Dr Kieran Mullan

It is a pleasure to speak on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition on Third Reading, following on directly from the Committee of the whole House, where Government Members rejected our amendments to strengthen the Bill. We now know the strength of the appetite on the Labour Benches to tackle this challenge properly and comprehensively here and now: there is not one. In truth, we knew that already. The Government had an opportunity weeks ago to restore democratic accountability to the Sentencing Council through the private Member’s Bill of the shadow Secretary of State for Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick). They rejected that opportunity, and earlier today they rejected even the more modest strengthening we proposed. That should not be a surprise. Labour has a Prime Minister who is first and foremost a lawyer, not a leader. He is a lawyer steeped in the philosophy of securing political change through legal activism. That is the very approach that the Lord Chancellor has been forced to bring in emergency legislation to curtail. That approach is why the appetite for proper action is so limited. The legislation before the House is a fig leaf to hide the truth that a Labour party led by Keir Starmer will always have to be dragged kicking and screaming to tackle the judicial activism that he has long championed—[Interruption.]