Kieran Mullan, the Shadow Minister for Justice, was told he was “not helping anyone” amid a lively discussion during BBC’s Question Time, which was this week held in Dulwich, south London
The Question Time audience last night applauded as a panelist told a Tory MP he was “not helping anyone” with dangerous rhetoric amid a heated debate.
Hashi Mohamed, a barrister and author, took exception with Dr Kieran Mullan, the Shadow Minister for Justice’s criticism of a major sentencing review, which has called for a series of politically difficult decisions in the biggest shake-up of sentencing in more than 30 years. Dr Mullan, MP for Bexhill and Battle in East Sussex, argued it is wrong to let criminals out of jail early, proposals which are set aside in the review.
But the Conservative politician used rather extreme cases – of rapists, killers and paedophiles – in his argument on the BBC programme, which irked Mr Mohamed, a barrister and broadcaster. He said: “I just think using extreme examples and the rhetoric that you are using to try and inject those kind of extreme examples into what should be a rational debate does not help anyone.”
At this point, Dr Mullan shook his head but most of the audience in Dulwich, south London clapped warmly at Mr Mohamed’s put-down. He added: “The reality is David Gauke’s review is a serious review, it has some serious recommendations and not all of them will be accepted by this government. We should never allow some of the serious offenders who are in our prisons to walk our streets at all, but what this is about is that we currently have 87,000 people in our prison system, we have a broken criminal justice system that doesn’t work from the moment you’re arrested.”
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Mr Mohamed went on to say police forces are under-resourced, courts are overstretched and “falling apart” and the probation system “can’t cope” in a passionate rant about the state of affairs the criminal justice system faces at the moment.
“And I wonder who we should turn to to tell us about how that happened… It’s bonkers,” the panelist said as he looked at Dr Mullan, who has been the Shadow Minister for Justice since July last year. The audience applauded again as Mr Mullan struggled to muster a response to the criticism.
Dr Mullan, whose father worked as a police officer, called the review “offensive”. The document, which also stated paedophiles and rapists could face mandatory chemical castration, could spark the biggest shake-up in prisons in some 30 years.
Yet Dr Mullan said on Question Time: “Some of the most serious offenders – rapists, people who kill through manslaughter, child abusers, some of the worst… the review recommended should spend less than half of their time in prison. Labour have already said that they would accept that recommendation, so Labour are going to allow rapists, child abusers, people like that to get out of prison earlier and I think that is totally wrong.”