Westminster update: Badenoch wins Conservative leadership race

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What you need to know

1. Badenoch wins Conservative leadership race

On Saturday 3 November, the Conservative leadership race reached its conclusion.

Kemi Badenoch beat rival Robert Jenrick to become the party’s new leader.

Badenoch is the first black woman to lead a major political party in the UK and the fourth female leader of the Conservative Party.

Badenoch went on to appoint her new shadow cabinet in the last week, bringing in:

• Mel Stride as her shadow chancellor
• Priti Patel as her shadow foreign secretary
• Chris Philp as her shadow home secretary

Leadership race rival and solicitor Robert Jenrick was given the portfolio of shadow justice secretary, while Lord Wolfson has been named shadow attorney general.

Other appointments included:

• Laura Trott as shadow education secretary
• Ed Argar as shadow health secretary
• Andrew Griffith as shadow business secretary
• James Cartlidge as shadow defence secretary
• Kevin Hollinrake as shadow housing and communities secretary
• Victoria Atkins as shadow environment secretary

Kieran Mullan has been appointed as a junior shadow justice minister, while solicitor Helen Grant will be Lord Wolfson’s deputy as shadow solicitor general.

The shadow cabinet now contains a mix of Badenoch allies and supporters of other leadership candidates, with an equal mix of experience.

They now face the challenge of establishing themselves as an effective opposition to the Labour government in parliament.

2. Justice questions: traction on legal aid?

Justice questions on 5 November saw ministers:

• set out a small amount of progress on criminal legal aid
• praise the role of legal aid in the justice system
• criticise the previous government for leaving the system in “disarray”

Responding to questions from the chair of the Justice Select Committee Andy Slaughter and Labour MP Warinder Juss – justice minister Heidi Alexander said the government would shortly be publishing its response to the “crime lower” consultation on duty solicitor fees and would be following this up with a response to our successful judicial review on criminal legal aid fees.

We are continuing to work with ministers to push for a response to the judicial review and for criminal legal aid to be given the investment it needs.

Robert Jenrick, the newly appointed shadow lord chancellor, used his questions to ask how many domestic abusers and sex offenders had gone on to reoffend following the prisoner early release scheme.

Justice minister Alex Davies-Jones criticised Jenrick for a “short memory” and noted there had been no exceptions for public protection under the last government’s release scheme, while Labour had not allowed the release of serious sexual and domestic abuse offenders.

Finally, MPs raised the significant backlog in the Crown Court and asked what ministers are doing to address this.

Alexander said the government had increased sitting days by 500 and noted capital spending, which would help address court repair issues, had been increased at the budget.

3. Mental Health Bill published

The long anticipated Mental Health Bill finally had its first reading in the House of Lords on Wednesday 6 November.

The bill contains a number of amendments to the Mental Health Act 1983 which look to strengthen the voice of patients subject to the act.

The bill’s explanatory notes state that the bill will add statutory weight to patients’ rights to be involved in planning for their care and choices regarding the treatment they receive.

The reforms will increase the scrutiny of detention to ensure it is only used when and as long, as necessary.

The bill also seeks to limit the use of the act to detain people with a learning disability and autistic people.

We welcome the bill’s publication, having lobbied for it for several years and will scrutinise the bill to advise if and where, improvements can be made.

We worked closely with the draft Mental Health Bill Committee last year to discuss the importance of self-advocacy and informed choices and we hope the committee’s report has been taken into consideration in this new bill.

Coming up

We are working closely with MPs and peers to influence a number of bills before parliament: