Speeches by Paul.

“The Sentencing Act 2026 now allows custodial sentences of up to three years to be suspended, and introduced presumption to suspend short custodial sentences. Those are changes that may well affect plea behaviour, sentencing outcomes and, in due course, trial volumes. They are, however, not obviously incorporated into t…”

“Colleagues will also recall the circulated letter from leaders in the violence against women and girls space, which makes the same point from another direction. It states that juries”

““a binary choice, would prefer a judge-only trial over waiting years”.”

“Charlotte Schreurs and others argue from lived experience that delay is intolerable, and limited reform may be preferable to a justice system that does not function at all. I do not shy away from that view. Victims are absolutely right to be angry about delay, and they are right to say that the current position is into…”

“If the Government truly believe clause 3 is fair, proportionate and necessary, why would they resist a review clause of this kind? New clause 29 has no impact on what the Government are proposing. It simply says that if you alter one of the most important protections in the criminal justice system and you know there ar…”

“Does my hon. Friend agree that Government Members and the Minister have spent a lot of time talking about victims being central to all of the changes, so why on earth would they not support the amendment if it is really about protecting victims from being cross-examined?”

“I agree with my hon. Friend, as I normally do. Finally, there is the obvious practical point that there are better answers available. The Law Society says that reform and investment must be strategic, not piecemeal, and warns against stand-alone measures such as changing from jury trials to judge-only trials without co…”

“but”

“The Victims’ Commissioner’s written evidence is useful because it makes clear that concerns about disproportionality are not confined to ethnicity. She says the potential impact of these reforms on women, particularly women from black and minoritised backgrounds, must be properly considered. She also notes that juries …”

““In 2021, 20% of female defendants elected compared to 14% of male defendants.””

““Racial disproportionality is evident through the criminal justice system”,”

“The second limb of new clause 29 also raises an important point. Sometimes when equality concerns are raised in criminal justice debates, people hear only the ethnicity point, but this new clause is more thoughtful than that and broader in its recognition that mistrust, disadvantage and distance from the system can als…”

“That is a striking omission and is enough to justify a review clause. If the Government say they cannot currently draw firm conclusions about how judge-only trials may affect different groups, we are entitled to insist that those conclusions be developed and published once the policy is in operation. It would be consti…”

“and the one part of the criminal justice system where minorities were treated without racial bias. He is also repeatedly quoted as having said:”

“Parliament ought to know whether a move away from jury trial bears differently on those who are poorer, more marginal, or less represented by the institutions that judge them. In other words, new clause 29 is right to say that the review should not be confined to ethnicity alone but should examine whether the move to s…”

“JUSTICE says that the Bill will not have an impact on the backlog until 2028-29, and that prison demand is not predicted to decline until 2034-35. The Institute for Government says that the gains are uncertain and may backfire. The Bar Council, the Law Society and others say that alternative productivity measures could…”

“For all those reasons, I oppose clause 3 standing part of the Bill. It rests on an arbitrary and unstable three-year threshold and asks courts to make constitutionally significant decisions at exactly the stage when the evidence is often incomplete, but then tries to patch over that unreliability through reallocation, …”

“When new clause 29 asks that the review focus on ethnic minority defendants and white British people in lower-income households, it is not introducing some alien or partisan concern. It is following the logic of the Secretary of State’s own work. If juries matter because they diffuse prejudice, open up decision making …”

“It is helpful to have a debate on new clause 29 for a very simple reason: if the Government insist on pressing ahead with clause 3, with all the constitutional, practical and equality concerns that surround it, the very least that Parliament should require is a proper, time-limited, evidence-based review of who has bee…”

““You don’t fix the backlog with trials that are widely perceived as unfair.””