what will the Government gain? Certainly not what they claim in the impact assessment, which is full of assumptions and fantasies, and certainly not anything that might be described as modelling. The Government want us to believe that 24,000 Crown court days will simply be converted into 8,500 magistrate days, but they have no evidence for that claim. They want us to believe that trials without juries will be 20% shorter, but they have no evidence to support that claim either.

[Alex McIntyre (Gloucester) (Lab)]

Has the shadow Minister seen today’s statement from the Institute for Government, which has backed the Government’s modelling and overturned its previous position? He might want to reflect that in his comments.

[Dr Mullan]

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman read the entire statement. What the institution actually said was that the modelling

“relies on several assumptions—some of which are highly uncertain.”

Did he read that part of the statement? I do not think he did, because it claims that there will be reductions of only 2% in trial time as a result of these reforms.

What are we being asked to give up? We are being asked to give up 800 years of English legal history. A sledgehammer is being taken to the cornerstone of our system, and to fundamental rights. Thousands of accused people risk spending years in prison, losing their livelihoods, losing their families, losing their homes, and not being able to make the simple request for a forum of their peers to make that decision—a part of the justice system that is trusted and supported more than any other. That is perhaps why it is being defended so robustly by those within it. Just today, thousands of retired judges and retired and working legal professionals asked the Justice Secretary to think again. What has been the Government’s response to that? It has been to denigrate the role of jury trials.

We have had the appalling sight of the Lord Chancellor comparing three years in prison to a scraped knee. We have heard the Minister for Courts say that being accused of an offence of sexual assault, which could be considered either way at the moment, was not serious—an accusation that, if proven, would lose someone their livelihood. It is shameful and desperate stuff from a desperate Government. In contrast, what did the Prime Minister say? He said:

“The right to trial by jury is an important factor in the delicate balance between the power of the state and the freedom of the individual. The further it is restricted, the greater the imbalance.”

Now he asks us to upend that balance in a historically unprecedented way.

Of course, we can talk about the facts and figures, as woeful and thin as they have been, but at the end of the day, these decisions come from political instinct and a deep sense of what is right and wrong. That is not shallow; it is based on knowledge and years of experience —the sort that the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and Tavistock (Sir Geoffrey Cox) have. That experience told them, before they saw the figures, that the Government’s approach was not going to work. They have been proven right by the figures.

Is it any surprise that the Prime Minister does not understand this? Time and again, we have seen that he is absolutely devoid of any sort of deep political instinct. His only instinct is to chop and change his mind as it suits him on any particular day. No wonder he has been, more than any other Prime Minister in recent history, an agent of the civil service. He has forgotten the golden rule that civil servants advise and Ministers decide. The Conservatives have said yes to more resources, to efficiency and to the hard work of getting things done, but we have said no to eroding a fundamental right, no to more overbearing state power, and no to gutting and scouring away the mechanism by which all of us watch the watchmen.

The Courts Minister tells us that the Bill has been introduced on a point of political principle, whereas other Members have argued that it is a matter of necessity and resource. Too often, Labour Members have said yes to a Prime Minister to whom they should have said no. They have an opportunity tonight to say no to the Prime Minister when it counts. Let us hope they have the courage to do so.

Courts and Tribunals Bill (First sitting)

Kieran Mullan Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 25th March 2026 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

We will now hear oral evidence from Sir Brian Leveson. We must stick to the timings of the programme order that the Committee has agreed, so we have until 9.55 am for this panel. Will the witness please briefly introduce themselves for the record?

Sir Brian Leveson: My name is Brian Leveson. I was a practising criminal lawyer from 1970. I became a silk in 1986. I went on to the High Court bench in 2000, and the Court of Appeal in 2006. I was the senior presiding judge for England and Wales between 2007 and 2009, the inaugural chair of the Sentencing Council between 2010 and 2013, president of the Queen’s bench division from 2013, and latterly head of criminal justice. I retired at the compulsory age of 70 in 2019. I am now the Investigatory Powers Commissioner. I have spent the last 15 months seeking to review criminal justice, a subject which I rather thought I had left behind.

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

Q I am Kieran Mullan, the shadow Minister and MP for Bexhill and Battle. I want to take you back to the process of your appointment and ask whether, prior to your appointment, you had any discussions with Ministers or officials about your views on the right to elect and the use of jury trials.

Sir Brian Leveson: No, although I recognise that, in 2015, I looked at efficiency in criminal proceedings. Everybody says that was a wonderful time—no, it was not. I published a report that dealt with efficiency. It was not to incorporate anything that involved legislative change, but in chapter 10, “Out of Scope”, I discussed what Sir Robin Auld said in 2001. Anybody looking at that material would have seen that I was seriously concerned about the way in which criminal justice was proceeding and progressing, notwithstanding the backlog then because of an absence of police officers. What I visualised has actually come to pass.

[Dr Mullan]

Q I want to ask about the process of your review. Did you undertake any visits to Crown courts, and if so, which ones?

Sir Brian Leveson: Well, I have been visiting Crown courts for 50 years. I personally visited Liverpool Crown court, and I am sure I went to another Crown court, but my team went a large number of Crown courts. I was assisted by three advisers: Professor David Ormerod, who is I think the foremost criminal academic lawyer in the country; Chris Mayer, a former chief executive of HM Courts Service; and Shaun McNally, a former director of crime at HMCS and a former chief executive of the Legal Aid Agency. I had plenty of expertise. I did not need to visit courts; they did. I spoke to a lot of judges, though.

[Dr Mullan]

Q You mentioned that you visited Liverpool.

Sir Brian Leveson: Yes.

[Dr Mullan]

I do not want to assume what you may or may not know about Liverpool, but are you aware that Liverpool does not have a backlog in its courts?

Sir Brian Leveson: I am very aware of Liverpool: I am a Liverpudlian. I practised in Liverpool. I know all the judges in Liverpool extremely well. It would be a mistake to think that Liverpool is a microcosm of the country, for lots of reasons. Liverpool has a single Crown court. There are 20-odd courts in one building. It was opened in 1984—I was present. It has its problems, but it is still a very highly functioning court. There is one Crown Prosecution Service area. There is essentially one police force, although there is a second in Cheshire. There is one chief probation officer. Much more importantly, there is a small local Bar where everybody knows everybody else and they all get on with it. That is not the case in other parts of the country.

[Dr Mullan]

Q Are there any lessons that could be drawn out for the rest of the country? You have given us some that you think cannot be.

Sir Brian Leveson: Yes, and I have made recommendations. It is critical that the systems join up: the police, the CPS, the defence community, the courts, the judiciary, and the prison and probation services. They all have their own budgets, their own problems and their own priorities. One of the recommendations I made in part 2 of my review—which is not considered in the Bill, obviously—was the creation of a criminal justice adviser whose only responsibility was co-ordinating the work of each of the agencies to try to make them work together. That is where it has worked in Liverpool. But doing that on its own would not be sufficient.

[Dr Mullan]

Q I want to move on to the references in your report to the modelling. I have various quotes from part 1 of your report, to refresh your memory of what you said. In paragraph 11, on page 34, you say:

“I have no doubt that the MoJ will want and need to conduct more detailed modelling, including through impact assessments of any recommendations taken forward.”

It is a common theme throughout the report that you say, repeatedly, that you expect that the Ministry of Justice will want to undertake more detailed modelling than the modelling you undertook. Are you aware of what, if any, more detailed modelling the MOJ did undertake?

Sir Brian Leveson: That is not my responsibility. What I wanted to say about modelling was this: it is bordering on the speculative to think that you can model all the changes to get one set of results. I am very conscious, for example, of the modelling in relation to the time saved by a bench division. You will know, and doubtless quote it at me in a moment, that the modellers suggest 20%, which I believe is pessimistic. Let me say why I think that is so, because it is very important that the Committee understands this.

How can modelling be undertaken in relation to systems that have never operated? The first question is, “What time would be saved?” The modellers—the analysts—looked to the court service: “How many minutes would be saved by not having to do this with a jury? How many by doing that, and the other?” They also spoke to some judges. I believe they came up with a figure that is far too pessimistic, as I said.

Let me explain why. The dynamic of a criminal trial conducted with a jury is very different from the dynamic of a trial conducted without a jury. Take family work, for example. The judge gets involved. If there is a jury, he finds no facts—every fact that anybody wants to elicit or develop, unless it is inadmissible, they can—but if a judge is conducting a trial, he or she will say, “Well now, what’s the issue in this case? Let’s get down to it,” and, “I’ve got that point; what’s the next point?” That changes the dynamic of the trial entirely.

Indeed, I have spoken to district judges who try rapes in the youth court and are also sex-ticketed recorders, so are trying rapes in the Crown court, and they say to me that trials in the Crown court are twice as long as for the same sort of acquaintance-type rape in the youth court. Canadian judges talk about 50%; I am concerned to achieve fair justice, and I need to speed that up because of the backlog.

[Dr Mullan]

Q I will take you through some further questions.

Sir Brian Leveson: Fine.

[Dr Mullan]

On the right to elect, your report—we are not talking about further work that you are not responsible for—says:

“It has been assumed that disposals per day in the magistrates’ court are in line with the current average.”

So if we change the system, disposals will remain at the current rate. If we are trying more complex, more serious cases, is it reasonable to assume that the disposal time will be the same as for those currently seen for less serious cases?

Sir Brian Leveson: Why do you say they are more complex? They are not necessarily more complex at all.

[Dr Mullan]

If they are being given sentences of potentially up three years versus, for example, six months, you do not think that will have any impact on the time, complexity or seriousness of the cases?

Sir Brian Leveson: I am not suggesting it will not have any impact; I am suggesting that the time cases take is not necessarily governed by the nature of the charge or, indeed, the eventual sentence. In the 1970s, I could conduct two trials in a day; nobody ever conducts a trial in a day these days.

[Dr Mullan]

Q I am being pressed for time, so I have just one final question.

Sir Brian Leveson: Keep going.

[Dr Mullan]

The most specific element of modelling that the MOJ undertook was something called a structured elicitation workshop, which found that the time saved would be between 10% and 30%. At the lower the end, that is half of the 20% estimate that you put forward. Would you accept that?

Sir Brian Leveson: No. I think that is wrong. As far as I am concerned, there will be a considerable time saving and, much more importantly, there will be a cultural shift. At the moment, if you can put your trial off until 2028, what is not to like?

[Dr Mullan]

Q Okay, so it would be fair to say that your report points to the need to do further modelling, the MOJ has undertaken that modelling, and you reject the modelling that your report says the MOJ needs to undertake to better understand the impact.

Sir Brian Leveson: I do not accept that characterisation at all. I believe that savings in a Crown court will be dramatic, for cultural and involvement reasons, in the same way that family judges get through cases more quickly. If you ask those who are opposed to any change what they think will happen as a result of change, they are going to be—

[Dr Mullan]

Sorry, but to correct the record: those people were not opposed. There was an MOJ-orchestrated workshop of neutral parties and judges, and they said it would be 10% to 30%. That is massively different to your estimate.

Sir Brian Leveson: Judges?

[Dr Mullan]

Yes. A whole series of stakeholders were invited by the MOJ and they potentially strongly disagree with your central conclusion of 20%. I have no further questions.

[The Minister for Courts and Legal Services (Sarah Sackman)]

Q Sir Brian, I would be grateful if you would elaborate for the Committee on the point you made about cultural change. Your view, expressed in the report, is that you think that a judge-only or Crown court bench division would save 20% at least—at a conservative estimate. You refer to a cultural change; can you elaborate and explain what you mean by that?

Sir Brian Leveson: Yes. At the moment, there are undeniably defendants who are gaming the system. They are charged with a crime, they are told their trial will not be until 2028 or 2029, and they are happy to put it off.

I gave an example in a debate on this subject. I said that in 1970 I would say to defendants in around November, “Well, this is a very strong case. If you are guilty, you are much better admitting it. You get a discount for pleading guilty and you can explain it, which will contain litigation.” More than once defendants would say, “Well, Mr Leveson, I am guilty, and I will plead guilty, but I want to spend Christmas with my kids, so I will plead guilty in January.” Now they can say, “I would like to spend Christmas 2028 with my children.” That was an anecdote from me, but after the debate a defence solicitor from London came up to me and said, “That example you gave—I am having that conversation every day of the week.”

We need people to confront what they have done. I do not want anybody to plead guilty who is not guilty and has seen the evidence. I am not asking to change the guilty plea rate, but in the early days, you pleaded guilty on the first or the second occasion you appeared at the Crown court—now there are many examples of that happening on the fifth or the sixth occasion you are in the Crown court. Each one of those takes a considerable amount of time. That is what is sucking up part of the time.

There are lots of other challenges to the system, which if you have had what I do not say is the benefit or privilege of reading both parts 1 and 2 of my review, you will see that I try to elaborate on there. I am concerned that we need to change the dynamic so that people address allegations that are made against them at the first opportunity, rather than hoping that the victim will withdraw, the witnesses will forget or the case will just fade away. That is the point I am talking about with cultural change.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

We will now hear oral evidence from Claire Waxman, Professor Katrin Hohl and Dame Vera Baird. It is good to see you and to have you back here, Vera, albeit in a different guise.

I will follow the same procedure as I did in the previous panel, but I want to get more Committee members in, as I know that Members on both sides of the Committee missed out. I ask Dr Mullan and the Minister to try to keep the Front-Bench questions tighter, so that we can get more participation from all parts of the Committee.

[Dr Mullan]

Q I think the witnesses were in the Public Gallery for the introductions, so I will skip straight to my questions. Claire, you have expressed your support of the structural reforms, including the reduction in access to jury trials. Could you take me through your policy formulation process when making such a decision to support a particular policy point?

Claire Waxman: Of course. My role is very much focused on listening directly to victim survivors and families bereaved by homicide, so any changes in legislation and proposals are sense-checked with them. I have been listening to victims since 2020, when the pandemic hit, and have seen the direct impact of the long delays, with cases now going well into 2030. There is a human cost to that. We often say, “Justice delayed is justice denied,” but justice is not abstract for victims. When we delay justice, what it really means for victims is a lack of security and safety, and an inability to process what has happened, to get closure and to move on with their lives; all those are denied. We trap victims in prolonged years of uncertainty, which compounds and prolongs their trauma. I have spoken at length publicly about what that looks like for victims.

You will hear from victims shortly, and a letter signed by 18 victims who have actually been in the criminal justice system and sustained long waits for justice was sent last week. I have spoken to victims, and they want this to end: they want a way out, and they are desperate. They are saying that if having a judge-only trial in a case will mean that they will come out of the system more quickly, they want to see timely justice. Without that, we are seeing a reduction in access to justice, an increase in victim attrition—and not just post-charge, as we have seen an increase of more than 5% in the last five years—and a third of trials breaking down because victims have withdrawn as they cannot sustain staying in the system.

We are also seeing it impact the pre-charge phase. Last year, as London’s Victims’ Commissioner, I published the London victim attrition review, finding that on average 40% of victims withdraw from the system, and that delays are playing a part in that—not just delays in investigation, but the thought of having to wait years to get into court.

[Dr Mullan]

Q So you feel you are reflecting what victims want.

Claire Waxman: Yes.

[Dr Mullan]

Q Are you familiar with the letter to the Deputy Prime Minister from a coalition of more than a dozen violence against women and girls groups, including the End Violence Against Women Coalition, London Black Women’s Project, the Centre For Women’s Justice and Welsh Women’s Aid, who oppose the changes to jury trials?

Claire Waxman: Yes, I am absolutely aware of it.

[Dr Mullan]

Q My next, very simple question is: do you accept that there is a diversity of opinion among those representing victims about whether it is the right step to take?

Claire Waxman: That letter was actually around victims who have been criminalised, so it is a different issue; they are dealing with victims who are defendants in the system, not victims who are complainants.

[Dr Mullan]

Welsh Women’s Aid?

Claire Waxman: Yes, they are talking about criminalisation, which is an appalling failing of our criminal justice system.

[Dr Mullan]

Q Sorry—we have to be really tight—you think Welsh Women’s Aid does not necessarily speak for victims?

Claire Waxman: In that letter, the focus is on the criminalisation of victims, which is awful. The overlap of criminalisation and victimisation needs to be dealt with way earlier on in the system.

[Dr Mullan]

Q Sorry, we have to be really tight with the questions. Do you think, if I were to ask Welsh Women’s Aid, they would say, “We support the changes to jury trials”?

Claire Waxman: In that letter, they are saying they are not—[Interruption.]

[The Chair]

Kieran, can we just ask a question and get the answer?

Claire Waxman: You would need to ask Welsh Women’s Aid. They have signed up to a slightly different tone of a letter, which is around the criminalisation of victims coming into the system as defendants. It is very different to the victims I listen to—

[Dr Mullan]

Q You have made that point.

Claire Waxman: Victims are complex—

[Dr Mullan]

Sorry, but you have made that point. I am asking you a very specific question. Do you think Welsh Women’s Aid supports the change to jury trials?

Claire Waxman: We know they do not, because they have signed that letter—

[Dr Mullan]

They do not—thank you. That is fine. I have finished.

Claire Waxman But that is at odds with a number of the victims I speak to, just to be clear.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q My first question is for Professor Katrin Hohl. There are measures in the Bill that address the admissibility of evidence in RASSO cases. How will those measures ameliorate the position for victims of those sorts of crimes?

Professor Hohl: The measures in the Bill that address sexual offences broadly fall into two groups. The first group clarifies and tightens admissibility rules around sexual history evidence and previous reports of sexual violence that may be portrayed as so-called “victim bad character”, tightening that threshold to better protect victims from unnecessary, intrusive and unfounded lines of questioning. We very much welcome those.

There is also a set around special measures, which effectively clarify how they should apply. Those are also very welcome, and my understanding is that they are largely uncontroversial; they seem to be welcomed across the board.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Kieran has asked me to come back in, but please keep it tight.

[Dr Mullan]

Q I want to pick up on this discussion of the letter, which I think you characterised as coming from the perspective of women and girls as defendants in the system, not victims. I want to read you part of the letter:

“The Government’s proposed reforms will likely create significant operational disruption and practical challenges that pull resources from more effective measures to reduce the backlog. This would prolong the uncertainty that leads many survivors to withdraw support for the prosecution of their abuser.”

Do you accept that the letter does, in fact, also talk about the impact on victims of the jury trial changes?

Claire Waxman: If you read the letter, it focuses on the victim coming in as a defendant, but it is also—

[Dr Mullan]

Q Sorry, I have just read you a direct quote about them as victims. Do you accept that it is in there?

Claire Waxman: You have to read the whole context of the letter—you have pulled out one bit. The whole context of that letter really focuses on listening to women who are wrongly being criminalised, as opposed to victims.

[Dr Mullan]

Q People will have heard the quote and they can make up their own minds.

Claire Waxman: I would urge you to read the letter that has been written and signed by 18 victims, instead of disregarding it—it is really important to read it.

[Dr Mullan]

Q I have read it, and I have just read you a quote. If you do not want to take a common quote at its face value, that is fine.

Claire Waxman: Can I just remind you that we have victims in the room, and I think that is really important?

[The Chair]

Order. We cannot have a row going on.

[Dr Mullan]

Q Dame Vera, you talked about Charlotte’s powerful testimony. Would you accept that Charlotte has said it is wrong to use the voice of victims to advocate purely for reforms, as though all victims agree with them, and that she is opposed to the reforms?

Dame Vera Baird: Yes, but she is on her own—

[Dr Mullan]

Oh dear!

Dame Vera Baird: Kieran, you are not listening to what Claire says—she is right. The women’s movement is very disappointed with the Bill because it does not tackle the issue of criminalisation of women. They think that dealing with delays in the list is a very poor substitute, and they will not have it. They want to stand up at last for a proper defence of coercively controlled women who are put into crime—goodness knows it has been long enough coming—but that does not appear in the Bill. The women’s movement is very upset about that, and in my view that has driven this. I do not doubt—

[Dr Mullan]

Q I think it is very unfortunate for you to refer to Charlotte as being “on her own” in that way. It is very disrespectful.

[The Chair]

Order.

Dame Vera Baird: No, it is not at all disrespectful. Natalie Fleet, who has also been abused, takes the opposite view. She does not want to be weaponised, Kieran, and that is a very sound point. None the less, her example is appalling, and nobody could doubt her. The man was acquitted, but a judge believed her, so what is your argument now? Judges are not fair.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joe Robertson]

Q May I ask for a clarification? Is Charlotte on her own in her views? Is she the only person who holds the views she has expressed?

Dame Vera Baird: Of course not, and I did not intend to say that. I have been trying to think, since we discussed it, about how I would feel if my experience were being used for a political cause, and it had been a very nasty experience. I might feel the same sort of—I do not know whether it is resentment or disappointment, or whether it is that it was inappropriate. I can well understand that, but many other victims do not agree that this will not help.

Women are waking up every morning, for three or four years, dreading the day when they will have to relive what happened to them in rape cases, or a man who has been very badly beaten up might wake every morning, worrying that he will have to relive it. It goes on and on like that, because there is a right to demand—as, I am afraid, I would phrase it—a trial for relatively small offences. I do not make little of them, but those will be in the queue. If Charlotte’s case is coming up next Monday, all the cases that have elected for trial before hers will be in the queue in front of it.

[Dr Mullan]

indicated dissent.

Dame Vera Baird: I see Kieran shaking his head, but there is no other way. There is a limited opportunity to give priority to cases. Obviously a very important point is whether the defendant is in custody. Most rape defendants are not in custody, because it is a “one word against the other” case, so they cannot be given any real priority for that reason. We end up very regularly with cases that took as long as Charlotte’s. That is really awful for a large number of victims. It also gives very little to the people who want this right: 64% of people who elect for trial plead guilty before they get to trial. You have to ask why they are electing for trial if they are going to plead guilty, but they have blocked up the jury list all of that time. This is about freeing up the jury list.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Q In the previous panel, Sir Brian asked how we could model something that had never been trialled. As a panel, would you support a pilot of what the Government are suggesting, so we can take the qualitative data and see whether it makes a fundamental difference, or we should go now and not, for example, put a sunset clause in?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Impressively brief. If we can have those kind of pithy answers—and pithy questions, by the way—we can get through our questions and cover as much ground as possible.

[Dr Mullan]

Q First, I am very grateful for you coming today to give evidence. We often debate things and hear from third parties but nothing is more important than hearing from people, such as yourselves, who have direct experience, even if we do not necessarily agree with the policy outcomes that might flow from that. Because it is so important, can you open with the experiences that you think are most important to get across to the Committee? Then we are clear that everybody has had an opportunity to make the points that are important to them. Farah, I know that you are representing an organisation, but perhaps you could start.

Farah Nazeer: I am conscious that there are victim-survivors here as well, so I will be brief. In the Bill, we are pleased to see the repeal of the presumption of parental involvement. That is absolutely critical. We know that the vast majority of survivors of domestic abuse do not go into the criminal justice system. Only one in five women will ever report to the police, so they find themselves in the family courts. The repeal will make a huge difference to them.

We now need to see the culture around that change. We have had a pro-contact culture in the family courts for a very long time. We can see through our experience working with vast numbers of survivors every day that the vast majority of judges are not as aware as they should be of domestic abuse and coercive control—they are not trauma-informed. We need to see judges trained to be able to apply this effectively.

We also see that, across all those other safeguarding contexts for children, such as health and safety, police and schools, there is mandatory training required, and a framework and infrastructure. Strangely, there is not the same infrastructure here, where you are actually talking about children’s lives and wellbeing. I previously heard a comment about how we cannot mandate judges to have training, but perhaps you should be mandating, because you do so in every other safeguarding context.

For further context, the majority of people affected by domestic abuse are children; we have more children in our refuges across the country than we do adults. It is a huge safeguarding matter, and I would encourage the Committee to think about mandatory training for judges.

[Dr Mullan]

Q Jade, do you want to come in?

Jade Blue McCrossen-Nethercott: I come from an angle of delay being a key factor. While my case was dropped 13 days before trial, from report to court it would have been 1,317 days, which is now becoming quite the norm. I regularly hear fellow victims advising on very similar situations, and how they feel about that and how it changes their perspective on wanting to navigate the justice process. If people are telling us that they would not necessarily come back into the system, for me, that is the clearest possible signal that change is not optional but very much overdue.

We published a letter last week in response to the Bar Council’s letter, just to try to centre lived experience in this conversation and debate, which felt like it had been predominantly missing. In statements of support, a couple of victims have described the process of waiting for court and the delays as “extreme harm”—that was from Victoria. Sarah advised that she felt “suffering, gaslighting and anxiety”.

Charlotte said that report to court was “total agony” and that we need to reduce the suffering. Jane advised that it felt like years on “eggshells, in limbo”. She said:

“Waiting years with no guarantee of getting justice is like torture.”

Charlotte—another Charlotte—advised of the delays that:

“They shape our lives, our ability to move forward, and our trust in justice itself.”

Those are important and strong statements from women describing that process. That is the angle that I come from.

Charlotte Meijer: We have also handed the letter over to one of your colleagues, so that the Committee can read it. I was seen in a magistrates court, so having the recording of magistrates courts that is in the Bill is incredibly important. That transparency, which I did not have, will really change victims’ lives, whether that is just to understand what happened in their trial or to hold people to account.

I did not have a good experience with my judge, but I am still pro my case being seen by a judge. I am so glad that my perpetrator chose that—although there is an issue with that in itself, as they should not be able to choose, and I am glad to see that being taken away. I am so glad I was seen in front of a judge, because to me a judge is educated in all aspects—or should be, as there is a definite need of training, as has been said—while 12 strangers off the street all have their own biases. We know that one in four men are generally perpetrators, so that could be three on the panel that is judging you and your case.

For me, having transparency really changes things. We talk about justice and the system being closed, so if we have more recording and transcripts, it will really help people. There is something that is not in the Bill that I would love to see; I have fought for the last three years for sentencing remarks to be made free, which we did earlier this year, but I believe that is not going to extend to magistrates courts. If they are now being recorded, my belief is that they should also be free in that way.

One thing that I think is also really important in this discussion, where there is so much pushback against more cases going to magistrates courts, is that coercive control essentially involves rape—it involves coercive sex—and yet it is seen in a magistrates court. When we talk about how only the worst crimes are being seen by juries, and they need to be seen by juries, what does that mean about all the other crimes, including domestic abuse and coercive control, that are being seen in magistrates courts? Are we saying that they are not getting fair trials as it is? We believe that they are, so why is there such pushback at the moment about more cases going to magistrates courts? Magistrates are laypeople as well, so there is still that accountability from the general public.

[Dr Mullan]

Q Thank you very much. Morwenna?

Morwenna Loughman: Thank you for having us all here. I waited two and a half years for my rape trial to go ahead. It was delayed twice—each time, the day before we were due in court. The second time it was delayed, it was actually confirmed, and then five hours later, on email, we were told that it was not going ahead. He had lied his way out on bail and breached his bail conditions 23 times. During those two and a half years, I lost my job, I lost my home and I developed acute PTSD, a side effect of which was a repeated vomiting syndrome, which meant that I had to go to hospital to have my oesophagus repaired.

I am also here to speak about juries not being bastions of infallibility. The treatment of the jury that I experienced was one of attrition. In particular, the foreman came out at one point and asked the judge, “If she’d been raped so many times, why did she not leave earlier?”

I would also like to talk about the treatment of victims while they are on the stand. During cross-examination, I experienced pervasive and repeated use of rape myths and stereotypes in a way to deliberately mislead the jury against me.

[Dr Mullan]

I am really sorry for the experiences that you have had, and certainly for any role that we played in government in not better addressing these delays and the challenges that you faced. The consequences of that are really powerfully illustrated by the things that you have talked about, so thank you for sharing that. I really hear all the evidence that you have given.

[Sarah Sackman]

Q Let me echo the shadow Minister’s thanks to you for being here. I appreciate that you have spoken in Parliament on other occasions, but I do not underestimate what it takes to repeat those stories again and again so that people like us can be educated on what that first-hand experience feels like.

Charlotte, I wanted to pick up on something that you said. You talked about transparency and about the benefit that the recording of proceedings in the magistrates court would have. We are committed, as part of these reforms, to recording all proceedings in the magistrates court. Can you describe and explain what difference you think that might have made in cases like yours?

Charlotte Meijer: Definitely. After I gave my evidence in my trial, I left. The gallery was not somewhere I could sit safely. It was a tiny bench. His best mate and his sister were sat there, so I could not really go and sit between them.

I had said to the CPS and the police that I might want to come and hear the verdict. I was not given that opportunity, unfortunately. I got a call from my independent sexual violence adviser to say that the verdict had been made and that he was found not guilty. From that day, I really wanted to understand what had happened. For me, it was a very clearcut case of coercive control. I cannot go into too much detail, because he was found not guilty, but there was a huge age difference and there was a power imbalance and so forth, so I never understood how he was found not guilty.

The judge also made some comments. She said that, because I waited eight months to report, I was unreliable, and that I had clearly spoken to other victims of domestic abuse, so I knew what to say. Those comments really stuck by me. For my healing, and for me to be able to move on, I just needed to understand what was said in court, so I went to ask for the transcripts, of which of course in the magistrates courts there are none. It is definitely twofold: I wanted to understand what happened for my healing, but I also still want to hold that judge to account, because the things she said are not true and should not be said by someone who should be in a position of power and education.

I also think there is an important argument to be made around transparency, because people do not feel that the system is transparent—and to be fair, if it is not recorded, it is not. If you cannot sit in the gallery, if no one can watch and if there are no transcripts, then it is not. It is important to have the ability to record everything so that people can listen back, whether that is for their healing or for their understanding, or to hold people to account. We need to be able to hold people who are in power to account.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

I know that Kieran and Jess wanted to come back in. Kieran Mullan first—briefly, please.

[Dr Mullan]

Q I want to ask about something called the unduly lenient sentence scheme. I will start with you, Morwenna, as a person who went through the Crown court process, because it is not applicable in the magistrates court at the moment. Were you aware of the unduly lenient sentence scheme when the sentencing was given?

Morwenna Loughman: I was aware of it. He is actually appealing the length of sentence at the moment, but has not yet been granted leave to do so.

[Dr Mullan]

Q I guess I am focusing on the perspective of victims and victims’ right to appeal. As I mentioned, with magistrates court cases you do not have a right to say that you thought the sentence was unduly lenient. I think that is because, when the scheme was set up, the maximum sentence was six months—perhaps there are questions about the ability and meaningfulness of that.

Obviously, an increased sentencing length means that someone could be sentenced for three years in a magistrates court, without a right to appeal that sentence. This question is to all three of you. Do you think it is important to ensure that, even if we increase sentence lengths in the magistrates court, victims have the opportunity, in certain circumstances, to appeal sentences that they think are unduly lenient?

Charlotte Meijer: Yes.

Jade Blue McCrossen-Nethercott: Straight and to the point: yes.

[The Chair]

Excellent. That is the best answer we have had—definitive and short. Great.