Speeches by Mahmood.

“Just once more—it is hard to say no to the hon. Gentleman!”

“The hon. Member makes an important point about communication with victims, and I will come a little later to the measures in that area that will enhance the system and provide a good foundation for us to build on, so that victims have the information that they need to get through criminal justice system processes, and …”

“The hon. Member makes a powerful point, and I will say later why the Government and I reject the idea that antisocial behaviour is low level and therefore outside the purview of the Victims’ Commissioner; that is why we are extending the commissioner’s powers. I welcome the support that the measure has received from th…”

“My hon. Friend raises an important point, and I am sorry about the case of her constituent. She will know that her request is one of the leading recommendations of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, and the Department of Health and Social Care has committed to taking it forward. I know that we will see mo…”

“If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I will make more progress. I think I have been more than generous. That brings me to the Bill before us today. While the updated Sentencing Council guidelines are currently paused, if we do not act they will come into force— [Interruption.] Well, there was a lot to say, gentlemen, abou…”

“First, I share the hon. Member’s outrage over the crimes that were committed in his community, and the fact that two of those individuals have been able to leave the country, and therefore evade the full force of the law and serving their sentence here. He will know that the decision to remand an individual in custody …”

“Equality before the law is a cornerstone of our justice system, and my position on this is clear. Later today, this House will debate legislation to overturn guidelines that the last Conservative Government welcomed, and I am not stopping there. I am reviewing current policy, and this guidance is being redrafted as we …”

“It is not appropriate in these difficult cases to misrepresent what the correct position is. The Home Secretary has already set out our position in this House and answered questions on our approach to the grooming gangs issue and the local inquiries. On court transcripts, we are piloting artificial intelligence technol…”

“The hon. Member is right: this is one of the many difficult inheritances left for us by the previous Conservative Government. The contract with Serco was agreed by the previous Conservative Administration. We acknowledge that the performance of Serco has been unacceptable. We have already been closely monitoring—day by…”

“We were transparent with the House about the problems with tagging during the second tranche of emergency releases last year. I will ensure that we publish the correct information, and I can write to the hon. Lady with the exact figures, but we have been holding Serco to account, because its performance on its contract…”

“The last Government left our prisons in crisis. We came within days of running out of space entirely, and the emergency release programme was designed to stop that crisis happening. Numbers are rising again, which is why this Government are committed to building 14,000 prison places by 2031, compared with the 500 that …”

“The solutions we pursue have to be shown to work. In the end, we need solutions that will work, because these people are often locked up for considerable periods of time, and when they come back out they still offend again. For some of those individuals, the problems will relate partly to addiction issues. It is import…”

“As I said, we have already removed the effective immunity from prosecution for thefts relating to values under £200, reversing the previous Conservative Government’s policy in this area. We will legislate to ensure that assault on a retail worker is a new offence in the Crime and Policing Bill, so we are already taking…”

“I hope the hon. Gentleman will welcome efforts on the Labour Back Benches relating to tool trade; my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin) has introduced a private Member’s Bill. As I say, I will not pre-empt the findings of the sentencing review, but it is precisely because we take such offending…”

“First, in the Crime and Policing Bill this Government have removed the effective immunity from prosecution for thefts relating to values under £200, so we are already taking clear, definitive action to deal with the problems that the hon. Gentleman sees in his constituency. I will not pre-empt the findings of the sente…”

“This Government inherited a situation where around 10% of offenders account for over half of all convictions. We also inherited rising levels of theft and shoplifting. In February, I announced reforms to the probation service that will focus more of its time on offenders who pose a higher risk of reoffending, and I hav…”

“What a load of nonsense. I am the Lord Chancellor who is rectifying the situation with the proper distinction between matters of policy and matters of independent judicial decision through the Bill that we will debate on Second Reading later today. I have already dealt with the issues in relation to the immigration gui…”

“I will chase that up this afternoon and ensure that the hon. Member gets a response as quickly as possible. She will know that release on temporary licence is a mechanism that has governor supervision. If people follow the rules in prison, they become eligible for release on temporary licence. If they do not follow the…”

“The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. In fact, we fully support section 30 of the Sentencing Act 2020—the sentencing code—which makes it clear that a court must obtain a pre-sentence report unless it considers it unnecessary to do so. That would be in cases where judges consider that they already have at their …”

“Sentencing remarks are already available for some of those cases. We have a robust judicial system that can handle difficult cases. I have already dealt with concerns about transcripts. The cost of full court transcripts is very prohibitive, which is why we are looking at technological solutions—AI in particular. We ha…”