Speeches by Farnsworth.

“Does my hon. Friend agree that the lack of legal aid solicitors and barristers will only compound the problems of the court backlog? That is because cases will either have to be adjourned as a consequence of lack of legal counsel or they will take longer when defendants appear without legal counsel because those defend…”

“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, and I will look into that. I remember discussing the changes to proposed new section 1A(3) with the advisers here, and I remember being satisfied that there was good reason for them. I am very sorry that I cannot bring those reasons to mind at the moment, but I will commit to lookin…”

“I am grateful to the hon. Gentlemen for their contributions. I will commit to looking at that issue again and tabling any necessary amendments on Report, perhaps in conjunction with the Minister. Going back to the Minister’s comments on the Fraud Act and the Theft Act, it is correct that members of staff can be charged…”

“I think I have got to the bottom of it. The Bill that has been printed for the Committee today is the old Bill, which has since been slightly amended to deal with that very point. That is why there is confusion, because I have a copy of the new version of the Bill.”

“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the intervention, and I commiserate with him on his choice of football team—I put on record that Everton are a much more preferable team to follow. As Siobhan described, at the Wembley incident, fans managed to get through the first ticket check. Many stadiums, including Wembley, hav…”

“It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. Following your guidance, I intend to speak to the whole Bill in my remarks. I thank everybody for coming along this morning; I hope that, with Members’ agreement, this former prosecutor can place a new offence on the statute books. As the title sugges…”

“I thank my hon. Friend for her attendance today; she is a real champion for her football team and her constituency, and I am sure that they will be grateful for her attendance. She raises a valid point: this offence could apply to other sporting events. Sadly, there have also been tragic incidents at music festivals, s…”

“The hon. Member is absolutely correct that in the modern day not many people have paper tickets. The Bill will apply equally to the electronic version, so I am grateful to him for allowing me to clarify.”

“Proposed new section 1A(4) of the 1991 Act says: “‘match ticket’ means a ticket or other thing (whether in physical or electronic form),” so I think that is expressed in the Bill, but I am grateful to the hon. Member. Baroness Louise Casey, in her report following the Euro 2020 final, concluded that the events of that …”

“Thank you, Mr Vickers. I thank all Members for their contributions today, as well as the Minister and the shadow Minister. I will return to the comments that the Minister kindly made about members of staff—”

“A ticket that has already been used? I am trying to remember; I think it goes back to the purpose of this change in the law and the desired effect of increased safety. If there is a valid ticket, there is a reserved seat, which is what I think the defence is getting at. The offence is being introduced to prevent overcr…”

“Indeed, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I am grateful for the fact that you did not; I am very conscious of my age myself. The community justice initiative brought the community into the justice process. It allowed community impact statements to be made for certain offences, such as antisocial behaviour, and took a holistic …”

“I recognise that prison places were created, but we are talking in net terms, and net, there were 500 extra places. [Interruption.] We are certainly not happy with only 500 places, net, over 14 years. That is why this Government are taking action to increase prison places in real terms. We must sort out the cycle of re…”

“Thank you. We are looking at expanding the use of it, as you say, as technology improves. I am sure we will be doing more and more with electronic monitoring. I know that the review considered the Government’s pilot on electronic monitoring for perpetrators of domestic violence. What evidence did you find of its effect…”

“Good afternoon. I am Linsey Farnsworth, Member of Parliament for Amber Valley. I was a Crown prosecutor for the best part of two decades before coming to Parliament, and my interests are as in the register.”

“Yes, thank you. I would like to talk to you about community sentences. The review proposes an expansion to the use of community sentences. Having been in the criminal justice system before coming into Parliament, I am interested to hear what your view is on what implications diverting more people into the community wou…”

“That will presumably need more resource. You cannot just move monetary resources from the prisons into probation because we are still going to need the prison places because of the trajectory that we are going in.”

“You have mentioned the third sector and opportunities there for bringing the third sector in more. I was interested in what you were saying earlier about the person, when they come out of prison, having a job, having a home, having strong familial ties. I think that goes for people serving a community penalty as well. …”

“If we can turn now to community sentence treatment requirements, the review highlights significant concerns about the lack of availability of those requirements. What assessment did the review make of the geographical availability currently for those and the funding across England and Wales for those programmes?”

“Last week we heard from healthcare providers about the opportunity to increase community sentence treatment requirements. I was just wondering to what extent the review adopts a public health approach to reducing reoffending.”