I rise to support the Leader of the House’s motion, and it is a pleasure to follow the powerful argument made by Jess Phillips.

I speak as a former Law Officer of the Crown—Attorney General under two Prime Ministers and Solicitor General before that—but perhaps more relevantly, as a practising barrister in the criminal law field for 17 years before I was elected to this honourable House. I very much accept the need to protect the people working here—of course, I do—and that includes other Members, staff of the House, staff of Members, visitors and everyone else. I personally prosecuted cases, and I think I am the only speaker on either side today who has actually prosecuted sexual offences and defended them in court over a 17-year period before 2010.

I care about these issues from a professional standpoint, and I want to speak about that aspect, but also about the constitutional aspect. I agree very much with my right hon. Friend Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg. After all, Charles Bradlaugh, to whom he referred, was the Northampton MP in the 1880s. He was repeatedly excluded from this House for refusing to swear the oath—at the time, one could not affirm—and that is a constitutional point about how the House maintained its right to reject someone who had been voted in to serve in this House.

There is a key principle here—a golden thread—that runs through our system, which is that a person must not suffer imposition before guilt has been proven. It is offensive to the laws of national justice and, in fact, contrary to human rights to do so. There is a principle, and this principle is ancient. In fact, it dates back to the ancient Romans. Later than ancient Rome, the 6th-century “Digest” of Justinian cited the general rule of evidence, which I was taught 30 years ago in my law degree, which is that a person is innocent until proven guilty. Everything we do in this House must be based and predicated on the principle that proof lies on him who asserts, not on him who denies. That is the legal principle, which in Latin is “Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat”, and when it was mentioned in the 500s AD—over 1,500 years ago—it referred back to Roman times.

That is how ancient this principle is—it was introduced to Roman criminal law by the Emperor Antoninus Pius—and it has become part of the constitution of this country. What we do in this House is predicated on our constitutional principles, as my right hon. Friend Sir Chris Bryant, as a historian of this House, will also know. However, it is not just that it is ancient; it is important that even the Hebrew Talmud has said that a person is innocent until proven guilty, and I have read that the presumption of innocence is fundamental to Islamic law. The principle that the onus of proof is on the accuser or claimant is strongly held, based on a hadith documented by Imam Nawawi in the 13th century. Everything we do here should look to that, as in Blackstone’s “Commentaries on the Laws of England” of the 1760s, which are still taught today, when it states:

“It is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer.”

Having spent 17 years at the Bar practising criminal law—prosecuting and defending—before being elected to this place, I strongly agree with that sentiment.