March 2026

Parliamentary appearance by Charlotte Nichols

Parliamentary appearance by Antonia Bance

I will give way to the hon. Member for Colchester first.

As well as the business pressures, a majority of households in Northern Ireland and many businesses use heating oil as their main heating source, so they are particularly exposed to shocks such as that which we are experiencing due to the wrong-headed conflict in the middle east, and they are not protected by the energy price cap. The Stormont Executive have failed to regulate in this area, or to make any meaningful progress towards a transition to sustainable and secure energy. What interventio

10. What recent assessment she has made of the potential merits of reducing VAT for the hospitality sector in Northern Ireland.

Parliamentary appearance by Irene Campbell

The right to a fair trial is fundamental to our democracy. For certain offences, a fair trial will always be a trial by jury. However, it has been long been the case that the right to a trial by jury is contingent on the offence. The Interpretation Act 1978 set out the three-tier classification of criminal offences, and created a category for less serious offences that would be tried only by a magistrates court—without a jury. The question of which crimes fall into that category has been revisit

I will give way to the hon. Member for Colchester (Pam Cox) first, if she can give me just two seconds. I want to develop this theme, because it is very important to me. There are some things that have to be above politics. If there are not, we have no society to defend. Jury trial is one of those institutions that have been defended by those across the aisle from me, on the opposite extreme of the political spectrum, and by those on our side of the House, out to the furthest waters of the right

Not now—later. I will. I want to appeal to Labour Members. We are engaged in ideological strife. But in the Venn diagram that any society depends upon for the sustaining of sufficient points of common ground to keep a society together, jury trial is one of those that appear in a point of intersection between the vast numbers of this House and outside it.

Not just now, but I will come back to the hon. Member. We in this House are engaged in ideological strife. Every day of our lives we are engaged in a political battle, and frankly, sometimes we do not always live up to the highest standards that even our own parties have set. In the course of my legal career, I have been led—when I say “led”, I mean that I was a junior in the courts—by some distinguished Labour Members of Parliament who continued to practise in the criminal courts and regarded i

Parliamentary appearance by Navendu Mishra

Parliamentary appearance by Daniel Zeichner

Parliamentary appearance by Sir Geoffrey Cox

Parliamentary appearance by Natalie Fleet

The Government’s spending plans look very, very iffy. The Minister has a chance of fitting in with the Chancellor’s fiscal rules—if there is no further downgrade on economic growth, which seems unlikely; if the Government have the backbone to rein in public spending and to increase taxes in the last years of the Parliament, which seems very unlikely; if the Government do not have to step in with any significant energy support because no money has been set aside; and if the Government can get £4.

I should declare an interest at the beginning. I am a member of the Bar—that is not uncommonly known—I still practise at the Bar, and I have the honour to be a criminal barrister and a member of the Criminal Bar Association. I have spent 44 years at the Bar. I have defended and prosecuted in some of the largest criminal trials that this country has ever seen—and some of the longest. I have been experienced in seeing how juries react to circumstances of adversity and circumstances that challenge

The other logical absurdity is that, under the Government’s proposed reforms, somebody with a previous conviction may well go above the three-year threshold, so those who have a string of previous convictions will get a right to jury trial, but a person of good character will not.

Parliamentary appearance by Afzal Khan

Parliamentary appearance by Claire Hanna

Parliamentary appearance by Julia Lopez