MPs debate Chilcot report

Peers are debating adding several groups to the list of banned organisations in the UK.

Under the motion the new groups added to the list of proscribed organisations in the UK will include:

• Global Islamic Media Front
• Ansar-al Islam, who are linked to al-Qaeda
• East Indonesia Mujahedeen 
• East Turkestan Islamic Party
• Jamaah Anshorut Daulah

It is a criminal offence to belong to or invite support for a proscribed organisation; to arrange a meeting to support a proscribed organisation; or to wear clothing or carry articles in public which arouse reasonable suspicion that an individual is a member or supporter of the proscribed organisation.

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In what looks set to be his final speech as a minister Lord Faulks says new Lord Chancellor Liz Truss will "have a huge mountain to climb" when she begins her role.

She will have "assistance from an extremely dedicated staff" to create the "sort of court service we ought to have in this country", Justice Minister Lord Faulks says.

Lord Faulks tells peers the changes to the UK's court structure is to "make justice more accessible".

Court closures will go alongside efforts to "remove some unnecessary hearings and ensure there is digital access where possible".

Today's session has finished and the Commons will return on Monday for questions to the new Communities and Local Government Secretary, Sajid Javid, and his ministerial team.

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Shadow justice minister Lord Beecham accuses the government of "undermining" access to justice.

Pressure on the justice system "engendered by government policy" has reached the highest level, leading to a "growing backlog and ever longer delays" in the Court of Appeal.

At the same time there has be a "curtailment of legal aid and ever rising cost on those who seek justice", Lord Beecham argues.

"It is reasonable to seek to cost the use of the system and make use of modern technology but not at expense of access to justice."

Home Office Minister Mike Penning tells MPs that "police officers are not mental health experts" and their powers under the Mental Health Act should be used as "a last resort".

Conservative MP Sir Paul Beresford is opening his adjournment debate on Section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983, which permits police to take an individual in a public place into custody if they appear "to be suffering from mental disorder".

The current law states that an individual cannot be detained for more than 72 hours without further evaluation.

In 2014 Sir Paul Beresford introduced a Ten Minute Rule Bill to amend section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983, arguing that the law should be amended so police can intervene in private as well as public places.

Liberal Democrat peer Lord Thomas of Gresford confirms that Justice Minister Lord Faulks will be stepping down.

"May I express my regret that my noble friend Lord Faulks has decided not to continue in post," he says.

"I can understand why he has taken that position."

Earlier, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood was praising the minister during his speech, when Lord Faulks appeared to signal that he was standing down, as this clip shows.

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Defence Secretary Michael Fallon responds to the debate for the government, saying ministers need to ask whether they have made "significant changes" since the Iraq War.

"We should take a long, hard look at our decision-making processes," he expands, highlighting the work of the National Security Council and the Ministry of Defence, which he argues has been "transformed in recent years our approach to risk". 

He is approached by the SNP's Pete Wishart about how those involved can be held to account.

Mr Fallon answers: "The report holds them to account, it is for them to respond to those judgements." 

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In May, the influential Commons Public Account Committee published a report which found the "criminal justice system is close to breaking point". 

"The system is already overstretched and we consider that the Ministry of Justice has exhausted the scope to make more cuts without further detriment to performance," the committee found.

The committee was concerned that users of the system won’t "see the full benefit [of reforms] for another four years" - and noted that the government “does not have a good track record of delivering projects that involve significant changes to IT”.

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Shadow defence secretary Clive Lewis begins the wind-up speeches by paying tribute to Sir John Chilcot, whose report he says "unflinchingly shone a light" on the events leading up to the Iraq War. 

He says he is not a pacifist, and "we must not be told we are soft on terrorism" if we question plans to intervene in another country. 

"We must demand the highest standard of proof for taking our country to war," he urges. 

Former soldier and Conservative Johnny Mercer earlier spoke out against the idea that the men and women "died for nothing". 

He said soldiers who are lucky enough to return from combat refuse to remember their colleagues' contribution as futile. 

"For they did make differences, they saved comrades' lives through their bravery, they shielded civilians from brutal enemy intent on showing the very worst of humanity," he told the Commons. 

The Public and Commercial Services union, which represents many court workers, have criticised proposals to close courts, saying it would restrict access to justice. 

It has promised to challenge the Ministry of Justice's method for calculating underuse of courtrooms.

General Secretary Mark Serwotka said: "With courts closures and cuts to legal aid, access to justice has been significantly restricted by the previous government and now this one.

"We do not believe it is in the interests of justice to leave our communities without easy access to courthouses and tribunals."

Lucy Hastings, of the independent charity Victim Support, said the government needed to make the court process more efficient.

She said the Crown Court system was taking longer than at any point in the past 15 years to process cases, and the backlog of outstanding cases now stood at over 54,000.

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Peers now move to today's final debate, on resourcing and staffing courts in supporting the rule of law led by the former Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf.

In 2015, the then justice secretary Michael Gove announced plans to reform the courts and tribunals in England and Wales, and sell a number of underused courts and refurbish others. 

Ministers said 48% of court buildings were empty at least half of the time last year, but the Law Society warns closures could limit access to justice.  

These reforms were expected to deliver savings of approximately £200m a year from 2019/20 and deliver a “more efficient configuration of the estate”. 

The government has published a schedule for the closures, with six phases planned between now and September 2017.  

Former chancellor, George Osborne, announced that the government was increasing total investment to more than £700m “to modernise and fully digitise the courts”. 

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Home Office Minister Lord Keen of Elie says "while it may sound simple" to provide assurances to maintain EU nationals rights in the UK "as soon as you scratch the surface it's extremely complicated" - especially as the UK's relationship with EU countries changes.

The government will "never use EU citizens as bargaining chips" he tells peers, and seeks to provide "reassurance to all those [EU nationals] in the UK". 

It is "completely appropriate we protect the rights of EU citizens in the UK so they can continue to practice, live, work and study in the UK", he adds.

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The SDLP's Mark Durkan weighs in with heavy criticism of Tony Blair's government, saying: "Never again should dispatch box certitude be mistaken for certainty."

He believes "the evidence was bent and melted and confected" and, while the Chilcot report found Mr Blair had not lied, "nobody can say it was not the case there was duplicity". 

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Lib Dem MP Alistair Carmichael says he is grateful to Sir John Chilcot for the thoroughness of the work done.

The report fills in the background details, he says, but he places on the page "a lot of the dots" and it's for Parliament to join them up. He says in particular, we can draw conclusions from the evidence on the legality of the war, which Sir John did not proffer an opinion on.

The removal of the Baath party stands out to a strategic error, he says. For many ordinary Iraqis, removing the infrastructure of government in the way it was done left a void which remains to this day.

Of the MPs who were in the House at the time, 172 remain. Of that number, 141 voted in favour and 21 against. He calls the atmosphere at that time "brutal" and it was that that forced many to vote "against their better judgement".