Category Archives: Shabana Mahmood

Shabana Mahmood plans bill to overrule Sentencing Council in ‘two-tier justice’ row

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Ministry of Justice drafts instruction for judges in England and Wales to ignore guidelines on age, sex and ethnicity

Ministers are planning to introduce a last-minute rule change this week to overturn sentencing guidelines that could have led to criminals getting different sentences depending on their age, sex and ethnicity.

Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, is planning to bring a bill to the Commons this week to overrule the guidelines, which are due to come into force in England and Wales on Tuesday.

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Starmer facing Reform UK byelection challenge as Mike Amesbury quits as MP after assault conviction – UK politics live

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Contest in Runcorn and Helsby will be a challenge for Labour

Around 80 Labour MPs could refuse to back government plans to cut billions from the welfare budget, Amy Gibbons and Tony Diver claim in a story for the Daily Telegraph. They report:

The Telegraph understands that around 80 Labour MPs – roughly a fifth of the parliamentary party – “won’t tolerate” billions of pounds of welfare cuts set to be announced by the Chancellor later this month.

The anger is said to have spread beyond the “usual suspects”, with MPs who would not typically criticise Sir Keir threatening to “give the government a slap” over the proposals.

Our Labour values are built on a simple but powerful idea: that every individual, regardless of background or circumstance, should have the support they need to make the most of their lives. Everyone who is capable of working deserves the security, dignity and agency that employment offers. Of course, there are some people who are not able to work and they must be treated with compassion and respect. But for those that can, we must restore the pathways to opportunity which are currently so sparse for millions of people. It is exactly what a Labour government exists to do …

As MPs, we understand that delivering this new social contract requires hard choices to be made. We welcome the work that has begun to rebuild our welfare system, and we are fully supportive of it. We believe reforming our broken system is not only necessary, but also a truly progressive endeavour. And so we have established the Get Britain Working Group to make that argument, insistently.

The radical package of reforms will see:

-£5bn in savings by making it harder to qualify for Personal Independence Payments - a benefit not linked to work that is meant to help people with the additional costs of their disability

This government is determined that instead of facing a life on benefits … we stretch every sinew and pull every lever to ensure that we can get those people into work, because that is the best way for them to have a successful and happy life into the future.

So I think it’s quite right to look at a benefit system which is clearly broken.

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Starmer highlights UK’s war record in implicit rebuke to Vance as Lib Dems mock Badenoch for defending him – as it happened

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Interventions follow US vice president’s comments about ‘20,000 troops from some random country that has not fought a war in 40 years’. This live blog is closed

In response to a question about intelligence cooperation with the US, Sir David Manning, a former ambassador to Washington, said he thought this would become “more difficult” because there was a problem of trust. He explained:

If you have some of Trump’s appointees in these key jobs who have very strange track records, and have said very strange things about Nato allies, the Nato alliance and so on, and you have people in the administration who seem to be, let’s say, looking for ways of appeasing Russia, then you have a problem on the intelligence front, because these are not the values that we have.

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Starmer ‘not telling truth’ over Gaza family asylum decision, claims Badenoch, after PMQs clash – as it happened

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Opposition leader says PM was wrong when he said that the decision was taken under the last government

After PMQs there will be an urgent question in the Commons, tabled by the Lib Dem MP Christine Jardine, on “the potential security implications of the involvement of Chinese companies including Mingyang in energy infrastructure projects”. After that Dan Jarvis, the security minister, will make a statement to mark the publication of the report into Prevent’s dealings with Ali Harbi Ali, the man who killed the Conservative MP David Amess.

Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan police commissioner, has blamed Home Office foot-dragging for a failure to change the rules to allow forces to sack officers who fail vetting procedures, Matthew Weaver reports.

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Ministers speaking out against assisted dying ‘are giving false impression’, says peer

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Labour’s Charlie Falconer says vocal opponents are leading voters to think government is against change

Senior ministers who have spoken out against assisted dying are giving voters a “false impression” about the government’s position, a leading proponent of changing the law has said.

Charlie Falconer, a Labour peer and former justice secretary, said opponents to the change were “getting more coverage” because ministers in favour of legalising assisted dying were “playing by the rules”.

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UK justice secretary attacks assisted dying bill as ‘state death service’

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Shabana Mahmood has written to her constituents saying she is ‘profoundly concerned’ about Friday’s Commons vote

MPs will be placing the country on a “slippery slope towards death on demand” if they back legislation on assisted dying in England and Wales this week, the lord chancellor and justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has said in a letter to constituents before a historic Commons vote on Friday.

Mahmood has received numerous letters about the bill from people in her Birmingham Ladywood seat, which has a big Muslim population, and sent out replies saying that she was “profoundly concerned” about the legislation, not only for religious reasons but also because of what it would mean for the role of the state if one of its functions became helping people to die.

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No 10 says Starmer ‘shares public anger’ at early prisoner releases but system facing paralysis without it – as it happened

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Downing Street says government ‘shocked’ at inheriting prisons crisis as hundreds of prisoners get early release. This live blog is closed

The funeral of Alex Salmond, the former Scottish first minister who died suddenly earlier this month after delivering a speech in North Macedonia, will be held on Tuesday 29 October, his family has announced.

The funeral will be at Strichen parish church in Aberdeenshire. It will be conducted by Rev Ian McEwan, a friend of the family, and only family and close friends are invited. Salmond will be laid to rest in Strichen cemetery.

According to the Eurostat data, England and Wales had 144 prisoners per 100,000 head of population, the 8th highest rate among EU countries and the highest amongst western European jurisdictions. Scotland had the 9th highest with 137 prisoners per 100,000. Northern Ireland had 76 prisoners per 100,000 of population and was ranked 24th.

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Use of ‘culture wars’ phrase ‘a dog whistle to attack the right’ Badenoch tells GB News Tory leadership special – as it happened

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Contender says ‘it is about being brave and not being scared that the Guardian is going to mock us’

Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, has told MPs that magistrates are getting powers to sentence offenders for longer – to reduce the number of prisoners being held on remand and to cut the backlog in crown courts

In a statement to MPs, she said that, although this would increase the prison population slightly, by reducing the number of offenders being held on remand it would free up spaces in reception prisons where overcrowding is particularly serious.

Unless we address our remand population, we could still see a collapse of the system, not because of a lack of cells, but because we do not have those cells in the places that we need them. It is therefore crucial that we bear down on the remand population.

This government inherited a record crown court backlog. Waits for trials have grown so long that some cases are not heard for years.

The impact on victims of crime is profound. For some justice delayed is, as the old saying goes, justice denied as victims choose to withdraw from the justice process altogether rather than face the pain of a protracted legal battle.

I have made it my personal mission to constrain the Kremlin, closing the net around Putin and his mafia state using every tool at my disposal.

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Police ‘left to deal with fallout’ of poorly planned early release of 1,700 prisoners

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Police association chief says criminals potentially being freed in England and Wales without proper rehabilitation plans

Police are at “the centre of a storm” caused by poor planning after 1,700 prisoners were released early across England and Wales to ease overcrowding, a senior officer has said.

Amid concerns that hundreds of inmates could end up homeless or return to crime, the president of the Police Superintendents’ Association, Nick Smart, said some inmates were being set free without a programme and that the police would be left to deal with the consequences.

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Ministers prepare extra 500 prison places to remand suspected rioters

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Former young offender institution repurposed and abandoned cells made safe, while early release scheme continues

Ministers are preparing an additional 500 prison places to cope with an influx of people expected to be held on remand over the next month, the Ministry of Justice said on Monday.

From next week, cells will be used at the newly repurposed HMP Cookham Wood, a former young offender institution in the village of Borstal in Kent, that was closed in March after it was called “inhumane” by a prison watchdog.

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Yvette Cooper says ‘disgraceful scenes’ of election candidate abuse must end

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Ministers will meet to address what home secretary calls an alarming rise in intimidation of politicians

An alarming rise in candidate intimidation during the UK’s general election campaign will be addressed next week at a meeting of ministers and civil servants, the home secretary has said.

Yvette Cooper said there had been “disgraceful scenes” in some areas in the run-up to the 4 July vote, as she announced she would chair a meeting of the defending democracy taskforce.

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Fears UK prisons face ‘collapse’ as they could be full before early release scheme begins

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With Labour plan not coming into effect until September, ex-prison governor says emergency measures can only ‘keep a lid on things’

Prisons could still hit full capacity within weeks despite new emergency measures announced by Labour to release some prisoners early.

An unprecedented move to cut the time served in custody for most sentences to 40% will not come into effect until September, and officials fear that capacity will be overwhelmed by the end of August. The justice secretary has described the situation as a “ticking timebomb”.

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Sunak and ministers are ‘guilty men’ in prisons crisis, says justice secretary

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Shabana Mahmood says Tories left country threatened with total breakdown of law and order

Rishi Sunak and his former ministers are “the guilty men” who should be held responsible for “the most disgraceful dereliction of duty” by failing to address the prisons crisis, the justice secretary has said.

Speaking as she set out plans to release thousands of inmates early to ease pressure in overcrowded jails, Shabana Mahmood said the Conservatives “had left the country threatened with a total breakdown of law and order”.

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Starmer ‘shocked’ about prisons crisis as early release scheme prepared

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Government to announce terms which could free more than 20,000 inmates in coming months to manage capacity

The “shocking” prisons crisis is even worse than feared, Keir Starmer has said as the government prepares to release tens of thousands of inmates early in a bid to prevent jails becoming full.

The prime minister suggested he was opposed to freeing violent criminals and sex offenders when ministers announce the terms of a new prisoner release scheme for England and Wales on Friday.

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