Victims and Prisoners Bill
Monday 15th May 2023
(2 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberVictims and Prisoners Act 2024 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Alex Chalk)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Some years ago, shortly before I entered Parliament, I was stood in the Crown court at Birmingham, having been instructed by the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute five men accused of rape. It was alleged that they had groomed two young girls from Telford aged 15 and 16 and abducted them to Birmingham, where they subjected them to a weekend of degrading and humiliating sexual attacks, offering them up to their friends to do with as they pleased. What made the case even more chilling was that it was clear that the victims had been targeted because of their troubled backgrounds and sometimes challenging behaviour when interacting with authority figures such as the police. The defendants had made a cynical calculation that, if the girls ever did complain, they were unlikely to be believed. Well, they were believed. The jury got the measure of what had really gone on. After a fair trial, presided over by an independent judge, the defendants were all convicted of rape, robust sentences were passed and justice was done.
I mention that at the beginning of this Second Reading debate because it provided me, and I hope now the House, with a powerful example of how supporting victims can make a decisive impact on outcomes. In that case, it was only because all the moving parts of the system came together to support those vulnerable girls to give their best evidence that a just outcome was delivered: conscientious police officers liaised sensitively with the young women to help them record their accounts; compassionate CPS lawyers and caseworkers applied for special measures to assist the victims to give evidence in court; and victim support staff worked hard during the tense days of the trial to assist victims with information and updates.
Here is the central point: all those agencies recognised that, in order to deliver justice, victims must be treated not as mere spectators of the criminal justice system, but as core participants in it. That is the mission of this Government and of this Bill. It will boost victims’ entitlements; make victims’ voices heard, including following a major incident like the tragedy of Grenfell or Hillsborough; and deliver further safeguards to protect the public.
As the House will know, my predecessor met brave victims such as: little Tony Hudgell, who was so badly abused by his birth parents that he almost died; Denise Fergus and Ralph Bulger, whose two-year-old son James’s murder shocked the nation; and Farah Naz, the aunt of Zara Aleena, who was tragically sexually assaulted and murdered last year. I want to pay tribute to them. Through their personal grief they have, none the less, found the strength to strengthen the system for others. We owe them a profound debt of gratitude. Their pain and their anguish spurs us on to strengthen public protection and to make sure every victim of crime is properly supported.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State for introducing the Bill. As an MP, I have heard so many complaints from victims that no one is listening to them. Can he assure me that victims really will come first in the Bill?
Alex Chalk
I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend. That is exactly the point. If victims are to be not spectators but participants, from the moment of complaint they must be listened to by the officer on the case, the CPS prosecutor and the prosecutor at court. Being listened to is a critical part of victims’ confidence in the criminal justice system.
Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)
On that point, will the Secretary of State give way?
Alex Chalk
Can I just make a bit of progress?
Before I return to the key elements I mentioned a few moments ago, I want to set out a little context. Hugely important work has taken place over recent years—this may perhaps answer some of the hon. Lady’s questions—to ensure that many of the standards achieved for those victims in Birmingham are now demanded as a matter of course. What it means in simple terms is this: no longer is it considered perfectly normal for a victim of a violent robbery to report their statement to the police, only to hear nothing until a curt instruction out of the blue to attend trial in a week’s time. The 2020 victims code requires that they be kept updated. Gone are the days when it was thought completely reasonable for a victim to arrive at court, give evidence and then have to rely on the media to find out whether the defendant had been convicted. The 2020 code requires that they are told the outcome of the case and given an explanation of the sentence if the defendant is convicted.
Alex Chalk
I will come to the hon. Lady in one moment.
The revised victims code, published in 2020, contains many additional entitlements. For example, right 7 is a victim’s entitlement to make a personal statement to tell the court how the crime has affected them, so that it can be considered when sentencing the offender; right 8 is the entitlement to be offered appropriate help before the trial and, where possible, to meet the prosecutor before giving evidence; and right 9 is the entitlement to be given information about the outcome of the case and any appeals.
Stephanie Peacock
I am very grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. My constituent Johnny Wood feels he has been let down by every part of the justice system after his sister was killed by four men with 100 convictions between them who were driving an HGV lorry. The legislation does not address non-compliance with the victims code, so can the right hon. Gentleman tell Johnny and the House how it will make a meaningful change for victims?
Alex Chalk
I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that important case on behalf of her constituent. I will develop those points in due course, but let me make a core point first. We have gone from creating the important victims’ entitlements in the code to wanting to ensure that they have a profile, a prominence and an accountability, so that if things go wrong—and from time to time things will go wrong; that happens in any system—people can be truly held to account, and where agencies are failing that is made plain for all to see.
We have also strengthened the system of special measures, completing a national roll-out of pre-recorded examination and cross-examination for victims of rape and sexual offences. That spares them the ordeal of giving evidence in a live trial and having to stand in the same room as their alleged attacker. Really importantly, there has been the introduction of more independent sexual and domestic abuse advisers. These are specialists trained to support vulnerable victims through the justice process. From just the odd pilot scheme pre-2010, there are now over 700 working up and down the country to support victims, and we are rolling out 300 more. It is all part of an unprecedented investment in victim and witness support services, quadrupling 2010 levels.
That is the context. The difference between a decade ago and now is stark. Following those crucial advances, we are now taking steps to secure the entitlements and raise yet further the standards we expect the criminal justice system to deliver for victims. First, the Bill will enshrine the key principles of the victims code in law and provide a framework for the code in regulations, centred around the 12 key entitlements that victims can expect. That will ensure that the good practice I mentioned earlier, which has taken root in many courts and CPS offices around the country, becomes standard practice. The Bill will give these entitlements the profile, the prominence and the weight they deserve and ensure that they cannot be watered down by future Governments. It will place agencies within the criminal justice system, including chief constables, the CPS, British Transport police and others, under a new duty to make victims aware of the code so that every victim knows what they are entitled to.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
The right hon. and learned Gentleman talks about what was enshrined in the code, which he said happened in 2020. In 2021—I have just checked the date on my phone—I found out that somebody had been convicted of harassing and threatening me. I found out about it in The Guardian, so the code was certainly not enshrined in that particular courtroom in Birmingham, which I mention as he is leaning on Birmingham courtrooms. What right would I have in this Bill to any recourse and what would happen to the people who failed to inform me?
Alex Chalk
The hon. Lady should not have found out in a newspaper. She should have been kept updated and informed. If she would like to come to speak to me about that, I will find out what went wrong in that case. On her specific point, what I think is exciting and heartening about the Bill is that it contains a duty on the Secretary of State and police and crime commissioners not just to promote awareness of the code—important though that is—but to promote compliance. If there is not compliance, there is also a duty, effectively, to publish that, so that it is plain for everyone to see. The local PCC will be publishing that, which means that the hon. Lady can get some accountability. I reiterate that if she wants to come to speak to me, she must not hesitate to do so. In fact, knowing her, I know that she would not hesitate to speak.
Several hon. Members rose—
Alex Chalk
Let me make a little progress.
As I indicated, the Bill will make sure that everyone knows what they are entitled to and it sends a clear signal to the system about the service that victims should be receiving. Secondly, as I suggested, the Bill will ensure stronger oversight by placing a new duty on police and crime commissioners and criminal justice bodies to monitor compliance with the code, to provide the public and this Parliament with a clear picture of how victims across the country are being treated. Ministers will have the power to direct the inspection of justice agencies that are failing victims to help drive improvements using best practice from those agencies that are succeeding.
Thirdly, the Bill will place a duty on specific authorities to respond publicly to the recommendations of the Victims’ Commissioner and introduce a requirement for an annual report to be laid before Parliament. That will shine a spotlight on how the system is working and ensure that we have the transparency needed to drive change.
Fourthly, the Bill will provide better support for victims. It will help to ensure that critical support services are targeted where they are most needed by introducing a new joint statutory duty on police and crime commissioners, integrated care boards and local authorities to co-operate and work together when commissioning support services for victims of domestic and sexual abuse and other serious violent crimes.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. The family of Declan Curran, who tragically took his life, pre-trial, aged just 13, wanted me to stress in this debate the importance of child victims of sexual abuse and their inclusion in clause 2, the victims code, and how they should be able to access comprehensive psychological services without any delay. This must not be seen as interference in the evidence of the trial, with victims’ evidence being recorded at the time of the crime. Will that be fully included in the Bill without delay?
Alex Chalk
It is incredibly important that child victims receive the support that they need, and that should not be a bar to their giving a video-recorded piece of evidence, for example, so that they can participate in that trial as well. I am happy to meet the hon. Lady to discuss the particulars. The general principle is this: if child victims, who are victims within the ambit of the Bill, need that support, they should get it.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
Can the Lord Chancellor provide the House with slightly more detail on the commissioning functions? He has rightly touched on police and crime commissioners, ICBs, the duty of care and the duty of co-operation. In many walks of life, that co-operation completely fails and, basically, victims are on the receiving end of institutional state failure. It would give the House some confidence if he were able to explain how this will work.
Alex Chalk
I begin by thanking my right hon. Friend for her stalwart commitment to the rights of victims. I venture to suggest that no one in this House has done more to stand up for victims. She is absolutely right; there are plenty of organisations who have a duty in that regard—police and crime commissioners are one, but there are plenty of other providers. We want to ensure that the duty of co-operation means that there will not be duplication in some areas and deserts, as it were, in others. The aim is to ensure that across the piece, if someone needs to make sure that there is sufficient support for rape victims, for example, that that support is provided and there is no potential duplication between what the hospital might be doing and what the PCC might be doing. That is a statutory requirement to co-operate—not a “nice to have”, but a direct requirement. That is the difference.
I have already spoken about the importance of ISVAs and IDVAs. They do exceptional work, and we want to strengthen their role further by introducing national guidance to increase awareness of what they do and to promote consistency.
I can also tell the House that we will bring forward an amendment in Committee to block unnecessary and intrusive third party material requests in rape and sexual assault investigations. I know that routine police requests for therapy notes or other personal records can be incredibly distressing for victims, who can feel as though they are the ones under scrutiny. Some may even be deterred from seeking support for fear of their personal records being shared. Our Bill will make sure that those requests are made only when strictly necessary for the purposes of a fair trial.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
Many of us welcomed this Bill and hoped it would transform and revolutionise the response, but it fails in several areas. We have heard about the duty of co-operation and collaboration, but there is to be no new funding to allow that to happen and to allow duty holders to commission new services to make the collaboration effective. How would the Government overcome that, and will they consider doing that in future?
Alex Chalk
I welcome the hon. Lady’s overall enthusiasm for the Bill. On that specific point, one of the things I am proud of is that funding for victim services has quadrupled over the past 13 years or so. It is a very significant increase. The money that goes to PCCs, for example, has significantly increased—I think it is more than £60 million or so—but there is additional money that goes directly to charities, such as the Gloucestershire Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre in my own constituency, which is directly funded. That funding has increased.
By the way, I should also note that during covid, when people were genuinely worried that those victim support services might fall over and collapse, the funding went in to sustain them during those very dark times. There is more money, and that is precisely why we want the duty of collaboration to ensure that those taxpayer pounds go as far as they can.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for the measures he has brought through on third party disclosures. Could he, though, give a message to the survivors in my constituency and across the country who have been deterred from coming forward by that knowledge, and to those whose cases have collapsed because of their fear of that information getting into the public domain? What message does he have for them?
Alex Chalk
The hon. Lady does an important public service in raising that point and I thank her for doing so. Let the message go out from this Chamber: “Do not be put off coming forward, giving your evidence and reporting allegations of serious sexual harm because of concerns about therapy notes. Get the therapy support that you need.” I want that message to go out loud and clear.
We are going to change the law to make it crystal clear that there will be no routine access to therapy notes; there will be access only when it is absolutely necessary and proportionate, and not by the defence, but principally in the very rare circumstances where a prosecutor needs to look at it. The message goes out that victims should come forward and co-operate with the criminal justice system, if they can.
Part 2 of the Bill provides better support for victims and the bereaved after major disasters such as terror attacks. The House will recall the awful events at Hillsborough and the most recent fire at Grenfell Tower, as well as the Manchester Arena bombing. The impact of those terrible tragedies is still felt to this day, especially by the families and friends of the victims. I know there is consensus on both sides of the House that survivors and families of victims caught up in such disasters must be given every support. No one should be left to feel their way in the dark as they grieve.
I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne), the noble Lord Wills and many others for their tireless campaigning on the issue. Indeed, one of the most moving debates that I have ever had the privilege of listening to was one to which the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood contributed on this topic.
The Bill will introduce the UK’s first ever independent public advocate—an advocate to give a voice to those who have too often felt voiceless. The IPA will be a strong advocate for victims, the bereaved and whole communities affected. It will allow us to hear everyone, including those who, in the darkest moments of their grief, may understandably find it impossible to speak up for themselves and their legitimate concerns.
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
Alex Chalk
I will just develop the point and then of course I will let the right hon. Lady come in.
From the earliest days after a disaster, the IPA will work on behalf of victims. It will be a crucial conduit between them and key public authorities, and it will focus resolutely on what survivors and the bereaved actually need, not just what others in authority might assume they need. The IPA will also help victims and the bereaved to navigate complex processes that most people would find deeply stressful and upsetting, such as investigations, inquests and public inquiries. On a practical level, it will give victims, the bereaved and the affected community a robust way of engaging the public authorities and Government—for example, by asking the coroner or the police for more information about inquests and investigations, or by pressing local government and central Government on their policies for victims.
Maria Eagle
I welcome the right hon. and learned Gentleman to his new role. I wonder whether he will be open to the idea—from those of us who have been working on this for some time—of strengthening the provisions in the Bill to improve them?
Alex Chalk
In preparation for today’s debate, I read the right hon. Lady’s Bill and have considered it with care. Of course, I am open to further discussions with her; she has lived and breathed this issue for a long time, and it is absolutely right that I consider those points. I think that there are—well, let us leave it at that and discuss those matters in due course.
Mr Ranil Jayawardena (North East Hampshire) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. and learned Friend to his role as Lord Chancellor. I have been listening very carefully to what he has said in relation to suggestions made in all quarters of this House. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher) recently proposed an excellent ten-minute rule Bill calling for tougher rules on the ability of sex offenders to change their names. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the Victims and Prisoners Bill is a perfect opportunity to bring in tougher rules, and that they should apply not only to changes of name but to changes of legal sex?
Alex Chalk
There is real and clear merit in what my right hon. Friend says. Plainly, we cannot have a situation in which people can, at the stroke of a pen, evade liability for their abhorrent crimes. I look forward to discussing that important matter with him and my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher) in due course.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State is making a powerful case on the role of a public advocate, which many of us support. We recognise that there may be more than one victim when traumatic events happen, so does he accept that it is right that the Bill also deals with strengthening support? In my community, a 16-year-old boy was murdered 10 days ago. The entire school community is traumatised. Getting them support, and recognising that his friends, as well as his family, are victims in this instance, is critical. Will he meet me and other campaigners to discuss that issue?
Alex Chalk
How could I not? I would be delighted to meet the hon. Lady on that important issue.
Let me turn now to the measures on prisoners and parole—part 3 of the Bill. The first duty of any Government is to protect the public, including from those who have betrayed trust, robbed innocence and shattered lives. Victims want to know that the person who has harmed them, their families and friends will not inflict that pain on anyone else. Indeed, I heard that strong message from Denise Fergus when I spoke with her recently. One thing that I found profoundly moving is that, notwithstanding her own private grief, one of her principal motivations is to ensure that others do not suffer in the same way.
Overwhelmingly, the Parole Board does its difficult job well, taking care to scrutinise the cases coming before it for release decisions. Over 99% of prisoners authorised for release by the Parole Board do not go on to commit a so-called serious further offence, but occasionally things go wrong, and when they do, the implications for public confidence can be very grave. John Worboys, the black cab rapist, and Colin Pitchfork, who raped two schoolgirls, were both assessed as being safe to leave prison, only for Colin Pitchfork to have to be recalled shortly afterwards and the Worboys decision to be overturned on appeal. Such cases are rare, but they are unacceptable. The public must have confidence that murderers, rapists and terrorists will be kept behind bars for as long as necessary to keep the public safe.
We have already made changes to improve safety and increase transparency. The most serious offenders now face robust tests to prove they are safe to move into open prisons, and some parole hearings can now take place in public so that victims and the public can see with their own eyes how decisions are made and why.
James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend on his well-deserved appointment. My constituents Matt and Carole Gould have campaigned long and hard on the tragic murder of their daughter some years ago. They are concerned that, when the murderer is released from prison after an all too short 12 and a half years, he will be allowed to return to the village he came from and that they will bump into him in the street. Will my right hon. and learned Friend advise me what normal practice would be in keeping murderers away from the victim’s relatives? Is there not an argument that, in rural areas such as mine, the distance should be further than it would perhaps be in an urban area?
Alex Chalk
I thank my hon. Friend for raising that deeply upsetting and troubling case and for liaising with his constituents. Although I do not know the specifics of any licence conditions, it is overwhelmingly likely that those conditions would take into account precisely the point he raises. If family are living nearby, it is usual for licence conditions to indicate an exclusion zone, and that could be expanded to meet issues of justice and safety. Those are matters that the relevant authorities will be taking close cognisance of.
Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)
On parole reform, will the factor determining whether someone is in the top-tier cohort always be the offence or offences committed, or will other factors sometimes be taken into consideration? With regard to top-tier offences, will Ministers have the power to add to or change the list of offences that put someone in the top tier?
Alex Chalk
I will come to those points in a moment, but it is broadly to do with the offences.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
Applications can now be made for Parole Board hearings to be held in public, but as Gwynedd resident Rhiannon Bragg learned, they can be refused. She feels strongly that if the hearing for the perpetrator who stalked her and held her at gunpoint overnight was heard in public, it would help her as a victim—she would not face him in a private context, face to face, and the hearing would be covered in the public domain through the press. Will the Minister consider this issue?
Alex Chalk
There is now a power for hearings to be held in public, but it depends on the facts of the individual case. It will be important to weigh up what is in the interests of justice, but that of course also includes what is in the interests of the victim—indeed, that is a pre-eminent consideration. These decisions are necessarily fact-specific, and the Parole Board has to consider them on the facts before it. However, the hon. Lady makes a powerful point, which I am sure the Parole Board will want to take into account in relation to the facts of that particular case.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
Will the Secretary of State give way?
Alex Chalk
I will make a bit of progress and then I will of course come to the right hon. Gentleman.
As I indicated, the Bill takes steps to strengthen the system further. First, it will make public protection the pre-eminent factor in deciding which prisoners are safe for release, by introducing a codified release test in law. Secondly, it will impose a new safeguard— a new check and balance—in respect of the top tier of the most serious offenders, drawn from murderers, rapists, child killers and terrorists. In those cases where there is a Parole Board recommendation to release a prisoner, the Bill will allow the Secretary of State to intervene on behalf of the public to stay that release and enable Ministers to take a second look. That oversight will act as a further safeguard in the most serious cases that particularly affect public confidence. Plainly, of course, to preserve fairness in the system that ministerial intervention must be amenable to independent review, and the Bill properly safeguards that right.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend on his well-deserved promotion. I have recently been contacted by a constituent who discovered the murdered bodies of her sister and baby niece. She is a volunteer with a national charity called Support after Murder and Manslaughter. It has given me a list of concerns, which I would like to give to the Minister separately. However, the charity states that the Secretary of State will be able to make this parole decision, which will then be subject to appeal, but the victims will not have a voice at either stage—they will not be able to do impact presentations. Will the Minister look at this point again, because the victims feel that they are being excluded?
Alex Chalk
I thank my right hon. Friend for raising that important matter on behalf of his constituents. The interests and rights of victims are absolutely at the heart of this proposal, because—this shone out from a conversation I had only today— some victims who are concerned about whether a prisoner gets released are of course concerned about what has happened to their family, but they are also worried about what might happen to others. That is why having public confidence in the safety consideration is so important. I will be happy to discuss my right hon. Friend’s points with him, but I emphasise that the rights of victims and the protection of the public are at the heart of this important measure.
Mr Carmichael
The volume and nature of the interventions on the Secretary of State show the difficulty of this area of law. While the changes to parole are welcome, is there not a danger that they will increase further the treatment of those who are currently in the system and those who are still in the prison system—somewhere in the region of 3,000 people—more than 10 years after we abolished sentences of imprisonment for public protection? The Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), who I see in his place, has called for a review. Sir John Major did the same recently. Would this Bill not be an opportunity to deal with that?
Alex Chalk
It is important to consider these things separately, but the right hon. Gentleman identifies something that is a stain on our justice system. The IPP system should never have happened. Trying to take the politics out of it, I sort of understand why it was proposed, but it was a bad idea. It was a big mistake, and it has left us with a difficult issue. I am considering carefully what the Justice Committee has to say about it, and I will be saying more about it in due course. It is important to treat that separately from the position I am talking about here, which is that in those most serious cases where the Parole Board has directed release, it is right that on behalf of the public the Secretary of State should have a second look, even if that is then susceptible to an independent review thereafter. It is a slightly separate issue, but I take the points that he makes.
Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)
I am pleased to see my right hon. and learned Friend in his place. On the issue of the powers taken in this Bill for a referral to the Secretary of State, in the Justice Committee we heard evidence of other routes for the Secretary of State to intervene: through reconsideration, which has been in place for four years, and through set aside, which is a power that the Secretary of State has taken more recently. That has the added benefit of including victims within the process. Can he just set out what it is that the Bill is trying to achieve that those routes cannot in ensuring that ministerial oversight?
Alex Chalk
There is a very important distinction. When the Secretary of State considers those most serious cases, he will look at this issue of safety for the public. That is not whether, for example, the Parole Board has acted in such a way as to not be susceptible to judicial review; it is a much wider consideration so that the public can be satisfied not just that the Parole Board considered safety, but that the Secretary of State did, too, and that is an important second check. That matters, because in these most serious cases, public confidence is hanging on the single thread of the Parole Board. We want to make sure that an additional thread goes into that structure, so that the public recognise that there has been that second pair of eyes. Plainly, Ministers cannot over-politicise this process, which is why there must be an opportunity to have an independent review of the Secretary of State’s decision. That will allow us overall to have a much more vigorous and robust process that stands up for victims, but is also mindful of the rule of law.
Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Sir Robert Neill
I am very grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend, whom I warmly welcome to his place, for giving way. Can I just follow up the point made by my fellow Justice Committee member, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson)? There are passages in the Bill where, in carrying out that legitimate policy objective—I do not disagree with the Secretary of State on that legitimacy—in certain circumstances, as it is currently drafted, he may be asked to put his finding of fact and his opinion in the place of that of the parole board that actually heard the evidence. Could I therefore ask him to look very carefully at the evidence the Committee received—it is tagged to the Bill on the Order Paper—and find a more effective way to achieve his objective that is legally robust but fair, but does not place him and his successors in the very difficult position of trying to rehear facts at second hand, as opposed to taking the role of those who heard the initial evidence?
Alex Chalk
May I thank my hon. Friend, and say that I have read every word of that important evidence to the Committee? I thank him for the time he took to provide that additional scrutiny, which I found extremely helpful. He is absolutely right that the check and balance is a sensible one, but plainly it has to be operational. We have to be able to deliver it, and we have to be able to do so in a sufficiently timely fashion, ensuring that a decision is not offending against article 5 and so on, but also that all parties have certainty about what is actually going to happen. I hope he will be reassured by my saying that I am looking very closely at the operational aspects of this provision to ensure that it does what is intended, and provides that check and balance, while being deliverable and of course being consistent with the rule of law. If I may, I will now press on, because I know others want to speak.
Thirdly, we are already recruiting more ex-police officers to the Parole Board. Now we will ensure that individuals with law enforcement backgrounds can be included on panels considering the release of the most serious criminals. Their first-hand experience of assessing risk will bring additional expertise to parole hearings.
This Bill will also prohibit prisoners subject to a whole-life order from being able to marry or form a civil partnership in custody, subject to an exemption in truly exceptional circumstances. The rationale for this is simple. Those most dangerous and cruel criminals—the ones who have shattered lives and robbed others of their chance of happiness and a family life—should not be able to taunt victims and their families by enjoying that for themselves. It is simply unconscionable, yet as the law stands, prison governors cannot reject a prisoner’s application to marry unless it creates a security risk for the prison, however horrific their crime. Our changes will prevent whole-life prisoners from marrying or forming a civil partnership in prison or other places of detention. That is nothing less than basic fairness.
Jess Phillips
I could not agree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman more. What I would also ask is that people in that situation, especially those who murder their wife and the mother of their children, should also have their parental rights taken away. Why is that not in the Bill?
Alex Chalk
As the hon. Lady knows, we have discussed these issues at some length in a different context, and she should know that I am ready to continue that conversation.
Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)
This is a really excellent piece of legislation, and I congratulate the Secretary of State and his team on everything they are doing, but I could not miss this opportunity of raising the issue of the intergenerational impact of female imprisonment. As the Lord Chancellor knows, women make up just 4% of the prison population, yet two thirds of them have dependent children. Because they are so few, they are generally placed much further away from home and have much less access to some rehabilitative facilities than their male counterparts. That imprisonment can have a devastating impact on the children, so in many cases the children of women in prisons are victims themselves. There has been some fantastic work across the country by organisations such as Hope Street, run by One Small Thing, which I know the Prisons Minister—the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds)—has recently visited. Does the Secretary of State not feel that this Bill would have been an ideal opportunity to try to address that?
Alex Chalk
My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point. She mentions Hope Street, and the Nelson Trust, which I have visited, does excellent work in this regard. I think we do always have to remember that the job of Government is to ensure that the decision of the court can be upheld.
In other words, a court will of course consider the evidence from the prosecution at a sentencing hearing about what has taken place, will hear a plea in mitigation about the impact on the defendant of incarceration—including the impact on friends and children, their future and so on—and will then reach a decision based on all those matters about the correct sentence. So while I do not seek to downplay any of the really important points my hon. Friend mentioned, we need to do our bit within the criminal justice system to give effect to the order of the court, but to ensure it is done in a way that is humane and understands that there are family considerations.
We want prisoners to serve their time, but to be rehabilitated, and one of the critical ways of being rehabilitated is to ensure that family relationships endure. That is why there has been so much investment in courts in areas such technology to ensure prisoners can keep in contact with the outside, so that when they leave having repaid their debt to society they are in a position to pick up those important relationships.
In closing, I want to put on record my thanks to all who have helped to shape this Bill, in particular the victims who shared their stories and contributed to our consultation. I also pay tribute to my predecessors my right hon. Friends the Members for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab) and for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) for the parts they have played in advancing this Bill.
These measures will help ensure that every victim, from the Telford teenagers I mentioned to the elderly victim of confidence fraud, secures the service from our justice system that they deserve. From the moment of report to the moment of conviction, and indeed beyond if required, victims’ interests must be paramount. That is how justice is done, and I commend this Bill to the House.
Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate the Secretary of State on his appointment. I am sure all of us, in all parts of the House, wish him well, because victims need him to succeed. That is particularly the case when we realise that every year one in five people in the United Kingdom become a victim of crime: their freedom is assaulted; they are left feeling angry, fearful and sometimes even helpless.
Our system of justice, once a beacon to the world, should give victims of crime the ability to seek redress for what they have suffered. Victims deserve to be at the heart of the criminal justice system. Those who have wronged them deserve to be prosecuted and held to account in open court. Criminals should face punishment for the harm they have done.
Justice is a cornerstone of any modern and democratic society, the very foundation of law and order. Justice demands respect for the rules that govern the fair functioning of our society. But after 13 years of Conservative government, our justice system is broken. The Conservatives have let victims down time and again. Prosecution and charge rates are now so low that it is no exaggeration to say the Conservatives have effectively decriminalised many serious crimes. Only 6% of burglaries and 4% of robberies come to trial. Victims of car crime are told to report incidents online, and only rarely is there ever a police officer to follow up. Fraud is growing exponentially, with online scammers threatening people’s entire life savings, yet the previous Conservative Chancellor dismisses fraud as not an everyday worry.
Most shocking of all is the fact that fewer than two in every 100 reported rapes result in a prosecution and the average wait for a rape trial, for those very few that ever reach court, is now over three years for the first time ever. A three-year wait for a rape trial is devastating for victims, but under this Government three-year waits are the norm, not the exception.
I was contacted by the father of a 16-year-old girl who had been waiting two years for her attacker to face trial. Just four days before the trial was due to begin, his daughter was told it had been postponed for a further nine months. Just imagine how it must feel for a teenage girl who has survived such a horrific crime, and who had the bravery to stand up and report the attack, to then have to wait years and years for her attacker to face justice.
This weekend new research from the Labour party found that delays had become so bad that six out of 10 rape victims now drop their cases. They are left in absolute despair as their attackers remain loose on the streets. While Ministers routinely dismiss the reality of what they have created, the number of outstanding rape cases has almost doubled over the past year alone, and we must remember that over 98% of reported rapes never result in a prosecution anyway. The legacy of this Conservative Government is victims left facing the longest trail delays on record, which is an absolute disgrace.
But the criminal justice crisis extends way beyond the courts. The Government broke the probation system with a botched privatisation followed by a panicked renationalisation. Under the Conservatives, every week on average one murder and two rapes are committed by offenders who are supposed to be under supervision, but the probation service has never recovered from the wrecking ball that the Conservatives took to it. Some parts of the service still carry 40% vacancy rates. Probation officers are not routinely given full information about an offender’s full history when they are asked to risk assess them on release. That was how Jordan McSweeney’s risk rating was so catastrophically mis-assessed before he was released and targeted Zara Aleena in one of the most shocking and brutal murders of recent years.
Victims have a right to believe that offenders convicted in court of crimes that deserve a custodial sentence will be locked up—but they cannot under this Government, because they have run out of prison cells. The previous Justice Secretary wrote to judges telling them to avoid locking convicts up. Inside our prisons, violence and drug abuse are raging out of control. Drug and alcohol use in prisons has skyrocketed by more than 400% since 2010, and staff assaults have more than doubled. Instead of offenders being rehabilitated behind bars—that is what the Secretary of State just said he wants to see—they leave prison fired up by violence and high on drugs, posing an even greater threat to the public. Eight out of 10 crimes are committed by someone who has offended before—those are Ministry of Justice statistics. Under the Conservatives, the broken system is not stopping criminals; it is breeding them. If we do not stop criminals, we create more victims. It is a vicious cycle that leaves the law-abiding majority feeling weak and victims feeling abandoned.
Since 2014, convicted offenders have been sentenced to 16 million hours of unpaid work in community sentences that they were never made to carry out. That is a quite staggering failure. What message do the Government think that sends to offenders and their victims? It says: the system does not care. It tells low level offenders that they can get away with it, so they progress to committing more serious crimes. They have learned that they can get away with crime with no consequences under a Government who have gone soft on criminals. Under this Government, crime is not prevented, criminals are not punished and victims are not protected. No wonder victims feel abandoned when so many crimes, from antisocial behaviour to violent sexual assault, go unpunished.
It is eight years and eight Justice Secretaries since the Conservatives first promised new legislation to support victims. For all of that time, Labour has been telling them to act. Now—finally—we have a Bill, but I am afraid that it is a wasted opportunity because it fails in so many ways to rebalance the scales of justice and make a real difference for victims. The Bill lets down rape survivors. It offers no specialist legal advice or advocacy that will help them to navigate the justice system.
Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)
On the hon. Member’s point about victims of rape who have been let down, does he consider that the Bill could protect child victims of rape from alleged child perpetrators where both the victim and the accused are due to attend the same school?
Steve Reed
I am grateful to the hon. Member for his intervention. He makes an important point. That is one of so many important ways in which the Bill could do more for victims. I hope that we will get the chance to make some changes to it and strengthen it as it passes through Committee and during the rest of its journey before it becomes an Act of Parliament.
Labour will table an amendment offering free legal advice for rape survivors. We want to ensure that survivors are supported every single step of the way from first reporting a rape at a police station right through to trial. It cannot be right that so many rape survivors describe their experience in court as so traumatising that it feels like they are the ones who are on trial. Labour has been calling for some time now for the protection of third-party material, such as counselling or therapy records, for rape and sexual violence victims. It is welcome that the Government are proposing some changes on that, but victims want more detail, and we will seek that as the Bill progresses. We need to support victims of crime throughout the justice system if we want to reduce victim dropout rates, which deny them justice and let criminals get away with their crimes.
There has, quite rightly, been a great deal of attention in recent years on victims of state failure that have led to major tragedies: Hillsborough, Grenfell and the Manchester Arena to name just three. Tragically, the Bill lets them down, too. Victims of major tragedies deserve the same legal representation as the authorities that fail them in the first place, but that does not happen, and the Bill does not put it right. Labour stands unequivocally with the families and survivors of those tragedies. Giving them proper legal representation is not only a matter of justice for them but helps the system learn from when went wrong, so that future tragedies can be prevented.
We will table amendments to establish a fully independent legal advocate accountable to families, as the Hillsborough families and campaigners have demanded; an advocate with the power to access documents and data not only to expose the full extent of failure but to prevent the possibility of cover-ups, such as those that denied families justice immediately after Hillsborough.
The Bill also lets down victims of antisocial behaviour. Those crimes can leave communities feeling broken and powerless, and lead to a spiral of social and economic decline that we should not tolerate. Whether it is gangs trashing local buildings, offenders intimidating local residents or selfish individuals dumping their rubbish on local streets and green spaces, we must support the law-abiding majority who deserve to feel proud of where they live.
Sarah Champion
Does my hon. Friend agree that not only does the Bill let down victims of antisocial behaviour, but its definition of a victim actively excludes them?
Steve Reed
As is so frequently the case, my hon. Friend makes an important and apt point. I hope that we will have opportunities to amend the Bill as it passes through Parliament. Victims of antisocial behaviour are victims of crime just as much as anybody else.
Labour wants to support victims of antisocial behaviour so that they can choose their own representatives to sit on community payback boards, where they can choose the unpaid work that offenders carry out to put right the wrong that they have done. Victims need to see justice carried out, as part of a functioning criminal justice system. To end the scandal of so many community sentences never carried out under the Conservatives, we would give victims the power they need to make sure that every sentence handed down by the courts is carried out in the community. Justice seen is justice done.
One of the most damaging experiences for any victim who reports crime is the years spent waiting for that case to come to trial, yet the Bill does nothing to cut the court backlog that warps the justice system under the Conservatives. Cases collapse as witnesses forget key details. Victims give up and criminals get away with it. This Government care so little that they have allowed the court backlog to reach record levels.
Ministers will routinely stand at the Dispatch Box and blame the pandemic, but that is just an attempt to cover up their failure. Court backlogs were already escalating to record levels before anyone had heard of covid-19. If the Government cared, they would do something, but there is nothing in the Bill to speed up justice for victims. Maria is a young woman who was subjected to multiple attacks by a serial rapist. She reported the crimes in March 2019, but had to wait three years and seven months for her case to come to trial. The pressure on her grew so intolerable that Maria attempted to end her own life, leaving her with life-changing physical injuries. That is abhorrent. Victims are sick and tired of hearing about failure on this scale while this Government refuse to take responsibility.
It is essential for victims that we speed up justice, but only Labour has a plan for that. We will double the number of Crown prosecutors to speed up trials. We will introduce specialist rape courts to fast-track cases through the system, to put criminals behind bars and get the wheels of justice turning again.
Sarah Champion
I am sure my hon. Friend welcomes the section 28 measures that came in recently, which allow pre-recorded information to be submitted and take a lot of trauma out of the sometimes hostile environment in which victims find themselves. However, from my experience, their use depends on the judge’s understanding and granting of them. Will the Bill contain anything to prevent that postcode lottery?
Steve Reed
Once again, my hon. Friend raises an important point that needs to be taken into account fully, not just as the Bill progresses but as we review the different forms of giving evidence that can make the experience of a rape survivor much easier, which makes it less likely that a case is dropped or collapses and that an attacker gets away with it.
In recent months, victims of the most horrific crimes have faced the insult of convicted criminals refusing to turn up in court to face sentencing in person. We have called on the Government to act on that and they have repeatedly said that they will, yet they have done nothing while killers, rapists and terrorists pick and choose whether they turn up to face the consequences of their crimes. Just imagine how the families of Sabina Nessa and Zara Aleena felt when the brutal men who had killed their loved ones refused to come to court to be sentenced. It is grossly offensive to victims and their families to let criminals have that hold over them at such a difficult and traumatic moment. It is disappointing that that is not part of the Bill, and I hope the Government will reconsider. If they will not act, the next Labour Government will. We will give judges the power to force offenders to stand in the dock, in open court, while they are sentenced, and we will do that because victims deserve nothing less.
With the Victims and Prisoners Bill finally coming before Parliament today, disappointingly there is still no Victims’ Commissioner in place. The Government have left the post vacant for six months now, and there is still no sign of a new appointment, which sends a message to victims about the Government’s intentions. I hope the new Secretary of State will be able to speed up that process. Whoever is eventually appointed, the Bill does nothing to strengthen the powers of the Victims’ Commissioner, which, at the very least, should include the necessary powers to enforce the victims code in full and to lay an annual report before Parliament. That would help immensely in holding the Government to account and amplify victims’ voices. I hope this too is something the Government might reconsider in Committee.
Victims will have serious concerns about some of the Government’s proposed parole reforms. It is essential that the Government should not politicise decisions that should be based on robust professional experience that keeps the public safe. Where the parole board has not been working effectively enough, the answer is to strengthen it, not to undermine it. While I am sure that the current Justice Secretary is reasonable, not all his predecessors have been. We need processes that work effectively and protect the public, whoever is in that post. There have been parole decisions that raised legitimate concern and there is clearly a need for appropriate intervention by a Justice Secretary without unduly politicising the whole system. We will return to that issue in Committee.
To conclude, the first duty of any Government is to protect the safety of citizens. The current state of the criminal justice system shows how badly the Government have failed in that duty. They have repeatedly let criminals off and let victims down. In many ways, this is a victims Bill in name only. Labour will seek to strengthen the Bill and rebalance the scales of justice in favour of victims and the law-abiding majority. We want to strengthen the Bill to speed up justice, to offer rape survivors the free legal support they need and deserve, and to give victims of antisocial behaviour a voice and the power they need to make community sentences really work. Our aim is to prevent crime, punish criminals and protect victims. That is what the public and, above all, victims expect a functioning justice system to do.
Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
I start by warmly welcoming my right hon. and learned Friend to his position, to which nobody in this House is better suited. I know that he will fulfil it in the most distinguished manner; he comes to the position of Secretary of State and Lord Chancellor with a background in our criminal justice system that is second to none and a reputation at the Bar for scrupulous fairness and integrity.
My right hon. and learned Friend and I both used to deal in the same kind of work and we are both still in contact with many who work in the criminal justice system. His reputation as both prosecutor and defender was impeccable. It is right that the House should know that, and it is important because it means that he will know the importance of going on the evidence and of acting on a fair, rational and ultimately humane basis. The best prosecutors are the fairest and the most humane, and he was a very good prosecutor. I hope he will bring those attributes to the role of Secretary of State and Lord Chancellor.
My right hon. and learned Friend was also an active and distinguished member of the Justice Committee. I hope he will remember some of the work we did together. I am delighted to see another former Justice Committee member in the form of the Attorney General, who is sitting on the Treasury Bench as well. I feel a little like Banquo—not on the Treasury Bench, but the father of Law Officers. I am proud of having worked with both of them.
I turn to the Bill, which is an admirable place for the Secretary of State to make his debut. It is a bit dangerous to make classical allusions, but the Bill is a bit like Caesar’s view of Gaul—divided into three parts—and one can come to different judgments about those different parts.
Let me start with part 1, which relates to victims. It is welcome. It fulfils a manifesto commitment of our party, and I am glad to see it there. The Justice Committee very much appreciated the opportunity the Government gave us for pre-legislative scrutiny of part 1. That was helpful and I hope the Government found it so. We also welcome the fact that the Government accepted a number of our recommendations—in particular the inclusion of bereaved families specifically as victims in the Bill, the strengthening of the role of Victims’ Commissioner, and the statutory obligation on statutory agencies to make victims aware of the contents of the code.
Those are important steps forward, although, with respect, I think that more could be done. I particularly thank the Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), for his constructive and full engagement with the Committee throughout the pre-legislative scrutiny. It was a good example of how such scrutiny can help the process. I might come back to that point in relation to other parts of the Bill.
I think that more could be done in some areas, but I nonetheless welcome the Bill. I suggest that we look at a couple of areas that the Select Committee picked up as the Bill goes forward. There are more areas as well. One is that although it is right to put the code on a statutory basis, there is a gap at the moment. If we give individuals legal rights, it is important to give them proper means of enforcing those rights and a proper remedy for their breach or for when there is non-compliance from the agencies charged with delivering those rights. At the moment, specificity is still lacking in that regard. As the Secretary of State knows, if we give somebody a right we must give them a remedy—that is basic sound law. At the moment, the clarity about the remedy is lacking. I hope that we can consider that as we go forward.
There is also an important point, which the Justice Committee report referred to, about victims of antisocial behaviour that does not end up being charged as a crime, for whatever reason. There would be no harm at all in adopting a more generous and broad approach on that issue, and I hope the Government will consider that. Our evidence on both points I have mentioned was pretty strong. Subject to that, however, this is a good part of the Bill, and I hope that we can work constructively across the House to improve some aspects of it.
Part 2, which deals with the appointment of an independent public advocate, is an addition that I broadly welcome. I know that there are those who will say that it does not go far enough, and I accept that. The Committee did not have a chance to look at it in detail, although we did hear some evidence connected with it in relation to other inquiries—notably from the Right Rev. James Jones, who did such fantastic work on the Hillsborough inquiry. I think there is something helpful to be learnt from that evidence. I also pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), my fellow Committee member, for her exceptional work in relation to the Hillsborough disaster, and the work that has followed from that. Those in the House and beyond are in her debt.
While I think that the appointment of the independent public advocate will be valuable, I hope we can look at some other issues, in particular the scope of the scheme—the areas into which the advocate might be able to go—and the question of equality of arms for bereaved families at inquests when the actions of a state body are in question and that state body will inevitably be represented, at public expense, by lawyers, while the bereaved families are not. I hope that, for the sake of fairness, the Secretary of State will think again about that. Equality of arms is a concept with which both he and I are very familiar, and this strikes me as a gap in the system that it would not be onerous, in the overall scheme of things, to remedy.
Part 3 deals with prisoners and parole. Here I am afraid I must adopt a slightly different tone, because this is a rather less welcome addition to the Bill. That is not because the policy objective is wrong. As the Secretary of State said, it is clearly right and proper for the public to have confidence in our parole system, and that means there must be both a robust test of the grounds on which a prisoner can be released from sentence or moved to open conditions, and a robust system of ensuring that the test is applied. I think that the difficulty has been in the detail thereafter, and that may be reflected in the fact that this part of the Bill was not subject to any pre-legislative scrutiny. The Justice Committee wrote to the then Secretary of State offering to provide such scrutiny, but the offer was declined. I also note that the evidence we heard from the Parole Board only last week indicated only the most perfunctory engagement with the board itself. There was no face-to-face engagement; there was, I think, one meeting and a notification, effectively, after the event.
The Secretary of State, who has seen the transcript of that evidence session, will know that the Parole Board is a serious and expert body of people. As he rightly said, the vast majority of cases deliver results because people do not reoffend. It is perhaps surprising that a little more attention was not paid to the views of the board or, indeed, those of many other people working in the criminal justice system. The absence of outside consultation with almost anyone with knowledge of the system weakens the credibility of part 3.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
In his role as Chair of the Justice Committee, the hon. Gentleman has done some remarkable work on the Bill, and I pay tribute to him and his Committee. I was stunned, although not surprised, to hear that there had been no consultation with either him or the Committee on part 3. I am also not aware of any consultation with the broader non-governmental organisations, campaigners, charities and survivors. Is he aware of any such scrutiny?
Sir Robert Neill
The short answer is that none has come to my attention or that of the Committee. We did endeavour to secure a range of views, particularly from practitioners in the field. It is helpful to hear such views, and I therefore hope that as the Bill proceeds, the Secretary of State and his Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), will, as fair-minded people, find opportunities to take them on board.
What we want is a system that is robust, because that is critical, but also—as the Secretary of State said—a system that is operationally effective. One of my main concerns is that the evidence we did receive suggested, in respect of nearly all the principal aspects of part 3, that there were serious question marks over how operationally effective it would be. This is a classic case of where Committee improvements ought to be made, and I hope the Government will move to do that.
I want briefly to flag up some of those areas. The current test is a very short one of some 20 words, but it is robust. Essentially it says that the protection of the public comes first, and that is what we want to achieve anyway. It is expanded somewhat by a non-exhaustive number of other matters that can be taken into account. There is nothing wrong in that, but I hope that it does not make the test unduly complicated. It is also worth remembering that there is sometimes a misunderstanding, particularly in media reporting, in relation to the work of the Parole Board. That comes in two forms. First, as the Secretary of State said, in 99% of cases people released on parole do not reoffend, and that context is important. Secondly, there is a suggestion of some kind of balancing test, but that is not the case.
It is clear from the evidence that since the case of Knight in about 2017, the Parole Board very properly changed its guidance to reflect the primacy of the protection of the public test. I think there is an element in this part of the Bill of trying to solve a problem that does not exist and therefore a risk of over-engineering the system, which we might not need. So let us look again at the best way to do the test. There is nothing wrong with changing it, and perhaps nothing wrong with expanding it, but are we sure that we are getting this right?
The next matter is the way in which the Secretary of State will, from time to time, step in and review. There is nothing wrong with a review but I have two concerns about the way it is done. In certain cases set out in the Bill, it will be necessary, if the Secretary of State chooses to carry out those powers, to intervene and substitute the Secretary of State’s decision, including on the facts, for those of the board, which will have heard first-hand evidence. The Secretary of State is not in a position to hear first-hand evidence, so he would have to rely on a provision that enables a person to be appointed to interview the applicant for parole and then report to the Secretary of State. I do not think the Secretary of State would normally feel happy acting on hearsay in such circumstances, because at the end of the day it is second-hand evidence and he would have to substitute his judgment for that of those who had heard first-hand evidence. I am not sure that is a fair or satisfactory way of resolving that problem.
The second concern relates to the very proper means of review. As the Secretary of State rightly said, there has to be an independent review, but at the moment the suggestion is that, among other things, this could go to the upper chamber. I would ask him to reflect on the appropriateness of the upper chamber. Logically, the element within the upper chamber that would hear these cases is the upper tribunal. The upper tribunal, as a logical part of that, would be the administrative chamber, which is essentially there to deal with points of law; it is not a fact-finding body.
The route of application to appeal against the Secretary of State’s decision has two grounds. One is the normal ground of public law and judicial review—involving unreasonableness, for example—and that is fine. The administrative chamber no doubt deals with those kinds of things. This also includes an appeal on the merits, and it has to, to make it ECHR-compliant, but this would involve a rehearing, and the upper chamber has no experience of re-hearing the merits. So this route of appeal does not seem to be right or practical.
Another point to remember is that there is no requirement for leave in this route. If someone appeals to the upper tribunal on the ground of legal deficiency, such as unreasonableness, they have to get leave. If they apply on the ground that the Secretary of State got it wrong on the merits, they do not have to get leave at all and they can have a rehearing, so everyone who feels aggrieved at the Secretary of State’s decision will apply on the ground that they want to challenge the merits and therefore have a rehearing. The number of unmeritorious appeals will therefore greatly increase, which is hardly the objective of this piece of legislation. It would also put these matters into a chamber that—with absolute respect to those who sit in the administrative chamber—is not geared up to hear evidence to do rehearings. It is going to the wrong place, so I hope we at least reflect on a better means of achieving that end.
The same goes for the Secretary of State’s powers to intervene and rehear. Would it not be better simply to toughen the current power of redetermination? Surely asking for a case to be reconsidered by a differently constituted panel would be a more practical way forward. There are practical and sensible things that could be done, but unfortunately they were not picked up by the Bill’s drafting, perhaps because nobody who knows much about it was asked.
Clauses 42 to 44 disapply section 3 of the Human Rights Act for the purposes of these hearings. Whatever one’s view of the Human Rights Act, there is no evidence that this is a problem in such cases. In fact, the evidence we heard from practitioners, from both sides, is that it can be helpful to have to have regard to section 3 in these hearings. These clauses seem to be trying to solve a problem that does not exist, and I wonder whether we really need them. It is perfectly possible to have a robust system that still complies with section 3. This is a needless distraction that sends the wrong signal about a certain desire to pick unnecessary fights, which I know is not the current Secretary of State’s approach.
Clause 46 addresses the Parole Board’s composition and the appointment of board members. It is perfectly legitimate to have more people with law and order experience, which could be included as a category, but we must be careful to make sure there is no suggestion that the Secretary of State can say that a particular class of person should sit on a panel for a particular type of hearing, as that would go beyond independence. There is strong case law from our domestic courts, never mind elsewhere, to say that the Parole Board carries out a judicial function and therefore must have a proper degree of judicial independence. There is a risk that the clause, as currently drafted, offends against that.
The final issue that arises is with the power to dismiss the chair of the Parole Board. There is already a protocol for removing a chair of the Parole Board who loses the Secretary of State’s confidence, and it was exercised after the Worboys case—I think it is called the Mostyn protocol. Why do we need an extra statutory power when we already have a way to do it? Establishing a statutory power creates another problem, because clause 47 says that the chair of the Parole Board shall not sit on any panels of the Parole Board. When we heard evidence, no one could work out why, but it has subsequently been suggested to me that it would be interfering with judicial independence to remove a chair who is sitting on a panel.
Perhaps the answer is not to have the needless power to remove a chair, because we can see the illogicality: if we want a Secretary of State to be able to remove the chair of the Parole Board, we have to make sure they are not carrying out any judicial functions, because otherwise the Secretary of State would be interfering with judicial independence. But we already have a means of removing a chair of the Parole Board, and it works, so why go down this rabbit hole?
My observations on part 3 are intended to be helpful and constructive, and I am sure the Secretary of State and the Minister will take them on board.
The Victims and Prisoners Bill makes no mention of the continuing injustice, as the Secretary of State rightly said—the blot and stain on our judicial landscape—facing a particular class of prisoner: those imprisoned for public protection. The House recognised that indeterminate sentences had failed and so abolished them, but not retrospectively. An increasing number of people on open-ended sentences, which Parliament has abolished, are being recalled. People have no hope of their sentence coming to an end and, because they are also potentially subject to a life licence, more people have been recalled than are serving their original sentence. Something has gone badly wrong here, which is doubtless why Lord Blunkett, the creator of the sentence, said, “This has gone wrong and needs to be changed.” It is also why Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, a former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, and not someone generally regarded as a soft touch in sentencing matters, said, “The only logical way to resolve this is to have a resentencing exercise.”
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
I speak as an old boy of the Justice Committee. I do not want to rehearse the debate we had only a few weeks ago, but there seems to be some reticence among those on both Front Benches about the proposals the hon. Gentleman put forward through the Select Committee; they seem to think that they would result in the large-scale release of dangerous prisoners. Could he emphasise exactly what the Select Committee was proposing: a panel of experts carefully preparing a way forward on resentencing that balances public protection and the rights of the victims, with securing justice? That has the wholehearted support of organisations on the frontline, including the Prison Officers Association, the probation officers, the courts staff and, as he said, the former Home Secretary and the Supreme Court judge. This needs to be addressed now. If we do not use this Bill to introduce such a measure, we will lose the opportunity, possibly for another number of years.
Sir Robert Neill
The right hon. Gentleman is entirely right and I agree with him. We are in a hopeless situation at the moment and there has been a misunderstanding. The Select Committee took careful evidence and made a number of recommendations, not purely on resentencing, but on a number of other practical measures that may be taken to improve the way in which IPP prisoners are dealt with in the system. Frankly, at the moment, they are set up to fail. They have to go on courses, which they are told about only a few weeks before their parole hearing and the course waiting list is two years in some places, we are told. They may be in a prison where the courses do not exist or are not available. They are then on permanent licence, where they can be recalled at any time. There is scope to have that removed after 10 years. We can see no evidence as to why the period should not be five years, rather than 10. If somebody has shown willing and gone straight for five years, there is no evidence to suggest that going on for 10 makes any difference to the reoffending rate. So why do that? Why set people up to fail?
On the resentencing exercise, as the right hon. Gentleman rightly says, we were not at all seeking to say, “Everybody will be resentenced immediately. Everybody will be released immediately.” Having acted in some cases that involved sentences of this kind, I know that some people will always remain very dangerous. There are some people who, by the nature of the index offence, will remain in prison for a long time and the determinate sentence that they ultimately receive under our scheme may be a very long one. So the idea that that approach opens the doors is wrong. What it does do is give certainty to everybody and give hope. Tragically, I was informed that, in the four weeks after the former Secretary of State rejected the entirely of the serious recommendations of the Select Committee, three IPP prisoners took their own lives. I hope that there was no connection there, but it does not say much for the sensitivity with which this has been handled in the past. I know that that is not the view of this Secretary of State, who is a deeply humane man and will want to do justice by this.
The resentencing exercise is not something that can be done quickly. It would require an expert panel of people, including lawyers, to say how best to do it and to work it through. I beg the Secretary of State to think again about using this opportunity. I have had a clause drafted that would give effect to the Select Committee’s recommendation. I would much prefer it if the Government said, “We will pre-empt that and bring forward our own proposals to set up an expert panel.” That may take some time and it may not come into effect for a period, but it would at least give people hope that something serious was being done, that work was being followed up and that there was a willingness to look at the matter again; I would have thought that that was only fair. Equally, it cannot be fair that soon some people will have served longer than the maximum sentence for the offence of which they were convicted. That cannot be just. This is not being soft. It is just being fair and just and that is part of the balance of the system.
I commend the good parts of the Bill to the House, and commend the Secretary of State to the House and to the legal fraternity, who respect him highly. In considering those outstanding matters, I ask him to apply exactly the same test as he and I, and any other advocate worth their salt, have set to juries day in, day out: try the case on the evidence, go on the evidence and apply your mind fairly and dispassionately. That is the right approach. If he does that, we will come to some changes in the Bill.
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), the Chair of the Justice Committee, on which I also sit. I agreed with much of what he said, particularly in respect of part 3 and some of the weaknesses in part 1, but I will begin with part 2. I suppose people would expect me to do that, given that it is about the independent public advocate, which I have been campaigning on and have had views about in this House for many years.
I welcome, again, the new Secretary of State to his place, despite the fact that having a whirlwind of appointments and eight Justice Secretaries in eight years does sometimes leave certain potential issues with continuity and ensuring that things happen in a sensible way, apart from the differences in approach and personality that one might come across. I know he cares about this particular issue. He responded to the Backbench Business debate—he made reference to it in his remarks—that I managed to secure following the final collapse of the Hillsborough criminal trials. That is some time ago now. There has been no reason since then—apart from perhaps turbulence in the Government, I say gently—for not dealing with this. The final collapse of the criminal trials was the last impediment to dealing with the recommendations in Bishop James Jones’s 2017 report, “The Patronising Disposition of Unaccountable Power” in which he was asked to come up with—and did come up with—recommendations to learn the lessons of Hillsborough.
Bishop Jones was asked and commissioned to do that by the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), whom I am pleased to commend for the work and effort she put in over the years when she had responsibility for dealing with the aftermath of Hillsborough. She developed a real understanding of some of these issues. The Secretary of State will be talking to various predecessors—people who have done his job and others who relate to it—and he could do a lot worse than sit down with the right hon. Lady. I am not trying to organise his diary—or hers, which would probably be more difficult—but she has a real insight from his side of the House into some of these issues. I recommend, if he gets the chance, that he sits down with her.
When the right hon. and learned Gentleman replied to the debate after the collapse of the last of the criminal trials arising out of the circumstances of Hillsborough, which is over 18 months ago now, he did promise, after being asked by me, to get out the response to Bishop James’s 2017 report by last Christmas; that was his hope. That has slipped for various reasons. The latest we have been told by Ministers on the Floor of the House is that it will be published in its full glory by this spring. I just say to him that we are nearly into summer and we still have not seen sight or sound of the response. I have read the Government’s response to the Justice Committee’s report into coroners. We were told that many of its recommendations would be dealt with in the overarching response to Bishop James’s report into the lessons to be learnt from Hillsborough. There are some outstanding recommendations, on which the Select Committee had what I would call a straight bat response from the Government. Perhaps they too can be dealt with when that response is completed.
I welcome very much the Government’s intent to legislate and the fact that part 2 is in the Bill. I would have preferred a stand-alone Bill, but that is neither here nor there. The fact that there are clauses in the Bill that relate to establishing an independent public advocate is very welcome; better late than never. The whole purpose of the independent public advocate is not to just add a further hoop for families to jump through, or a further stage that families need to go through at the beginning of the process. It is to stop the aftermath of public disasters going so badly wrong, as the aftermath of Hillsborough did.
It is more than 34 years since that disaster happened. We all remember that it was televised—there are hours and hours of film of that disaster. It is not as if it happened in secret and that what had really gone on had to be winkled out; it was televised live at the time. It cannot be right that it should have taken such a long time for those families to have properly acknowledged what happened to their loved ones, and for the very many thousands of traumatised survivors who witnessed that horror—they were not just from Liverpool, because there were two teams playing in that semi-final—to have properly acknowledged what happened. For that to have gone on for so long, with any controversy at all about what happened, when Lord Justice Taylor, within three months of the original disaster, set out in his interim report substantially correctly, although not totally correctly, the full causes and reasons, shows how badly things can go wrong in public disasters when there are interested parties who try to deflect the blame, and when state organisations, whether it be the police or others, try to make sure that their reputation is not trashed by responsibility being pinned on them and are willing to do anything and use any amount of resource to blame somebody else. That is what happened. So it is no surprise that things can go badly awry.
One could just say that Hillsborough was a terrible example, and it was. The circumstances of every disaster are different, but there are common elements. One common element is that, where state-funded organisations —the arms of the state—are involved, they appear to think that their reputation matters more than the truth. They appear to think that any amount of budget that they have over the years can and ought to be used to defend that reputation, and they often appear to think that it is perfectly alright to blame the victims, to blame others—to blame anybody but themselves. That is what we have to stop.
Sarah Champion
My hon. Friend has been an amazing campaigner on this, but does she agree that one of the commonalities between Hillsborough, Orgreave and child sexual exploitation in Rotherham was South Yorkshire police, so when these patterns are formed, the Government need to do something to step in?
Maria Eagle
My hon. Friend is correct. Where that does happen, if there is no accountability for what goes wrong, especially where there is venality—which there was at Orgreave and which was shown again at Hillsborough by South Yorkshire police— and if there is no reckoning, that kind of behaviour will not be corrected. One value of making sure that the aftermath of disasters does not go so terribly wrong is that one can keep organisations that may be tempted to behave in that way on the straight and narrow. I remember that, after the King’s Cross fire, the person responsible for London Regional Transport, who was found to be responsible for the cover-up that happened, was sacked. That then makes a big difference to the way in which the organisations involved deal with the aftermath of a disaster.
The whole purpose of having an independent public advocate is to try to ensure that, in the aftermath of such disasters, things do not go wrong. I am glad to see that the Secretary of State has re-read my Public Advocate (No. 2) Bill, because I know he will have read it before. I have been introducing the Bill in this House since 2016, and it has been introduced in the House of Lords by my friend the noble Lord Wills. My Bill proposes what finally worked for Hillsborough—the Hillsborough independent panel. It was a non-legal process, because almost all the legal processes and cases failed, but it was used to shine a light of transparency on what actually happened and to stop cover-ups. If the cover-up at Hillsborough could have been stopped from the beginning, we would not be 34 years down the line trying to untangle all of the intervening processes. The Hillsborough independent panel would not have had to look at millions of documents; it could have looked at far fewer if it had been doing its work within, say, two or three years.
In addition, any organisation seeking to use its powers and its people to organise cover-ups would know that the rock was going to be lifted up, that a torch was going to be shone upon what was under it and that it would not get away with the kind of cover-ups openly organised by South Yorkshire Police after Hillsborough to subvert the findings of the public inquiry, the Taylor Interim Report, which clearly blamed the police, made remarks about the way the police have behaved and said that they should not have behaved like that.
The police then set about simply using the inquests to change the impression of the interim report—and didn’t they succeed in that? From then on, no legal process worked until the Hillsborough independent panel, 23 years later, was able to get a full acceptance of the truth by close examination of documents. If we had the power to do that effectively at an early stage in the aftermath of disasters, it would save millions of pounds and prevent things from going wrong for years and budgets from being reduced and diverted into looking at legal proceedings.
We see some of the same things happening elsewhere. Grenfell has already been going on for too long without a proper understanding of precisely what happened, who was to blame and what went wrong. I have constituents who lost a child in the Manchester Arena bombing; even with the inquests and the inquiry put together to run concurrently, it has still been over five years since the bombing. These processes can extend for many years.
There will unfortunately be more disasters. Although we can try to minimise their occurrence, they are by their nature events that go wrong in combination, in a way that means terrible things happen. However, if we have a way to stop their aftermath going as wrong as those of some of the disasters over the years, we will not only be doing a real service to the victims and survivors of those disasters, who have got quite enough to be dealing with having lost their loved ones, but saving a lot of money in the end for the state.
The investigations into Hillsborough over the years have cost millions upon millions of pounds. The budget of any public advocate would be a lot lower than that and, if they were able to stop things going wrong, we would be doing ourselves a favour. I value very much the fact that provisions are now published and the Secretary of State is intent upon legislating, but there are two main reasons why the Government proposals will not work as my Bill intends.
The Government proposals deny agency to bereaved families in calling the advocate into action. One of the things anybody who is bereaved in a public disaster will say is that they stop being an ordinary person out of the public limelight and, at a time when they are having to cope with the grief of losing a loved one, suddenly the spotlight of the entire nation is upon them and their family as they try to grieve. Things are done to the family; things are set up outwith their capacity to arrange them, such as the inquest, to which they are often not party so they certainly do not get legal aid, and the inquiry, at which perhaps they might not necessarily get representation. All those things happen around them while they are in a fog of grief, wondering what is going on. They feel powerless; they feel “done-to”. They do not feel that they have any capacity to influence or be a part of what is happening, or to speak any kind of truth to any kind of power. They often feel like spare parts, third parties, not involved. Yet the families of a disaster are the most deeply involved, because they have lost the most, so it is tremendously important to give them collective agency to decide that the advocate should be involved, rather than saying, “Oh, and here is another thing we are going to do for you and give to you, whether you want it or not, and you will not have any part in deciding.” My Bill does that; the Secretary of State’s proposals do not.
There also has to be a power to be not just a sign-poster. I do not object to the provisions in the Bill enabling the advocate to help, signpost and do those kinds of things for bereaved families—that can be helpful—but it cannot be only that. I know that the Hillsborough families had people trying to signpost them to things, and that did not work with what was going on at that time in respect of that particular disaster. The point of the proposals in my Bill, which are not currently in the Government Bill, is to enable the advocate to establish a Hillsborough panel-type arrangement to guarantee transparency, ensuring that the advocate is therefore a data controller and has the documentation that they need. It should be an awful lot less than the Hillsborough independent panel had to collect, because not as much time will have passed and one would expect it to be done at an earlier stage in the aftermath of any disaster.
If amendments enabling the advocate to be a data controller and to establish an independent panel were accepted, giving the families agency to decide for themselves whether they want the involvement of the public advocate, that would enable the provision to do what I want it to do—prevent the aftermath of disasters from going so disastrously wrong for bereaved families. I have dealt with a number of these kinds of issues in my constituency over the 26 years that I have been a Member of this House—I feel old enough—and if we were able to do that, we could prevent things from going wrong and would not therefore have any instances whereby, 34 years later, we in this Chamber are still discussing what went on, as we do with what happened at Hillsborough in 1989. We should not have to do that. Those families should have peace, but they still do not have it.
I believe very strongly that, if we can prevent that kind of thing from happening to other families who are, through no fault of their own, caught up in disasters that they did not want to be caught up in, resulting in bereavement and pain, we would do the whole country a service. That would help a small number of people, it would not cost that much, and it would save a lot of public money over time, but the provisions, as currently drafted, will not be effective enough to do that.
I see the right hon. and learned Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) in his place. I also had meetings with him about these provisions, and he was very helpful. I hope that the Secretary of State will keep an open mind and will think that we are all on the same side. We want something effective to be done; we do not want to add some kind of process that will not make things better enough, thereby missing an opportunity to make things better than they are.
I do not care who legislates for that. If it is a Labour Government, I will nag them just as much as I have been discussing it with Conservative Ministers, of whom I have met an awful lot over the past few years—many of them are in the Chamber now, in fact. I hope that, between us all, we can take this forward, because it would be a cheap way of ensuring that we save a lot of public money over time, and would really help the families of those who are needlessly and through no fault of their own caught up in future public disasters—we hope that they will be few, but disasters happen. It would provide the Hillsborough families with the comfort of knowing that the horrendous experience they have gone through over 34-plus years will not be suffered by anyone else unlucky enough to be caught up in a public disaster.
Now is our chance to tackle this issue, so I ask the Secretary of State please not to defend every word of the current drafting and to have a more open mind about what we can achieve. There is a real opportunity for us, cross party, to make a big difference to the lives of a small number of people who will have enough to deal with when their family gets caught up in a disaster and they lose somebody. We can really make a difference, and I hope the Secretary of State will be open to doing so. I am perfectly happy to talk to him and to the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, the right hon. Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), about how best to do that. We need this legislation now. Let us make sure we are better prepared if another disaster happens.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
It is a real pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), and I will come on to the independent public advocate shortly. We have been in touch about the issue in the past; there is a great deal to say about it, and I agree with so much that the right hon. Lady said.
I am delighted that a victims Bill is finally here for us all on Second Reading. I am also delighted to see the Lord Chancellor in his place, and I welcome and congratulate him. I would like to thank the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, the right hon. Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), who has been so constructive on victim engagement, which I have found refreshing. I have spent a great deal of time in government speaking to individual victims, and the Minister of State—like all right hon. and hon. Members—will recognise the importance of doing that and of learning the lessons so that we can be better legislators and give those victims a voice and strong representation.
I feel like I have been speaking about getting a victims Bill for some time—back in 2011, I proposed a ten-minute rule Bill—and we have also seen manifesto commitments from the Conservative party and other parties, so the day is long overdue. In the debate so far, we have heard frustrations about how the Bill has been drafted, what it covers and what it does not cover—I will touch on that as well—but, importantly, it is here at long last and it could be a really important piece of legislation. There is no doubt that it will be amended, but it is clear from the debate thus far that there is much to unite us on behalf of victims. We can work cross-party on so many aspects, and we should seek to do that.
I pay tribute to everyone who has been involved in the Bill and the pre-legislative scrutiny. I pay particular tribute to victims. I have spent days, weeks and months with victims, and I would do that all over again, because we in this House have a duty to them to represent them, and also to recognise the pain and suffering they have gone through and how we can bring about institutional change on their behalf. Many organisations representing victims have campaigned hard, and I worked with many of them in my time as Home Secretary. I was also once chair of the all-party parliamentary group for victims and witnesses.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), who chaired the Justice Committee’s pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Bill. I also pay tribute, for their work as former Secretaries of State for Justice, to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland), who walked in just at the right moment to hear some important parts of the debate, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab). I have had the privilege of working with them both on behalf of victims as well as on so many other aspects of Government legislation, including policing, crime, courts and sentencing—the things that actually do bring about change.
We recognise that this legislation is needed to provide more rights and support for victims. They are human beings who are trying to navigate their way around the system of the state, and I have already mentioned institutional state failure, which I think will become a dominant theme in this debate and, I suspect, in Committee. It is important that we recognise that, because our duty is to redress the imbalance in the criminal justice system, where too often the needs of victims are forgotten, neglected, ignored or even just bypassed through process and bureaucracy. There is a ton of that in the system.
Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for her kind words. It indeed was a pleasure to work closely with her and Home Office colleagues, meeting victims, dealing with their problems and individual cases, and being forceful about the agenda we wanted to pursue. Does she agree that in clause 15 of the Bill, which relates to guidance for independent sexual violence advisers and independent domestic violence advisers, we are now in law recognising the invaluable work that these experts do? It is shown, particularly in sexual violence cases, that the input of an ISVA will often make the difference between a case going forward and a case collapsing.
Priti Patel
I completely agree with my right hon. and learned Friend. There is always more that we can do in this area, and there will be lessons we can learn from professionals and professional practitioners, and I believe they should be engaged and listened to. My hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) has already mentioned that in relation to part 3 of the Bill, and we must constantly learn, because we have all been shocked and horrified by the cases of victims—I will highlight some in the course of this debate—the types of crimes they have been subjected to and their treatment by the institutions of the state and the criminal justice system. That needs remedy, and we have the opportunity now to bring serious redress.
That redress will not be judged by words or pieces of paper; it is the implementation that matters. I have always focused a lot on delivery in government, and redress is about practical implementation. The Bill could be the game-changer in improving public confidence in the criminal justice system. All of us—this is not partisan—want that. We all want to ensure access to justice and that justice takes place in a swift and timely way. The improvement of services and support for victims of crimes must be a priority.
Progress has been made. One area to highlight from my time at the Home Office, was the work that we did collectively—because it was both parties—through the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, which provided much more focus on practical support and services to victims. We should always put victims first and target resources to deliver the right outcomes and support services, including enshrining more rights in law, which is absolutely right.
We have also seen police and crime commissioners’ role being much more focused—and there is more we can do in this area—on supporting victims of crime, which the Lord Chancellor mentioned in his opening remarks. Working collaboratively across statutory services is important. I want to give a positive plug to some of my colleagues who are police and crime commissioners. Roger Hirst, the police, fire and crime commissioner for Essex, is outstanding. He has put a strong focus in his police and crime plan on supporting victims. He is an excellent commissioner, and my constituents across the county of Essex can absolutely see the changes that plan is bringing, supported by our chief constable, B. J. Harrington. Last week I met Alison Hernandez, the outstanding police and crime commissioner for Devon and Cornwall, who is working with Victim Support. I spent many hours, weeks and months working with Victim Support when I chaired the all-party parliamentary group. There are first-hand experiences that we can learn about from those practitioners and bring into statute and practice, empowering parts of our statutory services, including these key roles, and that is vital.
The current code of practice for victims needs updating as the Bill progresses through the House, because we need to test the statutory provisions relating to the code. I want to see, learn and understand how they can be operationalised for delivery purposes. I want us to avoid the whole concept of a postcode lottery, where some parts of the country do better than others. We should be looking to drive consistency in outcomes and ensure that we have the right frameworks in place for accountability. Where the state fails, there should be sanctions, and I will come on to that shortly in relation to the independent public advocate. I would also like stronger assurance—not just further assurance, but stronger assurance—about the delivery of the code and how that will work.
Will Ministers in due course publish the proposed draft code, or highlight areas in the current code where they would like to see directional changes, because we need to get the balance right for victims? To ensure that the rights of victims are enforceable, a balance is needed between rights and the measures enshrined in statute, so that we are better off in terms of outcomes. That is where a number of victims charities and organisations supporting domestic abuse victims and survivors all have a great deal of knowledge and expertise. Ensuring a much stronger victim-centric approach to the criminal justice system is vital to drive the right outcomes. On that point, clause 6 rightly focuses on criminal justice bodies raising awareness of the code but does not include provisions directly to raise awareness among staff and the providers they may commission. I have no doubt that that will come under greater scrutiny in Committee.
On clause 1(2), which refers to victims being affected by criminal conduct, we want assurances that victims of antisocial behaviour will also be afforded some of the rights and protections under the Bill and the code. The lines between criminal conduct and antisocial behaviour are too often blurred. I hear what the Labour party says about antisocial behaviour—we all agree about this—but we must be crystal clear about the definition and its application within the criminal justice system. Antisocial behaviour blights lives and communities—that is a fact—and the perpetrators need to be held to account within the criminal justice system. That is in effect what we are trying to do, but we need to make sure that the current code is not weak in this area and that we have the relevant join-up in the system.
On victim impact statements, the Bill and the code need to examine how we ensure that the voice of victims is heard in the courts. At the opening of the debate an example was given of a victim who was unable to provide such a statement. That is sometimes because the police, the CPS and the courts make decisions that do not focus on the victims, and that is where we must get the right balance between victims and offenders. I am afraid that the process can often act fast for offenders with complete disregard to the victims—for example, in cases of theft or burglary, where quick disposal and, if I may say so, lenient sentences are prioritised over providing sentences that reflect the severity of offending and the impact on victims.
As an example, one of Britain’s most prolific offenders—responsible for hundreds of offences, including crimes against my constituents—was let off by the courts, let back into the community on a form of rehabilitation scheme, and given housing and access to services, but still went on to reoffend. The victims were not aware or informed until they saw this case in the media, and they were absolutely appalled. Their views of the impact of the offending on them had not been sought or heard, and they were completely ignored and dismissed. The Bill is an opportunity to shine a light on that area.
Another area where victims have been let down, and where we could provide improvement and a greater voice for victims, is compensation. There may be scope to amend the Bill in relation to compensation for the victims of crime. The courts have powers to issue compensation orders, which compel offenders to pay for their crimes and give recompense to their victims. However, sometimes —in fact, too often—these provisions are inconsistently applied. When there were the riots in 2011 which caused millions of pounds-worth of damage, I asked questions to the then Justice Secretary about the number of compensation orders issued and the data was not available. I suspect Members across the House have many individual cases in their constituencies, and I have many too and have been to my regional Crown Prosecution Service where I am afraid orders have not been followed through and there has been a huge sense of injustice. Back in 2011 many businesses and companies were left picking up the cost, but for individuals these crimes can be life-changing, severe and horrific, and the failure to enforce these orders can lead to devastating impacts.
A former constituent of mine was blinded by an abusive ex-partner, impacting on her ability to work. Not only did her partner get away with a short sentence and was let out before the halfway point, but no compensation order was imposed upon him. My constituent was left blinded in one eye; that has changed her life and she is a mother. I have spent a great deal of time with her over the years and it is a harrowing case. Sadly, she is a victim of our system and there will be many other similar cases.
I hope that during the passage of this Bill we can give light to such cases and examine how we can represent those victims in a much better way and ensure they are not let down by the courts or the CPS. I have spent many hours with our regional CPS on this; we need to find better ways to support individuals.
The subject of the independent public advocate has rightly already had a comprehensive hearing in this debate both from the Lord Chancellor and colleagues, and I pay tribute to all colleagues across the House. When I was Home Secretary I spent many harrowing hours with the families of the Hillsborough disaster, but, if I may say so, they were also deeply fulfilling hours when I was hearing from them. Bishop James Jones is a remarkable individual and his report is moving and very thoughtful. He has put forward great solutions with the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood and the former Prime Minister my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), who spent a great deal of time with me. I also worked with other Ministers to understand the role of the IPA and push forward its establishment.
I welcome the provisions in part 2 of the Bill and the establishment of the IPA to support victims of major incidents. The tragedies of Hillsborough have been well aired in this House, but there are so many lessons to learn; the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood touched on all aspects of this and I do not disagree with her at all. The history of Hillsborough is littered with institutional state failure. State institutions have let down those families. I have heard so many comments through the discussions I have had with representatives, the families and Bishop James Jones about issues from cover-up and collusion to state-sponsored denial and the role of South Yorkshire police. The history of this is appalling.
There are other tragedies, too. We have recently received the Manchester Arena bombing reports. I set up that public inquiry and every single aspect of it was devastating and harrowing. I have also met many family members, including children, mothers, dads, uncles and grandparents. I genuinely think we can do much more as a Government and just by changing our laws to bring parity to the justice system to give them voice. That is very important.
I saw that with the Grenfell families as well. There is nothing more harrowing than going to meet them in the area where they used to live—their own community—and hearing about the injustices they have suffered. I pay tribute to all those families for their relentless campaigning: they are campaigning for good reasons and to give voice to their suffering because they do not want others to experience the tragic circumstances they have faced.
During my time at the Home Office we looked at this issue and the role of an IPA sitting alongside the “duty of candour”, which I absolutely support as it will help to rebalance the system. The duty of candour would bring so much to light. It would shine a spotlight and completely change and safeguard individuals’ ability to give evidence at public inquiries, and really ensure that voices are listened to. That is needed, because there is an imbalance in the system, with victims and families who are seeking trust, truth, assurances and answers facing what I can only describe as the machinery of the state. They just feel intimidated. As we have heard, they are told that they are signposted, but it is either totally inadequate or the wrong kind of signposting. That machinery of the state is often tooled up with expertise, lawyers and unlimited resources while they are grappling for resources, so they cannot get access to justice.
I have an example from my own constituency in Essex, where an inquiry is taking place into the deaths of mental health in-patients between 2000 and 2020. We are dealing with incredibly disturbing and harrowing cases, but families have faced frustrations over many years in seeking answers. I believe that an independent public advocate would help them. I have been pushing for that on their behalf and recently had discussions with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. However, I genuinely believe that this could be a breakthrough moment—perhaps we can bring about the right changes through amendments in Committee—where we can all work together to learn from the harrowing experiences and tragic deaths that have taken place to make for an effective, independent public advocate role and give it the independence that it needs.
I do not want to dwell on part 3—it has already been given an airing—but I will touch on the point made by the Chair of the Justice Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill). There seem to be endless state failures in dealing with offenders. I have already spoken about institutional state failures on behalf of victims, but there must be a stronger and better way to deal with offenders who have been let down, perhaps through successive legislation and their rehabilitation. We have a cycle or revolving door of repeat offenders and offending, and I am afraid that sometimes judges and the courts are failing to send offenders to prison. There is a panoply of issues that we need to look at.
The public and the victims of crime expect offenders to be sent to prison to serve their sentences. But, at the same time, we see how often that does not happen and how offenders go through a cycle that does not address any of their offending, while the costs for the state continue to go up and up. This part of the Bill needs to be looked at. I believe in firm and fair sentences and have always been of that persuasion, but—we know, because we have all seen examples of it in our casework—we cannot have victims finding out about offenders being back in their neighbourhoods indirectly. All sorts of problems then take place in the community. So, areas of part 3 do need to be addressed.
The Bill is obviously long overdue. It could be a groundbreaking piece of legislation to address so many of the criminal justice system’s inadequacies, including the historical adequacies when it comes to giving voice to victims of all sorts of crimes. Crime is an awful thing for anyone to experience, but given the severity of the types of crime, we owe it to all the victims of crimes ranging from the Hillsborough disaster to terrorist events, domestic abuse and rape, to ensure that the Bill gives them representation, rights and access to the criminal justice system and deals with those anomalies and imbalances. I hope that we can all work constructively across the House to achieve that.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)
It is a pleasure to speak on Second Reading. I commend right hon. and hon. Members for the contributions that we have heard so far. This House is undoubtedly at its best when we engage in serious debate free from tribal engagement.
My contribution is largely based on the experiences of the family of my constituent Michael O’Leary, who was murdered in what was described by prosecutors as a “carefully planned execution” in January 2020. His body was desecrated in an attempt to hide the crime. The key bit of evidence that secured the guilty verdict was only obtained in March 2020 when a search of the murderer’s property found tissue matter that matched Mr O’Leary’s DNA—a piece of the small intestine—in an oil barrel. I cannot imagine the suffering involved for the family, not only having lost a loved one in such a manner, but having been deprived of the opportunity to process their grief through burial of the body. Mr O’Leary’s son Wayne said that families face a “lifetime of unanswered questions.”
Following the murder trial, my constituents have campaigned for a new offence of desecration or concealment of a body, dubbed Helen’s law 2. Helen’s law, which was adopted in the Prisoners (Disclosure of Information About Victims) Act 2020, means that an individual guilty of murder would not be eligible for parole if they refuse to reveal the location of a victim. I pay tribute to Helen McCourt’s family, and all the other families. Helen’s law 2 aims to increase punishment for those guilty of desecration or concealment, or in the very least to amend sentencing guidelines to reflect the extra suffering imposed on the families of victims. We await progress on the campaign.
I understand that there are complexities, but I hope that the UK Government continue to seek a way forward, considering that, unfortunately, these sorts of heinous crimes are becoming more common. I can certainly say that in the experience of my constituents, the additional suffering of knowing what was done to their loved one after he was murdered is beyond comprehension.
Following discussions with my constituents, I would like to take the opportunity to raise their views on the Bill. Victims’ families are concerned that a Bill on victims’ rights has been brought forward even though the Victims’ Commissioner post has been vacant since last September, following the resignation of Dame Vera Baird. Upon her resignation, Dame Vera said that she was disappointed by the lack of engagement from the Government in relation to her concerns about the Bill as the primary voice of victims. The resignation letter is quite damning, with the former commissioner accusing the Government of “downgrading” victims’ concerns. I am sure that Ministers appreciate families’ concerns that a Bill has been brought forward without a key advocate on their behalf being in post.
The Bill obviously concerns a very emotive subject for families. Changing the title from the Victims Bill to the Victims and Prisoners Bill is, in itself, offensive to them. Families believe that a victims Bill should stand on its own—a point made by the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle).
From a Welsh perspective, there is concern that the key parts of the Bill refer to England only. I am sure that that is only a drafting error, but both clauses 12 and 14 refer to police authorities in England alone. I suspect that the four Welsh police authorities should be included.
Victims’ campaigners are concerned that the rights set out in the Bill are not legally enforceable. The former Victims’ Commissioner pointed out in her response to the Bill that there is no accountability mechanism if a criminal justice partner does not deliver on those rights, and no right of recourse for families. Perhaps the Government are concerned about the extra cost that may be incurred as a result of any enforceable rights, but without a right of recourse it could be argued that the Bill’s content on victims is aspirational—a point made by the Chair of the Justice Committee, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill).
The former commissioner, Dame Vera, argues that the Bill should seek to emulate the Australian model. Policies pioneered in the state of Victoria provide a formal role for victims within criminal justice proceedings, leading to a cultural shift from, according to Dame Vera,
“agencies viewing victims as peripheral to their function – bystanders to proceedings – to a core and valued constituent part of the justice system.”
I am no expert, but strengthening the powers of the Victims’ Commissioner role would be one way forward. From what I can see, the Victims’ Commissioner performs an advocacy role at present. In Wales, the Welsh Language Commissioner has specific regulatory functions and powers, which include setting standards in the public sector and deciding on complaints and investigations. Following investigations, the commissioner has the power to initiate enforcement action. Strengthening the Bill in that manner would give the Victims’ Commissioner real teeth and would empower victims.
Under part 3, the new powers proposed will allow the Secretary of State to make Parole Board decisions on the release of prisoners. Families are concerned that they will not have the opportunity to make a victim impact statement or be included in licensing decisions, as is currently the case—a point made by the former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel). Furthermore, families are concerned that they will not have a voice during the appeals stage, as prisoners would surely contest a decision by the Secretary of State to keep them incarcerated. They will further lose their rights to make a victim impact statement or contribute towards licensing decisions at this stage—a point made by the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis).
The prisoners section of the Bill was not part of the original consultation; therefore. its removal should be considered. Campaigners believe that a second consultation should have been considered before the latest draft was published. Campaign groups raise concerns that the scope of the Bill is not wide enough to include other rights for victims. As I stated, it is vital that rights must be considered while putting victims at the heart of the criminal justice system, such as through free transcripts of trials involving loved ones. Campaigners tell me that a bereaved family were recently quoted £14,000 in costs for the transcript of a 17-day trial. Clearly, that is prohibitive.
The Human Rights Act 1998 is referred to only in part 3. That is upsetting to victims and bereaved families, as it implies that human rights apply only to prisoners and not victims. That further exacerbates the imbalances of power that they believe exist between victims and offenders. Before the Bill proceeds to Committee, I hope that Ministers will increase engagement with victims groups and bring forward necessary amendments to alleviate their concerns.
Dame Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate. I warmly welcome the Bill, and in advance I thank the Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), who I know, together with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, will engage thoroughly with all the issues raised. I thank the Justice Committee for an excellent piece of pre-legislative scrutiny; my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) who chairs the Committee does a great job for us all.
The Bill is complex and covers a great deal, from prisoners and parole to victims of major incidents. We have heard a lot about those two issues already. I will turn my remarks firmly to victims of crime—the first part of the Bill—particularly with regards to the victims code. This is a hugely important piece of legislation for victims. I believe that we have a strong justice system only if it is a deterrent that, yes, provides punishment, but also recognises and supports victims. Otherwise, we risk falling short. To be the victim of crime is not only devastating but can be incredibly disorienting. Attempting to navigate the complex criminal justice system as a layperson is not easy. The perpetrator has numerous agencies telling them what they can and cannot do. Certainly, that has been the way in the past. Largely, victims have been left to navigate life post crime themselves.
I am sure that the House will not mind me saying that quite recently I was a victim of crime, which led to a successful conviction of harassment by my local Crown Prosecution Service in Hampshire. I was listening to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips); I would not want to comment on what she said, but I cannot commend Wessex Crown Prosecution Service highly enough. Unlike the hon. Lady, I was kept thoroughly informed at every step. I will not comment too much on it because, unfortunately, the individual has transgressed and is before the courts again, but it is important to make the point that the CPS in Wessex got it right. It might not get it right all the time, but when it does, it is important for victims. I hope that the Crown Prosecution Service in the hon. Lady’s constituency takes a leaf out of the books in my area.
The 2020 code of practice was a good start and put some important principles in place. What is great about the Bill is that it takes them forward and puts them on a statutory footing. It seems perverse that the justice system could be better explained to perpetrators than to victims. The Bill will help equalise that disparity, by putting the victims code on a statutory footing, making what victims can and should expect even clearer than before.
An important part of the Bill is putting a duty on relevant bodies to raise awareness of the victims code with victims, which will make a big impact and be greatly welcomed. The victims code is a detailed document containing the important rights that victims can expect, but it is of little use if people do not know it exists, so it is right that those with responsibility for aspects of the code can make it clear to victims how they can use it.
We know that services working in isolation miss problems and opportunities for support, which is why I also welcome the Bill’s focus on co-ordinating services across relevant bodies and strengthening local services. The Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s recent report, “A patchwork of provision”, showed that the level of service and support that victims can reliably expect is not uniform across the country and depends greatly on where they live. I welcome the consistency that the Bill shows. We need to ensure we get that consistency across the whole United Kingdom, wherever people live.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) talked about the role of police and crime commissioners in getting local consistency embedded in our constituencies. I am pleased that my local police and crime commissioner, Donna Jones, has put in place similar initiatives to those mentioned by my right hon. Friend, as well as delivering, well ahead of time, an extra 600 police officers in our county. My police and crime commissioner is consulting on a victims hub—the consultation is ongoing—so that victims will know how to get the support that the Bill wants to ensure is available to them. Having quicker and tailored access to support services will be an important step forward in my own constituency. I urge anybody who is able to take part in the consultation to do so; it runs until Monday 21 May.
I add my support to the Bill’s provisions with regard to IDVAs and ISVAs. Indeed, I held a roundtable on Friday on the importance of tackling domestic abuse. We discussed the amazing work done by a number of different organisations in my constituency in ensuring that victims are well aware of the support available, and the hugely important role of IDVAs and ISVAs, particularly when cases come to court, which was underlined by my local police commander. Will my right hon. Friend the Minister help me to ensure that those expert individuals will in future be able to stay with victims in court? That issue was raised with me at the roundtable.
Having someone independent of the police present in the immediate aftermath of a crime can be crucial, but making sure they continue to be involved, when a case comes to court, can help with some of the problems that exist for victims because of the great deal of time it can take for relevant evidence and individuals to be brought to court. IDVAs and ISVAs are often the only people involved whose sole focus is the victim. As much as individual police officers regularly go out of their way to care for victims of crime, the reality is that police priorities will mean that sometimes their focus goes elsewhere.
I highlight to the Minister the section of the Bill about support for victims, because the victims code may go further than he thinks. In addition, I have raised the issue of the role of non-disclosure agreements with him on a number of occasions. They can cover up crimes, particularly those in the workplace and those that disproportionately impact women, such as sexual harassment or other forms of abuse in the workplace.
When it comes to non-disclosure agreements and sexual harassment in the workplace, the Government have been working on strengthening support for victims for a great deal of time. The Government have backed universities in banning the use of non-disclosure agreements to cover up misconduct, and they are looking at how they could go further in stopping non-disclosure agreements from being used inappropriately. Unfortunately, it is increasingly common practice for non-disclosure clauses to be included in settlement agreements, although it is perfectly possible to settle without them.
When victims of misconduct—often sexual misconduct and usually women—make allegations, an all too frequent response is a settlement in which an employer can see allegations dropped in return for a non-disclosure agreement that will stop the victim from speaking out, sometimes lawfully and sometimes not so much. No matter what, victims feeling that they cannot speak out cannot be what we want to see in this place.
An employee can feel trapped. When I chaired the Women and Equalities Committee, we published at least two reports on the impact on victims of non-disclosure agreements and we heard first-hand evidence that people felt not only that they could not speak out about their experience, but that it made them feel even worse and re-victimised. Sometimes, I am sure in error, legal counsel could put a non-disclosure agreement into a contract or severance agreement, but more often that is done by human resources departments, which probably take something offline and give it to an individual to sign. That means that a person who has experienced significant wrongdoing in the workplace can feel that they cannot speak out.
I hope the Minister might want to look at how the Victims and Prisoners Bill could take the excellent work that the Government have done with universities, calling out the appalling impact of non-disclosure agreements, a stage further. I am sure he is not surprised that I want to thank Zelda Perkins for the work that she has done through the organisation she has set up, Can’t Buy My Silence. She is continuing to campaign hard to stop non-disclosure agreements being used in the way they were against her and her colleagues, when she was unable to speak out about Harvey Weinstein and the appalling way that he treated a number of women in his organisation. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister is listening closely to how we could use this excellent Bill to take further the Government’s work on victim support and outlawing the misuse of non-disclosure agreements.
I was pleased to support the then Secretary of State for Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan), in launching the university pledge to stop the use of non-disclosure agreements in universities. I strongly supported the subsequent ban through the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023. I call on the Government to expand the ban on NDAs from educational settings to other workplaces through the victims code in the Bill. In the not-too-distant future, I hope the Minister will have some meetings with me to see how we can ensure that the very real impact that the work done by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham had on universities can have a broader impact. That will ensure we protect many more victims, over and above those he was envisaging in his first draft of the Bill.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller). I fully back her calls; as the Bill goes into Committee, I am sure we will work across the House to improve some elements it.
I find myself in the unenviable position of being ready to critique quite a bit of the Bill—not necessarily because of what is in it, but because of what is not in it. I say “unenviable” because without doubt the Secretary of State, who is not currently in his place, and the Minister have open ears for the things being said in this Chamber. The Secretary of State alluded to my contact with him over the weekend; I found him to be incredibly helpful about some difficult cases, specifically around the family court. I suppose I might focus my attention and ire about what is missing on the previous Secretary of State rather than the current one, who has been in post for a couple of weeks and I am not entirely sure has had the time to properly put himself into the Bill. I look forward to seeing that happen as we go through Committee.
We all agree that we do not want victims of crime to be left in terrible situations. We do not want there to be a postcode lottery or people who have suffered crimes not to get justice in this country—I do not doubt that for a second when it comes to the vast majority of people in this House. Unfortunately, however, when politics intervenes I sometimes see a huge amount of headline and very little frontline going on. Some of the things missing from the Bill need to be put into it, to make some of the Prime Minister’s words mean something more than a cracking headline in the Express. We have to work to get that to be the case. I will go over some of the things that should be included to make the Prime Minister good on some of his words.
I very much hope that sexual exploitation is not a wedge issue, but one that we would all focus on getting right. Recently, the Prime Minister talked about there being an element of charge around the duty to report in cases of sexual exploitation. If people fail on their watch as professionals to act collectively to report cases of sexual exploitation or any form of child abuse, they should be subject to a standard that they have to live by. The issue has been consulted on three times in the last 10 years—why on earth is it not in the Bill? The Prime Minister took to various plinths and said that he wanted it to happen. “Crack on!” would be my advice.
Nothing was released on the day the Prime Minister went out to talk about sexual exploitation, following years of many different inquiries from all over the country and amazing work by my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion). Why is none of it reflected in the Bill? Why is there nothing about children living in unregulated accommodation or about powers to change how we deal with the sexual exploitation of British children? I feel that there are huge gaps when it comes to things we have been promised—merely headline, rather than frontline.
The other area that is everybody’s favourite wedge issue —one that the Prime Minister certainly wants to lean on constantly—is the idea of specialist women-only services, which have become the absolute tour de force of a thing that people want to defend. Let me say what is happening across our country because of a commissioning environment created over the last decade. Specialist women-only services have given way to generic services that could offer a lower contract price in local authority areas. Nothing in the Bill says what specialist women’s services are—women do not even get a mention. Nothing in the Bill says what a specialist sexual violence or domestic abuse service is.
I am not talking about a Johnny-come-lately, “We noticed that people care about domestic abuse so we’ll set up a random domestic abuse charity and make it for everybody.” In the last 10 years, the commissioning environment created in local authorities, and police and crime commissioners, have seen specialist women-only domestic abuse services being told that they absolutely have to see men and will lose their contracts if they do not. Why on earth would we not just commission specialist men’s services if that is what we wanted? We want specialist LGBT services in this space, so why on earth would we not have a strategy to commission them?
What is happening in the broader area that I represent—not my constituency per se—is that contracts are given to generic housing associations or broader victims’ charities. I have a case of a woman who has been taken to eight multi-agency risk assessment conferences; she has been risk-assessed as being at high risk of harm and death eight times. Yet the same agency—apparently a specialist domestic abuse service; one I had never heard of—is also now supporting the perpetrator, who is claiming to be a victim of domestic abuse. It is completely and utterly dangerous to provide that kind of “specialist” service.
If the Prime Minister cared to make more of a headline out of the argument about women-only spaces, the Bill could make it incredibly clear what we mean by specialist women-only domestic and sexual violence services. I implore the Minister to make that happen. There is nothing that says what a specialist agency is. Even the duty to collaborate—honestly, I have heard so many serious case or domestic homicide reviews that say that people did not collaborate! It is not true: people do collaborate, but no one acts. This is about action. People talk to each other all the time. Agencies are constantly passing things on one to another, but people have to actually act and feel empowered to do something with the information.
The Secretary of State, a man I deeply like and respect, said a number of things earlier. The general patter in this place would make it seem that there are independent domestic abuse and independent sexual violence advisers everywhere, as far as the eye can see. That is laughable—in the area where I live, the wait for one at the moment would be at least a year, and they are rationed according to whether someone has come forward to the police. When I did the job, that was absolutely not the case—the victim did not have to be in an active process of police complaint to get access to an ISVA service, but that is exactly what is happening now across our country. The idea that IDAAs and ISVAs are everywhere or that there is anywhere near enough of them is for the birds.
The Secretary of State also said that of course young people should be able to access therapeutic support, to which I say, “Chance would be a fine thing!” I have tried to refer somebody who has been sexually exploited and is suffering from very severe suicide ideation to child and adolescent mental health services, for example. I have then been told that the assessment process will take two and a half years. It is great that the third-party thing that many in the House have campaigned for has come into force. Now let us get some counsellors for people to go to, so that there are some notes to go by. That might be an idea.
Many of us will have seen the letter today from Charlie Webster, a friend of many of us in this Chamber, and the story of her friend Katie who took her life after not being able to overcome the trauma of her situation. That is the reality on the ground.
Dame Maria Miller
I hear what the hon. Lady is saying about the availability of ISVAs in her area and about their only being connected with police cases, but should she not push back against that? There are three ISVAs in my local hospital, and they are certainly not connected with crimes; they would be called on by the staff in the emergency department as needed.
Jess Phillips
In fact, my area was the first in the west midlands to have ISVAs in a hospital, the Queen Elizabeth. I was one of the commissioners. What I want to see in a Bill such as this is not just a duty to collaborate, but a duty to commission. Every local authority area in the country, and every health provider, whether it is a public health provider, a mental health provider, an independent board, or whatever the bloody hell we call them this week—PCCs, PCGs—I apologise for swearing, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. Let us just rewind to “whatever”.
Jess Phillips
Whatever we call them this week, Madam Deputy Speaker.
The vast majority of those bodies do not commission a single support service anywhere in the country to deal with sexual or domestic abuse. In the constituencies of nearly all those who are in the Chamber today, there will be a sexual health service with no ISVAs. How is it possible to run a special sexual health service without them? The worst offender, though, is mental health services. It is unimaginable that there should be mental health services in this country that do not have specific mental health provision for victims of trauma such as sexual violence or a lifelong experience of abuse and victimisation, but most of them do not.
There may well be more ISVAs funded from the centre than there have been previously, but those funded by local authorities and police forces throughout the country have been decimated. We give with one hand and take away with another. The decimation of local authority budgets over many years has undermined victims’ services to the point where specialisms no longer really matter, and there is a race to the bottom in lots of commissioning. I would want the Bill to reflect what specialism actually means, rather than just listening to people caring about it when it makes for good headlines—that is absolutely no criticism of anyone who is in the Chamber at the moment.
I want to make two more points specifically about things that are missing from the Bill, and what we in the Labour party will be pushing for. One, which I mentioned to the Secretary of State earlier, is Jade’s law. The Bill massively misses an opportunity in some areas—well, all areas—of the family court, which is diabolical for victims of crime, to the point where I think it is the worst part of our justice system with regard to those victims. There is a specific opportunity to say that, if someone has been sent to prison for the murder or manslaughter—so many of these cases go for manslaughter, but let us say the killing—of the other parent, they should never be entitled to parental responsibility. If I were to go out into the street and tell people that a father who had murdered a mother is allowed to decide whether the child could go to counselling, for example, they would think I was a mad, swivel-eyed feminist. However, that is the law of the land in our country and we have to do something to end that ridiculous injustice.
The Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), did a fine and decent service to everyone in the Chamber with his critique of part 3. I look forward to the conversations in Committee, but I think it important to say now that this was always meant to be the victims Bill, and it has been subverted somewhat to become the victims and prisoners Bill.
We have already had conversations about Hillsborough and unfair arms with regard to legal aid and support. Currently, part 3 provides the opportunity for appeal and review, and I am not sure that anyone would argue with that, but what comes alongside the appeal and review is a lengthy process that victims—for example, mothers of murdered daughters and fathers of murdered sons—have to go through without a penny piece of support, or anything extra, but there is money to support the perpetrators. The only allocation of actual funding in this document is for the prisoners bit, not the victims bit.
That is not what the House has been pushing for 10 years. That is not what we asked for and it is not what we should have got. I look forward very much to working with the Ministers to make the Bill considerably better than it is now, as we would all want.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in the debate, and to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), with the experiences and perspectives that she always brings to matters such as this, and her ability to convey to the House the views of many people who do not feel that they have a voice in a way that makes them feel that they do indeed have a voice here.
The mere fact of the Bill’s introduction sends a clear message of intent to be on the side of victims of crime, especially as my good friends the Secretary of State and the Minister of State—my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar)—are in charge of it. It was welcome to hear the Secretary of State say that victims should not feel that they are just spectators, but should be aware that they are participants and at the heart of the criminal justice system. I also note the excellent work by the Justice Committee, chaired by another good friend who is not currently present, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill). Back in January, the Committee published the Government’s response to its pre-legislative scrutiny report on the draft Victims Bill. It is welcome that the Government have accepted 20 of the Committee’s recommendations, which strengthen both the Bill and work in this area overall.
The Bill can be broken down into three broad areas: victims of crime, victims of major incidents, and measures relating to prisoners and parole. Every crime has a victim, be it a person, a company, wider society or the taxpayer. Being described as a victim inherently covers a wide range of situations, from seeing something that one has worked hard to acquire or make destroyed or stolen, to serious sexual or violent attacks that can leave a person and his or her loved ones with an impact which lasts a lifetime. There will also be victims who are unaware that what happened to them was an offence, having been groomed or brainwashed into thinking that what was being or had been done to them was acceptable, and only realising when they talk to someone else, or many years later, that what happened was not just wrong but criminal. I am therefore pleased that clause 1 will establish a statutory definition of “victim”, helping to clarify who is being referred to.
I also welcome the move to include bereaved families, children who have witnessed domestic abuse and children born of rape in the definition of a victim, following the pre-legislative scrutiny. Those who lose a loved one as a result of another’s deliberate or negligent act will be victims for the rest of their lives, so it is right that they are included. Similarly, children born of rape who discover their heritage will need a unique form of support which reflects the fact that they too are victims of crime.
Alongside the definition of a victim, it is welcome to see the principles of the victims code enshrined in law, and a duty placed on criminal justice bodies with police and crime commissioners to review their compliance and raise awareness of the code. I note that the code will not be in legislation; that is logical, because it allows it to be flexible and adapt to needs rather than being rigidly set in statute. It would be interesting to hear some reflections on how it will be developed and implemented, and how the House, and Parliament more widely, will be involved in the process.
It was welcome to see Devon and Cornwall’s police and crime commissioner, Alison Hernandez, in Parliament last week to launch a new website to help victims of crime. The new website, which is just one doorway to getting help, is aimed at helping victims to access the care and support that they need, and provides a single route for all victims, regardless of whether they have reported the crime. It was especially good to talk to the representatives of Victim Support who also attended the event. As the Minister may know, they are working in partnership with Alison’s office to deliver services to victims in a landmark 10-year contract, the largest contract of this type outside London. The partnership has a budget of £3.42 million for this financial year, and during 2021-22, a total of 41,112 people were supported through the pathway, with over 11,000 more people referred to therapeutic services than in the previous year. It is welcome to see this type of work being done, as it is vital that delivery at local level should match aspirations at national level. That is why the commitment to require a criminal justice inspectorate to undertake joint inspections on victims’ issues when directed to do so is also welcome.
That said, it will be interesting to hear the Minister say a bit more about how he will ensure that services for victims at local level are tailored to meet the requirements of each victim’s circumstances, rather than being a set process, which might feel to some like a tick-box exercise that does not respond to the nature of the crime. Speaking from my own experience, I had a phone call from my local police force to find out how distressed I was about paint being thrown at my office front door. That might be appropriate in that instance, but I would hope that people who had suffered crimes that had a greater impact on them personally would get a slightly different experience. How will the Minister ensure that this is not just a process that is done to meet a national standard, and that it will actually respond to the severity of the impact on the victim?
Going through the courts can be a major challenge for victims of sexual violence and domestic abuse, so I welcome the introduction of guidance on independent sexual violence advisers and independent domestic violence advisers. These roles can make a crucial difference when a victim has to relive the most difficult and traumatic time of their life and to keep going to ensure that justice is done. Ensuring that those advisers are there to provide support when needed is absolutely vital. I also very much welcome the indicated amendment on third party disclosure. We should always remember that it is the accused who is on trial, not their victim. That should be reflected throughout the process the victim faces when reporting an offence.
I welcome the move to simplify the process for victims of crime to make complaints to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman by removing the need to go through an MP where their complaint relates to their experience as a victim. Members across the House will always be happy to help a victim who wants to go to the ombudsman, but this aspect of the process can feel like a tick-box exercise as few would refuse a genuine request from a constituent for a referral. I would, however, be keen to ensure that local MPs are still sighted of the outcomes when a report on a complaint is produced, especially if it has implications beyond the individual case for how victims are supported within our constituencies.
The second part of the Bill covers support for the victims of major incidents. The origin of these changes is the appalling treatment of the victims of the Hillsborough disaster and their families, and the systematic failures of the justice system that they experienced. A series of failings led to a tragedy that saw 97 football fans lose their lives in a disaster that was both foreseeable and preventable. Those who have heard me talk on this subject before will know that many of the Coventry City fans who attended the semi-final against Leeds in 1987 were all too aware of Hillsborough’s shortcomings, including a near crush that acted as an ominous sign of what was to come two years later.
As we know, rather than getting support, sympathy and justice, the Liverpool fans and their families faced a disgraceful mix of lies, smears and cover-ups, many of which were orchestrated by the very people who were supposed to enforce the law. All these things were being done by those seeking to avoid their responsibility for what had happened, and while doing so, they could take advantage of representation and resources that were simply not available to their victims. As was touched on earlier, there was a complete inequality of arms when they were making their case.
It is therefore welcome that part 2 of the Bill provides the Justice Secretary with the power to appoint public advocates to support bereaved families and victims of major incidents. Legislating for this independent public advocate is needed and, I have to say, long-awaited. I understand the model would be that advocates would be appointed if there was an incident, rather than holding a permanent position, and that they would be able to provide support in the immediate aftermath of an incident as well as assisting victims while any police or coroners investigations, inquests or public inquiries took place. It would be helpful, though, to provide as much clarity as possible about what the thresholds for these appointments will be and how Ministers will discharge this.
Understandably, particularly given the experiences of the Hillsborough families, there will be nervousness if it appears that advocates might not be appointed in cases where victims and their families have been impacted, although I appreciate that a set of strict rules could prove to be too rigid and have the opposite effect of not seeing an appointment where one was needed. It will be interesting to hear the Minister’s reflections on how we can ensure that the victim’s voice is paramount in making their demands and that, by the creation of this role, they will never again see the ridiculous inequality of arms where families are trying to represent themselves while their own taxes are being used to throw at them every argument, defence and excuse in the book by those trying to avoid being held liable for their mistakes.
The third part of the Bill covers changes relating to prisoners and parole. Having been responsible for the General Register Office during my time in the Home Office, I welcome the move to prohibit prisoners serving a whole life order from entering into a marriage or civil partnership. Those who receive these sentences have committed the most heinous crimes and they should not be able to enjoy an event that they have almost certainly robbed their victim of the opportunity to share with their loved ones. We also have to question their motives in looking to marry and the motives of those who wish to marry them. This is a matter of public confidence in the criminal justice system. It is about preventing the most serious offenders from mocking their victims’ families by holding such an event while in custody.
I agree with the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley that it is ridiculous that someone can retain parental responsibility when they have actively taken away the other parent. I hope that the Government are listening carefully to some of these thoughts, and I share some of the comments made by Opposition Members on this. If I walked out on the street and said that a father who had murdered the mother should retain parental responsibility, few would see that as a logical, sensible or desirable outcome. It would be a bizarre one, given the reason behind it. I am sure that this is something we will revisit at a later stage of the Bill.
I also welcome the moves to clarify the meaning and application of the current statutory release test to ensure that minimising risk and public protection are at the core of decision making when determining whether to release a prisoner, rather than the balancing exercise approach articulated by the courts. The protection of the public should always be first when reviewing whether an offender is ready to be released and it is right that this is being changed.
I also welcome the intention to create a new top tier cohort of offenders: those convicted of the most serious offences who, if recommended by the Parole Board for release, will be subject to a new ministerial power to review their case. As outlined by the Secretary of State, the Bill creates a power for him, having reviewed a top tier case, to refuse to release the prisoner if necessary for public protection. This is not about arbitrary political power, as the measures clearly create a new route of appeal to the upper tribunal if the prisoner wants to challenge the Secretary of State’s decision to block their release, yet it is right that someone who is accountable to the public and to Parliament takes the final decision in relation to cases where the public’s faith in our criminal justice system may be on the line more broadly, as we have seen in some cases recently. It also makes eminent sense to require the Parole Board to include members with a background in law enforcement to help parole panels to make better decisions in assessing risk.
There are a couple of areas where I hope we can go further. One that has already been touched on is the ability of convicted sex offenders to change their name. Currently, sex offenders can change their name by deed poll and, in a bizarre loophole, the offender is the one responsible for notifying the relevant authorities of the change. This can render the child sex offender disclosure scheme, otherwise known as Sarah’s law, and the domestic violence disclosure scheme, known as Clare’s law, ineffective. Research carried out by the Safeguarding Alliance has shown that thousands of offenders are being lost from the system, posing a risk to victims and the vulnerable. I therefore wholeheartedly supported the private Member’s Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher), and I very much hope that this Bill will allow progress to be made in this area. As I have indicated, it is bizarre that that loophole still exists, and it is time we shut it down.
A second area is spiking, which affects people across society. Prolific sex offenders are able to get away with their offences because spiking means that victims may not be aware of the offences being committed. I appreciate that the 1861 law provides options for prosecution, yet it is clearly far from sufficient. A growing number of Members believe it is time to create a specific offence, one designed for mid-21st-century offenders, rather than for those who purchased poisons from a Victorian apothecary. Any move that can be made in this area would be welcome, and I suspect the Government will face increasing pressure to make one.
I am conscious that there is a lot to cover in this Bill, and I could go on for longer than my current record set on a Friday, but I will draw my remarks to a close to ensure that others have a chance to set out their thoughts. The Bill is a welcome move both to support victims and to protect the public. It makes a clear commitment to support people who have been through the worst moment of their life, and to help people who have lost loved ones in disasters to get the advocacy they need to get answers and justice. There will inevitably be debates about details and aspects on which there may be a will to go further, but those are reasons for the Bill to pass its Second Reading this evening.
Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
It is with profound sadness that I express my devastation at the recent murder of my constituent Suma Begum. My thoughts are with all Suma’s loved ones at this most difficult and painful time.
As a survivor of domestic abuse, and as co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on domestic violence and abuse, I will be concentrating my remarks accordingly. I am afraid that I share the concerns about whether the Bill will, in fact, strengthen victims’ rights. The Justice Committee said the draft Bill “does not appear” to do any more than existing legislation. Specialist domestic abuse organisations argue
“there is a long way to go before this Bill can truly make a difference”.
Even the Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales has called the Bill “disappointing.” Indeed, it is very disappointing that the Government have failed to take on board such concerns and all the Justice Committee’s recommendations to strengthen the Bill. The End Violence Against Women coalition has argued that, despite the sector’s long list of priorities for the Bill, it instead delivers immense powers for the Justice Secretary to intervene in the parole process.
Despite the steps forward and the widely welcomed Domestic Abuse Act 2021, the truth is that it is extremely difficult for survivors of domestic abuse and other crimes to come forward. As a survivor, I know this from first-hand experience. The stigma, the structural and systemic bias against us, and the use of the courts and the law to threaten and silence us—never mind the trauma of the abuse itself—all too often seem insurmountable. In particular, evidence shows that black, minoritised and migrant groups are disproportionately victims of violence against women and girls, yet they also experience poorer outcomes in access to justice and support.
I know how threats of defamation and libel cases seek to shut us up, but this is not unique to my experience. We know of the libel cases in which wealthy men have sought to protect their reputation from women who accuse them of abuse. It is therefore clear that we need a comprehensive approach that provides support and consideration at every stage of the criminal justice system and, crucially, beyond. If the Bill is truly to centre on victims, it must provide rape survivors with independent legal advice and safeguards to protect them from excessive police requests for personal data.
I would also like to see a complete firewall between the police and immigration enforcement, ending the sharing of data that leaves those with insecure immigration status unable to seek justice and at risk of further victimisation. That demand has been made for decades, and it was also recommended by the Justice Committee’s pre-legislative scrutiny.
Lawfare, the practice of abusers misusing the court system to maintain power and control over their former or current partners, sometimes called vexatious or abusive litigation—in other words, stalking through the courts—needs to be tackled. The House will know that, two years after being elected as the UK’s first hijab-wearing MP, I had to endure an eight-day trial, instigated by a complaint from my ex-husband’s brother-in-law, which brutally forced me to talk about painful and private experiences. The action was taken by my local council, on which my ex-husband was a serving councillor at the time.
Although I was found to be innocent of all charges, I fear that the ordeal of the trial will haunt me for the rest of my life. The matter of domestic abuse was used against me by the prosecution, which argued that the abuse was a motive for the alleged crimes. Raj Chada, the criminal defence partner at Hodge Jones & Allen who represented me, argues:
“Prosecutors and investigators need to better understand and consider how victims of coercive control and domestic abuse behave and how they are treated by the criminal justice system.”
It is commonly assumed that a woman should just leave, and then all her problems will be over, but this is far from the reality for many. It goes on and on, and the wall of institutional gaslighting is chilling, which is why I am working with MPs from all parties to call for a duty of care to be placed on employers and political parties to ensure that survivors of domestic abuse are not exposed to further harassment. This must recognise that post-separation control and harassment is itself a form of domestic abuse and can occur long after a relationship or marriage has ended, with different tactics of abuse being used.
This week is Mental Health Awareness Week, and it is important to recognise that domestic abuse can have a severe and lasting impact on mental health and that survivors often find it difficult to access the support they need. I will be closely following developments on counselling notes. Victims of coercive control who go through court proceedings may find their counselling notes being used by a perpetrator to further the abuse and harassment post separation.
IDVAs have been mentioned a lot in this debate and, where they are funded and available, they can be crucial, as I know from first-hand experience. Women’s Aid and others have raised concerns about the proposal to create a statutory definition of an IDVA. I urge the Government to hold discussions with specialist domestic abuse services as soon as possible to address this issue. My understanding is that a statutory definition is intended to create consistency, but IDVAs should be allowed a degree of flexibility in how they carry out their role, given that they could be sitting in a courtroom with one victim and dealing with multiple stakeholders and partners to support another. It needs to be taken into account that, for victims of domestic abuse, no two cases are the same. My case was unique in that I had to go through court proceedings while holding public office, and the support of my IDVA was crucial.
Funding is crucial to this debate. The funding crisis in support for those experiencing domestic abuse continues to put many at risk, and it means that too many are unable to access vital services. The Bill currently places a duty on key agencies, but it does not attach funding. Any expansion in victim support services, which already face unmanageable referral levels and caseloads, needs funding.
More action and funding are urgently needed. In the UK, two women a week are killed by a current or former partner, and 49% of these women are killed less than a month after separation. This is unacceptable, but it is also preventable. This Bill is too little and, with great solemnity, I fear it is too late for so many.
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
That was a very sobering speech from the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum). It is a pleasure to rise to speak in this important debate. I was a member of the Justice Committee for a considerable period of the pre-legislative scrutiny, although I was not involved in the approval of the Committee’s report. I had moved on by then, but I think it relevant to mention that I had the privilege of listening to many of those who gave evidence to the Committee at that time, including many victims who bravely relived some of their experiences. I should briefly declare other interests, in that I was previously involved with victims during my 12 years as a magistrate, including time on the Sentencing Council. In that role, the needs and requirements of victims were always very much in our minds. I have also served on the boards of the Youth Justice Board and His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service.
That considerable experience across the criminal justice system prompted me in my maiden speech to say that I wanted to focus on putting victims right at the heart of the criminal justice system, and this Bill takes a big step towards doing that. It enshrines the principles of the victims code in law; it places a duty on PCCs to review their compliance; and it imposes a requirement on criminal justice bodies to raise awareness of the victims code. Each of those is significant in its own right, but together they have the potential to transform victims’ experience of the criminal justice system for the better.
The core provision of the legislation, to put the principles of the victims code on a statutory footing, has rightly been universally welcomed. We cannot underestimate the importance of setting out in law the services that should be provided to victims of crime. That, in turn, should dramatically improve compliance with the code. A report by the charity Victim Support found that currently
“as many as six in ten victims do not receive their entitlements under the Victims’ Code”.
It says that that can leave them feeling anxious, unsafe and frustrated. My own experience as a magistrate is that the process of hearings, trials and sentencing can be extremely difficult to navigate for victims of crime. Once in the courtroom, the terminology used by lawyers and the judiciary can be both complicated and challenging. All too often, victims feel as though they are the least important person in the room, notwithstanding the considerable efforts of the volunteers who make up the witness service in the court. Placing the code on a statutory footing, with much firmer requirements on compliance, holds out the prospect of a tremendous improvement in victims’ experiences.
One area where I am slightly disappointed, however, is that the victims code and, by extension, this legislation, do not require any specific action by the judiciary. I fully respect the need for a separation of powers, but I firmly believe that magistrates and judges can do much more to enhance the experience of victims. I would hope that that might be considered in future legislation.
I am pleased to see that a duty will be placed on PCCs to keep under review how the criminal justice bodies are complying with the victims code in their police area. The PCC for Thames Valley, Matt Barber, has welcomed this formal responsibility being placed upon him, and I know he will carry it out diligently across Buckinghamshire and the wider police area for which he is responsible.
Given the undoubted health impacts, whether physical or psychological, on victims of crime, the new duty for integrated care boards to collaborate with local authorities and PCCs when commissioning certain support services is important. My own experience, stemming from many meetings at local and national level, is that the NHS does not always regard involvement in the criminal justice system with the priority one might hope. Integrated care boards are still new and finding their feet; the one serving my constituency is already a cause of some concern, so I will be carefully monitoring its compliance with this new duty. However, the principle of the new duty is sound indeed.
The requirement to respond to recommendations made by the Victims’ Commissioner is another positive step, and will help keep to the forefront the needs of those who have so often been forgotten. Likewise, I strongly welcome the prospect of Ministers directing joint thematic inspections to assess the experience and treatment of victims throughout the entire criminal justice process. That has the potential for good practice to be shared, and it strikes me that that could be especially useful in developing further restorative justice schemes, which are extremely successful when they are implemented.
Having a code is good, but only if victims know about it; all too often, people do not get the service to which they are entitled because they are not aware of their rights or the services that exist to help them. So the duty in this legislation on specified bodies to promote awareness of the code is very welcome. I trust that experts in communications will be deployed to make sure the information is understandable, meaningful and appropriately disseminated; it is not good enough to have just jargon or just to put this information on a website that no one knows about.
Let me say a few words about part 2 of the Bill and the appointment of independent public advocates for the victims of major incidents. In doing so, I pay tribute, as many right hon. and hon. Members have, to the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) for her unstinting work. As I have mentioned in this House previously, I was a student at Sheffield University at the time of the Hillsborough disaster, and a friend of mine lost his life in that tragedy. Events since have been inexcusable and unforgivable, and the introduction of an independent public advocate will, we hope, prevent any such outrages of cover-up from occurring again. I am pleased that the Government have committed to working with families of victims of Hillsborough and of other disasters to get the detail of the advocate scheme right. I am glad that my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State and the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), who is on the Treasury Bench now, have indicated their openness to speak further with the right hon. Lady, who is undoubtedly expert in this arena.
I do have some sympathy with the view of the Law Society that legal aid should at least be considered to be provided to victims in cases where an independent legal advocate has been appointed. Of course, funding can never be unlimited, but it is important that there is an equality of arms so that victims are properly represented at every stage of an inquiry. In short, we need to ensure that victims’ voices are truly heard in the aftermath of such dreadful events.
Moving on to part 3 and parole, I understand the Government’s rationale for the changes that are proposed, and absolutely appreciate the concerns about public protection that have prompted the legislation, but I have my own concerns about the potential implications on the prison system and prospects for the rehabilitation of offenders. Many right hon. and hon. Members have made other points about the more general principles. I know from my very short time in the Ministry of Justice that prison capacity is extremely tight. My successor, the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) has been to this House to describe actions he is rightly taking in response to that. The impact assessment for this part of the Bill predicts that, on the central scenario, an additional 640 new prison places will be needed over the next 10 years as a direct result of the implementation of the new parole clauses. Those are spaces we do not currently have in the prison estate. The impact assessment states:
“To accommodate a large increase in demand for prison places, we would have to consider demand reduction elsewhere in the system.”
To put it more bluntly, some other people would not be sent to prison.
I am very much in favour of taking a root and branch look at who is sentenced to custody, as I believe we have scope to make far better use of technology through electronic GPS tagging, for example. That could facilitate the introduction of a form of house custody in a comprehensive sentence such as the intensive control and rehabilitation order that was proposed jointly by the Centre for Social Justice and myself several years ago. I believe that that would both improve outcomes for offenders and reduce costs to the Exchequer. It is worth noting that house arrest was mentioned in the Government’s White Paper on sentencing, in 2020 or 2021, I believe, which was introduced by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland). Disappointingly, it has not received further attention since. I would be interested to learn from this Minister whether there might be progress on that at some future point.
It is not just a question of space in prison from the changes to parole that we must consider. Again, the impact assessment paints a concerning picture when it states:
“Non-releases and a reduced licence period could disrupt offenders’ and family relationships and reduce rehabilitation in the community, potentially leading to higher reoffending due to less post-custody rehabilitation activity from the probation service.”
Consequently, I hope the Government more broadly will consider the implications of these clauses, not least His Majesty’s Treasury. Increased funding for prisons and probation is rarely popular, but it is essential if we are to provide accommodation that is fit for purpose, as well as being able to recruit and retain enough prison and probation officers to ensure that there is a genuine prospect of achieving the rehabilitation of the prisoners in their charge. I hasten to add that this would not be money for nothing.
We know that about 80% of those currently receiving cautions or convictions have offended before. We also know from the MOJ’s own figures that the economic and social cost of reoffending in England and Wales is approximately £18 billion a year. So, if we can improve rehabilitation in our prisons and in our probation service, that will cut crime and cut cost.
Just before I close, I will quickly mention additional ways where I believe victims could be helped by legislation. One such way would be to change the rules on sharing data between the police and the Crown Prosecution Service. At the moment, police officers waste untold hours redacting information before it is sent to the CPS for review. I am not talking about disclosure at a later stage; I am talking about that very first stage. Although the Attorney General’s office has provided helpful advice and guidance to police forces, which should reduce the workload somewhat—it is showing some signs of doing so—I am definitely still hearing feedback that there is the potential for the Government to go further and scrap what is an unnecessary administrative burden. That would mean more time for police to do what they do best: catch criminals and help victims get justice.
To conclude, the Bill is extremely welcome. It makes it absolutely clear that victims are being taken more seriously than ever before. I look forward to contributing further as it passes through this House.
Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)
I am pleased that we are finally debating the long-awaited victims Bill today. Since I was elected almost two years ago, the victims Bill has been just one of a very long list of so-called Government priorities that have been delayed and delayed. That delay has meant thousands of victims will not have received the support or exercised the rights they should have been able to. As we have heard from across the House, the Government have come forward with a Bill that is only half-baked. What has taken them so long to produce such a flimsy Bill that will not, in its current form, deliver its stated aims?
First, why have the Government not included victims of one of the most damaging and victim-centred issues faced by so many people every day: antisocial behaviour? In Batley and Spen we have seen, as is the case in many other communities across the country, huge spikes in antisocial behaviour in recent years. Whether it is inconsiderate or dangerous parking, modified motorbikes screeching through neighbourhoods at all hours, abuse directed at bus drivers and shopkeepers, setting off fireworks or fires, the vandalising of community facilities or fly-tipping, all of which the Government somehow treat as low-level nuisances, these are the things that are blighting our communities and terrifying residents. They are increasingly unaddressed and out of control, with little or no support for those affected.
In the current Bill, victims of those behaviours are not recognised. They are not given the same rights as other victims and they will continue not to be taken seriously in the criminal justice system. Without treating antisocial behaviour with the seriousness it needs, our communities, including Batley and Spen, will continue to see the increase in lawlessness that is damaging our towns, villages and neighbourhoods. We cannot underestimate the impact of this so-called low-level activity. It damages property and terrifies people, and it means that residents feel afraid to walk their streets alone. They are certainly not seeing any justice that reassures them their neighbourhood is safe and, as my constituents tell me, there is nothing low level about that. I therefore strongly urge the Government to reconsider their approach to antisocial behaviour in the Bill, and recognise the damage it does to people and communities across the country.
Secondly, as has been discussed, the Bill does not have the teeth to deliver meaningful change. As the Justice Committee set out in its report, simply stating the victims code in legislation will not by itself ensure that victims receive the justice they deserve. Where are the measures to ensure that victims are aware of their rights? Who is checking that police forces and the CPS are carefully going through the victims code with victims to ensure they take up all the measures available to them? And, most importantly, where is the resourcing to give police forces the staff and time they will require to afford each case the attention it deserves?
I am very fortunate to have a strong working relationship with West Yorkshire police, and in particular the Batley and Spen neighbourhood policing team. Of the cases we discuss, the major barrier to ensuring that victims are supported, involved in the process and able to see justice being delivered is not legislation, but police time and resources. And let us remember that the new police officers that the Government like to boast about barely replace the police officers we have lost over the last 13 years. So until we properly resource our police forces, this legislation will be unable to function in the way the Government hope it will.
Finally, I would like to discuss victims of domestic abuse and rape. Victims of these crimes are perhaps the most let down by the criminal justice system. Less than 1% of reported rapes lead to a conviction. That is a horrifying statistic that should alarm us all. Colleagues will have seen the open letter sent to the Justice Secretary by the charity Rape Crisis and Charlie Webster, who, along with her friend Katie, was a teenage victim of sexual abuse over many years. Katie, as has been referred to already, tragically went on to take her own life. On the radio today, Charlie spoke about the disconnect between victims, the justice system and the Government. Jayne Butler, the CEO of Rape Crisis, said:
“I want to see a Victims Bill that gives victims and survivors what Katie and Charlie never had. If the government truly wishes to make a difference with this bill, it must provide the funding needed to support it.”
The demand for the services of Rape Crisis has gone up by 38% in the last year. Without the resourcing and wider reform of the criminal justice system, the Bill will prove meaningless. Without providing any new funding for victim support services, the Bill will fail to deliver meaningful change for survivors of domestic abuse, as the charity Refuge has stated. Independent domestic violence advisers and independent sexual violence advisers are fantastic, but I share the concerns of others on the importance of solidifying those positions and ensuring consistency of provision across the country.
Furthermore, I agree that it is horrifying that a victim’s counselling notes can be accessed to form part of a defence if a case of rape does go to trial. That should not be acceptable in any circumstances. It undermines the aims of the Bill to protect victims and it may well lead to a decrease in the reporting of cases of rape, which is already shockingly low. I will therefore be supporting amendments in Committee to address that and to provide victims with the protections they need in the criminal justice system.
In conclusion, I am pleased that we finally have before us a framework that can be built on to ensure that victims receive the rights and protections they deserve. However, in its current state the Bill is too flimsy, excludes too many victims and fails to address the underlying issue in our criminal justice system: the underfunding and under-resourcing of our police forces and courts system. I therefore urge Members to back our amendments in Committee to strengthen the Bill, which has the potential to deliver the long-overdue, meaningful change that victims of crime deserve.
Kate Kniveton (Burton) (Con)
I rise to speak in support of the Bill. I welcome the Government’s commitment to improving support and services for victims and survivors of domestic abuse. I want to speak in relation to part 1, and specifically how it affects those who have been victims of those crimes.
The impact of domestic abuse is staggering. I know what affect it had on my own life. Nationally, in the last year alone, over 2 million people were affected by domestic abuse and every year more than 100 people are killed as a result of it. However, despite those grim statistics, support for victims of domestic abuse remains inconsistent and often unavailable, particularly for those facing multiple disadvantages. Being in an abusive relationship is a terrifying and lonely place, and it is not easy to ask for help. The mapping work conducted by the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s office shows us that there is much more to do to ensure that survivors receive the support and care they need and want.
The Government have taken important steps to improve our response to domestic abuse and I welcome that the Bill will put the principles of the victims code into law, but we need to ensure that the available support is what victims want and need. So much of this is crisis-related, and of course getting people to safety is hugely important, but what about after that? When the survivors of domestic abuse are often left traumatised and financially and emotionally broken, where is the counselling? What about the advocates to help them protect their children from their abusers, and battle through the endless challenges where they must recount their experiences time and again?
Even for those survivors who want to access some form of community-based service that is currently available, fewer than half have been able to access the support they want. Only 35% find it straightforward to access this help. The findings in the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s report, “A Patchwork of Provision”, make for stark reading, and I urge all Members to read it. Surely we can do better than this. We have made great progress under this Government, but I hope that we can push to help more people access the support that they need.
It is very clear that the specialist domestic abuse sector is stretched and underfunded. If we are serious about wanting to make tangible changes for victims, we need to invest more in community-based support services to help those services provide that support. The economic case is clear: Women’s Aid find that investing a minimum of £427 million per year to fund specialist domestic abuse services across England could save the public purse as much as £23 billion a year.
However, it is not just the support available to victims that is the problem; there must be fundamental change in our criminal justice process to support victims of rape and sexual abuse. Five out of six women who are raped do not report it, and for men, it is four out of five. Knowing how poor our justice outcomes are for survivors, why would anyone choose to put themselves through this level of intense scrutiny and have their credibility called into question when the chance of prosecution is so low? It takes tremendous bravery and courage to do this, and it is hard to even begin to think about it when a victim’s initial focus is on the immediate safety and wellbeing of their family. Victims and survivors must have access to specialist legal advice and representation to support them to ensure that their rights are not undermined and disregarded.
In closing, I welcome this important Bill but urge the Government to recognise the urgent need for increased investment in services that support survivors of domestic abuse. It is imperative that we provide comprehensive and accessible resources to empower those affected by these crimes, ensuring their safety. If the necessary funding is not available then perhaps we need to explore alternative avenues, such as pursuing financial penalties against those found guilty of abusive and violent behaviour. If we hold perpetrators to account for their actions through both legal and financial means, we send a strong message that domestic abuse and violence will not be tolerated in our society, and that the Government truly are on the side of victims.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
In 2013, I first met Claire Waxman. She is now the Victims’ Commissioner for London, but then she was a survivor looking to bring forward a victims Bill. She did this to prevent the horror that she went through befalling any other survivor, and I pay huge credit to her for doing that. She worked at the time with Elfyn Llwyd, the former Plaid Cymru MP —having stumbled over his name, I will not even attempt to pronounce his constituency. He first brought this forward as a ten-minute rule Bill in 2014. In 2015, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) presented it as a private Member’s Bill, which was then, rightly, adopted by the then Government.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
I am grateful for the opportunity to name my predecessor, Elfyn Llwyd, who was very successful in bringing through the legislation. He worked closely with Harry Fletcher, who was formerly the assistant general secretary of NAPO, and Members from all parties across the House to that effect.
Sarah Champion
I am very grateful to the right hon. Lady for putting that on the record and naming the former right hon. Gentleman, which I made such a poor attempt of doing.
I raised the private Member’s Bill because it was adopted by the Government eight years ago. This Bill is eight years in the making, and yet, despite endless consultations and excellent pre-legislative scrutiny, the Government have still failed to produce legislation that will genuinely improve victims’ experiences within, and external to, the criminal justice system. It pains me, as I know it does Members across the House, that this could be a missed opportunity.
I pay tribute to the civil servants and, indeed, the Minister for all their work on the victims code. That is what the Bill effectively makes statute. Its aim is to improve the support for victims and enshrine their rights into law. I pay huge credit to all the victims, the survivors, the charities and the campaigners for shining a spotlight on the inequalities in our current justice system. It is because of them that we are here today.
Not only does the Bill lack the teeth needed to enforce those rights, but, perversely—I use that word deliberately—the scope has been broadened to include prisoners’ release and give sweeping powers to the Secretary of State, raising human rights concerns, especially as we found out today that those provisions have not been properly consulted on or scrutinised. Personally, I find it an insult to victims and survivors that their one opportunity to have a Bill recognising the inequalities and hurdles that they face has been saddled together, in perpetuity, with the persecutors—the very people who made them victims. That sticks in my throat. I also find it challenging that the Government feel safe to put forward financial considerations for those prisoners—those perpetrators—but there is no money in the Bill to meet the needs of the victims. I really hope that the Minister is able to change that. I hope that that is an oversight, because it cannot be otherwise, so let us change that.
I am concerned that the addition of prisoners will minimise the much-needed attention that we have to give to strengthening the measures relating to victims and their needs. What is more, this comes at a time when the role of the Victims’ Commissioner remains vacant. The role is vital for providing a voice for victims across the country, yet the Government have not replaced Dame Vera Baird since September, leaving a huge gap in the scrutiny of this Bill.
Let me focus on some of the positives. I am grateful—genuinely grateful—that the Bill has finally been introduced. I am delighted that the Minister has today announced that new measures will be added to the Bill to tackle police requests for unnecessary and disproportionate third-party material. This is particularly common for rape and sexual assault victims, including the constituent whose counselling notes were investigated by the police and shared with the prosecution and defence teams. That approach perpetuates a culture of victim blaming and re-traumatises victims, resulting in even more cases dropping out of the system at a time when we need to see many more being brought.
I thank my constituent wholeheartedly for her work on that and congratulate Rape Crisis England and Wales on all its excellent campaigning to get the issue addressed. We must now ensure that the amendment to the Bill goes far enough to create a presumption against the use of that type of material and rebuilds victims’ trust in the criminal justice system.
It is particularly welcome that there is progress on the definition of a victim in the Bill and I thank the Justice Committee for all its work on that. I also take this moment to acknowledge the extraordinary work of my former constituent, Sammy Woodhouse. Her dedication has led to the recognition of children born of rape as victims in this legislation. That is a huge difference and significant progress. We must all applaud her and others who brought that forward.
However, the definition of a victim in the Bill is limited to those who engage with the justice system, which means that the majority of victims of crime are not covered by the legislation. The Government’s “Tackling Child Sexual Abuse Strategy” in 2021 noted that only 7% of victims and survivors informed the police at the time of the offence, and only 18% told the police at any time—they would not be included in the Bill. The most recent crime survey for England and Wales reported that only 41% of crime is reported to the police at all—those victims would not be covered in the Bill. The Bill excludes victims who have not reported their perpetrator, or who choose not to report their perpetrator, or whose case has not yet received a charge or conviction. Not least, it would exclude the majority of victims of antisocial behaviour. I ask the Minister to look again at ensuring that all victims can access the support they need, when they need it, no matter the context they face.
My overarching concern with the Bill is the severe lack of accountability and consequence if the victims code is not followed. Victim Support found that as many as six in 10 victims do not currently receive their rights under the victims code. Systemic issues are causing a lack of implementation. I ask the Minister to consider what measures in the Bill will make the code any more enforceable than it already is—because at the moment there is no enforcement. How will the Government ensure that victims are aware of the code and able to challenge non-compliance with it?
Reviews of compliance with the code by elected local police bodies are a step in the right direction but, again, there are no consequences if the code is not being upheld. We must also ensure that that mechanism does not deepen pre-existing regional inequalities. We need to see measures in the Bill to ensure effective monitoring of how well all victims’ rights are being upheld.
There is overwhelming consensus from charities, including the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and Women’s Aid, that a national oversight mechanism must be established to monitor the commissioning of support services, particularly for those with protected characteristics. It is also vital that staff at criminal justice agencies are trained to have an in-depth understanding of the victims code.
The introduction of the definition of child sexual exploitation has been transformational for policing, support services and the courts. We now need to see the same for adult sexual exploitation and child criminal exploitation, to ensure that victims can be identified and supported rather than criminalised.
Clause 12 introduces a duty to collaborate on victim support, which is welcome, but it could go much further. I join the London Victims’ Commissioner and the Domestic Abuse Commissioner in calling for a joint strategic needs assessment and a duty to meet victims’ needs under the assessment, with the necessary funding being provided. The measures must also ensure that agencies are joined up, so that victims are aware of any parole decisions—unlike the experience of many of my constituents of bumping into their perpetrators in the community, having not being formally informed of their release.
I will give the House two examples, both of which happened within the last 18 months and within six months of each other. Two survivors of multiple child rape found out by accident that their abusers had been given the right to go to open prison and the right to come home at weekends. They had no opportunity to give a victim statement in the parole hearings, there was no safeguarding and there were no support systems in place for them. All I got, when I had to raise it on the Floor of this House because I could not get any other attention to it, was two written apologies and being told, “Oops, the system failed them.” Yes, we know—but it should not have, and there should be consequences for that.
Furthermore, charities are concerned that clause 12 does not include funding to resource the duty to collaborate and that it may place additional burdens on existing staff. Will the Minister please confirm funding for the specific co-ordinated roles to enable clause 12 to be effective?
The Bill is an opportunity to be ambitious about victim support, particularly for children, and it must provide a direction and core aims for the collaboration between those agencies. There are currently too many faults with the criminal justice system that are letting victims down. The Bill must also embed independent legal advice for victims, so that they can have support to understand and challenge disclosure decisions.
Clause 15 on ISVA and IDVA guidance is welcome, but Women’s Aid states that defining solely those roles risks creating a one-size-fits-all approach to victims’ needs. We also need to provide explicit guidance on community-based support services, especially for domestic violence, as well as on the vital roles of stalking advocates and children’s independent sexual violence advisers, or CHISVAs. The Suzy Lamplugh Trust has shown that stalking victims who were not supported by advocates had a one in 1,000 chance of their perpetrator’s being convicted, compared with one in four if they had a stalking advocate.
The Minister is aware that I desperately want to see the issue of registered sex offenders changing their names, without the knowledge of the police, being addressed. I thank the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) for raising that matter earlier. He was the first Minister that I discussed it with when he was Immigration Minister, because offenders are changing their names and then getting a clean passport and clean driver’s licence, so they can then get a clean Disclosure and Barring Service check. I thank him for raising that again. That loophole causes irreparable harm to victims and survivors, and further harm to others by allowing those offenders to reoffend. It makes a mockery of our identity-based safeguarding system. We need to see that loophole closed. I know the Minister agrees with me, so I ask him to work with us on that, please.
Finally, I am disappointed that the Government delayed their response to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. I urge the Minister to tell us in his speech when the final Government response will be published, as this Bill provides the perfect opportunity to adopt its recommendations into law. I will be tabling amendments to ensure that all those gaps and failures are addressed; I hope to work with the Ministers and those on the shadow Front Bench in a cross-party way to put victims’ rights, voices and best interests at the heart of the Bill. This is not about politics; it is about fixing a broken system so that victims and survivors are not let down again.
Mark Fletcher (Bolsover) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) and indeed to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Kate Kniveton). We have heard some outstanding speeches in this debate on a huge range of issues, but for someone to speak of their own personal experiences of the criminal justice system, to try to empower others and to recreate that system so that it is better for other victims, is an incredibly difficult thing to do. To do so without losing her emotions takes great strength, so I pay tribute to my colleague, and I am very proud to be sat alongside her. I am sure there are many other people in this House and across the country who pay tribute to her for what she has said, for all she has been through and for how brilliantly she handles herself.
The speeches in this debate have been fantastic on a whole range of issues. I think the general emphasis is that this Bill is a welcome step in the right direction. My hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Rob Butler) outlined why enshrining the victims code in law is such an important aspect of the Bill. He did a great job of setting that out, so I will not try to repeat it.
I will, however, step back and say that the criminal justice system is a multifaceted beast that many people struggle to understand at the best of times, and when someone’s experience of it is difficult or not optimal, it can be incredibly disheartening. We have touched in a roundabout way in this debate on what it feels like to be a victim, but I am not sure we have really got to the heart of the strength it takes for someone to step forward and talk about what has happened to them, how difficult it is to repeat their experiences over and over again, or the strength that it takes to pursue justice.
I think that we have to see that in the broader scheme of things. We must entirely uphold innocent until proven guilty and maintain that central tenet of our legal system—something that is increasingly difficult in an age in which we are so connected and can comment on everything so quickly, through social media or just in passing. Equally, however, we need a criminal justice system that puts individuals at its heart. Those who have been victims need to be heard and to feel that they have faith in that system and that that system has faith in them.
The various statements, urgent questions and scandals we have sat through in this House, involving the Metropolitan police and others, are incredibly disheartening for many people sitting at home. It is also disheartening for many Members of this House. It is a blow to the criminal justice system when people in my own communities across the Bolsover constituency complain about not seeing police, or are victims of antisocial behaviour and low-level crime, and do not feel that the police take them seriously. That is a blow to the criminal justice system. When the papers report that sentences do not seem proportionate to the crimes committed, that is a blow to the criminal justice system and our faith in it. For those who go through the criminal justice system as victims, the level of bureaucracy and the impersonal nature of that process can so often be a blow to the criminal justice system and our faith in it.
It is nice to be standing here today putting victims forward and rebalancing the criminal justice system in favour of those whom it is meant to serve. A frustration for so many of us in this House is that it feels as if prisoners have a huge number of rights and are protected in many ways. Victims are often seen as almost inconvenient witnesses in the system, rather than the people against whom crimes have been committed.
The other bit that has so often caused an issue with the criminal justice system and our faith in it is the premature release of prisoners—that has been such a blow. Again, the Bill takes some welcome steps on the parole system. I disagree mildly with the hon. Member for Rotherham about combining the two things. I am not sure that victims of what we class “top-tier crimes” will find it difficult that there is now ministerial oversight of the potential release of prisoners. I think that, rather than combining the two, that would actually be a strength for victims, but I am sure that we will disagree over a cup of coffee at some other point.
Before I move on to the parole changes, I will mention covid-19, which undoubtedly had a huge impact on so many elements of our public services, particularly the health service. The criminal justice system certainly felt the impact of covid in a big way—not being able to gather in large groups obviously affected it—and we have explored the many ways in which we can try to catch up on the backlog. I do not think that it is fair to say that the system is continuing to fail; there has been a great effort to try to catch up on that backlog. I welcome the changes to the parole system, particularly in the release tests and the right to apply to attend a parole hearing, which is an important step—I am almost staggered that it was not there before.
The general theme of the speeches today has been that this is a good start but we could and probably should go further, so I suspect the Minister will be somewhat busy when the Bill reaches Committee. I agree entirely with my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) about the need for an individual approach to victims, not a tick-box approach—that is incredibly important. We should not see this as a one-size-fits-all approach. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) about antisocial behaviour, which is the scourge of so many working-class communities. To feel scared in your own home is a horrible experience; to feel like the streets are not yours is a horrible experience. Those people are victims and should be recognised as such. Ahead of the debate, I read the Victim Support briefing, which calls for the Bill to recognise victims of persistent antisocial behaviour. I strongly agree.
The Minister will have anticipated my next point—mostly because it has already been mentioned. I did not arrange for my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay and my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Jayawardena) to mention my ten-minute rule Bill on banning sex offenders from changing their names, but I had a decent bet on the hon. Member for Rotherham mentioning it. I may have pushed the stalking laws to their limits as I have followed the Minister around the estate for the past few weeks trying to persuade him that such a measure needs to be included in this Bill. He has been incredibly patient, as have Home Office Ministers.
My main reading ahead of the debate was “Trapped”, a book by a remarkable woman called Della Wright, whom the hon. Member for Rotherham and I have met. Della was here in the House of Commons last Thursday. She has worked alongside the Safeguarding Alliance, and has waived her right to anonymity so that she can campaign for what we have now dubbed “Della’s law”. If the Minister reads “Trapped”—I have already given a copy to the Minister for Safeguarding, and I am happy to purchase him a copy as well—he will see what it is like to be a victim when the system simply does not work for you. There are so many disheartening moments in that book. I think that every single Member of this House hates it when systems do not work for our constituents. So often, that is the point at which only their Member of Parliament is left to assist them.
Unfortunately, Della’s case is one of being failed for years and years, but she still has the strength to pursue justice. She talks throughout the last few chapters of the book about her experience of trying to go through the court process when she does not feel believed; when she gets notices of something happening at the last minute; when she simply does not understand what is happening with her case and how disheartening that is. Ultimately, the thing that drives her work now, and that will give her a sense of justice, is ensuring that sex offenders do not have the right to change their name. My hon. Friend the Member for Torbay outlined how easy that is for them to do, and the hon. Member for Rotherham and I have made the same argument on a number of occasions. The perverse thing is that Della’s case was delayed in going to court because her offender, who was already in prison, changed his name. That meant that all of the documents for the case were in the wrong name, so Della had to relive the same experience six months later. It cannot be right that victims are failed in that way.
I was drawn to clauses 48 to 50, which prevent prisoners serving a whole-life sentence from marrying in prison. I thought to myself, “That is a proportionate response to a select group of people.” It sounds ever so much like the argument that I made in my ten-minute rule Bill earlier this year: that those who are on the sex offenders register should not be allowed to change their names. That is in the victims’ interests and it is proportionate, and it would be deserved even if it were only for Della, but there are hundreds if not thousands of victims up and down the country who have suffered because of that issue.
I say to the Minister that the Bill is a massive step in the right direction. It is absolutely right that we recognise victims, give them more support and enshrine those rights in legislation, but there is room for improvement, and although I am not sure that the criminal justice system can be fixed overnight simply by legislating, a wider cultural change is absolutely necessary.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a genuine pleasure to take part in the debate, which is increasingly becoming an example of this place at its best. We are all sharing our own experiences and concerns. I pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Burton (Kate Kniveton); to the esteemed expert, my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion); to my hon. Friends the Members for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) and for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), who are no longer in their places; and to the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher), who spoke before me.
We all bring with us a determination because, having waited so long for a piece of legislation that was explicitly about victims and their experiences, we really want to get it right. After all, for many of us, that is our day-to-day work as MPs. We all remember the first time that we read those emails, had that phone call or met that resident, and the meetings in which you feel a burning sense of injustice by the end of the conversation—tears flow, and you and your team need to take some time out to recover from what you have heard. It is privilege to meet the people we meet as MPs, because we cannot understand how they have been able to carry on, let alone champion such causes.
I have to say I was a little frustrated by some of the earlier conversation. It felt so much—I hesitate to use this phrase—like victim blaming, because we talk about wanting victims to fit our systems. The victims I have had the privilege to work with as an MP for 13 years are no wallflowers; they are people who have been wronged, and they need to be recognised as people who have none the less done their damnedest to speak up for themselves or for somebody they love who has had a traumatic experience. I agree with the hon. Member for Bolsover about the Casey report, and I fear there are issues within the CPS too. Therefore, when we look at this legislation, we are looking not to find ways to make more victims come forward, but to recognise that, for too long, the systems and institutions we had set up supposedly to speak for these people have been found wanting, and they need to change.
Let me try to add something different to the Minister’s inbox, although I agree with many of the points that have been raised cross-party. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham that this is absolutely a cross-party thing. I want to raise five points—I know that a list of five might seem frightening, but I promise to be quick—about what it is to be a victim; when something happens to a family member overseas; third-party harassment; the legal rights of victims; and the issue of IDVAs, ISVAs and advocates more generally.
Let me start with the concept of what a victim is. The Minister is hearing loud and clear from many of us our concern that setting out that a victim is only somebody who engages with the justice system might make sense in a process way, but it does not make sense in a person way—it does not make sense for the people we deal with. It would preclude people who experience antisocial behaviour, which is a blight on the lives of everybody in our communities. That often fills up a huge amount of our inboxes, and understandably so, as people tear their hair out over the fact that behaviour that stops them living their lives is not being addressed.
Another area where we need to be clearer about victims and victimisation is what happens when traumatic events happen to communities, and I note that we are recognising that now in the concept of a public advocate. We are long overdue a public advocate, and I pay tribute again to my right hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), who is not here, for what she said; it was incredibly powerful, and it is absolutely right that we have public advocates. If we recognise that the trauma that comes from a severe crime can ripple through somewhere, it is right that we do not say that it is only when people speak up that we recognise that impact.
In my community, four people were raped—one of them was murdered—and I think about the impact that that had on the community. We fought for eight years for justice for Michelle Samaraweera. Her killer was not found until we fought and fought for him to be brought back from India. I think about the community at Kelmscott school, which lost one of its 16-year-old members 10 days ago. That community is grieving and traumatised, and we need to get it help and support. That is something we want to be able to build in from the start, because it helps the investigative process, but it also helps to address what has happened. That is absolutely critical.
It is absolutely welcome that we have talked about an advocate in major investigations, but there is a risk that we end up with a very narrow definition of a victim within a local community, which would be to the detriment of understanding how crimes affect people. I am pleased the Secretary of State said he would sit down with me and some of the campaigners and others working with the traumatised, victimised communities dealing with this epidemic of youth violence. There is merit, particularly when we are talking about serious harm, in taking a victim-led approach and in understanding that communities can be victims of crimes and how that might then influence the work we do.
The second area I would urge the Minister to think again about and that I would add to his inbox is when people are victims of crimes overseas and particularly when murders happen overseas. I have a phenomenal woman in my community called Sharon Matthews, whose beautiful son Tyrell was murdered brutally in Malia in 2013. We are still seeking to secure justice against the killers, and I can say “killers” because they were convicted in a Greek court, although they are here in the United Kingdom and have reoffended, so another family have lost a family member. Sharon faced a system that did not understand how to help her, and anybody who has ever dealt with a case involving someone who has been murdered or faced serious violence overseas, whether or not they were on holiday, will know how frustrating it is to deal with a different legal system and about the importance or otherwise of the victim in different jurisdictions. They will also know that that inconsistency is an injustice.
Let me be clear about some of the challenges that we have faced in supporting Sharon and her family through this. There was the idea that there would be a cap on the financial support available to the family. If someone is trying to get over to a foreign country to be at a trial, that is clearly a problem. There was no support for the witnesses to travel and give evidence. There was no support for us when we were trying to get video evidence involved to manage the costs. There was a horrific situation last year when, yet again in a retrial situation, the victim’s family and the witnesses were in the same hotel as the perpetrators’ families—clearly, a high-risk scenario. [Interruption.] I see that the hon. Member for Bolsover is shocked. Nobody was thinking about that family as victims, because this had all happened out of sight.
The victim in this instance was British, as are the perpetrators. A wider challenge for me in looking at the legislation is how we hold the police and the CPS to account when things to do with overseas violence lead to a possible risk here in the UK. Sharon’s case has been an absolute testament to her, as a mother, turning her grief into a determination to achieve justice for Tyrell, and she will always have my support in that fight.
I am absolutely shocked at how victims of crimes are treated. At one point Sharon was told she was not the victim, because the victim was Tyrell and therefore she was not entitled to any support. We have to change that because, sadly, this is an increasingly common experience. She got a letter—my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham touched on something similar—from the court saying that her son’s killer had been allowed to go on holiday, even though he had been convicted of a knife crime. Because they had decided to suspend his sentence for two weeks he could go on that lovely holiday, where he was then part of killing Tyrell. That is just one chink of the injustice that she has faced simply because the crime took place overseas. Again, the victims code and Victim’s Commissioner need to understand these issues.
The third issue I want to raise is third-party harassment —I have recently experienced this myself—and organisations using third-party organisations to harass victims of crime. We see this particularly in domestic abuse courts. We see this with the family courts. My hon. Friends the Members for Poplar and Limehouse and for Birmingham, Yardley powerfully set out the need to act. The idea that somebody would kill the mother of their children and then have access is incredible. It does not have to be about death. If we prove that someone is involved in domestic abuse, this does not have to go through other courts, so that they can be re-victimised time and time again through third-party organisations.
My own experience was with the use of social services to try to target and harass. Again, that is a loophole where there is no criminal offence that can be used to protect safeguarding and make sure that we stop those people who use these institutions to try and target people, or indeed to join up those experiences. When I challenged the police about my experience and the fact that they wanted to use a community resolution, I was told that it would be nice if, as a victim, I agreed with what they wanted to do, but it did not matter. There has to be a process whereby the victim’s voice is heard, and heard loudly, and that voice must be supported wherever a perpetrator might use a different institution to cause harm, particularly if they use third-party institutions for malice.
Fourthly, there is the issue of legal protections. It is a welcome win to recognise that asking for someone’s medical records should be allowed only in very exceptional, very specific circumstances. At this point, I would not be doing her justice if I did not call for Claire Waxman not only to be recognised as the Victims’ Commissioner but, frankly, to be knighted for the work she has done. She shows so clearly the power of having somebody to hold organisations to account, but she has found that extremely frustrating. Her own work on compliance showed that only 11% of victims were being made aware of their right to criminal injury compensation, and only 25% knew of the victims code at all. Claire’s work shows us powerfully why this cannot just be about the idea that, somehow, sunlight is a disinfectant—that, somehow, if we publish data about who is not supporting victims and who is not doing what we would ask of them—that will be enough to lead to change. The honest truth is that we have had the evidence—indeed, MPs’ casework provides the evidence.
We have all dealt with these challenges for years and years. So I join others in this place in asking Ministers to go further and to give teeth to this legislation, and not just to have publications. They should bring back the independent victims champions and make them a requirement for all police and crime commissioners, as Claire has so powerfully advocated, but also give those agencies real powers to hold people to account not just in a generic sense but in a specific sense. The sad truth is that we know how difficult that will be even if there are powers.
We have to give the Victims’ Commissioners the ability to do something. There have to be legally defined rights. There has to be a system to tackle non-compliance that goes further than just a spreadsheet and a dataset. We are all sick of seeing those letters of apology and of having those meetings where people say, “Let us try to learn the lessons”, when we can see those lessons happening time and time again.
Finally, I join everybody who is a fan of what IDVAs and ISVAs can do, and I have seen it in many cases. Sadly, she is not in her place, but I wish to draw something to the attention of the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller). I am pleased for her that she has such coverage of IDVAs and ISVAs, but the SafeLives survey shows that in only 74% of areas in this country do we have enough people doing those roles. I agree that we risk inadvertently restricting what they can cover. I pay tribute to and thank Laura Richards, who did huge amounts of work bringing forward the domestic abuse, stalking and harassment risk assessment and making the arguments around stalking and the stalking register. We need to go much further in understanding how that crime is being prosecuted.
IDVAs and ISVAs show the role of direct day-to-day advocacy, particularly when dealing with a crime where there are vulnerable people. I ask the Minister to think about this. When it comes to violence outside the home and people at risk of gang violence, we have seen how difficult it is to get people to be able to give evidence and to come forward. The lesson from IDVAs and ISVAs is that we should be rolling out systems of advocacy to help those vulnerable victims and to give people someone to guide them through that process on a range of crimes. We are dealing with an epidemic of youth crime. I can think of many cases in my local community where witnesses and victims have been terrified to come forward and terrified to go to court. They are often seen as potential perpetrators in their own right and not given that advocacy. I urge the Minister, rather than restricting what role an IDVA or ISVA plays, to think about independent advocates generally and how we might be able to use them to make sure that we get the prosecutions, the support for courts and the joining up of services that people need.
I also put on record my support for what was said by the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage). I note that the Corston review was in 2007. That gave us huge lessons about what we could do to reform prisons to support the very few women in prisons and to deal with the issues that might lead to women ending up in prisons. That review is long overdue implementation. I also support what the right hon. Member for Basingstoke said about NDAs.
There is so much here that could be done, because there is so much that needs to be done. I hope that the Minister will take in good spirit many of us adding to his inbox and wanting to see those things happen. We fear it may not be just another eight or nine years before we get a Bill to get it right; if we do not get this right, there may not be another one within our lifetimes. We have those conversations in our community with those people dealing with crime, those people who are survivors and those people who are grieving, and across this House we owe it to every one of them to do what it takes to get it right. The Minister will have my support if he does that, but he will also have my challenge if he does not.
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
Before I start my speech, may I take a moment to pay tribute and respect to Lord Peter Brooke of Sutton Mandeville, who sadly passed away this weekend? Members may know that he was the Member for Cities of London and Westminster for 25 years from 1977 to 2001, and in that time he was a Cabinet Minister in the Thatcher and Major Governments, Northern Ireland Secretary and National Heritage Secretary. I send my condolences to his widow Lindsay and the family.
It is a privilege to speak on Second Reading of the Victims and Prisoners Bill. Victims should and must have confidence in the criminal justice system, from making an allegation to the police investigation, court case, conviction and all the way through to the parole stage. After all, we know that a victim’s experience of the criminal justice system does not stop after the perpetrator has been found guilty. I praise the Lord Chancellor and the Minister for listening to victims, survivors and their families and bringing forward this legislation, which enshrines victims’ rights in law.
Rightly, part 1 of the Bill seeks to improve positive outcomes and provide that much needed support for victims at every level. As it stands, it does that by enshrining the key principles underpinning the victims code in law, simplifying support during and after the criminal justice system process, strengthening the Victims’ Commissioner’s role and introducing a joint statutory duty on PCCs, integrated care boards and local authorities to work together when commissioning support services for victims of domestic abuse, sexual abuse and other serious violence.
Those things are all welcome, but I gently ask the Minister to consider what survivors such as the broadcaster Charlie Webster and the London’s victims’ commissioner Claire Waxman are highlighting, specifically their campaign to give teeth to the victims code and ensure that there are proper resources in place for survivors and those supporting them. The Minister will remember from when he and I sat in Westminster City Council’s cabinet—he in charge of adult social services; me in charge of children’s social services—that Governments are very good at providing local authorities with statutory duties, but it is important that funding comes with that. The Victims and Prisoners Bill will strengthen the defined rights to drive the cultural change needed to improve the treatment of victims in the criminal justice system.
I have read the letter that Charlie has written to the Secretary of State, which highlights the death of her very close friend Katie, the victim of sexual abuse. I pay tribute to the work that Charlie has done in this arena. Charlie is a constituent of mine, and I first met her when we were both volunteering during the covid pandemic. She told me about her experience as a victim of domestic abuse and sexual abuse, and I was proud to sit on the Domestic Abuse Bill Committee and see through an amendment for which she had lobbied—those who know Charlie will know she is very good at lobbying—to ensure that children were included as victims of domestic abuse.
Charlie’s letter and Claire Waxman’s campaign show that this is evidence-led legislation responding to the lived experience of victims. It gives legally enforceable rights to justice and support. With their personal understanding, they know the needs and requirements to improve the system. As the Bill progresses through Parliament, will the Minister or the Secretary of State meet me and Charlie to hear more about her experience and her campaign, which makes some astute recommendations regarding long-term funding for victim support services?
I turn briefly to part 2 of the Bill. Expanding provisions for support to those affected by major incidents is welcome. Many colleagues in the Chamber today have highlighted the horrendous experiences of the Hillsborough victims and families. My constituency, the Cities of London and Westminster, has sadly through the years seen its own share of major incidents from the 7/7 bombings, the 2017 Westminster bridge terrorist attack to, most recently, the 2021 Fishmongers’ Hall attack. London has hundreds of victims, survivors and their families who have often felt left on the sidelines of support. We had the public inquiry for the Manchester Arena bombings recently, and I found the testimony from many victims and surviving family members moving, and I pay tribute to their bravery. I hope that the Bill reflects on that powerful testimony.
I have a great deal of sympathy with creating an independent and appropriately resourced advocate for victims of major incidents, because when a victim dies, the crime does not die with them. Often if the victim has been killed, it is their surviving family who continue with the lifelong consequences of the perpetrator’s actions. It is incredibly important that when we consider victims, we consider the families, too. The same principle applies when we consider parole.
Part 3 of the Bill includes proposals to provide the Justice Secretary with powers regarding granting release to certain individuals who fall into the top tier of serious cases. I note in particular the support of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) for Carrie Johnson in her campaign to prevent the killer of Joanna Simpson from being allowed his automatic release from prison after serving only half his sentence. When looking to improve the Parole Board process, one group that must not be ignored is the victim’s surviving family. I have been struck in researching this Bill by just how many families, like Joanna’s mother, Diana Parkes, and her children—have been neglected during the Parole Board process. They should have more of a say, so I welcome the Bill’s introduction of the right for families to apply to attend a parole hearing.
I am very aware that this is a complex issue and one that will benefit from debate, but I believe we need to nuance this. After all, no one crime is the same and no one victim’s experience is the same, so making sure there is a sympathetic approach, with appropriate powers in place for the Justice Secretary and the Parole Board so that they can deliver for all those affected by a top-tier crime, will be critical to the success of this Bill. That said, I certainly welcome the Bill as a whole and, of course, the measures that will go a significant way to change a victim’s experience.
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
Like the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken), I would like to send my condolences to the family of Peter Brooke.
It is a privilege to speak on Second Reading of the Victims and Prisoners Bill. There really is a feeling in this Chamber that is very unfamiliar to me, but also very pleasing, which is the sense of victims needing to be at the forefront of the Bill. I do hope that, in Committee, the significant changes that are needed will indeed be made.
Some 1.5 million violent incidents took place in the year ending March 2022. There has been a fundamental loss of faith in the criminal justice system by victims of rape and sexual abuse. Indeed, five in six women who are raped do not report it, along with four in five men. This Bill really does need to increase victims’ confidence, and the confidence of the public, that victims will indeed get justice. Victims from all backgrounds need justice, and I refer to the nine protected characteristics in the Equality Act 2010. In particular, I want to speak about young women, women and people of colour, because they are mainly the people who have spoken to me about their injustice and being victims in these types of situations.
Victims need justice, but they also need emotional support. A victim from my constituency—a woman—was kidnapped at knifepoint and raped well over a year ago, but she is still waiting for therapy. She is also worried about where she is going to be living when the abuser is eventually released from prison. Victims need a holistic sense of support, which includes support from victim support agencies, but also for housing. Although the organisation that supported her, called Athena, was able to offer some initial therapy, it was only for a set period of time and really was not enough, so much more funding and concentration is needed in looking at this.
On prisoners, the prison system is being let down by the Government, and the Government are letting down victims and, indeed, the public. I say this because the Prison Service is in crisis. We know that because prison officers are difficult to recruit and difficult to retain, along with the fact that a dispute about the high pension age is causing prison officers to leave early. Prison officers are doing their best, and I thank them for all the work they do, but the rehabilitation of prisoners is challenging. Because prison officers are not there, training is not able to take place. There are often delays in the reports that need to be done by prison officers, and prisoners are often kept in their cell for up to 22 hours. This needs to change.
Earlier this year, the Justice Committee, of which I am a member, published a report about prisoners struggling to cope with mental health issues. There are various other issues, and I do hope that the Minister will pay close attention to all the Justice Committee’s work on prison and prison officers and on victims.
I recently spoke to a young person who was in a young offenders institution. His release date was at the end of January, but his release was delayed because suitable accommodation cannot be found for him. That means he has spent three months longer in the young offenders institution, when he should have been put in accommodation with the public. That is a concern, because how many other young people or prisoners is this happening to, and how many more delays are taking place at a cost to the public purse?
As we know, this Bill is split into three parts. My right hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) spoke with conviction and passion about the public advocate provision. There is really nothing further for me to say on this, but I want to put on the record that the proposed advocate is welcome, but should be fully independent and accountable to families.
On part 1, I support the intention of clauses 1 to 21, because victims must be supported. Another teenager recently shared a horrific story with me. She went to the police station to report a rape, but she was speaking to a male officer, so she already felt self-conscious and intimidated, and it was very difficult conversation. What was even worse was that the police officer went on to ask, “What were you wearing at the time?” It implied it was her fault, and that should not be happening. At all levels of the criminal justice system, we need to make sure that victims are supported in a compassionate, caring and sensitive way, but one that gets the information needed.
The constituent who was kidnapped, raped and threatened with a knife made a statement at the police station, but she was also held at the police counter, and this was deeply traumatising for her and extremely difficult and painful. I therefore support measures to enable victims to escalate complaints about their treatment. However, I am sceptical about how certain measures will work in practice. The Chair of the Justice Committee, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), set out well the issues with just having a victims code. The victims code needs to be enforced and there need to be consequences. My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) also mentioned that eloquently.
I would welcome the Government listening to and considering Labour’s plan to put victims at the heart of the criminal justice system, such as by offering free legal advice and other advice to rape survivors, along with giving victims of antisocial behaviour a voice. That is a huge issue across our nation, and as we have heard in the Chamber, people who experience antisocial behaviour really need to know they are being viewed as victims and are getting the crucial support they need. I impress on the Government again to look at a holistic approach to victims. They really do need more than just prosecutions; they may need support and services for themselves.
Clauses 46 and 47 provide the Justice Secretary with powers to change the Parole Board rules, and I again refer to the Justice Committee evidence on this. So much that came out was about scrutinising the changes that the Secretary of State for Justice was proposing, and there are real issues coming out of this—not only the cost, but the time this will take—that are very concerning.
The issue of IPP legacy prisoners needs to be addressed, not ignored. No one should be in the state of no hope —it causes mental health issues, self-harm and, indeed, suicide—but that is what many IPP prisoners have felt and experienced.
Finally, we must all treat people how we would wish to be treated—fairly, with respect and with justice. Let us hope that the Government can achieve that with this Bill.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
I, too, welcome the introduction of this Bill in so far as it enshrines victims’ rights in law. Reference has already been made to my predecessor Elfyn Llwyd and the legislation he worked on about stalking and coercive control. I also welcome the move to reduce the material the police may request of victims, although I would bring the House’s attention to section 41 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999, which said that evidence should be requested only when relevant. We need to be very careful about the detail of what may be requested in case it can still be used by defence lawyers in court in ways that suit them, not the victims.
I am disappointed, if not surprised, to see that the Welsh Government have stated that there has been a lack of consultation by the UK Government prior to the publication of the Bill, even though it appears that the Bill touches on areas of devolved competence. In particular, I suspect that it will interact with legislation such as the Violence against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (Wales) Act 2015. It most likely will also impact on the approach of commissioning services in Wales, including the Welsh Government’s current plans for sustainable commissioning, so I seek an assurance from the Minister that the implications for Welsh legislation and victims in Wales will be given thorough consideration in Committee if that did not happen at pre-legislative scrutiny.
Victims have consistently been overlooked in the justice system in Wales, and this has been exacerbated by the massive programme of court closures in Wales, where over 20 Crown courts and magistrates courts have closed since 2010. This has reduced the ability of victims to get to court, especially in rural parts of Wales where public transport is poor. I am also told that some victims are reluctant to travel to court if they have to use public transport because they then face the possibility of meeting the person who made them victims.
There are, however, examples of good practice of commissioning victims’ services in Wales, such as the Goleudy service in the Dyfed-Powys Police force area. It is a holistic victim support service, established by Plaid Cymru police and crime commissioner Dafydd Llywelyn, that offers practical and emotional assistance for victims of crime. However, the fractured nature of commissioning services means that services such as Goleudy are not available to everyone, as provision and access to victim support varies wildly across Wales.
The resignation of Dame Vera Baird, the Victims’ Commissioner, last September highlighted how far down the priority list victims have fallen. What she said is significant. She said that the
“downgrading of victims’ interests in the Government’s priorities, along with the side-lining of the Victims’ Commissioner’s office…make clear to me that there is nothing to be gained for victims by my staying in post”.
It is also worth noting that in April the chief executive for the office of the Victims’ Commissioner announced that she, too, would be standing down next month.
The Bill makes specific reference to services in London but is silent on Wales and devolution, despite many of the victim support services being devolved. That cannot be right. Given the comments of the Victims’ Commissioner, the lack of engagement with the devolved Government in Wales on the Bill, and what we already know about the jagged edge of justice in Wales, I believe it is time for us to establish the role and office of a victims’ commissioner for Wales to lead on creating a consistent service across Wales and to champion the voice of victims in the changing landscape of legislation and devolution. A victims’ commissioner for Wales is vital for linking up victim support services with the justice system and making it accountable to the people of Wales, in co-ordination with services such as health and communities, which are of course already devolved.
The flow of services needs to be streamlined. As Victim Support said in evidence to the Thomas commission on justice in Wales, we must not “re-victimise” victims by telling them they have to tell their story several times over to several agencies. A one-stop shop for victims is similar to the idea of “victim care hubs” as advocated by the Victims’ Commissioner for London, and similar to the Goleudy model to which I referred earlier.
The Justice Committee concluded that the draft Victims Bill published by the UK Government would not fully secure the rights of victims, and many of its recommendations have not been adopted by the Government. I urge the Government to revisit some of the Justice Committee’s recommendations in its pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Bill, including recommendations to address sustainable funding for community-based victim support services.
Welsh Women’s Aid also told me that the penalties in the Bill for non-compliance with the victims code are toothless, and that clause 5 needs to be reworked with stronger sanctions so that criminal justice agencies are incentivised to uphold the rights of victims.
There are concerns that the Bill’s requirement for data sharing between services may put at risk migrant victims whose immigration status is insecure. Wales is a nation of sanctuary and the Bill should acknowledge this. There is also no reference to access to services for those with no recourse to public funds. There is also a lack of direct reference to specialist support available for child witnesses and victims.
Finally, I turn to part 3 of the Bill. The Prison Reform Trust says that part 3 raises significant constitutional questions regarding judicial independence and the UK’s compliance with human rights obligations. As co-chair of the justice unions parliamentary group, I also note that Napo, the probation staff union, is against any attempts to undermine the independence of the Parole Board or politicise the decisions of the board.
What the Government could have done with part 3 instead was bring forward changes to parole that would benefit victims and strengthen their rights. I welcome the Government’s decision to enable some Parole Board hearings to be held in public from last year onwards, but I urge them to look at the issue again to see what can be done to give victims greater say in the decision to enable a hearing to take place publicly. This is in relation to Rhiannon Bragg of Gwynedd, who campaigned for the parole hearing of her perpetrator to be held in public, only for the chair of the Parole Board for England and Wales to rule that Bragg’s perpetrator’s mental health issues could be exacerbated by a public hearing. That was after the Ministry of Justice accidentally sent Ms Bragg’s stalker intimate details of the anguish he had caused her and her family because of his horrifying actions—it sent her medical details to prison. It should be possible for a public hearing to be held if that would be in the interests of the victim, and that could be included in the Bill. The Bill’s title puts victims before prisoners, but that is not reflected by Parole Board measures at present.
In conclusion, I support the majority of the Bill’s aims, but it must be improved upon to ensure that it is strengthened to cover all victims and support services, and that compliance and enforcement of the victims code is maintained. Overall in Wales we would be better served with our own commissioner and the ability to align services properly, placing victims at the heart of the system, and I will do my best to make sure this place appreciates that Wales has a different legislature and all that implies.
Rosie Duffield (Canterbury) (Lab)
It is a privilege to follow so many great speeches in this debate.
I personally do not love the word “victim”: it makes some of us feel as though we have neon signs above our heads, flashing away and marking us out as weak, naive or stupid enough to have ignored the signs that led us to be treated so badly. I wince whenever I read that description of myself, despite knowing that it was not stupidity or weakness and that actually anyone could find themselves in a similar situation.
There are many women who grow up with only this expectation of relationships, not even imagining anything better for themselves. The privilege I had is that I knew that I did not deserve it or had to just accept it—that it was totally wrong and had to stop. Being in this place, having been plucked out of a previously ordinary life of low-paid work, single parenthood and constantly juggling money around, gave me the new tools to recognise that I did not have to put up with living my life in constant fear. I found the confidence and courage to say “No”, but before living this extraordinary life I know I would not have done. I would have carried on feeling isolated and invisible, and I know that finding a way out would have been infinitely harder.
As MPs, we regularly meet or hear from non-governmental organisations and charities that centre on victims or deal in the business of domestic abuse, but in ordinary everyday life people living in that situation have to first come to the realisation that their constant fear is not okay. Then they have to decide that it is not okay for them, and then to fully realise and accept that they deserve better. That part is the hardest.
I have colleagues and friends here and professional briefings that reminded me of that constantly. Despite not discussing my own personal home life much, the logos of those NGOs were always in my inbox. MPs wore badges. These issues were talked about and debated, but not in most people’s homes. We have to break through to those who need us and make sure as legislators that these processes are as easy and stress-free as we can make them, and currently they absolutely are not.
I know that as MPs we want to encourage all victims to come forward to report rape, domestic abuse or stalking, and we want to reassure them that they will be listened to and helped and justice will be served. But can any Member here today look their constituents in the eye and promise that the current horrendous delays and the experience of handing over the intimate details of their lives for brutal and crass scrutiny, and to be regurgitated all over newspapers, is going to be worth it?
The Bill comes too late for me. I know that and that is something that I will never be able to do for myself. The prospect is unbearable, frankly. But I have been able to put myself and my life back together, although of course there will always be broken and missing pieces.
The Bill’s aims are to be welcomed, but we also need to see real and tangible changes, rather than simply hear a wish list put forward by both sides of the Chamber. We need first and foremost to listen to victims and experts delivering services on the ground, such as the Centre for Women’s Justice, Dr Karen Ingala Smith, Aurora New Dawn and many others who have been helping victims for a long time, and who centre women and prioritise their needs. They know as professionals that, as Dr Karen Ingala Smith said:
“A trauma-informed safe space creates space for action and recovery from violence and abuse and places the woman victim-survivor in control and in the centre.”
That is why it is essential for women to be able to access recovery spaces free from men. I am afraid that that must also include those who may no longer identify as men, in accordance with the Equality Act 2010. I refer to services such as Beira’s Place in Edinburgh.
Women who have experienced rape and male violent abuse will re-experience that trauma in the presence of biological men, whether it is considered kind to say so or not. That must always be something that we can say without fear of being cancelled or essentially constructively dismissed from our roles, whether in the sector or in politics. Likewise, men who have experienced domestic abuse or violence from a female perpetrator must also be able to heal and rebuild their lives in a setting free from women, if that is right for them, and receive specialist care.
Let us please use the Bill to make positive changes to improve the experiences of victims who need protection, support and justice. Let us ensure that it is worth victims coming forward, that they have safe and protective services, spaces and refuges if they need them and that they are not simply having to relive their trauma over and over again.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
At the outset, I would like to say that the Liberal Democrats are of course pleased that we are debating the Bill. It has been a long time coming. As we have heard from across the Chamber, it has taken a good number of years to reach this point. On Second Reading, it is right that we are focused on the positives. It is great that it is here, but let us also focus on how we can make it better and what is missing ahead of Committee. I noted in the Secretary of State’s opening remarks that he knows of one amendment that he is tabling. I hope that that is the first of very many from him and the Government and that they will be open to listening to those across the House, because it has been a consensus-driven debate. Many people have been working on the issue for many years and there is a lot of expertise in the Chamber.
However, certain things that are wrong with the Bill need to be highlighted. For example, it does not give specific provisions for victims of burglaries, fraud or antisocial behaviour. My inbox is full of constituents who are keen that those are specifically mentioned because they are concerned that they will be considered too low-level to be dealt with. I dare say that that is linked hand in glove with a perception that law and order is not taken seriously right now. In Thames Valley, for example, 174 crimes remain uninvestigated every single day, let alone whether the police will come and investigate, whether any charges will be brought, or whether the case will be heard in court. Too many people feel let down by the criminal justice system. It seems complex, alienating and ineffective. The Bill is a missed opportunity to tackle some of those issues.
The Liberal Democrats welcome the Bill’s founding aims of improving end-to-end support for victims of crime and amplifying victims’ voices in the criminal justice system. In particular, we are pleased to see the victims code setting out the minimum level of service that victims can expect from criminal justice agencies enshrined in law. However, we question how much it will change the victim experience in practice.
The Justice Committee said that this is not strong enough to deliver the cultural change needed in the treatment of victims in the criminal justice system. Even clauses related to the victims code enshrine just four broad overarching principles in primary legislation, rather than a comprehensive set of standards with legal purpose. That code, as we have heard, is not legally enforceable. I hope that Ministers have heard loud and clear in the debate how important the House feels that point is. It is all very well having a code but, when it goes wrong, what is the recourse? I am sorry, but a newspaper headline saying, “x people and x agencies found that the code was not abided by” is not going to cut it. We can do better than that and Parliament’s clear will is that we should. I hope that the Minister takes that on board; that was mentioned in so many speeches.
Funding is almost just as much a cause for concern. I listened carefully to the Secretary of State when he said that funding has increased. That is great and everyone of course welcomes that. However, I urge him to look not at how much it has increased by from a low baseline, but at what is needed to deliver what we all want. Ultimately, we want people to feel that victims are properly supported in the system. Let us listen to, for example, survivors of domestic abuse. Women’s Aid Federation England estimates that adequate sustainable funding for specialist community-based services would cost £238 million a year. Eighty-five per cent. of frontline workers surveyed in a report by the domestic violence charity Refuge said that their service was being impacted by insufficient funding. So for real change to take place, by all means, say what has increased, but also look at what is needed. That is the shortfall that I am sure all of us in the Chamber are more interested in. Is it actually delivering what we hope it is?
In various speeches, there has been reference to having to start early with young people to make them aware of their rights. I highlight the campaign of my constituent, Faustine Petron, who came to see me in a village hall when I was doing my summer village tour. She has started a campaign called “Make it mandatory”. She set that up as a survivor of domestic abuse with nine friends, who recognise that, as young people in the school system, they had no idea about their rights, consensual relationships or any space for them to discuss that. I appreciate that that is for the Department of Education, but I sincerely hope that the Ministry of Justice will converse with the Department for Education on what can be taught in schools, particularly on the rights under the victims code that will be enshrined in law. That would be very much in line with what Faustine and her brave survivor campaigners would want.
The last thing that I will talk about specifically, which again came from my surgery—this all comes from us, as MPs, talking to our constituents—is non-disclosure agreements. I was approached by young women at Oxford University who had been effectively silenced by their colleges because, following incidents of rape and sexual abuse, they were asked to sign gagging clauses from their colleges. They were sold to them at the time as, “This is for your protection.” I cannot begin to describe the effect that that had on these young women. It stopped one of them talking to her GP. The clause said, “If you break this clause, you are going to lose the right to study at this university.” It was not explained that she could talk to her parents or to her GP. It is just nonsensical. That was not an isolated incident; young woman after young woman came to me from different colleges, and it soon became obvious that it was a pattern of behaviour. They then linked up with other campaigns across the country and realised that there was a pattern of behaviour at universities.
The issue was picked up, quite rightly, by the Government. I think that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) tabled an amendment and the Government accepted it. Now, non-disclosure agreements are banned in universities, but they are allowed everywhere else: charities, businesses and political parties. We know that they happen in political parties, as they have been reported. They should not be happening at all in those specific cases. If Ministers want to know more about this issue, I have a Bill ready that mirrors the wording that was passed in legislatures in Canada—this has happened before.
The point is that non-disclosure agreements should not be banned in one type of institution in this country—the Government have conceded that ground—yet still be allowed in other institutions and organisations. We can put that right in this Bill. I pay credit to the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel); when I met her as Home Secretary, she said that this Bill might well be the vehicle for us to do that. The campaign has broad cross-party support. It came from constituents, who raised it in the first place. It has been in various manifestos for the best part of a decade. I urge the Secretary of State and the Minister to engage with the campaign. We have spent a long time working on it. It is time that the voices of victims are amplified. At the very least, can we make sure that they are no longer silenced?
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
First of all, I pay tribute to all those who have spoken in this important debate. We have heard powerful speeches and personal testimonies from those who have shared their extensive knowledge and experiences of how the criminal justice system has failed victims. I pay particular tribute to those who have spoken about their personal experiences: my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum), who is not in her place, and the hon. Member for Burton (Kate Kniveton) and my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield), who both spoke powerfully.
We heard from the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Rob Butler), who lost a friend in the Hillsborough disaster; the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) paid tribute to Peter Brooke, and I extend my condolences to his family and friends. We heard the strong voices of my right hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater) and for Lewisham East (Janet Daby)—strong women speaking powerfully for the victims they represent and speak out for. I look forward to working with them as the Bill progresses. I hope the Government will listen to their proposals in Committee.
It is great finally to be here after so many years as the Government bring forward the victims Bill—I am sorry, my mistake: the Victims and Prisoners Bill. The Government almost succeeded in delivering what was promised, but they could not quite let victims be the sole purpose of the Bill—they now share the stage with prisoners. I fully support much of what the Chair of the Justice Committee, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), eloquently said in his powerful speech: adding in that part with no pre-legislative scrutiny, engagement or consultation with the sector is reckless, to say the least, and belittles the Bill for victims.
It has taken us eight years and eight Justice Secretaries to get to this point. I appreciate that the Government have been a little preoccupied with tanking the economy and forcing people to choose between heating and eating, but victims should never have dropped so far down the list of this Government’s priorities. The Bill is weak, has no teeth and is a colossal missed opportunity to introduce the vital change desperately needed to protect victims. We have heard today that everyone on the Opposition Benches knows that, as does everyone on the Government Benches.
Only last Friday, I was at the victim support hub in my constituency, answering calls on their 24-hour helpline. The line was inundated with calls. The staff there do incredible work, but it is clear that victims repeatedly return to that service because they are not supported throughout the justice process. I saw the real human impact of the criminal justice system on its knees—a direct result of 13 years of successive Tory Governments.
Let us look at what that has led to: almost half the courts across the country have closed; the court backlog stands at 63,000 cases; over a third of victims said they would not report a crime again; fewer than two in 100 reported rapes lead to a charge; for those that do lead to a charge, there is an average wait of three years for the case to be heard; nearly two thirds of rape survivors drop out of the system; antisocial behaviour victims are denied support because of the Government’s refusal to acknowledge them as victims; and the Victims’ Commissioner role has been vacant since September last year, allowing the Government to avoid scrutiny entirely throughout the Bill’s introduction.
But that is all fine, because now we have this ground- breaking Bill to address all those issues, and we have a Government plan to tackle the court backlog, increase charges for rape perpetrators, and ensure victims’ rights are upheld and supported throughout the system. However, none of that is in the Bill. As it stands, the Bill is a tick-box exercise for the Government, allowing them to say they tried. Currently, there are no defined rights for victims, the Bill states only that agencies “should” comply with the four overarching principles of the victims code, and the Government have failed to address the issue of non-compliance with the code. How is the code enforceable? Where is the accountability when it is not upheld?
One survivor who I spoke to was raped as a teenager. Sophie was not told about her entitlement to an ISVA for eight months after she reported the crime to the police. After two torturous years of uncertainty and neglect, she finally had her day in court, but she said she felt as if she was treated like a criminal on the stand, while being forced to look at a picture of the perpetrator that caused her to have a panic attack, reliving her trauma. The witness assistant, trying her best, told Sophie to “pull herself together”, but there is absolutely nothing in the Bill that would have improved Sophie’s experience. Without an enforceable victims code, it is nothing but words on a page.
Survivors such as Sophie are not the only victims who will suffer if the Bill in its current form is passed. The families of the victims of the disasters at Hillsborough, Grenfell and Manchester Arena will have nothing more than a Conservative puppet if the Government go ahead with their proposed idea of an independent advocate. The role of public advocate needs to be filled by a fully independent, permanent figure who is accountable to families and survivors. I pay tribute to the campaigners who are continuing to work towards that, particularly my right hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood who made a powerful argument, clearly and robustly, in her speech. Labour would introduce a robust Hillsborough law and ensure those families who have endured so much would see justice delivered and not denied.
Labour’s plan would ensure that victims of rape are fully supported, providing free legal advice to rape survivors. One victim I spoke to, Molly, was raped at a party by a boy she believed was her friend. When she reported it to the police, she was treated like a suspect, and subjected to questions about her clothes, alcohol consumption and sex life, all while traumatised from the night before. Nothing in the Bill will change what happened to Molly, but free independent legal advice would have helped her feel supported through one of the scariest things she would ever do. When five in six women who have been raped do not report it to the police and prosecution rates are at an historic low, free legal advice is essential to protect the victim, and also to ensure that those rapists are caught and charged.
We welcome today’s Government announcement on stopping the use of third party material in a court case. Labour has been calling for the past year for the protection of third party material, such as counselling records for rape and sexual violence victims, so I am glad that the Government have finally listened and introduced that, and heeded our calls on the issue. But how many victims would have been saved the torment and how many sexual predators would have been imprisoned if the Government had listened to us sooner? We have yet to see the Government’s policy detail, and the thresholds remain unclear. I look forward to scrutinising the proposal in Committee.
Labour will recognise the devastating toll it takes when someone feels unsafe in their own home and will recognise victims of antisocial behaviour for what they are—victims. My own constituent, Sarah, came to me having suffered a miscarriage due to the stress she had undergone from repeated antisocial behaviour against her home. It was that traumatic. She was singled out and targeted. How can the Government say that Sarah is not a victim? That issue must not be omitted from the Bill.
Unlike Government Members, we believe independent scrutiny to be a vital part of democracy, so we will strengthen the Victims’ Commissioner role—in fact, we will have a Victims’ Commissioner in the first place. We will grant them the necessary powers to enforce the victims code and lay an annual report before Parliament. The Government would have to respond to the report within the allotted timeframes, in contrast to their current practice. I understand that the Domestic Abuse Commissioner is still waiting for a response to their “Safety before status” report three months after the deadline.
Finally, campaigners such as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), who tabled his own victims Bill way back in 2016, and London’s Victims’ Commissioner Claire Waxman, have campaigned for a victims Bill for a decade and more. This legislation is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to enact meaningful change that will improve the lives of thousands who have experienced some of the worst crimes imaginable. However, this weak Victims and Prisoners Bill catastrophically fails to do that. Victims such as Sophie, Molly, Sarah and many more we have heard about today, who have to relive their trauma every day while trying to move on with their lives, will not find comfort in the Bill. The Bill must truly place victims at the heart of the criminal justice system and not simply pay lip service.
We will not seek to divide the House on Second Reading, but we want an extended and more robust version of the Bill, preferably with our proposed changes placed in statute during the Committee. The human cost of the Government’s callous neglect of the criminal justice system cannot be understated. The Government have a genuine opportunity here, and victims across the country are watching.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Before I call the Minister, I want to say how important it is for those who have participated in a debate to get back into the Chamber in good time to hear the wind-ups. If nobody came back, Opposition Front Benchers would be speaking to an empty Chamber and the Minister might well be in the same position. Some who participated are still not here, and I hope that the message will be passed back that it is really important for Members to get back in good time. If they do not do so, it is discourteous to the Front Benchers.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Edward Argar)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to deliver the closing speech in this Second Reading of the Victims and Prisoners Bill. I give my genuine and sincere thanks to right hon. and hon. Members from both sides of the House for their thoughtful contributions. The tone, by and large—with the exception of Opposition Front Benchers—has been measured, thoughtful and considered. Actually, given the nature of the issues, the debate has been remarkably non-party political.
Let me start by paying tribute to previous Lord Chancellors who have worked on the Bill—my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland), my right hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis)—and, indeed, paying tribute to the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), for the work that he did on the Bill in his previous incarnation in the Ministry of Justice. I will turn in due course to the speeches made by Members today, but first I want to pay a particular tribute to all the victims, and victims’ families, who have talked to us, worked with us, told us their stories and helped to shape the Bill. Despite their own personal tragedies, they have worked tirelessly to improve the system for others, and we are incredibly grateful to them.
As we heard earlier from my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor, this is a crucial Bill, and as one who was victims Minister between 2018 and 2019 and is now in that post once again, I must say that it is a particular privilege for me—as it is for my right hon. and learned Friend and others—to hear from victims who have come to see us to tell us about their experiences so that we can understand them just a little bit better. They come with bravery and relive very traumatic events in their lives to share them with us, and it is extremely humbling when we have those conversations. I see that the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove), is now sitting on the Front Bench; I know that he took a close interest in this issue when he was in the Ministry of Justice.
The Bill makes good on three long-standing manifesto commitments—three promises that the Government made to the British people. First, we promised to introduce a victims’ law, and we are fulfilling that commitment. For instance, we are enshrining the principles of the victims code in law so that victims, as well as every agency in the criminal justice system, are in no doubt about the service that victims should receive. Secondly, we promised to introduce an independent public advocate to support survivors and the bereaved after major disasters. We seek never again to see victims suffer as the Hillsborough families have, as the Grenfell families have, and as families have following the Manchester arena bombings. Thirdly, we promised to strengthen the parole system so that public protection would be the pre-eminent factor in every decision about whom it is safe to release.
As my right hon. Friend said at the beginning of the debate, if justice is to be delivered, victims must be treated not as mere spectators of the criminal justice system, but as core participants in it. That is the mission of this Government and the mission of this Bill. Huge progress has been made over the last decade for victims: that progress includes boosting the ranks of our police officers to tackle crime and bring criminals to justice, locking up the most dangerous criminals for longer as a result of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, improving the response to rape and domestic abuse victims through the End-to-End Rape review and our landmark Domestic Abuse Act 2021, unparalleled investment in victim and witness support—we are more than quadrupling the 2009 levels of funding to support victims—and introducing a clearer, strengthened victims code. However, we rightly committed ourselves to doing more, and today we are doing more. The Bill will boost victims’ entitlements, bring greater oversight, amplify victims’ voices, and deliver further safeguards to protect the public.
Edward Argar
I will, very briefly. There are a number of colleagues to whom I want to respond.
Sarah Champion
I recognise and truly respect the work that the Minister did in his last role as victims Minister. Will he tell us whether he will fight to secure the necessary funding for all the measures that he is proposing and those that are already in legislation, because it is not there right now?
Edward Argar
The hon. Lady and I have worked together in the past, and I thank her for her intervention. I will come to the subject of funding in a moment, because it was mentioned by a number of other Members in this context.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), the Chair of the Select Committee, for his work in respect of the Bill and for his typically thoughtful and forthright expression of his views on behalf of his Committee. Those who worked with me on both sides of the House on the Health and Care Act 2022 will know that I am always willing to engage with and genuinely listen to colleagues during the Committee and Report stages of legislation, as, indeed, is my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor. That does not mean we will always be able to agree with everything, but we will engage, and we hope to make it a genuine engagement.
We have heard some sincerely held views expressed today. In respect of the independent public advocate, I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), and indeed to Lord Wills, whom I have met, as well as the other colleagues across this Chamber who have engaged with these issues. I had the privilege of meeting the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood along with the shadow Lord Chancellor and other Members recently to discuss the independent public advocate. What has emerged from the debate today, including from my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster), is a general desire to make part 2 of the Bill work for the victims and their families and to ensure that, while disasters may sadly occur again, no one has to go through what those victims and families went through.
The right hon. Lady was very clear with me about the importance of agency and empowerment. She was also clear about the context and about how those victims and those families who had lost loved ones had come to this point and what they had experienced, as well as the need for them to trust in the process and the concerns they had about when the state or powerful organisations seek to use their power to conceal or to make their lives much harder in getting to the truth. I understand where she is coming from, and my commitment and that of the Lord Chancellor is to work with her and other colleagues to see whether we can reach a point where everyone is content with part 2 of this legislation.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) spoke powerfully, and I am grateful for her kind words. She has played a huge role on behalf of victims and those who want to see crime tackled and criminals brought to justice. I look forward to working closely with her as this legislation progresses. She rightly highlighted the importance of police and crime commissioners, a number of whom I have met recently, including Matthew Barber, Lisa Townsend and Donna Jones, and Sophie Linden, the Deputy Mayor of London. They do a fantastic job.
One of the issues that hon. and right hon. Members have raised is whether a victim chooses to report a crime and the impact that can have. I am happy to reassure the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) that whether or not someone chooses to report a crime, they will still be able to benefit from the victims code, and the clauses in this legislation that link to it will read across. I hope that gives her some reassurance. That point was raised by other Members as well. My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) and the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) raised the issue of NDAs. Without prejudice to the scope of this legislation and where we might land, I am always happy to meet my right hon. Friend and the hon. Lady.
Hon. and right hon. Members have highlighted a number of areas today where they would like to see the legislation go further in some cases and perhaps go less far in others. The only caveat I would gently add relates to scope. Some of the things they wish to push for may well be in scope, and I suspect that those who end up on the Bill Committee—I am looking at the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), who I suspect I might see sitting across the Committee room—will wish to explore them, but I just caution that there might be some areas that, just through the nature of scope, will not be able to be debated. It is important for those watching our proceedings to understand that the nature of scope is determined by what is already in the Bill.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke touched on ISVAs and IDVAs, as did a number of other hon. and right hon. Members including the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley. Last Thursday I had the privilege of speaking at the national ISVA conference and of meeting a number of them. There was strong support for guidance around their role, although I appreciate that the sector has mixed views on this. We are explicitly not seeking to create a hierarchy of support services but rather to recognise the professional role that ISVAs and ISDAs undertake and to help to bring greater consistency to it and greater awareness of their work across the criminal justice system.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Rob Butler) comes to this debate with a huge amount of experience of the criminal justice system. He spoke thoughtfully and he knows of what he speaks. He also served as a Minister in the Department. His comments on part 3 were measured, and I will always carefully consider what he says. He touched on the requirements on the judiciary, and I gently caution that we are limited—quite rightly, given the separation of powers—in what we can and cannot tell the judiciary to do, but I suspect the Judicial Office will be following these proceedings carefully.
Edward Argar
I will make a little progress, as I want to speak for roughly the same amount of time as the shadow Minister, to be fair to her.
The hon. Members for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum), for Rotherham, for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) and for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), and my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Kate Kniveton), all spoke movingly, powerfully and personally about their interactions with the criminal justice system.
My hon. Friend the Member for Burton spoke movingly about her experience of domestic abuse, and the whole House will admire the courage shown by all Members who spoke in such very personal terms. The hon. Member for Canterbury, in particular, demonstrated a huge amount of courage in giving a powerful and emotional speech, and she spoke for many who perhaps do not have the ability to speak for themselves in conveying what she did. She touched on third-party material, as did a number of hon. and right hon. Members, and that is one reason why I welcome the additional step we have announced today.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken), who was my ward colleague on Westminster City Council for a while, invited me to meet Charlie Webster. I know Charlie from my previous incarnation in the Department, when we visited a number of services together. I am always happy to meet Charlie, and my office may already be trying to arrange a meeting. My hon. Friend also touched on her support for the IPA, which I very much welcome.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher) and the hon. Member for Rotherham touched on the recent debate, and my hon. Friend’s ten-minute rule Bill, on prisoners changing their name. I hope to be able to meet my hon. Friend very soon to discuss the matter, and if the hon. Lady wishes to attend that meeting, I am always happy to see her, as I was when last we worked together.
Like the hon. Member for Rotherham, I pay tribute to Claire Waxman, with whom I have worked very closely in both my previous and my current role in the Department. The hon. Lady also mentioned Sammy Woodhouse, and I believe I engaged with her on the issues raised by Sammy last time I was in the Department and, like her, I am pleased to see the progress we have made in this space.
The right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) was typically thoughtful, but I gently say to her that we have engaged throughout with the Welsh Government on the victim provisions. Indeed, back in early December, I believe my right hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton received a letter from Mark Drakeford thanking him for the close engagement with the Welsh Government on this Bill, and we will continue to engage on the newer provisions, such as the IPA. As with the Health and Care Act 2022, I am happy to engage with Welsh Government Ministers.
Finally, the hon. Member for Walthamstow asked for clarification on the definition of a victim. I hope I have given her some reassurance that, whether or not a crime is reported, an individual can still come into the orbit of the victims code. One thing she uniquely mentioned, which I will look at with her if she wishes, is the overseas angle. I am always happy to engage with her, and this time it is not about the private finance initiative in hospitals.
Sir Julian Lewis
Among the long list of points the Minister addressed, I did not hear the one about murderers who refuse to appear in person in court to face their accusers and their sentencing. Does he think that that would be within the scope of this Bill?
Edward Argar
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that. My understanding is that that would probably not be within the scope of this legislation, but he will have seen that the previous and current Lord Chancellors have been clear in their determination to explore legislative options to address exactly that issue.
I very much look forward to engaging across the Committee Room with the shadow Minister and indeed with all those on the Committee, because genuinely important views have been expressed today, from particularly personal perspectives and with particular angles on elements of this legislation. That has been underpinned by a determination on both sides of this Chamber to make this work and a commitment to making the Bill an effective piece of legislation. I approach it in that spirit, as I hope the Opposition will.
As I bring the debate to a close, I say again that victims are not bystanders. Their views and experience matter greatly. They deserve to be treated with respect, compassion and dignity at every turn in the criminal justice system. It is only with their engagement and immense bravery in coming forward that we can bring criminals to justice and make our streets safer. That is why we have acted. That is why the Bill will put victims at the heart of the criminal justice system, where they belong, so that every victim’s voice is heard, every victim gets the support they need and every victim is empowered to seek the justice they deserve. This is about giving victims, and the British public, confidence that the parole system will keep them safe. We will ensure that they are listened to. We will ensure that justice is done. We will work to ensure that more criminals are caught and brought to justice, which is why we are delivering today on our manifesto promises to bring this legislation before the House. I commend the Bill to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time.
VICTIMS AND PRISONERS BILL: PROGRAMME
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),
That the following provisions shall apply to the Victims and Prisoners Bill:
Committal
1, The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.
Proceedings in Public Bill Committee
2. Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Thursday 13 July 2023.
3. The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.
Consideration and Third Reading
4. Proceedings on Consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.
5. Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.
6. Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading.
Other proceedings
7. Any other proceedings on the Bill may be programmed.—(Jacob Young.)
Question agreed to.
Victims and Prisoners Bill: Money
King’s recommendation signified.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)),
That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Victims and Prisoners Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of—
(a) any expenditure incurred under or by virtue of the Act by the Secretary of State, and
(b) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable under any other Act out of money so provided.—(Jacob Young.)
Question agreed to.
Victims and Prisoners Bill: Carry Over
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 80A(1)(a)),
That if, at the conclusion of this Session of Parliament, proceedings on the Victims and Prisoners Bill have not been completed, they shall be resumed in the next Session.—(Jacob Young.)
Question agreed to.
Victims and Prisoners Bill (First sitting)
Tuesday 20th June 2023
(2 years ago)
Public Bill CommitteesVictims and Prisoners Act 2024 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 20 June 2023 - (20 Jun 2023)
The Chair
We are now sitting in public and the proceedings are being broadcast. Before we begin, I have a few preliminary announcements. First, it is very warm, even after the thunderstorm, so if people want to remove their jackets or cardigans, that is fine. Hansard colleagues would be grateful if Members could email their speaking notes to hansardnotes@parliament.uk. Please switch electronic devices to silent. Date Time Witness Tuesday 20 June Until no later than 9.55 am Domestic Abuse Commissioner Tuesday 20 June Until no later than 10.40 am Rape Crisis England & Wales; Southall Black Sisters; SafeLives Tuesday 20 June Until no later than 10.55 am Children’s Commissioner for England Tuesday 20 June Until no later than 11.25 am Dame Vera Baird DBE KC; Victims’ Commissioner for London Tuesday 20 June Until no later than 2.45 pm Nottinghamshire Police and Crime Commissioner; Association of Police and Crime Commissioners; National Police Chiefs’ Council Tuesday 20 June Until no later than 3.00 pm Parole Board Tuesday 20 June Until no later than 3.30 pm Crown Prosecution Service Tuesday 20 June Until no later than 4.00 pm Local Government Association; NHS England Tuesday 20 June Until no later than 4.45 pm National Association for People Abused in Childhood; Victim Support; We Are Survivors Thursday 22 June Until no later than 12.00 noon The Right Reverend James Jones KBE; Ken Sutton Thursday 22 June Until no later than 12.15 pm Lord Wills Thursday 22 June Until no later than 12.45 pm Nick Hurd; Tim Suter Thursday 22 June Until no later than 1.00 pm Refuge Thursday 22 June Until no later than 2.30 pm Jenni Hicks Thursday 22 June Until no later than 2.45 pm Dr Stuart Murray; Grenfell Next of Kin Thursday 22 June Until no later than 3.15 pm Sophie Cartwright KC
We will first consider the programme motion on the amendment paper. We will then consider a motion to enable the reporting of written evidence for publication and a motion to allow us to deliberate in private about questions before the oral evidence session. In view of the time available, I hope we can get through these matters quickly, as I am sure we will.
Ordered,
That—
1. the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 9.25 am on Tuesday 20 June) meet—
(a) at 2.00 pm on Tuesday 20 June;
(b) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 22 June;
(c) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 27 June;
(d) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 29 June;
(e) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 4 July;
(f) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 6 July;
(g) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 11 July;
(h) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 13 July.
2. the Committee shall hear oral evidence in accordance with the following Table:
3. proceedings on consideration of the Bill in Committee shall be taken in the following order: Clauses 1 to 11; Clauses 16 to 21; Clauses 12 to 15; Clauses 22 to 33; Schedule; Clauses 34 to 55; new Clauses; new Schedules; remaining proceedings on the Bill.
4. the proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 5.00 pm on Thursday 13 July.
The Chair
The Committee will therefore proceed to line-by-line consideration of the Bill on Tuesday 27 June at 9.25 am.
Resolved,
That, subject to the discretion of the Chair, any written evidence received by the Committee shall be reported to the House for publication.—(Edward Argar.)
The Chair
Copies of written evidence that the Committee receives will be made available in the Committee Room and will be circulated to Members by email.
Resolved,
That, at this and any subsequent meeting at which oral evidence is to be heard, the Committee shall sit in private until the witnesses are admitted.—(Edward Argar.)
The Chair
We will now go into private session for a few moments to discuss lines of questioning.
The Chair
We are now sitting in public again and the proceedings are being broadcast. Before we hear from the witness, do any Members wish to make declarations of interests in connection with the Bill?
Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)
I am chair of the all-party parliamentary group on restorative justice.
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
I would like to declare, in the interests of full transparency, that prior to my election I was a non-executive director of what was then Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service and a member of the Sentencing Council. I was also a magistrate for 12 years and previously a member of the independent monitoring board of HMP Young Offenders’ Institution Feltham. I hope that covers the full gambit.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
In that case, I should probably declare that I have run sexual violence services, domestic abuse services, female offender services, human trafficking services and sexual exploitation services, as well as being the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on children at the centre of the family court and the vice chair of the all-party parliamentary group on domestic abuse. I think that is it.
The Chair
Thank you. I am happy to take declarations throughout proceedings if any Member thinks there is something they need to declare as we go through.
I welcome our first witness this morning, Nicole Jacobs, the Domestic Abuse Commissioner. We will now hear her oral evidence.
Before calling the first Member to ask a question, I remind all Members that questions should be limited to matters within the scope of the Bill and that we stick to the timings in the programme motion that the Committee has agreed. For this session, we have until 9.55 am. Could I ask Nicole Jacobs to introduce herself for the record, please?
Nicole Jacobs: Good morning, everyone. I am Nicole Jacobs. I am the Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales.
Jess Phillips
Q
Nicole Jacobs: Thanks for having me today. In general, I have huge hopes for this Bill. If amended and changed, which I am sure we will talk about, it could really produce momentous change for victims of domestic abuse. I am here to talk about victims of domestic abuse. You obviously have a wider scope of victims to consider, but victims of domestic abuse are highly prevalent; in my mind, that also includes and has a very strong link to so-called honour-based abuse, forced abuse, sexual violence, stalking and harassment, because, for the vast majority of people in those categories, you would find that their perpetrator is either a current or former partner.
It is hugely important to think about, in each and every part of the Bill, where we could improve and how we could go further to make it more meaningful on the ground. That is my interest. As things stand now, my topline view is that there is a lot to work with here, particularly regarding the duty to collaborate. That has huge potential to transform services on the ground, if the provisions are implemented correctly, which is what we need to spend some time talking about.
Jess Phillips
Q
Nicole Jacobs: First, I hope you will consider the mapping report that my office produced; I will tell you a little about it. When I became commissioner, that was one of the responsibilities of my role, and last year we produced a mapping report of services for England and Wales. That is a very important document, partly because we have not had one before. It brought together information from commissioners, from domestic abuse services on the ground, and, really importantly, from thousands of victims who fed back about their experiences of seeking services in the last three years—on what they wanted, what they got, and what is actually out there. We have not had that information at our disposal before. We have a sense of what is out there and we have other types of reports, but this is pretty comprehensive.
The report showed how huge the gaps are. Part 4 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 brought us the accommodation-based duty, which of course was a huge step forward, but we have to appreciate that 70% of victims go to community-based services, which is what you are looking at in this duty to collaborate and how it is funded. We know that the vast majority of victims—over half—were not able to find services that they wanted or needed in that category. There are higher rates when it comes to services for children, and lots of variability regionally in services for children and domestic abuse. We are looking at huge gaps in mental health counselling and therapeutic support, and in services for perpetrators to change.
The stark reality that I want to get across to you—although you will know this, because you have constituents—is that there are huge gaps. We have come a long way in our thinking and our legislation about domestic abuse, but the services are not sustainably funded. That is simply the reality. I ran services myself, before I was in this role. To give you a sense of things, the charity I ran had about 34 different funding streams, which were always cutting off, with cliff edges at various points. It was a struggle to make ends meet and to keep services continuing. That is what the services are doing. They are not sitting in core budgets. Money is coming to them—and the good news is that, in particular in the past few years, we have had great money through the Ministry of Justice and other sources—but it comes to the local area in a not very coherent way for the services to plan and think about filling the gaps.
The duty to collaborate, therefore, is potentially truly transformational, but to be so it is not as simple as saying, “You must collaborate”, which is how I read some of the Bill as it stands. Services will have to plan for collaboration and bring partners together, while sometimes the geographical mix does not fit exactly and certainly the timescales do not fit. There has to be a joint strategic needs assessment, which sounds administrative, but it is the only way to make the best of such duties. That takes some time. Under part 4 of the Domestic Abuse Act, money was set aside for the needs assessment of housing and accommodation-based planning, and we have seen that in other types of things, like our serious violence duty. A very practical way to make sure that the duty is implemented well is to have the joint strategic needs assessment.
Also, very importantly, when partners get together and look around the table, cobbling everything together and getting everything in line as perfectly as they can, inevitably they will find that they do not have funding for certain things that we would all agree that we need—services for children particularly, or for domestic abuse. They will then need some kind of mechanism to feed back to us here and to decision makers in Government to say, “We have this gap. How is it going to be filled?” There has to be some kind of responsibility back and forth. That is the only way we will move in any kind of meaningful way to fill the gaps.
Jess Phillips
Q
Nicole Jacobs: Absolutely, and there needs to be some kind of language that creates a responsibility for when the gap remains and how it is dealt with at the national level.
One other quick thing to point out from the mapping is the need for “by and for” services. What I mean by that is services that are very specific to particular groups: deaf and disabled survivors; black and minoritised survivors; LGBTQ+ survivors. What we found in our mapping is good news—that they are, by any measure, the most effective services for victims. We can see that because in our survey we could compare people who got to those services and how they felt with people who did not. That is very unusual, because usually we hear from reports and surveys of all people who made it to a service; it is great to hear about that effect, but in this mapping we could compare the two groups, so we can see how effective the services are.
We can also imagine how those services could be not effectively funded at the local level, because their geographic footprint might be a little larger, so the planning needs to be more regional or national. Another thing that has to be recognised at this stage is that there is a need for a “by and for” pot, which would help to supplement what is then implemented locally.
Jess Phillips
Q
Nicole Jacobs: Certain parts of it could. Of course, that is highly dependent on what kinds of services are out there and what they are funded to do. On the definition of an independent domestic violence adviser and an independent sexual violence adviser, that work really needs refining, as does the duty to collaborate in terms of community-based services. You are absolutely right: most victims do not report to the police. The reality is that it is probably one in six. We published a report where we scoped specifically which community-based services are oriented to criminal and family court proceedings. For the family court, it is much less—around 18%. We can send that to the Committee.
Jess Phillips
Q
Nicole Jacobs: I would, and I would go even further. You will spend a lot of time in this Committee hearing from people who will tell you about how to correct the criminal justice response as if it starts only with our statutory partners—the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and others. I beg you to realise—I have done this work myself—that the real meaningful work for a victim is when you have the community-based service, the IDVA or ISVA, in the mix and interacting with the police and those partners on a daily basis. That is where the problem solving is. You will get to a point where you will not have to worry as much about invoking the victims code because everything is taken care of.
Jess Phillips
Q
Nicole Jacobs: That is a really important point. Imagine that you are on a team at a local level—that was my reality before I came into this role. In central London, in the year before I was appointed, 4,000 victims were referred to the service. They cannot be supported by a team of IDVAs as if that is all that is needed. The most successful teams are ones that are surrounded by other types of role that recognise that not all people will interact with the police or the criminal justice system, but they will need help and very practical support. I do not know whether I am putting that in the right way.
These roles have huge caseloads, just like a lot of our frontline services. They cannot be everything to everyone. A big step forward in the process would be to carve out and be clear. I am not as concerned about what roles are called; it is about the skills and knowledge that one needs to be at the table advocating with and alongside victims in the criminal justice system and other systems—housing, health and children’s social care. What are the skills and knowledge, and what tables should they sit at? The best work that I have ever done was when I was in a working system where I knew that there was an operational group with the police, the CPS and others that was oriented to that work. You could problem-solve. You could bring issues to the table that everyone grappled with together. You cannot do that without the advocate for the victim being in the mix and being supported to do that.
There is another thing that, if it were in the statutory guidance or provisions, would allow a huge step forward. We have done a lot of funding of these roles, but not a lot of development of what that really means. What is the salary? What are the skills and knowledge? What is the practice development for this type of criminal justice advocacy or family court advocacy? That would move us substantially forward. Those are all possibilities that we can achieve in the Bill if we get the guidance, funding and language right.
Jess Phillips
Q
Nicole Jacobs: No. I had heard something along the lines of there being an interest in making sure that there were improvements to parole. I was surprised, and I understand the arguments made about the optics of it. On a practical level, I feel strongly that we really have to achieve the ambition of the Bill.
On the parole reforms, I talk to families, particularly bereaved families, and they often do not have a very good experience of the parole system, in terms of feeling informed and feeling that their concerns about release are being dealt with. One of the things that I am most curious about regarding the last-minute changes is how strong the parole provisions will be and how the family liaison care will be improved. I am very interested in what mental health assessments will be required when prisoners are released who have committed domestic abuse or murder. You are right: my thinking about this is probably less developed, because this was added on quite quickly.
Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
Q
Nicole Jacobs: I think broader is really positive. If you were to limit the definition to people who are accessing criminal justice remedies, then when it comes to domestic abuse, for example, that would narrow it way too much. Of course, the Domestic Abuse Act has a definition of children as victims in their own right. I am quite comfortable with the definition and feel good about what it is signalling, which is that in the victims code we want support for all victims, regardless of whether they engage with the police, for example. Services should be there.
One of my main concerns when it comes to genuinely providing services for all is that with domestic abuse, you are still leaving out migrant survivors and people who are in this country as students or with some other visa status; they have trouble accessing domestic abuse services. That could be fixed quite simply by allowing recourse to public funds for domestic abuse services for the period when a migrant is here—often victimised by a citizen here, let’s keep in mind. Having the provision of care that any other victim has: that is the one key thing I would highlight.
Sir Oliver Heald
Q
Nicole Jacobs: When I think of the impact of the victims code, the broadening of the victim definition impacts the fact that we want services for all in terms of what they need. A victim of domestic abuse, for example, may not ever have talked to the police, but may need housing support or support for their children and all sorts of things. Having that in place is really important. When you are talking about the obligations in the code in relation to people being informed about their case and all those things, to some degree quite a lot of victims will not need that if they are not engaging. In other words, I do not think it adds a huge amount of pressure that does not already exist on the statutory services in that regard.
Sir Oliver Heald
Q
Nicole Jacobs: I would not want the Committee to believe that there are not existing ways of training. Earlier in my career, I myself was part of developing the core training for IDVAs and doing that initial training, so I am fairly familiar with that. It is an accredited training. A lot of commissioners at the local level will require that level of training when they are tendering for community-based domestic abuse services, for example. I think you will hear from some charity CEOs later who can give you some more detail. Where we are is that while that is often included in commissioning standards, we need something more specific, more uniform, so that we—and, frankly, all our statutory partners—are really clear on what skills and knowledge these roles bring. I feel that we have this ability and need to carve out very specifically for criminal justice work and family court work what the skills and knowledge are that you need in particular.
The Chair
You have three minutes left.
Nicole Jacobs: Sorry. This is my job—I could talk about it all day. I think there is real scope to better define what good looks like for that, and that will impact the victims code and compliance with it. It impacts the multi-agency working at the local level. That would be a huge step forward.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
Q
Nicole Jacobs: The skills.
Sarah Champion
Q
Nicole Jacobs: No, I see that a lot more as a role at the local level.
Sarah Champion
Q
Nicole Jacobs: I would have thought the Secretary of State, but I don’t know. You will be the best people to decide those kinds of things.
Sarah Champion
Q
Nicole Jacobs: Of the services that domestic abuse victims access, 70% are community-based services. Having worked at them, I can say that you do not need to compel them to fill the gaps. They exist only to provide those services, and they desperately want to provide more. They will engage with absolutely any process that would help fill gaps for the people they are working with.
Sarah Champion
Q
Nicole Jacobs: I would expect there to be a meaningful assessment at the local level—a joint strategic needs assessment—where the potential funders come together alongside service providers and experts in their area and think very critically about what opportunities they have. That will not be totally precise, because some of it would depend on bidding, so they would have to decide together.
Sarah Champion
Q
Nicole Jacobs: The Bill could open recourse to public funds to all survivors. It could also create a firewall between the police and immigration enforcement so that people who are desperately needing protection would not fear calling or talking to services because of negative repercussions. They would just know that they would be made safe. They would have safety before status.
The Chair
I am afraid that that brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions. I thank the witness, on behalf of the Committee, for giving evidence this morning.
Examination of Witnesses
Jayne Butler, Ellen Miller and Dr Hannana Siddiqui gave evidence.
The Chair
There is a slight technical problem, so we will start with the witnesses who are here, and we will continue to try to get the other witness online as soon as possible.
We are now going to hear oral evidence from Jayne Butler, chief executive officer of Rape Crisis England and Wales; Dr Hannana Siddiqui, head of policy and research, Southall Black Sisters; and, if we manage to get the technology working, Ellen Miller, interim chief executive officer of SafeLives, via Zoom. Could the witnesses quickly introduce themselves for the record?
Jayne Butler: I am Jayne Butler, chief executive of Rape Crisis England and Wales.
Dr Siddiqui: I am Dr Hannana Siddiqui, head of policy, campaigns and research at Southall Black Sisters.
The Chair
Lovely. We now have Ellen joining us as well. Ellen, could you introduce yourself, please? [Interruption.] Ah. We will carry on, and hopefully Ellen will be able to join us as time progresses. Can I ask Anna McMorrin to ask the first question, please?
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
Q
Ellen Miller: I hope you can hear me okay. I am Ellen Miller, interim CEO at SafeLives.
Anna McMorrin
Jayne, can you tell the Committee what you think the Bill will do to tackle the historic low rates of rape prosecutions? Can you set out what you have said in your report today?
Jayne Butler: We had a lot of hope that the Bill would really change things for victims, particularly given the commitments that were made two years ago in the rape review. While there has been some positive progress on some things, there has been nowhere near enough to make a difference to the figures, and to the people on the ground who experience sexual violence and go to court. We can see that in the stats. It is evident, and does not really need me to speak to it.
There are still huge issues to do with the charges, conviction rates and use of scorecards. We talked in our report about the lack of understanding of who is using the criminal justice system and how, and a range of other things to do with victims and the specific legislation. For example, currently we do not have protection for counselling notes when victims come to court, and the Bill will not solve that. We do not have the security that victims will get support throughout the process and beyond. We hear time and again from people who report through the criminal justice system, then get to the end of the process and feel discarded. Those are the ones who are coming in, which we know is a tiny proportion of those affected by these crimes.
We feel that there is no genuine legacy in the Bill for ISVA roles, which have been really prioritised by the Government and funded at a much higher level than they were previously. They are highly regarded roles, but we still do not see the impact of them on the ground, and there is nothing to change that in the Bill. We see lots of hints at rights in the Bill that will not necessarily result in a genuine change for victims on the ground, because they will not have a way to pursue them—for example, through having independent legal advice that would help victims to challenge decisions that are made on their behalf, and to deal with it when the interests of the criminal justice agencies do not necessarily align with their own. That needs to be there, too. There is a whole raft of things; I could be here all day.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Jayne Butler: We know that rights are effective only if they go with equivalent responsibilities and accountabilities for not being upheld. To really make the rights in the Bill meaningful, and to actually change things for anyone who is pursuing a sexual violence issue within the criminal justice system, we would need an independent legal advice model that supports victims in understanding what is happening to them and how to make challenges. The Bill provides rights to people, and the idea that you can make a challenge—but no funding, no support and no way of actually making those challenges.
We are in a system where the criminal justice agencies are failing victims. The Bill gives victims more rights, but what does it do to support those already failing agencies to change anything? Right now, the responsibility for doing that falls time and again to the voluntary sector—to services that are underfunded and that constantly need to do more, challenge more and pick up issues and failures that come from individual cases and from systemic issues. Without any funding or decent proposal to give victims advice, the Bill leaves victims with nothing, and the voluntary sector with not enough funding and massive demand to pick up.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Jayne Butler: Sure. We would like to see a national hub provided for legal advice. We are not looking for that legal advice to give victims party status in legal proceedings; that is not what we are asking for. It is much more about ensuring that every time a victim has a problem to overcome, they can get some legal advice about how to challenge it. That might be a right to review; it might be a disclosure request for counselling notes or something else that is being asked for that they do not feel is relevant and that they feel is invasive and further traumatising them within the system.
We want it to be an independent service that will operate outside the current criminal justice agencies to ensure that victims feel that they have somebody who will act in their interests. A pilot has already been successful in Northumbria, and there is a strong evidence base that such models exist in other jurisdictions, including Australia, California and Ireland. We have put in a really detailed written submission to the Committee about this.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Jayne Butler: Not as it stands, no. Our concern is that it will not really deliver any improvements to victim services, partly because there is no funding attached to it. How do you ask people to collaborate around a massive demand without actually putting money in to provide those services? Often, we find in commissioning processes in this sector—and probably in others too—that as commissioners gain responsibilities, they pass some of the risk on to a provider, so we will start to see services being commissioned to deliver x within three working days for very small money. We have seen this across the board in other sectors before, and that is the real concern around this—that the duty to collaborate is not strong enough to give victims’ services, usually provided by the voluntary sector, a decent enough voice in talking about what is needed, demonstrating the demand and getting those service actually available for victims.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Jayne Butler: Potentially, yes. It is not necessarily my area.
Jess Phillips
Q
Jayne Butler: If it is one, I will be surprised. It is probably not—
Jess Phillips
Q
Jayne Butler: Not that I am aware of.
Jess Phillips
Q
Hannana, I will come on to you. My first question is: do you think that migrant victims of domestic abuse are currently included in the Bill?
Dr Siddiqui: Definitely not. The whole Bill is lacking, properly and in any meaningful way, any inclusion of protected characteristics. Black and minority women, for example, are not included, and migrant victims are definitely not included. The migrant victims should be central to the victims code, the definition of the victim and throughout the Bill. It is the only way that we can ensure all victims are provided for by the Bill.
Jess Phillips
Q
Dr Siddiqui: No. I think that most migrant victims do not approach the police or the criminal justice system to report domestic abuse and other forms of violence, primarily because they can be treated as an immigration offender and become criminalised, or they can be arrested, detained and deported. The fear of deportation is often the reason that prevents migrant victims coming forward. That is why a firewall, which is a total separation of the data sharing between the police and immigration enforcement, is absolutely necessary in order for them to come forward.
Jess Phillips
Q
Dr Siddiqui: Yes, there has to be a firewall and other legal reforms—for example, around no recourse to public funds. That needs to be lifted, so that victims can go to statutory agencies such as the police for help and support without the fear that they will be destitute as well as deported.
Jess Phillips
Q
Dr Siddiqui: There are hardly any. I mean, I would say that there should not be a statutory definition of IDVA and ISVA because it excludes most advocacy services that we have in community-based organisations, including “by and for” services. Southall Black Sisters, which is a pioneering organisation in advocacy services, does not fit the current MOJ model, which is very criminal-justice focused and largely looks at high-risk cases. We provide holistic services for victims of domestic abuse and a lot of that is advocacy work that sits outside the current definitions. You know, IDVAs and ISVAs also need development. They need guidance and improvement in pay and conditions. But I do not think that that needs to be done through a statutory definition. They definitely need more funding and you definitely need to give more funding for the “by and for” services with a wider definition of what an advocate is.
Jess Phillips
Ellen, can you hear me? I do not know whether I should make this declaration, but Ellen went to the same school as me. Ellen? Okay, I cede the floor if Ellen cannot hear me.
Elliot Colburn
Q
Dr Siddiqui: There is a duty to collaborate, but there is actually a lot of collaboration at a local level with funding agencies at the moment, but unfortunately they do not support migrant victims or victims from black or minority communities sufficiently to provide adequate services. You cannot have a duty to collaborate without having a duty to fund community services. More specifically, you need to fund specialist “by and for” services that are at the frontline in the community, providing services to enable migrant and other minority women to access mainstream services, including the criminal justice system.
There is also a need to change the law. The Bill on its own will not do it. You need to be able to remove the no recourse to public funds requirement for victims of domestic abuse so that they are able to come forward to and present themselves at the police, social services and elsewhere for help and support. At the moment, they cannot do that because they are frightened of being destitute or being treated as immigration offenders and deported. If you are going to look at protected characteristics, you have to look at migrants, at their specific experiences and at how they cannot use the criminal justice systems and local services. There is a need not only to improve funding for services, but to change the law.
Elliot Colburn
In the interest of time, I will cede the floor to my colleague.
Sarah Champion
Q
Jayne Butler: The announcement made in the Bill does not specifically mention counselling material. In our opinion, it does not bring about any new protections, but just effectively reinforces what already exists in law around the Data Protection Act.
Sarah Champion
Q
Jayne Butler: What we would like to see is a model that changes the legal threshold for access to survivors’ counselling records. This is not a blanket ban. What we are asking for is a test of substantive probative value. Again, we have seen this be successful in other jurisdictions. It would mean that CJS agencies have to make applications for access to a judge. There would be judicial scrutiny at two stages: a first one at the stage of access to the police, and a second one if it gets to the stage of being disclosed to the defence. It really protects that without, we believe, compromising any right to a fair trial or any rights that a defendant might hold in that circumstance. We have put a detailed written submission in to the Committee about this.
Sarah Champion
Q
Dr Siddiqui: There should not be a statutory definition, because under the current meaning of ISVAs and IDVAs, they tend to be criminal justice-focused and only deal with high-risk cases. They do not deal with the wider forms of advocacy services we provide, which tend to be on the whole more holistic and do not just focus on the criminal justice system; they look at the family court, the health and welfare system and provide services over a long period of time to women. It also does intersectional advocacy, which is about looking at a whole range of different issues, but it also looks at equalities.
Not all of them fit into the current definitions, and I think that if you define it, it will narrow what the definition is of an ISVA or IDVA. That means that the local commissioning bodies may not fund those services. The current services, of which a lot are run as “by and for” services that do not fit the current definitions, will not get funding. Historically, they are underfunded anyway, so they could disappear as a result.
Sarah Champion
Q
Dr Siddiqui: Yes, I think that a range of services—holistic services—are what the IDVAs should be dealing with. That is not just for high-risk cases. I would include medium and standard-risk cases, because risk changes rapidly. The models that exist for the community that are provided by the “by and for” sector include a whole range of things, including support services, outreach services, helpline advice and advocates. They do not fit the current models. The current model has always been restricted, and we have said so. Defining it in law means we could lose the funding we currently have for the range of services we offer.
Sarah Champion
Q
Dr Siddiqui: We would like a ringfenced fund that provides sustainable, multi-year funding to the “by and for” sector from central Government. There should be a duty to fund those services. I think the DA Commissioner estimates that there is about £300 million you need to give for the by and for sector. Imkaan, which is a voluntary umbrella organisation, estimates that £97 million is needed just for the “by and for” sector in black and minority communities. There needs to be sufficient funding that is long-term and provides holistic services that victims need in the community.
Sarah Champion
Q
Dr Siddiqui: No, most of the women we help do not actually know about the victims code. There needs to be far greater awareness, and it needs to be more inclusive in terms of language. It needs to be very explicit about protected characteristics and around migrant victims in order for it to reach and include everyone.
Rob Butler
Q
Dr Siddiqui: I wish I had the time to do that. I do not have an estimate, but I know that others have done those calculations. The Domestic Abuse Commissioner has done a calculation, which is about £300 million. Women’s Aid, Rape Crisis and Imkaan are all organisations that have done an analysis of what is needed.
Rob Butler
Q
Jayne Butler: I do not. There is a piece of academic work going on at the moment to estimate this. We all know that it is less than what these crimes cost society. What it costs to deal with victims and the long-term impact of these crimes in society is a lot less than victim support services. We would ask for more things. We have not talked about prevention. We want to see these crimes stop and that will cost money.
Rob Butler
Do you think we are talking tens of millions, hundreds of millions, or even more?
Jayne Butler: Hundreds of millions.
Rob Butler
Q
Jayne Butler: We have definitely seen incremental funding increases and recognise that those have been made. I do not think it is yet enough. We still have this really patchy provision of services. There are long-term issues around organisations that have been funded in the past and therefore exist versus where there are gaps. A lot more is needed to fill some of those gaps. Our waiting list in Rape Crisis is some 14,000 a year and increases constantly. We have seen an increase in demand of about 38% in the last year. We are seeing huge demand for those services, but that funding never quite touches it.
We also need to acknowledge that some of the delays in the last few years in the criminal justice system have really exacerbated things and mean that sometimes that new funding is not about helping new people. It is about the cost that they sit in the system for so much longer. I would like to know more about to what extent it is really making a difference to help more people.
Rob Butler
Q
Jayne Butler: I don’t think that people do always understand. It depends on what access to support they have had along the journey and who they are, but there is definitely more work that could be done on that and also in terms of how their individual cases are communicated. We hear time and again from people who have found out at a day’s notice that their court case has been postponed for months, if not years. So it is not only about knowing what is going to happen, but about being told when there is a variance and when that is changing for them individually.
Rob Butler
Dr Siddiqui?
Dr Siddiqui: I think you need an advocate to help you navigate the system. The information provided by the criminal justice system or by the courts generally is usually very little and victims do not really know what to expect. The fact that we are there as advocates and as a specialist service means we are able to give them the confidence to move forward. That is critical throughout the pre-trial, during trial and after trial. Nobody really cares about the aftermath except us. We are the ones who have to give them the ongoing support after the trial, so it is essential that the two work together.
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
Q
Dr Siddiqui: As I have said before, the victims code needs to be very clear about protected characteristics, particularly for migrant victims who lack the trust and confidence in the system to use it and to come forward. You need a wider definition of what a victim is. It needs to include witnesses. Also, a lot of our cases are transnational. When you are talking about what a victim is, you have to include families, friends and victims who have been dealing with international cases, which at the moment are not really being addressed. A lot of forced marriage cases and honour killings, for example, may take place overseas, but the families do not get any support in this country from the police and other agencies when they try to bring justice, even though the perpetrators may live in this country.
There is another thing that we need to include in the victims code when trying to define what a victim is. We know that a lot of women are falsely accused of perpetrating domestic abuse by their abuser, or defend themselves against abuse and may be treated as offenders as opposed to victims. It is really important that victims who defend themselves or who are falsely accused are seen as victims by the system. Groups such as the Centre for Women’s Justice are even asking for a statutory defence when women are driven to kill a violent partner out of self-defence. There is a need to look at our defences, and how we should treat those people as victims, not perpetrators.
Jayne Butler: To double what Dr Siddiqui just said, in terms of prevention work, we clearly do not want people to keep becoming victims. A whole host of work has been done on that. I refer back to the recent report of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse on the ongoing scale of such abuse. We also see huge numbers of adult rapes, with vast numbers of people affected, so it is obvious that we ought to be doing some prevention work. We had the Enough campaign through the Home Office, but we do not have a wholescale approach. Possibly some kind of public health approach is needed, because this is such a big issue, which continues to affect so many people.
In terms of gaps and counselling, the ISVA role gets a lot of focus. That is really important because support for victims of sexual violence who are going through the court process is invaluable, but people also need access to therapy. Often those services are not funded. Most of our waiting lists are for counselling as opposed to ISVA support, because the funding has been put into the ISVA side of things, without the need. Charlie Webster wrote an open letter recently, which I think was mentioned on Second Reading, about her and Katie’s experiences. They just did not get that kind of support.
Janet Daby
Q
Jayne Butler: Our waiting list for therapy is about 12,000 people across services across England and Wales.
Janet Daby
Thank you. Ms Elliott, I should have declared that I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on children in police custody, and I sit on the Justice Committee.
Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)
Q
Dr Siddiqui: I do not know how the firewall could be abused. It is important that, if there were a firewall, it would give victims the trust and confidence to come forward and seek help, and would ensure that the perpetrator was held accountable. At the moment, a lot of the victims—because they have insecure status—are told by the perpetrator that they have no rights in this country. Usually, that means that if they go to the police and are arrested for being an offender, or are reported to the Home Office, what the perpetrator has said is reinforced by the system. Basically, the perpetrator is able to weaponise victims’ status to control and trap them. David Carrick is a high-profile example: he trapped a woman with an insecure status. He told her that if she went to the police, no one would help her. That is true for many cases we deal with.
Some of the evidence for how many people are being caught out by that is from The Guardian, which did some FOI research with the police. It found that in a period of two years, about 2,500 people facing serious crimes including domestic and sexual abuse, as well as trafficking, were being reported to the Home Office. A lot of women were in that: in one quarter, about 130 women who were victims of domestic abuse were served with an enforcement order. We are talking about a hostile environment for migrants, and we must remove all barriers to victims of abuse being able to access their rights to protection, safeguarding and justice by giving them the whole toolkit that they need to access those rights.
The firewall—where there is complete separation from sharing of data between the police and statutory agencies, and immigration enforcement—is one way of increasing trust and confidence among migrant victims. I do not see a problem. If they are referred to agencies like ourselves, usually we will help them to report the abuse, but we do it by being their support and being able to advise them, and dealing with any issues that might arise with the police when they report it.
After getting legal advice on their immigration status, migrant victims are able to think more clearly along the lines of, “Yes, I should report it, because I want safeguarding and some justice. I want to hold this perpetrator to account.” At the moment, perpetrators have impunity, because they know that the women will not get any help from the police, even if they turn to them.
Siobhan Baillie
Q
Dr Siddiqui: If the migrant victims have done a crime, the police do their normal duties to investigate crime. It depends what that crime is. If they are seen as immigration offenders first and foremost, rather than victims first and foremost, they will not get any of the help and support they need. They do not even have a chance to get legal advice on their immigration status before they are reported. They do not have a chance to go to a “by and for” organisation to get any support or advocacy, so it is essential that they have the chance to do that before there are any kinds of communication with the Home Office. Usually, that communication should be done through their legal representatives, rather than by the police.
A lot of police officers say to us that they do not agree with the fact that there is no firewall. A lot do not even realise that there could be negative consequences if they report migrants. There is some international work, and even some in the UK, on having good guidance or a firewall. For example, there has been work in Amsterdam and in Quebec showing that a firewall works. The potential for abuse is minimised. In Northumbria and Surrey, the police are all looking at ways for how to improve responses to migrant victims without reporting them to the Home Office as their first response.
Sarah Champion
Q
Dr Siddiqui: If they have committed a crime, of course they need to be investigated like anyone else.
Sarah Champion
Q
Dr Siddiqui: Yes; there is no automatic sharing of data.
Sarah Champion
Q
Dr Siddiqui: No, I think there is a postcode lottery. “By and for” services, in particular, are very thin on the ground. Even in areas where there is a high black and minority population, “by and for” services are not necessarily commissioned locally. That is why I am saying that the duty to collaborate is not enough. You have got to have a duty to fund and you have got to have ringfenced funding, particularly for “by and for” services and specialist services, for that to work. At the moment, the system does not work and I do not think that this will necessarily improve it enough.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Edward Argar)
Q
Dr Siddiqui: A joint SNA is important if you are going to have collaboration at a local level and it will help to highlight which gaps could be filled by which agency, but at the moment some of that work is being done locally and some of the gaps are still not being filled. For those with no recourse to public funds, there are hardly any services on the ground. For those from black and minority communities, or “by and for” services, there is hardly any funding in the local area—so even where a gap may have been identified, there is not the funding to fill it.
Jayne Butler: There has been a little bit of work done on this, in terms of the recommissioning of the rape support fund and thinking about how to share that geographically. The result, when you have the same pot overall, is that you end up reducing services in some areas. If we start to look at where the gaps are, but we do not put any more funding in, and we are just revisiting what is already there, the result will be that some services that are funded now, which have high demands, will be reduced. There is nobody sitting there who is seeing people within a week, or sometimes even a month or six months.
Edward Argar
Q
Dr Siddiqui: Our demand has really rocketed, particularly after the covid pandemic, and it has not really gone down. It has doubled in size. We deal with 20,000 cases and inquiries every year. Before, we had half that.
We must remember that the mapping report by the DA Commissioner has shown that only 6% of Government funding was being made available to the “by and for” sector. Even though the demand has gone up, the funding has not gone up. In fact, a lot of “by and for” services are in crisis and are having to close down or reduce their services.
The cost of living crisis is adding to the problem. Services are not able to pay their staff enough. They have to find more resources for service users. We are having to find money to supplement the rent and subsistence of victims with no recourse to public funds. Although we have money from the support for migrant victims pilot project at the moment, that is temporary and it does not give us enough money. It does not give a universal credit rate. It does not give us enough money to pay rent for a refuge. It does not give enough to cover living expenses. We are having to find that extra money in the cost of living crisis situation. That is really not sustainable.
The Chair
Order. I am afraid that brings us to the end of the time allotted for this panel. I thank our witnesses, Dr Hannana Siddiqui and Jayne Butler, for answering questions in the room. I also place on record our thanks to Ellen Miller, who was on Zoom, intermittently without sound, and gave up her time this morning to try to give evidence.
Examination of Witness
Dame Rachel de Souza gave evidence.
The Chair
Could I ask you to introduce yourself for the Committee, Rachel?
Dame Rachel de Souza: I am Rachel de Souza, Children’s Commissioner for England. I am very grateful to be here.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Dame Rachel de Souza: Absolutely. I have been a big supporter of the Bill. I have to say that the ministerial team’s civil servants have worked incredibly well with us throughout the Bill’s passage. One of the things we have been pressing them on is making sure that children’s voices and experiences as victims are at the centre of the Bill. That is obviously why I am here today. I am happy to see the duty to collaborate there, but I would like a bit more accountability around it, which goes the last person’s comments. I am really pleased that they are there, but if we are going to put children as victims in the Bill, we have to make sure that we recognise that they experience crime and being victims differently. What we need to put around them to make sure they are supported, and can process things and get justice, is different. I would almost like a duty of accountability as much as a duty to collaborate.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Dame Rachel de Souza: I had intended to reserve my comments to children as victims, because that is what I am here to talk about. I do not want to let perfection be the enemy of good. I want a victims Bill that has children at the centre and understands children’s unique experiences. From what I saw yesterday, there is a lot of work to do. There is a lot of work to do in terms of defining children as victims, looking at the support they need and making sure that the victims code of practice is in the right place for children. That is what I want to focus on.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Dame Rachel de Souza: Yes, absolutely. I was going to bring that up with the definition of children as victims. When I go around the country and talk to children, wherever they are—whether that is being held in police cells or children who are involved in drugs or whatever—I realise just how complex the situations are. You realise that these children are as much victim as perpetrator. Children tell me all the time that their experiences with the police make them feel like they are not victims but criminals. That is what we need to sort out.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Dame Rachel de Souza: I have seen some very diverse and excellent services. I would first point out The Lighthouse, which I am sure you are all familiar with and which is a superb example of services coalescing around children’s needs and understanding where children are. Some of the sexual assault referral centres for peer-on-peer sexual abuse are also fantastic, but we do not have a national network so that every child gets the same experience. Every child should get the best support, and it is just not there.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Dame Rachel de Souza: I have made an initial examination of what has been proposed around Jade’s law. We have to protect children. Obviously we need to ensure that there are not unintended consequences and we need to look in detail, but I would say, on the face of it, that the protection of children must have primacy, so I support it.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Dame Rachel de Souza: That is a deeply complex question, but I would be deeply concerned. Children in those situations are often the victims of abuse themselves, and we must protect them. I would not say that I can read the mind of any particular father, but we find time and again that everyone in the household has had that experience.
The Chair
We have less than eight minutes left and five Members are indicating that they wish to come in, so please keep questions brief.
Rob Butler
Q
Dame Rachel de Souza: I was pleased to see the victims code published yesterday. There is more work to do on it, particularly in relation to having a clear definition of children and ensuring that it is child friendly all the way through. We have been working with the team to try to do that, and there is a lot more work to do.
Rob Butler
Q
Dame Rachel de Souza: I think there is, but it is wider than that. We also need to look at children with special educational needs and ensure that we take into account and make use of the expertise around working properly for those children.
Rob Butler
Q
Dame Rachel de Souza: Yes. When you talk to children who are victims you very quickly discover that they do not necessarily understand or report their experience in the same way as adults. Often, there is often quite a lot of delay in their coming forward, and the kind of support they need is far more complex, which is why I am so keen on an approach like that of the Lighthouse, where the services really see the child as an individual and coalesce around them. Children talk to me a lot about having to tell their story lots of times. They experience the courts completely differently. I have pages and pages of testimony of young people who have had dreadful experiences in the courts, because the courts just do not understand that they are children.
Rob Butler
Some of us tried.
Dame Rachel de Souza: Yes, but kids say, “I gave them my texts, I gave them my statements, but look—they’re not taking it forward.” We need the advice around the child to recognise what it is to be a child; they do not necessarily have that step-back view.
We need to do more. I was pleased to see the mention of advocacy; we could develop that a lot more, rather than just say, “This public service needs to deal with it, or that one.” It is about the individual child advocate and the services coming together around the child. It does not necessarily have to be introduced at vast new expense. I think there is a question about how we can regroup services to work in a way that works.
Rob Butler
Okay. I am going to interrupt you, if you do not mind, because I know that so many colleagues want to pick up. But thank you very much.
Janet Daby
Q
Dame Rachel de Souza: First off, and it is the point I made before, it is about recognising in the definition of victims children who have been criminally exploited; that comes up time and again. If I had more time, I could give you pages of quotes from children who, because of their experiences—whether it was being strip-searched or something else—have spent years feeling that they were in the wrong when they were actually the victims. That definition would be protective in itself, to start.
However, we also need to recognise that children get very worried if they have not come forward to the police to say they have been victims. We need to make sure that they are recognised in the victims code as well. I think that would help and I have some definitional changes and some word changes that I can write to the Committee about, which I think could help there. Often, it is about just two or three words, but it could make that work.
Elliot Colburn
Q
Dame Rachel de Souza: We heard a lot from the people before me about how services really are not set up for children, and we have started to talk about how they can be set up to deliver for children. Ultimately, of course, Government and Government Departments have a responsibility, but I think it is about ensuring accountability at local level as well. It is always going to have to be multi-agency, because there are different strands of support for children, but we need to find a way, and with children it is probably in relation to the victims code. There is some value in focusing on youth justice holding that, but we need to try to go for the holy grail, which is to make multi-agency support work. I do not want to sound like a broken record, but I think that looking at how the Lighthouse has done it in Camden, where it has drawn together the different strands of health, social care, policing and youth justice, and actually made that work, can give us a blueprint for how to go forward.
Sarah Champion
Q
Dame Rachel de Souza: Yes. I was so delighted during the passage of the Bill that Daisy’s law was taken seriously; we worked with Daisy. I think that is a really important step forward, and I feel similarly about children of paedophiles, because it will be the same argument.
Siobhan Baillie
Q
Dame Rachel de Souza: We have good intentions, but what will be important is that that is in the VCOP and that we operationalise it properly, because I absolutely agree with you that when these situations arise, the earliest possible intervention to deal with parental conflict is what needs to happen.
I think we have—
The Chair
Order. I am afraid that brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions. On behalf of the Committee, I thank Rachel de Souza for her evidence this morning.
Examination of Witnesses
Dame Vera Baird and Claire Waxman gave evidence.
The Chair
Q
Dame Vera Baird: I am Dame Vera Baird KC.
Claire Waxman: I am Claire Waxman, independent Victims’ Commissioner for London.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Dame Vera Baird: No, it does not. First and most important for me, it does not deal with people who suffer from serious antisocial behaviour. Despite the fact that the behaviour is often criminal, it is not dealt with as criminal by the police, but is instead called antisocial behaviour. I am particularly worried about people who are persecuted at home. It is not about every bit of antisocial behaviour—if someone chucks a can into my garden, I do not expect to have victims code rights—but this Government legislated well to introduce something called the community trigger about seven years ago. It says that when it escalates to a particular level, you have a series of remedies to get all the agencies together to put it right. If it gets to that level, then it is seriously persecuting, and there are people who are suffering that.
I had cases when I was an MP years ago but they still came to me when I was the Victims’ Commissioner. A woman is in her home; lads sit outside drinking beer and chuck the can into her garden. If she complains, they chuck something at her window. They stamp on her plants. They kick the ball against the gable end all the time. They shout abuse. They have just picked a place to mess around, but often the person affected is already vulnerable. That is very worrying, but it is not treated as criminality; it is treated as antisocial behaviour. But if we look at it, stamping on the plants in her garden is criminal damage; chucking something at her, if it might hurt her, is an assault; much of this behaviour is likely to cause a breach of the peace, but it is never dealt with like that. Since the key to the Bill appears to be that you are a victim of criminal behaviour, the question is: who makes that decision?
If I go to Victim Support and say, “Please help me. This is happening at home,” does the fact that it is obvious that part of it is an assault make me a victim or not? I think that is a key question to answer in the Bill. Who decides what is criminal behaviour? Often, it is wrapped up exactly as I have described but dealt with quite differently by the police. If someone pinches a spade from my garden, I am entitled to my victims code rights, but if someone behaves like that to an older person, they have nothing. That is a very serious omission. It is very widespread and it is very scary for people.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Dame Vera Baird: Yes, it is imperative. Of course it is. To be fair, the Government did consult us. It took about two years to get the victims code together. In fact, I am not sure if Mr Argar was not the Victims Minister when it started the first time around. It took a very long time. We wrote back four or five times, although I have to say we brought no change. There must be meaningful consultation, but the Victims’ Commissioner has to be in there. Indeed, in all the provisions about drafting codes and making changes, where it says you should consult the Attorney General, you have to consult the Victims’ Commissioner as well. This is about victims.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Dame Vera Baird: I feel that they should be elevated. The third duty of the Victims’ Commissioner is to keep the code under review. They cannot do that unless they can bespeak data. That is not in the Bill. What happens to the data is that it is collected by police and crime commissioners, promoted locally—that is fine—and if it has failed locally, it is promoted to the Secretary of State. It needs to go to the Victims’ Commissioner as well; otherwise the Victims’ Commissioner cannot perform that bit of their statutory role unless the Secretary of State chooses to give them the data. That is obviously the wrong way around, because the commissioner will want to have a say in how it is collected, what the nature of it is, and what to do with it. I think that definitely needs elevating.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Dame Vera Baird: You are talking about the duty to collaborate?
Anna McMorrin
Yes, the duty to collaborate in the Bill.
Dame Vera Baird: I think the main deficit in that duty is that it needs to be a joint needs assessment, rather than a duty to collaborate in some way after each individual organisation has decided what its needs are. There is a role for a victims’ champion in every police and crime commissioner area. We have a fabulous example of a Victims’ Commissioner who is a victims’ champion here, but we do not need a full-time person in a little place like Durham, or a relatively minor place like Northumbria. You need somebody charged with the task, however, so locally they can pursue the interests of the victim.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Dame Vera Baird: It will do nothing to bring change—if that is really your question. I am happy that there will be a duty to promote it to the public and to victims. Actually, it is a very odd, one-sided duty to promote it to everybody except the agencies that have to deliver it. There is no duty to promote it within the agencies themselves, and they do not know much about it.
There is a statistic—from 2020, I think—that 70% of people who have been through the criminal justice system as victims have never heard of the victims code. We used Office for National Statistics data in 2021 and showed that 80% of victims who had gone through the entire criminal justice system had never heard of the victims code. The first code was in 2006, so it has been completely ignored for 18 years. The agencies that are obliged to deliver it have no duty in the Bill to promote it themselves. They have no budget to train their staff, because, as I understand the Bill, there is absolutely no funding of any kind behind it—I think it is called financially neutral. Any training, development or promotion has all got to be done out of somebody’s back pocket.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Claire Waxman: Sadly, no, not in its current form. I spearheaded the campaign nearly 12 years ago for a victims’ law; the ambition was to give victims legally enforceable rights to justice and support. We have had the code in place since 2006. Compliance with the code has always been low, and even though the Government have reformed the code four or five times now, that has not driven better compliance. This Bill is the legislative opportunity to improve that. I remind everyone that even delivering the code is a minimum level of service to victims. Even if agencies are complying and delivering it, it is still a minimum level.
The Bill is a legislative opportunity to transform the way that victims in this country are treated once they report and come into the criminal justice system. It is an opportunity to help them easily access support services to help them through recovery and their justice journey. Unfortunately, the Bill in its current form, when it is translated into practice, will not have any meaningful impact for victims who are going through the criminal justice system or trying to access support services.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Claire Waxman: I think it has a huge impact on the Bill. As I said, the original ambition was to give victims legally enforceable rights. Part 1, which is where it should be addressing that, is very thin, weak and insufficient. A lot more focus has now been put on to part 3. A huge amount of funding has been allocated to Parole Board measures—more than the entire Parole Board budget, I think—and what has been put forward in the measures is not what victims or families have called for.
I work directly with bereaved families in London and the agencies that support them, and not one bereaved family has actually called for these measures. The Government have said that it is about public safety, but if it really is about public safety then where is the reform on probation, which is underfunded and understaffed? That is a public safety issue that needs tackling, but that is not in the Bill.
Part 3, I am sorry to say, is a vanity project. I think it is a power grab by our previous Justice Secretary. We have a Parole Board in place who are the right people to make the decision on release. I am with families who have been eight years in the process; it comes around for them every four or five months. They can barely recover. They are in this process and it is relentless. Putting these measures in gives them a false sense of hope. We are telling them that there is a chance that the Justice Secretary can veto the Parole Board decision and that the prisoners will not be released.
What will actually happen in reality is that, yes, the Justice Secretary might veto, but that prisoner will then have legal aid to appeal the decision. They will appeal every decision, pulling the bereaved families into even more distress and trauma. When I asked the officials in the Ministry of Justice what allocation had been given to provide extra support to the families during this process, no support had been given—only to the prisoners to appeal. I have to say very strongly that part 3 is nothing short of shameful.
Anna McMorrin
Thank you. That is pretty strong.
Claire Waxman: Yes, because this is a victims Bill and we are here for victims.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Claire Waxman: Absolutely. Sadly, I work with too many victims of domestic abuse, rape and stalking who have tried to leave abusive relationships. Many will not have the courage to report to the police, so they just want to flee and leave the abusive relationship. If children are involved, unfortunately those victims are then pulled into family court proceedings, which are retraumatising and place them and their children at further risk because there is no support provision in the family court to identify who the real victims are and what support is in place to protect them.
If they do report to the police, the two jurisdictions do not work together. You can be a victim in the criminal court but be accused of parental alienation in family court, and your victimisation has been dismissed. I see far too many victims who are victims of crime, may not have had the confidence to come forward to the police, and are being treated very poorly in family court. Unfortunately, this Bill will not address anything for those victims.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Claire Waxman: I have published two London rape reviews and heard from many, many rape victims in London. One of the biggest issues that comes up for them is the request for their personal records, especially their counselling records. Many victims will decide to withdraw from the process and feel pushed out because they have to make a decision as to whether they are going to pursue justice or hand over their counselling records, which are about their thoughts and feelings and trying to recover from the crime.
I know the Government have brought forward some measures now, but those measures are already in place. The police and CPS should be requesting these personal records only if absolutely necessary. We need to have judicial oversight, and that is where the Bill needs to go further. We need to ensure that therapy notes are only requested and that the judge makes a decision around that. Yesterday the Government announced that the CPS would meet rape victims before going to court, to raise confidence, but that is not going to work if we are requesting therapy notes from rape victims. That alone—just requesting those notes—is a deterrent and will push many rape victims out of the justice system, and then we will be allowing serious offenders to act with impunity.
Anna McMorrin
Vera, may I invite you to comment on that issue?
Dame Vera Baird: I think back to being a barrister more than a decade ago, when there was no pursuit whatever of this kind of material. It simply was not done. Very occasionally, if it came up in evidence that there was some issue about someone’s medical records, for instance, they would be sought, because it was directly relevant. There would be an occasional case, but none of this was ever looked for.
What the issue is about is what Operation Soteria, the new way of policing rape, talks about—there not being investigation departments for rape in police stations, but there being credibility investigation departments for complainants. Before the tendency to want to question the credibility by looking at the most intimate details about the complainant emerged, the conviction rate was actually better, very considerably better, than it is now. It dropped catastrophically in about 2016, and that was about the time when this started to emerge. So if we can do fair trials without that material, we do not need to get it.
In order to deal with this now, there can be no complete ban, clearly. After a decade or more in which the police and the CPS have treated it as axiomatic that you take these documents from a complainant, we must make someone else take that decision. It has to go to the court, so that a provisional hearing can decide whether the material should be accessed by the Crown and whether it should go to the defence. And of course the complainant needs to be represented fully at that hearing.
What is badly missing from this Bill—well, a whole range of things are. I completely concur with Claire that it is not going to make any difference to the ordinary victim, because there is no means of enforcing their code rights. But for victims of rape, the announcement that Alex Chalk made recently will make not a jot of difference as long as it is the same police and CPS that are using the test and it is the test that has been there throughout.
Independent legal advice is missing. You need to just put that counselling stuff into the court, and that is that: you need a good reason for accessing it, and the court will decide. As for the need for representation in that court, there is a need for representation at an earlier stage so that, if possible, we can avoid the cumbersome court. If you have, as we piloted in Northumbria a couple of years ago, independent legal advice when the material is requested by the police in the first place, you can often negotiate it away by just asking forceful questions about what is necessary about it. Independent legal advice could serve that purpose, but then would offer representation if there was a serious demand for the material.
This has been happening in New South Wales, with an identical jurisdiction to ours, since 1998 and is in every other state in Australia, save for Queensland, which is taking it on. Claire has been to Canada, and I believe it is very effectively run in Canada, too. In the end, of course, it deters people from pursuing this kind of material, because they take a second look at whether they need it. And that might put us back where we ought to be.
In short—never a ban; always judicial oversight. We do need to get rid of this massive deterrent. I think that according to some figures that possibly you, Anna, or someone else in the Labour party produced, 70% of those who accuse people of rape now withdraw. A huge factor—a huge factor—is when they realise that their most intimate secrets are going to be disclosed to a CPS and police force that, for quite understandable reasons, they do not see as their allies. And then, perhaps, the material goes on to—even worse—the defendant, who caused them their trauma in the first place.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Claire Waxman: I very much support Jade’s law. I worked with a family many years ago whose daughter was murdered, and they tried to adopt the grandchild. The prisoner—the murderer—had the right from prison to stop that adoption, and to cross-examine the bereaved family as well. He got legal aid. They did not get anything. At that point there is a presumption of no contact—of course he did not get contact—but they were still pulled into the most inhumane proceedings after their daughter had been killed. We need to stop that and to ensure that those convicted of murder do not have parental rights to access those children for the duration of the prison sentence. That needs to be reviewed very carefully to ensure that the family are well protected from engaging with the prisoner.
Edward Argar
Q
I will ask a couple of questions if I may. One might be specifically for you, Vera, and I think the other will be broader. Adding to what you have already said, are there any other aspects of the role of Victims’ Commissioner, in the context of the legislation, that you would wish to see elevated? I know we used to talk about, for example, your report being put before Parliament and similar. There is a lot more here than that, but what other aspects would you wish to see elevated in terms of the role?
Dame Vera Baird: It is nice to see that the Victims’ Commissioner must lay their report before Parliament; we have done that for the past two years. We had to crusade our way in, but it seemed important to me that victims’ rights were elevated to a parliamentary responsibility, and that the report did not just go to the Secretary of State. That is already being done, and it is good that it is in the legislation.
The most critical thing is to get data in the way I have already explained, but a big gap—make no mistake, you do need to put this right—is that there is no means to enforce any of the rights under the victims code: not one. It is not even expressed in terms of rights.
Let me give one quick example; I am a nerd on this, even though I have tried to forget in the last couple of months. Right 8.5 allows you as a victim to have a separate entrance and a separate place to wait from the defendant at court. That could not be more important. If my child had been run down by some driver, the last person I would want to meet when I walked through the door of the Crown court would be him—still less with his posse round him, which often does happen.
That is a very good right, and the right continues, but most courts do not have separate entrances and waiting areas. If you let the court know you are worried, it will do its best, but this is supposed to be a right. Many, many times—I am sure Claire will confirm this from an up-to-date perspective—people do come face to face with the defendant as they walk into court, and it is quite terrifying. You have to put the victims code in terms of rights in the first place, but you also have to be able to enforce it. If in default that ultimately must come to the Victims’ Commissioner, so be it.
I have a completely different plan for how we should enforce the code, but there is a statutory rule stopping the Victims’ Commissioner from being involved in individual cases. We still have 70 or 80 cases a month individually sent to us, so there would be a lot if that were done centrally. My notion is that we should have a local victims’ commissioner in the PCC’s office. That need not be a draconian imposition on a PCC; it could be someone who was there for two days. Truly, in Durham, where there are about 1,000 police officers, you do not need a Claire. You need a much smaller status of person.
That person could be the recipient of the complaint, but their working practice ought to be that they have a duty to promote, which needs to be put into the legislation, with respect to victim support services and the use of the code, which is not there properly either. Obviously, you have to have a duty to promote the code internally, so the CPS, the police and the court know they have to deliver it. Then, the victims’ services commissioned by the PCC could argue that a certain person needed an interpreter, or ask whether they had been guaranteed a separate entrance to court. If that was not happening, you could go to the PCC’s office with a working practice of trying to put the problem right in the case. I would not want to meet the person and be able to complain afterwards that I had met him by accident. I would never want to see him.
If you have that local resolution, ultimately for complaints but in the first place to try and intervene through local tentacles—PCCs are quite powerful people now—then you could stop a lot of this damaging material. If you do not, the recipient of the complaint in the first place could be that Victims’ Commissioner champion, who would then take on dealing with that on a local basis.
In the end, I think there have to be penalties. I think police officers should be docked pay; I think the CPS should have something done to them. The first code was in 2006. Now it is 2023 and 80% of people have never heard of it, even though they have gone right through. It is not just that there is nothing to impel it; there is a culture of disregard built on there. You need to change that. If you started there, then somebody has got to take a complaint that is not reconcilable locally up higher and that could go to the Victims’ Commissioner, if that were an appropriate route.
Edward Argar
Q
One of the things you have both talked about is the need for people to be able to understand their rights, access them and know what they are, particularly in the context of the legal advice point for victims and complainants. I would be interested to hear both your perspectives. I know, Vera, that you ran a pilot programme on this up in Northumbria when you were PCC, which was done through you as the PCC. Were that to happen, what would be the right model for it? Would it be PCCs doing that, a national service or a regional service? To both of you: how do you think that might look were such a provision to be made, whether on a pilot basis and then extended or otherwise?
Dame Vera Baird: Two sentences. We could only do it the way we did it by recruiting solicitors from solicitors’ firms because we could not offer people contracts beyond the time of the pilot. So that is how we did it. However, the best way, in my view, is to have a lawyer in a place where independent sexual violence advisers—ISVAs—are also working so that the lawyer is steeped in the ethics and culture of what is going on and has that to draw on for cases coming through. Claire, you probably have more to say.
Claire Waxman: Looking at how this role has worked in London gives us a really good example and evidence of what should be changing. Some of the key issues that we see with victims is that, while the Bill is putting a duty on partners to promote the code to victims, we are still leaving the onus on victims to try and claim their rights. Victims who are just recovering or trying to get over a crime and go through the criminal justice system are not going to be in any state to claim those rights. We need someone to help them navigate that system.
On Vera’s points, first, there is no enforceability; the code is not even really defined as legally enforceable in the Bill and that is an issue. Secondly, there is no enforcement mechanism either. Most victims want to see some redress on their cases. They do not want to go through a lengthy complaints process. What is missing is having that separate entity or agency that works alongside the police and the CPS, so that the moment the victim reports to the police, there is someone supporting all the agencies to ensure that those rights and entitlements are being delivered to victims at the right time. We take the onus off victims to try and battle their way through the criminal justice system and claim those rights.
We also pick up problems if rights are not being delivered, as to how we tackle it there and then in order to keep the case moving all the way through the justice system. That is missing and those are really important mechanisms if we want victims to access their rights and we want to see better justice and recovery outcomes for victims. It is critical that we look at the Bill and how we can use this legislative opportunity to really transform the way victims are treated through the criminal justice system.
The Chair
Order. We have 15 seconds left, so that brings us to the end of this morning’s allotted time for asking questions. I thank the witnesses on behalf of the Committee for their evidence.
Victims and Prisoners Bill (Second sitting)
Tuesday 20th June 2023
(2 years ago)
Public Bill CommitteesVictims and Prisoners Act 2024 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 20 June 2023 - (20 Jun 2023)
The Chair
We are now sitting in public again, and proceedings are being broadcast. Before we start, I am happy for people to take off jackets, cardigans or whatever; it is very hot today, particularly in this room.
We will now hear oral evidence from Caroline Henry, Emma Barnett and Sophie Linden. I ask the witnesses to introduce themselves for the record.
Caroline Henry: Good afternoon. I am the police and crime commissioner for Nottinghamshire, and because of that I would just like to take a moment to mention the terrible events in Nottingham last week. I repeat again to the families and friends of those affected: you are in our thoughts.
This Bill proposes to introduce a requirement to collaborate. Partners are already working together to support victims in Nottingham, and in many other parts of the country.
Sophie Linden: Good afternoon. I am deputy Mayor for policing and crime in London, but I am joint lead on victims for the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners.
DCC Barnett: Good afternoon. I am the deputy chief constable of Staffordshire police, but I am the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for victims and witnesses under the criminal justice co-ordination committee.
The Chair
Thank you. I ask people to speak up, because the acoustics in this room are dreadful.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
Q
Caroline Henry: We, as PCCs, absolutely welcome the duty requiring agencies to share data and to collaborate. PCCs take a big role in that. As police and crime commissioner for Nottinghamshire, I started a local criminal justice board, and I see those boards as an excellent forum where agencies can meet and collaborate.
Sophie Linden: You might get on to some of the points that I wanted to raise. We obviously welcome the Bill, but how it will work in practice will depend on what else happens in terms of strengthening the Bill, what the data collection is, what duties there are on other criminal justice agencies to provide the data to police and crime commissioners, and what the mechanisms are for when that data is not provided or for non-compliance with the code. If those mechanisms are not strengthened, there will be no step change in practice and in how victims are supported.
Jess Phillips
Q
Sophie Linden: I do think that, but the Bill could also look at other things. For example, police forces have a duty to provide data to police and crime commissioners, but the other criminal justice agencies do not have that duty. You could look at something like that—each of the different agencies having that duty. Then there has to be the guidance that sits underneath it for the criminal justice agencies to provide that data. The Crown Prosecution Service, for example, will provide data nationally. It is very difficult to get it regionally. The courts do not provide data, so there has to be clear guidance and practice—not just in the Bill—on data being collated in a consistent way and in a way that is useful to the police and crime commissioners. It has to be at force level.
Jess Phillips
Q
Sophie Linden: There is quite a reliance on relationships and the convening power of police and crime commissioners. There needs to be more strength and robustness put into the Bill in terms of enforcement and data collection.
Caroline Henry: You are spot on. What happens if we do not get the data? What do we do? It does not say what happens if we do not get it. That should be stronger.
Jess Phillips
Q
Caroline Henry: We can raise it with the Minister.
Jess Phillips
I am sure the Minister will be thrilled.
Sophie Linden: I am sure he is always pleased to hear from us.
Caroline Henry: There is a duty to collaborate, but there are no penalties if people do not.
Jess Phillips
Q
Caroline Henry: Funding has been talked about, potentially to give us an analyst. I am really keen that there is flexibility on a local level around what we might need, because it depends on your relationships. Analysts are great, and it is very hard to get hold of good analysts; that is a real challenge. But we might also need somebody to support the local criminal justice board as a manager to make sure that everybody collaborates and works together. There should be some flexibility in the funding we can have to help us make sure that we can pull everything together.
Sophie Linden: On the compliance issue, I think there needs to be something in the Bill, or that can flow through the Bill, that is akin to the way the Information Commissioner’s Office can work. If you have escalated it and nothing is happening, the Information Commissioner’s Office can ask for an action plan and impose fines. There has to be something like an end point by which if you have not got compliance and you are not getting the data, there is an escalation and enforcement route.
Jess Phillips
Q
Sophie Linden: I think it should be included in the code. The duty to collaborate is really important, but we have to make sure that what is in this Bill aligns with, and does not duplicate or cause complexities with, the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. There is obviously a duty to collaborate on domestic abuse accommodation, and there is the serious violence duty. From my point of view, speaking as deputy Mayor of London, I would want to see that duty to collaborate made wider for all victims. You should not start with the offence; you should start with the needs of the victim. At the moment, there are three categories, but I think it should be wider for all victims.
Caroline Henry: The definition of victims has been on my mind recently. It is a very tight definition in the Bill. The question is, how much wider do you need to make it? I would like to think about the included areas and get back to you in writing. ASB is one of the things that, as a police and crime commissioner, comes across my desk most. The victims mentioned in here, however, are on a different scale. It is so important that we get this right.
There is the word “victim” as well. I commission a lot of victim care. With what has happened in Nottingham, the word “victim” has put some people off getting help, because they are witnesses or have been traumatised by what they have seen—they are not immediate victims, but they have still been impacted by the terrible events of last week. The word “victim” is quite tricky to define.
Jess Phillips
Q
DCC Barnett: It is a long time.
Jess Phillips
Part 3 of the Bill seeks to increase the number of board members with law enforcement backgrounds, to give a different perspective of offenders. Will that help to strengthen public confidence in the Parole Board?
DCC Barnett: The first thing I would say is that the dealings of the Parole Board are not specifically in my portfolio, although I have a view. It is a very positive thing to include a breadth of perspective in the Parole Board setting and to give confidence on experience of risk management, risk assessment, decision making and so on, which can add value for the Parole Board.
Let me turn to a couple of other points you made at the outset. First, policing welcomes the victims Bill and its intentions. I guess we are in a unique position, because we are very used to the accountability mechanism that is proposed through local PCCs, recognising the independent nature of chief constables and the local accountability that exists through the elected bodies. If the Bill is to be a success, that will be around how that accountability spreads beyond policing across all the agencies, so that the victim’s experience can be understood from the point of reporting to the police right the way through to resolution and even beyond, into the parole setting. We welcome the understanding of where accountability may be strengthened through what is proposed to include the other criminal justice agencies that we work alongside.
We know that in the delivery of some of the rights, for example, our success in delivery is dependent on other agencies supplying us with the information we need to be able to pass on to victims. That is about how we work together and the local arrangements that are put in place. That is the strength of relationships. We welcome the opportunity of good visibility of data to understand compliance.
Jess Phillips
Q
DCC Barnett: I think this is a broader issue around how we collaborate as agencies with all victims. So much of that is based on how information flows, for example, so that we can keep victims updated about the experience of their case, their investigation, their court case and so on. We must have that good understanding of how we can work together to have the information to service the needs of victims.
We have been working closely with the Ministry of Justice on the suitability of metrics and—this is really important, because it is not only about the metrics of compliance with the code—on the victim’s experience: the qualitative information in the victim’s voice, the victim survey and the work of the Home Office to generate a victim satisfaction survey. Again, that is very much focused on policing, but I think it will start to give some good insights into the whole victim experience.
We are confident in a number of compliance measures going forward. We need to understand fully how we go about collating that information, and then passing it on in a transparent way to PCCs and criminal justice boards.
Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)
Q
Caroline Henry: I agree that not enough victims know that the code exists. That is why we need the Bill; we need to let people know that the code exists.
Siobhan Baillie
Q
Caroline Henry: We need to increase transparency around whether the victims code is being complied with. We all need to be talking about victims more, and keeping victims at the heart of this all the time.
Sophie Linden: As with any Bill, it will come down to practice and how it is delivered. The underpinnings of the legislation, and getting compliance and enforcement right, will help with that. I monitor it from my position in the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime; we monitor policing compliance with the code. It is very low, but we have done some work with the Metropolitan police around trying to raise the awareness of officers, and making it much easier for police officers to let victims know what is in the code. For example, we have helped the Met to produce a victims care leaflet. Something as simple as that, which has information about the code in, has started to make a difference with victim satisfaction and with compliance.
There is, however, a long way to go. You need all the agencies to have that legislative framework, so that there is compliance, there is an escalation and then there is enforcement. Those two things together, and proper monitoring, which is going to be down to the police and crime commissioners, should help improve awareness of the victims code among victims, and, importantly, among professionals. It is the professionals who are there to support the victim, and it is their duty and responsibility to ensure that the victims know about that.
DCC Barnett: I would not say anything different. It is key for all police forces. When we launched the revised code back in April 2021, chief constables had a responsibility for how that was delivered across their forces. We have training materials through the College of Policing and all forces will be monitoring their own compliance with the code, as well as the qualitative side through victim satisfaction.
Awareness of the code cannot just be around the agencies turning up to deal with the victim. That is a key part, but it is almost too late at that point. There should be a heightened awareness of the code anyway, so that if people are then unfortunate enough to be a victim there is an understanding of what the code is. It is also about being really clear on what aspects of the code are relevant to a victim at any given time. Obviously, that will change as they go through their experience of the criminal justice system.
Siobhan Baillie
Q
DCC Barnett: I think it is a really positive step forward. One of the real challenges with the delivery of victim rights is when we get to post charge. At that point, you start to bring in a number of different agencies. It goes back to the earlier point around how information flows and communications are delivered; if you are not careful, it can become a very confusing time for victims. I think it is our responsibility as agencies to streamline that process as much as possible and make the communications as effective as possible.
A victim should not have to worry about who, at a particular time, they are entitled to see or who should be supporting them. The notion of the CPS having those visits is really positive. I think they are a good engagement to have, but I think they need to be carefully operationalised around the other contacts and support that might be available to a victim, so that it does not become too confusing or an overload.
Caroline Henry: It is really important that wherever we can we have an independent sexual violence adviser to support and help with CPS contacts—to hold people’s hand as they go through the system.
Sophie Linden: Obviously I really welcome that, but I think it is just part of what needs to happen. At the moment, as I am sure you are all well aware, the victim has interaction with the police, the CPS and the courts. What you really need to look at is how that becomes a seamless service with one point of contact. In London—I am speaking on behalf of London now—we are exploring the victim care hub, which would bring all that together so that there is one point of contact and the victim is able to get updates and understand what is happening right across the piece.
Of course, the individual agencies have their specific roles to play, but the Bill could help that to happen. For it to happen, there has to be the relevant data sharing and there has to be the ability to track the victim through the system—not through policing, then the CPS and then the courts. At the moment you are tracking the crime, you are tracking the case and then you are tracking into court, and those things do not meet. You therefore have different points of contact for the victim, and you need to be able to either—at a minimum—interrogate the different databases or look at how you bring all that together. I think the Bill could make it easier for the agencies to share that data.
DCC Barnett: I would really support that. We look at this—again, I think the Bill does this—as a process of separate agencies, each with its own touch points to a victim’s experience of the criminal justice process, as opposed to looking at it from a victim’s perspective. Where do they get the information that they need? Where do they get the support that they need, whether that is reporting the crime with no further action or whether it goes right the way through to waiting for their court dates, what it means to give evidence in court, the outcome, parole consideration and so on?
Caroline Henry: I would just add that the victims who choose not to go down the criminal justice route or to report to the police still need support from all the agencies.
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
Q
Caroline Henry: I would absolutely like some of it in part 1, but we do need to remember that if you stop people reoffending, you are actually stopping us getting more victims as well. Parole and preventing and managing reoffending are really important.
Sophie Linden: I would always go for additional. But in terms of the duty to collaborate, at the moment it is a duty to collaborate literally on a strategy—there is no additional funding for the services and the gaps that might flow from that in the way that there was for the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 and the duty to collaborate around safe accommodation. There was significant additional money provided for that, which was welcomed.
Also, in terms of code compliance and the analysts that are being talked about by the Ministry of Justice—we are having discussions with them—at the moment my understanding is that it is a one-size-fits-all of two analysts per force area. Now, forces are vastly different in size and—just speaking on behalf of London, West Midlands, Greater Manchester or any other force with more complex arrangements—there are different numbers of organisations that they are going to have to make sure are complying. So this is just not going to be right—you cannot have one size fits all.
Then we have to really look at whether this funding really adds up to what is needed. For example, in London we recently did a needs assessment on sexual violence services. That cost us £110,000. If you add that up for other forces, this is not going to meet what is needed in terms of additional burdens.
DCC Barnett: I would support that in terms of looking again at part 1. With the duty to provide the data, we have a nervousness around the cost implications for forces. A lot of the measures are based on dip samples and having a really close assessment of what has been undertaken. There is no provision at the moment for additional resource to do that or to assist in taking forward the insight that that information gives us. This is an opportunity to work with PCCs to understand the roles that are accommodated and how the data is used.
The other point that I would make is about the demand for our witness care units and witness care officers, who have a lot of responsibility under the code to deliver the information to victims on what is happening with their case post charge and post first hearing. They are under a lot of pressure, given the time it takes for cases to come to court and the additional complexities and vulnerabilities of victims. Anything that helps us with managing those pressures and giving additional training and support, in terms of resourcing, would always be welcome.
Maria Eagle
Q
Sophie Linden: I think they could, but it will be dependent on proper support for victims. It is a difficult thing. There has to be a proper assessment of what victims’ needs are for them to be able to participate. There needs to be proper support for victims to do that, and then there will have to be funding to provide those support services.
DCC Barnett: I would agree. I think it is a very well-intended notion, but there are some risks around the impact on victims as well as around raising expectations.
Maria Eagle
Q
Sophie Linden: I think it could improve, but it is not strong enough. My overarching view is that it needs strengthening, but we welcome the Bill. It needs significant strengthening in the way that I have talked about, in terms of compliance, enforcement, proper data sharing, duty to provide the data and then the ability to access other agencies’ databases, at a minimum. It would be better if we could track a victim through the system, rather than tracking them through policing, then the CPS, then the courts. I hope that there will be significant amendments to strengthen the Bill.
Caroline Henry: It is great that work has been done together already. I would like to thank the Ministry of Justice and yourselves for letting the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners be involved with putting the Bill together. I do think that it will definitely improve things for victims, because it puts things on a statutory footing. That is what we need.
DCC Barnett: If I speak on behalf of the policing role, I think it does put it on a statutory footing, and it is a real opportunity to continue the work we have been doing over recent years to strengthen our overall performance within forces around the service that we deliver to victims. The question mark for me relates to making sure we take the opportunity within the Bill, whether that is through a strengthening arrangement around compliance or the accountability piece, so that we can understand how the victim traverses the criminal justice system and their experience of it. It must not just be—as I think it is at the moment—front-loaded around the code and the policing activities. It has to be seen as a whole. That is an opportunity in the Bill, and if we take that, overall service should improve.
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
Q
Caroline Henry: Personally, I feel that I have a directly elected mandate to be the champion for victims in Nottinghamshire and to make sure that they get the justice and support they need. That is what my office does, so I am happy that my office will continue to support victims. I do not think we need a separate victims’ champion; I think it could be confusing locally if that happened.
Rob Butler
Q
Sophie Linden: I know you had Claire Waxman in front of you this morning, and you are well aware of her role as an independent Victims’ Commissioner. It was an incredibly important development, when the Mayor was elected, that we appointed an independent Victims’ Commissioner. There is a very clear distinction between my role in holding the police to account and her role in bringing in the voice of the victim and advocating for victims. There has been no issue with the confusion of roles in London on that.
I am speaking for myself, not on behalf of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, because there is a difference of opinion, to be frank, but I think every force should have a victims’ advocate who is there purely as a victims’ advocate. The police and crime commissioner should use that voice coming into the commissioner’s office in order to be able to improve the services we commission.
Rob Butler
Q
Sophie Linden: My experience is that the Metropolitan police take my voice seriously and take Claire Waxman’s voice seriously. I think it makes it more powerful that there is a very clear voice coming in that is absolutely grounded in the experience of victims that she brings with her office and the work she does—for example, the rape review and her own analysis of victims code compliance in London—and then I am there as deputy Mayor and as police and crime commissioner to hold the police to account, having taken her advice.
Rob Butler
DCC Barnett, do you have a view on that?
DCC Barnett: I guess it is about being really clear about the lines of accountability. It is very clear that PCCs hold chief constables to account. That said, someone who brings the voice of the victim is absolutely going to help to shape service delivery. The two roles do not need to be the same. We can be very clear on a distinction around absolute accountability, but there is a wealth of information and experience that a victims’ commissioner can bring to a force area and all the criminal justice agencies.
Rob Butler
Q
DCC Barnett: I guess it may well be covered in other legislation. It is about recognising that there are a number of requirements on policing in order to further an investigation for consideration by the Crown Prosecution Service. I know that a lot of work is done around minimising those requirements, because we would all like to see speedier access to justice. We also recognise that there are good reasons why those requirements are in place. Whether those can be addressed through the Bill, I do not know; I would have to give that a little more thought.
Rob Butler
Ms Henry?
Caroline Henry: I know that the police officers and staff would much rather not be redacting all that information, but be getting on with their job. It would be a great vehicle if it could be included in the Bill. Going back to the independent victims’ champion, one of the ways I listen to victims is through the local criminal justice board; we have a victims sub-group, which feeds into the board. I also go out to speak to people all the time.
Rob Butler
Q
Caroline Henry: Our police work really hard. That wouldn’t be the first thing you’d want to do, would it?
Sophie Linden: An important issue is whether you are enforcing against the institution or the individual. In the Bill, you should be looking at the institution.
DCC Barnett: I absolutely do not support that suggestion. It is not about individuals; this is about the organisation’s ability to deliver. I will say that we have a robust complaints process, so if someone wishes to make a complaint about the police aspect, the code delivery or the service that people have had, they can make a complaint. That will then be assessed—it might be service recovery or quick resolution, or there might be a performance issue with an individual or a conduct issue if it is very extreme—and that works very well in policing. I would not advocate anything like what you suggest.
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
Q
Caroline Henry: I would like to give some written evidence on that, if that is okay, because I have a lot to say.
Janet Daby
Fair enough.
Sophie Linden: On the face of it, that sounds extremely interesting. I would be in favour of looking at how the Bill focuses on children. We know that trust and confidence—coming forward to the police—can be a real issue for young people and children. I would be interested in looking at the Bill to see what it means for children, where that compliance fits in—with the youth offending teams, which is partly there—and how the duty is enforced and monitored.
DCC Barnett: Again, the code defines victims, and that includes children and young people. Whether that is something specifically around how you might define a child when you first deal with them, I do not know. I would have to give that a little more consideration. I will put it in some written evidence. I am not totally sure that I understand exactly where Rachel de Souza is coming from, but perhaps I can understand that a bit more first.
Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)
Q
Caroline Henry: The definition of victim here would not include indirect victims who were not a direct witness of, or directly impacted by, the crimes that happened in Nottinghamshire last week, but they so need support too. As a commissioner, I have commissioned Notts Victim Care to be there to pick up the calls from people who are grieving and are traumatised, even though they were not directly impacted. It is having such an impact and such a ripple across our city, and not just our city: people have gone home from university and are all over the country. They might not think of themselves as victims, but what happened last week has made them so.
Maggie Throup
Q
Caroline Henry: It would be nice if there could be something in this Bill, but I am keen for it to get through. There are so many things I want to add on.
Maggie Throup
Q
Sophie Linden: Indeed. There are two things here. The role of an independent public advocate is an important one and we would support it. We should probably get back to you with more detail in terms of looking at the Bill and what we might or might not want for that independent public advocate. It is important because of what Caroline says about when those tragic events happen with a lot of witnesses, and that can be a problem.
In London, the way we have commissioned the London Victim and Witness Service has enabled us to stand up that response for events, but that does not mean—I will put it the other way: we do support an independent public advocate because I think there is a role for them.
DCC Barnett: Again, the Bill describes that role of an independent advocate, which I think is supported. In times of major incidents, as part of the overall response you will get support from family liaison officers, for example, but they also work closely with victim support services to identify those who would benefit from support. As for whether there needs to be more within the Bill itself, I think we would have to give that further consideration.
Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
Q
One of the things we have heard from earlier witnesses is that a larger group of people should be covered by the term “victims”. For example, it could cover people involved in anti-social behaviour cases, and somebody suggested that people who are migrants and worried about their status should be dealt with in the Bill in a special way. Of course, the duty to collaborate and the services covered by that duty are quite specific, and there are a limited number of advisers who have been trained in independent domestic violence and sexual violence work. We have heard that there is quite a need to develop those roles—to have some core skills that are understood and so on. Is there a danger that we expand the definition of victim to the point where the services that are available just cannot cope?
Caroline Henry: The independent domestic violence adviser and the independent sexual violence adviser work is very niche and absolutely essential. I would welcome more funding for more. I know we have quadrupled funding for it, but we still have a waiting list, especially because of the court delays.
Sophie Linden: I support the expansion to include victims of anti-social behaviour, because I think it should be the victim, not the offence, that is given the support. The danger is not funding it enough. In order to mitigate that risk, there should be funding; it should not be that you are ringfencing only a certain type or a certain offence. That is where I would come from, because we should be led by the victim’s needs, by their vulnerability and by revictimisation. So I support antisocial behaviour being part of the definition of victims.
From my point of view as deputy Mayor of London, one of the things we are pushing quite strongly and have been lobbying for is that, for migrant victims, we are keen to see in the Bill the ability to keep a firewall for victims who have insecure immigration status. We know that it is putting people off and victims are suffering.
The Chair
Order. I am afraid that brings us to the end of the time allotted for questions. I thank the witnesses on the Committee’s behalf for their evidence.
Examination of Witness
Martin Jones gave evidence.
The Chair
Q
Martin Jones: I am Martin Jones, chief executive of the Parole Board. I have been undertaking that role since 2015.
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
Q
Martin Jones: I certainly think there would have been a benefit. I always think there is benefit in pre-legislative scrutiny. I have taken legislation through in the past as an official and there would certainly be benefit in Parliament understanding what the impact would be.
On consultation with the Parole Board, it would be fair to say that it was very limited ahead of the provisions being introduced to Parliament. The root-and-branch review was published in the spring of last year, setting out what the proposals would be. Ahead of the Bill’s publication, the details of what it contained were shared with us, but I would not say that we were asked for our views on what was contained in the legislation.
Ellie Reeves
Q
Martin Jones: The current release test is set by Parliament. It is a very clear, simple test as to whether the prisoner’s continued detention remains necessary for the protection of the public. That means that public protection is always paramount in our decision making. Of course, when we make those decisions, we have to have regard to all the different factors involved in a prisoner’s case: the progress they have made in custody, the nature of their index offences, whether they have been well behaved in custody, whether they might have taken drugs in custody, and whether they might have done positive work, such as education and training. We take account of all those factors when we reach a Parole Board decision.
I would say that what is on the face of the Bill, in reality, gives effect to what the Parole Board already says in its guidance that we should take into account. We think that the legislation should make no significant changes to our practice.
Ellie Reeves
Q
Martin Jones: The slight danger is that the Parole Board practitioners start to view the matters that are on the face of the Bill as more important than other factors. The Bill is clear that it is not an exhaustive list, and the Parole Board can, of course, take account of whatever factors it believes to be relevant in the individual case, but the fact that Parliament puts a certain set of factors on the face of the Bill means that you will always have to have regard to that.
Allegations is a particularly important area when you are assessing the risk of a prisoner. It most commonly comes to the Parole Board when, for example, you are talking about an allegation of domestic violence. It often comes up, and particularly with somebody being recalled to custody. It may not be a proven allegation, but what the Parole Board may see is a pattern of behaviour with a person being arrested on a number of different occasions, alleging perhaps an assault against a partner. Those charges may not end up being brought to court and may not be proven, but when we are deciding whether someone is to be released, we want to ensure that we understand the pattern of behaviour. It was certainly something that was important to us as part of the DSD case—that is the Worboys case—in relation to how we take account and what weight we add in making those decisions. So previous allegations is a really important point for us.
Ellie Reeves
Q
Martin Jones: It is important to be clear that the Parole Board has always taken the view that it is important that you are able to challenge a Parole Board decision if either the victim, the Secretary of State or a prisoner thinks we have got our decision wrong. Ultimately, our decisions are judicial decisions made independent of Government and based on evidence and the law.
In 2019, the Government introduced a reconsideration mechanism that enables parties to come to the Parole Board and say, “We think you’ve got it wrong.” It is very closely based on the grounds for judicial review, and that provides a way for us to then review that case, normally via a judicial member of the Parole Board looking at all the evidence that the panel took account of and deciding, via a decision that is now published and available for the public to see, whether that decision was rational and fair. We have no problem with people challenging that.
The problem with a block on the decision and the veto amounts to two issues, one of which is: will it subsequently stand up to legal scrutiny? Parliament and the courts have been very clear that the final decision on whether somebody is safe to be released or not has to rest with a court. Until this Bill came along, that court has always been the Parole Board, subject only to judicial review. If you have the Justice Secretary intervening and blocking that release, it will have to go up, according to the Bill, to the upper tribunal to decide whether that decision should stand, and they will apply very similar principles of judicial review to look at the rationality of our decision.
In almost all cases, in my experience, when the Parole Board makes a decision, the reason we release somebody is because the professionals—the offender manager, the prison officers, the probation officer and the psychologists —say that the person is safe to be released. It is really important that we do not make decisions out of the air: they are based on the evidence presented to the panel. In my experience it would be highly unusual for us to go against that. But, of course, we are a court and we have to look at the evidence independently.
It is very difficult to see how, if the decision gets blocked and it goes up to the tribunal, and you look at all the evidence and the evidence is pointing towards release, and it gets blocked, that will withstand a subsequent challenge. The Parole Board has suggested that an alternative way would be to have a substantive appeal—which could indeed be wider than judicial review, if that was what Parliament decided—and that would provide an effective mechanism to stop and have a review of Parole Board decisions if you genuinely think we have got it wrong. That would add additional balance into the system.
My concern would be building up unrealistic hopes in the eyes of victims. I meet loads of victims: they are getting terribly upset and you can understand it. If you have been the victim of a serious crime—20 or 30 years ago you have lost a member of your family—and that person is up for parole, that is always going to be a difficult experience. But I am not sure that simply delaying release by two to three months is good for victims if a significant number of the decisions do not subsequently stand up to scrutiny by the courts.
Ellie Reeves
Q
Martin Jones: You are absolutely right: generally speaking, particularly in what we describe as the tier 1 cases—cases of murder, rape, terrorism, or causing or allowing the death of a child—the average size of the dossier of information provided to the Parole Board will be somewhere between 500 and 1,000 pages. Our members will in most cases ordinarily consist of a judge—a retired judge, sometimes a retired High Court judge; an independent member, who might be a retired police officer, a retired probation officer or prison officer; and maybe a psychologist or a psychiatrist if somebody has a mental health condition. They will consider that in detail and spend anywhere between half a day to a day hearing evidence from all the people at the hearing to determine whether that person is safe to be released or not.
If the Secretary of State then usurps that, how will he get sight of the evidence that the panel has carefully weighed in the balance to make the final decision? Decision letters are normally 15 to 20 pages long, explaining the legal basis of why we think that person is safe to be released or not. You certainly need an equivalent process if that is going to withstand a challenge subsequently in the tribunal.
Ellie Reeves
Q
Martin Jones: That would be an additional challenge. At the moment, I guess the closest approximation you have is the mental health review tribunal, which makes decisions about the release of people from hospital or prison. If you have mental health conditions, that goes up to the tribunal. But this would be new work for the tribunal.
It certainly seems to me that the tribunal would need training in relation to risk assessment. The lifeblood of the Parole Board is understanding the progress that somebody has made and ensuring the processes work. Clearly, if you are going to have, under one part almost, a reconsideration of the case as a whole, that will be quite a complex decision if you are potentially dealing with a significant volume of cases being challenged.
Maria Eagle
Q
Martin Jones: In my seven years of experience running the Parole Board, I cannot think of a single case where we would say that we cannot make that decision. We would say that is our job—take the evidence presented to us, do a risk assessment and decide whether that person is safe to be released—on some incredibly difficult, complex and sometimes controversial cases. I cannot imagine a circumstance in which a Parole Board would not deal with that.
The only circumstance I could possibly imagine is where we did not believe we had the full information to enable us to make the decision—perhaps on a terrorist case where there is sensitive information. But over the last three years, particularly following London Bridge, we have worked very closely with the Department and other agencies to ensure that the Parole Board always sees the most sensitive information in those cases, to make the right decision. That includes ways of seeing very sensitive information without disclosing the full information to the prisoner. That is really important to ensure that the public are kept safe.
Maria Eagle
Q
Martin Jones: First of all, it is important to be clear that we already have police officers on the Parole Board. They are an incredibly important part of our decision making, alongside all the other experience—the judges, the psychologists, the psychiatrists and others. We have had a look at the release rates by different types, and in reality our members are trained and we bring in people who are driven by the evidence, not by their vocation.
I think there is a problem in saying that a particular person must be on the panel for a particular group of cases. Certainly, it adds an additional layer of operational complexity to us to ensure that we have enough police officers. If you look at the numbers in the explanatory memorandum, it is about 2,000 cases a year; we would need quite a lot of police officers on the Parole Board to ensure that those cases are appropriately panelled.
Ultimately, it goes back to the fact that the Parole Board is a court in law. In reality, it is best for the court to decide who are the appropriate people on cases, depending on the complexity. Sometimes, we might have a case in which somebody was convicted as a child and has severe learning difficulties. It might be more important to have someone with that experience on a panel, rather than a police officer.
Maria Eagle
Q
Martin Jones: My concern would be about the nature of the decisions we are asked to make. Parliament has decided that we should decide upon the release of people convicted of the most serious offences. Ordinarily, the classic would be someone serving a life sentence for murder or other very serious offences of rape, terrorism and other things. None of those decisions are easy; none are decisions that will not have caused potential public anxiety and huge damage to the victim.
If you look at the numbers, we make around 16,000 decisions a year about whether people are safe to be released. We release about one in four, so 4,000 people each year. We probably get a controversy and lots of media attention in around five of those decisions, so it is a tiny number of cases. I have been working in public service for 30 years, and I understand why you get that attention on particular decisions if they are high profile, but I think there is a danger in trying to take aim at the chair of the Parole Board, who has had nothing at all to do with the decision in that case. Indeed, under the Bill they would not even decide who should sit on that case, but they could be told that they should be removed.
I would say that, of course, it must be right that if someone is not up to the job, there should be a way of removing them from that job. I think we would all expect that, living in public life. There is already a protocol in place that would allow a Secretary of State to follow a process in a fair way to remove the chair of the Parole Board if they believe they are not fulfilling their functions. My concern is that if it is used simply because the Parole Board has made a controversial decision, that potentially impacts on the independence of the Parole Board.
The Chair
That brings to a close the questions for this session. Thank you for coming this afternoon and answering questions.
Examination of Witness
Jan Lamping gave evidence.
The Chair
Jan, could you introduce yourself for the record, please?
Jan Lamping: Good afternoon. I am Jan Lamping, the chief Crown prosecutor for CPS Service Yorkshire and Humberside and the chief Crown prosecutor with the thematic lead for victims.
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
Q
Jan Lamping: The CPS is very positive about the Bill and we support its aims of improving the service to victims. The aims align with our victim transformation programme. We think it is positive that, for the first time, principles of the code are included in legislation.
As far as whether any category of victim is missing, there has been discussion about victims of antisocial behaviour. It would be a matter for Parliament as to whether they were included, but from a CPS point of view, we only consider cases that are referred to us by the police, so if there were a case with a victim of antisocial behaviour, we would apply their code rights in the usual way.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Jan Lamping: Our staff are really committed to complying with the rights. As an organisation, that is really important to us, so our practices and policies are written with that in mind.
Obviously, there can be problems and it is important that victims are able to complain, should they feel their rights have not been met. We have a robust complaints procedure that has several stages. At the first and second stages, the complaint would be dealt with within the local CPS area—at the second stage, by a very senior manager. With a service complaint—non-compliance with code rights would be a service complaint—there is a right for victims to complain to the independent assessor of complaints. The independent assessor has the power to make recommendations about our practices and procedures; to recommend that we give an apology, if we haven’t already; and to make a payment. There is the parliamentary and health service ombudsman as well. That is not the only oversight; there is oversight by our inspectorate as well, and we are superintended by the Attorney General
Anna McMorrin
Q
Jan Lamping: They are two very different things. The “Speaking to Witnesses at Court” guidance says that when witnesses attend court, we would speak to them at that point. When they arrive on the day to give evidence, we introduce ourselves as prosecutors or paralegals, and explain what is going to happen on the day.
The new duty is different, in that it would apply to every rape and serious sexual offence victim after a not guilty plea. It would be a more detailed meeting, so we would make the offer following the not guilty plea. We hope that people would take us up on it. It is an opportunity for us to try to give witnesses confidence in the process, because we know that there is likely to be quite a long time before the trial, to reassure them and to make sure that support is in place, because speaking to witnesses at the court stage would be too late. It is just one part of the service that we are working to provide under the victim transformation programme.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Jan Lamping: The fact that the Bill places a spotlight on all agencies complying with the code will make a difference. Obviously, that is only one aspect, though; we need to work well together, including locally. In my area, we work really closely with our police and crime commissioners and other justice partners. That is not to say that we always agree with one another, but we are working together through our local criminal justice boards to address barriers to providing a better service. I think that collaboration is what is really required.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Jan Lamping: The Bill in itself will not make a big change to the length of time that takes. Other work that is ongoing will hopefully do that, such as Operation Soteria.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Jan Lamping: Well, the Bill is really about compliance with victim code rights, and there are other pressures that lead to, for example, delays in the court process.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Jan Lamping: Obviously, only a part of that—a significant part, I accept—is our responsibility. The meeting with the victim following a not guilty plea is important given that cases are ongoing for longer. As I mentioned, this will be one part of our enhanced service to the victims in greatest need under our transformation programme. It will offer a more tailored, more bespoke service to those people. We completely accept that as cases go on much longer, people will need more support.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Jan Lamping: From a CPS point of view, our part would be to make sure that the right special measures are in place. Obviously, we do not provide the support services; that is not our role. However, we make sure that people are signposted to local support, that the right special measures are in place, and that we have kept people updated. Victims told us that they wanted to be kept updated, even if nothing was happening.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Jan Lamping: As the aims of our victim transformation programme align with the aims in the Bill—
Anna McMorrin
Q
Jan Lamping: I think the Bill, as I said before, puts a spotlight on things. Our work is aligned with that, and the two things go together, along with collaboration across the system.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Jan Lamping: Going back to our transformation programme, we have recognised the need to improve our communication with victims. I appreciate that you are talking not just about the CPS, but communication across a whole system. The principles in the Bill are aligned with what we are trying to do, and we fully accept that we need to improve our service to victims. That is why we commissioned independent research, and that is why we are now on our transformation programme.
Anna McMorrin
I was actually referring specifically to the CPS, because that was raised in the report. Thank you.
Rob Butler
Q
Jan Lamping: We want to ensure that we are responding to what victims need from us. That is why we think it is really important to have some flexibility about who from the CPS meets. There will undoubtedly be times when the right person to meet with the victim is the prosecutor in the case—for example, when a legal concept is to be explained or when we know that a victim has a particular question about a legal aspect. On other occasions, perhaps the victim may have questions about the practicalities on the day, and in those circumstances, it might be more appropriate for the victim to meet with one of our trained paralegals who are at court on a day-to-day basis and are more involved with speaking to victims. I think it is more about what would be of genuine benefit to the to the victim on a case-by-case basis.
Rob Butler
Q
Jan Lamping: No, we are absolutely committed to delivering this. The people who are presenting these cases in court would not be the people meeting with the victims, so—
Rob Butler
Q
Jan Lamping: That person will meet the victim under the “Speaking to Witnesses at Court” guidance, but the person making the decisions in the case is the reviewing prosecutor. I think it is really about what the victim needs from the meeting.
Rob Butler
Q
Jan Lamping: From the information that we have had so far, from the testing that we have been doing under Operation Soteria, victims and support services are telling us locally that the victims find it really useful to meet with the prosecutor.
Rob Butler
Q
Jan Lamping: Prosecutors in the magistrates court will deal with lists and have received them the day before, for example.
Rob Butler
And sometimes it is much shorter notice than that.
Jan Lamping: That is not my own experience. I accept what you say about that from yours.
Rob Butler
Q
Jan Lamping: We are committed to doing that. That is why the victim transformation programme that is aligned with the Bill will help us to work towards that.
Rob Butler
Q
Jan Lamping: In terms of resources, obviously the Ministry of Justice accepts that we will need to have the right resources in place—for example, for the meetings. As far as skills are concerned, we will need to train our people in, for example, how to speak to vulnerable victims, and we will need to use the expertise of those around us—not necessarily within our own organisation —to help us with that.
Janet Daby
Q
Jan Lamping: It is important that where victims feel that they need to have legal representation, they are able to obtain it. We would certainly engage on any proposals in that respect. We understand that issues relating to disclosure of personal information in particular cause anxiety for victims, and while we apply the law as it stands, we would engage on any proposals regarding independent legal advice.
Jess Phillips
Q
Jan Lamping: I was explaining about my personal experience in the areas I had worked.
Jess Phillips
Yes, that was my understanding.
Jan Lamping: We have offered the meetings, and they have tended to take place with an ISVA there as well.
Jess Phillips
Q
Jan Lamping: I accept that not everybody knows what questions to ask. That is why I said we would engage on any such proposals.
Siobhan Baillie
Q
Jan Lamping: As I said, we apply the law as it is now, and our guidance that is in place now should provide adequate safeguards, in that we should request such material only if it is relevant and necessary, and only in pursuance of a reasonable line of inquiry. That should provide safeguards. As for it being a judicial decision, there is a danger that that would introduce further delays. It is important that we follow our guidance and the police follow their guidance, so that victims are protected from unreasonable intrusion into their private lives.
Siobhan Baillie
Q
Jan Lamping: It is difficult to know from a CPS point of view, because we deal with the cases that are referred to us by the police. We do not know what has been a deterrent before that in terms of what the police have asked for, so I do not think that that is something I can comment on. It could be a deterrent, yes.
Janet Daby
Q
Jan Lamping: It is obviously a new concept, and we are interested in what the detail will be. We can certainly see the benefit from the point of view of the people affected by these terrible incidents. There are some things that we would like to work through. Prosecutors would have responsibilities for speaking to, for example, bereaved families in any event, and there are some concerns about whether there might be duplication.
I know there is mention that it could be a community representative who is the independent advocate. That may be fine, but it may be that a community representative does not represent everybody in that community. There are things to be worked through, but we understand why that is being suggested and are certainly happy to work on the detail.
Sir Oliver Heald
Q
Jan Lamping: In what sense?
Sir Oliver Heald
Obviously, you have a duty to the court. The judge is in charge of the procedure and the law. Does that create any limitations for the role of an independent advocate working for a witness?
Jan Lamping: In terms of the independent advocate, for the prosecutor?
Sir Oliver Heald
Well, the prosecutor clearly would want to be in charge of the prosecution, because that is your duty. Is there a limit to what the role of the independent advocate can be, and if so, what would it be?
Jan Lamping: I think there is. From what I have read about it, the independent advocate is more about the link between the people affected by a major incident and the agencies either investigating or prosecuting; it is more that kind of role, as opposed to in court.
Sir Oliver Heald
Q
Jan Lamping: No, not at all.
Sir Oliver Heald
Q
Jan Lamping: When the police refer a case to us, they provide information to us about the conversations they have had with victims about what kind of support would help them to give their best evidence. There are numerous special measures available that we then consider, from live links to giving evidence remotely, giving evidence in private in certain circumstances and pre-recorded evidence.
Sir Oliver Heald
Q
Jan Lamping: It happens at different points. There are initial conversations between the investigating officer and the victim and then conversations between ourselves and the police once we get the information from them, but certainly one point would be at that meeting. It may well be that we have already had the information and special measures are in place, so the meeting might be more of a check of whether those are still the appropriate measures and whether any changes need to be made.
The Chair
There are no more questions, so I thank the witness, Jan Lamping, for coming and giving evidence this afternoon. We will end that session and move on to the next session a few minutes early. I warn people that we are expecting a vote fairly soon, so we will have to interrupt proceedings when that happens.
Examination of Witnesses
Councillor Jeanie Bell, Kate Davies and Catherine Hinwood gave evidence.
The Chair
Can I welcome the witnesses and ask you to introduce yourselves for the record, please?
Kate Davies: Good afternoon, everyone. I am Kate Davies, a national director in NHS England. My formal title is the director of health and justice, armed forces and sexual assault services commissioning, and I have recently taken on a senior responsible owner role for the programme of work that NHS England is doing on domestic abuse and sexual violence.
Catherine Hinwood: Hi everyone, it is lovely to be here. I am Catherine Hinwood, NHS England’s lead on domestic abuse and sexual violence.
Cllr Bell: I am Councillor Jeanie Bell from St Helens Borough Council and I am here representing the Local Government Association.
Jess Phillips
Q
Kate Davies: Thank you very much, Jess. We welcome the Bill and we welcome the duty to collaborate. From the perspective of sitting giving evidence or suggesting amendments, the Bill probably is not as up to date as we in NHS England would like it to be with the new legislation of the integrated care boards, the integrated care partnerships and the different elements of commissioning. There are some additions that would help to strengthen that reality of work that is now happening with 42 integrated care boards. I think that a lot of that was in good faith, and in consultation with the Health and Care Bill becoming an Act in July 2022, but there is certainly more that could be produced to give a clear element of prioritisation and advice to 42 integrated care boards, which ultimately are the population-based commissioning for NHS services.
NHS England has mitigated that collaboration element by putting together a single national programme of work on domestic abuse and sexual violence, which I am pleased to say Catherine Hinwood is the senior lead for, because we take very seriously the fact that we want to support, influence and also use legislation and current Act work to prioritise the needs of the 1.5 million people who are seen by the NHS every day, whether in primary care, hospital trusts, mental health or within some of the services that I directly commission.
I think the answer to the question is, “Yes, that is great,” but the Bill is probably in the past in the way that has been written and put. If we are looking into the future and what we now know, we could look at strengthening that for NHS collaboration with local authorities and also at how the ICPs in particular work across their populations with the voluntary sector, lived experience, the criminal justice sector and police and crime commissioners.
Catherine Hinwood: If I could just add to that, I started leading this programme at the back end of last year. I visited a lot of ICBs and a lot of commissioners and I have spoken to the third sector. There is fantastic collaboration going on in some areas, so I welcome strengthening the collaboration through a duty, but there are a couple of things that I think we need to be mindful of.
The first is the serious violence duty and the duty in relation to prevention, ensuring that whatever we do in terms of thinking about the local structures and local infrastructure that exist—also in relation to the implementation of the Domestic Abuse Act and domestic abuse partnership boards—all comes together to be a really person-centred, locally focused duty that supports and enhances the structures that are already there at the moment, rather than comes in and brings in something new. From my perspective, there is great work that is already being done. Ensuring that collaboration is at the heart of the way in which key local partners work is brilliant, but I want to make sure that whatever we are doing aligns well with what is happening in local structures.
The next thing I would want to say is that I really welcomed the focus in the women’s health strategy on looking at violence against women and girls—in which, of course, we include men and boys as well—as a public health issue. One of the things that I would really like to see through the Bill, and across Government more widely, is thinking about violence against women and girls, domestic abuse and sexual violence through a public health lens, as well as the really important criminal justice lens. I would like to see the Bill thinking a little bit more about, and interacting a bit more with, that public health approach that we are taking to serious violence.
Jess Phillips
Q
Historically, health services have not been a commissioner in this particular space. When Rape Crisis England and Wales gave its evidence earlier, the witness said that she could not think of a mental health trust in the country that commissioned a specialist trauma service for victims of rape and sexual violence, and that has certainly been my experience as well—not that I could not think of one, but that it is very patchy. Kate, I noticed that you said it would be better if they had better advice. Do you think that the duty is strong enough to make the ICBs actually fund any of this work?
Kate Davies: I think one of the reasons why I am also sitting here is that I do commission £50 million-worth of sexual assault referral centres—47 across the country—and NHS England has increased that from what was actually £6 million when it first came in as part of the Act of 2012-13, and also developed all the paediatric services as well as adult services. Most recently, the long-term plan in 2019 increased a baseline of £4 million of mental health trauma-informed services around sexual violence, and in fact, I announced another £2 million for that only last week.
I think the reality with this area of work is that, when you are working within the NHS in a busy hospital trust or a GP’s surgery, of course we give some brilliant support every day of the week to men, women, girls and boys who are victims of rape and sexual assault, and also other elements of violence. However, this could be an opportunity to look at how the resource, generically within the NHS as well as maybe a more targeted element, can support people’s knowledge, people’s understanding and sometimes people’s fear—how that can be an earlier intervention, as well as a targeted intervention. That is why I am sitting here, and that is why we are sitting here for the NHS. I think that answer is yes.
Jess Phillips
Q
Kate Davies: I will have to say yes; I think it will. We would like to see that consistency. One of the works that the national programme does, as well as obviously across ICBs with Steve Russell—who is actually the board sponsor for this work as the chief delivery officer for NHS England; it is a great approach, through both Steve Russell and Amanda Pritchard as chief exec—is to really evidence that importance to our ICBs, for not only patients but staff. We have 1.3 million staff, and certainly from a recent campaign we had a lot of feedback on the improvements we can make and also the good practice.
We have some great work going on. We have just done some audit work around ISVAs in some of our acute trusts and actually found out that we are doing more that is commissioned through the health budgets and through ICBs than we ever realised before. We have to build on that good practice, to be honest with you, but this is a very busy time in the NHS. It is really important that we can maybe use some additional resource that can target how this can be understood and also be focused as part of a planned programme of work.
Jess Phillips
Q
Cllr Bell: I do not know if this will be controversial or not, because I am not sure what everybody else has been saying. Although I tried to tune in as much as I could on my train journeys down, the wi-fi has not been great. I would say that no, actually, I do not think that the duty alone is enough to make the collaboration work. Collaboration is formed on good relationships, good professional relationships and information sharing, and that is developed through strong partnership working practices. You cannot have that unless it is funded properly.
My concerns from what I see in the proposed Bill are that the funding assigned to it is for almost like a convener role to pull things together, whether that is at PCC level, who will help run the meetings and provide the support. Actually, we have local authorities and the NHS with significant capacity issues. I would go as far as to say that PCCs have capacity issues and cannot do everything either, so we cannot get away from that resource and capacity issue. It is an increasingly complex landscape.
We have to be really careful, when we talk about capacity in this context, that we are not duplicating as well. We have talked about the Domestic Abuse Act and the serious violence duty, but we also have collaboration happening through the combating drugs partnership. You have all these additional collaboration duties coming in—which we all want to comply with, because ultimately we all want a better service for victims—but there is no additional funding for victims in all this either, which is a concern.
I suppose the last thing I would say is when we look at the duty to collaborate, that will not solve the problem around the footprint that this will operate on. In terms of PCCs, ICBs, local authorities and violence reduction units—of which you have only 20—you are talking about lots of different organisations, some of which will be operating on different footprints, so how will you ensure that when you talk about the duty to collaborate, you have that flexibility built in to ensure that at a local level you can work in a way that meets the needs of your residents? You will all know from your own constituencies how complex that can be within that footprint, so there has to be a degree of flexibility as well.
Jess Phillips
Q
Cllr Bell: The pressure will increase. I was the previous cabinet member for community safety, which included housing, domestic abuse services, homelessness, asylum and refugees, as well as community safety and our band A properties, which are for most urgent need. Domestic abuse is in that band A category. A person could still be waiting for a minimum of a year.
Ultimately, our refuges fill up very quickly. They remain at capacity and that can be seen right across the country. That is not specific to my authority either, so you will see it right across the landscape. There are not enough houses being built to provide accommodation that is safe for people. I know that that is not necessarily what we are here to talk about today, but you do have to address that. That is why I have a concern about the duty to collaborate. Obviously, I want it to work. I want us all to work together, but I just do not think that the duty alone is enough.
Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)
Q
Catherine Hinwood: I am going to talk to you about the implementation of the serious violence duty and the way in which that worked, and some of the lessons that I think we should learn from that. Under the serious violence duty, police and crime commissioners were given the responsibility of overseeing the implementation of the duty and overseeing all of the funding for labour costs, which were given to responsible authorities for the set-up of the duty, as well as allocating the money for commissioning costs, which, again, were given once a new duty was put on responsible authorities.
What we saw with the way in which PCCs have taken that responsibility is that it has had a very justice-focused lens in the way that they decided to distribute labour costs. We know from the Home Office’s implementation work that a significant amount of money that ought to have been spread evenly across responsible authorities has not gone to ICBs. A significant number of ICBs did not receive their implementation costs.
What we have learned from the serious violence duty is that if you want to have some kind of equality of arms across responsible authorities to be able to ensure that they are all implementing the duty— I think that it is a great point about wanting to see ICBs much more in this space; they are talking about the fact that they want to be more in this space. If you put a PCC, for example, as the lead body—the convener—in relation to this, then the implementation of it needs to be done in a way that you are ensuring that funding is distributed equally and that responsibilities are clearly set out. I am not sure that I would put a lead authority or a lead body in place for the duty. There must be a way of ensuring equality between each of them.
Elliot Colburn
Q
Catherine Hinwood: The way that I have read the legislation and the way that I understand the guidance is being considered is that there will be local flexibility as to what kind of body will be the convening body. For example, one area might say that they will use an integrated care partnership, one might use a violence reduction unit, and another might use a criminal justice board. If you build that flexibility in, I do not know how you can then give one body the oversight for the implementation. It might be that a national body needs to oversee it, I really do not know. But this is the kind of stuff that we need to work through, and work through in the guidance.
The Chair
Order. I will suspend the Committee for Divisions in the Chamber. I will suspend for 15 minutes for the first Division and 10 minutes for the second and any subsequent ones. We are expecting at least two votes, so we will suspend for at least 25 minutes.
The Chair
We shall carry on with the session, and I would like to bring in Siobhan Baillie to ask a question.
Siobhan Baillie
Q
Kate Davies: It is obviously our responsibility within NHS England, when there is a particular area like commissioning some victim services—as I do—to work with Bills as they are coming in. I worked across that with Catherine in a previous role; I declare that as an interest. We are aware of it from working with our colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care as well. We now realise, because of the Health and Care Act of 2022—there are obviously lots of issues coming in as a Bill turns into an Act—what that means. We know much more than we did then, and I think it is fundamental now to look at how, with ICBs and ICPs, we can make better use of the local authority and NHS population-based commissioning. There is also a requirement with the voluntary sector. One of the objectives with ICBs is about health inequalities.
All those elements are now legislation. All those elements give us a real focus, a real lens, on, in particular, survivors and victims within a population, whether they come through a GP’s door or through a local authority door for something to do with housing. It is a question of that needs assessment at local level to say that we have a duty and the responsibility to work with that population number and also support that, whether that is through collaboration or governance. It goes back to Elliot’s earlier point about ensuring that we come round the table to ensure that that happens. I think the current wording in the Bill is helpful, but does not go far enough to ensure that there is that responsibility, accountability and governance in order to collaborate and provide as part of that needs assessment.
Siobhan Baillie
Q
Kate Davies: There have been discussions with the Department of Health and Social Care recently on that, so I think that is an important element to go back to you on.
Catherine Hinwood: I think we are going to submit written evidence on this, so we are really happy to do that.
Rob Butler
Q
In the context of, frankly, ICBs that are struggling to fulfil their core duties, I wonder how they will really do what is needed for victims through this proposed legislation, because I do not think that they are going to see it as their No. 1 priority. I wonder how you can leverage to ensure that this important legislation and the concepts behind it are delivered on by ICBs.
Catherine Hinwood: ICBs now have a duty to set out in their joint forward plans how they are going to support victims of abuse, and it is specifically set out that they must talk about victims of domestic abuse and sexual abuse. We are starting to work with ICBs to help them. We issued guidance on what they might want to do to be able to fulfil that duty and how they might approach it, but we are starting to work with them in the coming months to assist them in how they are approaching that. I agree that they would be at different levels of maturity, but it is certainly something that we within NHS England have had to focus on in assisting them with and will over the next year, as they grapple with a number of different responsibilities. You are absolutely right: this focus that they have on victims of abuse is a new one. It is a different one and it did not come with any funding—it did not come with any ringfenced funding—so we are helping them to think about how they might be able to mature in this space.
Kate Davies: One of the things at the moment is the maturity of the NHS, with the recovery from covid and everything else. I remember being in a forum during covid and looking at the issues of serious violence, victims and survivors. There are victims and survivors walking through the door of every GP, hospital trust and, perhaps, accident and emergency department. We have too much evidence or representation of people coming in years after they have actually been a victim— this may be related to childhood sexual abuse or to domestic abuse.
It is fundamental that someone in an NHS service has the opportunity to feel safe enough and supported enough to be part of their needs and requirements. They might come in for something else—for example, we have just done some work on cervical screening. I have to say that we are talking about superb interventions through lived experience. How do we get every woman who has cervical screening as part of their requirement also to have the opportunity to say, whether they know this or not, what needs they have or what support they need? This is about, “How can we support you? Have you ever been a victim of rape, sexual assault or domestic abuse?” It is those opportunities that we should be supporting.
I have been with the NHS quite a long time, so I am not saying this because I am sitting in front of the Committee, but there are massive amounts of evidence that people want to do more in this space, because that is part of so many people’s experiences, either personally or professionally; this could be as a clinician, with someone in front of them as a patient. This is a great opportunity to talk about the duty to collaborate, but it is also a great opportunity, as you say, when you have maturity of ICBs at this early stage, to make it a priority.
Lastly, as people are aware, I sat in front of a number of Committees to do with armed forces, as I am the senior commissioner for armed forces. I had exactly the same conversation about that maturity. Four or five years later, we had the armed forces covenant and a really important requirement around armed forces’ mental health and trauma, whereby we have commissioning and supporting a dedicated pathway. That is really why we have been commissioning more mental health enhanced services for sexual abuse recently, through the long term plan. It is a really good opportunity to build on this and build on that good practice, as well as to say where it is not working—we have to be honest about that, too.
Rob Butler
Q
Cllr Bell: Yes, it can. Let me just to come back to add a little more detail. At a local level, we are talking about ICBs and we are quite heavily focused on them. They will be feeding into your health and wellbeing boards on your local authorities. Your community safety partnership should be feeding into your health and wellbeing boards, and there should be a joint commissioning approach to local services running through that process as well. When we talk about not duplicating, we need to look at them; we need to look at what is already in existence and how we can deliver that duty to collaborate without creating additional layers of bureaucracy that may not actually do anything other than exacerbate the pressure on capacity. If we do not have to reinvent the wheel, let us not do so—let us look at what is there already.
Local representation in the ICBs is a funny picture at the moment, because different places are operating in different ways. Let me talk from my experience. Our clinical commissioning group was integrated into our local authority a number of years ago, so we had an integrated health and social care model already. Our director of adult health and social care was also our director at the CCG, and is now the head of our ICB. It works quite well and quite seamlessly. Our cabinet member sits within that structure as well.
Rob Butler
Q
Cllr Bell: I do not want to overstretch. From my experience, it works well in our authority. I am certainly not a health specialist. Those are the people you should speak to, given their knowledge. In my experience, at our level, it has worked extremely well.
The Chair
If there are no other questions, I thank the witnesses for coming along this afternoon and giving evidence, and I apologise for the intervention of democracy. We will now move on to the next panel.
Examination of Witnesses
Gabrielle Shaw, Rachel Almeida and Duncan Craig gave evidence.
The Chair
I welcome the three witnesses. Thank you for coming along. Would you all introduce yourselves briefly for the record, please?
Duncan Craig: Hi, my name is Duncan Craig. I am the founder and chief executive of We Are Survivors, an organisation supporting boys and men, like me, who are affected by sexual abuse, rape and sexual exploitation. Thank you for inviting me.
Rachel Almeida: I am Rachel Almeida, the assistant director for knowledge and insight at Victim Support.
Gabrielle Shaw: Hi, my name is Gabrielle Shaw. I am the chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood. NAPAC is a national organisation that supports adult survivors of any kind of childhood abuse, trauma or neglect.
The Chair
I repeat what I said earlier: people should speak loudly, because the acoustics in this room are dreadful.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Gabrielle Shaw: This is my “Mastermind” subject—thank you. First and foremost, it is good that we have the Bill. It is imperfect, as you will have heard today, but the fact that it is here and will potentially recognise victim status in statute is great, and there are some really good bits in it. My big thing is around the definition of a victim, because it is not currently explicit that you are a victim if your case has not been reported to the police. Clause 1(4)(b), which defines criminal conduct, states that, although you may be a victim,
“it is immaterial that no person has been charged with or convicted of an offence”.
By omission that implies that you have to have reported the criminal conduct to the criminal justice system. We are automatically cutting out the huge majority of victims.
In its 2020 crime survey for England and Wales, the Office for National Statistics showed that there are more than 8.5 million adult survivors of some kind of childhood abuse or trauma. Colleagues know that only a tiny fraction of survivors will ever report or even disclose their abuse. If the Bill could be made more explicit to include that you do not have to have reported the criminal conduct, it just needs to have happened, what a win that would be. How important it would be to victims and survivors on the ground to think, “What happened to me mattered and I am entitled to support.” As you can probably tell, I am a big fan of making the definition more explicit to cover that.
Rachel Almeida: This Bill is really welcome and has a lot of potential to improve the experiences of victims. We previously heard from the Minister that the Government’s intention is for victims who have not reported to be within scope, but given that there is a question around that, we would suggest that it could be made more explicit so that those who have not reported feel that the rights are for them. We welcome the additions to the definition in the draft Bill, and we would support widening the definition to include victims of non-criminal antisocial behaviour. Similar to what Vera Baird said earlier, we believe that a lot of victims are hugely impacted by persistent ASB. We agree that there needs to be a threshold for it to be persistent ASB, but we believe that their not having any rights means they are unable to access the support that they really need. We welcome the Bill and think it needs to be strengthened.
Duncan Craig: I am really pleased with the Bill. I remember speaking to Minister Argar, and I believe that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create something. I absolutely echo what my colleagues have said. As a child abuse survivor, a victim of sexual exploitation and a victim of rape, I have not reported to the police any of what happened to me, despite the fact that I have spent the last eight years training police officers, using my story in various different working groups and sitting on various different boards. Although I hear what Gabrielle is saying and I think there is a really powerful statement in there about strengthening the Bill, what is really important for us victims is to be seen. We can talk about the semantics of it, but it is not about that; it is about being seen and knowing that all of you see people like me.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Duncan Craig: Are you talking about mandatory reporting?
Anna McMorrin
Yes—and a definition.
Duncan Craig: I get a bit nervous around this particular subject, because no matter where I have worked—whether it is the past 15 years within my organisation, or working over in Australia or the States—no one has ever been able to fully explain what it means for adult survivors. I absolutely think that what we need is 100% clarity to make sure that if any individual—professional or volunteer—knows that a child is being harmed, we will use all our powers to stop that happening now. I am not too sure how we carry on with that, to be honest.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Gabrielle Shaw: I am not—
Anna McMorrin
Q
Rachel Almeida: The code is a really important document, which the Bill puts on a statutory footing. We really believe that if the code was put into practice, it would hugely improve the experiences of victims. There are a huge number of valuable rights in there that, if delivered, would provide victims with clear information, confidence in the system that they will hear what will happen to their case and support at court. We know that that does not happen in practice and we want a step change—a systemic change. We know that code compliance is really poor and what we need from the Bill is for that to change. We are concerned that, as the Bill stands, the change that is needed will not happen. A few things need to be done to strengthen the Bill.
The Bill refers to regulations being introduced to collect prescribed information. It needs to be more explicit that that applies to every single right. We want compliance with every single right to be monitored. From evidence we have seen, that will not necessarily happen, so it needs to be really clear that the regulations cover every single right.
We also believe that it should be made clear what level of compliance is acceptable. We know that compliance is quite low and, at the moment, the Bill hangs on the thread of transparency. It mentions collecting data—at the moment, the data will not necessarily be across all rights—giving the PCC oversight, although not powers to drive or compel agencies to comply or improve their compliance; that can be done only with the police, but it should be done across other agencies to drive compliance. That is lacking.
The Bill talks about information and reviewing the data, which is then shared with the Secretary of State. We do not believe that that level of oversight is enough. There is no enforcement mechanism or clarity that, if agencies do not comply across the board—we know that there are systemic issues with compliance—there will be any consequence; that anything will happen. We would like the Secretary of State at a national level to set out, as part of the regulations, a minimum threshold that criminal justice agencies are expected to meet. If they do not reach the required levels of compliance, there should perhaps be a warning period when they are given the opportunity to address the lack of compliance. However, if that compliance does not improve, we would like steps to be taken. For example, an inspection of the agency could be triggered to understand why they are failing to comply. There should also be clear recommendations that they need to remedy, and accountability around that.
That is not the only way it could happen, but we feel that it is a way that could work. Without that, at the moment, it is data being collected and published, but there are not really any teeth, which we would like to see.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Rachel Almeida: Yes.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Gabrielle Shaw: Yes. That is a really good point. I love what you just said about the tangible difference it makes to victims and survivors. It comes back to accountability. Building on Rachel’s points, accountability has to be built in from the start to make the Bill really effective. I was watching the previous session, when the Committee asked many interesting questions about collaboration and the duty to collaborate—ICBs, PCCs. That is great, but how do we measure the effectiveness of that collaboration? Will it just be a meeting once a year with collaborators? It has got to be stronger than that. I like what you are saying about strengthening the Bill. That is really important.
There is currently a duty on PCCs to oversee compliance with the victims’ code of practice—I read it quite a few times to make sure that I knew what I was talking about— but there is no similar duty to oversee compliance with the delivery of victim support services. That goes back to the making a difference on the ground that you mentioned. Compliance is patchy. There is really good stuff, but more consistency across the piece would make that tangible difference.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Rachel Almeida: Definitely. It should be at least on a par with the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s powers, particularly the powers that criminal justice agencies are compelled to co-operate with. That is really important. Those powers are not currently proposed in the Bill for the Victims’ Commissioner.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Rachel Almeida: It is enabling the Victims’ Commissioner to be that champion for victims and have that independent voice and ability to investigate where there is a lack of compliance, where areas are not improving and where they are seeing issues raised with them. They will have ways to address that and drive forward change.
Duncan Craig: Could I make a comment on the victims code and the question you asked my colleagues? It is really interesting that when we started off talking about victims’ rights, we called it victims’ rights, and then all of a sudden we started calling it the victims code. I think there is something really important about that. All of the 2,500 men who come through our service every year and all of the thousands of women who go through Jayne’s service—Rape Crisis England and Wales—need rights, not a code. In the victims code as it is—again, I do not think it is semantics—section 32(1)(b) says that it relates to “any aspect of the criminal justice system”, but, as I go through the Bill, I see that nobody is holding my organisation to account, and actually somebody should be.
Once we have moved the police out of the way, even though so many people do not report to the police, as well as health and SARCs—in Greater Manchester, only 10% of people who access SARC are males and 83% of those are prepubescent children, so that is exactly where they should be—there is something about ensuring that the rights of the victim are held not just by statutory agencies but by the voluntary sector, who provide the majority of the services that people want and access. So there is something about making sure that the voluntary sector is in here somewhere. We know—I have a really bad personal experience of going to a voluntary sector organisation; it made things worse.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Duncan Craig: Absolutely, and not just locally either, but nationally. There is something about commissioner oversight that should be better anyway—I think we should be spending smarter—but there is definitely something about real consequences for not adhering to victims’ rights.
Anna McMorrin
Q
Duncan Craig: Part 3 was a huge surprise. I had been part of the working group—the task and finish group—for the victims Bill for quite a long time, and I was part of the end-to-end rape review. I think I even asked a question of where that had come from, because it just had not been talked about.
My organisation has services across all 15 north-west prisons commissioned by NHS England, and I just cannot see how this is going to help. It is so easy to draw a line between victims and perpetrators, but the absolute reality is that for so many people there is a really blurred line, particularly in prison. It is quite easy to write certain people off, and it makes me sad that we are doing that, because quite a lot of the women in prison and the men in prison have suffered various things in their lives as well. What we really need to do is help, and it feels like part 3 is more of a hindrance.
Gabrielle Shaw: To add to that, it did come as a surprise—it came out of left field—but at least it is here, and we will work with what we have. Duncan makes an important point about the blurred lines between victims and perpetrators, and the crossing back and forth of it. It could have been, and perhaps could still be, a good opportunity, so let us work with what we have and turn it into an opportunity. In the earlier session, Catherine or Kate said that we need to look at this as a public health issue. If we are going to look at this in the round for victims, let us look at abuse suffered in childhood, what that means for life chances, and what that means if they go on to offend. There is a real opportunity here, and if we can turn it around, I will support that.
Rachel Almeida: I agree that it was a surprise. We expected a victims Bill, and we would welcome it returning to being a victims Bill.
Anna McMorrin
We have been waiting eight years for it.
Rachel Almeida: I feel like the level of scrutiny given to the first part has not been allowed for the other two parts. We obviously suggest that that should happen.
Janet Daby
Q
Duncan Craig: When we talk about paedophilia and child sexual abuse, about 87% of paedophilic offenders are victims, but only about 3% of victims ever go on to offend, so vampire syndrome—the idea that if you have been bitten by a vampire, you will go on to become a vampire—does not exist. All the research shows that that does not stack up.
In my service—I am only talking about 15 north-west prisons, but some have category offenders—I am not necessarily interested in dealing with the offenders and their crime; I am interested in the root cause. My organisation sadly lost one of our survivors the other day. One of the things that I will carry with me about him is that I met him in prison—I was his therapist in prison—and we dealt with a lot of his experiences. I fought for the service to go into that prison because nobody was interested in dealing with his victimhood; they were interested only in dealing with his perpetration of the crimes he committed. That is right, but there is something here that nobody is talking about or dealing with. He was in a small group of people I approached as a survivor, as a therapist, as the chief exec of an organisation. I had a challenge from a couple of our service users, who said, “What are you doing, Duncan, about reducing offending?” and I could not tell them. What we are really good at in victim services—Jess, you know this from all your time in domestic abuse—is cleaning up, but when are we going to stop cleaning up and start preventing?
With part 3 of this Bill, we could do some incredible work in prisons and with prisoners around prevention so that, when people come back out of prison and into the community, there is a better sense of self and better support. What happened was only because I have an amazing commissioner in NHS England North who just took a punt, quite frankly—I am sure there is a proper word for that in commissioning, but it was a punt—and actually, 897 prisoners are now on our waiting list, they are being seen and are dealing with the things they needed to deal with.
Finally, when I started talking to Michael and said, “I think we need to do something; I think we need to do something about that 87%. What do we do about those men?”—they nearly are all men—“How do we make sure that they are not going back out and offending against women, children and other males? Maybe we need to deal with their root cause.” He said to me, “Everything in my body says no. Why should we deal with them?” And then I think, “Maybe if somebody had dealt with the guy who abused you, Dunc—maybe you would not have been abused.” It hits right there in the middle, and I think that this is a phenomenal opportunity for us to not just do stuff around victims but to prevent us from even having victims in the first place. That was a very long answer; apologies.
Janet Daby
Thank you, Duncan. Sorry about your loss, as well.
Duncan Craig: Thank you.
Gabrielle Shaw: Great question. It is a hard act to follow.
To answer your question, there is an opportunity to name it in the very least. That would be such a great start here—to acknowledge the facts that Duncan just set out, and the proportions, and say it is a public health issue and really go hard on the public health and prevention aspect. Otherwise, we all know what is going to happen. If the comms message gets twisted, it will be “Oh gosh, everybody who has been abused as a child is going to go on to become a perpetrator.” We need to be really careful about how we message that. It could be about keeping the generalities—acknowledging the fact that a lot of abuse does come on to being part of a perpetrator—but talking about why we need to deal with it with money, resources, therapy and with all those things we know about, because that prevents and it makes people safer in the future.
At NAPAC, on our telephone support line, we hear from tens of thousands of survivors with many different stories and backgrounds. Survivors are not a homogenous group—there are so many individual stories out there—but I can say that there are key themes that come through. Probably the No. 1 key theme that we hear from survivors is “I wish it had not happened to me and I do not want it to happen to anybody else.” I do not purport to speak on behalf of survivors, but I can relay that theme to you as a Committee and help to tie that to your question. Put it in there; make it count.
Janet Daby
Rachel, did you want to say anything or are you okay?
Rachel Almeida: I am okay.
Siobhan Baillie
Q
Duncan Craig: I did, pre-pandemic. I used to go to the local training school. For a specially trained officer—an old-fashioned Nightingale officer—the 999 call comes in, and they go and lock down the scene, with the scene even being the individual themselves. They used to get five days’ training in forensics and so on, and they would have a whole day with me on working with male victims, because everything else that was talked about was around female victims. Then, on the very last day they would do role play with an actor and get scored. Effectively, it was a bit like an exam.
Now, I go to a university. I have done two classes now. I am really angry about this: in the first class, as I was telling my story—a story that I have told for seven or eight years—an individual put their hand up. There is a picture of me in the room where it happened. They put their hand up and said, “Yes, but do you not think that you should push them all off a cliff?” [Interruption.] I had exactly the same reaction as you; I was absolutely astonished. In seven or eight years, I have never had to kick anybody out of a classroom and I have never been surprised by it. It could just be a one-off, so I spoke to the tutors and said, “Just watch that.” Two weeks later, I went back to the same university, where a new cohort of police officers were being trained, and we kind of got the same thing. I do not know what has happened, other than we have moved from police training school to university, but I am terrified. I am terrified about what we are getting and what I am seeing on the ground now. There used to be a moment in time when I had done some training with every single police officer in my force, and I was really confident. I have zero confidence at the moment, and it is frightening.
Gabrielle Shaw: I come at this from two perspectives. What we hear through the NAPAC support line, from thousands of survivors, is that some of them have disclosed to the police. Of course, people who contact NAPAC are a self-selecting cohort, but over the past five years the number of positive experiences relayed by survivors to NAPAC has risen. I think that is no coincidence, because I know at a national level—I will come to this in a second—there has been a huge drive by national policing to improve response to childhood sexual abuse. The hydrant programme has done a lot of work on this, as well as College of Policing and the NPCC. There has been a huge national drive.
As Duncan described, the issue is how that national drive, the national guidance and all those really good intentions translate down to force level. I can hear the chief constables now saying there is a squeeze on the training budgets and so on, but we need to maintain that pressure and the good intentions that have set at a national policing level, to ensure that trickles down properly. What Duncan described is not a rare or isolated experience at all. There is good practice as well, but there needs to be more consistency to get that real drive across all levels.
Duncan Craig: I am not overly concerned about the current detectives at the moment, because we have a great relationship with them, but they are about to leave because they have done their service. It is exactly like the prevention bit—the bit that I am extremely concerned about is the new people.
Jess Phillips
Q
Duncan Craig: I am a bit conflicted, if I am honest, about whether the Bill should contain the guidance around IDVA—
Jess Phillips
I am not conflicted; I don’t think it should.
Duncan Craig: To be honest, Jess, I am probably leaning more towards your thinking. My organisation had the first male ISVA service nine or 10 years ago, and I know it is really patchy across the country in terms of what the judiciary and different judges will allow ISVA to do and not do, so my happiness about it being contained in legislation is that it is really clear what they are.
My unhappiness is about how restrictive it could be. What about people who have not been trained as ISVAs? What do we call them? Are we creating a hierarchy that does not need to be there? I definitely think we need some level of guidance, not necessarily for the ISVAs and for our services, but for the judiciary. What we do not want to see is an ISVA going into the witness box in an ITV drama and then everybody thinking that that is what ISVAs can do. We want clear guidance. I am worried about it being restrictive.
Jess Phillips
Q
Duncan Craig: Absolutely.
Jess Phillips
Me too, 100%.
Duncan Craig: I think they should be able to do whatever the witness wants them to do.
Jess Phillips
Yes, me too. But Victim Support runs the service that is allowed to sit in the witness box.
Rachel Almeida: Not all of them. Again, it varies hugely. In some areas, there are services where there are two courts, and one they are allowed in and one they are not allowed in. What good looks like is if the guidance could make it really clear that the roles need to be really independent. There is a role there to help establish the independence of the role and that these services should be independent from statutory organisations. The second thing is for the guidance to lead to improved and more consistent access, so that ISVAs can do their role fully and the support the victim-survivor through the court system. That is exactly what is needed. If the victim’s family wants them to sit next to them, they should be allowed to—they should be allowed in the court building—and that role should be recognised.
Jess Phillips
Q
Rachel Almeida: Further, I would say, in relation to section 28—whenever they are cross-examined, which may not necessarily be in the court building but could be in pre-trial cross-examination—that they should also be included in that room. Also, in the introduction of a CPS meeting, the ISVA should be there, invited and included as part of that process.
Duncan Craig: In Greater Manchester, we have been trying, with the deputy Mayor, to do an opt-out of ISVA. As soon as someone is identified, they have an ISVA, partly because, particularly when we are talking about something that happened last night, we seem to ask the individual 25,000 questions when all they want to do is go home, have a shower, go to bed and have nobody talk to them—let alone decide whether they want an ISVA, an IDVA or whatever.
What we learned in some of our discussions with our clients was, if we gave them one, they just accepted—in some way, shape or form—and it meant that we could properly see somebody right through to the end. If we asked, “Would you like an ISVA?” they always say, “No, I’m fine.” Then it is not until three days before going into court that someone has a breakdown and we have to try to fly somebody in. It is about working a little bit with some agencies. I am very proud of our north-west CPS, because its first question is, “Who is their ISVA?” The police need to do a little bit of that and health really needs to do a lot of that.
Jess Phillips
Q
Duncan Craig: That is the next bit. I did not say that we—
Jess Phillips
You could not possibly guarantee that every single rape victim would have one.
Duncan Craig: Completely. It would be nice to.
Jess Phillips
I mean, I would.
Rachel Almeida: I just want to come back to the guidance. Something that we are really keen not to happen is exactly what Duncan said: for it to lead to a hierarchy. A range of roles work in these services, and they are really valuable roles. There is a range of needs and victims, and the guidance needs to make sure that it does not end up excluding certain services or roles from being recognised as important in providing the support that is needed to victims. A concern we have is that all funding is channelled into ISVA roles only and then you lose the expertise and the recognition of the wider roles.
The Chair
If there are no further questions, I thank the witnesses for attending this afternoon and giving evidence. I apologise for the slight delay.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Fay Jones.)
Victims and Prisoners Bill (Third sitting)
Thursday 22nd June 2023
(2 years ago)
Public Bill CommitteesVictims and Prisoners Act 2024 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 22 June 2023 - (22 Jun 2023)
The Chair
We are now sitting in public and proceedings are being broadcast. I call the Government Whip to move a motion to amend the programme order agreed on Tuesday. The purpose of the motion is to enable us to hear from a witness who was unable to give evidence on Tuesday because of technical difficulties.
Ordered,
That the Order of the Committee of 20 June be amended, in paragraph (2), in the Table, in the entry for Thursday 22 June until no later than 1pm, at end insert “; SafeLives”—(Fay Jones.)
Examination of Witnesses
The Right Rev. James Jones and Ken Sutton gave evidence.
The Chair
We will now hear oral evidence from the Right Rev. James Jones, chair of the Hillsborough Independent Panel, and Ken Sutton, who was adviser to the panel. I remind all Members that questions should be limited to matters within the scope of the Bill, and that we must stick to the timings in the programme order that the Committee has agreed to. I welcome our witnesses and invite them to make a brief opening statement.
Rt Rev James Jones: No, thank you very much. I am happy to answer the questions. I welcome the proposal to set up an independent public advocate.
The Chair
Mr Sutton, would you like to say anything?
Ken Sutton: Thank you for the invitation. I headed up the secretariat that supported the Hillsborough Independent Panel and worked with Bishop James Jones in that capacity, as I have done ever since. I hope that my experience can shed some light on the independent public advocate.
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
Q
Rt Rev James Jones: We had to gain the trust of the families, understandably. At the outset, families were not instantly persuaded that the panel, which was set up by the Government, would do what we were charged with doing, which was to access all the documents available from public authorities, analyse those documents with a team of experts, and write an account, so that there would be greater public understanding of what happened on that day. In the end, I think we gained the confidence of the families, and due to their tenacity and the expertise of the various panel members, we were able to shed light on what happened on the day and in the aftermath.
Maria Eagle
Q
Ken Sutton: I think the success of the panel did not come from its powers; as a non-statutory form of inquiry, we did not have any powers. I think the success of the panel was built on the relationship that the panel members and the secretariat established with the Hillsborough families from the start of the work. At the heart of that—I think this is very relevant to today—was the fact that the panel listened to the families. That may sound like a very simple statement, but the experience of the Hillsborough families and others was that they were not listened to. Individual Hillsborough families made the point to the panel, and to me, that they felt listened to for the first time when the panel was established. There is a clue there for the work of the independent public advocate going forward: they should, first and foremost, be listening to the families affected.
Rt Rev James Jones: To add to what Ken has said, Maria, the title of the second report, which was about learning from the families’ experiences, was “The Patronising Disposition of Unaccountable Power”. That is exactly how the families felt that public authorities were treating them over those years.
Maria Eagle
Q
Rt Rev James Jones: Contrary to the Government’s proposal, I believe that there should be a standing independent public advocate. Why? Because in the immediate aftermath of a public tragedy, people are grief-stricken and traumatised. They are unprepared and disorientated, and they no longer feel in control of their life. It is in that immediate moment that they need an advocate—somebody who will represent them to Government and signpost them to the agencies that are available to support them in that moment of trauma.
Maria Eagle
Q
Rt Rev James Jones: I do. I think the independent public advocate should have the right to engage with the families, but the families should also have a right to call upon the IPA if the IPA has not taken that initiative. My view is that the independence of the IPA has to be at the moment of decision. Unless the IPA is free to make the decision about engaging with the family or families, then I think the IPA is just a public advocate, and not an independent public advocate.
Maria Eagle
Q
Rt Rev James Jones: I am afraid I do not. I welcome the Government’s initiative, and I welcome their determination to continue to listen to various parties as they shape this appointment. However, I do not think that that independence is sufficiently guaranteed by the Bill as it stands; I think it can be guaranteed only if it is a standing appointment.
Maria Eagle
Q
Rt Rev James Jones: I do think the IPA has a role, but I think there is a difference between the IPA and the Hillsborough Independent Panel. I will leave it to Ken to differentiate those two things. As to your question about what specific responsibilities the IPA should have, I would list them as follows. First and foremost, the IPA should be able to instruct all implicated agencies to keep, and not to destroy, public records. We should not have to wait until a panel or public inquiry is set up to instruct those agencies to keep all records. Secondly, I think the IPA could call on all implicated agencies to adopt the charter for families bereaved through public tragedy, which in essence calls on those agencies not to put their reputation ahead of the interests of the families of the victims and the survivors.
I think, too, the IPA can advise the Government on the setting up of an appropriate review, be that a public inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005, an independent panel or a different form of review or commission. I think, too, the IPA is in a good position to advise the Government on the terms of reference for such an inquiry or panel. One problem that I have observed over the years is that terms of reference are often cobbled together at very short notice, at the last minute, and are not adequate to the task.
The IPA could also advise the Government on the sponsoring Department. I draw attention to the infected blood inquiry: the families were very concerned about the fact that the sponsoring Department was the Department of Health, which was implicated in many of the allegations. Indeed, I was asked by the families whether I would petition the Prime Minister to transfer the sponsorship of that inquiry from the Department of Health to the Cabinet Office, which Theresa May, when she was Prime Minister, did, to the satisfaction of the families. The IPA could also have a role in scrutinising whether lessons really have been learned from the inquest or inquiry, so that those lessons can be embedded across Government and prevent future tragedies.
Ken Sutton: It was crucial to the success of the Hillsborough Independent Panel in the task that the bishop has described that it was, and was seen to be, impartial and certainly not merely an advocate for the families. Had that not been the case, we would not have had the success in publishing the documents that were published, because we would not have had the trust of the public authorities in exercising that role. I think it is important to distinguish the role of the panel from the role of an independent public advocate, going forward.
There is one other point that I think is relevant. I had the privilege of consulting the Hillsborough families about the membership of the panel, but I was very conscious that I was doing that 20 years after Hillsborough. If we were talking about a similar disaster now, where an advocate was needed, that is not the conversation that would be relevant to the families at the time of the disaster. The Bill is in some danger of creating a conversation with families that is not the right conversation to have at the moment of bereavement. I worry that the well-intentioned idea of consulting the families about prospective advocates would be more damaging than helpful at that time, and that it is wrongly placed in the process.
That is why I agree with the bishop that the better option would be for the independent public advocate to be appointed in advance, so they can discuss with the families the help that they can bring, and be immediately available for that purpose. That does not rule out there being a panel of advocates; I can well see that the independent public advocate might want to bring in a panel, or advise on other panel members being appropriate. That might be relevant for reasons to do with skills, if there are other panel members, geography, or possibly the multiplicity of incidents, if there is more than one at the same time, which is conceivable in the terrorist context. There is some learning from the Hillsborough Independent Panel, but it is important to distinguish that what the panel did is not what the independent public advocate would be doing.
Maria Eagle
Q
Ken Sutton: Honestly, I do not think it is a matter of powers; I think the independent public advocate will have a voice. The importance for me is the authority of the person in taking forward this work. That person would have the authority, and maybe in legislation could be entitled to express a view on what form of inquiry should go on alongside their work.
If I put myself momentarily in the shoes of South Yorkshire police, I would not have wanted or welcomed the panel being created through an independent public advocate who is there, by definition, for the families. The decision on an inquiry has to be for the Government, but the independent public advocate, having talked with the families in the immediate aftermath, would be well placed to offer advice on the form that that inquiry should take.
The Chair
Could I just interrupt for a moment? We do not have a lot of time and we have quite long answers. Does anybody else want to ask a question? Would you mind if I interrupt, because I want to get other people in? Sir Oliver Heald and then Sarah Champion. Please can we have short answers?
Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
Q
Ken Sutton: They are very different roles. It is welcome that the Government recently made it clear that the purpose of the independent public advocate is not to be the legal advocate for the families involved. I think the independent public advocate would have a role in making sure that the inquest or inquiry properly engages the families as participants. I am conscious of your remarks, Chair.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
Q
Rt Rev James Jones: Could you specify what bit of part 2 you are referring to, in terms of needing more work?
Sarah Champion
No, because it is not in front of me. Do you think that the Bill would get you the independence that you want, and give the families a voice?
Rt Rev James Jones: At the risk of repeating myself, no, I do not. I think independence can be assured only by there being a standing public appointment.
Ken Sutton: I agree.
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
Q
Rt Rev James Jones: Yes, I think that there should be a duty of candour on all public officials. Anybody who accepts public office should bind themselves according to their own conscience to speak with candour and not to dissemble when called upon to give the truth and an account of what has happened. But I do not think that that is part of this Bill.
Janet Daby
It is not, but it could be included, so it is important to get your perspective. Ken?
Ken Sutton: The bishop referred to how the independent public advocate could urge the public authorities not only to adopt the charter, but to live by it. I think the influence of the independent public advocate would be to bring about more candour in the terrible circumstances that we are imagining, beyond what would otherwise be the default. Unfortunately, we have seen many examples where candour has not been apparent in those kinds of circumstances. The IPA could help to hold public authorities to a position of candour.
Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)
Q
Is it the proposal that a standing IPA would basically step aside once the specific IPA got involved? How do you see it all working in practice? That is what I cannot get my head around.
Ken Sutton: I certainly have not seen them standing completely aside. The independent public advocate would have an authority through that office that would be beneficial going forward.
Siobhan Baillie
It is basically doubling up.
Ken Sutton: But I can see that they might decide that, for a particular tragedy, an advocate with medical experience, let us say, would be appropriate. We were greatly aided on the Hillsborough panel by Dr Bill Kirkup, whose work was decisive to the outcome of the Hillsborough independent panel. I can see circumstances in which that kind of advocate could be brought on board when you know the nature of the so-called incident. But I do not see the independent public advocate washing their hands, as it were, of an incident going forward.
Siobhan Baillie
Bishop?
Rt Rev James Jones: If we look at Hillsborough, we see that it was the immediate aftermath that compounded the tragedy—the role of the emergency service, the police, the media, the coroner. Within 48 hours, a narrative was being shaped over which the bereaved and the survivors had no control whatever.
My concern about not having a standing IPA is that there would inevitably be a process in which the Lord Chancellor would then consult with his team to see whether or not they should set up an IPA. But even in that short space of time, a false narrative can be created. I feel that in that short space of time, too, the families, who are disorientated and traumatised, feel even more bereft.
The Chair
Q
Rt Rev James Jones: Just to say thank you very much for inviting us. We stand ready—we have made this point to the Government—to share out of our own experience information that would help to shape the IPA. The Government have put it on the record that they want to continue to consult, and the families themselves have much to contribute to this proposal.
The Chair
Thank you very much for speaking so clearly to us on a very difficult subject. We are very grateful.
Examination of Witness
Lord Wills gave evidence.
Maria Eagle
Q
Lord Wills: I thank the Committee for inviting me to give evidence today. Let me start with the good bits of the Bill. The Government have endorsed the concept of an independent public advocate and have seen through the promise they made in the 2017 Queen’s Speech. I am grateful for that, and grateful to all the Ministers and officials who contributed.
In my view, however, the Bill is flawed in two main areas. When the Justice Secretary introduced the Bill on Second Reading, he said that
“in order to deliver justice, victims must be treated not as mere spectators of the criminal justice system, but as core participants in it.”—[Official Report, 15 May 2023; Vol. 732, c. 583.]
Exactly right—but that is not what the proposals for the independent public advocate do. They do not give the families effective agency.
As I understand it, the Bill gives the Secretary of State unfettered powers to appoint an independent public advocate or not to do so, and unfettered powers to dismiss an independent public advocate. It also gives the Secretary of State sole right to require the independent public advocate to produce a report. As I understand the Government’s proposals, the independent public advocate will not have the right enjoyed by the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, for example, to be an independent office that has the right to produce reports on its own initiative. In that way, the Bill does not fulfil the original intention of my Bill, which was to give bereaved families and surviving victims of public disasters effective agency.
Secondly, and crucially, the Bill does not give the independent public advocate the power to convene something like the Hillsborough independent panel, which after two public inquiries and, for the families, decades of campaigning was the first time that full transparency was achieved in finding out why Hillsborough happened, and what happened in the crucial hours and days after, when, as the bishop so rightly said, a false narrative was being created that was enormously distressing for the families, who were already suffering unimaginable grief.
Maria Eagle
Q
Lord Wills: I recognise that, as Ken Sutton said, in the end the Government have to have the final say. My original Bill denied them that. I can see the case for the Government having the ultimate say, but there is a halfway position between that and this Bill as drafted. This Bill could and should fetter the Secretary of State and the Government in such a way that they must, for example, have regard to the wishes of the families, to the public interest, to full transparency and so on. That would be quite a significant fetter on Executive power, and I would like to see it incorporated in this Bill. It would not give the families full agency, but that itself is complicated: there is a question of which families and how you define the families, which is for the detailed drafting of this Bill. It would give the Secretary of State some sort of discretion, but we have to go further than this Bill does in giving the families better agency.
Maria Eagle
Q
Lord Wills: It is important to remember that at the time the Hillsborough independent panel was established, there had already been two public inquiries chaired by distinguished judges, both of which were flawed in different ways and both of which had failed to prevent the false narrative that the bishop referred to—the cover-up by the police, the brutal commentary in some of the popular press—from taking root, causing enormous trauma for the bereaved families. What I was concerned about was making sure that finally, in any kind of panel and if any documents were to be released, the families should have full transparency. There were issues with that to do with data protection regulations. We thought we would get round them by putting the panel in the position of data controllers, so they would have the power to review all the relevant documentation and would then be able to publish their report. As it happened, they did publish a very large number of the documents they reviewed, although not all; a few were redacted. Crucially, I think the fact that the panel had seen everything gave the families confidence that they were getting something very, very close to the full transparency that they had been denied up until that point. That was a crucial lesson.
The other point that might be worth making is that setting up the Hillsborough independent panel, which is now seen as a great success due to the work of the bishop and Ken Sutton—indeed, all the panel—was not easy. Politicians and Ministers often have mixed motives, and while everyone was extremely sympathetic to the families, pretty much the entire Cabinet, for various reasons, was against my efforts to set up the panel in the way that I did. Fortunately, the one member of the Cabinet who did support me was the one who really mattered, and that was the Prime Minister.
Sir Oliver Heald
Q
Lord Wills: Yes, I believe it should be a standing appointment, for the reasons that the bishop set out extremely well. In the turmoil of the aftermath of a big public disaster, it is important that someone is on the ground immediately to support the families. I do believe that, and I think it is a perfectly achievable position to have. A secretariat could be drawn together at short notice—a standing secretariat, as it were. It would be doing work within the civil service, but when a public disaster happened it could be brought to bear to act as a secretariat for the independent public advocate.
I hate to think of what might happen. If you imagine a big terrorist incident, for example, the Government would be in turmoil anyway, and then they would have to find the time and space to go through all the selection processes, find out people’s availability and negotiate terms of reference. In the meantime, the poor families are left without anyone to support them, as they always have been up until now. It rather defeats the object of this whole exercise. So I am in favour of having a standing appointment.
As for who the independent public advocate should be, when I originally drafted my private Member’s Bill I had it in mind that it would almost certainly be a lawyer of some sort, and they would function in a similar but not identical way to the reviewer of terrorism legislation. In other words, they would be a distinguished lawyer with a lot of experience in these sorts of areas. Every public disaster is different and it would be very difficult to find someone who had expert knowledge in every possible area, but the broad parameters would be the same.
The main point would be to be able to guide the families through all the various processes that might be taking place, and above all to secure full transparency about what had happened and produce a report on it. As I say, I had it in mind that it would be a lawyer. They are usually extremely useful in these circumstances— I do not speak as a lawyer—but it is not impossible to imagine that it could be someone else with a similar sort of expertise.
Forgive me: there was another part to your question, but I have forgotten it.
Sir Oliver Heald
Q
Lord Wills: I do agree with that. That is one part of the Bill that is probably sensible. I can understand why it is in there and I can see possible conflicts of interest with professional lawyers, so I do agree.
Janet Daby
Q
Lord Wills: The prevention of a cover-up is essential in the wider interests of our democracy. People are losing faith in our democratic institutions. When they feel that Governments are covering up things that are crucial to them, they lose faith. In my view, that is worrying and dangerous. We have to do everything we can to protect against that, so anything we can do to raise the barriers against those sorts of cover-ups is crucial. That is why I would also support the introduction of a duty of candour.
We have to accept that a cover-up is part of the pathology of a big public disaster. It is human nature. When something happens like Hillsborough, the Manchester Arena bombing or Grenfell Tower, it is a huge story for the nation, and obviously those in power at the time, who feel they might be blamed for it, will feel that they have to cover up in some way. We saw what the police did with Hillsborough: they created a false narrative as part of that cloud of unknowing that they wanted to create, to cover up. What they feared, rightly in the end, was that they would be blamed for it.
That is true of pretty much every public disaster: obviously the details are different, but there is that essential pathology. There is always a risk of cover-up. I hope this Bill, suitably amended, will raise the barriers against that, but it does not mean that we can drop our vigilance against the potential.
Janet Daby
Q
Lord Wills: Again, the Secretary of State has too much unfettered discretion. I am not opposed to them having the ultimate responsibility, but you have identified there a very good example of giving the Secretary of State what, in my view, they should not have.
Sarah Champion
Q
Lord Wills: You have put your finger on the whole problem with the Bill—lots of powers to the Secretary of State and very few for the independent public advocate. There are various details of the Bill where the drafting could be improved.
I return to two main points. In some way, families have to be given effective agency, and that must mean some fettering of the powers on the Secretary of State. I am agnostic about the way to do that, and I have always accepted that my private Member’s Bill was not perfect. I am agnostic about how you fetter the Secretary of State, but something like ensuring that the Secretary of State “has regard to” the wishes of the bereaved and surviving victims would be a good start in making a way forward.
The other point, as I have said, is transparency, which I cannot stress enough. We have to get to the truth as quickly as possible. The Hillsborough Independent Panel did a magnificent job in a very short space of time, when it was inevitably more difficult, because 20 years had elapsed. Therefore, my view is that there has to be a presumption—not a requirement, because there has to be an element of discretion—in the statute in favour of an independent Hillsborough-type panel being set up. The important point is it is not adversarial. Big public inquiries very easily become adversarial; all sides have lawyers that argue and dispute, so that often a fog of dispute comes over these events. The Hillsborough Independent Panel had none of that. It was an impartial search for the truth. There must be a presumption in favour of a similar type of panel in all future public disasters. That should not be an absolute requirement, but there should be a presumption in favour of it.
The Chair
Thank you very much for your evidence, Lord Wills. That concludes this session.
Lord Wills: Thank you.
Examination of Witnesses
Nick Hurd and Tim Suter gave evidence.
The Chair
Our next witnesses are Nick Hurd, the independent adviser to the Prime Minister on Grenfell, and Tim Suter, a solicitor at the Manchester Arena inquiry and the Hillsborough inquest. Welcome, Nick; you are appearing via Zoom. Who wants to lead off the questions? Is it Maria again?
Maria Eagle
Q
Nick Hurd: Thank you for the welcome, Chair, and thank you for the question, Ms Eagle. Every disaster has its own specific context. I will take a minute to clarify my role in Grenfell and how it came about before answering your question.
The specific context of the Grenfell disaster was that, at the time, I was Minister for Policing and the Fire Service. I had some involvement in the co-ordination of the response in the aftermath, which was inadequate. The combination of the disaster and the response resulted in a situation in which there was zero trust—negative trust—between the communities affected and the state in the form of both the local authority, which many blamed for the disaster, and the national Government, which many blamed for the inadequate response to the disaster. I was asked by the then Prime Minister, Theresa May, to play a special role. It might have had some parallels with the role that Tessa Jowell played in a different context, that of 7/7. My role was to build a bridge of communication between the communities affected—the bereaved, survivors and residents close to the tower—and the state, in particular the central Government, who were more involved in the aftermath than they had expected to be. That was the specific context: I was not an independent advocate, but a Minister trying to build bridges of trust and communication.
To answer your question, I think that the central point is the one that Michael Wills made. The central difficulty that I faced was the lack of trust that the community felt and their lack of agency. In the specific context of Grenfell, many felt that they were victims of the state, and they found it difficult to believe that the state had an interest in supporting them or that they had any agency or voice in that process. In hindsight, that was one of the biggest challenges that we faced. I support the emphasis that Michael Wills put on it.
Maria Eagle
Q
Nick Hurd: If set up in the right way and with the right individual, the role could be very valuable in helping families to believe that there is someone on their side, given that of course they do not understand the system—why should they?—and feel that it is not listening to them and is not on their side. In principle, I am supportive.
I would enter a caveat around expectation, however. To the point that I think you were making, sometimes it takes a long time to get to the truth and to justice, which is the word that is used in the Grenfell context; “accountability” is a softer word. That process takes time. In the case of Grenfell, the public inquiry is generally extremely well regarded for the rigour of its processes and how it is led, but it is inevitably going to take quite a long time to get to the point of ultimate truth and accountability. I doubt that there is very much that an independent public advocate can do to speed up the process in the context of formal public inquiries and inquests. I would have a concern about expectation management and about how the thing is set up in a way that the system is required to respond to an independent public advocate.
Maria Eagle
Q
Tim Suter: Thank you for the question, and thank you to the Committee for inviting me along today. Let me just give you some context about my experience. I am a solicitor, and for the last 15 years I have helped those conducting inquests, inquiries and investigations. You referred to the new inquest into the Hillsborough disaster; I was the solicitor to that, and I am the current solicitor to the Manchester Arena inquiry. I also assisted the inquests into the Birmingham pub bombings and the 7/7 inquests. Through those and other investigations, I have had lots of experience and exposure to the difficult issues that those cases have to investigate, but also to the bereavement and anguish that those who are at the heart of those investigations go through. It is clear to me that the role of an IPA is very valuable. To be frank, I think there is some confusion in the Bill about the role that the IPA could and should fulfil, but at its core I fully support the need for an IPA.
As people gave their evidence, I jotted down words that absolutely ring true for me—references to “anguish”, “impotence”, “distrust”, “patronising” and “lack of access to power”. I have experienced all those things. On the flip side, there was talk of “agency”, “voice”, “empathy”, “the truth” and “compassion”. At its heart, that is the purpose of an inquisitorial process such as an inquest or inquiry. If the IPA can help with that in the right way, I think it is absolutely right.
Maria Eagle
Q
Tim Suter: I think the bishop summarised it very well in referring to a standing IPA. In my mind, I have characterised it as a standing office—the office of the IPA—whereby there is almost a chief IPA who is appointed. That would be a process that happens as soon as the Bill receives Royal Assent. It would be properly resourced; or it may not be resourced, but it should be absolutely firm that the resources for the chief IPA to fulfil their job are available. I think they should have the power to appoint IPAs in the light of a particular disaster. They may or may not be involved themselves; it depends on the nature of the disaster.
There are some issues in the Bill as well about the terms of appointment and the resignation of the IPA. I did not really understand why that is there. It needs to be much more forceful and brought almost into line with how the 2005 Act is framed, which is much clearer about the appointment process and the need for that appointment only to be terminated in very particular circumstances.
I have some questions—perhaps points of granularity—about how an IPA is going to advocate on behalf of those under 18. For the Manchester Arena inquiry, many of those affected were under 18. No one should be excluded just because of age from the vital work that an IPA would do. For me, that came across as needing a little bit more work and analysis. There was an intriguing reference to “no immunity” in the Bill as well, which I thought seemed a little out of kilter—perhaps I just do not know the detail. Why does the Bill refer directly to the IPA having no immunity? Then you go through to the process of reporting; as far as I can see, a report is not necessarily laid before Parliament, where it would get the protection of parliamentary privilege. All of felt that it needed to be reviewed with a little bit more scrutiny.
Sir Oliver Heald
Having a standing appointment or an office would mean that you could have speedy action. I was asking the previous witnesses whether they thought the role should be an impartial one, as the Hillsborough panel inquiry was. What sort of skills and qualifications should the person have? Do you agree that that person should not be able to undertake legal activity? For example, at an inquest, they would be an interested party and could be represented, but they would not be doing the representation themselves.
Nick Hurd: Oliver, good to see you. I have not thought it about very deeply.
Sir Oliver Heald
I have just one more question, Chair, which will be very quick. Please go on, Mr Hurd.
Nick Hurd: I am quite attracted to the idea of a standing body because I think it can begin to accumulate knowledge, experience and insight into what is required in these situations. The Government system struggles with that, not least with people moving on. I am attracted in principle to the idea of a standing body and my instinct, like yours, is that the person leading that should not be engaged in legal activity. That would be my instinct as well.
Tim Suter: I find the point about impartiality quite difficult because I think the role of the IPA is, in its very nature, to assist the victims of that disaster. I am not sure you can do that if you are properly going to be impartial. I have a question: they must be independent of Government, but I question whether that is different from the impartiality point. They should be able to really advocate on behalf of the particular victims.
There is also a question about how disaster is always, by its very nature, complex. There will be different types of victim—those who are bereaved, those who have suffered physical harm, those who have suffered mental harm. They will all have different needs from the IPA, which leads you through to the question about perhaps needing a number of IPAs and how that duty of impartiality would work across all of them. That gets quite complex.
As for skills, I would say this, but I think you probably have to have a lawyer. That may be something that everyone has a different view on. In terms of not undertaking legal work, I strongly agree with that. We may get on to it, but I do not think that they should be an interested person in an inquest, because there is a real risk of duplication and confusion. Provided that a bereaved family has access to a lawyer and that lawyer is properly funded so there is equality of arms, they should be the person who is standing up and advocating on behalf of a family in an inquest, not the IPA.
Sir Oliver Heald
Q
Tim Suter: No.
Sir Oliver Heald
Q
Tim Suter: Yes, I think the change was happening before Hillsborough. The 7/7 inquests were actually the process that introduced pen portraits—the memorialisation of the deceased—and the opportunity to say, “This was my loved one, and this was who they were as a person.”
Sir Oliver Heald
Q
Tim Suter: That was Dame Heather Hallett. That actually came from an inquiry into an air crash in Canada, so taking learning internationally is really important. Hillsborough was a journey—it has been a very long journey—where I have had the privilege to take a small part, but yes, it did give a voice to families. It undoubtedly could have done more; any process can always do more. That is why I would support the role of the IPA to be able to report on the experiences of victims in these processes, because I think being able to be held to account for the process you have been involved in has to be of real value. You need to ensure that there is still judicial independence in that process, and not going behind the decisions reached, but I think it is absolutely understanding the experience of those. The Hillsborough inquests were a very important part of that.
The Chair
We have three more people. We have Janet Daby, then Sarah Champion, then Jess Phillips.
Janet Daby
Q
Tim Suter: I do not know all the ins and outs of the legal aid regime. For a public inquiry, section 40 allows the chair to make the provision for lawyers—for legal representation—at public expense. In that sense, there is already the ability to grant funding. For inquests, I absolutely agree that it goes to equality of arms, and that there must be the ability for bereaved families to be properly legally represented. It makes my job harder, sometimes, but that is a thoroughly good thing—that I can be asked, “Why are you advising the chair or the coroner to take this view? Have you taken this into account?” Having that makes it a proper inquisitorial process—a search for the truth—so yes, I agree.
Janet Daby
Q
Nick Hurd: Yes, I do. It came up in the Grenfell context. You will understand that what I call the system tends to try to stay rational in these situations and try to respect their processes and structures, but in my experience in these seismic moments it is better to be decisive, up front and generous and just show that you are on their side with a decisive offer such as that.
Janet Daby
Q
Nick Hurd: I have discussed this with the bishop. I am, again, in favour in principle of the duty of candour.
Janet Daby
Wonderful. Tim?
Tim Suter: The duty of candour obviously makes sense. I would just urge some caution in terms of the process of, the role of, the IPA for getting access to material, if that is a duty that is brought in. I think there is a risk of duplication of effort and added complexity if the IPA is to have the role of gathering and holding material. I think it should have the ability to direct public authorities to retain material, but I do not think it should go further. I think there might also need to be a check in the Bill about the role of FOIA, the Freedom of Information Act, because for the 2005 Act, an inquiry is not a public authority that is subject to FOIA. Here, I think that does not necessarily carry across, so that probably needs to be looked at.
Janet Daby
Q
Tim Suter: I think the organisation should retain it, because there will be materials that are subject to legal professional privilege and materials that are subject or potentially subject to public interest immunity; there will be other confidences attaching to materials. Embarking on a process of redaction of that material by the IPA—when, gosh, you are in the foothills of what is going to be a very long process, I suspect—will take the IPA away from its key job of advocating on behalf of the families to make sure they get access to services. So I would urge caution.
The Chair
I had better go to Jess now, because she has not had a question, and then Sarah.
Jess Phillips
Q
Nick Hurd: I would have genuine concerns about that, fully respecting the need for speed and decisiveness. There need to be systems in place so that not least those affected by the disaster at that moment in time have some confidence in the integrity of the process, because ultimately, the individual who is appointed to that role has a very short window of opportunity to build trust. People will form a view very quickly about whether they are useful, so the recruitment is critical and I would think the system would be well advised to build in processes that increase the chances of trust from early doors.
Tim Suter: I agree wholeheartedly with that. I wrote down four words: speed, trust, confidence and independence.
Jess Phillips
Q
Tim Suter: Absolutely. In saying that a lawyer can do it, I completely agree with you. That is actually something I have seen improve remarkably through the course of the cases that I have been involved in—to the extent that for the Manchester Arena inquiry, there was something called the NHS resilience hub and it was fantastic. It was able to guide, support and assist the bereaved and victims. On the need for victim support and people who have specialist skills, I absolutely agree there is a role for that within the IPA.
Sarah Champion
Q
Tim Suter: Sorry, I used my shorthand for the Inquiries Act 2005: section 1—matter of public concern, set up inquiry.
Sarah Champion
Q
Tim Suter: I only looked at it quickly, but I just thought that it is almost saying that the IPA, through another support agency, can give you the voice of that child, or that person who is under 18, but it is not representing. I do not know where representing features in terms of the IPA.
Sarah Champion
Q
Tim Suter: I would like the IPA to be able to directly represent, subject to parental consent, someone who is under 18. It is just as important for those under 18, if they want to, to have that agency through the IPA. I think there is a real risk it gets lost.
On the Manchester Arena inquiry, we had a number of people under 18 giving evidence and they expressed the impact of the bombing on them so well, so clearly and so powerfully, and there is a real risk of creating a lacuna.
Sarah Champion
Q
Tim Suter: I just think that there is a risk that they will not be able to access services in the same way and I think we all realise that those under 18 may have a need for very specialist services. So, just making sure that it is absolutely crystal clear that the IPA can help those victims under 18 to access the services that are more specialist is going to be important.
The Chair
If there are no further questions, that concludes this evidence session. Thank you very much, gentlemen.
Examination of Witnesses
Ruth Davison and Ellen Miller gave evidence.
The Chair
We will now hear evidence from Ruth Davison, chief executive of Refuge, and from Ellen Miller, interim CEO of SafeLives. Ms Miller, thank you very much for coming; I know there was a problem on Tuesday, so thank you for coming in person.
Jess Phillips
Q
First and foremost I suppose, could you could give a brief assessment of whether you think what is currently in the Bill will make a big difference to the victims that you support—victims of domestic violence and, in lots of cases, sexual violence?
Ruth Davison: Speaking as Refuge, we are obviously the largest provider of specialist services to women who are experiencing gender-based violence, particularly domestic abuse. We absolutely support the intention of this Bill and its founding principles: to give greater voice and power to victims. Unfortunately, however, as it stands, my best description of it is a missed opportunity. Without any funding attached, we do not see any opportunity for the transformational change that these women desperately, desperately need.
To give you some sense of scale, still one in four women in this country will experience domestic abuse in their lifetime. It is one of the most heinous and prolific crimes that we have in this country, yet when we are calling for full funding of community-based services, which is only estimated at £238 million a year by the Women’s Aid Federation, we are not seeing any traction on that.
So, while it is great that there is a duty to collaborate and it is very positive that statutory bodies come together and look holistically at the needs of victims, without a corresponding duty to fund, I am afraid we do not think it will make any difference to the women we are supporting, the vast majority of whom do not report to the police anyway, because confidence in the police and criminal justice system is so low and retraumatisation is so high, as you try to work through that process, that they are not really included in the scope, even though they are covered by the technical definition.
Jess Phillips
Q
Ruth Davison: Absolutely. I understand that the victims code focuses on criminal justice practitioners, but I would absolutely enshrine not just four overarching principles but the specifics of the code in the law. We met some survivors, here, two days ago. One of the panel asked them whether they knew what the code was. Only one woman in that room knew what the code was, never mind knew how to uphold and access her rights. They absolutely need to be listed in the Bill and they need to be legally enforceable as a last resort.
Jess Phillips
Q
Ruth Davison: Absolutely, I do. Victims who are experiencing domestic abuse, through no fault of their own, are suddenly having to navigate housing, the family courts and social services, as well as the criminal justice and policing system. There is no tied-up approach and yet we know that so much trauma and so much post-separation abuse is perpetrated in the family courts at the moment.
Jess Phillips
Q
Ellen Miller: Thank you; I am real! It is a shame the link does not reach as far as Blackpool, but never mind.
I will focus in on two things. We would much rather have this Bill than not. There are two things I would focus on. The first is duties. The second is teeth.
I spent 20 years in local government. I would liken putting in a duty to collaborate to when somebody puts in a planning application, send an email to the Environment Agency and, three months later, it sends one back saying, “No, we haven’t got any record of protected newts.” Any duty that you can effectively discharge by email, you might as well not bother putting in. That is what we have at the moment. If I may politely do so, I would suggest that, instead, we look at a duty to listen—to listen to survivors and hear what their lives are like, and to see them as real people.
Secondly, we should look at a duty to acknowledge the level of need. You have heard about the joint strategic needs assessment. That exists in so many other fields of the social sector and social change work; why can we not have that for victims and survivors of domestic abuse?
Thirdly, there is the duty to act. When I say that, I do not just mean the duty to act on people who come to the police force at a moment of crisis, which is the majority of people for whom there is funding at the moment. We have to have that, but at the moment the system we have is a bit like having an NHS that is just A&E. We are never going to solve the systemic issues around domestic abuse unless we have a duty to not just immediately protect, but to prevent and ensure recovery, and to allow people to have the lives they should have the right to.
I would put those duties in the Bill, if you want to take my advice on it.
Jess Phillips
Oh, I will.
Ellen Miller: The other area is teeth. I have worked in the field of victims for a long time. I have seen so many atrocious things that are not in line with the victims code of practice. The code of practice is great, if only it happened. A screen when you go into court that is 4 foot high—that is not protecting a witness. Giving them a fold-out leaflet in English—that is not telling somebody what their rights are. This just does not happen. Please, let’s have some teeth. Let’s have some accountability around this. Let’s recognise the rights that should be there.
Jess Phillips
Q
Ellen Miller: Absolutely, and that is why I really wanted to come down, apart from the duties point. There was a history; there was initially funding for the equivalent of A&E-type stuff. In order to make that credible, the IDVA role was set up. In the past, the IDVA has been associated very much with only doing those really high-risk cases.
Let us deconstruct what an IDVA is. An IDVA is somebody who has gone through a 12-day training programme. This is not a master’s degree or an impossible bar; it is a really basic level of minimum threshold that you should get to. Everybody who works in domestic abuse should have the right to that level of training. We expect it in the care sector—we expect care workers to know how to safely manage cases, to report safeguarding, and to understand the dynamics of power and control within the care setting. We expect that in care. We should expect that in domestic abuse.
To us, the biggest provider of IDVAs, it is a programme of knowledge—a starting point. It does not give you cultural competence, which you have if you are a “by and for” organisation. It does not give you in-depth knowledge around things like non-fatal strangulation, honour-based violence and so on. It is your basic core concepts. It gives a bit more power and respect to individuals who do not have parity with the police officer, the psychiatrist and the social worker—it gives them a status. I wish it was not the case that you need a badge to be respected and listened to, but on the other hand it gives the credibility of a level of basic knowledge. To me, it is about a set of learning, so it is therefore useful, but it is only a starting point.
Ruth Davison: I would build on that, and echo what the Domestic Abuse Commissioner said to the Committee on Tuesday, which is to look at and value all the community outreach roles. When we are in the context of an absolute drought of funding, there is a potential unintended consequence of elevating the IDVA and ISVA roles over and above other roles that are equally skilled and vital—as Ellen said, particularly those roles that focus on cultural competencies and serve the “by and for” community. There is a real concern from us as a sector that we could unintentionally, by elevating one role, make it even harder to access funding for those culturally specific roles in the “by and for” services, which are already six times less likely to receive statutory funding.
Siobhan Baillie
Q
Ellen Miller: I would look at enforcement through the inspection and reporting regime. First, we must ensure that there is a Victims’ Commissioner and a Domestic Abuse Commissioner, and that they have the right to be very public and open. Ruth will have done this, and we have done this: when you have data and look at the differences in the level of funding, it is absolutely shocking and it is not reported. Some things that, for example, the victims grant gets spent on are just jaw-dropping. There is not that level of accountability. Accountability comes through inspections, the roles of the independent commissioners and reporting—and the right to properly kick-off in a way that will actually lead to something. There needs to be the equivalent health and care ombudsman: a proper complaints process.
Ruth Davison: I agree with what Ellen is saying. It comes back to putting the four overarching principles into the Bill. We have already seen reports saying, “That won’t go far enough. It won’t lead to the cultural change that is so necessary if victims are actually to be able to access those rights—not for those rights to just exist on a piece of paper that they may or may not be able to read even if they receive it, but to be acting throughout the whole process.”
Missing from the Bill as a whole is a recognition of how far there is to go in terms of tackling culture. The fundamental understanding of domestic abuse and of many of the crimes that are faced by women in this country is missing. We are calling for mandatory training for police forces, which would lead to the kind of enforcement and teeth that Ellen is talking about.
Sarah Champion
Q
Ruth Davison: No, it is not enough. You were there at the event, so you heard women saying, “What is this?” If they do not know what it is, it is not being upheld at the moment. We do not think that reasonable steps to raise awareness and make people aware of the code is adequate. Making it enforceable gives it teeth. I feel like I am repeating what Ellen is saying, but we need to go further.
These are women who are in a period of crisis in their lives. They may be being forced to flee their home with their children in the middle of the night, leaving friends, family, pets, and toys behind. They are dealing with all these institutions through no fault of their own. Those institutions need to have very clear and holistic approaches to their support. That is what is done on the frontline of community-based services, whether or not they enter the criminal justice system, report to the police and have their case dismissed due to lack of evidence, or endure the re-traumatisation of testifying again and again in the family court or in the legal case. Recognising that holistic support is essential, and embedding that in the Bill through the victims code being enforceable feels like a critical part of it, alongside the funding I am calling for.
Sarah Champion
Q
Ruth Davison: If they do, I do not think they are communicating it—so, no. I still think we find absolutely shocking responses from frontline policing, and at the moment obviously the level of police-perpetrated domestic abuse and sexual offences coming to light is only deterring people further from reporting to the police. The first place that many of them come—the frontline—is the national domestic abuse helpline or their local frontline community service, not the police. That needs to change, because police need to understand the dynamics of domestic abuse. I often say that if I spotted a suspicious package on the bus on my way here and I phoned it in, no one would say, “But what are you wearing and why were you on that bus on your own at that time of the day? Had you been drinking?” People would say, “Tell us where the package is,” and they would deal with the package, not start to interrogate me as if I were the criminal.
Far too many victims are unfortunately still receiving victim-blaming language and feeling as if they are criminalised themselves when they come forward. That is even before you get to the points made very well by Southall Black Sisters on Tuesday about the absolutely desperate need for a firewall to separate statutory services from immigration services, because women thinking they could be criminalised or lose their right to stay in this country is another massive deterrent to them feeling safe to come forward.
Ellen Miller: Can I add to that? There should also be a firewall to separate independent support for victims from the statutory organisations that have so often let down these individuals. That is why people are not going to the police. People are worried that their children will be taken away from them. They are worried about getting the father of their child in huge amounts of trouble. They are worried about what it might mean to them—they may not speak English in a particularly strong way, but have had it explained and know their rights. They may feel they do not have any chance of having their rights realised. Independence really matters, and that is something that is absolutely not universal in the support for victims. It is very hard, in some places, to get independent support. We see that in care: we have the independent health advocate, which is again written into the Care Act, but we do not have that provision for survivors of domestic abuse. That is a legislative issue.
Sarah Champion
Q
Ruth Davison: Maybe this comes back to understanding the dynamics of domestic abuse. An abuser will isolate you, gaslight you, tell you no one will believe you and cut off your routes to support. Something we hear time and again from survivors who come to us—survivors who phone the helpline and come to community-based services—is the unbelievable relief of someone believing you, having some empathy, listening to you and treating you like a human being. Obviously, there is then all the practical guidance that the independent advocates are able to give, but not having anywhere to speak and being silenced through these processes that are highly traumatic is dangerous for women, dangerous for their mental health, dangerous for their children and dangerous for their recoveries. Having a safe space in counselling as well as with your independent advocate in a community-based service is absolutely critical. That should not be automatically accessible by the police—who we know unfortunately have a whole habit of using that against you and looking into your past, rather than the past and motivations of the perpetrator. A firewall is absolutely essential if we to start to see confidence rebuild.
Ellen Miller: There is something about what this crime is, as well. Intimate violence does the most awful, traumatic things to your brain, and it gives you the hugest impacts that will stay with you for a lifetime. I myself have survived sexual violence—35 years ago, briefly, in an attack. That stays with me forever. The gap between that happening then and going forward to a case and prosecution—what that did to me. I have worked with survivors of sexual and domestic abuse and violence. How can we leave people—women, mothers, fathers—without someone to help them sort that out? They have been severely damaged by what has happened to them, and it feels to me callous and appalling that we then have ISVAs who have to say, “Well, I know you really, really need support, but the choice is you can have support or you can have justice.” That is just not okay.
Siobhan Baillie
Q
The Chair
Very short answer.
Ruth Davison: The default should be non-disclosure, but a judge decision, yes—not an outright ban. Hopefully that was quick enough.
Janet Daby
Q
The Chair
Very quick answer.
Ruth Davison: Very briefly, at the moment women who have no recourse to public funds are completely locked out of any provision. We would like to see that change, and that has been costed by Imkaan. We would also like to see that there is more funding and more support for the “by and for” services, which is where our slight concern around definitions of IDVA and ISVA would come in—
The Chair
Order. Thank you very much for taking the trouble to come in person. I know you have come a long way, but it is a lot better when people come in person. Thank you so much.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Fay Jones.)
Victims and Prisoners Bill (Fourth sitting)
Thursday 22nd June 2023
(2 years ago)
Public Bill CommitteesVictims and Prisoners Act 2024 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 22 June 2023 - (22 Jun 2023)
The Chair
We are now sitting in public again, and the proceedings are being broadcast. We now hear oral evidence from Jenni Hicks, a Hillsborough justice campaigner. Good afternoon, and thank you for coming. Do you want to say anything briefly at the start or do you just want to take questions?
Jenni Hicks: I have got something to say. Would you like to hear a little bit about my story?
The Chair
Q
Jenni Hicks: About my journey, I should say.
On 15 April 1989, my then husband Trevor and I, along with our daughters Sarah, who was 19 years old, and Vicki, who was 15 years old, drove from our home in north London to the Hillsborough football stadium in Sheffield to watch our team, Liverpool, play Nottingham Forest in the FA cup semi-final. We were all Liverpool season ticket holders and had been allocated four tickets for the semi-final at Hillsborough.
Trevor and I drove home from Sheffield that night with an empty back seat in our car, having had to leave Sarah and Vicki in body bags on a dirty gymnasium floor at the Hillsborough football stadium. After identifying Sarah and Vicki, we were told that they were no longer our property; they were now the property of the coroner of South Yorkshire. We were questioned by two police officers for over an hour about our movements that day since we had left home that morning—mainly about how much alcohol we had had to drink. Trevor was asked to make a statement, which was later used at the Taylor inquiry. No solicitor was present when we were being interviewed. It felt more like an interrogation than an interview.
That night in Sheffield, we were treated like criminals by the police, who did not show an ounce of compassion. What followed is the reason I support the urgent need to appoint an independent public advocate panel. The lies, corruption and dirty tricks campaign began immediately, informing the press, media and anyone who would listen—hideous, nauseating lies about the Liverpool fans’ misbehaviour. I will not repeat those now disproven hideous lies here, as that would give them some kind of credence and publicity, which is what South Yorkshire police had intended.
It took 26 years for the Liverpool fans to be exonerated; however, the mud from those lies and that corruption still sticks in certain quarters of society to this very day. It took what seemed like a lifetime of banging our heads against brick walls and climbing seemingly unsurmountable barriers before—following the 20th anniversary of Hillsborough, and thanks to the courage of the then PM Gordon Brown and the foresight of Lord Michael Wills, my unsung hero—the process of setting up the Hillsborough Independent Panel began.
With the release of previously withheld documentation, enabling families to finally find the truth about the causation of their loved ones’ deaths, a second inquest found that all 96 at the time—children, women and men—had been unlawfully killed; a 97th victim was added later. This is why we need an independent public advocate, with a public advocate panel based on the format of the Hillsborough Independent Panel. That’s me up to now. I have written down some other points, so that I do not forget anything. If you bear with me, I can read them out and then you can ask me questions if you like. Is that okay?
The Chair
I am afraid we only have half an hour. Why don’t we just take questions—then perhaps you can add some points. Is that all right?
Jenni Hicks: Well, there’s something important that I would like to say. I won’t read the whole thing; I will just jump about a little bit.
It took me and the other bereaved Hillsborough families 23 years of campaigning to finally hear from the Hillsborough Independent Panel in 2012 the truth about how our loved ones had died. It then took another four painful years to finally have, in 2016, the correct inquest verdicts that all 96 victims had been unlawfully killed, which I am sure you know is gross negligence manslaughter to a criminal standard. Importantly, the 96 innocent children, women and men—the Liverpool fans who had been cruelly blamed for causing the disaster—were also exonerated at the inquest of any blame whatsoever.
Here we are 26 years later to hear that truth. That can’t happen again. It mustn’t. Other families must not suffer what the Hillsborough families suffered. I mean, 26 years is over a quarter of a century of your life, just to have the truth and the correct inquest verdict. That cannot be allowed to happen. This is why I wholly support an independent public advocate—I keep stressing “independent” because the clue is in the title—and an independent public advocate team. In my opinion, it must be set up in the same way as the Hillsborough Independent Panel was. All the documents should be available to the independent public advocate and his team or her team right from the very start. People should not have to wait 23 years to have documentation of the truth. That is a summary of what I am saying in these notes.
The other point I made in these documents—as you say, I do not have time to read it all out now—is the fact that as it stands at the moment, the Government’s suggestions for an independent public advocate just would not work. It would just not be independent, because it is too dependent on the Minister. It seems that the supposedly independent public advocate will be answerable to the Secretary of State, which does not sound like independence to me.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
Q
Jenni Hicks: Well, if they are an independent public advocate, they should be like the Hillsborough Independent Panel were; they did not have to answer to anybody. They looked in, saw the documentation, and then reported on what they saw. They were not answerable to anybody, I don’t think. Is that correct, Maria?
The Chair
We are very grateful to you—this is a very moving testimony and you have had the most appalling experience—but we cannot have a general conversation; we have to have set questions. Can I now ask Maria Miller to ask her questions?
Jenni Hicks: Yes, sorry about that.
The Chair
That’s all right—we quite understand.
Jenni Hicks: I am an amateur at this, I am afraid.
Maria Eagle
It is fine. I have been called some names in my time—usually Angela.
Maria Eagle
Q
Jenni Hicks: That is why I automatically asked Maria. I do apologise.
Maria Eagle
I am just making it clear that I do know the witness.
Jenni Hicks: Maria is the only person that I know here.
Maria Eagle
Q
Jenni Hicks: I am hoping that an independent public advocate and their team would be able to have sight of the documentation that is needed to get to the truth. There has got to be transparency. We did not have that transparency until 2012—it took 23 years for us to have transparency about how our loved ones died. That is the difference that I am hoping it would make. That is such an important part.
Obviously, the independent public advocate would be able to guide people towards help in other ways, but for a major public disaster like the Hillsborough disaster, which was surrounded by a lot of lies and corruption, just to have transparency about the truth of what really happened was vital. We would never have known the truth without that. That is what was so good about the Hillsborough Independent Panel: it operated through transparency and sight of the documentation that it needed to come to its conclusions.
Maria Eagle
Q
Jenni Hicks: Yes.
Maria Eagle
Q
Jenni Hicks: It was horrendous. It was cruel. We were put through such an inhumane process. Not only had we lost our loved ones—in my case, my two daughters—but we did not have the truth about how they died. It was surrounded by lies.
I was there on the day. We were there as a family, and my ex-husband was there on the pitch with the girls, so we knew that the propaganda was lies. We were up against organisations like the police and the Government—like I said in my statement, those were huge, huge obstacles at the time—but we still carried on fighting, because we knew in our hearts what the truth was. Finally, 23 years later, we did have that truth, but it was a long, hard and gruelling process. It is not something that I would want anybody else ever, ever to have to go through.
It is bad enough to find yourself as part of a disaster and to be bereaved by a disaster. Then, when you cannot even get to the truth about what happened—or you know the truth and you know that lies are being put out there—it is not good. Nobody should ever, ever have to be put through that process again. I would like it to be a legacy for the 97 people who died that nobody else has to suffer like the Hillsborough families did.
Maria Eagle
Q
Jenni Hicks: No.
Maria Eagle
Q
Jenni Hicks: Yes. We felt on our own with this huge fight to find out what had really happened, or in our case—because we were at the match and knew what had happened—it was to find the evidence of the truth. We basically knew the truth but we could not get hold of the evidence; nobody could. It was not until the Hillsborough Independent Panel that we had that evidence, finally, and we finally—as I say, four years after HIP—had the correct inquest verdicts. The first inquest put a 3.15 cut-off in, so a lot of the vital evidence after 3.15 pm could not be heard. There was absolutely nothing we could do about it. It is very, very frustrating.
Maria Eagle
Q
Jenni Hicks: Yes, that is vitally important. That is why I am supporting it. That is why I am here today speaking about it—because I think it is vitally important that we have this facility, but that we have it correctly and they do keep their independence. When you are caught up in disasters, particularly if there is propaganda surrounding it, you need to be able to trust—you would need trust in a public advocate in a team. By having to report to a Minister, you are thinking, “Well, who is in charge of this? Is it the public advocate or is it the Minister?” I do not think that would go down very well.
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
Q
Jenni Hicks: Thank you, but it was not just me. It was me and the rest of the families, and the whole city of Liverpool, which suffered a huge injustice that day.
Rob Butler
Q
Jenni Hicks: I actually think this is the point in having an independent advocates panel. I think we need to have experts on that panel, as the Hillsborough Independent Panel did, such as an archivist and a researcher—perhaps even a historian, certainly a trauma expert and perhaps even a forensic pathologist. We were given incorrect evidence about the pathology and everything, so you need people who are experts in their field, in my opinion, as part of the independent panel.
Rob Butler
Q
Jenni Hicks: Yes, I think that is really important. I have some bullet points here, and that is what I have got down here—even a lawyer who knows, but certainly people with the skills needed.
Rob Butler
Q
Jenni Hicks: That is a huge question. I think that as long as the Hillsborough families were happy, it would work. Yes, they are going to support families, but there also has to be an independence when you are looking for the truth, from both sides; that is how it worked with the Hillsborough independent panel. As long as the families felt that the advocate and the teams were independent and there was not anybody on the panel they particularly had an objection to, I think it would work.
Rob Butler
Q
Jenni Hicks: Yes. Transparency is so, so important.
Rob Butler
Q
Jenni Hicks: If we had had the transparency, it would have prevented having to wait 23 years for the truth. They could also have pointed us in the right direction and they could perhaps have helped with people who needed support in other ways—counselling, perhaps, or whatever support they needed. That is why you have experts on the team who could help with the various issues that come up. But for me the most important part is to have the transparency.
As Hillsborough families we did not have a level playing field of funding, either. As Maria rightly said, when we went into the first inquest in 1990, we had a junior barrister who the families had all clubbed up to pay for: I think we all paid £3,500 each, 40-odd of the families, but all we could afford was a junior barrister. He was up against 12 top QCs with all their teams of lawyers. You can imagine.
We had this junior barrister and he did very well, considering. He ended up having to speak about every fan—not just the people who died, but everything that had happened with Liverpool supporters. He had a huge, huge job on his hands. We were told by the QC that we could either have him, the Rolls-Royce, or have the clapped-out Mini, which was the junior. That was Tim King, who we had. He did his best, but there certainly was not a level playing field of funding for families. As Maria quite rightly said, too, it did become very adversarial, considering it was an inquest.
Sarah Champion
Two quick questions from me. First of all, can I just say thank you so much for coming and sharing your experiences? I am so deeply sorry for what you and so many others have gone through.
Jenni Hicks: Thank you for having me.
Sarah Champion
Q
Jenni Hicks: How soon can you do it?
Sarah Champion
One of the examples that we heard from earlier witnesses was that they have a series of people who are on stand-by, so they could literally come in immediately.
Jenni Hicks: I didn’t realise that.
Sarah Champion
Q
Jenni Hicks: Yes. I think it has got to be immediately.
Sarah Champion
Q
Jenni Hicks: Because, certainly in our case, there was a huge cover-up. The longer you wait, the longer the cover-up stands, so it has to be immediately. Also, it is in the immediate aftermath that the victims’ families need the support anyhow, so it has to be as soon as. In fact, I think there should be somebody in place or on stand-by.
Sarah Champion
Q
Jenni Hicks: Oh yes, and to have the correct cause of death on the death certificate.
Sarah Champion
Q
Jenni Hicks: I have four death certificates for Sarah and Victoria. The first two said, “Sarah Louise Hicks. Cause of death: accidental death”, and the same for Victoria, who was 15. Twenty-three years later, we had the death certificates reissued and they said, “Sarah Louise Hicks; unlawfully killed” and “Victoria Jane Hicks; unlawfully killed.” That is very important—extremely important. I agree with the family from South Shields.
Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
Q
Jenni Hicks: Certainly, because we finally had the evidence of what had really happened and the second inquest got to see that evidence where, in the first inquest, because of the 3.15 cut-off, how the victims died and how long they lived afterwards was not put to the jury, because the jury did not ever get to see that evidence. It was deemed at the first inquest that everybody who died had received their injuries before 3.15, which was blatantly untrue. That is why I am saying the transparency of and having that documentation and evidence, if you want to get the right inquest verdict, is imperative.
Sir Oliver Heald
Q
Jenni Hicks: Certainly. One of the major things at the second inquest was when we did our pen portraits of our loved ones. That was a pivotal moment for everybody in the inquest. We had an opportunity to talk about the person who had died. They were not just a number; they were a person. When you are involved in a huge disaster where numerous people died, you do become part of just that number. Like I said there, I would like the independent public advocate to be a legacy for the 97, but, at the second inquest, it was broken down into individuals. I learned a lot myself just listening to the other families’ pen portraits about their loved ones. That is very important. I am pleased that the inquests are going that way now.
Sir Oliver Heald
Q
Jenni Hicks: Thank you. All the families are saying it—the city as well.
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
Q
Jenni Hicks: That is huge—there has to be a duty of candour. I do not just mean a duty of candour where you—how can I put this without being offensive to anybody?
Anna McMorrin
Don’t worry about that.
Jenni Hicks: Where you do not lie, but you do not tell the truth. I am talking about telling the proper truth, because often you do not actually lie, but you do not tell the truth. If it is a duty of candour, it has to be a proper duty of candour, and there should be consequences if you do not tell the truth.
When I spoke to the last Committee, we had Paul Greaney KC here and he said, “Apparently, there is some sort of duty of candour at the moment, but there is only a £2,000 fine.” To big organisations, that is just pocket change. It should be something a little stronger than just a £2,000 fine if you do not tell the truth. That and transparency are the two really important things.
The Chair
Thank you very much, Mrs Hicks. We salute your courage. Thank you for coming.
Examination of Witness
Kimia Zabihyan gave evidence.
The Chair
We will now hear from Kimia Zabihyan of Grenfell Next of Kin. I think we are having some technical problems with Dr Stuart Murray, so we have just one witness for this quarter of an hour session.
Maria Eagle
Q
Kimia Zabihyan: Actually, I started off on the ground as a volunteer. There were many, many people who came to the area affected by the tower. I have my roots in that borough and I grew up there, so it touched me very deeply, but the thing that struck me the most was seeing pictures of the missing people. Many of them looked like people who were familiar to me, because they looked like my family members. It really felt very personal, because 85% of the people who died in the tragedy were black and brown people. I felt that it was really important to make sure that there was advocacy for that, particularly given that most of the people who died were recent migrants.
It is very different from the Hillsborough experience and many other experiences—the Marchioness, for instance. This was the first national tragedy that predominantly affected black and brown people, and it became very obvious that the system responding to the moment was entirely white. That created dissonance, and it felt as though there was room to advocate for those people, because the majority of them did not have roots in this country; they were recent migrants.
Immediately, we were told, “Don’t talk about race. Let’s just deny that whole part of it, because it will turn off public sympathy.” These were the things that I was experiencing and seeing as someone from that background and that heritage who is very blessed with the advantage and privilege of a good education, life experience and work experience. It felt really important to play a role, so that was really what brought me there and kept me there. I am still there after six years.
Maria Eagle
Q
Kimia Zabihyan: That is a really big question. Actually, it is not just those few years; we are still in exactly the same place. We are still stuck in the same place because we do not have an independent public advocate and there is no recognised role for it, really, even though I am called an advocate by all the systems and I engage with all the systems. Ultimately, it has been one of choice, and in a way you are trapped by it, because you know that if you step away, there is nothing in its place. There is nothing to take that place.
With those families who have lost immediate family members, several things happen. In the first instance, it will be a disaster by its very nature, because it is not expected. There is chaos—absolute chaos. The people who know pretty quickly that their family—their child, mother, father, husband or wife—is missing are in shock. What happens is that immediately there is a separation; they become invisible, because they are sort of protected by the police—quite rightly—and the victim support units etcetera, so they are literally invisible on the scene.
We had survivors on the scene and we had systems engaging with survivors, but we did not have anything in place for the actual bereaved—nothing. None of the policies addressed their needs and their specific characteristics, which in this case were essentially rooted in their otherness, if you like. Their otherness became even more othered, and they became even more marginalised. The system responded with policies for the tragedy, but it was very much through one particular prism, which was through only the survivor prism. To this day, we still do not have any policies that actually address the specifics of the next of kin of the deceased, because there was never that public advocacy role.
Maria Eagle
Q
Kimia Zabihyan: No, not at all. I am passionate about the fact that there needs to be a public advocacy role, to the point where I have basically been doing it pro bono for six years, because I cannot believe that we do not have such a thing in place. Coming back to some of the questions you were asking Jenni Hicks earlier, it is really important to have that whole system set up, because disasters do not make appointments—they happen. You need to have a system and structure in place that can just be instigated as part of a resilience plan or disaster response. It needs to be extremely diverse, and it needs to have people who are awkward and definitely on the side of the victims.
Maria Eagle
Q
Kimia Zabihyan: It is very difficult, because what does independence really mean? You can call a person independent, but actually they are really not that independent. The pool of people you need to be looking at are people who have a huge amount of integrity and a footprint in speaking truth to power. If a person has that sort of credibility, it does not matter who they are reporting to.
The disadvantage of their being completely separate from our democratic system is that essentially they are toothless, so this independent person just becomes another report that is given to the Minister. It does not have any weight; it does not have any power. It needs to be someone who has the power to make policy interventions and decisions, at ministerial level—appointed by the PM even, not Ministers.
With Grenfell, we had a conveyor belt of Ministers. We had three name changes and six Ministers. The Department started off as the Department for Communities and Local Government, then it became the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and then the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and Ministers do not really mean anything, because they come and go. It has to be at Prime Minister level.
More importantly, “independent” can mean different things to different people. It was interesting watching the covid inquiry the other day, when Sir Oliver Letwin talked a little about that. It is about having people in the room who ask the awkward questions and are able to make a difference. We do not want someone else who just writes another report that goes nowhere. That is why it can take 30-something years.
We need to do that for our democracy and for our efficiency. You would be amazed at how much money has been wasted in the Grenfell response and recovery—ridiculous amounts of money—because the whole system is so inefficient.
Maria Eagle
Q
Kimia Zabihyan: To give you an example, very early on, when it became apparent that the majority of the people who had died were ethnic minorities in this country, because this is London and it happened in London—Grenfell will not be the last time this happens—the system did not know how to respond to that. The next of kin tended to live abroad, so we had to locate them and arrange for visas and what have you to bring them to the UK for the processes of identification, DNA tests and that sort of thing.
At the time, we were very lucky, because Amber Rudd came down and got it very quickly. She absolutely got it very quickly. The one thing that happened really promptly was that she allowed for that; she made sure that we had processes to identify the next of kin, get them on a plane and make sure they had visas—or even, sometimes, just to get them on a plane and issue the visa as soon as they arrived at the airport. People were coming from conflict zones, places where there might not be an embassy or places where they would not even be allowed past the first security gate. We had people from Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan and all sorts of places that were quite awkward.
The assumption that the system makes is a sort of myopic, white middle-class assumption about who victims are and therefore what the responses should be. The IPA or the panel has to be really quite progressive, sophisticated and understanding, and it has to have the experience that the world does not really function like that any more.
That was an example of something that worked—just doing something very practical—but only Amber Rudd had the power to do that, because she was the Home Secretary. We are now at a stage where we are trying to execute things that respond to the need of the next of kin, but time passes and the system moves at a different pace—it is on a different timeline. Six years for those in the system is, “Oh, we’ve sorted everything; we’re at the six-year mark,” whereas for the people who are affected, the six-year mark does not mean anything, because they are still at ground zero trying to get policies or attention for issues that speak to their particular characteristic.
If we have a panel or an independent advocate who can speak to Ministers and make policies that address the specificity of the victims, that will serve not only the victims, but our democracy. It will also save a ton of money.
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
Q
Kimia Zabihyan: I have, but I can only speak of my own experiences. The majority of my experience has been with the immediate family members, and they were the ones who defined what is a disaster, or a national disaster. It is the sort of tombstone imperative: once you get a certain number of fatalities, it is a thing. That was made very clear to me by someone very senior in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, who said, “You do realise that if less than 10 people had died in the tower, we wouldn’t even be obliged to rehouse everybody.” They would have just gone on the housing list. They might have got lots of points, but they would have had to wait on the housing list for appropriate accommodation. It is because of the number of fatalities that the thing becomes a thing, yet they are denied that power, or respect.
The Chair
Order. I am sorry, but we have to stick to the programme motion, according to the rules of the House. I am given no flexibility. We have to end your evidence there, but we are very grateful.
Kimia Zabihyan: You are more than welcome. I am always available to anybody who would like to have any kind of conversation, because I think what you are doing is really important. Everyone has a contribution to make, but Grenfell is the last disaster that presented specific challenges, and we are very frustrated that there is no learning from it.
The Chair
Our next witness is Sophie Cartwright KC, a solicitor at Deans Court Chambers.
Janet Daby
Q
Sophie Cartwright: Good afternoon. Just for clarification, I am not a solicitor; I am a barrister.
On legal aid, specifically in respect of the IPA it is slightly different because they are not to provide legal activity, but absolutely there should be non-means-tested legal aid available for victims of major incidents. That to some extent cures part of the issue around ensuring that there is access to the necessary advice and support for victims of major incidents, which, as the genesis of the IPA was, is a landscape that is daunting, confusing and overwhelming. Allowing non-means-tested legal aid so that victims can get access to appropriate advice through solicitors and latterly barristers, if necessary, is essential to address the concerns that led to the proposal for the IPA.
Janet Daby
Q
Sophie Cartwright: I think there is a slight confusion at the moment about what is set out in the Bill, particularly in clause 27 on the functions of an IPA. What is slightly confusing is that the IPA has been given the role of an independent public advocate, but it is not meant to be an advocate in the classical sense of being an advocate that provides legal activity, because that is precluded under clause 27(6). Essentially, therefore, the IPA is not intended to be an advocate in the legal sense of the word.
When one looks at the function envisaged in clause 27, it is to
“provide such support to victims…as the advocate considers appropriate”.
To that extent, I think there is still some confusion about what the purpose of the IPA is intended to be—whether it is just to provide support in the immediate aftermath, or whether it is to be a signposting service. There is a slight disconnect, because what is proposed is that the Secretary of State will appoint IPAs after major incidents occur, which will inevitably create delay. You will almost have a vacuum when a major incident occurs, because you do not have an IPA in place to give that support.
There will then be a whole process of liaison with the Secretary of State to appoint an IPA, so there is likely to be a recruitment, with a number of people putting themselves forward to be that IPA, which will inevitably cause delay. If the IPA is to have that clear role of offering support in the immediate aftermath of a major incident, they really need to be in place already so that they can provide the support as envisaged. If there is then to be a negotiation with the Secretary of State about the appointment, the terms of the appointment, the remuneration and what their functions can be, the IPA will inevitably get bogged down in delays, meaning that it is not providing what it is intended to provide in the immediate aftermath of these major incidents.
Janet Daby
Q
Sophie Cartwright: If there is a commitment that there needs to be an IPA, and if there is to be such a person or individual, then in my view it should be a function that is in place and appointed, with someone already in post, whether or not it is full time. It is envisaged that part of the role of the IPA, if they are individually appointed, is that they have a report-writing function and capture the views of victims. That necessarily allows the work of an IPA to be taken more slowly, in order to capture the victims’ experience and to learn lessons from major incidents that can bring about lasting and meaningful change.
I know that as part of this process you are speaking to a number of victims of major incidents. I think every victim and family experience will capture learning or things that could be done to make the process better for them. There is a lot that victims of major incidents have said about the intrusion of the press, and about not knowing where they need to go. If the IPA’s role is full time, that can allow them, when they are not dealing with the quick-time, immediate aftermath of these devastating major incidents, to be putting in place the system for capturing the victim experience, to feed into report-writing, and to ensure that there are recommendations and that lasting change occurs in respect of how to make the victim experience better and the structure and systems that are in place.
Rob Butler
Q
Sophie Cartwright: Yes.
Rob Butler
I am not sure whether you heard the evidence from previous witnesses, but Jenni Hicks of the Hillsborough campaign in particular was talking about a panel of support, with people who have different skills and different experiences. What do you think are the roles that are most important to the function of a successful IPA?
Sophie Cartwright: Certainly the IPA should have a trauma focus. Plainly, there should be a knowledge and experience that involves an understanding of the impact of trauma, so almost supporting from a resilience point of view with accessing necessary support through psychological services. In our experience of the Manchester Arena, we were absolutely blessed with the work of the resilience hub, which had a team of psychotherapists and psychologists who were providing that trauma focus. Essentially, the work of that body should not make things worse and should have a trauma focus to it.
I would definitely say that if there is to be a panel, it needs to be people with the right skillset, so that in their dealings with victims and obviously with victims’ families, they are not making things worse. They would definitely need a background that involves a psychological, therapy-type role, so they have that understanding. Also, if there is to be that practical support, it has to have the necessary skillset.
Clause 28 also envisages that IPAs will be asked to be properly interested persons at inquests. There needs to be clarity as to the purpose of the IPA, because that certainly suggests that there will be a form of providing advice. In terms of functions, clause 27 also talks about assisting with investigations by public authorities and assistance with the inquest and inquiry. Those are very much almost legal roles. The IPA should not in any way be a substitute for the access of families and victims to their own independent legal advice and representation.
Rob Butler
Q
Sophie Cartwright: Part of the function of the IPA is said to be a signposting role, but if it is not in place in the immediate aftermath and then there is this delay in putting it in place, I cannot quite see what the function is, if it is not to replace the role of legal representation, which it is not intended to do.
If it is not in place to deal with the immediate aftermath, for support and signposting, I do not see what its functions really are in terms of challenging public authorities, unless it is going to be a role that is linked to the changes on the duty of candour, which is being massively championed on the back of the work of Bishop James Jones, and that sort of role for challenging public authorities.
It is about clarity on what the function of the IPA is intended to be. At the moment, I do not see, practically, as the role is envisaged through the Bill, that it is going to be meaningful or what the IPA is intended to achieve by way of support and signposting for victims of major incidents, if it is not in place and ready to go. That is the concern, particularly when under clause 25 there have to be terms of appointments and then agreement, which is inevitably going to have delays. To what extent, then, is it really discharging what was intended to be its signposting and supportive role, if it is not there at the get-go of a major incident?
Maria Eagle
Q
Sophie Cartwright: Yes, that certainly seems to me to be a measurable and proportionate role for an IPA. It should be something that exists so that, when incidents happen, families know that the body exists and know where to go, rather than thinking, “Who is the IPA? Who has been appointed, and who will it be?” and the experience being dependent on who that IPA is.
If it is a body that exists, where families know that they can go as part of that search for the truth or to seek advice, I absolutely see that as more what was intended when the IPA was initially proposed. Certainly, the genesis of the IPA was very much the experience of Hillsborough. There has been a lot of discussion around it having a role holding core public authorities to account. I do not necessarily know how practically that would work when there is an inquest and a coroner is discharging their investigatory duty or—if there were to be an inquiry—how a chairman would discharge their role as the chairman. There has to be some thought around that to ensure that it does not trespass within the investigatory roles and the statutory functions of other investigators post major incidents.
The original concern was that public authorities had not shown candour in their approach to investigations, so that may be a function of the IPA. Certainly, when the IPA role was first announced in March by Mr Raab, a lot of the support seemed to be around saying, “This should be a role for the IPA around Hillsborough’s duty of candour.” I really cannot comment more broadly on that, but that was what was intended originally when the IPA was first proposed, which would fit with the evidence that you heard this morning. I apologise that I have not had access to that evidence in advance of speaking to you today.
Maria Eagle
Q
Sophie Cartwright: If the IPA had existed then as a place where the families could go for help, then certainly. The IPA could have a function to assist with that immediate intrusion that can occur to families. A lot of the families and witnesses that gave evidence to the inquiry talked about the massive intrusion on them by the press after the major incidents. If the IPA had a role to hear families’ concerns around press intrusion, and it liaised with editors and the like to stop that form of intrusion before lawyers were in place, I can definitely see that being an avenue to go down.
There was also a lot of concern from a number of family members about the blue light-type agencies, which immediately afterwards were putting out their own media and documentaries about events. I know that for a lot of the families the content of that material caused real concern. Again, the IPA could be somewhere they could go to speak about that and raise concerns, and the IPA could then be enabled to speak to the relevant representatives of those public authorities to ventilate the families’ concerns about that material, as well as to help explain the process to them.
After the Manchester Arena bombing, a lot of good work was done by the coroners and family liaison officers involved. I think having another place where victims could go to seek support in the immediate aftermath would be good. Anything that allows victims an avenue to try and understand what is happening is definitely for the good.
Janet Daby
Q
Sophie Cartwright: If it remains as intended at the moment, that is not really clear, because obviously the terms of appointment will depend on the agreement with the Secretary of State. If there is to be a report-writing function that captures the victim’s views, it is going to be a longer-term thing. It certainly seems to be a role that is envisaged as running alongside an inquest and inquiry process, which is why it is quite difficult if it is a number of appointments of different IPAs rather than a full-time position of the office of the independent public advocate, with a head IPA that can appoint individuals as and when necessary.
Again, if it is envisaged as a role in the immediate aftermath for signposting and support until victims have their own lawyers, who then can very much discharge the roles and functions of an IPA, it might just be a shorter-term thing. But if it is intended to also capture the victim experience and have a report-writing role, that is a much longer-term thing. We need to consider the functions of the IPA and whether it is intended to be a full-time appointment. As it is currently drafted, it is intended to be multiple IPAs that apply for the role of the IPA and are then appointed with terms of reference. That is a very different thing, and it potentially has a longer shelf life.
Janet Daby
Q
Sophie Cartwright: It envisages significant numbers by reference to death or serious injury. It seems that the function of the IPA is around those incidents where there is death, but as drafted the Bill also covers a major incident where there is not death—where you would envisage an inquest or inquiry process—but serious injury. If it is intended just to cover major incidents, there is no definition of “significant”, but I know the guidance gives a comparable definition by reference to the Manchester Arena incident, Grenfell and Hillsborough. I think there is vagueness around significant numbers of deaths or serious injuries, but as drafted it would also capture major incidents where there is just injury.
The other thing I want to flag is that at the moment it is intended to cover only major incidents that occur in England and Wales. Again, there might potentially be a disconnect if you are excluding the IPA from having a role. One can well imagine the Tunisia inquest that occurred, which was to assist victims of a daunting, confusing and overwhelming process. As it is currently drafted, it seems almost to exclude major incident types where large numbers of British nationals get caught up in incidents overseas. I cannot see, on the face of it, why it would exclude major incidents where a large number of British nationals are caught up overseas. I wanted to flag that as a potential area where there may be a real role for the IPA: if there are large numbers of victims caught up in major incidents overseas.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Edward Argar)
Q
You alluded earlier to the interaction between an IPA, as envisaged in the Bill, and other judicial or investigatory processes, whether they were inquests or other public bodies performing their work in the aftermath of a major incident. There have been a number of calls for the IPA to be a data controller, so that it can access data. We heard this morning from another lawyer, Tim Suter, who argued that that would not be the best approach and that individual public bodies should remain the data controllers, but with the IPA being able to view or access the data in that way. Do you have any reflections on that point? Once a statutory public inquiry is set up, how would the interaction between the IPA and the inquiry work best? On the data controller point, I can see arguments from various perspectives, and I am interested in your reflections.
Sophie Cartwright: Clause 30 deals with some data aspects. It goes back to having clarity as to the intended purpose of the IPA. If it is to discharge the role as per the evidence you heard this morning from the original proponent of the IPA role, it is for the IPA to have a data controller-type role in terms of seeking material and records. That could, though, be fraught with complete complexities that will then bog down the IPA role.
If it is envisaged at the moment that it will just be that supportive role, and interacting, it can become quite complicated, particularly if the IPA is not intended to have a role that involves legal activity. To that extent, anything around data controlling and making requests for records and properly retaining and looking after them is definitely more in the water of legal activity.
As the Bill is currently drafted, I think it would become an absolute nightmare if you were requesting the IPA to have the data controller function and require documents and records. Anything that involves requests for documents and controlling, retaining and storing them definitely has to have a legal activity-type oversight, so I can well understand why Mr Suter gave evidence today to the effect that the public authorities should remain the data controller.
It goes back to having a clear clarity of purpose as to what the IPA is. If it is intended that the IPA will have a candour role and make requests for documentation, it is inevitable that data protection and GDPR issues will have to be properly looked at and considered, because that is a very complex landscape. At the moment, that would not in any way come near what is intended in clause 30 on the data-control aspect of the IPA’s role.
The Chair
If there are no further questions, I thank you very much for your testimony. We are very grateful.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned.—(Fay Jones.)
Victims and Prisoners Bill (Fifth sitting)
Tuesday 27th June 2023
(2 years ago)
Public Bill CommitteesVictims and Prisoners Act 2024 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 27 June 2023 - (27 Jun 2023)
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 7 / Noes: 8 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
We will now start line-by-line consideration of the Bill. Hansard would be grateful if you could email any speaking notes to hansardnotes@parliament.uk, or pass them to the Hansard colleague present. The selection list for today’s sitting is available in the room. It shows how the selected amendments have been grouped together for debate. Amendments grouped together are generally on the same, or a similar, issue.
Please note that decisions on amendments take place not in the order they are debated but in the order they appear on the amendment paper. The selection list shows the order of debates. Decisions on each amendment will be taken when we come to the clause to which it relates. Decisions on new clauses will be taken once we have completed consideration of the Bill’s existing clauses. Members wishing to press a grouped amendment or new clause to a Division should indicate when speaking to it that they wish to do so.
Clause 1
Meaning of “victim”
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 2, in clause 1, page 1, line 16, at end insert—
“(e) where the person has experienced, or made allegations that they have experienced—
(i) sexual abuse, sexual harassment or sexual misconduct, or
(ii) bullying or harassment not falling within paragraph (i).”
This amendment would extend the definition of “victim” to include someone who has experienced, or made allegations that they have experienced, sexual abuse, sexual harassment or sexual misconduct, or other bullying or harassment.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 3, in clause 2, page 2, line 25, at end insert—
“(3A) The victims’ code must make provision in relation to people who have experienced, or made allegations that they have experienced—
(a) sexual abuse, sexual harassment or sexual misconduct, or
(b) bullying or harassment not falling within paragraph (a).
(3B) Provision under subsection (3A) must include—
(a) provision relating to the enforcement of non-disclosure agreements signed by such victims, and
(b) provision about legal advice and other support for such victims in cases where they are asked to sign, or have signed, a non-disclosure agreement.
(3C) In this section—
‘non-disclosure agreement’ means an agreement which purports to any extent to preclude a victim from—
(a) publishing information about a relevant complaint, or
(b) disclosing information about the relevant complaint to any one or more other persons;
‘misconduct’ means—
(a) sexual abuse, sexual harassment or sexual misconduct, and
(b) bullying or harassment not falling within paragraph (a); and
‘relevant complaint’ means a complaint relating to misconduct or alleged misconduct by any person.”
This amendment would require the victims’ code to include specific provision for people who have experienced, or made allegations that they have experienced, sexual abuse, sexual harassment or sexual misconduct, or other bullying or harassment.
Sarah Champion
I appreciate the opportunity to serve under your guidance once again, Sir Edward. I rise to speak in support of amendments 2 and 3, tabled by the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran). It is important that the Bill aims to improve end-to-end support for victims of crime and to amplify victims’ voices in the criminal justice system. The amendments focus on a widespread practice that disempowers victims and silences their voices: non-disclosure agreements. NDAs are contracts that were created to protect trade secrets, but when used incorrectly they become secret settlement contracts used to buy the silence of a victim or whistleblower. They have become the default solution for organisations, corporations and public bodies to settle cases of sexual misconduct, racism, pregnancy discrimination and other human rights violations.
In some cases, those in charge do not even realise that an NDA was used. NDAs have become boilerplate contractual language for so many organisations, and they are extremely harmful. They most often protect an employer’s reputation and the career of the perpetrator, not the victim, who could be protected by a simple one-sided confidentiality clause. They prevent a victim from speaking out and accessing the support they need by preventing them from reporting, speaking to family and friends about their experiences, or warning others. In one case of a university student who signed a gagging clause after she had been sexually assaulted, the agreement was so poorly explained that she took it to mean that she could not even speak to her own GP.
We have had this discussion many times before, specifically in relation to a different piece of legislation: the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, an amendment to which, tabled by Lord Collins of Highbury, sought to restrict universities from using NDAs in cases of harassment and bullying. The Government accepted that amendment. I and many others who have campaigned on this issue were delighted that students gained that protection in the 2023 Act. If students should be protected from NDAs and gagging clauses, why would the same not apply to other victims? Amendments 2 and 3, tabled by the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon, are intended to do ensure that it will.
Amendment 2 would expand the definition of a victim to expressly include victims of harassment, including sexual abuse, sexual harassment, sexual misconduct or other forms of bullying. Amendment 3 would then make provision in the victims code for those victims relating to non-disclosure agreements. The language of the amendments was drawn from the 2023 Act—language that the Government have already agreed to. As I said, the protection should not be limited to students; every victim deserves the right to speak out.
We have a golden opportunity with the Bill to enshrine in law the principle that no victim should be silenced, prevented from speaking out about their experiences and scared away from vital support services. There is support across the House for these changes—I refer to amendment 1, tabled by the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller)—and I hope that the Minister will accept the amendments, seize the moment, take firm action and stamp out this practice once and for all.
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Sir Edward. I hope the Minister will consider accepting these amendments. I can well see that he might have some concerns about what he may see as an open-ended extension of the definition of victims. I can see that, in the position he is in—deciding on policy—he may come to the view that a line has to be drawn somewhere when we define victims.
The Bill’s current definition does extend to a wide range of people, and there are other amendments and concerns that may extend that definition to an even wider range. As somebody who has been in the Minister’s position, making policy decisions about where a line ought to be drawn in the middle of a grey area, I understand that there is a natural tendency to resist. I hope he will resist that natural tendency in this particular instance, because my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham has made a compelling case and the amendments are important.
One of the worst aspects of being subjected to this kind of behaviour is not being able to talk about it afterwards. One understands why an employer would like to obtain a non-disclosure agreement. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham said, it has become a standard clause that anybody negotiating such a settlement on behalf of the employer would stick into every agreement in any instance; I imagine they are all drafted on computer systems ready to be simply splurged out at the drop of a hat. But the consequence for the individual who is signing up to the agreement—not always, as my hon. Friend has made clear, with the full information about what the legal implications are, and what they do and do not cover—can be extremely damaging, not only in the immediate aftermath of such an agreement, but possibly for years into the future.
Surely the Minister will accept, as I am sure you would, Sir Edward—although not in this Committee, of course—that the whole point of the victims code is to try to minimise the impact on victims by giving rights and access to provisions that enable them to recover swiftly from whatever it is that they have undergone that ends up causing them an issue. That is surely the very definition of what the victims code is meant to be doing. It would therefore be an omission if the amendments were not accepted.
Although I fully understand the concerns the Minister might have about extending the pool of people who may fall into the definition in the legislation, it would be remiss of the Government to exclude this particular group, who really do need such assistance. I hope that he will have something positive to say to us about these amendments when he gets to his feet.
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
I want to speak to these important amendments, which have been brought forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham. Amendment 1 gets to the heart of what the Bill is all about. It would ensure that there is no impediment to providing evidence of behaviour that may be criminal misconduct after signing a non-disclosure agreement.
We have all seen examples of these agreements. Some simply attempt to buy off the victim and halt any prospect of them using knowledge of a person or an organisation which may have been the perpetrator of any kind of criminal misconduct, ranging from financial impropriety to sexual assault. The agreements work by effectively threatening people that if they decide to share their experience or knowledge, they will be subject to costly sanctions.
I hope the Committee will agree that individuals or organisations trying to hide their criminality using non-disclosure agreements is not only wrong, but that it is also a licence to get away with all manner of activity that could lead to large fines and even imprisonment. Why should someone responsible for sexual assault be able to hide away? They should not be. Amendment 3, importantly, would ensure that that protection is enshrined in the victims code, which we will get to later. We want to ensure that there is no wriggle room to allow potential criminals to escape the law because of, in effect, an agreement that is designed to do just that.
Amendment 2 could also be said to sit at the heart of the Bill; we absolutely support the essence of the amendments. Amendment 2 would add to the clause the specific definition of a person who
“has experienced, or made allegations that they have experienced…sexual abuse, sexual harassment or sexual misconduct, or…bullying or harassment”.
We want to work constructively with the Government, and I hope that we can start now, with the Minister addressing the serious concerns that Committee members have raised, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham who moved the amendment. We need amendments to significantly strengthen the Bill—which we finally have, eight years after it was first proposed.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Edward Argar)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Rotherham for raising this important topic and enabling the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran)—and, by extension, my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller)—to be debated in Committee.
The amendments recognise that non-disclosure agreements are misused if they prevent someone from speaking about an experience of crime, for example, to relevant professionals. Amendment 1, though not selected for debate, is intended to include those who have signed NDAs that prevent them from speaking about criminal conduct in the definition of a victim. Amendment 2 and 3, which I will turn to shortly, are intended to go a little further—potentially beyond criminal conduct. I will address that point in a second.
Although confidentiality clauses can serve valid purposes—for example, to protect commercially sensitive information—the Government have been clear, as I think is the Opposition’s position, that they should not be used to prevent disclosures to the police, regulated health and care professionals, legal professionals and others. It is illegal for an NDA to be used to conceal a criminal offence, pervert the course of justice or stop someone co-operating with the police. As the hon. Member for Rotherham alluded to, we have already made reforms around the use of NDAs in higher education.
I know that the hon. Members who tabled, signed and spoke to the amendments are particularly interested in ensuring that individuals are aware of their ability to access support, regardless of having signed an NDA. Anybody who has suffered harm as a direct result of criminal conduct, regardless of whether that crime has been reported or is covered by an NDA, is already covered as a victim under part 1 of the Bill and the victims code. That means that they are entitled to access relevant support services, and, as the Law Society guidance on the matter makes clear, it would not normally be appropriate for non-disclosure agreements to prohibit disclosure to professionals for legal, medical or therapeutic reasons. In most circumstances, those qualified professionals would be bound by a duty of confidentiality to their client.
Maria Eagle
The Minister makes an excellent point, but how does he get across to those who have signed non-disclosure agreements that they are not restricted in the way in which the law requires that they be unrestricted if nobody has told them that? Could he do something to ensure that those who sign such agreements get proper information about what they really mean?
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady. I do not want to test the Committee’s patience too much with the amount of notes that I have, but I will come to her point. I hope that I can give her a little succour in terms of her asks of me in her speech.
I reassure Members that if anybody suffers harm as a result of sexual abuse, bullying or harassment, where that behaviour amounts to criminal conduct it is already covered by the definition of a victim in part 1 of the Bill. Therefore amendment 1, which would include those individuals explicitly in the definition, could be deemed unnecessary, as they are already covered. However, I will turn to amendment 1 in my final remarks.
Amendments 2 and 3 seek to go further to include those who have experienced behaviour that may be covered by a non-disclosure agreement but which is not criminal. As the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood alluded to, that would expand the definition. We are clear that we have to strike the appropriate balance in drawing the definition in a way that is practical and functional but that does not exclude those who we feel should be included. Part 1 of the Bill seeks to restrict the definition to victims of crime, and we believe that that is the right approach. However, I suspect we will debate on the coming amendments and over the course of today whether that balance has been struck and whether that line has been drawn in the right place. We may disagree on some elements; I expect we will explore that further today.
The relevant definition of a victim is focused on improving support services for victims of crime and increasing oversight to drive up standards of criminal justice agencies working with victims of crime. That does not mean that individuals who have suffered as a result of behaviour that is not criminal, albeit harmful, are prevented from seeking support. Outside the provisions in the Bill, they can still access support services where those are available to them.
Amendment 3 would require the victims code to include provisions for those who have experienced or made allegations that they have experienced sexual abuse, sexual harassment or sexual misconduct, or other bullying or harassment. It would also require the code to include provisions for those who have signed NDAs for those incidents.
It is vital that the victims code works for different types of victims. The code covers a wide range of entitlements for victims of different crimes and with different needs. To give us the broadest flexibility to serve the changing needs of victims without having to amend primary legislation, we have not explicitly listed entitlements or specific provisions for particular types of victims in the Bill, as the amendment would do. Instead, we have placed the overarching principles of the victims code in primary legislation and specified that the code can provide different entitlements for different types of victims.
We believe that is the right approach to allow the flexibility to amend the code and to reduce the risk of inadvertently excluding some groups of victims or the relevant provision that the code should make for them. The Bill as presently drafted means that the code could include provision about the matters referenced in the amendment, where they relate to victims of behaviour that amounts to criminal conduct. We have committed to consult on an updated victims code after the passage of the Bill. As mentioned on Second Reading, I am open to working with Members on whether we can go further in that respect.
I appreciate the points made by the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood, by the shadow Minister the hon. Member for Cardiff North, and by the hon. Member for Rotherham and the sponsors of the amendments. Therefore, although I encourage the hon. Member for Rotherham not to press the amendments to a Division at the moment, I am happy to work with her and other hon. and right hon. Members, including those who support the amendments, to explore further before we reach Report stage whether there might be something we can do to help address their concerns.
As I say, I do not believe that amendments 2 and 3 as drafted are the right approach. I am looking carefully at the issues addressed by amendment 1. I am not in a position to make any firm commitments at this point, other than to work with the hon. Member for Rotherham and others to further explore this important issue. With that, I hope that she will consider not pressing this amendment to a Division.
Sarah Champion
I thank the Minister very much for his welcome words. I echo the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood about the chilling effect of NDAs, and the lack of awareness of victims. That is at the nub of what we are trying to address.
I know there is a lot of interest in this issue across the House, so I will withdraw the amendment so that we can debate it on Report. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Anna McMorrin
I beg to move amendment 10, in clause 1, page 1, line 16, at end insert—
“(e) where the person has experienced anti-social behaviour, as defined by section 2 of the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2014, and the conditions necessary for an ASB case review under section 104 of that Act have been met.”.
This amendment would include victims of anti-social behaviour in the definition of a victim.
As the Committee may be aware, our sessions in Committee will run over ASB Awareness Week, which is poignant. It is quite disappointing to be here today, fighting once again to have antisocial behaviour victims protected in the Bill.
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that victims of antisocial behaviour are indeed victims of crime and should be included in the victims code?
Anna McMorrin
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. The Government have repeatedly ignored advice on this, so I am here again to be a voice for the voiceless, who will remain voiceless if the Bill passes unamended.
Rachel Almeida, assistant director for knowledge and insight at Victim Support, told us last week that a huge number of victims are impacted by persistent antisocial behaviour. She said:
“We agree that there needs to be a threshold for it to be persistent ASB, but we believe that their not having any rights means they are unable to access the support that they really need.”––[Official Report, Victims and Prisoners Public Bill Committee, 20 June 2023; c. 71, Q148.]
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
As constituency MPs, we all receive reports of antisocial behaviour. A constituent came to me because her neighbour regularly throws human waste out of the window. Can it really be right that she would not be considered a victim under the Bill?
Anna McMorrin
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I do not think there is a Member here who does not have discussions with constituents, has not received casework about it, and has not seen antisocial behaviour when they are and about. This is a major issue that needs to be addressed, and the amendment would address it.
Antisocial behaviour can make victims’ lives a living nightmare, causing stress, misery and despair. It can often be the precursor to very serious crimes, including knife crime and gang activity, so it is important that it is taken seriously by the agencies that respond to it.
For example, if I had ordered a new outfit online and it was delivered to my house and left in the doorway, and someone pinched it, that would be a crime. It would be an unfortunate or upsetting incident, but it would have minimal impact on my wellbeing, because I could request a new outfit or get a refund. As a victim of that crime, I would be eligible for support services to help me cope and recover, regardless of whether I thought that was necessary. I would be eligible for all the rights under the victims code, including having my complaint recorded.
If I were a victim of antisocial behaviour, the situation would be entirely different. I might have people parked outside my home drinking, being disruptive, throwing cans into my garden, kicking a ball against my wall, and coming back night after night, swearing, spitting and being aggressive. I would feel persecuted in my own home and so targeted that I might become afraid of leaving the house. The longer it persisted, the more traumatised I would become. But as a victim of antisocial behaviour, I would have no access to victims’ rights and no guarantee of support. That disparity must end.
Dame Vera Baird KC, the former Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales, told us last week that a key problem with the Bill is that it does not deal with people who suffer from serious antisocial behaviour.
Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
Was not the point that Dame Vera was making that there are cases of antisocial behaviour that are criminal behaviour, but for some reason the police and others do not treat them as criminal matters? They say, “Well, that’s antisocial behaviour—a matter for the council.” Is this a question of amending the Bill, or is it about changing the attitudes of those who investigate these matters?
Anna McMorrin
I am just talking to the point that Dame Vera Baird made. We absolutely need that change, but we also need this amendment to ensure that things change for the victim and they can access those services.
Sir Oliver Heald
The clause refers to a person
“being subjected to criminal conduct”.
A lot of the things that the hon. Lady has mentioned—harassment, threatening behaviour and all those sorts of things—are criminal offences, it is just that they are not treated in the way they should be.
Anna McMorrin
They are not treated in the way they should be, but there is no system or support available for antisocial behaviour, yet if the amendment were agreed, there would be. As my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge just mentioned, the two things are not mutually exclusive.
Despite the fact that the behaviour is criminal—which is what Dame Vera Baird was referring to—it is not dealt with as criminal by the police. Instead, it is called antisocial behaviour. She said:
“I am particularly worried about people who are persecuted at home”,
as I have illustrated. She continued:
“It is not about every bit of antisocial behaviour—if someone chucks a can into my garden, I do not expect to have victims code rights—but this Government legislated well to introduce…the community trigger about seven years ago. It says that when it escalates to a particular level, you have a series of remedies to get all the agencies together to put it right. If it gets to that level, then it is seriously persecuting, and there are people who are suffering that.”
Dame Vera illustrated her evidence with the example of a woman sitting in her garden, minding her own business, when some lads who are sitting outside drinking beer throw a can into her garden. It is a relatively small incident—it is not particularly pleasant, but it is antisocial behaviour—but if she complains,
“they chuck something at her window. They stamp on her plants. They kick the ball against the gable end all the time. They shout abuse.”
They keep going and going, making the woman’s life a misery.
As Dame Vera said, often the person impacted is already vulnerable, and this intensifies that vulnerability and creates trauma. She continued:
“That is very worrying, but it is not treated as criminality; it is treated as antisocial behaviour. But if we look at it, stamping on the plants in her garden is criminal damage; chucking something at her, if it might hurt her, is an assault; much of this behaviour is likely to cause a breach of the peace, but it is never dealt with like that. Since the key to the Bill appears to be that you are a victim of criminal behaviour, the question is: who makes that decision?”
I hope the Minister addresses that in his response to the amendment.
Dame Vera continued:
“If I go to Victim Support and say, ‘Please help me. This is happening at home,’ does the fact that it is obvious that part of it is an assault make me a victim or not? I think that is a key question to answer in the Bill…If someone pinches a spade from my garden, I am entitled to my victims code rights, but if someone behaves like that to an older person, they have nothing.”––[Official Report, Victims and Prisoners Public Bill Committee, 20 June 2023; c. 27-28, Q62.]
My constituent Sarah suffered a miscarriage due to the stress of being the victim of repeated antisocial behaviour on the part of her neighbour. Sarah should have been entitled to specialist support for what she went through, but she was not. She was not entitled to anything. Victims of antisocial behaviour are not second-class victims, second-class citizens or second-class anything, and they do not deserve to be treated as such.
The Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 established a trigger of three reported incidents of antisocial behaviour over a six-month period, at which point the victim can seek a community resolution meeting of the responsible agencies to resolve what is by then persistent ASB. The Home Office’s guidance in support of the Act acknowledges
“the debilitating impact that persistent or repeated anti-social behaviour can have on its victims, and the cumulative impact if that behaviour persists over…time.”
It also explains that the community trigger is an important statutory safety net for victims of antisocial behaviour and that it helps to ensure that “victims’ voices are heard.”
The community trigger can be activated through notice to a local authority, a police and crime commissioner or the police when a victim or victims have reported antisocial behaviour incidents three or more times within a six-month period and no effective action has been taken. A councillor or Member of Parliament may also activate the trigger for a constituent, and I am sure that some hon. Members are supporting constituents in that way. The trigger is intended to be an opportunity for citizen empowerment—an important part of our democracy.
When the victims or victims have activated the trigger, all the agencies, such as the police, local authorities and housing associations, must come together to address the situation and fix the problem. However, despite the intention that the trigger should be a solution to a complex problem, it has not delivered the intended results. A report by the Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales found that awareness of the trigger remains low among the public and that even some of the relevant agencies are not using it. Including the community trigger threshold in the definition of a victim, as amendment 10 intends, would help to rectify that problem, as well as providing much-needed support to these usually very vulnerable victims.
Some police and crime commissioners offer support to antisocial behaviour victims through discretionary funds, because they cannot do so from Ministry of Justice victim funds, but that is pot luck: some police and crime commissioners do not. That means that whether support services are provided for victims of ASB depends on where they live, which creates a concern that some victims who are suffering significant stress from persistent ASB do not get the emotional and practical support that they need to cope and recover. Victims of persistent ASB whose suffering has entitled them to activate the community trigger must be recognised as victims of crime in their own right, with all that that entails.
What is even more bewildering about the Government’s stance is that the previous Justice Secretary, the right hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab), said on 4 December 2021, as reported exclusively in The Times, that the Bill would give antisocial behaviour victims new rights and protections. He committed to putting victims of antisocial behaviour “on a par” with victims of crime. The article quoted a Ministry of Justice source, who said:
“It’s about recognising there is never a ‘victimless’ crime.
It’s about making sure people who aren’t directly part of the criminal justice process, where crime has wider implications, that there is an opportunity for that wider impact to be articulated in the process.”
Is this a U-turn, or will the Government support the amendment and bring forward the support that victims of ASB so desperately need? Why are those victims suddenly deemed unworthy of protection? For so many people across the country, the toll of being made to feel unsafe in their own home is unbearable. My constituent John came to me in despair after being passed from pillar to post by different authorities. John’s wife is disabled, and their home had been targeted repeatedly by a group that congregated outside on most nights. John and his wife were bereft, overwhelmed by anxiety and stress, and felt unsafe in their own home.
Antisocial behaviour is a national issue. It should not be a party political issue. We see it across constituencies and in all neighbourhoods. The amendment would simply include the Government’s own guidance on such incidents in the Bill, so that people like Sarah, and John and his wife, are not treated as second-class victims. I hope that the Minister will reflect on that and support the amendment.
Maria Eagle
I rise to support my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North in pressing the case for amendment 10, or at least seeking an explanation about why antisocial behaviour is not included in the clause, given the undertakings made by the Minister’s predecessors. I admit that there have been a few of them, and catching up can sometimes be a little difficult—institutional memory dissipates swiftly these days on the Government Benches.
I urge the Minister to take another look at this issue, because the essential point that has been made by Opposition Members is reflected in my constituency experience. Believe it or not, Sir Edward, it is 26 years since I was first elected, although it does not seem that long. Some of the most distressing constituency cases that I have ever had to deal with relate to antisocial behaviour, as it is somewhat underwhelmingly called.
When the former Victims’ Commissioner gave evidence to the Committee, she was correct in noting that some of the individual bits of behaviour that make up what we call antisocial behaviour are indeed crimes. She made reference to criminal damage, assault and battery, which are very familiar. Perhaps an individual incident would not be enough to meet the threshold that most of our police forces use these days for deciding whether to proceed against individual perpetrators, but as a course of behaviour over time, such incidents certainly add up to very serious crime. Over the years, I have had many instances in my constituency where that has undoubtedly been the case.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North set out using examples from her constituency, the impact on victims is very serious indeed. It is certainly more serious than what some victims, who would fall within the definition in other instances, have experienced. Many of the people who perpetrate antisocial behaviour against their neighbours are lawless in other ways, and they are often on the radar of the police for other reasons. If they are not, they are frequently on the radar of other agencies, and the only way to deal with some of these people is to get everybody together to problem solve.
My concern is twofold. First, leaving those who are subject to antisocial behaviour out of the definition of “victim” suggests a hierarchy. Victims are often told by police and other agencies, “Oh, it’s below the threshold”; “We can’t do anything about it”; “It’s a civil matter”; or, “It’s just a neighbour dispute.” They are frequently told that, when it is nothing of the sort. If we leave victims of antisocial behaviour out of the definition of “victim” when so many others are included, it reinforces the idea that legislators are not taking seriously the consequences for victims of antisocial behaviour, as opposed to the consequences of other types of crime for which we are legislating to improve victims’ rights.
Janet Daby
My right hon. Friend is making a great speech. If somebody is afraid, fearful or worried, or does not want to return home because of that, surely they are a victim and should be part of the victims code.
Maria Eagle
I very much agree. I have had constituents come to me who are in the most dreadful state as a consequence of repeated instances of antisocial behaviour, sometimes over many years. Sometimes it can take years until they come and see me, and I then have to say to them, “These are difficult issues to resolve. I’m going to try this, and I’m going to try that,” but I cannot say to them, “I’m going to get all the agencies together and force them to do something.” I have to expectation manage myself when they come to see me, because one knows from experience that it is just not possible to promise to solve these issues.
Perpetrators are canny, and one of the things they do is complain to the police first. For the citizen who has never broken the law and would never dream of inflicting this kind of behaviour on their neighbours, going to the police is a last resort, but for some perpetrators, going to the police is a first resort so they can induce the impression among the police that it is a dispute between neighbours.
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech about the victim and the perpetrator’s actions. We see at first hand that there is no thought about the effect of the antisocial behaviour on the victim, who may be a veteran and may have post-traumatic stress disorder, so working across agencies is vital in supporting our constituents.
Maria Eagle
Indeed, and that is what usually happens. One of the cases that springs to my mind involves a veteran—I will not use the gentleman’s name—who for years has carried around a little rucksack with all the things he values in his life, including his service medals, so he can get away from the flat he lives in because he is worried about what the perpetrators might do. Although the issue has been going on for many years, I have not been able to deal with it to his or my satisfaction, even though some of the instances he has told me about have been quite awful. If he were to see that antisocial behaviour is not included in the Bill, and that it is seen as a lower level of crime—not even as crime—he would not be very impressed, quite frankly.
The right hon. and learned Member for North East Hertfordshire made the important point that the agencies are not doing their job, and I agree. It is like a hot potato: they say, “Oh, it is not for us,” and they send it to the police, who send it to the council, and nobody problem-solves. Obviously, the job of MPs is to try to knock a few heads together and get some problem solving going on to resolve an individual matter. We all do that, and in some instances we are successful, but with antisocial behaviour it is very difficult. The signal we are sending by leaving antisocial behaviour out of the definition of “victim” is that it is somehow below a threshold. The Bill will not encourage the agencies to up their game if they do not see that kind of behaviour in the definition of “victim”.
That is why I hope the Minister will have a think about the amendment. I know he will stand up and say, “Well, if it reaches the threshold of crime, it is included,” because he said that in respect of the previous two amendments. Of course, that is technically correct, but in the real world, where agencies are starved of resource and always have to ask, “Which issue should we deal with as a priority?” because they cannot deal with all of them, sending the signal that antisocial behaviour is not as important as something that comes above a different threshold and counts as crime means that it will be left out and these problems will not be solved. Our many constituents who suffer from serious antisocial behaviour—which does amount to crime, but try getting the police to handle it in that way—will be left feeling that they are second-class victims yet again. I do not think that is the intention behind the Bill and of legislating to put the overarching principles of the victims code into law. If the Minister cannot do something, that would be a regrettable omission. I hope he will give us some good news and say that he will implement the commitments made by his predecessors.
Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I am interested to hear what the Minister says in response, and I hope he will take on board what hon. Members said about the changes since the previous Lord Chancellor, who was quite outspoken about these issues, was in post. It is important to investigate whether the real issue is the implementation of the existing legislation and guidance, or whether it a lack of legislation, which we can fix here.
I have been sat here thinking about how slow and clunky this place is; it has taken so long to get to this Bill. I have had two children quicker than some Government projects have been completed. It takes forever. I have also been thinking about how creative antisocial behaviour has been getting recently, and about the TikTok videos showing youngsters storming into people’s houses, often with gangs of people. That would be a one-off incident, so presumably it would not reach the threshold of the community trigger, but it leaves a victim in its wake. I also understand—please correct me if I am wrong, Minister—that trespass is not criminal if someone storms into a house but it is pre-arranged. That it is very scary, but we possibly would not reach the threshold for the victims code.
I want to know that the Department is thinking through the rise of social media, the way that TikTok is being used and how gangs of people try to harass and attack people. If this legislation is a way to address this social media stuff, which the public are pretty outraged by, we need to think that through. I want to hear that the Department has gone through case studies and interrogated to see whether a change of legislation is appropriate, or whether the Department is still satisfied that what is available would deal with this latest nonsense, because this will not stop. There will be new ways of getting at people. People called Wizzy or Mizzy or something like that will try to get their ridiculous little videos, but there are victims in the wake of those videos, so I am interested to hear the Minister’s views.
Sarah Champion
I want to build on the points that have been made. I will start with those made by the right hon. and learned Member for North East Herefordshire—
Sarah Champion
We are off to a bad start now, aren’t we?
Some levels of antisocial behaviour are a crime, so they would immediately fall within the proposals, but many victims of antisocial behaviour are not covered by the victims code, which means that they do not have access to the support and information found in it. In particular, that means that they do not have the right to be referred to support services and that PCCs face spending restrictions on victims funding for antisocial behaviour support services as a consequence. The cumulative nature of what would be seen as low-level annoyances literally drive people insane, get them to move house and have them in a constant state of anxiety. In amendment 10, it is clear where that threshold is. On the points that my right hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood made, that needs to be recognised in black and white so that the services, particularly the police, recognise the significance to people’s lives of antisocial behaviour and view it as something that ought to be covered under the victims code.
I also say to the Minister that this issue was raised a lot on Second Reading and was highlighted by witnesses. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North said, the former Victims’ Commissioner, Dame Vera Baird, called for this specific thing in an evidence session. To be specific, she emphasised the fact that
“this Government legislated well to introduce something called the community trigger”,
so that
“when it escalates to a particular level, you have a series of remedies to get all the agencies together to put it right.”––[Official Report, Victims and Prisoners Public Bill Committee, 20 June 2023; c. 27, Q62.]
If the antisocial behaviour gets to that level—amendment 10 seeks to address this—those affected must be classed as victims under the legislation. I really think that the amendment would ensure that victims of persistent antisocial behaviour would be entitled to the rights as they are set out in the victims code and, hopefully, the victims Act, so I support the amendment.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Cardiff North for her amendment and for providing us with the opportunity to debate this issue. I suspect that we will return to it again, but this is a useful opportunity that allows us to get into more detail than is perhaps possible on Second Reading.
The amendment would include victims of antisocial behaviour in the definition of “victim” if they have suffered harm as a direct result of the conduct. As the hon. Lady sets out in the amendment, it would use the definitions in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 and would therefore cover
“conduct that has caused, or is likely to cause, harassment, alarm or distress to any person…conduct capable of causing nuisance or annoyance to a person in relation to that person’s occupation of residential premises, or… conduct capable of causing housing-related nuisance or annoyance to any person.”
Therefore, that would also include non-criminal antisocial behaviour.
The Government agree with the hon. Lady that antisocial behaviour is a blight on our communities, and the impact on individuals cannot be overestimated. It is a national issue and it has a huge impact. Every Member of the House and of the Committee has probably dealt with casework on behalf of constituents relating to antisocial behaviour. As Dame Vera kindly acknowledged, that is why the Government took action on the community trigger, which helped to address the line between what is criminal conduct and what falls short of it.
Sarah Champion
I might have cut the Minister off too soon—he might be about to answer my question—but this is about the persistent level of low-grade behaviour, which would not reach the criminal threshold. It is like a dripping tap or a mosquito buzzing in the room; that is what really drives people into frustration.
Edward Argar
I was about to come to that point, so the hon. Lady’s intervention is prescient.
All of the speeches that we have heard have acknowledged that the behaviour that is being referred to is often criminal, even the low-level behaviour. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Cardiff North said that if something is thrown in the direction of an individual or if plants are trampled, that would be criminal behaviour. It may not be charged as such, but it would still entitle people to those rights under the code.
Dame Vera’s key point was about who decides what criminal behaviour is, how we ensure that people know that those rights are available to them and that the service providers acknowledge that those individuals are entitled to those rights. The behaviour we have heard about is included, but we do not believe that including it in the Bill in this way is the right approach to address the issue, to raise that awareness and to ensure that people can access the rights that are already there. However, I will turn to that in just a second. The right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood again managed to pre-empt an element of what she thought I would say in my speech, and she is not inaccurate in her presumption.
A point was raised about the previous Lord Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton. My only reflection on that is that, first of all, in my recollection—the right hon. Lady is right that this is going back a while—the articles cited an unnamed source and Government sources. We on both sides of the House have experience of how that can work. That is not official policy, but I will mention, on official policy, that that Lord Chancellor confirmed the content of the draft Bill and the full Bill, so it is not accurate to suggest a U-turn. It was the same Lord Chancellor who confirmed what we are debating today as what he wished to see in legislation.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud raised a number of points. We do not believe that a lack of legislation is the challenge here. We believe that there are key aspects, which the hon. Member for Cardiff North rightly highlighted, about raising awareness and the different public authorities and bodies engaging in a concerted manner to tackle the problem—treating it seriously and suchlike—but we do not believe that putting something in the Bill is the right way to raise awareness and to change those behaviours.
My hon. Friend raised some particularly distressing cases that have recently been on social media. I tread warily because I am not a lawyer—I am looking at one or two of the lawyers across the room—but she is right to say that trespass is a civil offence. I want to be careful, because I do not know the details of each of those incidents, but it is quite possible that a number of those incidents reported on social media may well have encompassed elements that were criminal in what was done. However, as a non-lawyer, I am cautious about saying that with any certainty, without knowing the details of the cases. Again, in those cases where there was an element of criminality, those individuals would be encompassed under the provisions for support under the victims code and in the legislation.
As Dame Vera alluded to, a significant number of individuals who have been harmed by antisocial behaviour are already defined as victims under the Bill. The definition as drafted covers a huge range of antisocial behaviour: where the behaviour itself is a criminal offence, such as criminal damage; where the behaviours, when taken together, constitute a criminal offence, such as harassment; or where a civil order has been breached, thereby incurring criminal penalties. In essence, where the antisocial behaviour amounts to criminal conduct, victims harmed by that behaviour can already benefit from measures in the Bill.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
I was going to intervene on the Minister earlier, when he kept saying that we should not put this in the Bill, to ask, “Why?” If it is already included, why not write the words down?
Edward Argar
First, we do not need to do this in the Bill—the points that the hon. Lady makes are essentially two sides of the same coin. I will turn to this in more detail, but we are seeking to be permissive in the breadth of the definition, rather than prescriptive by naming individual groups. Again, that risks causing the effect that she does not want: if we name A, B and C, does that create a hierarchy, and if we miss out D—as this place occasionally does—are we suddenly excluding something unintentionally? We have sought, by criminal conduct and victims of crime, to include as broad a definition as possible. A vast majority of individuals who are sadly victims of antisocial behaviour will be effectively victims of a crime.
The challenge, which I am happy to work with Members on both sides of the House on, is how we can ensure that we address Dame Vera’s key point—in my view, we would not do this on the face of the Bill—which is who decides and how we empower individuals to say, “Police may not have proceeded with it, but I know this is a criminal offence, so I wish to access these services and have a right to do so.” We need to address that key point. I am not sure if that is best done through legislation, but I am happy to work across the House to address that issue.
Anna McMorrin
The amendment seeks to include a clear community trigger that will set off victim support. That is very clear in the amendment, and it will allow those agencies, organisations and authorities to work together in support of people who are victims of repeated, consistent and persistent antisocial behaviour.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the hon. Lady and I will address that point in my remaining remarks—I will give way again if she feels that I have not done so. In terms of those who suffer from persistent antisocial behaviour that does not amount to criminal conduct, we disagree that putting this in the Bill, rather than seeking other means to achieve an outcome for them, is the best approach. As I set out in my remarks on the previous group of amendments, we have deliberately defined victims in part 1 of the Bill to cover victims of crime. The measures have been designed to ensure that all the criminal justice agencies work together to engage and support those who are victims of crime. We also seek to strengthen the victims code.
A whole range of behaviours are included, and every speech has mentioned behaviours that contained elements of a crime that would therefore enable those individuals to get support. There are different agencies and procedures, as the hon. Member for Cardiff North said, for cases of antisocial behaviour that do not meet the criminal threshold or where there is no specific criminal offence involved. That means, for example, that victims of persistent antisocial behaviour can make a request for an antisocial behaviour review to any of the main agencies responsible, such as the council, police and housing providers.
That does not mean that individuals who have suffered as a result of harmful but not criminal antisocial behaviour are prevented from seeking support. Outside the Bill and the victims code, they can still access support services in their local area. Police and crime commissioners, as well as local authorities, can and do commission support for victims of all types of antisocial behaviour, and can help victims of all kinds of ASB, both criminal and non-criminal, to resolve their issues. Some of the funding they receive is rightly ringfenced for particular criteria and causes, but they do have a degree of overall discretion in their budget as to whether they wish to fund such services.
Anna McMorrin
As I set out in my speech, the police and crime commissioners decide in each area. If someone is a victim of antisocial behaviour, they are not guaranteed any support. Victims of persistent antisocial behaviour have no idea where to turn to access support because the authorities pass them from pillar to post. What the Minister is setting out does not happen; the amendment would ensure that it did.
Edward Argar
I am afraid I disagree with the shadow Minister’s last point. I do not think the amendment would address the operational or on-the-ground implementation issues that she highlights.
On the initial point the shadow Minister made, we have often debated in the House how to strike an appropriate balance in support services for victims of all crimes and of particular types of crime—how to ensure a tailored local support service that reflects the local community, while also ensuring a baseline of services, and a national response when a local community may not commission a particular service because the police and crime commissioner may have to make prioritisation decisions and the number of people likely to use that service in their locality may not be sufficient that they can afford to fund it. We always have this debate about the appropriate line between a national, consistent service, and local tailoring and local empowerment to police and crime commissioners, who are of course directly elected and accountable to their communities for the services they provide—notwithstanding turnout, as I think the shadow Minister indicated.
Sir Oliver Heald
Dame Vera was making the point that these matters are not being taken seriously enough, but there is an offence of harassment. That is repeated behaviour, and it can be antisocial behaviour or bullying. That was treated as a serious matter by Parliament—it is a summary offence—and there is also the more serious offence if fear of violence is involved, which has a maximum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment. Is it perhaps time for the Minister to discuss with the Attorney General and the Home Office whether there is a need for more impetus to be put behind that provision, whether through guidelines or the prosecution college hub?
Edward Argar
I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for his intervention. We are discussing these issues more broadly not only with the Attorney General but with the Home Secretary, given the cut-across and the importance that is rightly attached to these issues by those who send us to this place and by Members on both sides of the House. I reassure my right hon. and learned Friend that we are looking cross-Government at how we can make such responses more effective.
More broadly, the Government are taking clear action to crack down on antisocial behaviour and to build confidence that it will be taken seriously and, where appropriate, punished. Backed by £160 million of funding, our antisocial behaviour action plan, published in March this year, will give police and crime commissioners, local authorities and other agencies more tools to tackle the blight of antisocial behaviour across communities in England and Wales. That includes increasing policing in hotspot areas and a new immediate justice programme to make sure that offenders are made to undertake practical, reparative activity to make good the loss or damage sustained by victims, or to visibly support the local community in other ways, such as by litter picking. If things go wrong, the antisocial behaviour case review is there to ensure that those affected can seek a solution from the appropriate agency.
The Government will continue to take action for those who suffer as a result of persistent antisocial behaviour. The vast majority of examples given in evidence sessions and in today’s debates have, however, contained elements that would constitute criminal behaviour, which would therefore mean that the individuals were included in the rights under the victims code and the details that we are discussing in the context of the Bill.
We have sought to be less prescriptive and more permissive to make sure that we do not inadvertently tighten the definition too much. We do not share the view of the shadow Minister that adopting the amendment is the right way to address the point, but we do accept the points that Dame Vera and others made. There are two questions or challenges, which are not, in my view, best dealt with by legislation, but which do need to be addressed. First, who decides what is criminal? Secondly, how do we raise the awareness of authorities and individuals, so that people know their rights and that what has happened constitutes criminal behaviour, even if it is not prosecuted and even if there is no conviction? Therefore, those entitlements and rights are there.
Maria Eagle
That is one of the most important points. The victims are told that the police cannot do anything about it because it does not reach certain thresholds. When people understand that they may have rights that relate to being victims of crime, first, they will not have thought that they do—unless someone tells them—and secondly, they will ask the question, “If that is the case, how come the police aren’t doing something about the crime?” That is the conundrum. The Minister’s solution to the issue—not accepting the amendment—does not deal with it.
Edward Argar
The right hon. Lady makes two points. I suspect that in a number of cases the police will look at an offence and say, “We don’t think it meets the threshold for prosecution,” but that dextrous lawyers—we have some in Committee—could probably find a way to have it constitute a criminal offence and be prosecuted. Decisions on prosecutions, however, are made by the independent Crown Prosecution Service, based on the evidential threshold, the public interest and whether there is likely to be a conviction. I will not intervene or interfere in the CPS’s prosecution decisions.
Nevertheless, I am happy to work across the House to find a way to increase awareness. I do not believe that legislation and the amendment are the right approach, but there must be ways to increase awareness among victims that they are victims and among criminal justice agencies and others, so that they understand that, where a criminal offence has taken place, even if it is not prosecuted, individuals should be entitled to support.
Anna McMorrin
I thank the Minister for his response and everyone who has contributed to this important debate. I know that the number of people across the country who suffer from persistent antisocial behaviour—whether that is extreme or slight but persistent incidents which, as I illustrated in my speech, cause people to be locked in their homes and afraid to venture out to the shops, scared even to walk outside their front door—is hugely underestimated. This is a serious issue that must be addressed in the Bill. The amendment would do just that.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood made excellent points about how the perpetrators of antisocial behaviour jump the gun. Many of them know the system and will make a report to the police in extreme circumstances and where the incidents are criminal, so the police are left not knowing whose side to be on, thinking it is a neighbourhood dispute or something that can be resolved. I, too, have tried to support such victims of antisocial behaviour in my constituency, and it is very difficult to get the agencies and authorities to understand that those people are victims. Including the amendment in the Bill will ensure that they are seen as victims and will have access to services that support them.
The hon. Member for Stroud made an important point about trespassing and storming into houses, which has seen a worrying rise among young people on social media such as TikTok. I know the Minister responded to that in his speech, but it would be good if he could look at the issue again. He said he was not able to address it here and now, but perhaps he could look into it and come back to the Committee—or write to us—on what the Department, the Government and he will be doing to address it.
All that goes back to the main point, the community trigger. With it, we need to ensure that services, the authorities and the criminal justice agencies work together to support the victim. That is what the amendment is intended to do. My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham made the good point that the authorities need to know where they can step in, which they do not currently know. It should not be in every case for the victim to have to go to their MP, and for the MP to step in to bring the authorities together, as my hon. Friend stated. That is an impossibility for everybody out there. The Minister made the point that people can access lawyers; who in our communities has that knowledge and awareness, especially when they face that trauma? They may be vulnerable and may not have access to the finances to get legal advice.
Edward Argar
I fear the shadow Minister misunderstood what I was saying; I was referring to police and CPS lawyers, who will be able to find ways to prosecute some of these cases, I would hope—not to individuals.
Anna McMorrin
I thank the Minister, but the police and the criminal justice agencies just do not do that. They are stripped of resources. They do not have the ability to look into each case. If the community trigger is reached, support can kick in. Then at least those victims of antisocial behaviour know that they have something to lean on and some way of accessing support. That is why the amendment has been tabled, why I moved it today and why I spoke to it on Second Reading. It is particularly poignant that it will be Anti-Social Behaviour Awareness Week in just a couple of weeks. This is a really good opportunity for the Government to support the amendment, which is why I will press it to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Anna McMorrin
I beg to move amendment 17, in clause 1, page 1, line 16, at end insert—
“(e) where the person has experienced child criminal exploitation;”.
This amendment would include victims of child criminal exploitation in the definition of a victim.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 51, in clause 1, page 1, line 16, at end insert—
“(e) where the person has experienced adult sexual exploitation.”
Amendment 18, in clause 1, page 2, line 6, at end insert—
“(c) ‘child criminal exploitation’ means conduct by which a person manipulates, deceives, coerces or controls a person under 18 to undertake activity which constitutes a criminal offence;”.
This amendment provides a definition for the term “child criminal exploitation”.
Amendment 52, in clause 1, page 2, line 6, at end insert—
“(c) ‘adult sexual exploitation’ means conduct by which a person manipulates, deceives, coerces or controls another person to undertake sexual activity.”
This amendment would provide for a statutory definition of adult sexual exploitation.
Anna McMorrin
The Minister should not be surprised that we are debating child criminal exploitation once more; my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham tabled a similar amendment to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 just two years ago. Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, the Government voted against that amendment, so two years on we still do not have a definition of child criminal exploitation in statute. Barnardo’s and the Children’s Society define child criminal exploitation as when
“another person or persons manipulate, deceive, coerce or control the person to undertake activity which constitutes a criminal offence where the person is under the age of 18.”
That is the definition that we would like to see on statute.
Child criminal exploitation takes a variety of forms, but ultimately it is the grooming and exploitation of children into criminal activity. The current reality is that, across each form that child criminal exploitation takes, children who are coerced into criminal activity are often treated as perpetrators by statutory agencies, rather than as victims of exploitation. That is partly because safeguarding partners work to different understandings of what constitutes criminal exploitation.
Recently, child criminal exploitation has become strongly associated with one specific model—county lines—but it can also include children being forced to work in cannabis factories, being coerced into moving drugs and money across the country, or being forced to commit financial fraud, to shoplift or to pickpocket. The lack of shared understanding of what child criminal exploitation is and the guises it can take means that the questions are not consistently asked when children are identified as being associated with criminal activity, either at the time of arrest or during court cases in which the possible coercion of a child has taken place.
Ellie Reeves
Throughout the country, children are being used by criminal gangs to do their bidding, and they are often subjected to the most sophisticated coercion, intimidation, duress, abuse and, sometimes, sexual abuse, so does my hon. Friend agree that it is indefensible not to have them listed as victims in the Bill?
Anna McMorrin
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. It is completely indefensible not to have the definition of child criminal exploitation in the Bill to make sure that, as she says, such children are seen as victims, not perpetrators.
The lack of shared understanding that I mentioned also means that children are often arrested for crimes that they are forced to commit, whereas the adults who exploit them are often not investigated or brought to justice, leaving them free to exploit other children, which happens. All this is because of the absence of a statutory definition of child criminal exploitation, the true scale of which is completely unknown. We know that it is happening all over the place—it is off the scale, essentially—but many children who are exploited or groomed fall through the cracks of statutory support so are not identified in official statistics.
In England in 2021-22, there were more than 16,000 instances of local authorities identifying child sexual exploitation as a factor at the end of an assessment by social workers; 11,600 instances of gangs being a factor; and 10,140 instances of child criminal exploitation being a factor. It has been estimated that in England alone there could be as many as 200,000 children aged 11 to 17 who are vulnerable to serious violence because of the levels of crime or income deprivation in their community.
Research carried out by Dame Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner for England, found that 27,000 children who were at high risk of gang exploitation had not been identified by services and as a result were missing out on vital support to keep them safe. The research also found an even higher number of children who were experiencing broader risk factors linked to exploitation, with one in 15 teenagers—or 120,00 young people—falling through the gaps in education and social care. These are children who are being excluded from school, who are persistently absent or who go missing from care, and many face a combination of factors that leave them vulnerable to exploitation.
In the evidence sessions last week, Dame Rachel de Souza spoke about the importance of including a statutory definition of child criminal exploitation in the Bill. When asked whether it should be in the Bill, she said “absolutely”, and that she had wanted to bring it up herself. She said:
“When I go around the country and talk to children, wherever they are—whether that is being held in police cells or children who are involved in drugs or whatever—I realise just how complex the situations are. You realise that these children are as much victim as perpetrator. Children tell me all the time that their experiences with the police make them feel like they are not victims but criminals. That is what we need to sort out.”––[Official Report, Victims and Prisoners Public Bill Committee, 20 June 2023; c. 24, Q50.]
Jess Phillips
I think that, last year, four people were charged with child trafficking, and one person was convicted. I believe that last year also saw the highest rate of young boys being trafficked into the system and being recorded in the national referral mechanism. Although the number of victims has gone up over the past 10 years, the number of trafficking convictions has gone down.
Anna McMorrin
I thank my hon. Friend for absolutely illustrating the point.
I want to raise a real case of child exploitation. A 15-year-old boy, whom I will call Robbie—not his real name—was picked up with class A drugs in a trap house raid by the police. He was driven back home by police officers, who questioned him alone in the car and used that information to submit an entry to the national referral mechanism, which did not highlight his vulnerability but instead read like a crime report. Robbie subsequently went to court. His national referral mechanism failed, and his barrister, who did not understand the NRM process, advised him to plead guilty, which he did.
Janet Daby
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech and speaking up for the rights of children. I am sure we all have cases where we know a child has been exploited and is vulnerable—by definition, a child is a vulnerable person. If a child is criminally exploited, it means that their vulnerability is increased. Does my hon. Friend agree that it makes no sense for them not to be included in the victims code?
Anna McMorrin
That is an excellent point. My hon. Friend has absolutely reinforced the point that such children must be included in the Bill as victims.
I move on to talk about Robbie’s experience—as I said, that is not his real name. In June 2019, he was referred to the Children’s Society’s disrupting exploitation programme. The programme helped Robbie challenge the national referral mechanism decision, and those supporting him attended court sessions with him to ensure that his vulnerability was outlined and that he was recognised as a victim, instead of an offender. That enabled him to retract his guilty plea and access vital support. However, that was just one case. He was lucky: he had the Children’s Society programme there to support him. We know that does not happen for the majority of child victims.
Jess Phillips
Is my hon. Friend aware that had Robbie arrived on a small boat and been trafficked out of a hotel and into a cannabis factory at the age of 10—Channel 4 has found such a case—he would not be entitled to any support from the NRM under the proposals of the Illegal Migration Bill, even though he would be a 10-year-old child who had been groomed into drug dealing?
Anna McMorrin
Absolutely. That illustrates yet more child criminal exploitation. The whole thing is just horrific and absurd, which is why this issue needs to be addressed.
Back to Robbie. As the drugs that he had been selling were confiscated by the police when he was picked up in the raid, there was debt bondage in Robbie’s case, as he now owed the groomer money for the drugs that had been lost. In turn, that resulted in threats to him and his family. The programme then worked with the police to complete intelligence forms and make sure that Robbie’s safety was paramount. It put markers on the home and made sure that the police were aware of the situation, so that they could respond quickly if anything happened. The programme supported Robbie to continue his education.
Amendments 17 and 18 are absolutely vital to make sure that we take the necessary steps to protect vulnerable children and to focus agencies’ attention on the adults who exploit them and are linked to the much, much more serious crimes that are taking place. Protecting children and bringing true criminals to justice—I do not see how anyone, least of all the Government, can object to such a notion. I will push the amendments to a vote later, but I hope the Minister will seek to include them in the Bill.
Sarah Champion
I start by apologising to the Committee. For each month that the Bill was delayed, I tabled another amendment, so I have quite a few today.
I will speak to amendments 51 and 52, which stand in my name, and then to those tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North. My amendments seek to provide a definition of adult sexual exploitation and are informed by my experiences of child sexual exploitation. I hope to make the argument that one very often blurs into the other, and the same arguments stand for both.
In 2009, the Department for Children, Schools and Families introduced a statutory definition of child sexual exploitation for the first time. I can honestly say that it has been transformational in ensuring that child abuse and exploitation are understood and that children receive the necessary support. We now need to accept in this Committee that adults can also be sexually exploited.
The STAGE group is supported by the National Lottery community fund and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley. It is a fantastic group that highlights the nature and extent of the sexual exploitation of adult women across our communities and seeks to change legislation to give them better support. STAGE brings together a number of charities to provide trauma-informed support for women who have been groomed for sexual exploitation across the north-east and Yorkshire—including, in my constituency, the amazing organisation GROW, which I say to the Minister is severely underfunded at the moment.
Adult sexual exploitation is a specific form of sexual abuse. It occurs where an individual or group takes advantage of an imbalance of power to coerce, manipulate or deceive a person aged 18 or over into sexual activity, usually in exchange for something that the victim needs or wants—often drugs, alcohol or indeed love. It is also usually for the financial advantage or increased status of the perpetrator or facilitator. The victim may have been sexually exploited even if the sexual activity appears to be consensual. It can happen online as well, of course. The victims cannot give informed consent if they see no reasonable alternative to engaging in the activity, or if they have a reasonable belief that non-engagement would result in negative consequences for themselves or others.
Adult sexual exploitation does not always involve physical contact; it can also occur through the use of technology. My amendment 52 reflects the wording used in the statutory definition of child sexual exploitation, which the Government already use. The Government need to accept that not just children are exploited: many women—it is usually women—are exploited as adults, too. They are victims and deserve support, and that begins with ensuring that their abuse is recognised through a statutory definition of this form of sexual abuse.
One case study from the STAGE group is N, whom I will keep anonymous. N is a 22-year-old first-generation British Pakistani woman, who grew up in Leeds in a devout Muslim household. From a young age, N began experiencing sexual abuse from a male in her extended family. N began to spend more and more time outside of the family home; she could not talk to her family about the abuse because she did not want to be seen to bring shame into the household. During her time spent out of the house, N was introduced to a “friend”, whom I will call H.
H began to groom N, supplying her with drugs and alcohol to the point where she developed a dependency. He used her fear about shame as a form of control—to ensure that she did not speak out about the abuse he would subject her to. N was 15 at the time. Between the ages of 15 and 18, N was seen as a victim of child sexual exploitation. She was trafficked around Yorkshire by H, being picked up in taxis and taken to properties to be raped repeatedly. Professionals did all they could to safeguard N, but the abuse continued. N experienced a breakdown in her mental health due to the repeated trauma that she was experiencing, and she began drinking heavily on a daily basis.
When she was 18, the exploitation continued on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis. However, since she moved into adult services, the police and adult social care brought into question whether N was making “unwise choices” in respect of whether she was getting something out of these exchanges. So N was seen as a victim of child exploitation while she was 17—364 days—but the following day, when she turned 18, this victim of adult sexual exploitation was making “unwise choices”.
A lot of work from STAGE partner Basis Yorkshire was put in place, including advocating for N—although she was not a child any more, by law she was experiencing sexual exploitation. Over the past few years STAGE has lobbied health, police and social care services to ensure that N is recognised as a victim of grooming and exploitation. Although she might seem to “choose” to get into a taxi or to meet H or one of his associates, that is in fact a result of the coercion and control that takes place in grooming and exploitation. In legislation we recognise coercive control.
Jess Phillips
I should declare that I am chair of the STAGE group. Is my hon. Friend concerned, as I am, at the disparity when it comes to women who are British citizens? When sexual exploitation is considered as part of human trafficking, a foreign national is far, far more likely to be considered a victim than a British person. In many regards, British victims of sexual exploitation—adults and children—get lesser services.
Sarah Champion
Sadly, I am concerned and I absolutely agree. That is partly why we need a definition. The national referral mechanism was mentioned. By moving a person from one side of the street to the other they are trafficked, so they could fall under the national referral mechanism for modern slavery or just be prosecuted. But without a definition, services are not taking a joined-up approach and using the resources already in place.
The same arguments about choice and risky lifestyles in relation to adult victims of sexual exploitation were used in Rotherham. Having a definition would mean police forces being trained in what the definition means. Legal arguments would be put forward, and judges would receive training so that when they saw a young person in front of them they would understand that their behaviour was a symptom of being sexually exploited. There is a domino effect once a legal definition is in place. That is what happened with child sexual exploitation, so I hope that that will happen with adult sexual exploitation. I will come on to child criminal exploitation, but I have said to the Minister what needs to happen with adult sexual exploitation.
Manipulation by perpetrators, cultural expectations and family and community dynamics make it difficult for women to identify that they have experienced abuse. But sadly, sexual exploitation, as I have said, is not widely understood by professionals. It is vital that the Ministry of Justice use the Bill as an ideal opportunity to create a statutory definition of adult sexual exploitation to ensure a consistent understanding and recognition of the ways that sexual exploitation continues and presents itself in adulthood.
Amendments 51 and 52 would be a huge step in the right direction by recognising people who have experienced adult sexual exploitation as victims and entitling them to the crucial support available under the Bill. That must also come, of course, with support and funding for training to be given to police and justice staff to identify the signs of sexual exploitation.
I will now speak in support of amendments 17 and 18, which are about the definition of child criminal exploitation. The amendments would place a statutory definition of criminal child exploitation in law for the first time by ensuring that children who are being exploited are classed as victims under the Bill. Child criminal exploitation is the grooming and exploitation of children into criminal activity. There is a strong association with county lines, but it can also involve moving drugs, financial fraud and shoplifting on demand. That our laws catch up with our reality and realise the harm and damage that those criminals are causing children is long overdue. The true scale remains unknown, as many children fall through the cracks, but we have some evidence that indicates the scale of the abuse.
The former Children’s Commissioner estimated that 27,000 children are at high risk of gang exploitation. During 2020, 2,544 children were referred to the national referral mechanism due to concerns about child criminal exploitation, and 205 of those cases involved concerns about both criminal and sexual exploitation. The pandemic has only made the situation worse. Children in Need reported that during the pandemic children faced an increased risk of online grooming or exploitation due to time online, not being at school or college, and increased exposure to harmful online content such as inappropriately sexualised or hyper-violent content.
In the evidence sessions last week, the current Children’s Commissioner fully supported introducing a statutory definition of child criminal exploitation. She explained that the situations facing the children affected are very complex and that police make many feel like criminals rather than victims, as my Front-Bench colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North, highlighted.
It is clear that thousands of children are being criminally exploited every day and the response for those children must be immediate and properly resourced. Experts believe that a lack of understanding of child criminal exploitation prohibits an effective and joined-up response. The lack of a single definition means that local agencies respond differently to this form of exploitation across the country. The Children’s Society data shows that a third of local authorities had a policy in place to respond. That means that two thirds do not. Given the nature of this exploitation, a national shared understanding is imperative. That is what a definition would provide.
Let me for one moment contrast the situation with that of the response to child sexual exploitation, which I spoke to on a previous group of amendments. Police officers across the country say to me that, because the police and politicians understand CSE, the police get resources specifically to address CSE. That is great and I support that provision, but it takes away from the resources we need for CCE. They are treated as two separate issues, even though the same gangs often promote both forms of exploitation. They are using these children for criminal exploitation, whether that be sexual, drug running or shoplifting. Accepting the definition would mean that we see criminal exploitation of children and sexual exploitation of children just as “exploitation of children” and we can pool the resources and expertise to try to prevent this crime.
Many children who are criminally exploited receive punitive criminal justice responses, rather than being seen as victims. Again, I take colleagues back; that is what happened 25 or 15 years ago with child sexual exploitation victims.
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
The hon. Lady is making some incredibly powerful points and I have sympathy with a lot of them, but on several occasions, she has mentioned circumstances that would constitute criminal conduct. For example, she talked about victim N, who was raped. Rape is clearly criminal conduct. Does she accept that children in that situation would be covered by the provisions in the Bill?
Secondly, she is making a point about how young offenders are dealt with. I am a former youth magistrate and member of the Youth Justice Board. Does she accept that the judiciary dealing with young people are now trained and encouraged to find out whether the defendants in front of them have been subject to this kind of exploitation, and that that is therefore considered in the way that they are dealt with?
Sarah Champion
I will deal with those points in reverse order. My first reaction is to question why they were in front of a magistrate in the first place. How have those children gone all the way through the system to be in front of a magistrate, rather than it having been recognised at a very early point that there is something going on with the child? Why is a 15-year-old repeatedly running drugs across county lines? What is happening? What is behind that? The professional curiosity is not there.
That leads me to the hon. Gentleman’s opening point. Of course, raping a child or raping an adult is a crime. We all recognise that. First, there are very low levels of reporting, and—as I hope I made clear with the adult sexual exploitation argument—a lot of people do not recognise it. They just think, “I’m a drug addict. He’s my dealer. I have to do this in order to get my drugs.”
First there is the reporting situation, and secondly there is recognition. In the case of N, she was seen as putting herself in a risky situation, so she would not be seen as a credible witness. We are not seeing the overall picture and the patterns of behaviour—the fact that the same children might be in the same location day after day—and then going back upstream to see what the motivator is and who is controlling the situation. I hope that having the definition of both terms will enable the police forces, the judicial services and the support services to see the broader picture and place the victim in that broader context. That is where I am coming from with both amendments.
Rob Butler
The hon. Lady posed a direct question to me. In terms of those young people coming before the youth courts, will she acknowledge that there is now a far greater use of diversion at the very early stage by the police and youth offending services, which means in fact that far fewer young people are coming to court? I was directly addressing the situation she raised about what happens when they are in front of that judicial process. In fact, there has been a huge amount of progress in trying not to bring children in front of magistrates or judges if it can possibly be avoided. Does the hon. Lady accept that there will be occasions when the level of offending is so great that society rightly demands that those people must face justice, at which point judges and magistrates can consider all the factors in determining what action to take?
Sarah Champion
I fully accept the hon. Gentleman’s points. There was no criticism implied, but I will give one example. In 2013 I worked with Barnardo’s, and we did an inquiry to see whether the justice system was fit for purpose for child sexual exploitation cases. Something that we found, which I alluded to, was that when a victim was in front of a judge as a witness, they were often seen as chaotic, aggressive and unreliable. We identified that if the judges had training on what a victim of child sexual exploitation presented like or as, it would make a difference. Indeed, it has made a dramatic difference now that that training has been rolled out.
If we got the definition of child criminal exploitation, a judge would automatically get training on the identifiers, so one would hope that the outcome would be more informed on the basis of having understanding of the young person in front of them, rather than just looking at the crimes. That is not to say that there will not be young people who are bad ’uns, who will use this and exploit what they see as a “get out of jail free” pass—I fully accept that could happen—but if the judge has a proper understanding of criminal exploitation, one would hope that they would then be able to challenge that a little more from an informed position and make the right decision for the young individual in front of them.
I have now covered quite a lot of my points—happy days! Another thing that really frustrates me is that many children who experience child criminal exploitation come to the attention of services once they are arrested for crimes. Again, if we had the definition in place and the awareness in the services, one would hope that the child presenting would be seen as a warning sign, rather than as a criminal. Individuals who exploit children for criminal activity are not being held to account. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North said, only 30 charges under the Modern Slavery Act 2015 were flagged as child abuse in 2019-2020, against the 22,000—I think that was the figure—recognised by the Children’s Society in the same period.
Organised crime groups are aware of this situation and they are deliberately targeting children, because they know that by putting them on the frontline, it is much less likely that they themselves will be in the dock. The Government rightly adopted the statutory definitions of domestic abuse, coercive control and child sexual abuse, so I urge the Minister to do the same for vulnerable children experiencing criminal exploitation; they are victims, just as children of CSE are victims.
I will end with an example. I imagine that two thirds of Members, if not more, get here each week by train. I set those Members a challenge: speak to a train conductor, and I guarantee that they will be able to give daily examples of child criminal exploitation. They see the children going backwards and forwards, often without tickets but often with tickets paid for by the gang leaders. On my train, staff say that now they do not even bother looking for the children, because the common denominator is the bag that they carry either the drugs or the money in. It is different children going up and down, up and down, up and down—so conductors look for the bag and then report it to British Transport police.
British Transport police is funded by the railways. The service has a small budget and there are very few officers, so the likelihood of one being there when that train arrives is slender. Organisations like Railway Children try to support those children, but I guarantee that if Members speak to the conductor on their train, they will say, “Yes, that is happening on my train.”
Lia Nici (Great Grimsby) (Con)
We are all very concerned about the example given by the hon. Lady. Why are the conductors and British Transport police not reporting those children to the police? That does not seem to be to do with the Bill; it seems to have something to do with what is happening in our criminal reporting processes.
Sarah Champion
Sadly, they are reporting it to the police, but the scale of the issue is so enormous and the resources are so intensive that nothing happens. I suggest the hon. Lady speak to her conductor. Normally what happens is that the child will be offered some support, but will then be very up front with the conductor, saying, “No, no—it’s my bag!” and so on. The child then gets off and there are not the resources to have a member of the British Transport police there, and that genuinely is not a criticism of them; I think there are only 4,000 officers for the whole country.
Sarah Champion
British Transport police are the specific police for incidents that happen on the railways and transport networks. Even if we were looking at the Metropolitan police—I am going back and forth to London—the scale of the issue is so enormous that there is not the capacity to deal with it.
Jess Phillips
As somebody who has called the police in those circumstances, we are talking about a nine-day wait for anyone to come out. That is a problem.
Sarah Champion
Minister, it seems a ridiculously simple act to accept these two definitions, but the cascading of support and recognition within the victims code and our justice system would be enormous as a consequence. I have seen that at first hand with child sexual exploitation. I urge the Minister to look seriously into the two definitions.
Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Fay Jones.)
Victims and Prisoners Bill (Sixth sitting)
Tuesday 27th June 2023
(2 years ago)
Public Bill CommitteesVictims and Prisoners Act 2024 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 27 June 2023 - (27 Jun 2023)
The Chair
I remind the Committee that with this we are discussing the following:
Amendment 51, in clause 1, page 1, line 16, at end insert—
“(e) where the person has experienced adult sexual exploitation.”
Amendment 18, in clause 1, page 2, line 6, at end insert—
“(c) ‘child criminal exploitation’ means conduct by which a person manipulates, deceives, coerces or controls a person under 18 to undertake activity which constitutes a criminal offence;”
This amendment provides a definition for the term “child criminal exploitation”.
Amendment 52, in clause 1, page 2, line 6, at end insert—
“(c) ‘adult sexual exploitation’ means conduct by which a person manipulates, deceives, coerces or controls another person to undertake sexual activity.”
This amendment would provide for a statutory definition of adult sexual exploitation.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Edward Argar)
Amendment 17 seeks to include in the definition of a victim those who have experienced child criminal exploitation and have suffered harm as a direct result. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Rotherham for raising this issue, which the Government agree has a devastating impact. This morning, right hon. and hon. Members did what this House does well: they gave a voice to the voiceless.
I want to reassure hon. Members that large elements of the amendment are encapsulated in the Bill, and I hope I am able to offer something that goes at least some way to satisfy the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Cardiff North. The Government are committed to tackling county lines and associated child criminal exploitation, and outside the Bill we have invested up to £145 million over three years to crack down on criminal gangs exploiting children and young people.
In addition, as part of the county lines programme, the Government continue to support victims of child criminal exploitation. We have, for example, invested up to £5 million over three financial years—2022 to 2025—to provide support to victims of county lines exploitation and their families. That includes a specialist support and rescue service provided by Catch22 for under-25s in priority areas who are criminally exploited through county lines to help them to safely reduce and exit their involvement. It also includes a confidential national helpline and support delivered by Missing People’s SafeCall service for young people and their families.
As the shadow Minister said, it is important to remember that although county lines is often the first issue to catch the attention of the media or this House, child exploitation goes way beyond that crime. We are therefore also targeting exploitation through the Home Office-funded prevention programme, delivered by the Children’s Society. That programme works with a range of partners to tackle and prevent child exploitation regionally and nationally.
I assure hon. Members that children who have been exploited for criminal purposes are indeed victims in the context of the Bill if the conduct they have been subjected to meets the criminal standard. Regardless of whether the crime has been reported, charged or prosecuted, those victims are already covered under part 1 of the Bill and the victims code.
Child criminal exploitation is already captured by a number of criminal offences under the Serious Crime Act 2007, the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and the Modern Slavery Act 2015. However, as the hon. Member for Rotherham highlighted, in some cases the exploitative conduct may not itself be criminal. The measures in part 1 of the Bill have specifically and fundamentally been designed for victims of crime and seek to improve their treatment, experiences of and engagement with the criminal justice system. Therefore, where the criminal exploitation is exactly that—criminal—the victims are already covered by the Bill’s definition of a victim of crime.
The definition of a victim, as I said previously, is deliberately broad. Within reason, we are seeking to be permissive, rather than prescriptive, to avoid the risk that specifying particular subgroups could inadvertently exclude those who do not fall into specific descriptions and definitions.
Amendment 18 seeks to provide a definition for child criminal exploitation. The Government recognise that the targeting, grooming and exploitation of children for criminal purposes is deplorable, and we share the hon. Member for Rotherham’s determination to tackle it. The Government have already gone some way to defining child criminal exploitation in statutory guidance for frontline practitioners working with children, including in the “Keeping children safe in education” and “Working together to safeguard children” statutory guidance. We have also defined child criminal exploitation in other documents, such as the serious violence strategy, the Home Office child exploitation disruption toolkit for frontline practitioners, which was updated in July last year, and the county lines guidance for prosecutors and youth offending teams.
The Modern Slavery Act 2015 states that when children who are under 18 commit certain offences, they are not guilty if they were committed as a direct result of exploitation. Prosecutors must consider the best interests and welfare of the child or young person, among other public interest factors, starting with a presumption of diverting them away from the courts where possible.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
The Minister highlights the problem: there are lots of different documents with lots of different Departments and support teams where the Government have felt comfortable defining child criminal exploitation, and there is fragmentation across Government. The Bill offers the opportunity to define child criminal exploitation so that it is seen clearly that such children are victims of that exploitation. I will be frank with the Minister: the victims ought to be recognised in the Bill, but they are not. My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North and I are trying to use this as an opportunity to force the Government’s hand to make that definition, so that any person in the public or private sector who sees those children can understand that they are victims.
Edward Argar
When I conclude in a moment, I hope that I might have given the hon. Lady a little more reassurance. In respect of her specific point, the Government have previously explored the introduction of a statutory definition of child criminal exploitation with a range of operational and system partners. They and the Government concluded that the existing arrangements allow sufficient flexibility to respond to a range of circumstances while still ensuring actions when that consideration was undertaken.
I reassure the hon. Members for Rotherham and for Cardiff North that we continue to keep under review the issue and the legislation. The previous consultation with partners suggested that the right tools, powers and offences were already in place to tackle the issue.
Sarah Champion
I wonder who the Minister is talking to, because this amendment is supported by the children’s sector, including the Children’s Society, the NSPCC and Barnardo’s. The children’s sector wants this, so I do not understand who he is talking to who does not.
Edward Argar
I mentioned operational partners, and in this context, that refers to partners in the criminal justice system, such as the prosecution authorities, the police and others. I take the hon. Lady’s point about the wider stakeholder and sector support. If she allows me to make a little progress, we will see if it reassures her sufficiently.
Turning to amendments 51 and 52, amendment 51 seeks to ensure that persons who have experienced adult sexual exploitation are explicitly referenced in the definition of a victim. Adult sexual exploitation could be considered to consist of numerous criminal acts, some of which include human trafficking, controlling and coercive behaviour, causing or inciting prostitution for gain, controlling prostitution for gain, and rape and other serious sexual offences. I reassure hon. Members that adults who have been subjected to such criminal conduct are victims under part 1 of the legislation and under the victims code. My concern is therefore that the amendments would duplicate the existing coverage of the definition of a victim of crime. Again, the definition is deliberately broad to avoid inadvertently excluding a particular group or victim through being overly prescriptive.
Amendment 52 is intended to create a definition of adult sexual exploitation. Acts that can constitute adult sexual exploitation are, again, already covered by a number of existing offences.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
While they are covered by a number of different offences, much like domestic abuse, there is no charge or crime of domestic abuse, yet the Government felt it important to define domestic abuse in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 for all the same reasons that my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham tried to point out: it is currently written nowhere in any Government guidance, or any strategy to tackle adult sexual exploitation. That is what the amendment is intended to address.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the hon. Lady. She may well push me in a slightly different direction, but I am always a little cautious of seeking to read across a precedent in one piece of legislation to a range of other areas. There may be occasions when it is universally applicable, but in other cases I would urge a degree of caution.
We have yet to see unequivocal evidence that a single definition or approach would better achieve delivery of our commitment than the current approach. However, I am happy to discuss it further and work with the hon. Member for Rotherham, the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Cardiff North, and others between Committee stage and Report. As is the nature of the Committee stage, the amendments were tabled a few days ago—last week—and inevitably, when something significant is suggested, it is important to reflect on that carefully. I intend to reflect carefully on the points that have been made. I will not pre-empt the conclusions of my reflections, but I will engage with the hon. Member for Rotherham, and the shadow Minister if she so wishes, to see what may be possible between Committee stage and Report. On the basis of that commitment to engage, I hope that the hon. Member for Rotherham and the shadow Minister might, at this point, consider not pressing the amendments to a Division.
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for his response and the Committee for this debate on child criminal exploitation. I particularly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham for tabling the two critical amendments that look at adult exploitation as well as child criminal exploitation. She made excellent, and really quite emotive, points about a victim of child sexual exploitation, of course due to coercion and control, reaching the age of 18, when it is suddenly questioned as “unwise choices”. I appreciate the points that the Minister made. He appreciates that there is a real issue. As I set out earlier, there is widespread concern among all the agencies and charities working on this that child criminal exploitation takes a variety of forms. Ultimately, the grooming and exploitation of children into criminal activity needs to be addressed.
To take up the Minister’s point about using one statutory definition, at the moment safeguarding partners are working to so many different understandings, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham said, of what constitutes criminal exploitation that there is no meaningful or consistent response across criminal justice agencies and safeguarding partners, which is critical when dealing with such matters.
I appreciate that the Minister is prepared to work together, and I hope that he has listened to our arguments. It sounds as though he is coming to the agreement that we will work together to address this matter in the Bill. Therefore, on reflection and having heard those points today, I will seek to bring this proposal back at a later stage of the Bill but will not press it today.
Sarah Champion
I thank the Minister. We have worked together for a long time, and he knows that I can be like a dog with a bone when it comes to things like this. I will take what he has said absolutely at face value. I am really grateful for the opportunity to explore the matter with him further, and because of that, I will not press my two amendments at this point.
Anna McMorrin
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Sarah Champion
I beg to move amendment 46, in clause 1, page 1, line 16, at end insert—
“(e) where the person is the child of a person posing sexual risk to children.”
This amendment would include children of a person posing a sexual risk to children (that is, paedophiles (including perpetrators of offences online), suspects or offenders) as victims.
I don’t get out much, Sir Edward—and neither do you, because of that! I ask the Committee to listen to my speech on this issue with an open mind, because when I first came across it, it took me a little time to get my head round it, but to me now, it seems the most obvious thing. I am talking about recognising the children of paedophiles as victims. That is what my amendment seeks to make happen. Just as we have now—I thank the Minister and the Ministry of Justice—made a huge step forward in defining children born of rape as victims in this legislation, so we need to ensure that other secondary victims will also be entitled to rights under the victims code. The children of any paedophile are disproportionately impacted when their parent is investigated, charged and jailed, and I make a plea for them to be considered within the definition of victims.
Just like domestic abuse, the illegal activity is committed, most often, within the family home—the child’s “safe space”. Social services view the parent as potentially posing a sexual risk to any child from day one of an investigation, not from a guilty verdict. I will give the Committee an example from my constituency. About five years ago, a lot of single mothers were coming to me with real concerns about the heavy-handedness of social services around child protection—their child’s protection. They were really confused as to why social services were doing this. When I intervened on their behalf, I realised that it was because the other parent of the child was being investigated for—in this case—organised child sexual exploitation. Social services could not tell the mother what was going on, for fear of tipping off the other parent, but they had serious safeguarding concerns in respect of that parent in that house because of the father’s activities. This is a very real thing that happens; it has a very real basis.
Amendment 46 is crucial, because it specifically identifies children of a person posing sexual risk to children. These people are known as PPRC—persons posing a risk to children—by the police when they are under investigation and not just once they have been charged. The family unit structure, including the household economics, is generally impacted in a dramatic way—irrespective of the outcome of the investigation—because of the immediate protective measures put in place by agencies. For the family’s safety, the nature of the investigation is almost always kept confidential, thus increasing the vulnerability of these children within the whole secrecy around CSA. Investigations and convictions shape the child’s childhood, as interactions with the parent are controlled by restrictions imposed by the judicial system. The child loses all autonomy within the relationship with the suspect or offending parent, for safeguarding purposes—which we can completely understand—until they are over the age of 18.
Negative community judgment for close associates of CSA suspects is highly prevalent and can be magnified by media coverage at the court. If we think about our local papers, once someone is charged with such crimes, their name, address and photos all get into the public domain, whether by media, once the conviction has happened, or most likely by Facebook and well-meaning neighbours trying to protect their own children. The stigma that causes for the child is untold.
I have worked with the survivor Chris Tuck for many years. She is an active campaigner on child protection. She has asked me to read her case study about what happened to her:
“I grew up in 3 domestic violence households where witnessing and experiencing abuse every day was the norm.
My dad and step mum were not good for each other or to us children. The abuse intensified via domestic violence and child abuse.
This chaotic dysfunctional abusive home life led to us being vulnerable to abuse outside the family home. I was sexually abused by a school bus driver in 1979…In 1980/81 my dad George Frances Oliver was convicted of child sexual abuse against some of the children in the household (not me).
I remember very clearly when my dad was arrested for his crimes.
It was an odd day; 3 of us children came home from school and dad was lying on the sofa reading. It was eerily quiet, my step mum, my sister and stepsisters were not there.
We were just speaking to dad about this fact when there was a loud crashing noise and lots of shouts of ‘Police! Police!’.
The police stormed into the room and arrested my dad, it was very frightening to witness and caused us a lot of distress. We did not know what was happening.
I remember the police taking us 3 children to our eldest stepsisters’ house where my step mum, other stepsisters and sisters were waiting.
That is where I was told what my dad had done. I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it.
In my head I was trying to reconcile what the school bus man had done to me and now my dad had done those things and worse to other children in the house.
I felt sick, I felt dirty, I felt shame. I felt betrayed and let down by my dad. The man I loved at the time.
Dad was put on remand and eventually convicted of his crimes. I find out about this at school, in the playground. One day a boy shouted out ‘your dad is a paedo....dirty paedo’.
I didn’t know what that word meant. But I knew it was bad by the way it was said and I knew what my dad had done. I had experienced a little of what my dad had done via my own experience of sexual abuse and the internal examination I had at the Police station.
Dad’s sentencing had been written up in the local paper. Again, it felt like everyone knew. Everyone was judging me, us, for the crimes committed by my dad.
Again, I felt sick, I felt dirty, I felt shame. I felt bad to the very core of my being. This I carried with me well into my adulthood.
Again, no support was given to any of us as children and young people.
The legacy of my dad being a convicted paedophile lived with me into my mid 40s when I paid for specialist professional help and support to deal with the trauma from deep unexpressed feelings and emotions.
When I left home at nearly 16, I wrote my childhood off, I never told anyone about anything. I put on a mask for over a decade and I tried to build a new life for myself. I battled with bulimia and anger management throughout my teens and twenties.
If I had been classed as a victim, as a child and young person and given the help and specialist support at the time of each incident throughout my life I would not have had the hardship of dealing with the trauma and ill-health (mentally and physically) I have experienced as a result during my adulthood.
Recognising children and young people as victims of crime perpetrated through association needs to be recognised because there is a trauma impact as I have described.
Just knowing what is happening when it comes to the perpetrator and their movements—where they are imprisoned, when they are going to be released and where—is a must for the peace of mind of all involved.”
That experience has become even more common with online child sexual offences, which have increased dramatically. The trauma for the child usually begins once police execute a search warrant of the family home, often referred to as “the knock”, after the police have received the information regarding the online suspect. That, I would say to the Minister, would be the ideal point to intervene to prevent further trauma, but currently that is not happening. Records for 2021 show that there were 850 knocks a month. Children were present for 35% of those knocks. That compares with 417 knocks per year in 2009-10, and I fully expect those numbers to keep on going up, with all the police are telling us about the exponential rise of online child abuse.
Children are unseen victims of this crime, but are not recognised as such or given the support they need. Often, families do not receive information about the offence, court proceedings or sentencing until they are told by the offender, if they are told by the offender. If the children were defined as victims, they and their parents would be entitled to receive such information. Having the victims code apply here would address some of the key issues for children and for non-offending parents, including information from police and access to support services.
Let us be honest: the knock disproportionately affects women, who are often forced to give up their job as a consequence, take time off sick, move home, supervise access, manage childcare, manage supervision and take on the burden of minimising the suspect’s risk of suicide or reoffending. Women are effectively treated as a protective factor, but they have no protection themselves.
I have worked on the amendment with Talking Forward, a charity that funds peer support for anyone whose adult family member has been investigated for online sexual offences. It is much more common than Members realise. Currently, three police forces refer families automatically to Talking Forward, but that could be broadened out nationally, if the amendment is accepted. Lincolnshire police now have a dedicated independent domestic violence adviser-type role for such families. Again, if the amendment is accepted, that could be rolled out more broadly to provide specialist support.
The first step must be to recognise children of child sexual abusers, whether physical or online, as victims. That will reduce costs in the long term, whether that is by ensuring children have immediate support or reducing costs to the family courts. I ask the Minister to accept this amendment.
Edward Argar
As the hon. Lady set out, amendment 46 would include persons who have suffered harm as a direct result of being a child of a person who poses a sexual risk to children, for example a paedophile, in the definition of a victim. I am grateful to her for raising this important issue and I reassure her that the Government absolutely sympathise with the challenges faced by the unsuspecting families of sex offenders and those who pose a sexual risk to children.
If family members in these circumstances have witnessed criminal conduct, they are of course already covered by the Bill’s definition of a victim—that is, if they have been harmed by seeing, hearing or otherwise directly experiencing the effect of the crime at the time the crime happened. I think the hon. Lady would like to go somewhat more broadly, to those who may not have been there at the time or have directly witnessed the crime, but who may still suffer the impacts of that criminal behaviour. I know that she is interested in support more broadly for the families of offenders and those impacted.
As the hon. Lady rightly said, that cohort would not come within our definition of a victim, which is deliberately crafted in both the Bill and the victims code to be designed for those who have been harmed directly by the crime in question and therefore need the broader entitlements in the code to navigate the criminal justice system, as well as to receive support. On this occasion, therefore, I must resist the broadening of the scope of clause 1 that the amendment would bring.
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
The Justice Committee, in its pre-legislative scrutiny of the clause, did ask the Government to extend the coverage of these provisions to include children born of rape as secondary victims, and they responded positively. Is there a difference between the case that my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham made for the children of paedophiles and the concession—that is the wrong word for it; it is technically correct, but I am not trying to suggest that the Government have given in—made in accepting the Justice Committee’s suggestion that children born of rape should be included? Is there a technical difference, because I am failing to see it at the moment?
Edward Argar
The technical difference, or the difference as we see it, is that in the case of the Justice Committee’s PLS recommendation the individual was born as a direct consequence of a criminal act. In the case to which the hon. Member for Rotherham referred, the individual is not experiencing something as a direct consequence of a criminal act, but there are of course impacts on them. That is the difference that we draw, but it does not mean that this cohort is not deserving of support on their own terms, and I will touch briefly on what is available.
His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service funds the national prisoners’ families helpline, which provides free and confidential support for those with a family member at any stage of their contact with the criminal justice system. There are also several charities—I suspect that the hon. Lady works with them on these issues—that provide specific support for families affected by the actions of a family member, including support for prisoners, people with convictions, and crucially their children and families, and support for families that have been affected by sexual abuse.
We will continue to consider how best to support and protect those impacted by crime as well as victims of crime, who are directly covered by the Bill. I therefore gently encourage the hon. Lady not to press her amendment to a vote at this stage. She may wish to return to it, but I will continue to reflect carefully on what she has said. We sit and listen, but we may miss some nuances, so I will read the report of what has been said carefully.
Sarah Champion
I am grateful to the Minister for keeping an open mind. What is needed most is information on the criminal justice process for those family members, which would automatically be afforded under the victims code. I am grateful for his offer to read the report and see whether there is something that we can do. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Jess Phillips
I beg to move amendment 54, in clause 1, page 1, line 16, at end insert—
“(e) where the death by suicide of a close family member of the person was the result of domestic abuse which constitutes criminal conduct.”
We have all had a long time while the Bill has been going through to campaign, successfully, on various things through various means, including, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood mentioned, around the pre-legislative scrutiny. Those of us who have been fighting for child victims born of rape were pleased to see that concession. Another area that many of us have campaigned on is recognition of people who are victims of homicide but not direct victims. If someone’s daughter is murdered, they are a victim of that crime. Both those concessions have come about, and not dissimilarly to my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham I wish to push the envelope a little further, and talk about those who die by suicide as a direct result of being a victim of domestic abuse.
I met a mother at a memorial service for violence against women and girls. Just yesterday, she emailed me. Her daughter died in 2018. She wrote:
“If my daughter hadn’t met him, she would still be alive, her children still have a mother, me my precious only daughter…Why is the associated link between ‘domestic abuse’ and ‘suicide’ ignored? Overlooked are the ‘compensating’ mechanisms—substance abuse, alcohol, ‘mental health issues’ then used by so called ‘professionals’ as the reason ‘why’ they have taken their lives...the link is the perpetrator and the victim, NOT the substances. They are often used by the victim to ‘escape’ from the relentless mental, physical abuse and torture. They don’t want to die, merely ‘escape’ from the traumatic situations. They are in Hell.”
Families who have lost loved ones to suicide following domestic abuse should be recognised as victims, in the same way as those who lose family members to murder are supported.
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. I want to mention the family of Gemma Robinson. Gemma was the victim of a horrific assault by a former boyfriend. She took her own life in 2020 due to the fear of facing her attacker in court. Gemma’s sister, Kirsty, has spoken about the devastating impact of Gemma’s death on the whole family. The family were then left to face the sentencing of the perpetrator, Gemma’s inquest and the domestic homicide review all on their own, without support. Does my hon. Friend agree that Gemma’s case highlights why it is so important that relatives in these types of cases are recognised as victims?
Jess Phillips
I thank my hon. Friend. Our hearts go out to Gemma’s family. That is exactly the reason why I tabled the amendment and why the Labour party seeks to have these people recognised. That recognition would allow such relatives to access the support and care they need, and begin to shine a light on a shamefully under-scrutinised and ignored sphere of criminality and wrongdoing.
We do not need to look much further than the facts of the cases and the experiences of the families to realise that those relatives should be recognised and have the support and guidance that that would, or should, bring. The criminality and wrongdoing in those cases, the interaction with court processes and the justice system, and the trauma experienced, make the argument for inclusion clear. Although in many cases, they may not ever get a criminal sanction against the perpetrator, there are inquests and domestic homicide reviews, as my hon. Friend said. Honestly, to be a victim in this country, whether that is one recognised by this Bill or not, is hard work. Imagine doing that work when your daughter or your sister has died.
There are other concerns about why this recognition is important, which are to do with unchecked criminality and wrongdoing. In these heartbreaking cases, where the deceased took her own life—I use the pronoun “she” due to the gendered nature of domestic abuse—there is clear evidence that she was driven to suicide by the abuse she suffered at the hands of a domestic abuse perpetrator.
The feelings of injustice for bereaved families when the abuser escapes all responsibility for the death must be unbearable. Families find themselves in an agonising position of having watched their loved one experience horrendous criminality—violence, abuse, coercive control—and the unrelenting horror day after day, hour after hour, until their loved one was driven by desperation to take their life. Currently, in those cases, criminality is going completely unchecked, un-investigated and unchallenged. Perpetrators remain free to harm again and again. Bereaved families are left feeling failed by the justice system, and the opportunities to address issues and learn lessons are being missed.
There has been one successful prosecution of that type of case. In 2017 R v. Allen, the perpetrator pleaded guilty to manslaughter—if we are relying on cases where men plead guilty, we are on a hiding to nothing—in respect of the death of his former partner, Justene Reece, who had taken her own life after experiencing years of coercive control, stalking and harassment. Justene had left a suicide note explaining that she could not endure her stalker’s behaviour any longer. That case is a clear precedent.
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
Only last week, we heard from the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, who said that the broader the definition is, the better it will be for victims.
Jess Phillips
Absolutely. I have worked with the Domestic Abuse Commissioner. There is a huge area of hidden homicide that we are concerned about, and suicide is one of the areas where we are just not getting the data about how many women are dying because of domestic abuse, unless they are directly killed.
The case that I described provides a clear precedent, and there is hope that more cases will follow, but currently families find very limited access to such justice and answers. It is clear that for such prosecutions to happen, police officers must proactively undertake evidence gathering for domestic abuse offences post death, for example by listening to the concerns of family members, taking witness accounts, reviewing records held by medical, statutory and third sector agencies, and looking through financial records and electronic communications. This is not commonplace in cases of domestic abuse where the victim is alive. It is certainly not commonplace in cases where the victim has died.
The police seem to have a distinct lack of professional curiosity in such cases. In research by Advocacy After Fatal Domestic Abuse and the University of Warwick, titled “An Analysis of Domestic Homicide Reviews in Cases of Domestic Abuse Suicide”, families reported police failing to investigate adequately, police not acting on the information given by families and friends about perpetration of domestic abuse, evidence not being captured, evidence and personal effects of the deceased being returned to the surviving partner or ex-partner, police not considering domestic abuse when attending suicide cases, and a lack of senior police oversight in investigations of suicides.
One family member included in the research submitted 74 exhibits of screenshots and photographs in the aftermath of her daughter’s death, but felt dismissed out of hand by the officer in charge when she presented them. She said:
“I said to him, I’ve brought this because I think it’s important information. Every time he took a piece of paper off me…[he] slammed it on the desk. I said to him, are you not going to look at them? He said, there’s no point…it’s irrelevant…your daughter took her own life…It was like she wasn’t important when she was alive and…she’s not important now she’s dead.”
Other institutions also deny these families any form of justice or an understanding of what happened to their loved one. Take domestic homicide reviews. In many cases, even though the statutory criteria are met, families have to fight tooth and nail to ensure that a domestic homicide review is commissioned, normally only with the help of an advocacy organisation such as AAFDA. Inquests and coroners courts often demonstrate a lack of understanding of domestic abuse. In the research I mentioned, one DHR chair reflected that, in their experience,
“Coroners often see...women as kind of weak, they’re so misguided and they take their own lives, and they should have stood up for themselves and left…So you get that kind of reference to, you know, extreme attention-seeking. And it’s not that. It’s that you’re utterly worn down by someone who often is so cleverly manipulative…I don’t think Coroners understand that at all and the barriers to leaving and all those sorts of things…I don’t think they have an understanding of how all these little things are really damaging.”
Those examples of interactions with criminal justice systems or inquest procedures clearly highlight the crucial need for advocacy and support for families who lose a loved one to suicide following domestic abuse. One family member explained that
“you’re thrust, in a nanosecond your life flips on its axis, and not only are you dealing with the impact of losing someone so precious, especially in circumstances like this…you have to learn a whole new language…and then there’s timeframes, you’ve got to have this done by that…you’ve got this agency asking you for that, you’ve got someone questioning you, the police are calling you up”.
Research has found that having access to support and advocacy is overwhelmingly positive for families, helping them to feel empowered, but for most that support comes about only by luck or lengthy effort on their part. The mental health impact must not be underestimated. The trauma experienced by families is unimaginable. As one professional who works with such bereaved relatives put it, losing a loved one to suicide is
“one of life’s most painful experiences. The feelings of loss, sadness, and loneliness experienced after any death of a loved one are often magnified in suicide survivors by feelings of guilt, confusion, rejection, shame, anger, and the effects of stigma and trauma. Furthermore, survivors of suicide loss are at higher risk of developing major depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicidal behaviors, as well as a prolonged form of grief called complicated grief. Added to the burden is the substantial stigma, which can keep survivors away from much needed support and healing resources. Thus, survivors may require unique supportive measures and targeted treatment to cope with their loss.”
It is clear that families who find themselves in that devastating situation desperately need more support to navigate the complex legal processes and get access to the support they need.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley for raising this important issue and for referring, as the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood did, to pre-legislative scrutiny. I hope to have given Committee members some encouragement that on occasion I agree to changes, and perhaps to a different approach from that in the original draft of the Bill.
As the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley set out, her amendment 54 would extend the definition of a victim in the Bill explicitly to include families impacted by the death by suicide of a loved one as a result of domestic abuse. In her remarks, the hon. Lady quite rightly went wider than that, highlighting investigatory issues and broader prosecutorial issues. I have—as, I suspect, does every member of the Committee—huge sympathy for the families in the position that she set out. Before I turn specifically to the impact of her amendment, and I wish to touch on some of the support available for them,.
The Ministry of Justice provides police and crime commissioners with grant funding to commission local, practical, emotional and therapeutic support services for victims of all crime types, based on their assessment of needs. The Department for Health and Social Care has committed to publishing a new national suicide prevention strategy later this year and is engaging widely across the sector to understand what further action can be taken to reduce cases of suicide. The strategy will reflect new evidence and national priorities for suicide prevention across England, including actions to tackle known risk factors and targeted actions for groups at particular risk or groups of concern. An additional £57 million is being invested in suicide prevention by March 2024, through the NHS long-term plan.
I agree with the hon. Lady about the importance of the issue. With regard to her amendment, we are not convinced that explicitly extending the definition of a victim of crime in the Bill and the code is the right approach to appropriately support the families. Part 1 of the Bill specifically sets out how victims who have suffered harm as a direct result of criminal conduct are treated by and supported to engage with the criminal justice system. Our view is that that group is largely covered by the Bill’s definition of the bereaved family of a person who has died, including by suicide as a direct result of domestic abuse, which is captured by clause 1(2)(c):
“where the death of a close family member of the person was the direct result of criminal conduct”.
In the context, domestic violence is criminal conduct. I appreciate—this is potentially where the nuance lies, and why the hon. Lady might be pushing for greater clarity—that that will be fact-specific for each case in the circumstances. It is a complicated area and each case will be complicated but, as I say, we believe that clause 1(2)(c) captures this.
I know that we have discussed the need for clarity and awareness about entitlements among victims and agencies. As I am sure the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley is aware from her shadow ministerial role, the Government are consulting on and clarifying the position in the domestic homicide review to formally recognise this cohort of victims. With her permission, I will gently encourage her not to press her amendment at this point, but in the context of the broader work being done I hope she will allow me, in the short term, to write to her with greater clarity on our interpretation of clause 1(2)(c)—she may wish to challenge that in the future, of course; she is entitled to—and to see if we are able to factor in the broader work being done before we reach Report.
Jess Phillips
I thank the Minister. I would absolutely welcome it if he wrote to me and the Committee about exactly how clause 1(2)(c) encompasses what I seek, so that those families have an opportunity. It is good when Ministers say things in Committee that we can use to ensure that families get support. I will withdraw the amendment at this stage. I am not always especially keen on the Government, but the level of progress in the area of hidden homicides, certainly under the previous Home Secretary, is to be admired. I do not think that the Government are without concern on the issue of suicide in cases of domestic abuse. Thanks to what the Minister says, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Sarah Champion
I beg to move amendment 63, in clause 1, page 1, line 16, at end insert—
“(e) where the person is a child under the age of 18 who has suffered harm and is a victim of, or a witness to, criminal conduct.”
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 42, in clause 2, page 2, line 25, at end insert—
“(3A) The victims’ code must make provision for services for victims who are children under the age of 18 who have suffered harm and are victims of, or witnesses to, criminal conduct.
(3B) In determining what services are appropriate under subsection (3A), the Secretary of State must have regard to the provisions of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 in respect of children under the age of 18.”
This amendment would require the victims’ code to contain specific provision for children who are victims or witnesses, in line with the provisions of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999.
Sarah Champion
Amendments 63 and 42 are supported by the NSPCC; I am grateful for its help, which has enabled me to table them. They are designed to ensure that all children under the age of 18 who have experienced harm as a victim of or witness to a crime are within the scope of the Bill and have access to special measures in line with the existing provisions on vulnerable witnesses in the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999.
The inclusion of children as victims of domestic abuse within clause 1, in accordance with the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, is welcome. However, children experience many different forms of abuse, exploitation and serious violence, as shown by the remit of the Bill. In many cases, children can experience more than one form of abuse at the hands of one or multiple perpetrators.
The scale of child abuse in this country, as we know, is devastating. The Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse estimates that, based on the available evidence, one in 10 children in England and Wales are sexually abused before the age of 16. At a conservative estimate, the number of children sexually abused in a single year is around half a million. In 2021-22, there were more than 16,000 instances in which local authorities identified a child sexual exploitation case as a factor at the end of an assessment by social workers. There were 11,600 instances in which gangs were a factor, and 10,140 in which child criminal exploitation was a factor. Research by the Children’s Commissioner found that 27,000 children were at high risk of gang exploitation but had not been identified by services, and were therefore missing out on vital support to keep them safe.
For the Bill to truly support all young victims and witnesses, clause 1 must refer to the eligibility criteria in the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999, which provides for enhanced rights and special measures for those under the age of 18 at the time of the offence. The victims code of practice also recognises the issue, under its definition of “vulnerable or intimidated” victims, by affording eligibility to under-18s to have access to enhanced rights and special measures. Special measures include, but are not limited to, screening witnesses from the accused, providing evidence by live link, the removal of wigs and gowns, and video-recorded cross-examination.
However, despite the Crown Prosecution Service stating that special measures are available for vulnerable and intimidated witnesses to give their best evidence in court—and to help to relieve some of the stress associated with giving evidence—the Victims’ Commissioner has found that young victims were neither informed about nor in receipt of all their rights under the victims code, including access to special measures. For many children, the current justice system is simply not supporting their needs. That often compounds the abuse that they have suffered.
In oral evidence last week, this Committee heard the Children’s Commissioner explain that children and young people do not necessarily understand or report their experiences in the same way as adults. NSPCC research has previously found that special measures were seldom used. Being accompanied by a neutral supporter of the young witness’s choice, closing the public gallery in sexual offence cases, combined special measures—such as preventing the defendant’s view of the child on the live link—and giving evidence over a live link, away from the trial, were sadly rarely used. Some areas had no non-court remote sites at all.
Our courts desperately need the funding and resources to ensure that there are suitable facilities accessible for all victims’ needs and preferences. I welcome the roll-out of section 28 pre-recorded evidence in all courts, but it is key that the victim or witness can provide their evidence how they choose. For children, we must ensure that that is an informed choice.
NSPCC research also found that 150 witnesses waited an average of 3.5 hours at magistrates courts or youth courts and 5.8 hours at a Crown court, despite the victims code committing to ensure that victims giving evidence
“do not have to wait more than two hours”.
It is imperative that all victims under the age of 18 be recognised as eligible for special measures under section 16 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999, so that they are recognised by all relevant agencies as vulnerable and therefore receive their enhanced rights. We need to actively include children within the definition of a victim so that they can be afforded the appropriate support to which they are entitled, in a way that they can understand and access. Will the Minister explain whether he will take any additional steps, either in the guidance or separately from the proceedings of the Bill, to ensure that all child victims and witnesses can access their rights, particularly special measures?
Edward Argar
Amendment 63 seeks to add wording to the definition of a victim to explicitly state that it includes children. I reassure the hon. Lady that children who are
“a victim of, or a witness to, criminal conduct”
are already covered by the definition of a victim under part 1 of the Bill, and included in the current victims code. The relevant provision of the Bill—clause 1(2)(a)—says
“where the person has seen, heard, or otherwise directly experienced the effects of, criminal conduct at the time the conduct occurred”,
and that is not an age-specific or age-exclusive point; it is universally applicable.
The definition of a victim covers individuals, including children, who have suffered harm as a direct result of being subjected to a crime. It also covers persons, including children, who have suffered harm as a direct result of certain circumstances, including the death of a close family member as a direct result of criminal conduct, and being born from rape. The hon. Lady quite understandably made a number of broader points about the operation of the criminal justice system and the courts. I will confine my remarks to the amendments, but I note those points.
The Bill’s definition of a victim has been amended, as the hon. Lady touched on, to align with the full definition of domestic abuse in part 1 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, which will also be set out under the new victims code. The purpose is to have clarity and proper read-across between different pieces of legislation. The Bill therefore defines child victims who witness or experience the effects of domestic abuse as victims in their own right.
Individuals—again, including children—who witness a crime are covered by the Bill. We have described that as seeing, hearing or otherwise directly experiencing the effect of a crime at the “time the conduct occurred”, which ensures that we do not exclude individuals who have been harmed by witnessing a crime even if they were not physically present when it occurred. For example, they may have seen it occur online as it was happening if it was being streamed or similar.
We recognise that individuals will be affected differently after witnessing a crime. That is why we have specified that an individual will be defined as a victim only if they have suffered harm as a direct result of witnessing criminal conduct. In that context, amendment 63 is unnecessary as children are already covered by the definition in the Bill, which, as I said, also aligns with the DA Act 2021.
Amendment 42 would require the victims code to contain specific provision for children who are victims or witnesses. Again, I reassure the hon. Lady that the definitions in both the Bill and the victims code include adults and children alike. Children are also explicitly recognised in the current victims code as vulnerable victims. Some of her points—for example, on how a court case is run and the length of time given for evidence—will, to a degree, be down to the way a judge runs that particular case with judicial independence and discretion. However, that explicit recognition in the victims code means that children have entitlements and “enhanced rights”, such as getting information about key decisions more quickly.
That recognition is set out in the enhanced rights section of the code, which specifies that victims are “eligible for enhanced rights” if they are
“under 18 years of age at the time of the offence”.
Young people are automatically eligible for the special measures included in the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999, which the hon. Lady mentioned, when they are giving evidence. Such measures can include communication assistance through a registered intermediary, giving evidence by live link or having their evidence pre-recorded, subject to the agreement of the court or the judge.
I fully support the aim of making the victims code as clear as possible about the different and distinct needs of children. The hon. Lady is aware that we will be consulting on a new victims code after this Bill gains Royal Assent, and we have published a draft to inform the debate prior to that formal consultation. This is one of the areas that we will be focusing on in reviewing and updating that code.
Sarah Champion
The Minister is right to say that the special measures are subject to a judge’s discretion. I wonder whether, when he is looking at updating the guidance and the code, he could look quite closely into that, because of the example in Rotherham, where we have the ongoing past cases of grooming gangs. We are finding that the National Crime Agency tries to go for one judge, who is very aware of the need for special measures and very supportive of that. The concern is that, across the country, other judges are more subjective with regard to whether they think special measures are an automatic right and what the threshold is. Therefore, when the Minister is doing his review, will he look specifically at the guidance to judges about whether to allow special measures?
Edward Argar
I hope that the hon. Lady will forgive me if I resist the temptation to stray into areas that are properly judicial—related to judicial independence and, indeed, training and the Judicial College. I am very cautious about trespassing on judicial independence. She has made her point on the record, but as a Minister I have to be a little cautious in that respect.
The Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, when she gave evidence to the Committee last week, welcomed the fact that work with her office had already begun. We are looking forward to working with her and others—including, indeed, in this House—as we prepare a further draft code for consultation. Given that the current code already includes provision for child victims and witnesses and that we have made a commitment to make that clearer in the new code, and given the definition in clause 1(2)(a), I hope that I will persuade the hon. Lady not to press her amendment to a Division at this point.
Sarah Champion
I thank the Minister for everything that he has said. I have comfort at this point, so I will not press the amendment. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Sarah Champion
I beg to move amendment 40, in clause 1, page 2, line 5, after “that” insert
“no report of the conduct has been made to a criminal justice body and that”.
This amendment aims to ensure that a person could meet the definition of a victim without needing to make a report to a criminal justice body.
I am nearly done with my amendments—on this clause. [Laughter.] Sorry; but I will say up front that this is a straightforward probing amendment, which aims to ensure, in relation to determining whether a person is a victim for the purposes of this legislation, that the scope is expanded to include those who do not choose to report an offence to the criminal justice system. Clause 1 of the Bill has been substantially improved since the drafting. I am relieved that it states that
“in determining whether a person is a victim by virtue of any conduct, it is immaterial that no person has been charged with or convicted of an offence in respect of the conduct”.
However, I am keen for the Minister to clarify that this also does not require the victim to report the crime to a criminal justice body.
Janet Daby
I want to refer again to the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, who said in her evidence to us:
“You are absolutely right: most victims do not report to the police. The reality is that it is probably one in six.”––[Official Report, Victims and Prisoners Public Bill Committee, 20 June 2023; c. 7, Q4.]
I just want to emphasise that point: many victims do not report to the police. Of course, there is a question following that, as to whether a prosecution takes place.
Sarah Champion
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, as is the Domestic Abuse Commissioner. That is why it is imperative that all victims and witnesses, particularly children, can access support through this legislation without needing to engage with the criminal justice process.
I have worked with the NSPCC on this amendment, as it raised concerns due to the fact that the majority of crimes against children and young people are not reported to the police. It can be extremely difficult for victims and survivors to speak about their experiences of child sexual abuse, as revisiting traumatic childhood experiences often causes significant distress. Prior experiences of being silenced, blamed or not taken seriously by the justice system can discourage victims and survivors from disclosing child sexual abuse again.
The independent inquiry into child sexual abuse found that child sexual abuse is dramatically under-reported. The 2018-19 crime survey for England and Wales estimated that 76% of adults who had experienced rape or assault by penetration did not tell anyone about their experience at the time. A large number of the inquiry’s investigation reports noted that the true scale of offending was likely to be far higher than the available data appears to suggest. The Government’s own “Tackling Child Sexual Abuse Strategy 2021” noted that:
“People were even less likely to tell the police—only an estimated 7% of victims and survivors informed the police at the time of the offence and only 18% told the police at any point.”
Can the Minister guarantee, on the record, that the definition of victim includes those who choose not to report to the criminal justice system? The majority of victims, who choose not to report an offence, must still be able to access support under the Bill.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for the amendment, which she has clarified is a probing amendment; she is seeking clarity from the Box, as it were, that someone can come within the definition of a victim in the Bill without needing to report the relevant crime. Let me reassure her at the outset that that is already the case in the Bill’s existing definition.
Victims of crime are considered victims under part 1 of the Bill, whether or not the offence has been reported to the police or any other criminal justice body. This is a fundamental part of the Bill, because we want to make it clear that victims of crime are able to access support services, regardless of whether they have reported a crime.
The point is covered by clause 1(4)(b), which sets out that,
“criminal conduct” means conduct which constitutes an offence (but in determining whether a person is a victim by virtue of any conduct, it is immaterial that no person has been charged with or convicted of an offence in respect of the conduct).”
I am happy to clarify and build on that for the hon. Lady: reporting or conviction is not required to meet the threshold. That echoes the current victims code and approach, which is clear that relevant entitlements are available,
“regardless of whether anyone has been charged, convicted of a criminal offence and regardless of whether you decide to report the crime to the police or you do not wish to cooperate with the investigation.”
In the new draft code that we have published, that point is further highlighted in the opening section on who is a victim under the code, which explicitly sets out:
“The term ‘criminal conduct’ reflects the fact that you do not need to have reported the crime to the police to be considered a victim of crime. Some of the Rights under this Code apply to you regardless of your engagement with the criminal justice system.”
The reason it is worded that way is because some of the rights are clearly worded as only to be directly relevant if someone is in the criminal justice process. It is explicit there that the code would apply to the individuals that the hon. Lady seeks to ensure are encompassed in this context.
I appreciate that the amendment seeks to make the fact that reporting is not required as clear as possible. Our view is that the amendment is not necessary because of the current drafting of the Bill and the wording of the revised victims code.
Noting the hon. Lady’s words that this is a probing amendment, I hope she will not feel the need to press it further.
Sarah Champion
I thank the Minister for that clarity. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Anna McMorrin
I want to put on the record my thanks to the Clerks here, but also to Claire Waxman and Dame Vera Baird, who have steadfastly demonstrated their commitment to championing victims’ rights.
Dame Vera’s commitment has not wavered, even though she left her role as Victims’ Commissioner last September. Victims and advocates have continued to step up and make their voices heard, even when the Government have delayed the promised Bill time and again—we have been waiting eight years for it. Many victims, advocates and groups have continued to campaign and champion the issues. I particularly commend Claire Waxman, who has been pushing for this Bill for 10 years. Without those people, we would not be where we are today—at long last sitting here and scrutinising the Bill, line by line.
Anna McMorrin
Yes, that is what I am looking at right now. I wanted to make a couple of general points, because we are beginning the line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill, if you will just allow me to do so, Sir Edward; you are being very generous—thank you.
We can only do this by working together. I turn to the amendments that we have discussed today—the critical ones tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham, who is a steadfast champion for the rights of those who have been abused and for the rights of children. I commend her for that work. The amendments we have discussed seek to strengthen clause 1 on the definition of a victim, and they particularly consider antisocial behaviour and child criminal exploitation.
My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley, when speaking to her amendment 54, made some emotive points on death by suicide and the impact on family members.
I hope that we can work together as we move forward in our consideration of the Bill, so that amendments, including those to clause 1, are discussed and debated, and so that we can amend the Bill later down the line, and so that victims’ rights, particularly the rights of child victims, are clearly defined in the Bill and that we strengthen the Bill as a result.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to right hon. and hon. Members for their points. It is important and right that we have taken a considerable amount of time to consider this clause on the definition of a victim, which of course is central—quite understandably—to what this Bill is about. It is a piece of legislation that I am pleased to be taking through Committee. If it does not harm my prospects with the Whips to say so, I will say that when I first entered this House in 2015 I took a close interest in working on this issue, alongside the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), having both been elected at the same time.
The hon. Member for Cardiff North mentioned the role of Victims’ Commissioner, which, as she will appreciate, is an extremely important post. We have seen a number of changes of Lord Chancellor in recent years. As she would expect, the new Lord Chancellor takes a very close interest in the position and is determined to make sure that he gets things right, gets the right person and that the process is properly followed. I know that he is as keen as she is to see the post filled, but filled properly.
Anna McMorrin
I appreciate the Minister’s answer. Could he come back to the Committee with a timetable for the appointment?
Edward Argar
It is probably premature to offer a prescriptive timetable, but I know that it is very much on the Lord Chancellor’s mind and that he recognises the importance of the role.
I am grateful for the debate on clause 1 and the various amendments. It is clear that we all agree on the importance of the clause. As I have alluded to, I am happy to work across the House where possible to see whether there are ways that we can address the points that have been raised.
Our intention in clause 1 is to define “victim” for the purposes of the relevant clauses in part 1 of the Bill, so that it is clear who is covered and entitled to benefit from the measures. If I may put it this way, we have sought to be more permissive and less prescriptive to avoid inadvertently excluding particular groups. In resisting some of the amendments, we have tried to avoid an approach that is duplicative. We do not need to put something in the Bill if there are other ways that we can achieve the same objective.
The clause focuses on victims of crime, which is relevant to the Bill’s measures designed to improve support services for victims, regardless of whether they report the crime, and to improve compliance with the victims code. I am grateful for the constructive engagement on the clause. I believe that the definition as drafted is a good definition, but there are certain points that I will take away and reflect on further.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Sarah Champion
On a point of order, Sir Edward. Amendments 44 and 49 have been grouped together, but they have little to nothing to do with each other. Is there any way to separate them, or am I stuck with that group?
The Chair
Well, I can ungroup them. We will deal with them separately.
Clause 2
The victims’ code
Sarah Champion
I beg to move amendment 44, in clause 2, page 2, line 18, leave out paragraph (a) and insert—
“(a) should be provided with information from all state agencies with responsibilities under the victims’ code, including the NHS, to help them understand the criminal justice process and beyond, including grant of leave or discharge.”
This amendment would extend the principle that victims should be given information about the criminal justice process to explicitly include the NHS, in order to bring mental health tribunal decisions in line with the rest of the criminal justice system.
I tabled amendment 44—and amendment 45, which we will come to later—because victims of serious crime committed by mentally disordered offenders currently do not get the same rights and entitlements as victims of offenders who are not mentally disordered. I apologise for the clunky terminology. Amendment 44 is vital, as critical information is often withheld from victims when the offender is mentally disordered.
In diminished responsibility cases, the psychiatric evidence is often considered and agreed in private by the Crown Prosecution Service without any meaningful disclosure to the victims. In those cases, there is often no trial, just a brief sentencing hearing where the evidence is not examined or tested in open court, which leaves victims completely in the dark. Often, offenders in such cases will have been patients of local NHS mental health trusts, which will have conducted their own investigations into the care and treatment of the offender. Many of those investigations are not shared with the families as they should be, with NHS trusts often ignoring official national NHS guidance without sanction. NHS trusts seem unaware of their responsibilities and duties to victims under the victims code.
I am speaking about the issue from personal experience. I have worked with the brilliant charity Hundred Families on this amendment, as well as amendment 45, because it has been supporting a bereaved family in my constituency that has been affected by this type of case. In February 2022, my constituent’s son, Paul Reed, was murdered on a ward in Rotherham Hospital by a fellow patient. Although there is clear NHS guidance requiring the trusts to investigate serious incidents, the hospital did not even consider Paul’s murder a serious incident. Initially, the hospital claimed that it had done a full investigation but would not share it with the family; then it turned out that it had not done an investigation at all. It required many letters, and finally my direct involvement, to get it to start a proper investigation.
That case, like others, shows that the Bill needs specifically to include the NHS to get it to take its duties to victims seriously. This is, sadly, a widespread issue; I know that Committee members have direct experience of it with their constituents. There are around 100 to 120 mental health-related homicides in the UK each year. In December 2022, there were 4,580 restricted patients —mentally disordered offenders who have committed serious crimes and are considered dangerous—in psychiatric hospitals in England and Wales. Around 2,979 restricted patients are discharged every year, although 268 were recalled to hospital according to the latest figures from 2020.
There is a very high rate of reoffending by such patients on their release. A recent long-term academic study found that 44% of offenders discharged from a medium-secure psychiatric unit were reconvicted following release, mostly for assault. Nearly 30% were convicted of a grave offence such as robbery, arson, wounding, attempted murder or rape. Another study of patients released from high-secure psychiatric wards found that 38% were reconvicted, 26% of them for serious offences. These are very sensitive cases that may raise broader concerns about processes, but victims and families deserve access to information, just as they would if the case went through the criminal justice system.
The amendment would ensure that the NHS is explicitly included among agencies that have a duty to inform victims of decisions made about an offender. I genuinely cannot understand why that is not happening now, and I really hope that the Minister will address that serious oversight. These families have already experienced immense grief and shock. They must be able to remain informed about the case, just as they would if the offender did not have any mental health issues.
Maria Eagle
I rise briefly to support my hon. Friend’s amendment. She has touched on an important point: the difference in treatment between offenders who end up in jail and those who end up in some form of secure hospital or mental health unit. That is something that struck me when I was a Minister at the MOJ, in what now seems like the dim and distant past—in fact, it is.
The main reason for the difference is that the offender in the mental health hospital or secure unit is treated by clinicians, who have that person’s clinical recovery at the core of what they do. They are very much focused on that and not so much on the broader issues of public safety, as would be the case in the criminal justice system, in the prison and at the Parole Board. I am not saying that clinicians do not consider those issues at all; I am saying that the focus is different.
Therein lies one of the reasons for the difference that my hon. Friend’s amendment highlights: the focus is on getting the individual who is in mental health provision up on their feet and back out operating in society, rather than on the broader public safety issues that may arise from that person’s being back out and about. Putting such an obligation on health service organisations is the kind of prompt that would make clinicians—and treating clinicians in particular—think a little more about the broader issues, instead of focusing entirely on the recovery of their patient.
One can understand why a clinician focuses on the recovery of their patient. I am not criticising that, but often there is not the overview of the broader public safety implication of any decision. I hope that the Minister, with his very open mind, which he has already demonstrated today, will consider that there is an issue here, and that there has been for many years. Depending on the kind of offence, it is easy to end up in either mental health provision or jail; some offenders could end up in either, yet the way they are treated can be very different, as can the reasons that decisions are made.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Rotherham for tabling the amendment and airing this issue. The amendment seeks to ensure that victims are given
“information from all state agencies with responsibilities under the victims’ code, including the NHS, to help them understand the criminal justice process and beyond, including grant of leave or discharge.”
I recognise the importance of ensuring that victims receive the information they need to help them understand the process, including when the release—temporary or otherwise—of offenders detained outside the prison system is being considered.
The hon. Member for Rotherham drew attention to cases where an offender was subject to a hospital order. As the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood highlighted, such offenders are subject to a different process from offenders in the prison estate. They are viewed through the prism of health as opposed to criminal justice, and decisions about their detention under the Mental Health Act are taken by the mental health tribunal or the Secretary of State for Justice, rather than by the Parole Board. However, I want to reassure hon. and right hon. Members that communication with victims about those processes is handled in the same way, through the HMPPS victim contact scheme.
Under the scheme, the victim liaison officer will share information about the process for considering release and will notify victims when the patient is having their detention reviewed. The victim liaison officer will also support victims and make representations to decision makers on conditions of discharge in appropriate cases. The victim liaison officer is best placed to communicate with and support victims in such circumstances, as they will be expert in the process and have victims’ interests at the centre of their work.
The victims code includes some information about the process and what victims can expect from those involved, under right 11, the right
“to be given information about the offender following a conviction.”
I think it is right to keep the detail of who will deliver services, and how, in the code rather than in the Bill, in order to build in flexibility so that it can continue to be updated and to enable the inclusion of more operational details, such as those I have outlined. However, I take the point made by the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood and the hon. Member for Rotherham about how we get an organisation such as the NHS—I had the privilege being the Minister of State for Health for two and a half years—to engage with that in what is understandably a different context, because there is often a medical mindset rather than a criminal justice one. My plea to Members is that this is better considered in the context of the revised code, and that perhaps we can use that to better draw out victims’ rights.
Sarah Champion
Could I push the Minister to say that he will consider this in the revision of the code? I hear everything that he says, but it relies on all the different parts working together, which simply is not the case.
Edward Argar
Notwithstanding any legislative reason or primary legislation that might limit our scope, I am quite happy to look at it in the context of the code. We have published a pre-draft to give colleagues and organisations the opportunity to engage with it and make suggestions before it goes to the formal consultation process, and so that it is available to members of the Committee during our deliberations. I encourage the hon. Lady to engage with that.
With that, I hope that I may encourage the hon. Lady to treat this as a probing amendment, rather than one she wishes to press to a Division.
Sarah Champion
I will indeed treat it as a probing amendment. I am given confidence by the Minister’s words. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Anna McMorrin
I beg to move amendment 6, in clause 2, page 2, line 18, leave out “should” and insert “must”.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 5, in clause 2, page 2, line 20, leave out “should” and insert “must”.
Amendment 7, in clause 2, page 2, line 22, leave out “should” and insert “must”.
Amendment 8, in clause 2, page 2, line 24, leave out “should” and insert “must”.
Anna McMorrin
In his opening speech on Second Reading, the Justice Secretary stated that
“in order to deliver justice, victims must be treated not as mere spectators of the criminal justice system, but as core participants in it. That is the mission of this Government and of this Bill. It will boost victims’ entitlements”
and
“make victims’ voices heard”.—[Official Report, 15 May 2023; Vol. 732, c. 583.]
On paper, it sounds like the Government are dedicated to putting victims first, yet they stumble at the first hurdle. Clause 2(3) states only that agencies should comply with the four overarching principles of the victims code, making those principles weak and open to interpretation.
Ellie Reeves
Does my hon. Friend agree that if the Bill is really going to serve victims, it is important that it sets out what must be done rather than what should be done? We all know that when the word “should” is used, it often simply does not happen, and that is not good enough.
Anna McMorrin
I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. That is at the core of why I would like the Government to agree to the amendment. The principles are at the core of the Bill and agencies must comply with them. If they do not, that will call into question the essence of this entire piece of legislation.
I understand from the Government’s response to the Justice Committee’s pre-legislative scrutiny report that they believe the wording cannot be “must”—I am probably predicting what the Minister will say—because agencies require flexibility. However, having spoken to various stakeholders, I have seen no example where such flexibility would be required or reason why we could not reflect it in the code, rather than by watering down victims’ rights in the Bill.
As the Government’s reasoning remains unclear, I hope the Minister might clear that up for us today. If the intention is to prevent civil litigation from victims, the Bill already achieves that. Victims deserve some form of accountability from criminal justice agencies, and weakening victims’ rights by using the word “should” will result only in a Bill that fails to make a difference on the ground.
The victims code has been in place since 2006. Compliance with the code has always been low; even though the Government have reformed it four or five times, that has not driven better compliance. The Bill is an opportunity to improve that, but by stating that agencies only “should” comply, it absolutely fails to do so. I will repeat what London Victims’ Commissioner Claire Waxman said during the evidence session. She said that
“delivering the code is a minimum level of service to victims. Even if agencies are complying and delivering it, it is still a minimum level.”––[Official Report, Victims and Prisoners Public Bill Committee, 20 June 2023; c. 29, Q67.]
As shadow victims Minister, I speak to survivors every day. Their harrowing truths and inspiring bravery helps shape what we do in this place, and I thank every single one of them for sharing their truth with me. I want to pay tribute to one of them, Sophie, who spoke to me. She was raped when she was just 19 years old. After Sophie reported the rape to the police, she was brought in to be interviewed, after which months went by with little contact or communication about her case and what was going to happen. She was not told of her entitlement to an independent sexual violence adviser for eight months after speaking to the police and had to wait two years for her day in court after it was pushed back several times. Sophie was told by the detective on her case that it would help her to give evidence in person in court, which she did, even though she was absolutely petrified and the thought of it retraumatised her. She desperately did not want to.
Her Crown Prosecution Service barrister looked at Sophie’s case for only 30 minutes before the trial. He had no communication with her before that—not even a conversation before the trial began. Sophie told me that she felt like a tick-box exercise for the CPS to just get its stats up and get the case into court.
During the trial, Sophie was put behind a screen to protect her from seeing the perpetrator—a little screen that goes up, knowing that the perpetrator is there—but the defence barrister persisted and used a horrific scare tactic to throw Sophie off. He asked her to open a booklet that was in front of her. She opened it to page 1 and in front of her was the image of the man who was the perpetrator. Her own barrister did absolutely nothing to stop that. That not only had a very real mental health impact there and then—she suffered a panic attack and anxiety and had to leave the courtroom—but she could not gather herself afterwards because it had retraumatised her. She said to me that she thought she was going to vomit there and then in the court, and nobody did anything to stop her. The witness assistant, who was of course trying her best, said, “Pull yourself together, Sophie. You need to go back in there and do this.”
Sophie told me that because of the technique used she was unable to remember any of the important details of the incident, and we know what trauma does: people cannot recall really important incidents and detail. The intense stress and anxiety she was experiencing meant that she just could not remember. She believes that that led to the not guilty verdict.
After waiting a torturous two years for justice, Sophie was retraumatised and her attacker walked free. Although I agree with the four overarching principles, I do not agree that they are a step in the right direction for victims. We must make sure that the Bill is fit for purpose and that agencies have a duty on them. That is why the amendments and changing “should” to “must” are essential.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the shadow Minister for the amendments and the opportunity to debate them, and for her articulating her rationale for them so clearly. I hope you will allow me to address all four together, Sir Edward, as they each seek to ensure that the victims code is required to make provision for services for victims that reflect the overarching code of principles in the Bill—as the hon. Lady has said, replacing “should” with “must”.
I want to explain the reasons behind the approach we have taken. The principles provide a legislative framework for the code, which ensures that the code captures the core issues that we know victims are most concerned about—the right information, the right support, the opportunity to have their views heard and the ability to challenge decisions that affect them.
I reassure the Committee that the detailed entitlements for victims are set out in the victims code. As it is a statutory code of practice, there is already a clear expectation that agencies will deliver the entitlements that it sets out, and agencies are required to justify any departure from it if challenged by victims or the courts. The hon. Lady gave the example of particular cases. There will be many others. Without straying into decisions made by judges in those cases, she illustrated through that example why the principles matter.
Jess Phillips
Does the Minister agree that if this was written into primary legislation and it did not happen, a victim who sought to challenge that would have a case in law to do so, and would not otherwise?
Edward Argar
I will turn to non-compliance and why we believe that the approach that we have set out in the clause is the right one. I suspect that Opposition Members may take a different view, but after making a little progress, I will hopefully address some of their points—whether or not to their satisfaction.
Maria Eagle
Will the Minister give way again, before he goes on? I am not seeking to try his patience.
Maria Eagle
Dame Vera Baird, the former Victims’ Commissioner, said in evidence:
“There is a statistic—from 2020, I think—that 70% of people who have been through the criminal justice system as victims have never heard of the victims code. We used Office for National Statistics data in 2021 and showed that 80% of victims who had gone through the entire criminal justice system had never heard of the victims code. The first code was in 2006, so it has been completely ignored for 18 years.”––[Official Report, Victims and Prisoners Public Bill Committee, 20 June 2023; c. 29, Q66.]
How will the Minister’s wording tackle that better than beefing up the language in the Bill would?
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady, but there is a slight difference between her two points. That survey refers to the number of victims who were not aware of the code; that does not necessarily mean that their rights were not available to them, or even that they were not given to them. They may not have seen it through the prism of the victims code, but they may have been kept informed. She is right to highlight that under Governments of all political complexions there is more to do in driving this, but the key point that that evidence points to is the importance of raising awareness of the code, ensuring that people know it exists and understand what it can do for them. As we progress through the other clauses, I suspect that we will touch on how we can do more on that. Raising awareness of the code’s existence and what is in it is the crucial first step to empowering people to request, push for and demand their rights under it.
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
In terms of raising awareness, does my right hon. Friend agree that the language used in any explanatory materials needs to be crystal clear, and tested for comprehension by people of all levels of ability and understanding? We know that many people in prison who come up against the criminal justice system from that side have very low reading ages. It is really important, because some offenders are also the victims of crime, that what we put into legislation with every good intention is clearly understood.
Edward Argar
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is one of the reasons, but not the only reason—I suspect we may touch on this when we come to amendment 49—why our approach is to place a greater reliance on the victims code, because the nature of legislation is that there is often a requirement for it to be phrased in a certain way with particular language for good legal and drafting reasons. With a statutory code such as the victims code, there is greater flexibility to ensure that it can do what it aims to do, which is to make it accessible. As I said, I suspect we may touch on this when we discuss amendment 49 from the hon. Member for Rotherham.
On addressing non-compliance, the Bill places a new duty on criminal justice bodies to collect and share code compliance information with police and crime commissioners, who in turn are under a new duty to share information with the Secretary of State. We also intend for information to be shared within national oversight structures, and there is a duty on the Secretary of State to publish information, which will allow the public to assess, through greater transparency, the compliance of public bodies with the code. Where issues are identified by police and crime commissioners or others, operational agencies can take action to address them and enforce standards. Should local solutions fail, senior figures in the criminal justice system will provide national oversight to drive improvements at a system level. Ministers already have powers to intervene where systemic failures occur, such as the ability to direct inspections or direct measures to remedy failures.
When things go wrong, victims can make a complaint. The Bill will simplify the process for victims of crime to escalate complaints. It does that by removing the need to raise a compliant through an MP before it can be made to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. Instead, it allows victims to make a complaint directly or through a nominated representative. I know that Members of this House are always diligent in considering PHSO requests and forms from members of the public and their constituents—we look at them, we review them and we sign and submit them where appropriate—but we believe that this simplifies the process in these circumstances and provides for direct access. The PHSO will investigate complaints and can recommend that an organisation issues an apology, provides a financial remedy or takes action to resolve the complaint to prevent the same thing from happening again. Crucially, it can follow up on whether action has been taken and report to Parliament where an organisation has failed, not only providing a remedy for individuals but being a driving force for improvements for victims.
In summary, our view is that the Bill provides an appropriate legal framework for the victims code that sends a clear message on the principles that are important for victims, alongside new monitoring and oversight measures to drive up compliance with the code. I hope that the shadow Minister will not press her amendments to a Division, but I will wait and see.
Anna McMorrin
I thank the Minister for his response. As I predicted in my outline—I must admit, I am not psychic, but I do read the Minister’s responses to the Justice Committee and in pre-legislative scrutiny—I am disappointed that the view has not changed, because when speaking to agencies and victims, that is what they all tell me is needed to provide the support that victims so desperately need. I outlined that in the emotive response from Sophie, who spoke to me about her awful experience, but we know that that is just one experience. These experiences happen time and again across the country, and I am sure that because all of us here have an interest in victims and the justice system, we will all have heard similar cases.
I am disappointed that the Minister has not understood that and is not seeking to change “should” to “must”. As we heard clearly in the evidence sessions, and as my right hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood mentioned in regard to the former Victims’ Commissioner, who talked about the need for this to be outlined, criminal justice agencies do not know that the code even exists. Changing “should” to “must” would be a vital way of ensuring that this is on the face of the Bill. Victims deserve some sort of accountability from these agencies, and the weakening of their rights through using only the word “should” will not make a difference on the ground. I hope that we are trying to work together today to make that difference for victims on the ground. The victims code has been in place since 2006, but as has been outlined today and in statements from our witnesses, it is not being used. It is therefore not making a tangible difference to victims’ experiences and the criminal justice agencies are not using it to its full potential.
I will not press the amendment to a vote now, but may bring it back at a later stage. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Sarah Champion
I beg to move amendment 49, in clause 2, page 2, line 19, at end insert
“in a language or format that they can understand;”.
As the Minister predicted, this amendment dovetails nicely into his remarks. The prominence of right to understand and be understood in the code is genuinely welcome and has the potential to significantly improve the experiences of victims who speak English as a second or additional language—EAL. However, for these basic rights to be upheld and to make meaningful change, they must be enforceable. It is therefore vital that they are enshrined in more detail in primary legislation. In particular, the entitlements underpinning the right to understand and be understood must be enshrined more directly in the Bill.
Failing to address and respond to communication barriers could risk the police having incomplete information and evidence from victims due to a lack of support to ensure that they are understood. SignHealth has highlighted a case where a deaf victim did not want their family to be involved and requested to make her disclosure outside of the home. Instead of having the conversation at the station, the officer took a statement from a British Sign Language user in their car, using a pen, paper and gestures. She was left vulnerable and unable to fluently express herself. When she attended a meeting with the police, no support or interpretation services were provided. She was handed a “no further action” letter that provided no rationale. She had no understanding of what the letter meant and had to struggle to use Google Translate to understand the decision. Such examples highlight how failing to respond to communication barriers can also result in cases not being adequately investigated, and subsequently closed.
It is deeply concerning that statutory bodies are enabling perpetrators to exploit these vulnerabilities and to keep controlling victims while remaining unpunished themselves. Amendment 49 is essential to ensure that all victims can access information in a language or format they can understand. It is crucial that this is explicitly on the face of the Bill, because if a victim cannot understand the information provided, their rights have not been met.
Currently, spoken language is not recorded systematically within the criminal justice system. There is no accurate data available on the number of victims who speak EAL. There is also evidence that criminal justice practitioners often make do with alternative forms of support, such as the use of Google Translate, which victims report to be much less helpful than professional language support. The absence of interpretation provision has been linked to a number of adverse outcomes, ranging from inaccurate statements being taken to a negative effect on victims’ wellbeing and trust in the police. This is not acting in the best interests of the victim and does not enable us to achieve justice, so I hope the Minister will focus on these issues.
Maria Eagle
I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham for tabling the amendment. It is very easy to forget about disabled people in our public services, and there is an obligation under the Equality Act 2010 to provide access to public services in a way that works for disabled people, which can often involve proper translations or formats. Given that disabled people are disproportionately victims of crime, it is particularly incumbent on us, when considering the victims code, to make sure that it is accessible to those who are likely to benefit from it or who could benefit from it. The more vulnerable a victim is, the more likely they are to benefit from proper access to the rights in the code and the support it provides. It would be an omission if we did not make it clear.
Sarah Champion
There is also a common misunderstanding that deaf people will be able to understand information in written form, but English is not their first language—British Sign Language is—and we have now rightly recognised it as a language in its own right. They are being asked to read something in a second language that they may or may not be competent in.
Maria Eagle
Absolutely: prelingually deaf people in particular do not have English as a first language. British Sign Language is their first language and we cannot just assume that they will be able to read written English in the same way in which they could understand proper sign language interpretation. That is a misunderstanding and a lack of awareness on the part of those who provide services. If we do not make it clear that access has to be provided, with reasonable adjustments to ensure that deaf people can understand what is being said and can exercise their rights, we will not be doing a proper job.
It is all too easy to think about this as an added extra—that it would be good if we had enough money in the budget to translate the victims code into different languages—but translating the code is an essential part of ensuring that it is implemented and usable by many victims. If we do not do this, we will not have the success that we all hope for from putting the principles underlying the code into legislation. We can have as much flexibility as we like by not putting the draft code into primary legislation, but we need to make sure it is accessible to those who need it. The amendment is important. It is not a nice added extra: it is an essential part of ensuring proper awareness and that the victims code is usable and benefits those who need it to access their rights and to be able to deal with the criminal justice system as victims.
Edward Argar
Amendment 49 would amend the first principle of the victims code, which says that victims should be provided with information to help them to understand the criminal justice process, to state that the code should be provided in a format or language required for a victim to understand.
The victims code includes an entitlement—indeed, it is the very first entitlement—for victims to be able to understand and to be understood. The right states:
“You have the Right to be given information in a way that is easy to understand and to be provided with help to be understood, including, where necessary, access to interpretation and translation services.”
Not only is it implicit in that that the issues raised by the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood and the hon. Member for Rotherham are addressed, but in the revised draft of the victims code that we have published, footnote 28 on page 15, which sets out right 1 in more detail, explicitly says that the right
“includes both spoken and non-spoken interpreting, for example if a victim is deaf or hard of hearing.”
It is there in the code not only implicitly, but explicitly, particularly in respect of the circumstances alluded to by the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood.
We appreciate that the criminal justice process is complex and on occasion can appear impenetrable. The code is absolutely clear in right 1, which is “To be able to understand and to be understood”—
Edward Argar
I will finish my sentence, then of course I will. The code is absolutely clear in right 1 that all providers are expected to consider any relevant personal characteristics that may affect a victim’s ability to understand and be understood, and to communicate with victims in simple and accessible language—a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury in his intervention —to help them to understand what is happening.
Sarah Champion
I began my speech on the amendment by welcoming the new changes, but the fact of having it enforceable is the nub of the amendment. Is the Minister able to speak about that? I have the right to be treated with respect in this place, but it does not always happen.
Edward Argar
I appreciate the hon. Lady’s point. I will just round off my point, then address her point specifically. Right 1 of the code is clear that victims who, for example, have difficulty understanding or speaking English—the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood alluded to the fact that some people’s first language will be not English but British Sign Language, so they would be encompassed in the wording—are entitled to use an interpreter when being interviewed by the police or giving evidence as a witness, and so on. It also sets out the circumstances in which victims are able to receive translations of documents or information and makes it clear that all translation or interpretation services must be offered to the victim free of charge. The approach we have adopted throughout, and continue to support, is that we set out in the Bill the overarching principles that are important to victims and underpin the victims code, but the operational detail of how they are delivered sits in the code itself.
To address the hon. Member for Rotherham’s point, it is of course a statutory code, and we are strengthening that in the way we are approaching it in this legislation, but I appreciate her point. When she reviews the code, if she has suggestions about how right 1 on page 15 might be made more explicit—it is there, but she might argue that the footnote 28 at the bottom of page 15 could be made rather more prominent—I am happy to reflect on them and, equally and more broadly, any suggestions that she or other right hon. and hon. Members have on how the code might be made more accessible, including in its language, which goes to my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury’s point in the debate on a previous group of amendments.
We are clear that given that the focus in the code is on the need to provide information in a way that is understood by those who need it, the amendment is unnecessary. We believe that the code is the right place for the right to be articulated, and on that basis I hope that the hon. Member for Rotherham will consider not pressing the amendment to a Division.
Sarah Champion
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
The Chair
I have agreed to a further request to vary my grouping for debate. We will now debate amendment 45 separately, and then amendments 48 and 50, along with new clause 7.
Sarah Champion
I beg to move amendment 45, in clause 2, page 2, line 23, at end insert
“and with all state agencies with responsibilities under the victims’ code, including HMCTS and the NHS when considering leave or discharge;”.
Amendment 45 follows on from my amendment 44, which was about access to information for victims of mentally disordered offenders. Amendment 45 focuses more on release decisions. Victims need information beyond the arrest, prosecution and conviction of the offender: they also have a right to receive information about the offender’s leave and discharge. In all other situations that right is a given, but we need to ensure that it also works in practice for victims of mentally disordered offenders.
Mentally disordered offenders who have committed serious crimes are typically granted leave or discharged by mental health tribunals, also known as first tier tribunals. Hundred Families, with which I worked on the amendment, says that there is no evidence of mental health tribunals taking victims’ rights seriously—a bold statement. Victims are not considered to be interested parties when the release of dangerous offenders is being considered. Mentally disordered offenders who have committed very serious crimes can apply for leave or discharge within six months of conviction and every year thereafter. Victims of such mentally ill offenders are granted only very limited rights to comment in the tribunal hearings, particularly in comparison with when parole boards consider the discharge of offenders who have committed serious violence.
At the parole board, victims can make a personal statement, attend the hearing, receive copies of any decisions and appeal the decision. At mental health tribunals, victims cannot make any personal statements. They are not allowed to attend the hearing, do not receive decisions and have no means of challenging any decision, because they are made in secret and not publicly disclosed. I draw the Minister’s attention to his remarks about my amendment 44: what I have said brings them into dispute. I am interested to hear his thoughts about that.
Other jurisdictions—notably Scotland, but also Queensland, Australia—allow victims’ participation at mental health tribunals without any known problems. Amendment 45 simply aims to bring these victims’ rights in line with those of any victims participating in the parole process.
Edward Argar
As ever, I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her speech setting out the rationale for amendment 45. She seeks to give victims the opportunity to make their voices heard during particular types of proceedings. The amendment seeks explicitly to include the NHS and HMCTS within the victims code principle that victims should have the opportunity to have their views heard in the criminal justice process. It seeks to cover cases in which the full or temporary release of offenders detained outside the prison system under the Mental Health Act 2007 is being considered.
Eligible victims are able to provide their views on release conditions for offenders, but they are not able to explain to the decision makers in the mental health tribunal the impact that the crime had on them. We agree with the hon. Lady: we do not think that is right. Victims are able to give such explanations in the courts and the parole systems through a victim personal statement, and we believe that that should be the case regardless of where the offender is detained. That is why the Government have committed to making provision in the new victims code for victim personal statements to be submitted to mental health tribunals considering the release of an offender.
That commitment is reflected in the draft code that we have published. Right 7, the right to make a victim personal statement, includes draft text to show how that would apply to victims eligible for the victim contact scheme. We are working through the details with our partners, including the judiciary, to consider how we can appropriately achieve our aim in a way that recognises the particular sensitivities relating to the offender’s health records and conditions in these settings.
We have committed to consult on an updated victims code after the passage of the Bill. As always, I am open to working with the hon. Lady on ensuring that the new provisions relating to mental health tribunals meet the needs of victims. We will keep her updated on the work we are doing. For reasons of flexibility, it is right to keep the detail of who will deliver the provision, and how, in the code itself rather than in the Bill, but I hope that I have reassured the hon. Lady that we share her view and that we are working to deliver on that, both through the code and with the judiciary.
Sarah Champion
Indeed, and I thank the Minister. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Sarah Champion
I beg to move amendment 48, in clause 2, page 2, line 23, at end insert “, including on parole decisions;”.
This amendment seeks to clarify that the principle that victims should have the opportunity to make their views heard in the criminal justice process includes parole decisions.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 50, in clause 2, page 2, line 23, at end insert
“and should be provided with appropriate support to communicate these views;”.
New clause 7—Parole Board: victim engagement—
“(1) It is the duty of the Parole Board to monitor and report on how they support victims to make their views heard in the criminal justice process.
(2) In discharging the duty under subsection (1), the Parole Board must report to the Secretary of State on their effectiveness in—
(a) engaging victims at all stages of the criminal justice process, including informing them of outcomes, and
(b) informing victims of their right to make a Victim Personal Statement.
(3) The Secretary of State must lay a copy of any reports received under this section before Parliament within 15 days of receiving them.”
This new clause would require the Parole Board to monitor and report how they support victims to make their views heard in the criminal justice process.
Sarah Champion
I tabled the amendments and new clause because I have had to deal in a short period of time with two constituency cases of pretty horrendous child sexual exploitation in which victims of extremely serious crimes were not notified when an offender was considered for transfer to open conditions until after a decision had been made and, in one case, after the decision had been implemented, which goes completely against the existing practice that is detailed in the code and should be enforced across all our justice systems. That happened despite the statutory duty on His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service to notify victims. Neither constituent had the opportunity to express a view on the transfer, to outline their concerns or to contribute in respect of the conditions of the release. Instead, in a bolt out of a blue, they were told, seemingly by accident, that their offender was out on the streets. It is hard to imagine the shock and terror that caused them.
When I raised the cases with the then Secretary of State for Justice, I was told that both incidents were the result of human error. The two incidents were markedly similar and affected people in a relatively small geographical area in an extremely short period of time, so I find it very hard to believe that they were isolated and not, instead, a system failure. It is difficult to understand how such errors can be made if well-understood processes are in place, as we are expected to believe, and those processes are underpinned by statute. The changes in the amendments and new clause would strengthen the statutory underpinning, hopefully to thereby avoid similar incidents happening in future and ensure that such devastating mistakes could not happen again.
Amendment 48 would add “including on parole decisions” to clause 2(3)(c), which says that victims
“should have the opportunity to make their views heard in the criminal justice process”.
That should already be happening but sadly is not, and victims are being left vulnerable, uninformed and without their rights being met.
New clause 7 would place a core responsibility on the Parole Board, as the statutory body, to ensure that the right of victims to make their views heard is fulfilled, by monitoring and reporting on how it supports victims to ensure that their views are heard.
Amendment 50 would, similarly to amendment 49, ensure that victims have the opportunity to make their views heard in the criminal justice process and that they should be provided with the appropriate support to communicate their views. The amendment is supported by, among others, the Bell Foundation, to which I am grateful for its support. The amendment is vital for the victims the foundation works with to ensure that they can be involved in parole decisions.
As I stated in my remarks about amendment 49, Google Translate is used too frequently and is not an effective tool for ensuring that victims can understand and be understood. An example from Rape Crisis refers to a victim of domestic abuse and sexual violence whose first language is not English. When she attended a meeting with the police, no support or interpreting service was provided. She was handed a “no further action” letter that provided no rationale and gave no understanding of what it was. She had to struggle to use Google Translate to understand the decisions that had been made. How is she supposed to communicate her views about a parole decision if she is unable even to understand the process?
All victims deserve the right to be involved in parole decisions, but we must first ensure that they can be understood when they give their views and that they also understand the process.
Edward Argar
Before I turn to amendment 48, let me address amendment 50, which would add to the victims code the principle that victims should be provided with appropriate support to make their views heard in the criminal justice process. It is right that victims are able to make their views heard, and I agree that they may need support to help to navigate the process effectively. That is why there is already support in place for them to do so, including support provided by organisations and services, such as independent sexual violence and independent domestic violence advisers, and other victim support services that can help explain and help victims navigate the justice system. A victim personal statement is key to the victim being heard in the criminal justice process. That allows victims to explain in their own words how a crime has affected them.
Under code right 7, “To make a Victim Personal Statement”, the police are expected to provide victims with information about the victim personal statement process, so they can decide whether to make one. The College of Policing provides guidance for the police on what victims need to know about the process of making a victim personal statement. To help victims, the Ministry of Justice has published guidance called, “Making a Victim Personal Statement”, which explains what it is, how it works and what the victim needs to do.
Support at court if the victim is due to read out their victim personal statement may include special measures, such as the use of a screen or live link, and support from the witness service can include accompanying the victim when they give evidence or read their victim personal statement. If giving a victim personal statement during the parole process, victims who are part of the victim contact scheme will have a victim liaison officer, who can help them write their statement and let them know how it will be used during a parole hearing. I hope that I have gone some way to satisfy the hon. Lady that support is already in place.
Sarah Champion
I will be quick because I know we have a vote coming. I agree that the instruments are in place, but the problem is that it relies on humans to actually let the victim know or the Parole Board to let the victim support know, and that is where it is breaking down.
Edward Argar
I hope I might address that to some extent as I turn now to amendment 48 and new clause 7, which relate to the role of victims in the parole system. Amendment 48 would add parole decisions to the principle in the victims’ code that victims’ views should be heard in the criminal justice process, and new clause 7 would place a duty on the Parole Board to monitor how it supports and enables victims to give their views to the Parole Board. It would be required to report that to the Secretary of State, who in turn would be required to publish it. It is vital that victims are informed of the parole process and are given every opportunity to engage with it so their voices are heard. The parole process can be distressing for victims, so it is crucial that they understand how the system works and receive support to effectively engage in the process.
We have made improvements to the way victims can receive information and participate in parole proceedings, including the introduction of decision summaries and public hearings. Parole hearings are part of the criminal justice process, which extends beyond the trial. That means the principle that victims should have the opportunity to make their views heard in the criminal justice process already includes relevant parole decisions, so the amendment is not necessary.
Right 11 in the victims code already sets out victims’ entitlements to submit a victim personal statement as part of the parole process. Where the victim chooses to make a victim personal statement, the Parole Board Rules 2019 require that it is included in the dossier of written evidence submitted to the Parole Board by the Secretary of State. Right 11 of the code then requires the Parole Board to read the victim personal statement, if one has been made. We have committed to developing a process to allow victims the opportunity to make written submissions to the Parole Board in addition to their victim personal statement. Information in the submissions could include their views on the offender’s potential release and questions to the Parole Board. Provision for victim submissions will be included in the new victims’ code.
It is vital that victims are supported during the process, that there is oversight to ensure they are being given the opportunity to have their voices heard and that they feel supported to do so. However, the proposed new clause seeks to put duties on the Parole Board in relation to support for victims. The reality is that the Parole Board does not liaise directly with victims. In practice, the responsibility for supporting victims through the parole process lies with probation service victim liaison officers, who sit within His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service. They are specially trained to work with and support victims through the parole system, including ensuring that they can submit a victim personal statement and be informed of the outcome of the review.
Under the current code, victims are entitled to be given information about the offender following a conviction and to be told about how to make a victim personal statement. That is delivered through the referral of eligible victims to the victim contact service, and they are then assigned a victim liaison officer. That means that compliance with those entitlements can be monitored and reported on via clauses 6 and 7. The clauses place a duty on HMPPS to collect and share information on the delivery of victims code entitlements and to jointly review this with police and crime commissioners, and on police and crime commissioners to report to the Secretary of State, who will publish relevant information.
On the basis that we can monitor this important information by different means, and that an updated victims code will include the information regarding representations to the Parole Board, I encourage the hon. Lady not to press her amendment to a Division at this time.
Sarah Champion
I thank the Minister for what he says, but it does not given me the reassurances that I want, because things are not working in practice. I will not press my amendment to a vote now, but I am minded that the new clauses will come at the end of our consideration. I may well press the matter then if he is unable to give those reassurances. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)
I beg to move amendment 26, in clause 2, page 2, line 25, at end insert—
“(e) should be able to access and, where appropriate, be referred to restorative justice services;
(f) should be able to access and, where appropriate, be referred to services and support that are tailored to their individual needs.”
I am grateful to have been called to speak, Sir Edward, but I appreciate that my speech may not last for long before we are called somewhere else. My amendment relates to the inclusion of restorative justice in the victims code set out in clause 2. That was a recommendation that the Justice Committee made in its pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill, but I have tabled the amendment as a Back-Bench MP and as chair of the all-party group on restorative justice.
To give a little background and context, I was inspired to do so because of a heartbreaking and harrowing story. I know that the Minister has heard it before, but I will repeat it for the benefit of the Committee. A lovely couple living in the London Borough of Sutton, Ray and Vi Donovan, suffered the most unimaginable tragedy when their son Christopher was murdered. [Interruption.]
Elliot Colburn
I will resume by telling the story of Ray and Vi Donovan, a couple who live in the London Borough of Sutton. They went through the tragedy of losing their son, who was murdered several years ago.
A long time ago, Ray and Vi recited to me their experience of going through the criminal justice system. The police found the three boys who were responsible—they went to trial, were convicted and put behind bars. But Ray and Vi said that they never felt that they—as victims of the crime, and having lost their son in such tragic and gruesome circumstances—had had a voice at the trial. They did not have the opportunity to share their side of the story or explain how it had impacted them; it was all to do with the perpetrators.
Ray and Vi acknowledge that some time has passed since the trial; however, they have made it their life’s goal to set up a restorative justice charity in Christopher’s name and to work with wider restorative justice providers around the country to promote its use, where appropriate, and to improve access to it. That is the premise of the amendment. Studies show that only about 5% of victims are aware of restorative justice; it is often buried in a large pack or binder that victims of crime get handed.
I want to be clear about what I mean by restorative justice, because it often gets confused with the American version. The UK does it very differently. Restorative justice has no impact on sentencing, parole or anything like that; in the criminal justice space, restorative justice is the opportunity for a victim of crime, in appropriate circumstances, to meet the perpetrator. That allows them to ask questions. The most obvious question that victims of crime have is, “Why did this happen to me?” Restorative justice is designed to answer the important questions that victims often have, to which the court is often unable to provide answers.
Restorative justice is not meant to make a sentence more lenient, or to be something that a victim or perpetrator is forced to go through. Obviously, there will be circumstances where that would not be appropriate. Not every victim will feel like they want to take part, and it would not be appropriate for every victim. For example, in some cases a child would not be appropriate for restorative justice. Equally, there will be perpetrators who will not engage constructively—use the opportunity only to further traumatise their victim. The amendment is meant not to mandate the use or promotion of restorative justice, but simply to make it a right in the victims code that a victim of crime be made aware of the potential for restorative justice, and allowed to access it where necessary, after taking into consideration all the required safeguarding provisions.
I hope that the Minister will say a little more about the work that his Department wants to do in the restorative justice space. I appreciate that he may not want to accept the amendment today; however, I would be grateful for some reassurance that the Bill will enable and empower victims who want to go through the process. I stress that RJ must always be victim led. It always has to come from the victim. I would welcome some reassurances from him on how the Bill could achieve that.
Rob Butler
My hon. Friend makes some important points about restorative justice. I have seen it work very effectively both in the courts and in the prison and youth justice systems. Does he agree that there are already some very successful examples of restorative justice, particularly in our prison, probation and youth offending services, and that quite a lot of work is already being done—including for children, who he said he would probably rule out of scope? In fact, restorative justice can be very effective for under-18s.
Elliot Colburn
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I would certainly not agree with a blanket ban for children, but I appreciate that additional safeguarding concerns would need to be considered for young victims. I agree with him; I have seen this myself. I have been invited to witness such sessions happening in prisons, and some amazing work is going on. The results cannot be understated. Something like 80% to 90% of offenders will not go on to reoffend if they go through restorative justice, according to studies. I cannot remember the name of the university that conducted them, but I am happy to clarify it to the Minister later.
Janet Daby
I thank the hon. Member for making such a great speech in favour of restorative justice; I am with him on that point. Restorative justice is effective in prisons, courts and education, but would he agree that if it is to have the necessary impact in prisons, it needs to be fully resourced?
Elliot Colburn
The APPG that I chair produced a report into the state of restorative justice in the UK, and looking at resourcing RJ was one of our nine recommendations. I ask the Minister to take a look at those recommendations again to see how we can better allow victims to access RJ when they feel that they want to and when it is appropriate.
I do not deny that excellent work is being done. I commend the practitioners and prisons engaging with the issue, but far too often I hear from victims who want to go through this process that they find it a struggle—or else victims have no idea that restorative justice exists. That is why enshrining it as a right in the victims code would help to raise awareness and ensure that victims can access it if they want to. I will bring my remarks to a close, but would be grateful to hear any reassuring remarks from the Minister.
Edward Argar
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work that he and the all-party parliamentary group that he chairs do on this important issue. I am grateful to him for giving us an opportunity to debate restorative justice. He and I have spoken about it in the past; as I have highlighted, we are committed to the effective use of restorative justice in appropriate cases.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for highlighting Ray and Vi Donovan’s case and situation as an example of how restorative justice can work well. I know that when it is delivered in the right circumstances it can result in improved victim satisfaction and reduced reoffending, bringing benefits to victims, offenders and their communities.
We support local agencies providing restorative justice in the devolved model that came in a few years ago. We looked to police and crime commissioners to fund services locally, as they are best placed to assess local need. We are encouraging greater co-commissioning between police and crime commissioners and regional probation directors.
The second code principle in the Bill is already clear that victims
“should be able to access services which support them (including, where appropriate, specialist services)”.
That covers all types of support services. We would consider it to include restorative justice services where appropriate.
The code also goes further. Right 4—to be provided with information when reporting a crime—is clear that victims are entitled to information from the police about restorative justice and how to access such services in their local area, and that all service providers will consider whether victims would benefit from this information at any stage of the criminal justice process. We are also using the Bill to create a duty for agencies to raise awareness of the code, including information about restorative justice, so that victims know what services they can, and should, receive.
I hope my hon. Friend will not press his amendment; he said that it is essentially a probing amendment. Specifying different types of support services in primary legislation might, we fear, inadvertently narrow the current broad coverage, but he raises some very important points.
First, we must be cautious of a general entitlement to access to restorative justice. That would not always be appropriate because offenders must voluntarily agree to participate, as my hon. Friend highlighted. To give him some hopefully positive news, I am open to considering alternative approaches that the Government can assist with to promote the effective use of restorative justice in appropriate cases. I read his report carefully and, as luck would have it, I have written to him—I think I signed it today—responding over four pages to his nine recommendations. In that letter to him, I offered to meet with him outwith this Committee to engage on these issues and see what more we can do to work together. Given that, I hope my hon. Friend will not press his amendment to a vote. I look forward to exploring the issue with him in more detail in that meeting, should he wish to take me up on it.
Elliot Colburn
I am grateful to the Minister. That is incredibly reassuring and I look forward to reading his response when it lands. On the basis of those reassurances, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Sarah Champion
I beg to move amendment 38, in clause 2, page 2, line 25, at end insert—
‘(e) should be able to access appropriate compensation.’
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 39, in clause 2, page 2, line 25, at end insert—
‘(3A) In accordance with subsection (3)(e), the victims’ code must include provision requiring that—
(a) all victims of child sexual abuse, including online-based abuse, are entitled to compensation under the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme,
(b) victims with unspent convictions, whose offences are linked to the circumstances of their sexual abuse as a child, are entitled to compensation under the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme, and
(c) victims of child sexual abuse may apply for compensation under the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme within a 7 year period of whichever of these two dates is the later—
(i) the date the offence was reported to the police, or
(ii) if the offence was reported whilst the victim was a child, the date the victim turned 18.’
This amendment would provide that all victims of child sexual abuse (CSA), including online, are entitled to compensation under the CICS and that those with unspent convictions directly linked to the circumstances of their abuse can access compensation. It would also extend the period by which victims can apply.
Amendment 55, in clause 2, page 2, line 25, at end insert—
‘(3A) In accordance with section 1(2)(b), the victims’ code must include provision requiring that all children born of rape are entitled to compensation under the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme.’
Sarah Champion
I will speak to amendments 38 and 39, which are linked to the criminal injuries compensation scheme. Victims of violent crime in England and Wales may be awarded compensation under the publicly funded criminal injuries compensation scheme. I have campaigned extensively to reform that scheme and the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority that administers it.
When I started supporting victims of child sexual exploitation in Rotherham, it soon became apparent that CICA was simply not fit for purpose. An agency that should have existed to support victims seemed instead to believe that its duty was to find any excuse possible not to make an award. Several constituents were affected by that. Indeed, many had claims rejected on one of the three grounds: first, that they were out of time; secondly, that they themselves had unspent criminal convictions; or, appallingly, thirdly, that they had somehow consented to their own abuse. That last reason was recognised to be deeply wrong and legally contradictory. I am pleased to say that it has now been removed, although not before it caused much harm.
The other two grounds remain in force and are particularly problematic for victims of child sexual exploitation, many of whom may take years to disclose their abuse. The trauma of doing so may further delay launching a claim. Furthermore, a well recognised and understood part of the grooming process is that abusers may involve victims in other criminal activities as a further form of coercive control, which is also seen as blackmail and, indeed, an insurance policy. It goes without saying that we should not be holding symptoms of abuse against victims when determining whether their suffering merits compensation.
Amendments 38 and 39 will ensure that all CSA victims, including online, are entitled to compensation under the CICS and that those with unspent convictions linked to the circumstances of their abuse can access support. The period by which victims can apply for compensation is also extended.
There is broader support for change in the scheme. The independent inquiry into child sexual abuse—IICSA —published its interim report in April 2018. That report, along with the “Accountability and Reparations Investigation Report” published in 2019, made several recommendations to improve access to the scheme for victims and survivors of child sexual abuse. Despite that, concerns about the scheme remain, in that its continued focus on crimes of violence fails to consider that child sexual abuse and particularly online sexual abuse may occur without physical contact.
Under the 2012 scheme, no award is made to applicants who have unspent convictions for offences that resulted in certain sentences or orders. That fails to recognise the impact of child sexual abuse and specifically that abuse may have directly contributed to instances of offending; there is often, for example, a close link between sexual exploitation, grooming and criminal behaviour. There is also a two-year time limit for making a claim. Even though that may be extended where there are exceptional circumstances, such a period is inadequate for victims and survivors of child sexual abuse, who often do not report their abuse until adulthood.
Victim Support strongly believes that the unspent conviction rule unfairly penalises some victims of violent crime, in particular the most vulnerable, such as the victims of child sexual abuse. It says that victims of child sexual abuse, sexual exploitation and grooming are often targeted by their abusers, in part because they are vulnerable, lack adequate support and supervision and may be perceived by offenders as easy to manipulate on those grounds. Such victims are often from challenging backgrounds and therefore, for various reasons, may be more likely to have criminal convictions prior to the abuse taking place. That should not be held against them.
Further, the fact of being abused in itself makes it more likely that a person will themselves go on to commit an offence, either as part of the abuse and under the coercion of the abuser, or in reaction to the abuse. It is now widely recognised that victims of crime have an increased likelihood of committing an offence. The relationship is particularly acute where the individual has suffered sexual abuse. Ministry of Justice data reveals that almost a third—30%—of prisoners experienced emotional, physical or sexual abuse as a child.
The 2008 criminal injuries compensation scheme, which the current scheme replaced in 2012, also set out that an award for compensation would be withheld or reduced to reflect unspent convictions, but it allowed for claims officers to use their discretion if they considered that there were exceptional reasons. That claims officers could use their discretion to decide on levels of reduction was also set out in the accompanying guidance for the scheme, which makes it clear that claims should not be rejected where the convictions are related to their child sexual abuse.
The Government should reinstate the ability of claims officers to use their discretion in this area and remove completely the blanket ban on making any payments to the victims, which is set out in paragraph 3 of annex D to the guidance on the criminal injuries compensation scheme. Victim Support would also support changes to the criminal injuries compensation scheme time limits rule. Currently, claims made outside of the two-year limit can be considered by CICA in exceptional circumstances, but that does not provide enough clarity or certainty for victims and is therefore not fit for purpose. The policy disproportionately affects victims of sexual abuse, who are concerned that their claim may affect their ability to receive justice and that the fact they have made a claim will be used against them in court.
It is welcome that, as part of the review into criminal injuries compensation, the Government undertook a review of the exceptional circumstances clause and found that 63% of cases submitted outside the time limit still received a reward. However, that still shows that over a third of claims submitted outside of the time limit were denied.
Additionally, the Government’s review does not consider the victims who did not submit a CICA claim because they believed they were too late to do so. The court backlogs also mean that victims concerned about applying to the CICS before the trial ends, who are already struggling to cope with the delays, will have the additional risk of being ineligible. I urge the Minister to listen to my constituents, victims, charities such as Victim Support, and the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, and accept the changes.
Jess Phillips
I rise to speak to amendment 55, which I tabled to clarify that one of the groups that has now been included in the Bill—that is, children born of rape—will also be able to access the criminal injuries compensation scheme as victims of crime. Many brilliant people have been involved in the campaign to ensure that children born of rape are considered to be victims: Daisy, who has been involved with Daisy’s law; the Centre for Women’s Justice; and the very passionate campaigner and Rotherham sexual exploitation victim Sammy Woodhouse.
I want to read a letter that I received about this issue:
“Dear MP
I hope my email finds you well. I am the son of Sammy Woodhouse. I am aware you have publicly supported my mothers campaign, which I would like to thank you. I am writing you this letter with her help and support as I have never reached out to an MP before, I have done so as this is a campaign that is very close to me.
I wish to express how difficult it has been for me to learn that I was conceived by sexual violence and some of the challenges I have had to face. I want the government to take it seriously and to help others. Not only have I felt very alone but I have struggled with my Identity, my mother was raped by my ‘father’ and he is known as the UK’s most notorious rapist, this alone faced its challenges and left me confused. Emotionally I have closed off and shut down and at times I’ve wanted to scream from the rooftops.
Despite me never being identified publicly, we were known within our community so therefore I was subjected to death threats, followed and had my picture taken, called ‘rape baby’ and told I would also become a rapist. We had to move home and schools and even then people came to our home and posted our address online. I’ve been targeted and lied about on social media, and professionals encouraged me to have a relationship with my father rather than safeguard me. This was all done by the people in our local community even when my mother remained anonymous. I was 12 years old. There are many like me.”
Edward Argar
I turn first to amendment 38, which seeks to include victim compensation as an additional victims code principle, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Rotherham for her explanation of it. I should put on the record at this point that I am aware of the hon. Lady’s tireless work to support victims of crime, particularly victims of child sexual exploitation. She and I have worked on this issue in my previous incarnation in this role and I know that during my interlude in the Department for Health and Social Care—and, very briefly, in the Cabinet Office and the Treasury—she has continued relentlessly to pursue this cause. Now that I am back in the Ministry of Justice, it is nice that we can pick up some of the issues that we were discussing back in 2018 and 2019.
I agree with the sentiment behind the amendment. It is quite right that, in appropriate circumstances, victims should receive compensation for the harm that they have suffered as a result of a criminal offence. She made one point that was particularly interesting. When I have previously talked to staff at the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, I have found that their preference is for less discretion and more prescription, from the perspective that it makes their job easier because that is black and white—that is the decision—rather than there being any potential grey area that causes uncertainty for claimants and applicants.
Responding to the hon. Lady’s key point, however, I will say that this issue is already reflected in the victims code. Right 5 for the victim is:
“ To be provided with information about compensation”.
That includes an entitlement for victims to be told about how to seek compensation, and is covered by the existing code principle in the Bill that victims should be provided with information to help them to understand the criminal justice process.
Compensation can come from several sources: court-ordered compensation; the taxpayer-funded criminal injuries compensation scheme; and civil compensation claims. The code provides for victims to be made aware of routes through which they might obtain compensation for the harm or loss that they have suffered, but the code is not in itself a mechanism for providing compensation and the eligibility of individuals for compensation is determined by the courts or other bodies, such as the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, that operate independently of Government. For that reason, it is our view that the existing entitlement to information about compensation is the right one for the code.
I turn to amendment 39, which seeks to provide that victims of child sexual abuse are entitled to and can access compensation under the statutory criminal injuries compensation scheme by including it as a requirement in the victims code and changing the scope, time limits and unspent convictions eligibility rules of the scheme.
As I have already alluded to, I am aware of the hon. Lady’s long-standing interest and work in ensuring support for victims of child sexual abuse and exploitation. I recall that she raised concerns about time limits and other aspects of the scheme in a debate, which I think I answered, on the Government’s victims strategy in 2018. I welcome her contributions to the review of the scheme that we announced in that strategy. However, our view is that the victims code is not a mechanism through which changes to the scheme can be made. Changes such as those that the amendment seeks to bring about need to be made in accordance with the primary legislation under which the scheme is made and to follow the appropriate procedures for any changes. The Criminal Injuries Compensation Act 1995 requires that before a new or amended scheme can be made, a draft must be laid in Parliament and approved by a resolution of each House.
We are actively considering the issues that the hon. Lady raises in relation to the scheme itself, which of course reflect recommendations made by the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. We have committed to consult on whether to change the scope and time limits of the scheme, and we hope to do so in the coming months. I caveat that by saying that, of course, the scheme must be financially sustainable; that will be one of the elements that we will need to consider.
As the hon. Lady will know, this will be the third consultation of our review, as we have already consulted on reforms to the scheme as a whole in 2020, which was the process that she worked with me to kick off when I was last in the Ministry of Justice, and then again in 2022 on whether to amend the unspent convictions eligibility rule, following—I believe—a court judgment requiring that review.
My intention is to publish a single response to all three consultations as soon as they are all completed and as soon as is practically possible. I am seeking, as the hon. Lady will see, to get through some of the unfinished business that I had in the Department when I left it and went to the Department of Health and Social Care. We have brought this proposal forward. There are a number of other issues that still remain in my in-tray that I recall from when I worked with her pre-pandemic.
For those reasons, I encourage the hon. Member for Rotherham not to press this amendment to a vote, having put on the record her clear views.
I turn to amendment 55, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley, and seeks to provide that children born of rape are entitled to and can access compensation under the statutory criminal injuries compensation scheme by including it as a requirement in the victims code. As the hon. Lady has already alluded to, the Bill explicitly recognises, for the first time in legislation, people born of rape as victims in their own right. This will help them to access vital support services. I pay tribute to the hon. Lady and to other campaigners who have relentlessly pursued this cause and successfully campaigned for this change.
In relation to criminal injuries compensation, as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley may know, the statutory scheme has eligibility criteria that are approved by Parliament. The core purpose of the scheme is to provide compensation to victims who suffer a serious physical or mental injury attributable to their being a direct victim of a crime of violence. The scheme defines a crime of violence and specifies when a person will be eligible for a compensation payment for injury directly resulting from that crime. Under the current scheme, the birth mother of a child born of rape would be entitled to apply for compensation as the direct victim of a sexual assault and a crime of sexual violence. An additional payment can be made where a pregnancy directly results from the sexual assault.
The scheme also provides for compensation to be available to a person who sustains injury while taking an exceptional and justified risk in the course of limiting or preventing a crime, or if they have been present at or witnessed an incident or its immediate aftermath in which a loved one sustains a criminal injury. Provisions in the Bill do not affect eligibility for the scheme and, as I have already said, the victims code is not a mechanism through which changes can be made. A change such as that which the amendment proposes would need to be made in accordance with the primary legislation under which the scheme is made.
I hope that I can give the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley a little bit of reassurance, as I did for the hon. Member for Rotherham. We are in the process of finalising the third and final part of the consultation. When we have done that, we will come forward to Parliament with our response, and of course that will have to be laid before Parliament as a new scheme. I hope that might give both hon. Members the opportunity to raise these issues in the correct way, when the scheme is being considered by the House.
Sarah Champion
I welcome all that the Minister is doing. If I can help or support him in any way, obviously I will. The victims code is a fantastic tool, but it is only useful if victims know about it. Unfortunately, therein lies the nub of most of our arguments. However, I have heard what he said, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
The Chair
I am afraid that I am now leaving you for the rest of the Bill, because my fellow Chairmen are taking over. May I thank you for a very interesting and moving day? Thank you so much.
Victims and Prisoners Bill (Seventh sitting)
Thursday 29th June 2023
(2 years ago)
Public Bill CommitteesVictims and Prisoners Act 2024 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 29 June 2023 - (29 Jun 2023)
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 6 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
Before we begin, I should say that it is still very warm in the room, so people are welcome to take jackets, cardigans or whatever off—I do not want people collapsing on me.
Clause 2
The victims’ code
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 4, in clause 2, page 2, line 25, at end insert—
“(3A) The victims’ code must—
(a) require criminal justice bodies to take all reasonable steps to identify and record any change of name by a perpetrator, and
(b) require criminal justice bodies to inform a relevant victim when a perpetrator changes their name.
(3B) For the purposes of subsection (3A)—
‘perpetrator’ means a person whose conduct or alleged conduct results in another person being a victim as defined by section 1 of this Act;
‘relevant victim’ means a person who becomes a victim as a result of the perpetrator’s conduct.”
This amendment would require criminal justice bodies to monitor name changes of perpetrators and inform victims of any name changes.
The amendment is about sex offenders who are changing their names to avoid detection. As of yesterday, it had been signed by 24 MPs from five different parties, including a former Home Secretary. I hope hon. Members, and particularly the Minister, will take on board the severity of the consequences of this practice, which is happening daily across the country.
For nearly three years, I have been raising this serious safeguarding loophole. Registered sex offenders are changing their names without the knowledge of the police, and I will evidence that as I go on. Unless that loophole is closed, it will continue to make complete nonsense of the schemes on which the public rely to detect offenders: the sex offenders register, the child sex offender disclosure scheme, the domestic violence disclosure scheme and the Disclosure and Barring Service. Of course, a number of these schemes are named for victims and survivors. The domestic violence disclosure scheme is also known as Clare’s law—it enables someone to check whether their new partner has a history of domestic violence offences—and the child sex offender disclosure scheme is also known as Sarah’s law. All these schemes become redundant if the offender changes their name.
It is breaking the law for registered sex offenders to change their name. They are meant to notify the police within three days of doing so. That is very clear, but it relies on a registered sex offender—someone who, by their very nature, looks for vulnerabilities in systems that they can exploit—to do the right, honourable and legal thing and to tell the police that they have changed their name. I say to hon. Members that that is as likely to happen as—well, I don’t know, but something that is very, very unlikely to happen. And the evidence backs that up.
For those three years, I have been raising this issue with Ministers in both the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice. So far, as a consequence of that, there have been two reviews, but it has been decided that they should be internal. I understand the reasons for that—we do not want to give sex offenders a handbook on how to do these things—but nothing has been published about any changes that have happened as a consequence of those reviews, and we should all be deeply concerned about that. If the Minister can tell me today that changes have been put in place, and it is just that we have not been notified, I will be very comfortable with that and very reassured; I will say that the Minister is doing his job by ensuring that these things happen. So I look forward to his reply.
The issue is not just sex offenders changing their name; they are also meant to notify changes of address—changes of personal details. These are referred to as notification requirements. The issue currently is that, when they do not inform the police about changing their name, they literally disappear. I raised this loophole with my former district commander, and he did not even know about it. He said to me, “Sarah, how am I meant to catch someone who has breached their notification requirements, when I don’t know who they are?” That is a very good point. This is not “Luther”—or whatever other detective show it is that we watch—where there is this great, amazing database and all these CCTV images, and it is possible to track all these thousands of people. It just does not work like that. We rely on people doing the right thing, but unfortunately sex offenders rarely do.
In response to my written parliamentary questions, the Home Office confirmed that more than 16,000 offenders were charged with breach of their notification requirements between 2015 and 2020—in that five-year period, 16,000 were charged. But, again, we have to know who they are to be able to charge them, so the true scale will be much bigger. The Safeguarding Alliance freedom of information request to the Crown Prosecution Service found that over 11,500 registered sex offenders were prosecuted for failing to notify changes of information between 2019 and 2022. I need to say, for transparency, that the breach could have been for a change of name or other details—for example, a change of address—but it is still concerning that they are not notifying these things.
Although it is clear that offenders are changing their names and not disclosing their new name to the police, the exact scale remains impossible to capture. New data secured by the BBC a couple of months ago demonstrates the same ongoing pattern, allowing offenders to slip through the cracks. Over 700 registered sex offenders have gone missing in the last three years. It is highly likely that they breached their notification requirements without getting caught, making them an active risk to the public. I am sorry, but there is not the rehabilitation that we need for sex offenders, and they continue their pattern of behaviour. However, only 31 of the 45 police forces responded to the BBC FOIs, so the scale will be much bigger than we know.
Della Wright is an ambassador for the Safeguarding Alliance and a survivor of child sexual abuse. I have worked with Della and the Safeguarding Alliance throughout, on both this amendment and raising the risks, and I am incredibly grateful to them for all the help and support they have given. Della has bravely chosen to speak out and tell her story in support of so many other victims affected by this serious safeguarding loophole. I pay huge credit to her; her tenacious campaigning is what brought this issue to public attention and, initially, to me.
When Della was a child, a man came to live in her home, becoming one of her primary carers and repeatedly sexually abusing her. Years later, when Della reported the abuse, her abuser was already known to the police; he had committed many further sexual offences against many more children. During that time, Della was made aware that his name had changed. He changed his name at least five times, enabling him to relocate under the radar and to evade justice.
When Della’s case was finally brought to court, her abuser had once again changed his name—this was between being charged and appearing in court for the plea hearing. That is not uncommon, and it slows down the whole court process, because the court papers need to be issued in the new name. That places additional distress on the victim and makes a complete mockery of the court justice system. Just think how tightly packed the court system is; on the day, the court will have to pull the case and try to find another spot, which inevitably puts trauma on the victim. The victim will have been working for months with their independent domestic violence adviser or independent sexual violence adviser, friends and family to get them to a point where they can be a witness, and then, on the day, the case gets dropped because someone can change their name.
At this point, let me just pause and say that, by the time I finish this speech, any hon. Members here could have changed their name legally. It can be done online for free. There is an enrolled and an unenrolled deed poll. I think the enrolled is £45, and it then gets published. I completely understand why a victim of domestic violence or stalking might not want to go on that. There is also the unenrolled, where it costs on average about £10—but it can be done for free—to change a name.
Sadly, Della’s case is far from unique, and I imagine that a number of Members here will have had survivors in their constituency come to them. There are survivors who have discovered that their abusers have reoffended, but it is discovered that they are using a different name only once they have been caught. My amendment would require criminal justice agencies to actively monitor name changes by perpetrators, including before their trial, so that victims can remain informed. That could prevent a lot of trauma for victims, help to reduce the number of offenders going missing and help us to put in the associated safeguarding.
I thank the Clerks for their help in drafting this amendment. Up to this point, I have focused on the people who are already on the registered sex offenders list; they are a known risk to us. However, police forces around the country have alerted me to the common practice of offenders of changing their name at the point of, or just before, being charged. They do that to keep their birth name clean so that if they are charged or convicted under the new name, at the end of the process they can revert to their original name and have a clean record. I did not realise that that was a common thing. There is also the issue of people with dual nationality who do that. If they hand over their passport as a condition of pre-charge bail, they will still have their original passport in their original name. Such a practice is a real, live risk.
When someone is investigated before they are charged, we have pre-charge bail conditions. When someone is accused of such grievous offences, which they are likely to continue, I do not think it is in any way a violation of their human rights—or whatever the argument is that is going to be put—if one of those pre-charge bail conditions is that they cannot change their name. Obviously, if the investigation goes forward and the charges are dropped, those conditions would be dropped. Once that person is off the sex offenders register, that requirement would be dropped. Given the gravity of the offences that they are accused of and the likelihood of their perpetuating them, that is something we should take seriously to protect everyone.
I have spoken a lot about sex offenders, but the amendment could, at the Minister’s discretion, cover other offenders too. One notable example I am sure everybody is familiar with is Colin Pitchfork—a rapist and murderer who changed his name. I raise this example to show that, although we might be familiar with a case, we might not know about someone changing their name. When we look at local papers, it is quite common to see “aka” and that people are changing their names on a regular basis.
Families deserve to know if their relative’s murderer is living under a new name, because that at least guards against the trauma of relatives not knowing that that person has been released, for example. Sadly, in the cases I know, Facebook seems to be the most common way that people find out about this.
I think the reason that Ministers have not acted on this issue to date is not that they do not understand the risks—when I have raised it with them, they have all understood the risks—but because it goes into the “too difficult” drawer. I get that; this is messy, and there are likely to be some associated costs. So I have tried to find a solution for the Minister.
Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)
The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech on an incredibly serious matter, which other hon. Members have raised. She supported the ten-minute rule Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher), and the matter was also raised on Second Reading by my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Jayawardena), so I know that colleagues feel very strongly about it. The hon. Lady mentioned that it is put into the “too difficult” drawer”. May I urge the Minister through her to ensure that that is not the case? Although this issue might be difficult, that does not mean that we should not tackle it.
Sarah Champion
I very much hope that the Minister has heard that. This is an issue that, when we start looking for it, we start finding it. The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher) came to it after a constituency case, and we have been working together to try to find a solution. I am sure that all of us will have examples; we just do not necessarily know what is going on at the time.
Experian and RELX believe that their business model uses enough data to track offenders if the police ask them to, and the police are currently asking them to on other areas of concern. For example, if the offender created a new mobile phone account or started registering bills to a new name, Experian and RELX could then inform the police of that pattern of behaviour. There are solutions to this problem if we have the will to implement them. More than that, we already have a solution in place: the College of Policing’s guidance states that police can take pre-emptive action where an offender is likely to change their identity or leave the country—and I suggest to the Minister that almost every sex offender is likely to change their name if they think they can get away with it.
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
I really thank my hon. Friend for raising the issue, because she is highlighting things that I think many hon. Members are unaware of, as indeed are many organisations that work with vulnerable people and children. What she says is so serious that the Minister cannot fail to agree to take it on board.
Sarah Champion
I am a Back-Bench MP, yet I know just from my own digging that this is about tens of thousands of people. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: organisations that work with children and vulnerable people think that they are doing the right safeguarding things by getting a DBS check.
Sarah Champion
They are being deceived, and we are all being deceived. The confidence that a DBS check should give us is not there: it does not exist while this loophole exists.
Lia Nici (Great Grimsby) (Con)
The hon. Lady is making a fantastic point. Does she agree that we should not restrict this to driving licences or passports? It should include citizenship cards—in fact, perhaps we should use the term “any form of identification that is used”.
Sarah Champion
The hon. Lady makes a really good point. A number of people have come to me and said that the social security number is the way to go, because that number follows us through our life. It seems a really sensible way forward. I do not have the resources to look into it and check, but the Minister might be able to do some research. I genuinely do not know whether the Government’s internal reviews have flagged this as a logical way forward. It seems sensible to me, but they have not shared that information with us at all. That is what I am saying: we might already have those trackers on us if necessary, but the Home Office has not told us what it has done with the internal reviews. At the moment I am going on the knowledge that I have, and the gaps in that knowledge.
One thing I do know is that police guidance gives the police the right to put markers on file for passport and driving licence applications. However, it also states:
“To avoid unnecessary or high volumes of requests to these agencies, enquiries should be limited”.
I say to the Minister that the case of a registered sex offender is an example where the police should be given free rein to put those markers on and to follow up any cases in which files are flagged. I get it that there is a cost when a police officer looks into flagged cases, but where a registered sex offender applies for a passport or driving licence in a new name, enabling them to get a clean DBS check, the risk is so great that I think it deserves an hour or so of a police officer’s time and the associated costs.
Janet Daby
I am sitting here, listening intently to every word my hon. Friend is saying, and getting more annoyed. I would perceive not dealing with this as negligence.
Sarah Champion
I believe that is the right word. Surely a Government’s duty is to safeguard citizens; to know the scale of this problem and that there is a solution but not to act is to be negligent. I withhold that allegation from the Minister, because I know he is a good man who wants to do the right thing.
I was first contacted about this three years ago by a journalist. It is not that I thought they were having a laugh; I thought they were wrong—that this could not possibly be true. Then I looked into it. As my hon. Friend knows, I get obsessed about certain things, and I am obsessed about this because it worries me. While this loophole remains, every system we have in place to safeguard the vulnerable is undermined. I believe that this form of electronic marking must be mandatory for all registered sex offenders. That would help criminal justice bodies to keep track of offenders who were trying to change their name secretly, rather than having to rely on offenders doing the right thing and notifying them.
The hon. Member for Bolsover argued that registered sex offenders should be banned from changing their name. I have sympathy with that view and want the Minister to reflect long and hard on it. Sentencing allows other rights to be withdrawn, so that may well be something that the Minister should be looking into.
And that, Minister, is that. I hope that I have made a convincing argument. I know that the Minister is aware of this issue, and I hope he is able to find some way to work with me and others to close this loophole. It cannot go on any longer.
Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)
I woke up this morning and told myself not to talk too much today, but the hon. Lady has inspired me to contribute. I have changed a number of people’s names in my career. As a junior lawyer 20 years ago, I used to get calls from reception saying, “Will you come down and do a deed poll for George Michael?” George Michael had previously been Jon Bon Jovi; Pamela Anderson used to turn up, too. The public do not understand how easy it is.
I decided to speak because we have officials in the room, and I want the Ministry of Justice to have a word with gov.uk. We can all see the seriousness of the situation and the problems it causes with DBS checks and things like that, but at the moment gov.uk sets out how simple it is to change one’s name. At the end—the very end—of the page, under the headline, “If you’re a registered offender”, it says:
“You must tell the police you’ve changed your name within 3 days if you’re a registered: sex offender”
or a violent offender. It tells people that they must go to the police station to do so. Then, after an exclamation mark, which shows that this is serious, it says:
“It’s a criminal offence if you do not tell the police you’ve changed your name.”
The headings beneath that are, “Next”, followed by “Make your own deed poll”.
I cannot overemphasise how serious this is and why it is important that people are honest about this process. People will rarely choose the enrolled deed poll option, because it costs an extra 42 quid. While we are debating what people can or cannot do, will someone please have a word with gov.uk?
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham—not only for her powerful speech today, but for the huge amount of work that she has done on this very, very important issue. All of us here today can hear how absolutely important it is that the Government act on this issue. We fully support her in her endeavours and urge the Minister to respond positively and to find a way through. Registered sex offenders cannot be allowed to change their names without informing the police, and without the police then being able to take action. Leaving that loophole open calls into question the integrity of all the schemes that the public rely on. We all think that the public are safe through such mechanisms, as my hon. Friend set out.
I am stumped for words by what my hon. Friend has called out, some of which is deeply shocking. The child sex offender disclosure scheme, the domestic violence disclosure scheme, and the Disclosure and Barring Service all rely on having the correct name. If they do not have that, how do they go about safeguarding the many survivors and victims out there? My hon. Friend pointed out that an offender can easily change their name from anywhere, even prison, and there is no joined-up approach between the statutory and other agencies. I understand from the data that she collected that the Home Office has confirmed that more than 16,000 offenders were charged with a breach of their notification requirements just in the five years between 2015 and 2020.
The BBC discovered that 700 registered sex offenders have gone missing in the last three years alone, so it is highly likely that they breached their notification requirements without getting caught. Families and survivors deserve to know if a perpetrator has changed their name. Relying on a system that depends on registered offenders self-reporting changes in their information is dangerous, and an enormous risk to public safety. I hope that the Minister will respond with the positive message that he will go back to his Department and work with colleagues to change that.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Edward Argar)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Ms Elliott. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Rotherham for her amendment and the debate that it has provoked, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher) for his campaigning on this issue and his ten-minute rule Bill. I congratulate the hon. Lady on her dexterity in bringing the matter into the scope of the Bill, but above all I recognise the serious concern that certain categories of offender, such as sex offenders, might change their name to evade monitoring, which would clearly not be right. I pay tribute to Della and the Safeguarding Alliance for their work; I hope to meet them in the coming weeks to discuss the matter.
The UK already has some of the toughest powers in the world to deal with sex offenders and, more broadly, other offenders who pose a risk, but we are committed to ensuring that the system is as robust as it can be. The majority of offenders released from prison are subject to strict licence conditions to manage the risk of harm that they pose. In July 2022, a new standard licence condition was introduced that requires offenders to notify their probation practitioner if they change their name. Failure to disclose it is a breach of licence and could result in recall to custody.
However, as the hon. Lady ably illustrated in her remarks, that relies on those individuals doing the right thing. Given the nature of the offences and of the individuals concerned, I suggest that that poses a significant level of challenge. I will ask my officials to take away the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud raised about gov.uk, which sits with the Cabinet Office, and ask that it be looked into.
As right hon. and hon. Members will be aware, there are multi-agency public protection arrangements designed to protect the public, including victims of crime, from serious harm by sexual offenders, violent offenders, terrorists and other dangerous offenders. They require the local criminal justice agencies and other bodies dealing with offenders to work in partnership. Measures are also in place that legally require registered sex offenders to inform the police of any name change; where a registered sex offender poses a specific risk in relation to name changes, the courts can restrict their ability to change their name, although again the same challenge exists.
Disclosure of any name change to victims is currently decided on a case-by-case basis. There will be a careful risk assessment process to consider whether disclosure of a name change is necessary for the protection of a victim, or whether it could provoke threats to the family of the offender or others, which could put them at risk. The process does need to be managed on a case-by-case basis. I do, however, fully understand the intention behind the ten-minute rule Bill, the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Rotherham, and indeed the strength of feeling in the Committee today—and which I think we saw through attendance in the House when the ten-minute rule Bill was debated—to ensure that there are no loopholes that allow sex offenders to change their names unregistered.
Sarah Champion
I know that the Minister takes his brief incredibly seriously and recognises the severity of the consequences as things currently stand. I think he has also heard the degree of support within this room—and, I am quite sure, within the House—to do something quite dramatic to close this loophole. I will therefore gladly accept his offer, but I really need to see something different on the face of the Bill at a later stage, because we have to do something.
Edward Argar
Because of the nature of the parliamentary Session and the carry-over, we will have a period between this Bill’s leaving Committee and its returning to the Floor of the House on Report, which I suspect will happen around Christmas time, given uncertainty over the timing of the King’s Speech. I am happy to use that period to work with the hon. Lady to see whether we can find a way forward ahead of Report stage.
Sarah Champion
I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
I feel certain that between the heads of the people in this Committee Room, some progress on this issue could no doubt be made. The area where I have concerns—not only because of my own brief—is that Home Office Ministers need to be brought on board, because this relates to Home Office policy. Will my hon. Friend seek from the Minister a commitment that the Home Office might take part in some of this work?
Sarah Champion
The Minister can address sentences and conditions, but we absolutely need the Home Office on board.
Sarah Champion
With the Minister’s nodded confirmation that that will happen, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Sarah Champion
I beg to move amendment 53, in clause 2, page 2, line 25, at end insert—
“(3A) The victims’ code must make provision about pre-trial therapy for victims, including—
(a) a requirement that all criminal justice agencies inform victims of their right to pre-trial therapy, and
(b) a requirement that the Crown Prosecution Service annually review their pre-trial therapy guidance and its implementation.”
This amendment would include in the victims’ code a requirement to inform all victims of their right to access pre-trial therapy, and require the CPS to annually review the implementation of pre-trial therapy guidance.
The amendment is about access to pre-trial therapy, around which there are currently so many problems—particularly for victims and survivors of sexual offences. My former constituent contacted me a couple of years ago after she raised a complaint with the police regarding how she was treated throughout the criminal justice system. In 2011 to 2012, she reported her child abuse to South Yorkshire police. In her email to me, she wrote:
“After I had completed my video evidence, the officers told me it would complicate the trial if I sought any mental health support and to wait until it was over. That took 18 months, 18 of the most difficult months when I was emotionally abused and outcast by family for reporting the abuse. I had nowhere to turn, needed to see a psychologist for support and I was utterly traumatized. Today, I suffer from post-traumatic stress from that trial and feel that was related to being denied my human right of access to mental health support. If the police denied anyone cancer treatment during court proceedings, there would be uproar. We need to see mental health in the same way.”
She goes on:
“Despite it not being illegal to see a counsellor, it appears to be more convenient for the police if one is not seen. When someone in such an immense position of trust indicates it would be better not to see a counsellor, the victim is so vulnerable and so strongly lead by the police that I fear that it will continue, even if off record.”
Jess Phillips
I agree with everything my hon. Friend is saying. The week before last, I was in court with a victim of child sexual violence—she is no longer a child; she is now 22—who had waited seven years for her trial. As in the case that my hon. Friend has highlighted, she was not allowed to access mental health support for seven years, from the ages of 13 to 22.
Sarah Champion
Sadly, this is standard practice; systemic change is needed. Receiving counselling or mental health support should not be seen to make a victim an unreliable witness, which is what it feels as though the police believe. That culture within the criminal justice agencies perpetuates victim blaming. I hope that the threshold will be raised, so that there is a presumption against disclosure of mental health records as evidence in court. I think we will come to that in a later amendment.
I am relieved that the Minister is trying to tackle the use of counselling notes through new clause 4, which we will debate later in our proceedings, but it is vital that we also ensure that access to pre-trial therapy is also on the face of the Bill. My amendment is essential, as it would require the Crown Prosecution Service to review the implementation of its pre-trial therapy guidance. If the guidance is not effectively rolled out among prosecutors and officers, they should respond accordingly.
I think the current situation is a fundamental misunderstanding by the police, who are trying to do the right thing—get a prosecution—by trying to prevent victims’ counselling notes or victims being seen to be coached in any way before the trial, so that that cannot be used against them and unravel the case. The Minister is aware that that is not the case; people are able to access such provision. Former Secretaries of State and the CPS have confirmed to me that victims can access pre-trial therapy, but unless it is on the face of the Bill and in the victims code that that is their right, the myth perpetuates and it is having a very damaging effect on victims.
Anna McMorrin
I support and endorse much of what my hon. Friend has stated on access to mental health services. I speak to many victims and survivors each week who are so traumatised by the current process, given the state that the justice system is in and the delays that they are facing—week upon week, month upon month, year upon year, waiting for their day in court, but with no access to support, going through the trauma day after day after day. I add my support to the essence of the points made by my hon. Friend.
Janet Daby
I, too, endorse the proposals brought forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham. In 2021, the former Victims’ Commissioner stated that 43% of rape victims pulled out of cases. I am sure that my hon. Friend agrees that trials can be especially difficult for victims, and that therapy guidance for victims pre-trial must be of a high standard and advertised to victims if the Government are to tackle worrying attrition rates in rape cases. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Edward Argar
Amendment 53 would place in the victims code a requirement to inform victims of their right to access pre-trial therapy, and require the CPS to annually review the implementation of its pre-trial therapy guidance. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Rotherham for provoking this debate by tabling the amendment.
It is vital that victims get the support they need to cope and recover from the impact of crime, and pre-trial therapy is a hugely important part of that. The hon. Member for Lewisham East commented on the number of complainants and victims who withdraw from a case—the technical phrase is victim attrition; it is not the best phrase in the world—or do not see it through. A variety of reasons and a range of factors sit behind that. Lack of therapeutic support may not be the only one, but it is undoubtedly one of them. I am aware of instances where victims have mistakenly been advised not to seek the therapeutic support they need and to which they are entitled while they are involved in a criminal justice process. That should not happen, and I am again grateful to the hon. Member for Rotherham for raising that.
The first part of the amendment would require the victims code to include a specific requirement on all criminal justice agencies to inform victims of a right to pre-trial therapy. I hope I can reassure the hon. Lady to a degree that there are already many provisions in the Bill and, indeed, beyond it to make victims aware of how they can access pre-trial therapy. What came through in her remarks is that the challenge is not the obligations in the Bill or other legislation, but how they are operationalised and pull through into the experiences people have when interacting with the system.
The Bill already includes the code principle that victims should be able to access services that support them, including specialist services. The code itself includes the detail that those services can include pre-trial therapy and counselling, and we are introducing a new duty in the Bill on certain criminal justice agencies, including the police and the CPS, to raise awareness of the code and the rights within it. None the less, I am open to considering how we can make information relating to pre-trial therapy clearer in the new victims code, as it is critical that practitioners do not, even inadvertently, deter victims from seeking the support they need.
As hon. Members will be aware, we have committed to consult on an updated victims code after the passage of the Bill, and as I have said on previous occasions, I am happy to work with the hon. Member for Rotherham and others on the Committee on the new code. We have put out an indicative draft, which is almost a pre-consultation consultation, but that allows the flexibility for hon. Members and others to reflect back their thoughts on it.
Jess Phillips
As a point that may be interesting as we try to get this right established is that when I ran a rape crisis counselling service, this was not particularly an issue. Something has happened—something chilling—in the last eight years that means it is now a pressing issue. It was never the case, and rape crisis counsellors would always just make very sparing notes. Something has gone wrong, and in trying to move forward we should do a piece of work on where it started to go wrong.
Edward Argar
The hon. Lady brings to the House and this Committee a huge amount of experience from having worked in this sector and seen changes to it, and an interest that she has maintained since being elected to the House—at the same time as I was—and through her shadow ministerial roles. She is right; it is important that, if things have changed, we seek to understand the genesis of and the reasons for that change, and how to address it.
Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
The point being made about delay is important. The pandemic was of course a very difficult period for the courts. Is the Minister able to give us any reassurance that the courts will be able to hear these cases more quickly? I suspect one of the reasons for this situation is that, if there is a very long period between the incident and the time of trial and there are counselling notes over an extended period, there is a temptation to see if there is an element of coaching—the hon. Member for Rotherham made that point—or even inconsistent statements, as a period of time has lapsed.
Edward Argar
My right hon. and learned Friend is right to highlight the importance of this point. On the big picture of court backlogs, it is important to remember that 90% of cases are dealt with in magistrates courts swiftly. It is the serious cases, such as those we are discussing, that are sent to the Crown court, and that is where we do see delays. There has been investment in Nightingale courtrooms—a new sort of super-court, if I can put it that way—just up the road from my constituency, in Loughborough. We are implementing a range of measures to tackle the backlog. He is absolutely right that the timeliness of a case being heard is a key factor in a victim sticking with the process and being able to give their best evidence. He is also right that the longer the delay, the greater the temptation to seek more “evidence”, more documents, over that period. Timeliness is hugely important.
We will also continue to take action to ensure that victims are not put off from seeking support due to fear that their therapy notes may be unnecessarily accessed as part of a criminal investigation, including through the proposed Government amendment that was alluded to, which will place a duty on police to request third-party materials that may include pre-trial therapy notes only when necessary and proportionate to the investigation.
Sarah Champion
I want to explore the Minister’s phrase about victims giving their “best evidence” in court. I have tried to get to the bottom of what is going on in the minds of the police. I think they see victims of crime as witnesses, rather than victims in their own right. They are trying to protect the evidence, effectively, to get the conviction that they want. The police need to understand that a well-supported victim is able to give the best evidence, because they have confidence and clarity of mind, and the support of knowing that there is someone there who has got their back. The reason I am arguing for a provision in the Bill—perhaps under an expansion of what specialist services means; I am happy if it is in the guidance—is to make the police aware that there is no chilling effect from a victim having pre-trial therapy.
Edward Argar
The hon. Lady makes an important point. I think progress is being made. In saying that, I point to, for example, the work being done through Operation Soteria. I pay tribute to the work of Chief Constable Sarah Crew and her officers in Avon and Somerset, and there are others working on these issues around the country, trying to change that understanding. There is of course more to do, which is why the hon. Lady has brought forward the amendment, but I see some encouraging signs, particularly in the work that Sarah has been leading.
The second part of the amendment would place a requirement on the Crown Prosecution Service to annually review the implementation of pre-trial therapy guidance. I reassure the hon. Lady that the Crown Prosecution Service already has a robust compliance and assurance regime across all its areas, which includes specific questions on consideration of the privacy rights of victims. The CPS is also a key part of Operation Soteria. Next month, the CPS will relaunch its individual quality assessment guidance, which is its assurance tool to make sure it is delivering high-quality casework. That will include additional information on consideration of a victim’s privacy rights during an investigation, which I hope will help bring consistency across the CPS.
I urge the hon. Lady not to press the amendment to a Division, as I do not believe that including this measure in the Bill is necessarily the best approach. As I have said a number of times, I am happy to work with her in respect of the code, the consultation and how we might draw this out a bit more clearly, but also on an operational basis more broadly. I suspect that we may be spending a lot of time together over the summer and coming months, given the number of commitments I have made to work with her. There may be ways that we can also work with colleagues at the Home Office, the police and others to make sure that what is already there is fully understood and operationalised.
Sarah Champion
Given those assurances, I will withdraw the amendment. I agree with the Minister that it is about the first or second community officer someone speaks to—that seems to be where the misunderstanding is, so we have to find a way to filter the message down down. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Anna McMorrin
I beg to move amendment 64, in clause 2, page 2, line 25, at end insert—
“(3A) The victims’ code must provide that victims must be informed of their rights under section 63 (Special measures in family proceedings: victims of domestic abuse) of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021.”
I am incredibly grateful to be here today to discuss what I believe is a national scandal: what is going on in family courts across the country. Before speaking to the amendment, I want to set out the context. Cases of domestic abuse, rape and child sexual abuse are still routinely dismissed or minimised—so much so that support services are now dissuading victims from disclosing abuse or child sexual abuse for fear of accusations of parental alienation, which will result in children being removed from a safe parent.
What is clear is that family courts are continuing to breed a culture that promotes contact with those who have been accused of abuse. Survivors of domestic or coercive abuse are facing counter-allegations of parental alienation as a stock response to their own abuse allegations, which is shocking. Courts have continued to instruct unregulated experts who are connected with the parental alienation lobby and who are known for dismissing domestic abuse victims. As a result, unsafe decisions are being made, with sometimes catastrophic consequences for child contact. We are now hearing of more and more cases of protective parents—most commonly the mother—losing all access to their children, who are instead placed with the abusive parent. Just last week at the UN Human Rights Council, Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, said:
“The tendency of family courts to dismiss the history of domestic violence and abuse in custody cases, especially where mothers and/or children have brought forward credible allegations of domestic abuse, including coercive control, physical or sexual abuse, is unacceptable.”
The Government’s harm panel report in 2020 was meant to address many of these issues, but progress has been slow. It is three years this week since that report was published, and the situation is now critical. Many vulnerable victims and children are being dragged by their perpetrator through the family courts and a system that has no understanding of the abuse that a victim and their children have faced and continue to face.
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a really powerful speech. Does she agree that many of us have seen cases in our surgeries where mothers who have escaped domestic abuse tell us that they have been re-traumatised by the family courts, that abusive ex-partners often use the process in the family courts as a further form of abuse and control, and that the children are weaponised?
Anna McMorrin
I absolutely agree, and that gets to the core of the point I am making. Domestic abuse is the central issue in private law children’s proceedings in family courts, and evidence shows that allegations of domestic abuse are present in at least half of all such proceedings. A study by the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service published in 2021 found domestic abuse allegations in 62% of cases and that special measures in those cases were not being upheld.
Earlier this week, I met Dr Charlotte Proudman, a barrister who specialises in family law at Goldsmith Chambers. She has worked with many survivors and victims of domestic abuse, taking their cases to appeal and being successful when she does so, which shows that there is a problem. Her dedication to those mothers has brought hope to many women and survivors of domestic abuse, but it should not take going to appeal or having a barrister take a case to appeal, or overturning those cases, to expose the problems in the family courts.
The rights of victims of domestic abuse under section 63 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 are not implemented consistently or, even worse, they are not informed of those rights at any point in the process. Many of the survivors report suffering, revictimisation and retraumatisation caused by the family justice system. It is clear that the special measures introduced in the 2021 Act have made no difference whatsoever to victims’ experiences on the ground. There is an opportunity in this Bill to change that and to strengthen the victims code to place a duty on agencies to inform domestic abuse survivors of their rights under section 63, “Special measures in family proceedings: victims of domestic abuse” of the 2021 Act. I hope the Minister agrees that we should put this in the code to overturn what is happening now.
Sarah Champion
Does my hon. Friend agree that the nub of the problem is the total lack of transparency—I would go so far as to say the secrecy—around family courts? We are unable to do our job of scrutinising whether rights are offered or special measures are given, so it is only when an acute case gets into the public domain that we find out about these failings, so I support her amendment.
Anna McMorrin
That is absolutely part of the problem: we cannot see what is going on here, and that is why it is important that we are here discussing this issue. This is a vital debate, and I know many survivors and victims will be looking on keenly at our debate and how the Minister responds. They will take hope from the fact that we can do something about this absolute tragedy and travesty happening in our family court system to survivors and children.
Provision for special measures in family proceedings is made in part 3A of the Family Procedure Rules 2010, supported by practice direction 3AA. Those rules provide that victims of domestic abuse and other parties or witnesses are eligible for special measures in their proceedings if the court is satisfied that the quality of their evidence or their ability to participate in the proceedings is likely to be diminished due to their vulnerability. The court needs to consider a wide range of matters to assess whether a victim is vulnerable before determining whether any special measures are necessary to assist them.
The Family Procedure Rules 2010 state there is a duty on the court to identify whether a party is vulnerable by virtue of being a complainant or victim and if so, what participation directions they need in order to ensure they can effectively participate in proceedings and give their best evidence. The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 assists by making it clear—in statute, which is important—that that is a requirement in the family courts. If the court fails to address the issue of special measures, the court has failed in its duties and the judgment is likely to be successfully appealed. It is a requirement under the rules to hold a ground rules hearing in each case to determine what special measures are required. That is simply not happening in family courts at all.
Jess Phillips
To pinpoint the devastation so that we can get the point across, the harm panel review largely came out of a report written by Women’s Aid, which showed that, over a 10-year period, the murders of 19 children had followed family court decisions to place them with an abusive father.
Anna McMorrin
I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. Evidence from Women’s Aid still shows that survivors are disbelieved. Children have continued to be forced into unsafe contact arrangements with abusive parents, and perpetrators have continued to use child arrangement proceedings as a form of post-separation abuse. It is vital that the right support is signposted and that survivors are able to access that support. Parental alienation allegations in the family courts mean that many survivors of domestic abuse and coercive control are themselves made out to be the perpetrator. That has to stop.
Sarah Champion
My hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield raised a case where social services had parental responsibility for a baby whose parents were horrifically abusing it. The judge in the family court overruled the recommendation of the social services team to have a six-month integration period. The baby was put back with the family within six weeks, and it was dead in a couple of days. In his reply, will the Minister talk about access to the victims code for someone who is not themselves a victim but for someone with responsibility for a child?
Anna McMorrin
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. It is really important that all those wrapped up in the system understand their rights and that we strengthen the Bill with this amendment, so that survivors, victims and guardians get the support they need.
The United Nations recently published the report of the special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences. The report addresses the link between custody cases, violence against women and violence against children, with a focus on the abuse of the term “parental alienation” and similar pseudo-concepts. Evidence showed a tendency to dismiss the history of domestic violence and abuse in custody cases. That extends to cases where mothers or children themselves have brought forward credible allegations of physical or sexual abuse.
The report also found that family courts had tended to judge such allegations as deliberate efforts by mothers to manipulate their children and separate them from their fathers. That supposed effort by a parent alleging abuse is often termed “parental alienation”. Research and submissions received by the UN, however, demonstrated that the perpetrators of domestic violence misused family law proceedings to continue to perpetrate violence against their victims, resulting in secondary traumatisation, which then goes on and on and on. Parental alienation is used deliberately as a tactic.
One study cited in the report found that parental alienation was mentioned in all 20 cases studied in the context of coercive control and child sexual abuse. Even when it was not explicitly used, the underlying ideas were still present. The use of parental alienation is highly gendered and frequently used against mothers. Common to the gendered use of parental alienation is the depiction of mothers as vengeful and delusional by their partners, courts and expert witnesses. Mothers who oppose or seek to restrict contact, or who raise concerns, are widely regarded by evaluators as obstructive and malicious, reflecting the pervasive pattern of blaming the mother.
The Chair
The hon. Member is making a speech with some harrowing detail. However, I would draw her attention to what the amendment says. The hon. Member has to relate what she is saying to the amendment.
Anna McMorrin
The reason I am illustrating this point is that it is relevant in setting out the context of why we need the amendment. It relates to getting special measures in a court case. Without access to special measures, all of the abuse is perpetuated, including through the parental alienation tactics that are currently being used.
The use of parental alienation becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. As soon as parents are judged as being alienating, implacable or failing to listen, their action or inaction can be prejudiced. As a result, allegations of domestic violence remain sidelined as a one-off occurrence—they are not taken into account during proceedings. That reduces domestic violence to a minor conflict and stigmatises and pathologises women and children. How can that be best for the child?
I have spoken to countless women—all survivors of domestic abuse—who have been retraumatised by the family courts. All their cases read the same: the mother is criminalised, the children are ignored and the father is excused. One mother told me about her harrowing experiences—she is now being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder. The daughter disclosed that her father sexually abused her and told the guardian assigned to the case that she did not want to see him. The guardian dismissed the claim, and instead a read a book to the daughter that stated, “Mummy made it all up. Daddy hadn’t done anything wrong.” That same guardian said that she would only support the mother’s claim for full custody if the mother positively encouraged her daughter to have a relationship with her father. In the mother’s own words:
“My daughter was not heard, and not listened to. We have been forced through more trauma and we don’t know what the future might hold.”
The same practice was also cited by the UN report. Women are being advised by their legal representatives not to raise allegations of domestic violence as it would work against them.
Sir Oliver Heald
Is the amendment not supposed to be about providing victims with information about their rights? The hon. Lady seems to be criticising the decisions of judges in cases that they have heard. It would be helpful to know why she feels that special measures would help in these situations, and what sort. Is she talking about screens? What exactly is she asking for?
The Chair
Order. I have given the hon. Lady a lot of leeway, but in her concluding remarks she really needs to focus on the amendment.
Anna McMorrin
Thank you, Ms Elliott—I appreciate that. In response to the right hon. and learned Gentleman, I have one last example to illustrate why these special measures—
Anna McMorrin
A special measure could be anything; it could be a screen. It is about understanding and access to victim support. It is anything that will help a survivor of domestic or coercive abuse to understand the reason why the perpetrator is dragging them back to court, time and time again.
Sir Oliver Heald
I was the Minister when we discussed bringing in special measures. We were looking to make the experience a better one for these witnesses, with screens and elements of that sort. Is the hon. Lady suggesting a particular special measure? What is it that she wants?
Anna McMorrin
The amendment would ensure that those in family courts, and all those agencies, have a duty to signpost victims to support and special measures, so that everybody around family courts should be aware of what is happening and of the abuse that is being perpetuated. The special measures outlined in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 must be accessed: that is a duty on family courts, but it is just not happening. The amendment would mean that, under the victims code, agencies must ensure that those special measures are introduced.
You have been very good, Ms Elliott, in allowing me to set out the context—I have talked about parental alienation and given examples of horrific abuse—but very little has been done in this House to set out the problems in family courts. It is absolutely essential to build that case and show what is happening to the thousands of women and their families who are the victims of such abuse. As we have heard, family courts operate behind closed doors. There is very little resource, and very little is happening to bring together the agencies and court processes and ensure that special measures are in place.
Siobhan Baillie
Does the hon. Lady recognise that Sir Andrew McFarlane, the Head of Family Justice, is already trying to open up family courts and is doing an awful lot on transparency? I think quite a lot of positives will come out of that.
Anna McMorrin
An awful lot of organisations and people working in this area, including the Head of Family Justice, are bringing to light what is happening, so I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady.
Jess Phillips
On the point about exactly how we will ensure victims are protected within the family court system, I am afraid to say that one of the issues we have faced in the past three years is that when McFarlane says something, the Government say, “No, it’s McFarlane’s responsibility,” then McFarlane says, “It’s the Government’s responsibility,” and on we go. Does my hon. Friend agree that the amendment is about ensuring that some action is taken in this building?
Anna McMorrin
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We need to make sure that something is happening. That is why this amendment and the debate around it are so vital. The amendment will not solve everything in family courts—it is the tip of the iceberg—but we need to make sure that at the very least we have something in this Victims and Prisoners Bill to safeguard the mothers and children who are subjected to continued allegations and abuse through the family court system. That is not for want of trying by the very many organisations that are working hard.
To illustrate why we tabled the amendment, I will quote from a message that was sent to a mother I spoke to. Her son had been placed with an abusive father. He said:
“Mum…Dad bent my fingers back, hit me and pushed me on the floor. He won’t even let me eat lunch today.”
She said to call her, and he said:
“I can’t. I’m in the car and he will hit me if I call you. I have a big purple bruise on my knee.”
Now more than ever, survivors of abuse and their children need our protection and support, and this amendment is the necessary first step in ensuring we do that.
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)
I will withdraw from speaking, because I realise that time is pressing on.
Edward Argar
Amendment 64 would require the victims code to state that victims must be informed of their rights to access special measures in the family court. We agree that all participants in court proceedings, including in the family court, should be able to give evidence to the best of their ability, and I appreciate that the shadow Minister cited a number of harrowing cases and highlighted some broader issues. If I may, I will confine myself rather more narrowly to the scope of the amendment. I will also highlight that I would be very wary of trespassing into territory that would see me commenting on what is rightly subject to judicial discretion and the decisions of individual judges.
We already have a number of measures in place to support participants in the family court whose ability to give evidence is impacted, as the shadow Minister set out, by the trauma and retraumatisation of having experienced domestic abuse and then having to give evidence. Examples of those special measures in family proceedings include giving evidence behind a protective screen or via video link.
In section 63 of our landmark Domestic Abuse Act 2021, on which there was a large amount of cross-party co-operation—I am looking at the shadow Home Office Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley—we have strengthened eligibility for special measures for victims of domestic abuse in the family courts. I gently disagree with the hon. Member for Cardiff North when she says that it has made no difference. As a result, the existing Family Procedure Rules automatically deem victims of domestic abuse as vulnerable for the purposes of considering whether a participation direction for special measures should be made. That provision came into effect on 1 October 2021. However, the decision is quite rightly a matter for the presiding judge in the case.
As the hon. Member for Cardiff North highlighted, what the amendment addresses is raising awareness of rights—not the decision made by the judge, but awareness that the rights exist and that an application is possible. I agree that it is important not only that this provision exists, but that participants in the family court are made aware of it. However, I stress that the victims code and the provisions in part 1 of the Bill are intended to set out the minimum expectations for victims navigating criminal justice processes, rather than other proceedings or settings such as the family court. It is important to highlight that distinction.
We are, however, committed to ensuring that participants in family proceedings are aware of the role of special measures and of their entitlement to be considered for them. Following the implementation of the provision in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, the Ministry of Justice and His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service have been monitoring the data on special measures requests using the online application service. We have been assessing what more could be done to make parties aware of their rights with regard to the provision of special measures.
As a result of the changes that have been made, guidance has been developed in collaboration with the Family Justice Council, which provides information on the support and special measures available at local courts. This information is now set out with notices of hearing in all family cases.
I hope that what I have said goes some way towards reassuring the Committee that we are taking steps to make sure that victims of domestic abuse are aware of the special measures that they can access in the family courts. We are consulting on the victims code; I say to the Committee that that, rather than the Bill, would be the right place for consideration of such measures. Placing such measures in primary legislation would add rigidity to what should be a flexible process to update the code and ensure that the rights enshrined within it keep pace. On that basis, I encourage the shadow Minister not to press amendment 64 to a Division.
Anna McMorrin
I understand what the Minister says, and I appreciate his reflections, but I have to point out the number and the intensity of issues that I have raised and the amount of concerning evidence from the women I have spoken to. The amendment would have an impact on real cases. It would go some way towards helping victims to understand that they can get access to special measures in court. I have given illustrations from cases in which rape victims were not able to have a screen and were forced to speak to the perpetrator. They need to feel that they are empowered, that they are survivors and that they have the ability to ask for those special measures.
Amendment 64 would go a long way towards ensuring that things start to change—that the culture starts to change—in the family courts. That is why I would like to press it to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Victims and Prisoners Bill (Eighth sitting)
Thursday 29th June 2023
(2 years ago)
Public Bill CommitteesVictims and Prisoners Act 2024 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 29 June 2023 - (29 Jun 2023)
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Edward Argar)
I beg to move amendment 27, in clause 2, page 3, line 15, leave out
“function of a relevant prosecutor”
and insert “prosecution function”.
This amendment and Amendment 28 substitute a reference to persons exercising a prosecution function for the defined term “relevant prosecutor”. The victims’ code may not make provision requiring anything to be done by such persons.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Government amendment 28.
Clause stand part.
Edward Argar
Amendments 27 and 28 are minor technical amendments that have been tabled to better meet our intention to prevent the victims code from interfering with independent prosecutorial decision making. Clause 2 sets out that the victims code cannot place requirements on relevant prosecutors in relation to their prosecutorial discretion. This is an important safeguard, which reflects our constitutional arrangements, and allows the code to set expectations in relation to service provider procedures and how they should treat victims, but not to interfere with prosecutorial discretion to make decisions in particular cases.
The Bill currently refers to a relevant prosecutor, which is defined under section 29 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, and includes service providers such as the police and the Crown Prosecution Service. However, some other service providers under the current code also have a prosecutorial function and are not covered by the existing list, including bodies such as the Health and Safety Executive and the Competition and Markets Authority. These service providers have functions in relation to the investigation or prosecution of specific types of offences or offences committed in certain circumstances. To ensure all service providers are covered now and in the future, the amendment sets out that the code cannot interfere with prosecutorial discretion, regardless of which prosecutor is involved.
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
The Minister will be aware that there have been controversies surrounding private prosecutions—the Horizon scandal springs to mind—but that there are also other private prosecutors who in individual cases might decide to take prosecutions. Will these amendments do enough to cover all of them?
Edward Argar
My understanding is that they will, but will the right hon. Lady allow me to confirm that? If at any point I have inadvertently misled the Committee, I will make a correction in the usual way.
Clause 2 provides the legal framework for the victims code and places an obligation on the Secretary of State to issue a code of practice setting out the services to be provided to victims by different parts of the criminal justice system. It also sets out the overarching principles that the victims code must reflect. These are the principles that victims should: be provided with information to help them understand the criminal justice process; be able to access services which support them, including specialist services; have the opportunity to make their views heard; and be able to challenge decisions that directly affect them. We know that those principles are important for victims, and our consultation showed us that most respondents believe them to be the right ones to focus on.
Placing those overarching principles in legislation will send a clear signal about what victims can and should expect from agencies within the criminal justice system. This will help to future-proof the code and ensure that it continues to capture the key services that victims can expect, while still allowing a degree of flexibility in the code itself. We have retained the more detailed victims’ entitlements in the code, as this offers a more flexible way to ensure that they can be kept up to date, rather than by placing them in primary legislation on the face of the Bill. Agencies are already expected to deliver the entitlements in the code and they will be required to justify any departure from it if challenged by victims or by the courts.
To safeguard the topics that the code should cover, the clause allows for regulations to be made about the code. We will use the 12 key entitlements contained in the current code to create a framework for the new code and regulations. This will enhance parliamentary oversight of the code by setting the structure out in secondary legislation, and will allow more flexibility than primary legislation to make any necessary changes in the future if the needs of victims require changes in policies or operational practices. The power to make regulations has appropriate safeguards set out in the clause, in that regulations can only be made using this power if the Secretary of State is satisfied that they will not result in significant weakening of the code in terms of the quality, extent or reach of services provided.
Rather than specifying the details of particular entitlements for particular victims, the clause allows the code flexibility to make different provision for different groups of victims or for different service providers. That means they can be tailored appropriately, such as to provide for the police to give certain information more quickly to vulnerable or intimidated victims. We have published a draft of the updated victims code as a starting point for engagement, and will consult on an updated victims code after the passage of the Bill, so that it can reflect issues raised during parliamentary consideration.
Finally, the clause makes it clear that the code relates to services for victims and cannot be used to interfere with judicial or prosecutorial decision making. That will protect the independence of the judiciary, Crown Prosecution Service and other prosecutors in relation to the decisions they make in individual cases. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Amendment 27 agreed to.
Amendment made: 28, in clause 2, page 3, leave out lines 18 and 19.—(Edward Argar.)
See the explanatory statement to Amendment 27.
Clause 2, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 3
Preparing and issuing the victims’ code
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 11, in clause 3, page 3, line 29, at end insert
“and the Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses.”.
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to consult the Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses when preparing a draft of the victims’ code.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clause 3 stand part.
Amendment 12, in clause 4, page 4, line 24, after “Attorney General” insert
“and the Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses”.
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to consult the Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses when revising the victims’ code.
Clause 4 stand part.
Anna McMorrin
Amendments 11 and 12 address the same issue. Amendment 11 falls under clause 3 concerning the drafting of the victims code, and amendment 12 falls under clause 4, which concerns its revision. Clause 3 outlines that it is the responsibility of the Secretary of State to prepare the draft code and, in doing so, must consult the Attorney General. Amendment 11 would place a duty on the Justice Secretary also to consult the Victims’ Commissioner. Amendment 12 would place a duty on the Justice Secretary to consult the Victims’ Commissioner on any future revision of the code. These are the first of several amendments I have tabled to strengthen the powers and authority of the Victims’ Commissioner.
The Victims’ Commissioner is a public office established by Parliament in the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004 to encourage good practice in the treatment of victims and witnesses in England and Wales. It is independent of Government and works to raise awareness of issues faced by victims, conduct research, promote good practice and hold agencies to account on the treatment of victims. I pay tribute to Dame Vera Baird, the former Victims’ Commissioner, who resigned in September last year after three years in post. Dame Vera was integral to shining a spotlight on the harmfully low number of prosecutions, and she secured safeguards against excessive requests for victims’ mobile phone data in rape investigations. If the Government accept both my amendments, they would go a long way towards demonstrating that they understand the value and authority of the Victims’ Commissioner’s office by ensuring it is integral when looking at the revised victims code.
During the evidence session last week, when asked if the Victims’ Commissioner should be consulted in the drafting and revision of the victims code, Dame Vera said,
“Yes, it is imperative... To be fair, the Government did consult us. It took about two years to get the victims code together. In fact, I am not sure if Mr Argar was not the Victims Minister when it started the first time around. It took a very long time... although I have to say we brought no change. There must be meaningful consultation, but the Victims’ Commissioner has to be in there.”
She went on to say,
“in all the provisions about drafting codes and making changes, where it says you should consult the Attorney General, you have to consult the Victims’ Commissioner as well. This is about victims.”––[Official Report, Victims and Prisoners Public Bill Committee, 20 June 2023; c. 28, Q63.]
The Victims’ Commissioner has a statutory duty to keep the code under review, but the Secretary of State for Justice is not obliged to consult the Victims’ Commissioner on revisions of the code. I am not sure how they are not mutually exclusive. The Victims’ Commissioner is established to be
“a promoter, an encourager, and a reviewer of operational practice, and is the only statutory public body with these overarching duties in relation to victims”.
The Victims’ Commissioner has the singular responsibility to introduce a degree of accountability to how agencies, including central Government, treat victims and witnesses. If victims are given their rightful recognition as participants in the system, their rights must be fully respected and delivered at each stage of the process. Currently, the Victims’ Commissioner has the widest remit of any commissioner but the most limited powers. The powers relating to the victims code should be strengthened, so that the Victims’ Commissioner is consulted alongside the Attorney General.
Amendments 11 and 12 would make it obligatory for the Secretary of State to consult the Victims’ Commissioner on the preparation and revision of the victims code, rather than having the commissioner make proposals. This would also form part of the functions of the Victims’ Commissioner under section 49 of the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004—promoting the interests of victims and witnesses and keeping the code under review. It would also ensure that there is accountability and compliance with the victims code, and that standards are maintained at all levels. I hope the Minister will consider agreeing to the amendments.
Edward Argar
I thank the shadow Minister for tabling amendments 11 and 12, which would place a statutory duty on the Secretary of State to consult the Victims’ Commissioner when preparing and revising the new victims code. The Victims’ Commissioner and their office are a vital and powerful voice for victims, and part of the commissioner’s statutory duty is to keep the operation of the code under review. In highlighting that, I will go a little further than the hon. Lady by paying tribute not only to Dame Vera Baird, but to Helen Newlove and Louise Casey. I think Louis Casey was the original Victims’ Commissioner, and Helen followed her in that role. In their different ways, all three have brought a huge focus and passion to the role, and I want to put on the record my gratitude to them all.
We have routinely engaged with the Victims’ Commissioner’s office on matters concerning the code since last September, and we will continue to do so when a new Victims’ Commissioner is appointed. As I highlighted in the previous sitting—I think it was after being prompted by a question from the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Cardiff North—a recruitment process is under way, with the new Lord Chancellor taking a very close interest so that we get the right person into this vital post. I am keen to see it filled as swiftly as possible with someone of the calibre of the three individuals who have already held the post.
We recognise that it is essential that we consult experts, including the Victims’ Commissioner, when preparing or revising the code to ensure that it continues to reflect the needs of victims. The Bill already requires public consultation on the draft code under clause 3(4) and, naturally, the Department engages thoroughly with the Victims’ Commissioner and their office as part of that process, as we always have done in the past. Public consultation provides an opportunity for a wide range of relevant stakeholders, practitioners and victims to make representations to the Government. For that reason, we do not consider it necessary to formally list each relevant stakeholder in legislation, including the Victims’ Commissioner, as the amendments would do.
I do recognise—the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Cardiff North, may have alluded to it—that one role is listed for consultation: the Attorney General. That consultation is required ahead of the public consultation on the code and is explicitly included to reflect the Attorney General’s shared responsibility for the delivery of the criminal justice system and for the impact of the code. As hon. Members will know, ministerial responsibilities across the criminal justice system involve the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, the Home Secretary and the Attorney General. By practice, the Secretary of State for Justice will consult the Home Secretary as part of the process of preparing, issuing and revising the code. The Home Secretary, as the other Minister with direct operational delivery responsibilities, is not explicitly referred to because the technical drafting convention is that different Secretaries of State are not named in legislation.
I hope that I have provided assurance that the Victims’ Commissioner and their office will continue to be engaged on matters concerning the code, and that the hon. Member for Cardiff North will find those assurances satisfactory.
Anna McMorrin
I thank the Minister for his response to these provisions. The Victims’ Commissioner has a statutory duty to keep the code under review. Because the Secretary of State, however, is not obliged to consult them, it is an area of the Bill that needs strengthening. The powers of the commissioner related to the victims code must be strengthened so that the Victims’ Commissioner is consulted alongside the Attorney General when the code is drafted and revised. That seems to me to be an essential part of the process to ensure that victims’ experiences are listened to and then represented in the drafting and revising of the code. That would also form part of the functions of the Victims’ Commissioner under section 49 of the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004—promoting the interests of victims and witnesses and keeping the code under review.
Importantly, the measures would also ensure accountability. The Minister alluded to that in terms of Parliament, but it is vital that the Commissioner is included formally within the process in the Bill. Although I will not press the amendment to a Division, I hope that as we move forward through the Bill we can look at how the role of the Victims’ Commissioner can be strengthened. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clauses 3 and 4 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 5
Effect of non-compliance
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 47, in clause 6, page 4, line 37, leave out “take reasonable steps to”.
This amendment would place a duty on criminal justice bodies to promote awareness of the Victims Code, rather than only requiring them to ‘take reasonable steps’ to promote awareness.
Amendment 13, in clause 6, page 5, line 6, after “services” insert
“in accordance with the victims’ code”.
This amendment would clarify that criminal justice bodies must collect information about their provision of services for victims in accordance with the victims’ code.
Clause 6 stand part.
Clauses 7 to 9 stand part.
New clause 2—Duty to co-operate with Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses—
“(1) The Commissioner may request a specified public authority to co-operate with the Commissioner in any way that the Commissioner considers necessary for the purposes of monitoring compliance with the victims’ code.
(2) A specified public authority must, so far as reasonably practicable, comply with a request made to it under this section.
(3) In this section “specified public authority” means any of the following—
(a) a criminal justice body, as defined by subsection 6(6),
(b) the Parole Board,
(c) an elected local policing body,
(d) the British Transport Police Force,
(e) the Ministry of Defence Police.
(4) The Secretary of State may by regulations amend this section so as to—
(a) add a public authority as a specified public authority for the purposes of this section;
(b) remove a public authority added by virtue of paragraph (a);
(c) vary any description of a public authority.
(5) Before making regulations under subsection (4) the Secretary of State must consult the Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses.
(6) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (4) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by resolution of each House of Parliament.”
This new clause would place a duty on specified public authorities to co-operate with the Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses.
Edward Argar
Clause 5 makes it clear that failure to comply with the victims code does not in itself give rise to liability in criminal or civil proceedings, but it also makes it clear that the code is admissible in evidence in proceedings and that a court may take a failure to act in accordance with the code into account when determining a question in the proceedings. We think individual liability for non-compliance would be disproportionate, but the clause does not prevent non-compliance from being addressed, nor does it prevent victims from being able to make or escalate a complaint. Their being able to do so is vital to ensure that victims are being given the right standard of service.
The measures in the Bill are designed to enable new oversight of compliance with the victims code and to drive improvements in victims’ experiences when engaging with the criminal justice system. We will discuss those measures when we reach the relevant clauses, but we believe the framework is the right starting point to drive real change locally and at system level, so that victims are treated in the right way. It is essential that there are consequences for non-compliance, clear oversight structures and complaints processes for victims, and this is the first time that such a comprehensive legislative framework has been put in place. It is right that it is done at local and national level and that the Bill does not allow for litigation against individuals. The clause is necessary to set that out.
I will speak to the amendments when I sum up, when I will have heard what those who tabled them have had to say. I will now speak to the other clauses in the grouping.
Clause 6 puts two duties on criminal justice bodies, namely the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service, and youth offending teams. First, it requires them to take reasonable steps to promote awareness of the victims code among service users, including victims or those supporting victims, and the public. That is essential because—Opposition Members remarked on this, I think—just 23% of victims and 22% of the public were aware of the code in 2019-20. That is clearly not good enough. We want victims to be clear about what they can and should expect from the criminal justice system and to feel empowered to ask for that when criminal justice bodies fall short.
Secondly, clause 6 requires criminal justice bodies to keep their compliance with the code under review. That will include collecting and sharing information, which will be set out in regulations. They will also be required to jointly review that information with police and crime commissioners and other criminal justice bodies in their local police area. Where issues are identified by police and crime commissioners or bodies, operational agencies can and should take action by using local forums to drive improvements.
Those measures are the heart of the Bill. As we have discussed in Committee, it is essential that we monitor code compliance. Victims do not always receive the level of service to which they are entitled. In 2019-20, 45% of victims felt that the police and other criminal justice agencies kept them informed, and only 18% of victims recall being offered the opportunity to make a victim personal statement. The duty will improve local information collection, allow for effective local solutions and help us track the performance of criminal justice bodies to pinpoint areas that need improvement.
To deliver consistency across England and Wales, we will use regulations to specify the necessary code compliance information to be collected, and issue guidance on how criminal justice bodies should carry out their duties. We are using regulations and guidance to enable more detail and flexibility to update the provisions than primary legislation would allow. It will be crucial the get the data requirements in the regulations right, and we are working with bodies subject to the duties and those who represent victims to develop them. By implementing standardised data collection and reporting practices, we can build a national picture of the delivery of victims code entitlements throughout the criminal justice system. Such a data-based approach has been used effectively by the criminal justice system delivery data dashboards to enable data-informed discussions and to feed into action plans at local level to drive change. Together, the duties will promote compliance with the victims code and therefore better outcomes for victims.
Clause 7 is a crucial part of the new framework for better local oversight of victims code compliance. It strengthens the role of police and crime commissioners and enables issues to be identified and escalated where necessary by requiring police and crime commissioners to review compliance information jointly with criminal justice bodies in their local area, and to share information and insights into local performance with the Secretary of State. Together with the new requirements in clause 6 for criminal justice bodies to share compliance information with police and crime commissioners, that measure addresses concerns we heard that police and crime commissioners did not have the mechanisms in place to deliver on their role to monitor local code compliance.
The Government recognise the vital role police and crime commissioners already play in bringing agencies together to oversee the code locally. Further empowering police and crime commissioners and harnessing their convening powers will lead to a more collaborative and effective approach to solving local issues. Where issues are identified by police and crime commissioners or bodies, operational agencies can and should take action, using local forums to drive improvements.
Edward Argar
I will give way first to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley.
Jess Phillips
I hear the good words in the Minister’s explanation, but I am still not entirely sure exactly what will happen. Are we going to get local forums to make it better if it is bad? That does not seem enough to me to ensure compliance or any change from the situation we have at the moment.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the shadow Minister. I will come on to how this will work in practice, but I suspect hon. Members may wish to return to it in their contributions to their amendments. I give way to the hon. Member for Rotherham.
Edward Argar
I suspected that might be the case.
The requirement to share compliance information and to report to the Secretary of State on the joint review of this information will enable a clear national picture to be formed of how the criminal justice system is delivering for victims. It is important to remember that police and crime commissioners are directly elected and directly accountable to their local communities.
The requirement provides a means to escalate issues that cannot be solved locally and will enable Government to establish a new national governance system to pinpoint and intervene to address any systemic problems. The Victims’ Commissioner and inspectorates will be asked to participate in the new national governance system to ensure that victims’ needs and their perspectives are reflected. This will, of course, be covered in the relevant statutory guidance that will set out the operational detail across these clauses and the wider oversight framework.
Clauses 8 and 9 put two duties on the British Transport police and Ministry of Defence police respectively that mirror those placed on criminal justice bodies in clause 6. The duties are to promote awareness of the victims’ code and keep their compliance with the code under review. This ensures parity between local, national and non-territorial police forces. British Transport police meet victims of crime every day, including those mentioned by the hon. Member for Rotherham who are involved in child criminal exploitation, such as through county lines.
Instead of jointly reviewing information with police and crime commissioners, the British Transport police will be required to jointly review information with the British Transport police authority, which is the appropriate oversight body for them. Similarly, the Ministry of Defence police will do so with the Secretary of State, which in practice will mean that the Secretary of State for Defence is the appropriate oversight body for them. It is important that all police forces that have contact with victims, and therefore have responsibilities under the code, are responsible for promoting awareness of and complying with the code to help support victims. If I may, Ms Elliott, I will address amendments 47 and 13 and new clause 2 in my wind-up remarks. I commend clauses 6 to 9 to the Committee.
Sarah Champion
I have tabled what I hope is a straightforward amendment that would place a stronger duty on criminal justice bodies to promote awareness of the victims code, rather than just asking them to take reasonable steps. Clause 6(1) states that,
“Each criminal justice body which provides services in a police area must…take reasonable steps to promote awareness of the victims’ code among users of those services and other members of the public”.
The amendment would remove the words “take reasonable steps” and make the clause stronger. For example, a reasonable step could be a poster in a police office reception, so that when asked about this during the compliance process, they could say, “Yes, we have taken a reasonable step. Everyone that comes into the police office can see that. It is a reasonable step.”
As other Members and I have already pointed out, compliance and awareness of the existing victims code is worryingly low. I look to the Minister to do something more robust to get that awareness into the public domain. Victim Support’s “Victim of the system” report found that as many as six in 10 victims do not receive their rights under the victims code; 20% of victims are not referred to support services, 46% do not receive a written acknowledgement of the crime, and 60% do not receive a needs assessment. The status quo is not working. For victims to access their rights, they must first be aware of them.
Anna McMorrin
I will speak to amendment 13 and new clause 2 together. Amendment 13 would insert
“in accordance with the victims’ code”
after “services” in clause 6. It is a relatively small correction that would, I hope, improve the Bill by making it clear that criminal justice bodies must collect information about their provision of services for victims in accordance with the victims code. I am concerned about the current provision in clause 6. The amendment would clarify that the information collected by each criminal justice body in a police area, and shared with other criminal justice bodies, would have to be in accordance with the victims code.
I thank Dr Ruth Lamont, senior lecturer in law at the University of Manchester and co-investigator for the victims’ access to justice project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, for working with me on this issue. I am also pleased that the amendment is supported by Victim Support. During evidence last week, Rachel Almeida, assistant director for knowledge and insight at Victim Support, stated:
“The Bill refers to regulations being introduced to collect prescribed information. It needs to be more explicit that that applies to every single right. We want compliance with every single right to be monitored. From evidence we have seen, that will not necessarily happen, so it needs to be really clear that the regulations cover every single right.”— [Official Report, Victims and Prisoners Public Bill Committee, 20 June 2023; c. 72, Q151.]
As amended, clause 6(2) with reference to the code would add elected accountability for provision of victims’ services. The elected local policing body—most commonly police and crime commissioners, but also metro mayors—are responsible for the commissioning of victim support services in their policing area. The amendment would specify the nature of the information to be provided. Police and crime commissioners do an awful lot of work on different aspects of policing and are responsible for its totality, so it is eminently sensible to focus the collection of prescribed information about the provision of services in accordance with the victims’ code. That would also support awareness of the code among agencies, which my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham brought up under another amendment. Does the Minister agree with that? That way, police and crime commissioners would have a specific path to follow, with a clear outline of what they need to collect and what they do not, thus streamlining resources and saving time. It also enables a very clear feed of data up to the Victims’ Commissioner for the purposes of reporting as the scope is defined.
It is imperative that code compliance is reviewed and monitored by criminal justice bodies and I support the introduction of that measure in the Bill. However, failing to identify the scope will have an undesired impact, as it could either prevent the desired data from being collected altogether or could have an adverse effect on PCCs by overstretching their resources. Overall, consistent data collection in accordance with the victims’ code guarantees that criminal justice agencies are complying, and if they are not, it will expose areas where improvement is needed. It would also make available information on whether victims are aware of their rights in the victims’ code and which rights are being accessed and required the most. The only way in which criminal justice bodies can respond to the needs of victims in their respective areas and deliver is through the proposed data collection and by sharing different methods for delivering the guarantees of the code. The process could also inform the reform of services and the commissioning choices made by the elected policing bodies.
As previously outlined, the Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales would also be able to use data collected by criminal justice bodies in each police area to produce a national survey that could be fed into both the commissioner’s annual report and general advocacy engagements with Government. It is beneficial for victims that the system is better informed and evidence-based policy can then be drafted because of that specified data collection.
New clause 2 would place a duty on specified public authorities to co-operate with the Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses. The clause would allow the commissioner to request a specified public authority to co-operate with them in any way they consider necessary for the purpose of monitoring compliance with the victims’ code. It also places a duty on the specified public authority to comply with that request. I am grateful to Victim Support, which supports that too, for outlining in last week’s evidence session that the clause would increase the powers and authority of the Victims’ Commissioner in line with those of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner and the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, who is the most recent commissioner to be granted that power.
The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 gives the Domestic Abuse Commissioner specific powers that enable her to fulfil that role and places legal duties on public sector bodies to co-operate with her and respond to any recommendation she makes to them. The powers are essential for the commissioner to drive forward change and hold agencies and national Government to account for their role in responding to domestic abuse. It is therefore perfectly reasonable to grant the Victims’ Commissioner the same authority. I hope the Minister agrees. Especially when considering just how many victims of crime there are out there, I am sure he will agree that that simply strengthens the Bill.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to hon. Members for their contributions. I will respond on amendments 47 and 13 in turn, and will then touch on new clause 2.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Rotherham for amendment 47. I understand that she seeks to require relevant bodies to raise awareness of the code, rather than taking “reasonable steps” to do so. I reassure her that our intention is, of course, that victims will be made aware of the victims code. The “reasonable steps” term is commonly used and well understood in legislation. The use of it here seeks to replicate section 24 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, which states that a senior police officer must “take reasonable steps” to discover the victim’s opinion before giving a domestic abuse protection notice. It appears similarly in the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017.
Sarah Champion
I am feeling the way the Minister is going with this. Might I make an on-the-hoof addition of the phrase “all reasonable steps”?
Edward Argar
The hon. Lady knows me well; she may have had a sense of the direction I was heading in and be seeking to gently see me off from it midway. I will return to her point in a second.
The reason why we have introduced a reasonableness requirement is to retain operational flexibility, to allow for circumstances in which it would not be reasonable or operationally possible to expect the code to be actively promoted to certain victims. For example, when a criminal justice agency is communicating with a victim, sometimes that victim may be too distressed to process information about or want to engage with the code, or they may be in a public environment. In such instances, we would expect the reasonable step to be to share the information, but at a more appropriate time for the individual.
That in-built flexibility recognises that those working in the system, day in, day out, have considerable expertise and can deploy that to determine the most appropriate moment and method for sharing the code with vulnerable victims. It is absolutely our intention that all victims are made aware of the code, but there is a sensitivity about how and when.
I know that, separately, more can be done to improve criminal justice agencies’ communications with victims. We will use statutory guidance to set out further detail on our clear expectations as to when and how relevant agencies should make victims aware of the code. That will also point to appropriate training so that staff working with victims are confident and comfortable to share it at the right time. We are working closely with stakeholders to ensure that that guidance is robust, ambitious and practical. My fear is that being prescriptive in asking agencies when they communicate with victims, through removing “reasonable steps” from the clause, may lead to less sensitive and effective sharing in order to meet the duty, but I am happy to reflect on the points that the hon. Lady has made.
Amendment 13 seeks to amend the clause 6 requirement on criminal justice bodies to collect prescribed information. It would add that the requirement to collect prescribed data must be in relation to services provided in accordance with the victims code.
I agree with the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Cardiff North, that our intention is absolutely for this information to be relevant to how they deliver services in accordance with the code, rather than how they provide services more generally. However, I fear that the clarificatory amendment she has tabled is not necessary, because we believe the duties contained in subsection (2) are already sufficiently limited to be clear about the code under the preceding subsections.
To demonstrate the point, I am happy to clarify that the duty to collect prescribed information is supplementary to the overarching duty in subsection (1)(b), which requires the criminal justice bodies to keep under review how their services are provided in accordance with the victims code. It follows from the reference in subsection (1)(b) that the services referred to are only those that are relevant to how services are provided in accordance with the victims code.
Our view is that amendment 13 would overly limit the duty to collect prescribed information, and requiring the collection of only information about the provision of services in accordance with the code would not allow for the collection of related relevant information. That information could include, for example, contextual information on the systems in place to ensure an accessible complaints process, which would give a greater understanding of compliance with code right 12 to make a complaint about rights not being met. Therefore, on what I accept is a technical point, I encourage the hon. Member for Cardiff North not to press the amendment to a Division.
Finally, I will touch on new clause 2. I agree that it is vital that relevant bodies co-operate with the Victims’ Commissioner so that they can fulfil their statutory role to keep the operation of the victims code under review. We carefully considered whether updates were needed to the important functions and duties of the Victims’ Commissioner, to align them, where necessary, with those of more recently established commissioners—for example, the Domestic Abuse Commissioner. That is why this Bill already introduces key updates, such as a requirement that the Victims’ Commissioner’s annual report must be laid in Parliament and that relevant authorities must respond to recommendations that the commissioner makes in any report.
Jess Phillips
I just wonder what would happen if we were discussing a school in my constituency—let us say my own children’s school—and Ofsted just got to say, “Yeah, you’ve just got to hope for the best, really. Let’s just hope for the best, with a little bit of improvement.” There are no powers; this process does not go anywhere. I am not sure that I can see how there is any gumption behind any of these particular improvements, other than just, “They’ll respond”.
Edward Argar
As I say, our experience is that the Victims’ Commissioner—I suspect that this is by virtue both of the office itself and the strength of personality of all three Victims’ Commissioners—has tended to be successful in obtaining the information they need to do their job and shine a light on particular issues or individual system challenges. Therefore, we do not believe that it is necessary or proportionate to alter their powers further in the way that has been discussed.
We intend for the Victims’ Commissioner to have access to relevant compliance information collected and shared under clauses 6 to 9, both via national governance forums and through the duty on the Secretary of State to publish compliance information. That may not go the full way, but I hope it goes some way to reassuring the hon. Lady that the Victims’ Commissioner will have access to information on the code. We do not believe that additional powers to collect such information are required.
Sarah Champion
The Minister is a reasonable man and I am a reasonable woman, so I will not press amendment 47.
The Chair
We now come to amendment 13, which has just been debated. Does Anna McMorrin wish to move the amendment formally?
Anna McMorrin
I am not going to press the amendment, but I would like to work with the Minister on how we see this issue going forward. He has given some assurances, but it would be good to clarify those.
Clause 5 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 6 to 9 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 10
Publication of code compliance information
Anna McMorrin
I beg to move amendment 14, in clause 10, page 8, line 37, at end insert—
“(1A) The Secretary of State must share compliance information with the Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses (‘the Commissioner’) within 2 days of receipt.
(1B) The Commissioner must use compliance information received under subsection (1A) to prepare an assessment of compliance with the victims’ code, including—
(a) an assessment of compliance in each police area,
(b) identifying any instances of systemic non-compliance with the victims’ code,
(c) identifying opportunities for improvement in compliance with the victims’ code, and
(d) identifying best practice in respect of compliance with the victims’ code.
(1C) The Commissioner must include a summary of the assessment made under subsection (1B) in their annual report prepared under section 49 of the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004.”
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to share information about compliance with the victims’ code with the Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses and require the Commissioner to prepare an assessment using that information.
Anna McMorrin
Amendment 14 would place a duty on the Secretary of State to share all information collected regarding compliance with the victims code with the Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses. Clause 10(1) states:
“The Secretary of State must publish such compliance information as…will enable members of the public to assess…code compliance”.
Although I welcome clause 10 and agree that the public should be aware of agencies’ compliance with the victims code, the clause fails to provide information on how members of the public should be expected to interpret this data. I would welcome it if the Minister’s response addressed how that will be interpreted.
Amendment 14 would use the oversight by the Victims’ Commissioner to enable national analysis and oversight of compliance with the victims code, closing the feedback loop. Currently, although there is reporting, there is no independent reporting back of analysis to elected local police bodies or criminal justice bodies, or sharing of best practice.
The amendment would allow the Victims’ Commissioner to make an assessment on compliance across all police areas under the following categories: failures of reporting, areas of systemic non-compliance with the victims code, areas for improvement in compliance with the victims code, and evidence of best practice. The key focus has to be on ensuring the effectiveness of the oversight by the Victims’ Commissioner of compliance with the victims code throughout the whole of England and Wales. The reporting process would be both to the public and to criminal justice agencies, and it should encourage and support the development of higher standards for the protection of victims’ needs and interests.
Each of the four categories to be reported on by the Victims’ Commissioner is directed at a different aspect of identifying whether there is meaningful compliance with the requirements of the victims code. Such reporting should provide an overarching assessment of how effectively the victims code is working for victims. If a criminal justice agency fails to provide requested evidence regarding compliance with the code without just cause, this must be highlighted and publicly reported to provide accountability and encourage consistent reporting.
Through the Victims’ Commissioner’s oversight of criminal justice agencies reporting on the code, problem areas where there is evidence of non-compliance could be identified. For example, if there were consistent problems in providing for a category of victim, that could be highlighted and addressed as an issue across criminal justice agencies, rather than focusing on just one body. The process would naturally inform areas for improvement to ensure compliance with the code and enable support for criminal justice agencies in developing their practice in relation to victims. At the moment, however, there is no formal sharing of best practice in supporting victims in the justice system and meeting the expectations of the code. There is a lack of information for criminal justice agencies about the most effective services and processes to provide for victims under the victims code.
Reflecting on the evidence of compliance provides the commissioner with an important opportunity to share examples of best practice, including valuable services, procedures or approaches. This process would provide an environment in which positive developments could be identified, promoted and fed back to agencies that are doing well. We know that the agencies should seek to provide, and often do provide, the best service they can to victims, and that the process of reporting on compliance should encourage the development of effective services. The amendment would both promote the role of the code and provide resources for criminal justice agencies to draw on in developing their services for victims.
In evidence to the Committee last week, Caroline Henry, the police and crime commissioner for Nottinghamshire, stated:
“We need to increase transparency around whether the victims code is being complied with. We all need to be talking about victims more, and keeping victims at the heart of this”.––[Official Report, Victims and Prisoners Public Bill Committee, 20 June 2023; c. 43, Q83.]
I am sure the Minister agrees that this relatively minor amendment would absolutely do that.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the shadow Minister for enunciating the rationale for amendment 14. I shall first address her amendment and then move on to clause 10.
I agree that access to information on victims code compliance will help the Victims’ Commissioner to assess the operation of the code. I also agree that that information should inform their annual report. The amendment would require the Secretary of State to share the code compliance information that they receive from relevant bodies with the VC. I reassure the Committee that we not only intend to share information with the Victims’ Commissioner, but we will make sure that we use their expert insight to interpret what the data shows and what it means in practice. That will be covered in the new national governance structure that is intended to oversee the new code compliance framework put in place by the Bill.
We will set out more details about the structures in supporting guidance as we continue to test and develop proposals with stakeholders—the shadow Minister is welcome to contribute to that process. However, as relevant data will be shared in that forum, and the Victims’ Commissioner will also be able to access the published information, we do not see that additional data sharing arrangements are necessary in the Bill.
On the proposal that there should be a requirement on the Victims’ Commissioner to assess compliance and consider specific issues, that is exactly what we are seeking to achieve through the slightly different mechanism of the national governance forum on which the Victims’ Commissioner, among other important voices in the criminal justice system, will sit.
The Victims’ Commissioner has existing legislative responsibility to keep the operation of the victims code under review and existing powers to make reports and recommendations. The broad approach to the existing requirements for the Victims’ Commissioner means that all annual reports have already included a section on the victims code, and the increased overview and data will support further reporting on compliance.
We want to keep the potential topics that the Victims’ Commissioner can choose to cover as broad as possible. Being overly prescriptive could reduce the flexibility and independence in the role. We want to give the Victims’ Commissioner the flexibility to determine themselves which topics they wish to look at and cover. I hope that gives the shadow Minister some reassurance that the Bill as drafted will allow the Victims’ Commissioner access to code compliance information, and to use it to inform their annual report. We expect the Victims’ Commissioner to be a key lever in driving improvement in the system within the new national oversight structure.
Clause 10 ensures that we have appropriate transparency of code compliance data—first, by requiring the Secretary of State to publish victims code compliance information, which will allow the public to assess whether bodies are complying with the code; and secondly, by requiring police and crime commissioners to publicise that information in their local areas. We know that data transparency across a range of public functions can drive performance, and we heard at pre-legislative scrutiny that it was important to provide greater certainty that the compliance information would be published.
Publishing compliance information will allow victims, stakeholders and the public to understand how well bodies are complying with the code, as well as allowing for benchmarking and comparison across areas to identify disparities, share best practice and help drive improvements. I appreciate that right hon. and hon. Members might have concerns about the publication of sensitive information. Some information collected, such as feedback from victims that might be identifiable, may not be suitable for publication because it would infringe on privacy rights and potentially compromise victims’ confidentiality.
The clause therefore allows the Secretary of State a degree of flexibility in determining what information should be made public to allow effective assessment of code compliance while also protecting the identities of victims.
Anna McMorrin
I thank the Minister for his response to amendment 14. The issue is to ensure that the Victims’ Commissioner’s oversight role is strengthened, which is what the amendment would do. I am not sure whether the Minister gave me the assurance that there would be a strengthening. The previous Victims’ Commissioner, Dame Vera, was explicit about the fact that she lacked the data to ensure compliance throughout her tenure. I would like a bit more assurance that the Bill will do that. I will not seek to push the amendment to a vote today, but I would like to work to see how we can strengthen the Bill on that specific issue. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 10 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 11
Guidance on code awareness and reviewing compliance
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clause stand part.
New clause 5—Improving accessibility and awareness of the Victims’ Code—
“(1) In preparing the draft of the victims’ code under section 2, the Secretary of State must take all practicable steps to ensure that the code is fully accessible to all victims and to promote awareness of the code among those victims and associated services.
(2) For the purposes of this section the Secretary of State must by regulations prescribe—
(a) that criminal justice bodies must signpost victims to appropriate support services, and
(b) that appropriate training is delivered to staff in criminal justice bodies, including by specialist domestic abuse services.
(3) The steps taken under subsection (1) must include steps aimed at ensuring that victims who—
(a) are deaf,
(b) are disabled,
(c) are visually impaired, or
(d) do not speak English as their first language,
are able to understand their entitlements under the code.”
This new clause seeks to ensure the victims’ code is accessible to all victims and associated services.
New clause 11—Monitoring compliance—
“(1) All agencies with responsibilities under the victims’ code have a duty to monitor and report how relevant services are provided in accordance with the victims’ code.
(2) In accordance with the duty in subsection (1), the agencies must provide an annual report to the Secretary of State on their assessment of their compliance with the code.
(3) The Secretary of State must make an annual statement to the House of Commons on the delivery of services provided in accordance with the victims’ code.”
This new clause would place a duty on the Secretary of State to make an annual statement on compliance with the victims’ code.
New clause 12—Compliance with the code: threshold levels—
“(1) The Secretary of State must, by regulations, issue minimum threshold levels of compliance with each right of the victims’ code.
(2) If a minimum threshold is breached by an organisation in a particular area, the Secretary of State must commission an inspection of that body with regard to that breach.
(3) The Secretary of State must, as soon as is reasonably practicable, lay before Parliament the report of any such inspection.”
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to set minimum threshold levels of compliance with each right of the victims’ code.
Edward Argar
I will speak to clause 11 stand part, and in my concluding remarks address the speech that the hon. Member for Rotherham will make when she speaks to her new clauses.
Our approach through the Bill is to provide a framework to drive improvement and to use statutory guidance to set out how to operationalise that framework. That is why clause 11 requires the Secretary of State to issue guidance that will support the bodies subject to the code awareness and code compliance duties in clauses 6 to 10 to discharge those duties. It also requires those bodies to have regard to the guidance, which I hope provides reassurance to the hon. Member for Rotherham that there are sufficient provisions in place to ensure agencies take the statutory guidance on board.
We intend for the guidance to cover topics raised by hon. Members: how relevant bodies can promote awareness of the code, including how to make the code accessible and how to provide training to staff so they can confidently engage with victims; how police and crime commissioners will be required to report to the Secretary of State on their local reviews of code compliance information; and what good or poor performance looks like. It will also cover information on how local and national oversight structures will work, including routes for escalating on issues between them and on how data sharing and publication will work. The frequency of information collection will be set out in regulations and reflected in the guidance as appropriate.
Getting the guidance right is crucial to ensure that the policy works on the ground, so that it is clear what those subject to the duties are expected to do, and to encourage good practice and consistency across England and Wales. We intend to publish details of the guidance during the passage of the Bill to enable parliamentarians to have it to hand as they debate the Bill in its subsequent stages, and we are currently working with bodies subject to those duties and those who represent victims to develop it so that we can be sure it will work operationally. Underlining the importance of considering the views of those affected by the guidance, the clause also requires the Secretary of State to consult relevant stakeholders before issuing the guidance, which will ensure that it is useful and reflects the operational context.
Our approach to setting out the framework for code awareness and code compliance in the Bill, and the detail in statutory guidance and regulations, is the right way to drive improvement in the victim experience. I hope that clause 11 will stand part of the Bill.
Sarah Champion
Clause 11 is a welcome part of the Bill that requires the Secretary of State to issue guidance regarding the code awareness and reviewing code compliance. We know that the guidance may include provision about ways of promoting awareness of the code; how information is collected, shared and reviewed; and the steps that an elected local police body must take to make the public aware of how to access compliance information. That is all vital for ensuring accountability and awareness of these issues, but alone it does not go far enough. It must be on the face of the Bill that the code is accessible to all victims, particularly those who have disabilities or whose first language is not English. The Secretary of State must ensure that code awareness is raised among those groups too.
It is also not enough to publish code compliance and draw public attention to how to access that information. If we want to ensure that victims’ rights are met, we need to actively monitor their enforcement. New clause 5 seeks to ensure that the victims code is accessible to all victims and associated services. The new clause is supported by Women’s Aid and addresses issues raised by charities such as Victim Support, which I thank for helping to draft it.
As we know, the victims code sets out the minimum standards that organisations must provide to victims of crime. However, specialist violence against women and girls organisations have an abundance of evidence that indicates the needs of deaf, disabled and blind victims, as well as victims whose first language is not English, are being overlooked, neglected or at best addressed inadequately. It is truly concerning to hear from Women’s Aid that public bodies, including the police, often fail to comply with their obligations under the Equality Act 2010 to eliminate discrimination, harassment and victimisation when interacting with victims facing communication barriers. Their right under the victims code—
“To be able to understand and to be understood”—
is also not being upheld. We know from specialist “by and for” led organisations that this is having a direct impact on marginalised victims not coming forward. This failure to respond to their communication needs is preventing victims from coming forward. As a result, victims are left with no choice but to stay longer with an abusive perpetrator and are at risk of increased harm while being denied justice.
Rising Sun, a specialist service, highlighted a case whereby a victim’s disability was not factored into the support plan and she was not provided information in Braille. Not only did this impact on her ability to make an application for a non-molestation order; she could not even read the resources provided on domestic abuse. She was left feeling humiliated and embarrassed, and stayed with her abusive partner for a further four weeks before fleeing to emergency accommodation with her children.
As discussed on earlier amendments, by failing to address and respond to communication barriers, there is a risk of the police having incomplete information and evidence from victims due to the lack of support to ensure they were understood. A survivor working with Women’s Aid urged for there to be more training to support those with accessibility needs, such as deaf people. She highlighted that we have a BSL Act but this it is not having any impact on survivors of domestic abuse.
The Government state that one of the first objectives of the Victims and Prisoners Bill is to introduce measures
“to help victims have confidence that the right support is available and that, if they report crime, the criminal justice system will treat them in the way they should rightly expect.”
It is clear, therefore, that new clause 5 is vital to ensure that all practical steps are taken to ensure that the code is fully accessible to all victims, particularly deaf, disabled and blind victims, as well as victims whose first language is not English.
Victim Support has also raised concerns about the need to implement the right to be understood. One woman, Angela—both her name and the languages have been changed—was wrongly arrested when she attempted to seek help from the police after experiencing domestic abuse. Despite taking regular English classes, Angela struggles with language skills in pressured or stressful situations. When she contacted the police to report the abuse, her partner at the time, who was fluent in English, managed to convince the police officers that he was the victim. Angela said:
“They cuffed me, put me in a police car, so I said, why? I was being treated like a criminal, so I was in great shock.”
At no point did the police ask Angela if she understood what was happening or if she needed a translator, even when she started speaking in Romanian. She said:
“They were just saying, ‘speak English, speak English!’”
Angela was arrested and held in police custody. She only got an interpreter at 8 pm, despite asking for one at 2 pm. After explaining what had happened through the interpreter, Angela was, thankfully, released and her partner was later charged. Eventually, the case went to court and the perpetrator was found guilty and issued with a restraining order. However, a copy of the court ruling was only sent in English, and Angela had to pay to have it translated.
It must be on the face of the Bill that the Secretary of State must take all practical steps to ensure that victims who are deaf, disabled or visually impaired, or who do not speak English as their first language are able to understand their entitlements under the code. We cannot allow anyone, in particular vulnerable women such as Angela, to be wrongfully treated and unaware of their rights do to these language barriers.
New clause 5 would also require the Justice Secretary to ensure that criminal justice bodies signpost victims to appropriate support services, and to ensure that appropriate training is delivered to staff in criminal justice bodies, including by specialist domestic abuse services. This is desperately needed, as we know from the examples we have heard over the past few days. I urge the Minister to consider adopting the new clause, or to please give assurances that he will include guidance on not only accessibility and awareness of the code, but on providing training to criminal justice agencies.
I now turn to new clauses 11 and 12. New clause 11 would place a duty on the Secretary of State to make an annual statement on compliance with the victims code, and new clause 12 would require the Secretary of State to set minimum threshold levels of compliance with each right of the victims code. The new clauses aim to strengthen the accountability of the victims code of practice by placing a duty on the Secretary of State to oversee them. They also aim to remove the core responsibility of overseeing enforcement of the code from the police and crime commissioners, who currently do not have sufficient powers and, in many cases, resources to either ensure compliance or hold contributors to the local criminal justice board to account.
New clause 12 would also ensure that the information on regulations covers every right in the victims code so that genuine improvements for victims will be achieved. In 2019, the independent Victims’ Commissioner carried out a review of delivery of the victims code. Sadly, the review found that the code is failing to deliver the improvements and sense of change required, because of fundamental problems that require systemic changes to be fixed. The needs of victims are not being met, and agencies are still struggling to deliver the code. The review called for an urgent reform—and that was in 2019. Wider victims code compliance data is not readily available, but aspects of it, such as being informed of the option to write a victim’s statement, are tested by the Office for National Statistics. That is reflected in the Ministry of Justice’s “Delivering justice for victims” consultation document, which sadly offers no detailed look at code compliance from other data sources.
The new clauses seek to tackle the lack of compliance by addressing the accountability issues denying victims and witnesses their rights and entitlements. The current set-up relies on the local criminal justice boards, the majority of which are chaired by the PCCs. LCJBs were introduced to bring together criminal justice partners to identify priorities, improve the experiences of victims and witnesses and deliver agreed objectives to improve the effectiveness of the local criminal justice system. They are aligned to the police force areas and operate as voluntary partnerships. However, when looking at right 4, for example, regarding support services for victims, the third sector, integrated care boards and sometimes local authorities are missing from this core conversation on the victims code.
In 2016, the Local Government Association undertook a high-level review of the council’s role in providing community safety services. Part of that review scrutinised PCCs and their role in chairing LCJBs. The review found that relationships between local councils and the PCCs were, not surprisingly, varied. It was clear that in some areas relationships are well established, with close work taking place; in others, relationships have proved more difficult to establish and there is very little contact, particularly where local priorities differ between the leading PCCs and the community safety partnerships. The review also found that similar variations were reported regarding the strength of local authority relationships with other statutory partners. In some areas excellent relationships are in place; however, it is clear that that is not universal. In other places, there continue to be concerns about siloed working and core issues such as data sharing. Stronger mechanisms must be in place to ensure that code compliance is on a national scale. We cannot have another postcode lottery being exacerbated due to the lack of accountability.
By placing a duty on the Secretary of State to both gather the data and publicly analyse it, there will be an emphasis for the relevant bodies to both return the data and work to improve it. Additionally, requiring criminal justice agencies to report annually on compliance provides the Secretary of State with a level of necessary oversight to ensure compliance and that victims’ rights and entitlements are upheld. The Secretary of State can then make an annual statement on the current state of code compliance and provide additional support and scrutiny wherever necessary to ensure that the code is working effectively for victims and witnesses. That also allows for more parliamentary scrutiny where necessary.
New clause 12 requires the Secretary of State to set a minimum threshold level of compliance for each right under the victims code. If the threshold for compliance is not met, the Secretary of State must commission an inspection and lay it before Parliament. Core accountabilities of the measures in the Bill must go back to the Secretary of State to ensure that we as parliamentarians can hold him or her to account, reporting the steps taken to correct any issues. That is a vital safeguard for Parliament. It should lead to urgent and tangible change where failures have taken place, and ultimately to a better experience for all victims.
Anna McMorrin
I support my hon. Friend’s new clauses. Victims who are deaf, disabled or blind or whose first language is not English are constantly being failed by the criminal justice system, so new clause 5 is essential. New clauses 11 and 12 raise key issues regarding accountability. It goes back to what I was talking about with my amendments. We need accountability. Treatment for victims is a postcode lottery, dependent on which policing areas see fit to hold services to account and ensure that victims’ needs are put first. I know that the Minister wants to address compliance, so I hope he will respond to my hon. Friend, who has made some important points.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Rotherham for tabling the new clauses, and I hope that she will allow me to address them all together. Although they each address different aspects of victims code awareness and compliance, they are interrelated. I wholeheartedly agree with the aims of each new clause, but we believe that the issues are already addressed in the Bill and associated measures. What differs is how the new clauses would achieve what is essentially a shared aim.
Broadly, the new clauses would either place duties in legislation where we instead propose including provision in statutory guidance, or introduce duties that we feel are already provided for in the Bill; I will go through the specifics in a second. As I said, the approach that we have taken to drive up code awareness and compliance is to set up the key structures of the framework in the Bill but to allow for the regulations and statutory guidance that operationalise it to be where the detail is found. Where we have introduced new duties, we have carefully considered how to do so in the way that we believe will be most effective in delivering the improvements in victim experience that I think is a shared objective for everyone in the room.
New clause 5 is intended to improve accessibility and awareness of the victims code and associated services. I share the hon. Lady’s aim of ensuring that all victims have access to the information that they need to support them in engaging with the criminal justice process. The new clause would require the Secretary of State to
“take all practicable steps to ensure that the code is fully accessible…and to promote awareness of the code”.
As right hon. and hon. Members will have seen in clauses 6, 8 and 9, we are placing explicit duties on criminal justice agencies to promote awareness of the code among victims and the public. We have placed that duty on agencies rather than the Secretary of State. Because those agencies are the ones in contact with victims day in, day out, they are best placed to raise awareness directly with victims themselves and to shoulder that responsibility.
Outside the Bill, I agree that there is a role for the Government in promoting code awareness. This is why we have committed to raising awareness of the code among practitioners, victims and the general public. For example, we are looking at a Government communications campaign and similar measures to boost that broader reach.
Sarah Champion
What language is that campaign in? I am holding up my phone to make a point about access to smartphones and smart technology. Translating all the core documents, which could easily be downloaded on a phone or printed out by an officer or support service, does not seem a particularly complex thing to do, if there is the Government will to make it happen.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the hon. Lady. As I say, I am looking at how we might do this, so I am not in a position to make firm commitments to her, other than that I will bear what she says in mind when we get to the point of being able to do something like this. She made a sensible point and, typically, in doing so she also suggested a possible solution.
Accessibility is hugely important. The code, however brilliant it may end up being, is of limited value if people cannot access it to understand it and know how it relates to them. We know that victims not only need to know about the code, but need to understand it. We recognise the importance of that. We are considering carefully how we can ensure that everyone who needs to understand it can do so. I am happy to work with the hon. Member for Rotherham. My meeting agenda over the summer and in September is getting longer and longer, but I am always happy to spend time with her to discuss such matters.
The hon. Lady’s new clause 5 would also give the Secretary of State the power to make regulations prescribing that criminal justice bodies must signpost victims to appropriate support services and must receive appropriate training, including from specialist domestic abuse services. It is absolutely right that victims should be signposted to appropriate support services. Right 4 under the code contains an entitlement for victims to be referred to support services and to have such services tailored to their needs. Through the new duty on criminal justice agencies to take reasonable steps to make victims aware of the code, more victims should be aware of their entitlements.
I turn to training. Agencies already deliver training on the code to their staff to ensure that they are confident and comfortable sharing it. For example, the national policing curriculum uses interactive and group training methods to deliver training in as impactful a way as possible. That is regularly reviewed and updated as necessary.
Jess Phillips
I do not have the data, and I do not expect the Minister to have it at his fingertips, but does he know how many police officers have actually had that training? Less than 50% have been trained on what coercive control is, for example.
Edward Argar
The hon. Lady slightly pre-empts my answer. If that information is centrally held, I will endeavour to get it and write to her with it.
I am also pleased that the College of Policing has developed the Domestic Abuse Matters programme, which has already been delivered to the majority of forces. It was developed in conjunction with SafeLives and with input from Women’s Aid.
In addition, the CPS will work with specialist support organisations to develop bespoke trauma-informed training on domestic abuse to help prosecutors to understand the complexities that victims experience in those crimes. Information on domestic abuse and how to recognise the signs and provide support is also available to HMCTS staff. To increase the impact that the training agencies already deliver, we are using statutory guidance to set out advice regarding appropriate training so that staff working with victims are confident in how to share the code sensitively and effectively at the right time for the victim.
We are confident that for both training and accessibility, statutory guidance under the existing code awareness duty is the most flexible and effective approach. It can set standards while allowing agencies to tailor it for the different needs of agencies, staff and victims, and it can be kept up to date more easily, which enables us to take a continuous improvement approach. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley is right to make the point that we can have fantastic guidance and training, but the key thing is to ensure that it is engaged with and that practitioners take the training on board and—I have used this dreadful word a few times—“operationalise” it in their day-to-day work. It is right that independent agencies have the expertise to decide how best to design and deliver training, rather than the requirement sitting with the Secretary of State. We already have provisions in the Bill and additional measures to address the aims of new clause 5, so I encourage the hon. Member for Rotherham not to press it to a Division.
New clause 11 would place a duty on all agencies with victims code responsibilities to monitor and report on compliance, and a duty on the Secretary of State to report annually to Parliament. I am grateful for the debate we have had, and I absolutely agree that we must monitor and report code compliance information. That is vital to understanding whether victims are getting the service they should. As I mentioned in our debate on a previous group of amendments, in 2019-20 only 23% of victims and 22% of the public were aware of the code, and only 45% of victims felt that the police and other criminal justice agencies kept them informed. That is why the Bill already legislates for new duties on code awareness and compliance in clauses 6 to 11. We therefore consider that new clause 11 is already covered by the existing provisions.
Sarah Champion
I wonder whether the Minister plans to speak about what enforcement there is if things do not go as he anticipates in the Bill.
Edward Argar
Without testing the patience of the Committee, I have a few more points I intend to make before concluding. I hope that some of what I say may well reassure the hon. Lady. If it does not, I am sure she will return to it at some point.
Together, these clauses set out the new code compliance monitoring framework by requiring key criminal justice agencies to keep their compliance with the code under review through collecting, sharing and reviewing compliance information and by reporting to the Secretary of State—either through police and crime commissioners, for local area reporting across agencies, or via separate routes for the national police forces. As has been outlined, those reports will be fed into a national forum where the data is reviewed, and the Secretary of State will publish relevant information to create as much transparency as possible. We are actively considering how often compliance information and data will be shared, and we will include that in the statutory guidance.
Where the amendment differs is in covering all agencies that deliver services under the code. This is a long list and includes bodies for which direct working with victims of crime is not central to their work. We carefully considered which agencies should come under these important but potentially not un-onerous monitoring and reporting responsibilities. We sought to choose key agencies that work day in, day out with victims of crime and have most responsibilities under the code, for example the police, the CPS, the courts, prisons and probation, and youth offending teams. That is where we want to prioritise resourcing to deliver robust local and national oversight. I agree that the Secretary of State reporting annually to the House is a vital part of accountability. We will continue to test and develop proposals for the new national governance forum, and I am open to considering how the findings and outcomes of that forum can best be reported to Parliament to allow parliamentary scrutiny and debate of such measures.
New clause 12 would require the Secretary of State to set victims’ code compliance thresholds by regulations, trigger inspections if thresholds were breached and require inspection reports to be laid before Parliament. I agree that there should be clear standards for the service that victims should receive, and consequences if service falls below that threshold. Our approach to achieving that is related to, but slightly different from, the proposal of the hon. Member for Rotherham. Although we will use regulations to set out what information must be collected to monitor code compliance, we think statutory guidance should cover the important issues that the hon. Lady has raised, such as thresholds that may trigger escalation to address poor performance. That is particularly appropriate for considering performance thresholds, given how the victims’ code sets out entitlements: they are a mix of what victims should receive, or have the opportunity to receive, and how they should be treated. In this context, the quality of communication and delivery really matters.
We will better understand code compliance, including the quality of delivery, by gathering consistent information from a range of different sources, including victim feedback, quantitative data and process narratives to understand how agencies deliver less measurable entitlements. That basket of evidence will hopefully give us a broader picture of how well local areas are delivering the code. The information on code compliance will allow police and crime commissioners to assess where improvements are needed, what agencies’ plans are to drive these improvements and whether those plans are working. Measuring whether standards are improving in this way will be more effective than setting a potentially arbitrary threshold, against each code right, as to what triggers escalation.
Where local solutions fail or greater oversight is required, police and crime commissioners will be able to escalate systemic issues to the national governance forum. I agree that inspections will help to drive change, which is why the inspectorates will be invited to attend the national governance forum. When systemic issues and poor performance are identified at a national level, that will be an opportunity to use the powers that we have introduced in the Bill for Ministers to direct a joint victim-focused inspection in areas that are consistently not delivering or to examine a range of issues that are clearly challenging in a number of areas, rather than requiring an inspection for each individual breach. In cases where there are individual breaches, there are, of course, complaints processes, and the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman can take appropriate actions to identify the most appropriate route for redress.
Finally, with regard to laying a report in Parliament, inspection reports are already published. As I have said, I am open to considering how the national governance forum reports and work can be fed into Parliament, and I will work with the hon. Member for Rotherham and others across the House to ensure that we get this right. I hope that that gives the hon. Lady some reassurance.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 11 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Fay Jones.)
Victims and Prisoners Bill (Ninth sitting)
Tuesday 4th July 2023
(2 years ago)
Public Bill CommitteesVictims and Prisoners Act 2024 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 4 July 2023 - (4 Jul 2023)
The Chair
Before we start, I have a few preliminary reminders: switch off electronic devices or turn them to silent; no food or drink, except for the water provided, is permitted in this sitting; and send your speaking notes to hansardnotes@parliament.uk, or pass them to Hansard colleagues in the room.
Clause 16
Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Edward Argar)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie.
Clause 16 raises the profile of the Victims’ Commissioner, a vital and powerful voice for victims. Previous office holders—we have spoken of them in previous sittings: Louise Casey, Helen Newlove and Vera Baird—have all been dedicated in speaking up for the needs of all victims and witnesses, especially the most vulnerable.
The Victims’ Commissioner plays a crucial role in advising national policymaking, raising awareness of the common issues faced by victims and witnesses, conducting research, and assessing how the criminal justice and victim support agencies comply with the code. However, in the 2021 victims consultation, we heard that the commissioner requires further powers to effectively carry out their duties.
The clause introduces a requirement for the Victims’ Commissioner to lay their annual report in Parliament, which will give greater prominence to the report and amplify victims’ voices. It also bolsters the status of all Victims’ Commissioner reports by requiring Departments and agencies under the remit of the Victims’ Commissioner to respond to recommendations directed at them in all published reports within 56 days. They must say what action they plan to take in response to the report or explain why no action will be taken.
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
Will the Minister give way on that point?
Maria Eagle
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way so early in his remarks. Does he agree that for a Victims’ Commissioner to be effective, they have to be in post? Can he give us an update on how the recruitment of Dame Vera Baird’s successor is going? There has now been a gap between Dame Vera leaving and whoever the new postholder is to be taking up their post.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for her intervention; I said that I thought that I could predict her question, and I did—in my head—with a fair degree of accuracy. I gently refer her to the response that I gave to the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Cardiff North, in our deliberations last week. This is a hugely important post, as the right hon. Lady highlighted in her intervention, and it is right that we take it seriously and get it right.
I suspect that Opposition Members may raise wry smiles at this, but we have had a number of Lord Chancellors in the past year. The Victims’ Commissioner is an important post to which a Lord Chancellor can recommend an appointment to the Prime Minister. The current Lord Chancellor has been in post for a few months now, and he wants to ensure that he reviews the situation and gets it right so that he is happy with the postholder, but he shares my view—and indeed that of the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood—that it is important that we get this done properly and as swiftly as possible.
The proposals in clause 16 will better hold agencies to account and ensure that they are actively considering victims’ experiences and how they can be improved. The clause also adds to the list of agencies that the Victims’ Commissioner may make recommendations about, crucially adding police and crime commissioners and the criminal justice inspectorates.
As set out previously, the Bill also puts in place mechanisms to improve the processes for monitoring compliance with the victims code, both locally and nationally. The Victims’ Commissioner is expected to have an important voice in those discussions, where systemic issues have been escalated, so that action can be taken to drive improvements. Together, the measures add to the existing broad Victims’ Commissioner powers, allowing the Victims’ Commissioner to tailor their role as they see fit to achieve their functions and outcomes for victims. We expect that that will result in better treatment of victims at both local and national levels, fulfilling the most important function of the Victims’ Commissioner.
As set out in previous Committee sittings, and as I said to the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood, a recruitment process is under way, and we take it extremely seriously. With that in mind, I commend clause 16 to the Committee.
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for addressing the clause. As I have already outlined, regarding my previous amendments that would have strengthened the powers and authority of the Victims’ Commissioner, we fully support the function of a robust and independent Victims’ Commissioner. We first asked for a provision to grant the commissioner a statutory duty to prepare and issue a report to lay before Parliament in early 2021, so I am glad that the Government have finally caught up and heeded our calls.
We believe that victims’ rights should be a parliamentary responsibility, and I am pleased that the report will not just go to the Secretary of State. During the evidence sessions, Dame Vera raised her concerns about the efficacy of the data that will be available to the commissioner for the purposes of their report—something that I have also raised in debates on earlier amendments. Will the Minister outline how a future Victims’ Commissioner, when appointed, will receive the appropriate data and information to allow for independent scrutiny? The Bill at present fails to do that.
The Victims’ Commissioner’s powers under clause 16 do not go far enough in ensuring that victims have a steady, reliable voice that criminal justice agencies and the Government must listen to. Granting agencies the duty to respond to the commissioner’s recommendations is a welcome first step, but how will the Government ensure that agencies respond and comply? I understand that the Domestic Abuse Commissioner is still waiting for a response to their “Safety Before Status” report five months after the deadline. Can the Minister explain why the Government do not believe it is necessary to respect the powers of the Domestic Abuse Commissioner and respond to such a pivotal report? Can he reassure all of us here that exactly the same practice will not just happen again to the Victims’ Commissioner?
Edward Argar
There were a number of points there, to which I will respond swiftly for the benefit of the Committee. I note the point made by the shadow Minister about having asked for such provision in 2021. In a gentle way, I must say that she was beaten to it—by Dame Vera, in fact; she and I had discussions about how that might happen in 2018-2019, just before I was reshuffled to the Department of Health and Social Care, so I am pleased to see the measure before us today.
The Bill already contains data transparency provisions and a duty on the Secretary of State and others to publish the data at both a local and national level. That will give a huge additional layer of data granularity for not just the Victims’ Commissioner, but others, including Members of this House, to scrutinise.
I turn to the duty to respond. I suggested to the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood that I had predicted her question. I thought this could have been the other question she might have gently sent in my direction—about the “Safety Before Status” report and the response time to it. I note that the other report by the Domestic Abuse Commissioner was responded to. We always seek to respond within the timelines set out. As the hon. Member for Cardiff North will be aware, that particular report is a matter for the Home Office, but I will ensure that my colleagues in the Home Office are made aware of her remarks.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 16 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 17
His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to debate clauses 18 to 20 stand part. [Interruption.] I will speak more slowly between clauses next time so that the Minister can find his notes.
Edward Argar
As the day goes on, Mr Hosie, I get more dextrous when it comes to finding the right piece of paper to respond to interventions or, indeed, to your swift running of the Committee.
These clauses have been grouped together, because while each separate clause relates to each of the separate criminal justice inspectorates in turn, they all introduce the same measures. Each of the inspectorates named in the legislation has a role in the oversight of victim treatment in the criminal justice agencies they inspect. His Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons oversees the responsibilities prisons have to victims, and His Majesty’s inspectorate of probation oversees the delivery of probation’s responsibilities towards victims. That includes the victim contact scheme and the role of probation in protecting the public and keeping victims safe.
His Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services oversees the delivery of the police’s responsibilities towards victims, including how forces protect vulnerable people and the service provided to victims throughout their engagement with police. His Majesty’s chief inspectorate of the Crown Prosecution Service oversees the delivery of the CPS’s responsibilities towards victims, including the victims communication and liaison scheme and the service provided to certain groups, such as victims of domestic abuse. Increasing transparency around the performance of criminal justice agencies and ensuring clear oversight when victims are treated poorly are both integral parts of driving improvements for victims. In delivering these aims, the inspectorates’ diligent reporting on the efficiency and effectiveness of criminal justice agencies is vital, and we fully recognise the importance of their work in ensuring victims are treated as they should be.
The inspectorates play a key role in scrutinising the performance of the agencies that they inspect and monitoring the delivery of recommendations, utilising tools such as re-inspections where required. Their work promotes effective practice, challenges poor performance and encourages improvement. We want to build on that foundation to deliver further progress for victims, with clauses 17 to 20 bolstering the inspectorates to enhance victim focus in their work.
The clauses will achieve that by empowering Ministers to jointly direct that a joint inspection programme must include provision for the inspection of victims’ issues, creating a sharper focus on how victims are treated and where to focus improvements. That new power will be an addition to existing ministerial powers to drive improvements with regard to code compliance. They will also be able to use the newly collected and shared code compliance information that we touched on in the debate on the previous clause to inform the use of the power. Joint inspections will involve the inspectorates working together to address cross-cutting systemic issues that impact victims and their experience of the criminal justice system.
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend join me in particularly welcoming the inclusion of His Majesty’s chief inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service, given that many victims’ experiences—sometimes adverse experiences—of the criminal justice system occur in the courts? Of course, it is not for us to tell the judiciary what it should do, as we have been reminded during the passage of the Bill. There is not an inspectorate of the court service in the same way, so does my hon. Friend agree that the inspectorate of the CPS can, to some extent, fulfil the role of improving the experience of victims through the court process?
Edward Argar
When I see my hon. Friend rise to ask a question, I always look at him with a degree of trepidation, because he knows of which he speaks, having for many years served in the youth justice system. He is right that, as well as the judiciary being independent, and that independence being, quite rightly, jealously protected, so too are individual prosecution decisions by the CPS. His Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service inspectorate, exactly as he says, has the potential to make a huge impact here, because we often hear from many victims that the court stage of the process of seeking justice can be very challenging for them. The clauses will ensure that victims’ issues are comprehensively assessed, with associated action plans driving improvements so that victims receive the service they deserve.
Maria Eagle
I am having a look again at the report of the Justice Committee—the pre-legislative scrutiny of what has ended up being the first part of the Bill. The Select Committee raised the issue that the general difficulty that inspectorates have relates to having levers available to them to ensure that their recommendations, if they are even accepted, are implemented. The inspectorates all use different methodologies. I wonder whether the Government have developed any plans to ensure that the inspections that he is legislating for give levers to the inspectorates, so that we do not merely get what often happens now, which is repeated reports making the same points, with the inspectorates having no way, even if their recommendations are accepted, of ensuring that anything is done about them.
Edward Argar
The right hon. Lady makes a couple of important points. First, on the different methodologies, while I expect that we will want to see consistency in the application of principles to them, I suspect that, by the nature of what they are inspecting and the independence of each of the inspectorates, there will be some tailoring and divergence in how they operate in terms of their inspections.
On the right hon. Lady’s broader point, which I think was the thrust of her intervention, and the PLS point about how inspectorates get traction with their recommendations, we have set out in debates that we would expect the recommendations to be responded to and acted upon, but ultimately it will be for those who are accountable for running the individual services, be they Ministers, the Director of Public Prosecutions, or ultimately the Attorney General in the case of the CPS, to heed those recommendations and act on them.
I think that it is right that Ministers respond to, for example, the recommendations of His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service, which answers directly to the Prisons Minister, and ultimately to the Secretary of State, but it would not necessarily be appropriate if Ministers were compelled to enact every recommendation without consideration. It is right that there is a degree of agency for the Secretary of State, for which of course they are accountable to this House and to hon. Members.
I suspect that if there were sensible recommendations to be made and a Secretary of State ignored them, the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood would be one of the first to challenge them on the matter in this House. I think the provision strikes an appropriate balance. Any Secretary of State or agency head who did not give careful consideration to the recommendations of an inspectorate would be—“reckless” is the wrong word, so let’s say “courageous”, in the language of Sir Humphrey.
To conclude, the clauses require the inspectorates to consult the Victims’ Commissioner when developing their inspection programmes and frameworks. That will ensure that the commissioner can advocate for what matters most to victims, with their invaluable insight considered throughout the consultation process. Centring the victim experience in this way will promote positive change across the criminal justice agencies that are inspected. I commend the clauses to the Committee.
Anna McMorrin
It is clear from my previous amendments to the Bill on expanding the powers of the Victims’ Commissioner that the commissioner should be widely consulted for the majority of matters in the victims code. I am pleased that the Government have accepted the recommendation following pre-legislative scrutiny by the Justice Committee to place a duty on criminal justice inspectorates to consult the commissioner when developing their work programmes and frameworks to drive improvements, because it is the victims’ experiences and what they go through that matter.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood was absolutely right when she emphasised, as the Select Committee set out, that the inspectorates need the levers to act when these issues are pointed out. It is imperative that a formal consultative role is established as only some inspectorates routinely consult the Victims’ Commissioner. I welcome this provision, but would like to see that point emphasised.
Edward Argar
When responding to the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood, I should have thanked and paid tribute to the work of the Justice Committee for its pre-legislative scrutiny, which played a huge role in improving the original clauses and drafting of this part.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 17 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 18 to 20 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 21
Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Edward Argar
Clause 21 simplifies the process for victims of crime to escalate complaints about their experiences as a victim. The policies and approach introduced in the legislation will lead to improved experiences for victims, but if things do go wrong, the clause will help them raise their concerns more easily and seek redress. It does that by giving victims the ability to complain directly to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, rather than referring their complaint through an MP, where their complaint relates to their experience as a victim of crime. Victims may either make a complaint themselves or do so through a nominated representative, such as a friend or relative.
The change addresses a concern that some would call the “MP filter”, which may be a barrier for victims and deter them from escalating complaints against public bodies due to a complicated and intimidating process. I am sure that Members on both sides of the House respond swiftly and sensitively to ombudsman forms that they are sent by their constituents in cases that come before them, and that all Members seek to assist their constituents in that respect. However, we are seeking to simplify this process further. Given the nature of complaints that may arise in this context, it is possible that some victims may not feel comfortable approaching their MP to share a potentially traumatic experience. I hope they would, but I appreciate some may not.
The PHSO is an independent complaint-handling service with extensive expertise in driving improvements in public services and identifying the most appropriate route for redress. When it decides that an organisation has not acted properly, it can recommend that the organisation prevents the issue from occurring in the future, acknowledges its mistakes, issues an apology or makes a payment to the complainant, or all of the above. It may also follow up to check that action has been taken and report to Parliament where an organisation has failed to follow recommendations, and that, of course, is central to improving activity and delivery. It is therefore important that complainants feel confident and comfortable when making a complaint, to encourage them to do so when needed and, as a consequence, to prevent similar issues in the future.
Anna McMorrin
There have been calls for some years to remove the MP filter so that victims who want to complain do not have to go through their MP. I met the ombudsman in July last year, and they made it clear how essential it was for the MP filter to be removed, so I am glad the Minister has outlined this proposal and finally conceded the point.
This move has widespread approval both inside and outside Parliament, but it is long overdue. The Government introduced a draft Bill back in December 2016 to remove the MP filter. How many victims could have sought support directly from the ombudsman in the last six years had the Government followed through with that Bill? That is not to mention the fact that the MP filter was intended as a temporary measure to be phased out after five years when first introduced in 1967. Yet here we are in 2023.
I also echo the ombudsman’s further request to allow victims to make a complaint in formats other than in writing. The Government’s response to the Justice Committee was that complainants can nominate someone else, such as a family member, to submit the complaint for them. However, there is a consensus that that does not go far enough in ensuring that everyone has adequate access to this vital public body.
The ombudsman’s consultation response on the Bill outlined the issue using a case in which the complainant stated they found the system difficult to navigate because they could not read or write. There is no guarantee that this individual would be able to nominate someone close to them to handle this incredibly sensitive and very personal issue for them, so I wonder whether the Minister might consider conceding on this point. Finally, it is worth noting that the ombudsman service is not well known among victims of crime, so how will the Government increase its visibility?
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your guidance for, I think, the first time, Mr Hosie. It is not so much that I want to make a speech; it is just that I feel compelled to say thank you to the Minister for moving on this issue.
In the 10 years I have been an MP, I have always felt quite compromised by being another level of the bureaucracy slowing down my constituents in getting through to an ombudsman-type person. That has always felt odd and inappropriate, and it gives false hope and a false understanding that MPs have some involvement in this process. It also took away another tool, but now we can act as lobbyists, as well as having the commissioner in place.
It is good to hear that the individual will have responsibility in terms of the victims code, because we keep asking about accountability and how to make sure the code is applied in an even-handed way geographically. I warmly welcome this change, which is well overdue, and I am glad the Bill is bringing it forwards.
Maria Eagle
I also approve of the fact that the MP filter is going, but it has had some advantages. They have, perhaps, paled in comparison with the disadvantages, but I have always found when assisting constituents that the filter makes it possible to ensure that the application is in a fit state. It is not always easy these days to get separate advice—a lot of the advice agencies are not operating in the way they were—and I have frequently seen constituents’ applications that could be better set out and, perhaps, that could make the points that I know about, because I know the case, more persuasively. I think there is an issue about quality in that sense.
I know that the ombudsman is set up to find out what has really gone on and treat the person making the application fairly, but it is constrained by what is written in the application and the documents that have been sent. Many people who want to complain are very involved in their case and do not necessarily put it in the strongest possible manner.
In the past, I have not referred cases to the ombudsman when it has been absolutely clear to me that they will not succeed. In part, that is because, in a way, I am in a better position to explain to my constituent why they will not succeed and to make sure that they do not have false hope. I am clear with them that I am not going to send a case forward to the ombudsman if I absolutely know that it will not succeed, because that will not do them any favours. One can imagine that more cases may come to the ombudsman that are not going to succeed.
Sarah Champion
I hear my right hon. Friend’s point about being that first filter, but does she think it is fair that we are put in that position? I understand what she says about cases going forward that might not be appropriate, but I have never felt easy about that being my role.
Maria Eagle
I understand my hon. Friend’s point. Indeed, when I first came into Parliament many moons ago, that was how it worked; it was just one of those roles that one had, and so one tried to make the best of it. If there is a chance of deterring a case that has absolutely no chance of success and is not going to help the constituent concerned because it is inevitable that they will not get what they want, then perhaps having the MP there to explain it helps. There is no doubt that one can become a lightning rod for annoyance in those circumstances, and that is not a happy place to be.
I prefaced my remarks by saying that I approve of the MP filter going, but I think that there is an issue here that a greater number of cases that are less well prepared and have no chance of succeeding may go forward to the ombudsman. I wonder what the Minister is going to do, both on providing resources for the parliamentary commissioner and on providing the public with information and, perhaps, other ways of getting advice in completing applications, to ensure that the intent of this positive legislative change will not be overshadowed by some of its potential consequences.
Edward Argar
I also met Rob Behrens, the ombudsman, and I pay tribute to him and his team for their work. I am pleased by the broad consensus in the Committee. I note what the shadow Minister said; all I will say is that I am bringing this measure forward and that I am grateful for her support.
I am also grateful to the hon. Member for Rotherham for her kind words. It is always a pleasure to do political business with her, if I may put it that way. I sometimes wish that some of what happens in Committee Rooms was rather better publicised. People watch Prime Minister’s questions and think that is everything that happens, whereas in fact there is quite a lot of constructive to and fro in rooms such as this when we are seeking to improve legislation.
As ever, the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood makes a very important point. When we seek to change or influence something in this place, there is rarely a simple, binary choice between an unadulterated good, without any downsides, and an unadulterated bad, without any upsides. On balance, I believe that we are taking the right approach and that the positives significantly outweigh the negatives, but she is right to highlight the challenges. Not only can a Member of Parliament sometimes help to strengthen an application before it is made, but it can be useful to an MP to see applications so that they know if there is an issue. If there are suddenly two or three about the same organisation and the same issue, that aids Member of Parliament in standing up in the House to challenge a Minister, or to hold an agency to account about what may be a more systemic problem.
That said, I do not think that the approach that we are adopting would preclude someone from seeking advice from a Member of Parliament if they so wished as they prepared their form. Some of my constituents have found the ombudsman service quite helpful, not in prejudging a case but in giving some pretty good advice when they ask, “What do I need to submit with it?” There is also some pretty good advice on the service’s website.
Ultimately, the clause should make it easier for people to complain, but I agree with the right hon. Lady that we need to provide support to ensure that they can make their best complaint, if that makes sense, to the ombudsman, in order to give them the best chance of having it looked at in the best possible light. I will take away the point that she makes, and reflect on whether we can do more as Government, and as parliamentarians, to promote awareness of the PHSO route, and how we might better support people in going through it.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 21 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 12
Duty to collaborate in exercise of victim support functions
Sarah Champion
I beg to move amendment 89, in clause 12, page 10, line 5, at end insert——
“(1A) For the purposes of this section, the relevant authorities for a police area in England must together conduct a joint strategic needs assessment.
(1B) The Secretary of State must, drawing on assessments prepared under subsection (1A), provide a statement every three years on current support for victims of domestic abuse, including—
(a) volume of current provision,
(b) levels of need, and
(c) investment.”
Amendment 89 requires the relevant authority for a police area in England to conduct a join strategic needs assessment. The amendment is supported by the Domestic Abuse Commissioner Nicole Jacobs, and I thank her and her team for both the evidence that she submitted and her help with the amendment. Part 4 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 made great strides by placing a duty to plan and provide accommodation-based support for survivors of domestic abuse, including their children. However, there is no such duty for other essential community-based services, such as counselling, therapeutic support and advocacy, which are vital for survivors to find safety and recover from abuse.
In November last year, the Domestic Abuse Commissioner released the findings from her mapping of domestic abuse services across England and Wales, titled “A Patchwork of Provision”. She found that most victims and survivors wanted some form of community-based support. For example, 83% wanted counselling and therapeutic support, 74% wanted one-to-one support, such as a caseworker, and 65% wanted mental health care. There is a clear need for a range of community-based services, and a duty to collaborate would be a step forward in helping to co-ordinate the response.
However, victims and survivors are diverse, and so are their needs, which all too often are not being met. The Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s report found a huge discrepancy in the provision of services across England and Wales, and an acute lack of funding, particularly among “by and for” services. Fewer than half of survivors were able to access the community-based support that they wanted. Only 35% said that accessing help was easy or straightforward. Over 70% of survivors who wanted support for their children were unable to access it, and only 7% of survivors who wanted their perpetrator to receive support to change their behaviour was able to get it.
Only 23% of survivors who wanted help to stay in work were able to get it, and just 27% who wanted help with money problems or debt received it. The mapping highlighted how effective and critical such services are in supporting victims and survivors of domestic abuse, but over a quarter of domestic abuse services were forced to cease some services altogether due to a lack of funding. Among “by and for” organisations, that rose to 45%. For children, who are recognised as victims in their own right for the first time in the Domestic Abuse Act, the Bill becomes empty legislation unless there is funding to provide services for them, or structures in place to understand their needs and provision.
The duty to collaborate will make some progress in responding to that need. However, I am unsure how a local strategy can have any material and substantial impact without a joint strategic needs assessment, which I will refer to as a JSNA from this point forwards. JSNAs draw from data to create a description of the place and population, taking into account the social, demographic and economic characteristics of the population in that area. They identify risk and protective factors to ensure effective commissioning. They provide the multi-agency partnership with important information to inform local initiatives, including data and typologies of domestic abuse, trends, volume, extent and distribution.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her amendment, which, as she set out, would require relevant authorities for a police area to conduct a joint strategic needs assessment—I may adopt the same shorthand as she did in order to save words—as part of their obligations under the duty to collaborate to inform the strategy for commissioning victim support services. The amendment would also require the Secretary of State to use the assessments to publish a statement every three years on the current support for victims of domestic abuse, using the needs assessments to assess whether provision is in line with need.
The hon. Lady is quite right to highlight the importance of service provision for such victims and survivors. It is something that she has championed, and that with passion and experience the shadow Home Office Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley, has raised on every occasion in this House when she has had the opportunity since we were both elected together in 2015; I pay tribute to her for her work in this space.
It is vital that we have the relevant support services to fit the local needs of victims and that a bespoke approach is taken, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach set at a national level. That is why the funding system for victim support services operates as it does. I sometimes fear that some of the debate around duties to fund specific individual services slightly risks over-constraining individual local commissioners in their ability to meet the needs of their particular communities and to ensure that there is an appropriate blend of services, be they general services, “by and for” services or very specific services, so I sound a slight note of caution there. Of course, when it comes to overall funding—I suspect we may touch on this in subsequent debates—in the Government’s view the spending review, rather than individual legislation, is the right place to set such funding limits.
Grants and funding are supplied to PCCs to allow them to use their knowledge of local need and provision to choose what they fund. As part of the process, relevant local needs assessments that indicate the needs of victims already take place regularly as part of good commissioning practice. The grant funding is provided to commission practical, emotional and therapeutic support services for victims of all types of crime in their local areas. PCCs are expected to carry out needs assessments, which will allow them to target the funding and ascertain the level of need and demand in their area.
Sarah Champion
I am listening intently to what the Minister is saying. For clarification, I am not asking for a prescription like, “Five per cent. of support goes to people with dogs.” What I am saying is that authorities need a robust understanding of their demographics so that they are able to justify that they are supporting the needs in their areas. As the Minister has moved on to PCCs, will he comment on whether he believes that system is working? PCCs are individuals—political appointments—and I wonder whether that is leading to some of the subjective delivery we are seeing nationally, which I know he seeks to address.
Edward Argar
The hon. Lady makes a couple of points. First, my remarks a moment ago were made in the context of the broader debate that can often happen around the funding of services. To her specific point, I fear I may detain the Committee a little while, but I suspect I will address her points within that context.
Police and crime commissioners are directly elected and therefore accountable to their communities, but there is always—I suspect that, under any Government of any political complexion, there will always be—the perennial debate of how to strike the appropriate balance: local flexibility and tailoring to meet local needs, versus the challenge of how to achieve a degree of consistency and avoid the so-called—this is a dreadful phrase— postcode lottery. That is always going to be a tension within the system. The challenge for us all, whichever side of the House we sit on, is how to strike the appropriate balance between those two approaches: the national and consistent approach, versus a degree of local tailoring, which reflects not only local need but political decision making by police and crime commissioners.
Sarah Champion
As the Minister knows, I am trying to help. Would it not help the Secretary of State and the Government if an agreed baseline of data was collected? A region may push back on it, but it gives the Government a guide to see whether an area is succeeding or failing, and whether they need to be asking questions. For example, we do the same thing with ambulance times—we have that baseline. There will be local variations that can be discussed with the Secretary of State, but the baseline gives the Minister the opportunity to make investigations.
Edward Argar
I reassure the hon. Lady that if she allows me to develop my point a little, I will address her specific JSNA point before I conclude.
As the hon. Lady will be aware, we published our victims funding strategy last May. I am pleased that that was published, not least because I set it in train back in 2018 when I was last a Minister in the Department. I am pleased that it has seen sunlight. The strategy provides a framework for how agencies should work together to best resource the victim support sector. Within it, there is a clear expectation that commissioners carry out regular needs assessments, using all the data required to commission appropriate services for victims in their areas, including victims with tailored needs. The duty to collaborate in the Bill, which the hon. Lady touched on, is clear that relevant agencies must work together to ensure that services that meet local needs are commissioned and provided for.
Clause 13(3) requires relevant authorities to have regard to any assessment of the needs of victims that they have already carried out when preparing their joint strategy. We will be issuing statutory guidance to accompany that duty. That will set out clear expectations for how the duty should be carried out, as well as good practice, including around data and consistency of data. The guidance will set out that relevant authorities are expected to explain in their joint commissioning strategy how they have had regard to the relevant needs assessments, and how commissioning decisions meet those needs.
I understand the points made by the hon. Lady, both in her opening remarks and in her interventions. I share her view that support services have to be commissioned in line with, and reflect, genuine need. That is why we have created the duty. To a degree, it reflects the duty created under the Health and Care Act 2022 for integrated care boards and integrated care systems in that context. We should allow local flexibility in the services that are offered but seek to avoid duplication and gaps where multiple agencies commission the same service in some spaces and nothing is commissioned in others. It is a cornerstone of the duty that local needs must be assessed and considered. For those reasons, we do not believe that the amendment is required to clearly state that a joint needs assessment must be considered, but I have a few more remarks to reassure the hon. Lady.
Subsection (1B) of amendment 89 would require the Secretary of State to provide a statement every three years on the current support available for victims of domestic abuse, including the volume of provision, levels of need and investment. The Department receives regular monitoring returns from PCCs and the support services that we commission. The returns include data that indicates how many victims are seeking support, and provide insight into demand and levels of need across England and Wales, which informs national commissioning decisions.
We are committed to improving our understanding of need and the impact of funding at a national level. To do that, we have introduced core metrics and outcomes to be collected from all victim support services that are commissioned through Government funding streams as part of the victims funding strategy. We will also establish an oversight board to monitor them.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
The trouble with the data that the Minister is describing is that it will not be all the data in a local area if it just comes from a PCC, because the vast majority of community-based services for victims of domestic and sexual violence come from a local authority. Unless that data is all pulled together with a joint needs assessment, the Minister, up here in this ivory tower, will get only a tiny fraction of the reality.
Edward Argar
The shadow Minister highlights one of the issues that we grappled with in the course of drafting the victims funding strategy. I pay tribute to the Domestic Abuse Commissioner for her work in trying to grapple with this issue as well. I am talking about trying to get an understanding of what is provided in a given locality, not just from the money provided by central Government—we can track that and see what is commissioned—but through local authorities and, in some cases, although I suspect it is not a huge amount, elements of NHS service provision.
Edward Argar
I take the hon. Lady’s point. I am no longer a Health Minister, but I suspect that were I ever to be so lucky as to be reshuffled back into that role, she would gently, or perhaps less gently, lobby me on that point. Of course, there is also the provision of services that are not funded by a statutory body but are voluntarily supported and funded. That is not to say that that is a reason not to fund services statutorily; equally, in regard to understanding the provision locally, it is important to understand all aspects of that provision.
I will turn to the JSNA—
Sarah Champion
You probably will in an hour or so. [Laughter.] I do not want to push the amendment to a vote, but I would like the clarity that will prevent me from doing so. Is the Minister saying that in the statutory guidance he will require or ask for data not only from the PCCs but from the local authority, the NHS and—one hopes—community services?
Edward Argar
I suspect that I have but two or three minutes more, and I hope that in that time I will be able to address adequately the hon. Lady’s concerns. The funding strategy’s oversight board will review collected data returns to establish where there are obvious gaps in current funding, where we may be duplicating funding across Government and where we could improve collaboration at national level to improve services for victims. The duty to collaborate will further improve our—
Sarah Champion
Minister, I think you have an hour, not two minutes, so please take your time.
Edward Argar
I will not test your patience in that way on a Tuesday morning, Mr Hosie.
The duty to collaborate will further improve our understanding of both local need and the services commissioned for victims of not only domestic abuse but sexual abuse and other serious violence offences. The publication of the joint commissioning strategies will give valuable insight into the levels of service that victims are receiving in each police area across England and an assessment of how areas are making improvements against local objectives or key performance indicators. An oversight forum will then scrutinise those strategies, assess how well the duty is executed nationally, share best practice and help to devise plans for improvement.
A national statement every three years focused solely on domestic abuse would not in itself hugely build on the understanding that the Secretary of State already has through existing mechanisms or necessarily better help local areas to understand need. The strategies published under the duty to collaborate will instead provide information of the type, or a large amount of it, that the hon. Member for Rotherham is asking for—that is, on the volume of provision, levels of need, and investment—for not only domestic abuse but sexual abuse and other serious violent offences more broadly, and with the important local context that is useful for commissioners. I therefore encourage the hon. Lady not to press the amendment to a Division, as the Secretary of State will in effect have access to all the information that she asks for. However, although I am—
Edward Argar
I give way to the shadow Minister, but let us hope she does not dissuade me from what I am about to say.
Jess Phillips
I do not wish to dissuade the Minister. In my local area, there is a “by and for” service that is run specifically for Afghan women, that is completely funded, usually, by the will of volunteers, and that is dealing every year with hundreds of cases of Afghan women who are victims of domestic abuse, and it does not get its funding from any of these sources. How will the Secretary of State know that that is an issue?
Edward Argar
The hon. Lady did not quite succeed in dissuading me from what I was about to say, which is that although I am unable to accept the hon. Member for Rotherham’s JSNA amendment at this time, I will reflect very carefully on its import and what she said, and particularly on the words of the Domestic Abuse Commissioner in the oral evidence we heard, and in the context of the points made by the hon. Members for Birmingham, Yardley and for Rotherham about the challenges in understanding service provision when that is not funded through a national or a public funding stream.
I cannot commit further than that, but I will commit to reflecting very carefully, between Committee stage—as this is a carry-over Bill, we will have a few months—and before it returns to the House on Report, on the points that the hon. Members and the Domestic Abuse Commissioner have made very eloquently.
Sarah Champion
I apologise for testing your kind patience, Mr Hosie. While the Minister is in a reflective mood, I hope he will also reflect on the financial and time commitments that might be placed on organisations, and try to ensure that we get the data we need with the lightest of touches. I am grateful for his movement on the issue, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Jess Phillips
I beg to move amendment 80, in clause 12, page 10, line 16, at end insert—
“(3A) In discharging their duty under this section, relevant authorities must collaborate with specialist women’s community-based domestic abuse and sexual violence support services within the police area, as commissioned under section [Commissioning of specialist women’s community-based domestic abuse and sexual violence support services].”
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 19—Commissioning of specialist women’s community-based domestic abuse and sexual violence support services—
“(1) It is the duty of relevant local authorities to commission specialist women’s community-based domestic abuse and sexual violence support services for victims in accordance with need.
(2) The services provided under subsection (1) must include, but are not limited to—
(a) counselling and other psychological support,
(b) advice and advocacy support in relation to welfare benefits, debt and access to financial support,
(c) support for children affected by domestic abuse,
(d) legal advice,
(e) victims helplines,
(f) support for victims of domestic abuse, sexual violence, trafficking or modern slavery who offend as a result of that abuse,
(g) perpetrator programmes with a priority outcome of increased safety and freedom for victims,
(h) support for victims of elder abuse,
(i) support for victims of stalking,
(j) support for families where a relative has died by suicide following domestic abuse,
(k) support for victims of modern slavery and trafficking,
(l) support for so-called ‘honour-based’ abuse victims,
(m) outreach and education initiatives aimed at raising awareness of domestic abuse and sexual violence, and
(n) ‘By and For’ services that support individuals with protected characteristics.
(3) In discharging the duty under this section, the relevant local authorities must have particular regard to the need for such services provided by, and for the benefit of those with protected characteristics.
(4) The Secretary of State must by regulations—
(a) define ‘specialist community based services’ in collaboration with the violence against women and girls sector, and
(b) set out how providers are to be regulated.”
Jess Phillips
I apologise for my lateness, Mr Hosie. I am suffering from a weird bout of dizziness, which I have never had before in my life.
Jess Phillips
I will attempt to stand, but should I need to sit down I will. I am fine if I just stand still.
Unsurprisingly, I will follow on from the theme of my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham regarding exactly how the very welcome duties around domestic abuse and sexual violence will work in practice. I am afraid that the Bill runs the risk of having a good title—obviously I preferred it when it just had the word “victims” in it—but not much else in this space. No one is not on the side of victims. Everyone wants them to be looked after and cared for. The problem, as is so often the case, is that the devil is in the detail. The support, care and provision of services that victims need are specialist, tailored guidance and support in the face of tragedy, abuse, exploitation, fear, anger and loss. I tabled the amendment and new clause in recognition of the specialist services that are needed if we are to truly deliver on the promised principles of the Bill.
My commitment to specialist services and my desire to get specialisms written into the law is, and will be, lifelong, because I have watched as generic services have taken over from specialist support-based services. In my constituency, I have seen a case where the perpetrator is being supported by the same service as the victim, which is both unethical and dangerous. That happens because there are all-encompassing, non-specialist victims-based services rather than specialist women’s services. I gently point out to all Government Committee members that there is a huge desire from the Government to talk about women-only spaces. I notice that it is politically expedient to talk about women’s specialisms in some aspects of our politics; if only putting women’s specialisms into the law were such a hot topic. I notice that much less debate goes on about that.
The amendment and new clause would clarify that police and crime commissioners, local authorities and health bodies must commission specialist women’s community services that will provide the support, care, prevention and guidance that victims need. Without specifying the types of services that should be commissioned to best serve victims, the duty will undoubtedly incentivise large generic contracts and not local specialist services—a real risk to which I will return.
First, though, I will make the argument for specialist provision and pay homage to the providers that deliver it. It is easy to make such an argument when we hear of the need, experiences and injuries of victims, and the sheer scale of crimes suffered. We know that such services are currently available to victims. For example, community-based domestic abuse services are life-saving and, crucially, life-building for victims of some of the worst crimes, but an estimated 70% of domestic abuse victims and survivors who seek support rely on community-based services.
In previous Bills such as the Domestic Abuse Bill, the Government have sought to have protections from on high, not from local commissioners. They decided it was more important to make sure that refuge-based accommodation services were provided in all areas. However, they did not put the specialisms in, as I will come to in a minute. Currently, 70% of people are seen by community-based services, so we are touching only a fraction. Refuge, the UK’s largest domestic abuse charity, states that 80% of its thousands of service users access some kind of community-based specialist service, but inconsistent provision across the country means that many survivors are not able to access such support. In 2022, less than 50% of those who wanted to access community-based services were able to.
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
We all have female constituents who have been victims and who need community-based services. I have had constituents contacting me who are on a very, very long waiting list. Those specialist services are not there at present. Not only do we need them, but we need the funding to be in place for them.
Jess Phillips
I absolutely agree. In my local area, we have had to shut down waiting lists, and not just because of their length: there have been cases of domestic homicide, where women have been murdered while on a waiting list for services. Those agencies that were not able to provide specialist services then feel the hand of blame coming from the state: because people were dwindling on waiting lists, the agencies get a level of blame for the murder of those women. In the worst possible circumstances, we cannot even operate waiting lists any more. They just shut them.
The care and support that victims and survivors need are specialised and wide-ranging. In new clause 19, we have laid out some of the key services that need to be provided. The mental health impacts of domestic abuse and sexual violence cannot be overestimated, so counselling and other psychological support is central. In Women’s Aid research, almost half of women in refuge reported feeling depressed or having suicidal thoughts as a direct result of the domestic abuse that they experienced. Throughout the journey of the Bill, we have heard the heartbreaking case of Katie, who took her own life following sexual abuse. Katie was a childhood friend of the journalist Charlie Webster, who wrote:
“The thing about the trauma of sexual abuse, it doesn’t just go away. What happened to Katie made her feel worthless like she wasn’t enough, and it impacted her mental health, as is common for all survivors, me including.”
We must ensure that victims can get the help they need.
The organisation Surviving Economic Abuse has done extraordinary work on raising the profile of economic abuse and the devastating, complex impact on domestic abuse victims’ lives. Some 95% of domestic abuse victim-survivors experience economic abuse, and the lack of access to economic resources post separation is the primary reason why women return to an abusive partner. It is crucial that survivors have access to specialist experts who understand economic abuse, as well as advocacy support in relation to welfare benefits and debt and access to financial support to rebuild their lives.
The impact of domestic abuse on children is a shamefully underdeveloped area of policy. Colleagues and I were successful in securing the recognition of children as victims in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, but what does that actually mean in practice? One in seven children and young people under the age of 18 will have lived with domestic violence at some point in their childhood, but the provision of children’s support services nationally is patchy, piecemeal and precarious. I am one of the nation’s leading experts in this, but if a child in my constituency came to me today and said, “I’m not a direct victim of domestic abuse, but my mum is being beaten up by my dad every day,” I would not know where to send them. I would not know where to refer that child.
Sarah Champion
Will the Minister give way? Sorry, I mean the shadow Minister.
Sarah Champion
I wonder whether my hon. Friend heard the “Woman’s Hour” piece last week. Olivia Colman is a trustee of a theatre group that goes into primary schools specifically to raise issues that are uncomfortable, but also to try to give some support to those hidden children who will be seeing domestic abuse and to try to prevent perpetrators in future.
Jess Phillips
Absolutely. That organisation is called Tender; I am also a patron, along with Olivia Colman. Again, that support is only provided through having good headteachers or good local commissioners. There is nothing from this building or nationally that says there must be specialists going into every school, because if in every single school there is a class of 30 kids, and one in seven—my gosh, I am so dizzy that my maths will not work it out, but we will have a huge number of children in every class who suffer this in silence. They need specialist support available to them. We are failing to reach and save children in dire domestic abuse circumstances.
Edward Argar
It is good to see the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley, in her seat. I hope she is feeling a bit better, although I am pleased that neither her eloquence nor her passion for the subject has been impaired. I am grateful for her amendments to place a duty on relevant local authorities to create specialist women’s community-based domestic abuse and sexual violence support services for victims, in accordance with need. Her new clause 19 would also require the Secretary of State to define in regulations “specialist community based services”, after agreeing that definition in collaboration with the violence against women and girls sector, and to set out in regulations how providers are to be regulated.
Supporting victims of domestic abuse and sexual violence is an absolute priority for the Government. As I said in responding to an earlier group of amendments, I recognise the hon. Lady’s expertise and commitment to the issue. I hope that one thing we can both agree on is the importance of getting the right support for victims of these crimes. She is absolutely right: there is a place for broadly based general support services for victims of crime, but equally I have seen at first hand, both in my current incarnation in this role and previously, the importance of specialist services, particularly “by and for” services and trauma-informed services, if we are to succeed in reaching out to and being able to help victims and survivors of those horrendous crimes and give them the confidence to engage and be supported.
Amendment 80 calls for collaboration with the providers of community-based specialist services for female victims of domestic abuse and sexual abuse. The duty to collaborate set out in clauses 12 and 13 is specifically and purposely placed on the commissioners of services only—that is, police and crime commissioners, local authorities and integrated care boards in England—as it is a duty to collaborate when commissioning services. To expand collaboration beyond commissioners would risk changing the objectives of that duty, which are to encourage more strategic and joined-up commissioning of services, rather than to dictate or fix which types of services the commissioners, who understand the needs of their area best, should focus on and should aim to commission.
I appreciate the hon. Lady’s ambition to ensure that specialist women’s support services are properly considered as part of that commissioning process. As needs will vary locally, the Department provides police and crime commissioners with grant funding to commission practical, emotional and therapeutic support services for victims of all crime types in their local areas. PCCs are expected to carry out needs assessments to inform their local commissioning decisions, as I mentioned in discussing a previous amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Rotherham.
Sarah Champion
This point builds on my previous amendment. Budgets are tight and PCCs are trying to get the most support from their limited budgets. Can the Minister point to anything in the Bill that will make sure that the specialist services get a look-in? My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley touched on generic services, which we were seeing a lot. Brexit was meant to eliminate having to go to the lowest bidder, the European regulations and that sort of stuff. My fear is that unless there is something the Minister can point to in the Bill that embeds that need for both demographic and specialist support services, the PCCs will go for the cheapest, most common provider.
Edward Argar
I slightly differ from the hon. Lady’s perspective; I do not believe that it is necessary to have that provision in the Bill. There are other mechanisms, be they through statutory guidance or through commissioning guidance and the work that is done together. We have touched on this point before, but the challenge is the extent to which we think mandating—and thereby, to a degree, being prescriptive—is appropriate, versus being permissive, for example by setting out guidance and expectations, but saying that it is for a directly elected and accountable police and crime commissioner to make decisions and be accountable to their electorate and their public for what they are doing and whether they are making the right decisions.
Jess Phillips
I understand entirely—I am a firm democrat and I will fight for democracy—but I am afraid the idea that very marginalised groups of people with very little resource could launch a campaign to spark public interest in, say, Lincolnshire to get the 19% of people who voted in the PCC election to change the balance is for the birds. I say that as someone who has tried to do it. I am not entirely sure that PCCs can truly be accountable to their electorates on the issue. If we are seeing gaps, surely it is Parliament’s responsibility to deal with them.
Edward Argar
I was going to make the point that, sitting alongside local accountability and local tailoring, we also have—as the hon. Lady will know, and for want of a better term—a national approach. The context is slightly different, but we have the rape and sexual abuse support fund, for example, which is nationally commissioned. With RASAF, we seek to fill gaps in provision and ensure there is a geographical spread.
I will turn to individual services in a moment, but in any locality a PCC might say, in relation to the point made by the hon. Member for Rotherham, “I have limited resources, so I will put them where the greatest number of victims are in my area.” However, a small number of victims might not be covered by that, because they are a small number in that locality. That is why we have the national approach sitting alongside to ensure that there is national provision in a number of areas.
Jess Phillips
On the idea that there is anywhere in our country where victims of domestic abuse are small in number, let me say that the national average is 19% of all victims of crime, and domestic abuse represents the highest volume of any crime in our country where calls go to the police. I do not expect the Minister to have the data to hand, but I would like to see a PCC’s office that is spending 19% of its budget on this.
Edward Argar
I will see whether I can get that data. On the hon. Lady’s point about the figure of 19%, she is right to highlight the horrifying prevalence of that crime, which often goes unnoticed because of the nature of reporting and the nature of the crime. Moreover, there are particular groups within the figure and within the cohort of victims, for example minorities. A PCC might take the view that in a locality a particular group might need specific trauma-informed services, which, given their choice of resource allocation, might not have been catered for. That is why we seek at national level to try to address such issues with direct funding grants and with agreements that we reach, for example through the RASAF.
Our role as Government is to set the expected standards for the approach to commissioning of victim support services. At a macro level, we have done that through the victims funding strategy, which clearly sets out the expectation for commissioners to put victims at the centre of commissioning. We wholeheartedly agree that commissioners should consider a range of different services, including specialist women’s community-based domestic abuse and sexual violence support, and that they should choose to commission services that best fit the needs of their population.
Let me turn to the specifics of the amendment. I am in agreement on the importance of commissioners drawing on the expertise of providers of victim support services when preparing and revising their joint strategies. That is why clause 13(2) specifically requires relevant authorities to consult with persons who represent the interests of victims, providers and other expert organisations. We would expect them to consult with providers of specialist services for female victims of domestic abuse and sexual abuse, as well as “by and for” services in the children’s sector, to name but a few more. However, we do not consider it proportionate to list in legislation organisations with which commissioners must consult, which would risk resulting in a hierarchy of services or unintentionally omitting organisations providing valuable and important services.
In addition, we intend the accompanying statutory guidance to set out that local commissioners should consider engaging with a range of providers that reflect the types of service required in their area, such as women-only services, when considering their statutory duty to consult persons appearing to them to provide relevant victim support services and other appropriate persons. Guidance will also support commissioners by recommending standards and processes for that consultation. We are engaging with both providers and local commissioners as we develop that guidance so that we can reflect best practice, and I would be very happy to work with the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley to explore how guidance may further support commissioners in fulfilling their obligations to reflect the views of providers, and those who support victims, in their joint-commissioning strategies.
I reassure the hon. Lady that the Government are fully aware that domestic abuse and sexual violence disproportionately impact women and girls. Beyond the Bill, in February 2023 we published a revised strategic policing requirement, which includes violence against women and girls as a national threat for policing to respond to. In 2021, the Government published a new and ambitious cross-Government tackling violence against women and girls strategy to help to ensure that women and girls are safe everywhere. That includes a new full-time national policing lead on violence against women and girls, DCC Maggie Blyth, who I have had the privilege of meeting; I know that the shadow Minister meets her regularly as well. She is now in post and is doing an excellent job in the role.
We have awarded £125 million through the safer streets fund and the safety of women at night fund to make our streets safer for women and girls. We have contributed up to £3.3 million to fund the roll-out of Domestic Abuse Matters training to police forces. That includes funding the development of a new module to improve charge rates. The Government are also taking targeted action against sexual violence, including through the 24/7 rape and sexual abuse support line, which offers free, confidential emotional support for victims and survivors.
I therefore encourage the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley—I do not know whether she is persuadable—not to press her amendment to a Division. The duty to collaborate focuses only on commissioning bodies, as they are best placed to meet the objectives of our duty. In the Government’s view, the Bill already includes provision for engagement with providers, such as providers of specialist women’s services for domestic abuse and sexual violence, underpinned by the statutory guidance that will be produced.
New clause 19 would place a duty on relevant local authorities to commission specialist women’s community-based domestic abuse and sexual violence support services for victims in accordance with need. It would also require the Secretary of State to define in regulations “specialist community based services”, after agreeing that definition in collaboration with the violence against women and girls sector, and to set out in regulations how providers will be regulated.
We do not fully share the hon. Lady’s view about the extent to which local authorities should be required to fund particular types of community-based services; again, that goes to the point underpinning my earlier remarks about it being a local decision for which local authorities would be accountable. In our view, it is for local commissioners to determine what services to fund, noting the additional national strand of direct funding alongside that. That determination will be based on their assessments of the needs of their local populations, knowledge of available services and their understanding of those services and their provision. Our concern is that the approach set out in the new clause risks excluding or minimising the importance of some of the other service types that commissioners could consider for victims of domestic abuse and sexual violence. As drafted, the new clause could risk creating a hierarchy.
On overall funding, we believe that the right approach to setting funding levels continues to be through the spending review process, rather than individual pieces of legislation. That allows Government and individual Departments to outline priorities and respond to changing circumstances; allows the Chancellor of the Exchequer to consider a range of funding requests and pressures, recognising the finite amount of taxpayer money available to any Government; and allows those priorities to be considered in the round.
I hasten to add that I am not in any way questioning the importance of these vital services. I have had the privilege of visiting a number of them, both as Under-Secretary of State and in my present role. I have seen at first hand the amazing work that they do. They often go above and beyond the resources that they have available, in their own time and with their own resources, so passionate are those who work in this part of the sector to assist to the best of their ability those who need their help. That is one of the reasons that we have included ringfenced funding in our grants to PCCs for community-based services for victims of domestic abuse and sexual violence.
In allocating money to PCCs, there is always a balance to be struck. Many PCCs, I know, would prefer a greater proportion of their funding to be unringfenced and to be used entirely at their discretion within those broad parameters. We think that we have struck the appropriate balance, with them having a degree of discretion, but with some ringfenced funding to address particular needs.
Sarah Champion
I am listening intently to what the Minister is saying. He says that he is concerned that the list of services put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley has the potential to create a hierarchy of services, but he has only detailed IDVAs and ISVAs further on in the Bill. How does the Minister hold both those thoughts?
Edward Argar
I suspect that when we reach that clause, we will debate that exact point. However, to pre-empt what I will say about that clause—I shall say this briefly before you call me to order, Mr Hosie—the reason is that ISVAs and IDVAs have a particular, evolving and developed professionalism that gives them a particular locus within the criminal justice system. It is quite right that we cannot issue guidance to judges, because they are the independent judiciary, but through this approach to ISVAs and IDVAs we can seek to give the judiciary greater confidence in the professionalism of those roles. We thereby hope to see the judiciary being more willing to utilise them in the court process. That is my rationale, but we may debate that point when we come to the relevant clause.
New clause 19 also highlights the importance of legal advice for victims. The Government asked the Law Commission, as part of its work on the use of evidence in sexual offence prosecutions, carefully to review the law, guidance and practice relating to the trial process in prosecutions of sexual offences, an issue in which I know the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley takes a close interest. That will include consideration of whether independent legal advice and representation would be beneficial where personal records are sought, or more widely for the trial process.
On setting out how providers are to be regulated, we do not want to take a prescriptive approach in legislation. Local commissioners regularly review the services they commission to ensure high standards of victim services and will set relevant and tailored quality standards in their agreements with local providers. I suspect that a degree of the debate here is around where the line lies between prescription and a permissive approach.
As I have said in response to similar amendments, we have allocated a substantial amount of funding for domestic abuse and sexual violence victims and survivors, demonstrating the Government’s commitment to victims of these crimes. We are making it clear to commissioners and funders that they should consider the value and role of specialist-based support services when assessing local need to inform the distribution of funding, but ultimately local commissioners are best placed to determine how those services should be provided locally. On that basis, I gently encourage the shadow Minister not to press her amendment to a Division.
Jess Phillips
I will respond to some of what the Minister has said. His charming hope that all commissioners are absolute experts in this is not one that I share. I have been a commissioner on a local authority, and I think Birmingham remains probably the only part of the country to commission sexual violence services as part of its sexual health commissioning, and sexual and domestic abuse services as part of its substance misuse commissioning. The reason is that I was the commissioner and I am an expert in this.
In our evidence session, the woman from Rape Crisis said that she could not think of any specialist Rape Crisis services being commissioned by mental health services in our country. There is this idea that commissioners all have a total understanding of specialist domestic and sexual violence services. I have a plan for someone who works in the service to become a commissioner in every service, to ensure that that happens, but given the failure of my ability to influence Bury St Edmunds Council to have someone from women’s aid services elected to it, I will struggle. I do not think we can argue that commissioners know best. I have watched them know very little about anything to do with this topic. They are not specialists. They need to be told what specialisms they have to provide.
On hierarchy, I totally agree about the paradox that my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham pointed out. I want there to be a hierarchy. That is what I am saying: I am asking for a hierarchy, where specialist services are placed at the top and generic support services are just that.
I will not press the amendment to a vote, because I genuinely believe that we can get to an agreement on this issue prior to Report. I totally believe in the Minister’s will to do that. I say gently, though, that evidence from the Domestic Abuse Act shows that if we do not write these provisions into legislation, local authorities will just take refuge accommodation in-house and it will become completely non-specialist—it has been staffed by men, for example. We did not get this written into the Domestic Abuse Act, but I would really like the words “women” and “women’s specialist services” to exist somewhere in the Bill. Although I will not press the amendment to a vote today, I stand ready to make this argument again later. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Anna McMorrin
I beg to move amendment 9, in clause 12, page 10, line 22, at end insert—
“(d) offences against children.”
This amendment would extend the duty to collaborate to include victim support services for child victims.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 19, in clause 12, page 10, line 22, at end insert—
“(d) fraud.”
This amendment would extend the duty to collaborate to include victim support services for victims of fraud.
Amendment 82, in clause 12, page 10, line 22, at end insert—
“(d) modern slavery.”
This amendment would extend the duty to collaborate to include victim support services for victims of modern slavery.
Anna McMorrin
I will start with amendment 9. As it stands, the duty to collaborate in the Bill is limited to victim support services for domestic abuse, conduct of a sexual nature and serious violence. All of that is welcome, but it is such a restrictive remit that it excludes vulnerable victims who would benefit from joined-up services. Extending the duty to collaborate to include victim support services for child victims would ensure that children’s needs are guaranteed to be front and centre of any collaboration that takes place.
In her evidence session, when asked whether children should be included in the duty to collaborate, the response of the Children’s Commissioner for England and Wales was, “Absolutely.” I am happy to see that the duty to collaborate is in the Bill, but there needs to be more accountability around it. If we are going to put children as victims into the Bill, we have to recognise that they experience crime and victimhood very differently. What we need to put around them, to make sure that they are supported and can process things to see justice delivered, is different. Including children in the duty to collaborate would allow a national network, operating through regional and local levels, to enable every child to have the same experience and the best support. At present, as the Children’s Commissioner outlined,
“it is just not there.”––[Official Report, Victims and Prisoners Public Bill Committee, 20 June 2023; c. 24, Q51.]
According to Victim Support, children and young people are disproportionately more likely to be victims of crime, particularly the most serious crime. They often experience those crimes in their homes, schools and communities, and the crimes are sometimes carried out by people who should keep them safe. The Howard League for Penal Reform surveyed over 3,000 children in schools over a period of seven years; of those, 95% of children aged 10 to 15 reported being a victim of crime. Including them in the duty to collaborate is imperative to ensuring that the relevant agencies are prioritising children’s unique needs. That is what amendment 9 seeks to do.
Amendment 19 would include victims of fraud in the duty to collaborate. I put on the record my thanks to Catch22 and the shadow Attorney General’s team for working with me on the amendment. Concerns have been raised around there being a need to collaborate only with a subsection of crime types. That dilutes and undermines the importance of other crime types. Fraud is the UK’s most prevalent crime type.
Janet Daby
According to UK Finance, over £1.2 billion was stolen through fraud in 2022. Does my hon. Friend agree that victims of fraud must be mentioned in the Bill?
Anna McMorrin
Absolutely, and that just goes to emphasise the importance of the amendment. The cost to the mental health and wellbeing of victims of fraud is significant. In the year ending December 2022, 3.7 million offences were reported to the crime survey for England and Wales—a huge number, equating to 41% of the total offences experienced in that period. I am sure that the Minister has not had a chance to look yet, but our amendment has received coverage in The Times today, which reports that fewer than one in 3,000 fraud offences committed last year resulted in a prison sentence.
Far too often, The Government have treated fraud as a second-tier type of crime, and if Government Committee members reject that characterisation, I need only quote their own Ministers’ words back to them. In February last year, when he was the Business Secretary, the right hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) told the BBC that fraud was not the sort of crime that people experience in their daily life. Shortly afterwards, the Government’s counter-fraud Minister, Lord Agnew, resigned that post in protest at the
“combination of arrogance, indolence and ignorance”
that he had observed in the Government’s response to fraud. The Treasury, he said,
“appears to have no knowledge of, or little interest in, the consequences of fraud to our economy or society.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 24 January 2022; Vol. 818, c. 20-21.]
Bear in mind that that was when the current Prime Minister was in charge at the Treasury.
Is it any surprise, then, that a year after a previous Prime Minister and Home Secretary were chastised by the Office for National Statistics for leaving out fraud when they talked about the overall rates of crime in our country, the current Prime Minister and Home Secretary repeatedly did exactly the same in the House? Minister after Minister has tried to play down or simply ignore the most frequently experienced crime in our country, and I fear that by not having it in the Bill the Government are seeking to do the same. All of us whose constituents have fallen prey to scammers know that it is anything but a victimless crime. I am sure that every Committee member is dealing with constituents who have become victims to fraud. We are talking about thousands upon thousands of lives being ruined in our communities—retired people losing all their savings, and mums and dads losing the money that they had set aside for when their children went to university, or to help them to put a deposit on a house.
According to the Government’s fraud strategy, published in May, 300 people who contacted Action Fraud last year to report their losses were considered by the call handlers to be at risk of suicide. Just last week, we heard that two elderly pensioners lost £27,000 because criminals posing as police officers had persuaded them to withdraw large sums of cash. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham pointed out, last year alone over £1.2 billion was stolen through fraud. It is the most commonly experienced crime in the country, ruining the lives of millions, yet the Government did not see fit to include victims of it in the duty to collaborate. I am sure that the Minister will agree that they would benefit from a multi-agency approach. I am keen to hear his response before deciding whether to push the amendment to a vote.
Sarah Champion
The amendment is supported by the Centre for Social Justice, which identified that the duty to collaborate must cover support services for victims of modern slavery. Local authorities, the police and the NHS are all key agencies that come into contact with victims of modern slavery, and have a role to play in supporting them, alongside specialist programmes such as the national referral mechanism. That can range from immediate emergency support and protection to providing longer-term social care support or housing. There is a particular gap for victims before and after their contact with the NRM, and the lack of support often means that they have to choose between being destitute and going back to their exploiter.
Local authorities are the primary agency providing care and support for children, and only some children receive the additional support of independent child trafficking guardians. However, there is often confusion among local authorities about their responsibilities for supporting modern slavery victims. There is also often a lack of co-ordination with specialist support providers under the Home Office modern slavery victim care contract. Victims are passed from pillar to post, unable to access the support they need.
Police often find modern slavery victims out of hours, when access to other services is limited. Clear, joined-up strategies for supporting victims of modern slavery would help prevent those victims being placed in unsuitable and unsafe accommodation after being identified by the police—that is, of course, if the police identify them as a victim of modern slavery. A lack of clear and joined-up referral pathways can mean that victims of criminal exploitation, especially young people exploited in county lines drug dealing, find themselves arrested, rather than safeguarded and therefore given support.
The gaps in support provision particularly impact British victims of modern slavery. In 2022, the highest number of British “possible victims” were identified since the NRM began. One in five NRM referrals in 2022 was for a British child. It is essential that we get the support for that group of victims right. Research suggests that many British victims in particular are not accessing specialist support available under the NRM, either because they are not identified as victims of modern slavery as they or the professionals have misunderstood their entitlement to support, or because they choose not to be referred. That leaves them without access to specialist support, and their particular needs may not be recognised by mainstream providers.
The definition of victims in clause 12 lacks clarity in respect of modern slavery victims. Some modern slavery victims are victims of other offences listed in clause 12(4), such as sexual offences or serious violence. However, modern slavery can also result from threats, deception, and financial control and coercion, which may not meet the threshold of serious violence. The particular needs and experiences of modern slavery victims need to be considered in strategies, assessments and the exercise of support functions. That is best accomplished by listing those victims in the duty to collaborate.
Explicitly including modern slavery victims in the duty to collaborate would address local authorities’ confusion and lack of awareness of their responsibilities to support victims of modern slavery. It would strengthen the implementation of the modern slavery statutory guidance. It would lead to stronger local co-ordination by the police, the NHS and councils when it comes to identifying support needs, providing support and monitoring the recovery of modern slavery victims. It would also help ensure that British victims who do not enter the NRM receive appropriate support that recognises and responds to their needs and experience of exploitation.
We cannot let more vulnerable people slip through the gaps in local service provision. A joined-up approach to tackling modern slavery is needed, and I truly believe that amendment 82 will facilitate that.
Maria Eagle
I rise to support all the amendments, but I will briefly say something about amendment 19. We have all come across extremely distressing cases of fraud in our constituency. In 2012—10 years ago—2,629 people were jailed for fraud, but last year the figure was 1,177. However, the number of offences rose from 441,000 in 2012 to 3.7 million last year.
There has been an absolute explosion in that type of offence, and there are consequently many more victims, who often lose their life savings and their future security. Almost nothing is done for them. They are simply left to feel as though they have been duped and are stupid, and nobody seeks to help them. Normally, they do not even get any kind of response from Action Fraud, which is like a black hole; once a report is made to Action Fraud, the person who made it never hears from Action Fraud again. It is hard enough for a Member of Parliament to get a letter out of Action Fraud about a particular case.
Given the explosion in the number of fraud cases, it is surely important for the Government to take this issue seriously, and to recognise that the people involved are victims, who need support, just as any other victims do. I hope that the Minister, when he replies, will give an assurance that much more will be done to recognise that victims of fraud need the support that this Bill seeks to give to victims.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the hon. Members for Cardiff North, and for Rotherham, for their amendments, which seek to expand the duty to collaborate so that under that duty, support services must be provided to victims of fraud, victims of modern slavery and child victims.
The duty to collaborate will require local commissioning bodies such as police and crime commissioners, local authorities and integrated care boards in England to work together when commissioning support services for the victims of domestic abuse, sexual abuse and other serious violent crimes. We have focused on the victims of those crimes because they are particularly traumatic crimes with a high number of victims each year. They are also crimes where there will be a particular benefit from collaboration, as victims of them typically access a range of services across health, local authorities and policing. However, we are committed to providing support for all victims. Beyond the Bill, the Government are committed to supporting victims of all crime types; support is available through PCC-funded services, and there is other specific support for victims of terrorism.
If I may, I will take the amendments slightly out of order. I turn first to amendment 19, which seeks to include victims of fraud under the duty to collaborate on victim support services. Clearly, this Government take extremely seriously the challenge posed by fraud and its impact on victims. As I have said, the Government have been very clear about our determination to support all victims of crime, and we are taking steps to improve local collaboration on support for victims of fraud. This includes supporting the multi-agency approach to fraud—or MAAF, if I may abbreviate—which brings together relevant local agencies to improve the quality of support available to fraud victims. MAAF hubs should be rolled out across all England and Wales by September.
The duty to collaborate focuses on crime types for which support services are commissioned by a combination of police and crime commissioners, local authorities and health bodies. The measure seeks to bring together those who commission those services, so that commissioning is co-ordinated and strategic, with better join-up and smoother referrals for victims. It is important that the duty be focused on crime types for which services are commissioned by a specific combination of PCCs, local authorities and integrated care boards, so that collaboration can have the maximum and intended impact.
Support for fraud victims is typically delivered through PCC-commissioned local services and the National Economic Crime Victim Care Unit. Because of this, many victims of fraud would be less likely to benefit from collaboration between PCCs, local authorities and ICBs. However, the duty does not prevent local commissioners from collaborating on other crime types, including fraud.
More broadly, the Government have allocated £400 million over three years to tackle economic crime, including fraud, and to help fund the National Economic Crime Victim Care Unit, which supports fraud victims. We are also providing over £30 million to City of London police to support the upgrade in the Action Fraud service; the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood touched on that service. A number of improvements have already been made to the system to improve the victim reporting experience and the quality and timeliness with which cases are sent to police forces for action.
Opposition Members have highlighted the scale and impact of fraud. That is why the Government take fraud so seriously and have done so much in this space. The Government published “Fraud Strategy: stopping scams and protecting the public” in May, as the hon. Member for Cardiff North said. This strategy sets out how Government, law enforcement, regulators, industry and charities will work together to cut fraud incidents by 10% by the end of this Parliament, and includes measures to improve the support available to victims of fraud. As we roll out those initiatives, we will continue to consider how victims of fraud can be better supported.
Amendment 9 seeks to ensure that specific support services for child victims are provided. I agree that it is vital that child victims be able to access the specialist support that they need in order to cope and recover from the impacts of crime. The Bill aims to improve the support offered to children and young people. Child victims are covered by the definition of victim in part 1 of the Bill, and by the current code. The duty to collaborate requires local authorities, police and crime commissioners and integrated care boards in England to collaborate when commissioning victim support services for both adults and children who are victims of domestic abuse, sexual abuse and other serious violent offences.
To emphasise the inclusion of children in the duty, following pre-legislative scrutiny, we amended the definition of victim to clarify that child victims who witness and/or experience the effects of domestic abuse are victims, and amended clause 1 to emphasise that commissioners must have regard to any assessment of the needs of child victims when preparing their joint commissioning strategy.
The duty focuses on crimes that are particularly traumatic, have a high number of victims each year, and for which services are commissioned by a combination of police and crime commissioners, local authorities and health bodies. Those services will benefit from collaboration to reduce duplicative commissioning and improve strategic co-ordination of support. Including all offences against children brings a vast range of services into scope, not all of which require a collaborative approach; that would risk diluting the focus of the duty.
Finally, I turn to amendment 82, which would seek to include support services for victims of modern slavery in the duty to collaborate. The Government are committed to supporting all victims of crime, including those who are subjected to modern slavery. Clause 12, which the hon. Member for Rotherham is seeking to amend, already requires local commissioning bodies such as police and crime commissioners, local authorities and integrated care boards in England to work together when commissioning support services for domestic abuse, sexual abuse and other serious violent crimes.
Local commissioners can already consider victims of modern slavery under the duty to collaborate, where those crimes apply, and we envisage that it is likely that for the most part, modern slavery victims will have suffered conduct that constitutes domestic abuse, sexual abuse or other serious violent crimes—particularly because “serious violence” includes threats of violence—and therefore will already be captured by the duty to collaborate.
We intend to clarify in accompanying guidance that modern slavery victims can, and are likely to be, captured by the duty. The duty does not list crime types that commissioners must consider in relation to serious violence, and instead allows local areas to make that decision based on the impact on the victim and the maximum sentence that a crime could receive. Commissioners can therefore already consider modern slavery, where that comes under the definition in the clause, under the duty to collaborate.
Sarah Champion
I hear what the Minister is saying. I also heard the word “should” rather than “must”. Will the Minister clarify that in the guidance, there will be an explanation of how modern slavery presents? A lot of modern slavery—I am thinking particularly about prostituted women—involves coercion and intimidation. Those people will probably not present themselves as victims in the usual sense; they will probably argue about that. There needs to be a bit more understanding, rather than us just saying “modern slavery”.
Edward Argar
I will try to answer quickly, before we get cut off by the end of the sitting. I take the hon. Lady’s point. Recently I attended a Select Committee sitting in which we looked at so-called honour-based violence and abuse. One of the key points that came out of that was that a multiplicity of offences constituted so-called honour-based abuse, and the same is true of modern slavery. It is important that we reflect those multiple indicators in the guidance.
The definition of serious violence in the duty mirrors the approach taken to the serious violence duty derived from the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022; that provision does not list specific offences, but instead defines serious violence based on the impact on the victim, and the maximum penalty for the crime committed. A more prescriptive approach of specifying types of serious violent crime would risk excluding offences that commissioners may want to consider, and would not allow for the necessary flexibility.
More widely, the Government are committed to supporting victims of modern slavery and ensuring that they get the support that they need. For example, children’s services work in close co-operation with the police and other statutory agencies to offer potentially trafficked children the protection and support that they require as part of the local needs assessment. “Working together to safeguard children 2018” sets out the system of multi-agency safeguarding arrangements established by the Children and Social Work Act 2017.
The Government have rolled out independent child trafficking guardians to two thirds of local authorities in England and Wales. Those roles are delivered by Barnardo’s until March 2024. They provide additional advocacy and support to child victims of modern slavery. Adult victims of modern slavery in England and Wales can access support through the national referral mechanism, under the Government-funded modern slavery victim care contract.
Every year, we support thousands of adult victims, so that they can begin rebuilding their life, engage with the criminal justice system and transition back into the community following their traumatic experiences. The current contract is delivered by the Salvation Army. I would be more than happy to work with hon. Members going forward, as we monitor the success of these initiatives in helping victims of modern slavery.
Victims and Prisoners Bill (Tenth sitting)
Tuesday 4th July 2023
(2 years ago)
Public Bill CommitteesVictims and Prisoners Act 2024 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 4 July 2023 - (4 Jul 2023)
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
I remind the Committee that with this we are discussing the following:
Amendment 19, in clause 12, page 10, line 22, at end insert—
“(d) fraud.”
This amendment would extend the duty to collaborate to include victim support services for victims of fraud.
Amendment 82, in clause 12, page 10, line 22, at end insert—
“(d) modern slavery.”
This amendment would extend the duty to collaborate to include victim support services for victims of modern slavery.
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
I will quickly respond to the Minister’s comments on amendment 9. I take what he said about ensuring that collaboration includes support for different sorts of victim, but the point that I am outlining in the amendment—that child victims often need a very different type of support—is backed up by a lot of evidence and the many organisations we worked with to table the amendment. I would like the Minister, when taking the Bill forward, to reflect on that and to see what he can do to encourage and include collaboration specifically with child victims and support services. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment proposed: 19, in clause 12, page 10, line 22, at end insert—
“(d) fraud.”—(Anna McMorrin.)
This amendment would extend the duty to collaborate to include victim support services for victims of fraud.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Edward Argar)
I beg to move amendment 29, in clause 12, page 10, line 36, leave out “disclosure or”.
See the explanatory statement to Amendment 30.
Edward Argar
I will be brief. These amendments are part of a collection of minor and technical amendments that have been tabled across the Bill to ensure that consistent terminology is used in relation to data protection. These changes are primarily for the purposes of clarifying the provisions and ensuring that they work as intended; they do not constitute a policy change and are not intended to have substantive effects. The amendments in this group make changes to clause 12 to remove the term “disclosure” and insert
“within the meaning given by section 3 of the Data Protection Act 2018”,
to ensure consistency with existing legislation.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
That is absolutely fine. The amendment seems fairly minor, so knock yourselves out!
Amendment 29 agreed to.
Amendment made: 30, in clause 12, page 10, line 37, at end insert
“within the meaning given by section 3 of the Data Protection Act 2018”.—(Edward Argar.)
This amendment and Amendment 29 give “processing” of information the same meaning as in the Data Protection Act 2018. Processing includes disclosure and other uses of information, so there is no need to refer separately to disclosure.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 43, in clause 12, page 10, line 37, at end insert—
“(8A) Collaboration under this section may include the co-location of services in accordance with the Child House model, as defined by the Home Office guidance entitled “Child House: local partnerships guidance”, published 6 September 2021.”
This amendment would include within the duty to collaborate the use of the Child House model, described by the Home Office guidance as “a multi-agency service model supporting children, young people and non-abusing parents, carers and family members following child sexual abuse”.
The purpose of the amendment is to promote the establishment of child houses as part of the relevant authority’s duty to collaborate in the exercise of its victim support function. Although the Bill seeks to collaborate between commissioners, it does not provide the firm direction needed to enable the joint multi-disciplinary service provision that makes such a difference to child victims. By rolling out the child house model, we can ensure that children are provided with both therapeutic support and support to navigate the criminal justice process all under one roof.
Too many children face a lack of support after experiencing sexual abuse. Young victims seeking justice are faced with extremely distressing delays in the justice system, as waiting times for child sexual abuse cases have surged in the past few years. Ministry of Justice data shows that the average number of days between a defendant in child sexual abuse cases in England and Wales being charged and the criminal trial starting rose by 43% in four years. That is from 276 days in 2017 to 395 days in 2021—a lot of time in a young life. For children already suffering with depression or post-traumatic stress disorder as a consequence of the abuse, the drawn-out process of waiting for a trial to start and end can be extremely distressing and compound the significant mental health impacts of the abuse.
In 2020, the Office for National Statistics found that around half of child sexual abuse cases did not proceed further through the criminal justice system, citing one of the reasons as being that victims worried that the process would be too distressing. Going through a police investigation and prosecution as a victim is often described as inherently traumatic—think of that for a young child. That is because during the process of a police investigation and trial, a child or young person often has to retell the experience of abuse multiple times, usually in an environment that is unfamiliar, intimidating and confusing.
NSPCC research found that support for child witnesses varied depending on location and that only a small minority were ever offered communication support through a registered intermediary. NSPCC analysis of freedom of information data revealed that in 2020-21, only 23% of the 119 local authorities that responded across England and Wales said they provided dedicated support for young victims in the form of independent and specially trained advisers. Research shows that children face an inconsistent network of agencies and services after experiencing sexual abuse. Instead, we could use the approach of a child house.
A child house provides a child-centred model in which the agencies involved in supporting young victims, including healthcare, social care, children’s independent sexual violence advisers—CHISVAs—the third sector and police, all provide co-ordinated services in an integrated, child-friendly environment. It is literally under one roof, and that supports children to give their best evidence. Currently, there is only one child house in England and Wales: the Lighthouse in London. They would love Members to go and visit them. It is a fantastic place and just a tube ride away—do go and see it.
In 2021, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime was commissioned to evaluate the Lighthouse. As part of its research, children were consulted on their experiences. MOPAC found that the model addresses concerns that children who reported sexual abuse often face—that is, multiple interviews with social workers, the police and other professionals. Children who had used the Lighthouse complimented the care and respect they received from the staff. Being able to go at their own pace with choice and control was described as valuable. Children emphasised the positive impact that the homely atmosphere had and said that the environment was created by the little things, such as being offered a hot drink and police officers not wearing uniforms.
One child spoke about their experience to the NSPCC, saying—I slightly paraphrase: “Looking back on the Lighthouse, even though obviously I wish I hadn’t had to go there, I think they just made the experience of having to go there a lot less harder than it had to be…And yeah, I did feel like almost loved there. I guess looking back I didn’t realise at the time how easier things were made for me with the Lighthouse being there.”
The child house model has been recommended by the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, the Home Office, NHS England, the Children’s Commissioner for England and the Government’s own tackling child sexual abuse strategy, as well as the British Medical Association. Despite those endorsements and a wealth of evidence that supports the effectiveness of the model, the Bill does not address the fragmented support landscape currently faced by children. I ask the Minister to listen to all the evidence, use the opportunity in the Bill and commit to rolling out the brilliant model of child houses across the country. We really can demonstrate what a difference that would make to all child victims.
Jess Phillips
I rise to agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham and remind the Committee that the Children’s Commissioner mentioned the Lighthouse what might be a record number of times; I am sure that Hansard would tell me one way or the other. The experts are telling us that the approach works and I have some experience of the alternative—when cases fall apart and children are completely unsupported. That still happens in the vast majority of cases, I am afraid, so I support the amendment.
Edward Argar
I am grateful, as ever, to the hon. Member for Rotherham for the amendment, which would include within the duty to collaborate the use of the child house model. Co-located, child-centred support services, including those delivered in accordance with the child house model, do excellent work in supporting child victims of crime. Like other Committee members, I recognise the work done by the Lighthouse. I also take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work done by Dame Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner, and her deputy Ellie Lyons, in campaigning for and highlighting the rights and needs of children.
The Government recognise the importance of the co-located child-centred support service, which is why we provided £7.5 million towards a pilot of the UK’s first child house, in Camden. Following that, we have published guidance for local partnerships that wish to introduce similar models for child victims in their area. The duty to collaborate aims to facilitate a more strategic and co-ordinated approach to commissioning and to improve the strategic co-ordination of services, so that all victims get the timely and quality support that they need.
The legislation requires commissioners to collaborate when commissioning services for victims of domestic abuse, sexual abuse and other serious violent offences. As we discussed this morning, it allows for flexibility for local commissioners to decide what services will best meet the needs of their population; that could include commissioning co-located services, exactly as the amendment suggests.
Listing in legislation the sorts of services that commissioners may or must consider is, I fear, slightly over-prescriptive—this goes back to the debates we have had about a number of amendments. I repeat what I said in those debates: it would risk excluding some of the other excellent service models that local areas may also want to commission, although I do not in any way diminish the huge impact that the child house model clearly has.
The duty also requires commissioners to consider any assessment of the needs of children when preparing their joint commissioning strategy. Statutory guidance will support commissioners in doing this, encouraging the co-production of services where appropriate and linking to the “Child House: local partnerships guidance” document. As the original draft Bill already allows local commissioners to adopt the approach where appropriate, we believe that it strikes an appropriate balance. I hope that the hon. Member for Rotherham might be persuaded to agree.
Sarah Champion
I thank the Minister for his warm words in support of the child house model. This was always a probing amendment. I hope that the commissioners listen to the Minister’s support for the model and act accordingly. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Sarah Champion
I beg to move amendment 83, in clause 12, page 10, line 40, at end insert—
“(10) The Secretary of State for Justice must ensure the relevant authorities have sufficient funding to exercise their functions in relation to relevant victim support services.”
This is not a probing amendment. For me, this is the nub of the gap in the Bill. Amendment 83 would make the Secretary of State for Justice ensure that the relevant authorities have sufficient funding to exercise their functions in relation to victim support services. I put on the record that the amendment is supported by Refuge. Its recent report, entitled “Local Lifelines”, highlights that
“Due to inconsistent funding of support services across the country, survivors face a postcode lottery”.
Collaboration between relevant public authorities is part of the solution. However, without funding, the duty to collaborate will not result in a meaningful change for survivors.
The Minister has talked about the duty to collaborate helping to identify duplications and gaps, but there are no duplications in this threadbare sector—only gaps, which cannot be filled without additional funding. Community-based domestic abuse services provide holistic, specialist support to women and children experiencing domestic abuse in local settings. Some 95% of survivors supported by Refuge, the UK’s largest provider of gender-based violence services, rely on some form of community-based service, yet far too often, through no fault of their own, survivors are unable to access community-based services due to the postcode lottery in service provision across the country.
In 2022, the report published by the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, “A Patchwork of Provision”, estimated that fewer than half of survivors who wanted to access community-based services were able to. Minoritised women seeking support from specialist “by and for” organisations face even greater barriers to accessing support. It is therefore vital that the Victims and Prisoners Bill introduces strong measures to safeguard these services.
Although the Ministry of Justice has committed to increasing funding for victims and witness support services to £147 million per year until 2024-25, that funding is not ringfenced to domestic abuse services. Existing commitments are simply insufficient to meet the demand for specialist domestic abuse community-based services across the UK. In the witness sessions, the Minister asked how much was needed for that; I can confirm that Women’s Aid put the cost at £238 million per year. I know that seems like a lot of money, but when we look at other schemes and how casually we now talk about billions and trillions, £238 million to provide the services we need to make this Bill as effective as the Minister wants it to be seems somewhat slender.
Amendment 83 would strengthen the duty to collaborate to require the Secretary of State to provide sufficient funding for relevant authorities to exercise their functions in relation to relevant victim support services. Refuge’s report demonstrates the extent of funding challenges facing frontline domestic abuse community-based services. More than four in five, or 85%, of frontline workers surveyed by Refuge said that their service is impacted by insufficient funding. Funding gaps are particularly acute for mental health support, early intervention and support for children and young people.
In many cases, funding contracts are simply insufficient to cover the costs of running a safe and effective service. That leaves organisations reliant on insecure and fundraised income, which is fundamentally unsustainable. For the financial year 2021-22, more than half of Refuge’s income was generated from fundraising sources. In this cost of living crisis, many charities are seeing their fundraising income falling dramatically.
In addition to insufficient fundraising, short-term contracts and recruitment challenges are exacerbating the insecurity facing many community-based services and contributing to rising caseloads. More than three quarters, or 76%, of frontline workers surveyed by Refuge said that their caseload had increased over the past 12 months. That comes at a time when victims and survivors need our support more than ever. The cost of living crisis is exacerbating the financial hardship victims and survivors face when fleeing abuse. Survivors typically flee with few possessions and often have to give up their jobs for their own safety. According to Refuge, as a result of this crisis more women are going to community-based services with financial support needs, such as food bank referrals and debt advice. Community-based services are not only transformational for victims and survivors; they are critical to managing the cost of domestic abuse to society.
According to Government estimates, domestic abuse costs society a staggering £78 billion a year. Economic analysis published by Women’s Aid early this year shows that every £1 invested in domestic abuse services will result in at least £9 of savings to the public purse. The case for investing in community-based services is therefore clear. Sustainably funding specialist support services, which reduce the need for victims and survivors to use statutory services, will save money in the long term while transforming the lives of victims, survivors and their children.
Jess Phillips
I just want to draw a comparison between services—for example, in the health service—that we fund and do not expect to get to crisis point. The best example I can ever think of is diabetes services. Imagine if the scheme in our country was that 10% of all people who have diabetes could access insulin and the other 90% could access insulin only at the point that they were about to die. That is the current situation with community-based services in domestic abuse services. If you fund crisis, you get crisis. If you fund prevention, you get prevention. That is simply the case at the moment.
We ration provision. We literally have a form for it, called the DASH—domestic abuse, stalking, harassment and honour based violence—risk assessment. A DASH risk assessment will be undertaken and you will be given a score—almost like, “How good is your domestic abuse?” We will come to some of these issues when we debate independent domestic violence advisers. From that score, a decision will be made about what sort of service you can access—not you, Mr Hosie; rather what sort of service “one” can access. I have seen DASH risk assessments where a woman has been hit repeatedly with a brick in the face and was not given a high risk of harm on her risk assessment. To be given a high risk of harm on a risk assessment, someone basically has to be at imminent risk of death. It is a bit like high risk in children’s social care; in the vast majority of the country, a parent basically has to have a knife to the child’s throat for the case to reach the threshold for any sort of children’s social services care.
Imagine if people got that kind of level with diabetes and we said, “You can have the insulin. There may be a service for you, but not necessarily,” and to everybody else who we could avoid elevating to the risk level of having been hit around the face with a brick, we said, “Go on this waiting list. Come back later. We’ll manage you in the community,” which basically means, “Go away until he knocks on your door 17 times with a machete and even then we won’t consider you high risk of harm.” Those are literal cases that I have handled.
I speak in absolute support of my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham. I also want to make a broader point about funding. The Justice Committee’s pre-legislative scrutiny report said that around £40 million, if not more—I think that figure is correct, but I am more than happy to correct the record if I have got it wrong—is being allocated to legal aid access for people who do not like their parole decision. The Minister has stood up a number of times today and said that the way to get money is by going to the Chancellor and doing it through the financial systems, which of course was not the case in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, because the money was allocated for the refuge assessment. The only money that is being allocated in this Bill is something that can be accessed by, for example, murderers but not by the people they would go on to murder.
Edward Argar
I fear that this is one area where I may not be able to bring the hon. Member for Rotherham with me. I will try but I suspect I may be out of luck on this one. I am grateful to her for the amendment and for the opportunity to debate this important matter.
To the point made by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley about the Parole Board, my recollection of what the Committee and the assessment looked at was not additional new money being made available in the way she suggests for part 3 but not for part 1, but a recognition of the cost implications of those changes based on the current entitlements to legal aid and the way the process works.
Edward Argar
I take her point, but I add the nuance that it is not a case of new money being allocated. It is an assessment of the consequences of a legal entitlement that would exist in those circumstances.
To speak to the broader point, I agree with the hon. Member for Rotherham on the importance of sufficient funding for victims’ services and ensuring that, where we can, we also provide funding to commission services on a multi-year basis. That was one of the key pillars of the victims funding strategy. That reflected what I, when I was last doing this job, was told by the sector, and what the hon. Lady will have been told as well, about the challenge of small, short-term pots of money—a situation that results in a number of key staff spending most of their time not delivering the service but writing bids to try to collate enough to meet the financial needs of that service. The funding strategy recognises and reflects that, so the Government do recognise that, where possible, that should be the approach adopted.
Outside of legislation we are more than quadrupling funding for victims’ services—as a basket, as it were—by 2024-25. That funding is up from £41 million in 2009-10, and includes an additional £6 million per annum through this spending review period, which is provided directly to police and crime commissioners and ringfenced for domestic abuse and sexual violence services in response to increased demand. Through the Bill, we are creating a statutory duty on PCCs, integrated care boards and local authorities in England to collaborate when exercising their victim support functions for victims of domestic abuse, sexual abuse and other serious violent crimes. That will mean that support is better co-ordinated and more effective. Collaboration should also improve use of existing funds.
Monitoring of local need and provision provides Government with valuable intelligence and insights. To improve our understanding of demand and the impact of the services we fund, we have introduced through the victims funding strategy a core set of metrics and outcomes that are being collected across Government. The reality is, however, that this information is used to inform decisions made through the spending review process, which continues to be the right approach to setting Government budgets, as it recognises that there is a finite amount of taxpayers’ money and there are finite funds.
I would gently argue that individual Bills setting funding requirements in an unco-ordinated way is not the most appropriate or effective way to consider Government spending and prioritisation of funding in the round. I was going to say, “as a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury,” but I only did that job for 11 days—maybe that still counts. I would nevertheless argue that considering funding in the round during the spending review process is the right approach. Continued flexibility is required when considering funding levels, and I do not believe that fixing funding in primary legislation is the right approach in that context. I fear I may not carry the hon. Member for Rotherham with me on this one occasion, but it was worth a try.
Sarah Champion
I always have respect for the Minister and he is right: I understand the analysis he puts forward but I do not agree with it, because there are other examples where money is attached to a Bill. Although I think the Minister will have a fight on his hands with this, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn,
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Edward Argar
Clause 12 introduces a joint statutory duty on police and crime commissioners, integrated care boards and local authorities to collaborate on relevant victim support services. As a result of the clause, we have for the first time a framework for collaboration when commissioning support services for victims of domestic abuse, sexual abuse and other serious violence that amounts to criminal conduct.
The duty focuses on child and adult victims of domestic abuse, sexual abuse and other serious violent crime, as they are particularly traumatic crimes for the worryingly high number of victims each year. It does not include accommodation-based services, which are covered by separate legislation under the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, as was alluded to by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley. Victim support services are crucial for victims to be able to cope with and recover from the impact of crime. Across the three crime types, victims typically access a range of services from health, local authority services and policing bodies. At present, services are not always co-ordinated and victims can find them to be disjointed when moving between them. As a result of the clause, we expect the relevant authorities to consider the entirety of the victim support service pathway and strategically co-ordinate and target services where victims need them most.
Clause 12 should be considered alongside clause 13, which we are shortly to debate and which requires the authorities to prepare, implement and publish a local commissioning strategy. We expect this activity to lead to increased join-up between services, a common understanding of local need and systematic sharing of information, leading to more informed decision making in commissioning. The clause also enables the sharing of relevant information to support that duty. With that, I commend the clause to the Committee.
Jess Phillips
I do not have much more to say, as I made most of my comments around clause 12 in its entirety when moving amendment 80. We recognise the good intention of the provision, but feel it has some way to go to not just be words on goatskin, which is what I am always concerned about. Words on goatskin are all well and good, but when it comes to how this legislation acts in people’s lives on the ground, I think it still has some way to go—but the intention is obviously one that we would support.
Edward Argar
I commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 12, as amended, accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 13
Strategy for collaboration in exercise of victim support functions
Sarah Champion
I beg to move amendment 87 in clause 13, page 11, line 3, at end insert—
‘(aa) prepare an assessment of the needs of victims (including victims who are children or have other protected characteristics) in the area,’.
This amendment would require the relevant authorities in a police area in England to assess the needs of victims in their area.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 88 in clause 13, page 11, leave out lines 16 to 18 and insert—
‘(a) the assessment of the needs of victims (including victims who are children or have other protected characteristics) carried out under subsection (1),’.
This amendment is consequential on Amendment 87 and would require the relevant authorities to have regard to their assessment of the needs of victims when preparing the strategy.
Sarah Champion
Both amendments seek to ensure that the strategy for collaboration takes into account victims’ needs. Amendment 87 would require the relevant authorities to begin the strategy of preparing an assessment of victims’ needs. That must include a specific requirement to assess the need of child victims and those with other protected characteristics, who are particularly vulnerable and must be subject to additional considerations by the relevant authorities. It is a logical place to begin and, as I stated when arguing for the joint strategic needs assessment, it would fail to be an effective collaboration if needs were not evaluated to begin with.
Amendment 88 would require the relevant authorities to consider the needs assessment when putting together the strategy to collaborate. Some partnerships may do that once the Bill is passed, but we must ensure that every region has the same standards and processes so that the needs of all victims, and particularly child victims, are met across the country. The amendment would enable the strategy to collaborate and be more cost-effective and ambitious when fulfilling the duty the Minister wants it to achieve.
Jess Phillips
I do not have much to say other than that I entirely support the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham.
Edward Argar
I am grateful, as ever, to the hon. Member for Rotherham for her amendment, which would require the relevant authorities in a police area in England to assess the needs of victims in their area and then take that assessment into account when devising strategies under the duty to collaborate. I already touched on that when debating an earlier amendment, so I will seek not to repeat myself—at least not too much—although, I am afraid that some of the arguments will be the same.
The Government agree that needs assessments are vital in informing local commissioning decisions, and relevant local needs assessments that indicate the needs of victims already happen regularly as part of good practice. The Ministry of Justice provides police and crime commissioners with grant funding to commission practical, emotional and therapeutic support services for victims of all types of crime in their local areas. In order to achieve that and to know which services are required, PCCs are expected to carry out needs assessments that will allow them to target the funding and ascertain the level of need and demand in their area.
There are also several other needs assessments that local commissioners carry out, which give an assessment of the needs of victims. They include, but are not limited to: the serious violence joint strategic needs assessment, which indicates levels of serious violence and the volume of victims in an area; the public health joint strategic needs assessment, carried out by local authorities and health and wellbeing boards, which sets out social care and public health needs; and safe accommodation needs assessments, which give an indication of the number of domestic abuse victims requiring safe accommodation in an area.
We have been clear with commissioners in the victims funding strategy that needs assessments are a central pillar of commissioning victim support services. To do that, the victims funding strategy sets out a clear expectation that commissioners carry out regular needs assessments using all the data required to commission appropriate services for victims in their areas, including victims with tailored needs.
Sarah Champion
The amendment is very specific about children, so would the Minister touch on that, please?
Edward Argar
I reassure the hon. Lady that I will turn to that. I have a little more to say, though not too much. To ensure that the victims funding strategy is improving commissioning practices and outcomes for victims—all victims, including adults and children—we will set up a cross-Government oversight board, which I have mentioned, to monitor delivery against the strategy. I am encouraged by the engagement with commissioners and providers to date, which indicates that the standards set within the victims funding strategy are being upheld, but we will of course continue to monitor adherence to those standards.
The duty to collaborate aims to ensure that the relevant authorities come together to utilise all the relevant needs assessments that I have set out when commissioning services for adults or children, as well as any other relevant data or information. Clause 13(3) requires the relevant authorities to have regard to any needs assessments that they have already carried out in respect of the needs of particular groups of victims when preparing their joint strategy. Statutory guidance for the duty will clarify that, when commissioning, the relevant authorities are expected to set out in their joint commissioning strategy how they have had regard to the relevant needs assessments, and how commissioning decisions aim to meet the identified needs of different groups.
We fear that placing that in legislation would be duplicative of existing practices that currently work effectively, and which our duty to collaborate will only enhance. Indeed, by virtue of the relevant commissioners under the duty working together, assessing existing needs and publishing their commissioning strategies, they will build up a clear picture of the local landscape of victims services and the local populations. The strategies will then clearly set out how they will, over the coming period, deliver a more joined-up and effective service for victims, including child victims.
I am happy to work with the hon. Member for Rotherham to identify the benefits and drawbacks of the current system. As I set out earlier, I continue to reflect on the points that she and the Domestic Abuse Commissioner made about joint strategic needs assessments, which shades into what I believe the hon. Lady is seeking to get at with the amendment.
Sarah Champion
I thank the Minister for his offer to collaborate on this. I have been working with the NSPCC, which has much more experience than I do, so we would gratefully accept the offer, and on that basis I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Sarah Champion
I beg to move amendment 84, in clause 13, page 11, line 8, at end insert—
“(d) ensure that services commissioned as part of the strategy are given contracts or grants for a minimum of three years, unless it would not be justifiable and proportionate to do so.”.
I present this as a probing amendment because I sadly know the Minister’s position. He was right to highlight earlier the eternal misery of short-term contracts as a result of short-term funding, and just how much the community invests in funding bids, some of which are successful and some of which are not. I am sure that we both agree that that money would be better spent on the services themselves.
Longer-term contracts are essential to help ease the insecure funding landscape facing the specialist domestic abuse sector. Amendment 84 would introduce a requirement that services commissioned under the duty to collaborate be delivered through sustainable contract terms of three years or more. That would enable community-based services to take root in a local area, recruit to permanent contracts, and provide women and children with the security and stability that they desperately need when fleeing domestic abuse. Some 64% of frontline workers surveyed for Refuge’s report, “Local Lifelines”, said that their services were impacted by short-term contracts. Frontline workers highlighted the challenges of delivering a service under short-term contracts due to the time and resources that it takes to implement a new service and embed the idea.
If a contract is for two years or less, it often takes the length of the contract for the service to become established within a local area. Then it stops, or the whole process starts all over again, at which point survivors must find new sources of ongoing help, which can be incredibly unsettling and traumatic for those victims. Short-term contracts force charities to spend resources rebidding for contracts rather than supporting their clients. It also presents significant recruitment challenges, as services can only offer short fixed-term, rather than permanent, posts. Given the transformative impact of community-based services on a survivor’s journey towards safety and independence, ensuring services are properly staffed and well established in their local area is vital. I know that the Minister understands that. Through an adequate, sustainable funding offer for community-based services delivered via long-term contracts, these services can take root in the community and provide the stability that women and children need.
Jess Phillips
I entirely endorse and support the amendment. As someone who was in charge of fundraising for a small community-based organisation, I know that the amount of money wasted getting in human resources experts is significant. It happened to me on a number of occasions: it would roll around to December and people would be put on notice just before Christmas—because of the financial year, staff can be given three months’ notice at Christmas, which is always a really cheerful thing to have to do as a boss of one of these organisations.
I also point out that the problem has been exacerbated by the current delays in both the policing and the court-based systems. That adds a new flavour for domestic abuse community-based services or sexual violence community-based services. Yesterday, I was interviewed by police in a case. Hilariously, the police officer said to me, “Are there any dates you might be on holiday?”, and I said, “Well, I’m going away in August,” and I thought, “Hope springs eternal—it will be August 2025 before I see the inside of that courtroom.”
The situation is that a victim could come forward, go through the process with the police and the charge could take a year, let alone the court time taking another two years. The lack of continuity of even the same service, let alone the same person, still being in place because of the way short-term contracts in this space work is exacerbated by delays in the system. We have to skin the cat we have, and that cat is one of delay in this process. Three years from complaint to end on anything that would be seeing the inside of a Crown court is standard at the moment, so the very least we should seek to do is ensure that at least three-year contracts are provided in this space.
Edward Argar
We touched on a number of the elements that I am going to talk about when we debated amendment 83, which the hon. Member for Rotherham moved earlier, so I will be relatively brief. I agree with her on the importance of sufficient funding for victims’ services and ensuring that, where we can, we provide the funding to commission services on a multi-year basis.
The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley, is right to highlight the challenges: not only the demand pressures on a charity or a service provider but the fact that those most experienced at meeting that demand and providing the service are often the people who have to sit writing the responses to the invitations to tender or bids. I say that as someone who, before coming to this place, was a trustee of an environmental-regeneration employment charity. The challenge is having certainty of income and also a diversity of income streams, so that the charity can insure itself against any one of them suddenly saying it will no longer provide funding.
It is absolutely right to highlight the fact that individuals invest not just money but time, and that the work is often done outside office hours because they are at work during working hours and spend their evenings doing it. I visited a project in north-west London a little while ago and had exactly that conversation with some of the trustees and the senior staff there. Without a degree of certainty on funding, where that is possible, the challenge is not only the effort of constantly bidding for it but the risk of losing good people who, however passionate and however much of a vocation it is for them, often want at least a degree of predictability in their lives so that they know they can pay their bills.
Amendment 84 seeks to ensure that commissioned services are given contracts or grants for a minimum of three years. As I just alluded to, I recognise the importance of sustainable funding for victim support services and how it can affect the reliability and consistency of services. We listened to service providers, who told us that single-year funding presented the biggest challenge to them in delivering support for victims, and we have already committed to multi-year funding, where possible, outside legislation. We have committed £154 million per annum of our victims budget on a multi-year basis across this spending review period, totalling a minimum of £460 million over three years.
Multi-year funding will allow for greater staff retention, opportunity for services to innovate and invest for the long term in the services they are able to provide, and— to the point made by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley—allow victims to receive a greater degree of consistency and continuity in the support they need, particularly when they have begun to build up a rapport and trust with those with whom they are working. That is why we have put multi-year funding at the centre of our victims funding strategy, in which we reaffirmed that commitment and set out an expectation for all commissioners to pass multi-year commitments on to their providers.
Sarah Champion
The amendment was probing and provided a good opportunity for me to remember how hard you fought the last time you were in this role to get multi-year funding agreements in place. It helps enormously to have you in post and to get you on the record. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
The Chair
May I gently remind all colleagues, who are all very experienced, that I did not promise anything or deliver anything? The Minister did.
Sarah Champion
I beg to move amendment 85, in clause 13, page 11, line 13, at end insert—
“(ba) persons appearing to the relevant authorities to represent persons providing relevant victim support services for children,
(bb) victims,”.
This amendment would require the relevant authorities to consult victims and organisations providing support to child victims in preparing their strategy.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 81, in clause 13, page 11, line 14, at end insert—
“(d) victims to whom relevant victim support services are being, or may be, provided.”.
This amendment would require the relevant authorities to consult victims who are, or may be, receiving support services when preparing their strategy.
Sarah Champion
Apologies for getting overexcited, Mr Hosie.
Amendment 81 is supported by London’s Victims’ Commissioner, Claire Waxman, and it is worth reminding the Committee that Claire started campaigning for a victims Bill in 2014 or 2015. I pay huge tribute to her for never giving up. The fact that we are here debating it is in no small part due to her campaigning. Amendment 85 is supported by the NSPCC, to which I am grateful.
Amendment 81 would simply require that the relevant victims are engaged and consulted when authorities prepare the strategy for collaboration. We must ensure that victims themselves are engaged in the strategic planning for victim support services, because they know best. Amendment 85 seeks to make it clear that we must ensure that organisations that provide support to child victims are similarly consulted. As I have already made clear, children have very specific needs as victims. There must be a link between recognising children as victims and the duty to deliver a strategy for collaboration in the exercise of victim support functions, to ensure that commissioners include support services for children when preparing their joint commissioning strategies.
Considering children’s support needs as distinct from those of adults is vital. It is crucial for commissioners to reflect children’s needs effectively when they prepare their joint commissioning strategies. It is especially key at a time when child abuse continues to rise. At least 500,000 children a year are estimated to suffer abuse in the UK, one in 20 children in the UK have been sexually abused, and an estimated one in five children have experienced severe maltreatment. Last year, for the first time more than 100,000 cases of child sexual abuse were reported. NSPCC freedom of information data found that police in England and Wales made nearly 700 referrals a day to children’s social services about domestic abuse in 2021, totalling 245,000 cases that year.
Recognition of children in the relevant authorities’ victims’ needs analysis is welcome, and I welcome what the Minister has previously said, but the relevant authorities must have a duty to consult the providers of children’s services to ensure that those services are included in commissioning strategies. Simply including children in the victims’ needs analysis is not enough to ensure that support is in place. NSPCC freedom of information figures demonstrate that many local authorities are not accessing readily available information about child victims of domestic and sexual abuse. When asked, 50% of local authorities did not have any records of the number of child victims who had experienced either sexual or domestic abuse in their area, despite their statutory obligations to undertake a joint strategic needs assessment to improve the health and wellbeing of their communities.
It concerns me that the Bill risks undermining the important recognition that child victims must come within scope of the Bill if the duty to deliver a strategy for collaboration in exercise of victim support functions—I would love it if it could be called something snappier —does not include a duty to consult the providers of children’s services. I hope the Minister recognises that risk and therefore accepts the amendment.
Jess Phillips
I completely support the amendment and just wish to say that although I and others will talk about the lack of available support services for victims of domestic and sexual violence more broadly, there is no group more populous and more poorly served than children. The idea that children’s services would not be included seems bizarre, and the argument has been eloquently put.
Edward Argar
I thank the hon. Member for Rotherham for her amendments, which would require the relevant authorities to consult victims who are or may be receiving support services when they prepare their strategies. I also take the opportunity to pay tribute to the work of Claire Waxman, whom the hon. Lady rightly mentioned. I have a huge respect for Claire Waxman. We do not always agree on everything, but she is a formidable and passionate campaigner in this space and she manages to do that and achieve results while being an incredibly nice person as well. She is incredibly successful in what she does and I wish her continued success—albeit perhaps not in every aspect, because sometimes she will push me a little too hard. We should all be grateful to her for her work.
Amendment 85 would require the relevant authorities to consult providers of support services for child victims, as well as victims directly, when they prepare their joint strategy. I will address the two parts of the amendment in turn. I agree that engagement with the providers of services for child victims can provide valuable insight into local decisions, including on how commissioning is likely to impact victims, communities and the capacity of organisations to provide support. Our view is that the Bill already meets that objective. Clause 13(2)(b) requires the authorities to consult
“persons appearing to the relevant authorities to represent persons providing relevant victim support services”.
I am happy to make it clear to the Committee that that includes the providers of services for child victims.
Furthermore, we intend for statutory guidance to set out in more detail how relevant authorities can ensure that child victims’ needs are met. That is intended to include how they can engage directly with victims if they consider it appropriate to do so, and take into account the views of providers and experts in the sector. I am happy for the hon. Member for Rotherham to give her thoughts on what that statutory guidance should contain, based on her work with the NSPCC and other organisations; as on other aspects of the Bill, I will work with her to see whether we can create something that works. Although I agree with the objective behind the first part of the amendment, we do not consider it necessary.
The second part of the amendment would require the authorities to engage directly with victims. I agree that they should take into account the views of victims when they prepare their joint strategy. That is why clause 13(2)(a) requires them to consult those representing the interests of victims and clause 13(2)(c) gives scope for them to engage directly with victims if they consider it appropriate to do so. Again, we intend for the statutory guidance issued under clause 14, which we will turn to shortly, to make that clear and set out in more detail the considerations that should be taken into account by the authorities when deciding who they should engage with, as well as our expected standards and process for consultation.
In addition, clause 13(3) requires authorities to have regard to any assessments of the needs of victims, including child victims, and the relevant victim support services that are available in the police area. The measures in the clause, taken together, ensure that the voices of victims and the expertise of victim representatives will be considered when the joint strategy is prepared. I do not believe that the second part of the amendment is necessary, given the extant clauses and subsections.
Amendment 81 would require the relevant authorities to consult victims who are, or may be, receiving support services when they prepare their strategies. I agree that is an important issue. Clause 13 already sets out that the relevant authorities—police and crime commissioners, integrated care boards and local authorities in England—must consult persons who represent the interests of victims, those who provide relevant victim support services and other persons the relevant authorities consider appropriate. That not only requires consultation with those who represent victims’ voices but gives ample scope for the relevant authorities to engage victims directly when they consider it appropriate to do so. We intend for the statutory guidance issued under clause 14 to set out in more detail what commissioners may want to take into account when they consider their duty to consult, including how to engage with victims effectively and, importantly, in a trauma-informed manner.
Engaging with victims to better understand their experiences in accessing services is undoubtably beneficial to the improvement of commissioning and outcomes for victims. Alongside allowing for direct engagement with victims themselves, clause 13 requires the relevant authorities to consult persons who represent victims. That is because some victims may prefer to be represented by another body—an advocate, a campaigner, a charity or a service provider—and we believe the legislation should be flexible enough to allow for that. We do not want to disadvantage victims who do not have the resources, autonomy or confidence to speak up for themselves. We should also recognise that there are organisations that are experienced in taking views from a representative spread of victims, feeding back to commissioners, and ensuring those views are heard and are useful in the commissioning process.
I hope I have given the hon. Lady some reassurance that we believe the clause already covers what she seeks to achieve.
Sarah Champion
I wonder whether the Minister will give a bit of clarity. A lot of the solutions he is setting out are based on the statutory guidance; will we get draft statutory guidance before the Bill receives Royal Assent, or will it only come afterwards?
Edward Argar
As with other elements, such as the draft victims code, or the draft draft victims code, and the guidance, my intention—I suspect we will come to that when we discuss independent domestic violence advisers and independent sexual violence advisers—is that where possible we will publish as much statutory guidance in draft while the Bill is going through the House. That is facilitated by the fact that this is a carry-over Bill, so there is more time for right hon. and hon. Members to engage with the guidance. It will also inform the latter stages of the Bill’s passage through this House and the other place.
Sarah Champion
The Minister referred to the draft draft victims code consultation, but we have been unable to find that, so will he share it with the Committee?
Edward Argar
Through the Chair and if appropriate, I will ask my officials to communicate via the Clerk where that can be found, so that it can be circulated to Committee members for their information as we continue our deliberations. On that basis, I ask the hon. Lady to consider withdrawing her amendment.
Sarah Champion
I take the Minister’s comments at face value and am glad that we have them on the record. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Anna McMorrin
I beg to move amendment 15, in clause 13, page 11, line 14, at end insert—
“(d) the Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses.”.
This amendment would require the relevant authorities to consult the Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses when preparing their strategy for collaboration.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 16, in clause 13, page 11, line 20, at end insert—
“(c) any guidance prepared by the Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses on collaboration between victim support services.”.
This amendment would require the relevant authorities to consider any guidance prepared by the Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses when preparing their strategy for collaboration.
Anna McMorrin
I will refer to amendments 15 and 16 together. The clause outlines that relevant authorities in each police area must prepare a strategy for victim support services. Such collaboration is welcome, but there is one glaring omission: the Victims’ Commissioner.
In previous amendments, we have debated proposed increased powers for the Victims’ Commissioner, who is the one who voices the concerns of the voiceless—the victims. It is therefore imperative that, in the strategy preparation, the agencies must include guidance from the Victims’ Commissioner and consult that office. Only then will victims really have an independent voice advocating for them right down to the local level, where victims will see that most genuine change and impact.
The commissioner’s office can consult on best practice from the very beginning, guiding the authorities to make the meaningful change that the Minister wants the Bill to introduce. It is essential that the Victims’ Commissioner is consulted when the relevant authorities are preparing their strategy for collaboration on victim services; that is why I moved this amendment and tabled amendment 16. I am sure that the Minister will agree that that is needed in the Bill and that this oversight is simply an error that can be easily fixed.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the shadow Minister for her amendments and for her exposition of them. I agree with her on the importance of local areas reflecting the views and expertise of those representing the interests of victims when preparing and revising their strategies.
The amendment would require consultation with the Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses when preparing local strategies, but I stress the existing requirement for the relevant authorities to engage with those who represent victims and providers, as well as other expert organisations. The clause deliberately does not specify any persons or organisations, to avoid being overly prescriptive.
As a—if not the—leading figure representing victims, we expect local areas to consult the commissioner when preparing their strategies, unless there is a justifiable reason not to do so. We intend the statutory guidance issued under clause 14 to set out who local commissioners might want to consider engaging with, as well as the standards and process for consultation. We believe that that will reflect whom we think should be consulted, but leaves sufficient flexibility, rather than placing a limiting or prescriptive list in primary legislation.
Amendment 16 seeks to require the relevant authorities to have regard to any guidance prepared by the commissioner. We intend the statutory guidance to set out clearly how we expect the relevant authorities to consider commissioning best practice and how to meet the needs of those with protected characteristics. That includes paying due regard to relevant research and reports published by key stakeholders, including the commissioner.
In developing the guidance thus far, the Ministry of Justice has engaged extensively with other Departments, local commissioners, experts and the victim support sector. I am grateful to all who have provided valuable input, including the Office of the Victims’ Commissioner. In light of that and given that we believe in being permissive rather than prescriptive in primary legislation, we think statutory guidance represents the appropriate balance in this space. I encourage the shadow Minister to consider not pressing her amendments.
Anna McMorrin
I am grateful to the Minister for setting that out: what will be said in statutory guidance and his explanation for deliberately avoiding a prescriptive list in the Bill. However, a reference to the Victims’ Commissioner is the core essence of what the Bill is about. Certainly part 1 is about giving a voice to victims, which is within the remit of the Victims’ Commissioner. I beg him to look at this again, and to be more prescriptive within the statutory guidance to ensure that there is a deliberate reference to the Victims’ Commissioner for those relevant authorities. Would he consider that?
Edward Argar
I am always happy to consider the suggestions put forward by the hon. Lady.
Anna McMorrin
I thank the Minister for that. I will not push the amendment to a vote, but hopefully we will work together on the statutory guidance. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Sarah Champion
I beg to move amendment 90, in clause 13, page 11, line 19, leave out paragraph (b) and insert—
“(b) any assessment of the victim support services consulted in carrying out their duty under section (12).”
This amendment would ensure that when preparing the strategy for collaboration, relevant authorities must have regard to any assessment of the victim support services consulted under section 12.
This is a probing amendment, which seeks to strengthen the strategy for collaboration by requiring relevant authorities to consider any assessments made under the duty to collaborate. Currently, clause 13 (3)(b) says that when preparing the strategy, relevant authorities must have regard to
“the relevant victim support services which are available in the police area (whether or not provided by the relevant authorities).”
As we have discussed, it is vital for victims’ needs to be considered, and that will take place under subsection (3)(a). However, the strategy must also take into account any review of support services that the relevant authorities may undertake under the duty to collaborate. That is key in preparing the strategy as it will help them to identify gaps in services and where local need for services is stronger.
We cannot simply suggest that authorities consider the support services available; we must ask them to be more ambitious than that. By requiring them to consider any evaluations of services, we can enable them to strengthen the options available for victims and ultimately improve the outcomes of the Bill. Wherever possible, we must ensure that the services available to victims are as strong as they can be. The best way to make that happen is by local partners taking into account local need. However, for that to take place consistently across the country, we must improve the wording of the clause so that all assessments of services are always taken into account.
Jess Phillips
I do not have anything to add to what has already been said. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Rotherham for her amendment, which, somewhat like amendments 87, 88 and 89, would require relevant authorities for a police area to conduct a joint strategic needs assessment to inform the strategy for commissioning victim support services as part of the duty to collaborate. I am also grateful to her for highlighting that she has approached this as a probing amendment. I will respond to it in that vein, noting again the context of my previous comments about her broader calls for a JSNA.
The Government agree it is vital that relevant support services fit the local needs of victims, and that victims’ needs form the centre of any commissioning decision. Current systems are created so that commissioners place the victim at the heart of commissioning, enabling a bespoke approach rather than a one-size-fits-all approach set nationally.
PCCs are able to allocate the grants and funding supplied by my Department based on relevant needs assessments, which already happen as part of good commissioning processes. Those assessments enable PCCs to target funding into practical, emotional and therapeutic support services for victims of crime, where it is most needed in their area. PCCs, local authorities and integrated care boards are also required to carry out a joint strategic needs assessment under the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which should indicate the level of serious violence and the number of victims affected.
Both domestic abuse and sexual abuse are now considered forms of serious violence—and in my view, rightly so. Local authorities and integrated care boards also already carry out separate assessments that indicate the needs of victims, including the needs assessment under part 4 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, which sets out the needs of victims in accommodation-based services, and the JSNA that informs the public health and wellbeing strategy.
Clause 13(3) requires PCCs, local authorities and integrated care boards to have regard, when preparing their joint strategy, to any needs assessments that they have already carried out and that reflect the needs of victims. Statutory guidance will state that relevant authorities should then set out in their joint commissioning strategy how they have had regard to the relevant needs assessments and how commissioning decisions aim to reflect and to meet the identified need.
Sarah Champion
I pause the Minister at the point of the black hole that he may well be about to backfill. If, in doing the assessment, the authorities found a big gap in provision in, say, Muslim women’s support services, would they then have to fill that gap and provide those services or would they just say, “Oh, that’s awful; we have a big gap in those services”?
Edward Argar
As I have said in previous responses, the funding is finite. There is a degree of flexibility—not total flexibility, because there are, as she will be aware, some ringfenced pots for police and crime commissioners to address specific needs. They also have their core funding. It is down to them to determine how they spend that funding and that finite pot of money, but having regard to the work that they have done in terms of needs assessments. To be blunt, they cannot spend what they do not have. They have a finite pot, so they will have to determine how that is most effectively used to meet the needs that they have identified.
The victims funding strategy, which we published in May last year, also sets a clear expectation that commissioners should carry out regular needs assessments using all the data required to commission appropriate services for victims in their area, including victims with tailored or specific needs. Due to the recent publication of the victims funding strategy—notwithstanding its genesis back when the hon. Lady and I talked about it in 2018, pre pandemic—we are still in the relatively early stages of assessing its impact and the pull-through into what happens on the ground.
For those reasons, I am not convinced that the amendment is required to clearly state that joint needs assessments must be considered at this stage. However, I understand the points that the hon. Lady made and, as always and as I have said more broadly in the context of needs assessments, I am happy to converse with her and look to work with her as we go forward.
Sarah Champion
For me, this amendment comes back to the idea that “you only know what you know”. My concern is that if the Minister, the Secretary of State, is clear that this assessment needs to be done and if gaps are found, there is the need to fill those gaps; I still do not have the assurances.
I am thinking of situations where, for example, English is not someone’s first language or they need British Sign Language, or where there are cultural issues and someone wants a culturally sensitive service. I would welcome the opportunity to work with the Minister. The amendment layers on to others that have come previously, which may well be put to a vote at a later point, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Sarah Champion
I beg to move amendment 86, in clause 13, page 11, line 27, at end insert—
“(5A) The relevant authorities must publish an annual report containing—
(a) information about the action they have taken to implement the strategy prepared under this section, and
(b) information about their compliance with the duty to collaborate under section 12 of this Act.”
This amendment would require the relevant authorities to publish an annual report about the implementation of the strategy and their compliance with the duty to collaborate in the exercise of victim support functions.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 9—Reviewing compliance: duty to collaborate—
“(1) A police and crime panel which oversees services in a police area must keep under review how the relevant authorities which provide services in the police area provide those services in accordance with their duties under section (12) and (13) of this Act.
(2) In this section, the reference to a “police and crime panel” is to be read in accordance with Schedule 6 to the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011.
(3) In this section, “relevant authorities” has the meaning given by section 12(2).
(4) For the purposes of subsection (1), police and crime panels must prepare and publish an annual report setting out how the relevant authorities are fulfilling their duties under section (12) and (13).
(5) A report under subsection (4) must set out, in particular—
(a) how the relevant authorities are assessing the needs of victims;
(b) how the relevant authorities are meeting the needs of victims; and
(c) how the relevant authorities are collaborating to represent the interests of victims.
(6) The police and crime panel must send a copy of any report published under subsection (4) to the Secretary of State.
(7) The Secretary of State must then publish an annual statement on the state of victim support.”
This new clause aims to establish a review of compliance with the duty to collaborate and add in a layer of accountability to oversee this new duty.
Sarah Champion
I apologise for taking up so much of the Committee’s time; I am very grateful for everyone’s indulgence. I do it just to try to get the best Bill, one that we can all be proud of.
Amendment 86 would require the relevant authorities to publish an annual report about the implementation of the strategy and their compliance with the duty to collaborate in the exercise of victim support functions, and new clause 9 aims to establish a review of compliance with the duty to collaborate and add in a layer of accountability to oversee the new duty. This is very much building on the debate that we have been having.
The duty placed on local authorities, integrated care boards and the police and crime commissioners to collaborate in their exercise of victim support functions is an important step towards ensuring that victims receive necessary support. However, although the duty to collaborate is important at the moment, there is no way of measuring the effectiveness of this model.
Jess Phillips
I was the chair of the west midlands police and crime panel, so I suppose I will say that in that role I would have been more than happy to undertake this particular piece of work. The truth is that we count what we care about and we try to ignore everything else. If I were to think about all the different strategies and timeframes for schemes that were meant to be better for victims that I have come across in my 20 years in this area, I would say that they are just sitting on a shelf gathering dust and have meant absolutely nothing on the ground. It would be a very high number—more than the number of amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham, but only just. The truth is that unless we have a proper scrutiny function, albeit from the Victims’ Commissioner nationally or through a local situation—as my hon. Friend said, she has basically designed a system that could work perfectly well—my worry is that we will get a lot of nice words saying, “Of course we are going to ensure that all our mental health services are trauma-informed.” It is just words; it does not mean anything on the ground. We need some level of scrutiny on specific outputs, key performance indicators, timeframes, what is improving and what needs to be improved.
This is not about criticism. Domestic homicide reviews, serious case reviews and all the systems we put in to scrutinise post-something terrible happening to somebody or some terrible crime have become a bit of a blame game that, at times, can freeze people into inaction. It should be a process of scrutiny for the good and the bad, for a genuine conversation and for Government to be able to say, “This doesn’t seem to be working. What needs to happen across the country for it to work?”, so I absolutely support the amendment.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Rotherham, as ever, for her amendments. Amendment 86 would require the relevant authorities to publish an annual report about the implementation of the strategy and their compliance with the duty to collaborate in the exercise of victim support functions. New clause 9 would establish a review of compliance with the collaboration duties in clauses 12 and 13 and add a layer of accountability to oversee the new duty by requiring police and crime panels to keep under review how the relevant authorities that provide services in their area are doing so in accordance with their collaboration duties under clauses 12 and 13.
I seek to reassure the hon. Lady that the existing requirements of the duty to collaborate will achieve a high level of transparency and the Government have a plan for an effective system of oversight for this duty, which I will set out. The relevant authorities—police and crime commissioners, integrated care boards and local authorities in England—will already be under an obligation to publish, review and revise their commissioning strategies, including publishing any revised versions or revisions. This is to ensure transparency, as the strategies must contain information on how they consider they are fulfilling or intend to fulfil their duty under clause 12. We intend these strategies to be assessed by the national oversight forum, about which we have spoken previously in Committee and which was announced in our consultation response in 2022. This ministerial-led group will scrutinise the local strategies, assess the effectiveness of collaboration and how well the duty is executed. It will have an ongoing role in monitoring the performance and outputs of local strategies against the objectives that local areas have set.
Under clause 13, local areas must review and revise strategies from time to time so that they reflect the changing commissioning landscape and emerging local need. We expect strategies to be reviewed annually and revised fully approximately every four years. That is an expectation we will test in practice when we consult formally on the statutory guidance in due course. At the point of review and revision, the oversight group will have oversight responsibility to consider whether the next set of objectives set by local areas are ambitious and deliverable. I therefore contend that requiring an additional annual report as intended by amendment 86 is to a degree duplicative of the extant intentions under the clauses.
Sarah Champion
At this point, does the Minister have details of who will be on the oversight board?
Edward Argar
It is something that we continue to work through. I have alluded in previous comments to some of those whom we hope will be engaged—the Victims’ Commissioner and others—but if it is helpful, in the spirit of sharing what we have, even as a working document as we work our way through the Bill, I am open to considering sharing that as well with members of the Committee.
Edward Argar
In that context, I will gently say—and this may be a little less consensual than what I would normally say—that one of the people on the group will be the relevant Minister, but I fear that Opposition Members may have a long wait before that will necessarily apply to them. They may take a different view. On new clause 9, I agree with the hon. Lady—
Edward Argar
Not on that! I agree with the hon. Member for Rotherham on the importance of ensuring appropriate and robust oversight and monitoring of the duty to collaborate. I hope to reassure her that many of her proposals are satisfied by our existing clauses and the Government’s existing plans. Where we have taken a different approach from her recommendations, I will explain our reasoning.
The purpose of the duty is to create a framework that facilitates local collaboration and leads to more targeted and joined-up local commissioning that meets local needs. The measures we are introducing to achieve that are as framed in clauses 12 and 13. As I have said, we will be setting out plans for that clear system of oversight, which we think is essential to ensuring that it meets its aims. The details of that will be set out in statutory guidance. That oversight group will have an ongoing role in monitoring the performance and outputs of local strategies against the objectives that local areas have set. As I have alluded to, under clause 13 local areas must review and revise strategies from time to time.
I turn briefly to potential membership of that group, to put a little gloss on it that might help to inform any feedback the hon. Lady subsequently wishes to give. It needs to have a representative membership that represents and scrutinises the relevant authorities—police and crime commissioners, integrated care boards and local authorities. Those people will need to have the right seniority to discuss and take decisions on issues relating to the three crime types included in the duty: domestic abuse, sexual abuse and other serious violent offences.
As well as Ministers and senior representatives from the relevant delivery authorities that have the ability to scrutinise local plans, it is important that we are able to bring different perspectives to the discussions. In the case of police and crime commissioners, that could include representatives from police and crime panels or, for example, the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners. We continue carefully to consider what representation may be required and I am open, as ever, to working with the hon. Lady on that.
The statutory guidance will set out clear advice on what form the national oversight structure will take and how the relevant authorities can participate and engage with it. I believe that this national oversight system will be effective, proportionate and less complex than alternative models. I am afraid I do not share the perspective that police and crime panels should take on oversight responsibilities to keep the relevant authorities under review in relation to the duty, and prepare and publish the annual report. I will set out my reasons and rationale for that.
First, the bodies that the hon. Lady would like police and crime panels to scrutinise are subject to different individual accountability arrangements. Under this duty, the Secretary of State will issue guidance to integrated care boards, PCCs and local authorities in relation to their collaboration duties under the Bill. While PCCs are scrutinised by those panels, and can be in respect of any of their functions, they, together with local authorities, are ultimately held to account at the ballot box—I suspect we would all hope to see higher turnouts in elections for those important offices, given the functions they perform, but it is of course the choice of our constituents as to whether they vote.
Secondly, it is important to stress that this is a joint statutory duty placed equally on police and crime commissioners, integrated care boards and local authorities. Victims of domestic abuse, sexual abuse and other serious violent crimes typically access a range of services across health, local authority services and policing provision. That is the primary reason why our duty to collaborate is a joint one.
Police and crime panels are rightly focused on scrutinising the relevant PCC on any decisions and actions taken in connection with the commissioner’s role—again, including this new addition to their obligations—but they do not have scrutiny powers over local authorities or integrated care boards. The proposed clause would therefore require going beyond the role, function and powers of the panels. It would also potentially infringe the independence and respective scrutiny arrangements of the other bodies under the duty. The Government currently have no plans to review the role and powers of police and crime panels or to change their remit.
I turn to the hon. Lady’s recommendation for police and crime panels to publish and prepare an annual report setting out
“how the relevant authorities are fulfilling their duties under section (12) and (13)”,
in particular how they are assessing the needs of victims, meeting the needs of victims and collaborating to represent the interests of victims. The new clause asks police and crime panels to publish that annual report setting out how relevant authorities are fulfilling their duties, in particular addressing those key points that I have highlighted. I would argue this additional layer of oversight is, again, not strictly necessary, given the extant obligation on these authorities to publish their commissioning strategies, and given the statutory duty for those strategies to contain information on how they consider they are fulfilling, or intend to fulfil, the collaboration duty under clause 12.
Sarah Champion
The Minister has put forward a persuasive argument. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Edward Argar
The purpose of clause 13 is to improve how support services for victims are planned locally. Clause 13 requires the relevant authorities to undertake certain activities as part of their duty to collaborate, as set out in clause 12.
Police and crime commissioners, integrated care boards and local authorities within a police area are required, first, to prepare, implement and publish a joint local strategy, setting out how they consider that they are fulfilling, or intend to fulfil, their duty to collaborate in relation to victim support services. Crucially, by ensuring transparency and a better understanding of the aims and approaches of each commissioning area, the strategy will be expected to demonstrate how commissioning areas work together, what their approaches are to commissioning and how their decisions will meet the needs of their community.
Secondly, the strategy must be informed by certain activities, including existing assessments of victims’ needs—including children and those with protected characteristics —and the views of those representing the interests of victims and service providers, ensuring that strategies are developed with the necessary information and the right expertise. Importantly, more effective use of existing joint needs assessments should help to build an improved understanding of local need, and therefore more targeted commissioning activity and better decision making.
Thirdly, the strategy will be reviewed and revised from time to time so that it reflects the changing commissioning landscapes and emerging local need. By increasing collaboration, we expect that local strategies will lead to changes in commissioning processes, including reduced duplication through increased joint working; a common understanding of local need and effective provision; and transparency, including on how decisions are informed by consideration of needs assessments. As a result, victims should experience a more joined-up pathway, resulting in quality support enabled by better co-ordinated and targeted local use of resources and interventions, and timely support facilitated by better joining up so that victims can more seamlessly move between services.
Clause 14 requires the Secretary of State to issue guidance that will support PCCs, integrated care boards and local authorities in carrying out the duty to collaborate. It requires them to have regard to this guidance when discharging their duties under clauses 12 and 13. The guidance will cover topics such as how collaboration is expected to work in practice, information on strategy development and content, and how we expect areas to monitor the impact of the duty.
The clause also requires the Secretary of State to consult relevant stakeholders, such as local commissioners and providers, when drafting the guidance, so that it is useful and reflects the operational reality. The clause is important because it ensures that commissioners are clear about what is expected of them and can carry out activity in a consistent way across England. We anticipate that persons who interact with the bodies subject to the duty will also look at the guidance to understand the expectations for the bodies. Following parliamentary passage of the Bill, we expect to formally consult on the guidance and plan for implementation as soon as practically possible. I commend that clauses 13 and 14 stand part of the Bill.
Jess Phillips
Clause 13 says that relevant authorities will collaborate on a strategy on aims and approach to commissioning, and that they must engage victims and those who represent victims; again, this must mean specialist service providers for victims—and by that, I mean that those service providers must be specialist. The clause also states that authorities must base their strategy on the needs of victims. We would clarify that this must be according to need. In order for areas to understand their local need, they must consider the volume of victims, the cohort and characteristics of victims, and the impact on victims. The authorities must have all that information, as a needs assessment can only truly be made if we know the facts first; otherwise, it is based not on any understanding, but on perception.
When it comes to gendered violence, the lack of data is a massive issue. It is an issue that is beyond the parameters of this debate, but as we make new law, as we are doing today, we should try to address it. Data is really important to how we do a needs assessment because, I am afraid to say, so much is missing. Take, for example, the outrageous lack of data accessible to fully investigate and comprehend the relationship between protected characteristics and gendered violence. The Femicide Census tells us that in 79% of cases where a woman was murdered by a man during the period of 2008 to 2018, the ethnicity of the victim was not recorded. Although the Office for National Statistics provides an analysis of homicide offences by “ethnic appearance”, the data is not broken down by gender. This must change. We need to make sure that when we are putting together strategies and needs assessments, they are based not on assumptions but on facts. I fear that the current data collection situation, both nationally and locally, does not allow for that process to be as good as it could be.
We are fine for clauses 13 and 14 to stand part of the Bill.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the shadow Minister, particularly for her comments on data. I may not quite be Mystic Meg, but I sense some possible future amendments or at least a debate on this matter when we reach Report stage. I am happy to engage with her on this in the interim, and I am grateful for her support for the clauses.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 13 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 14 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 15
Guidance about independent domestic violence and sexual violence advisors
Sarah Champion
I beg to move amendment 57, in clause 15, page 12, line 5, at end insert—
“(c) independent stalking advocacy caseworkers”.
This amendment would ensure the Secretary of State must also provide guidance around stalking advocates, rather than limiting to ISVAs and IDVAs.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 56, in clause 15, page 12, line 12, at end insert—
“(c) ‘independent stalking advocacy caseworker’ means a person who provides a relevant service to individuals who are victims of criminal conduct which constitutes stalking”.
This amendment would ensure that the Secretary of State must also provide guidance around any relevant specialist community-based services, rather than limiting to ISVAs and IDVAs.
Sarah Champion, before you speak to your amendments, let me say this: you never need to apologise to this Committee or anyone else for trying to make legislation better.
Sarah Champion
That is very decent of you, Mr Hosie. Thank you very much.
Amendments 57 and 56 attempt to ensure that the Secretary of State must also provide guidance around stalking advocates, rather than just limiting it to ISVAs and IDVAs. I hope that I will be able to make my argument to the Minister using his own words from earlier.
The Bill as it currently stands, in my opinion and that of many others, does not go far enough to ensure that victims of stalking will be supported, as it makes no specific reference to this very specific crime. Stalking is a highly complex offence, requiring criminal justice agencies to understand the patterns of obsessive controlling behaviour, which, when seen as individual occurrences, may not appear to constitute criminal practice. Victims of stalking often experience prolonged periods of victimisation, often not reporting stalking behaviour until after they have experienced more than 100 instances. Sadly, criminal justice agencies and inspectorates lack training and expert understanding of the complexities of this crime, and the specific trauma that victims of stalking experience. Furthermore, justice on stalking is not currently being delivered. In 2019-20 there were more than 1.5 million estimated victims of stalking, but just 3,506 stalkers were charged. Only 304 of those charged received custodial sentences.
The Government must prioritise raising awareness and understanding of stalking in criminal justice agencies, because victims are currently falling through the gaps. The Bill represents an opportunity for the understanding of stalking to be improved. By explicitly acknowledging the specific characteristics of stalking, services will ensure victims are not excluded from the right to safety and support.
The Suzy Lamplugh Trust says it welcomes the decision to elevate the importance and understanding of ISVA and IDVA roles under clause 15. I echo that, and it is very welcome. But while IDVAs and ISVAs do vitally important work for their specific victim groups, they are not necessarily stalking specialists, nor are they expected to be. Stalking is a complex crime, and victims must be supported by specialist advocates who have expertise in the area.
At present, the Bill neglects to include a definition for independent stalking advocates. Given that stalking is often misunderstood by criminal justice agencies, victims of stalking will once again fall through gaps in support if explicit reference to their needs is not made. It is well documented that stalking advocates have a huge impact on improving the experience of victims. Some 90% of respondents to the Suzy Lamplugh Trust’s research “Bridging the Gap” stated that their stalking advocate helped them to navigate the criminal justice system. I thank the Suzy Lamplugh Trust for its help with this amendment.
Stalking advocates support victims in a holistic way to help them to manage and cope with their situation and to recover from abuse. They carry out risk assessments and ensure that safety plans are put in place to protect victims and those around them, including any dependants, from further harm. Unfortunately, stalking advocates are underused. The Suzy Lamplugh Trust research demonstrates that 77% of stalking victims did not access a stalking advocate; 69% accessed no advocacy at all; only 4% accessed support from a non-specialist service such as an IDVA or ISVA; and just 15% of victims were referred to a stalking advocate by the police, further demonstrating low levels of understanding of stalking in criminal justice agencies.
If clause 15 made specific reference to independent stalking advocates, the guidance that the Secretary of State has committed to issue should include a definition of stalking advocates and clarity on the services they provide. The Suzy Lamplugh Trust has shown that victims not supported by an advocate had a one-in-1,000 chance of their perpetrator being convicted, compared with one in four if they had a stalking advocate. The amendment would not only provide much needed support for victims, but help enable justice to be secured.
This morning, in response to new clause 19, the Minister said:
“Our concern is that the approach set out in the new clause risks excluding or minimising the importance of some of the other service types that commissioners could consider for victims of domestic abuse and sexual violence. As drafted, the new clause could risk creating a hierarchy.”
That exact argument applies here. I completely understand his response to me that ISVAs and IDVAs need specific training for judges to recognise their judgments and advice in courts. Independent stalking advocates receive training and qualifications such as the level 4 ISAS—independent stalking advocacy specialist—course, which is accredited by the University of Hertfordshire.
These are vital professionals who must be included in the Bill. We cannot limit clause 15 solely to ISVAs and IDVAs when so much abuse begins with stalking. We must enable victims of this preventable crime to access support at an early stage that has statutory guidance, just as those who have experienced sexual or domestic violence will be able to.
Jess Phillips
In support of amendments 56 and 57, I say gently to the Minister that a one-time Back Bencher who is now Secretary of State for Justice introduced legislation that put stalking protection orders in place. That was undoubtedly based on a harrowing case he came across as the Member for Cheltenham. In my experience of working with him on stalking, he has always been a true and brilliant ally in this space, so I could imagine him moving the amendment. We could go back to him gently for his agreement to it.
One important thing to mention is that stalking is distinct from the crimes of sexual violence and domestic abuse. Normally, I am on my feet complaining that people do not understand that stalking happens as part of domestic abuse and that someone can be a victim of domestic abuse and coercive control but then, following separation, go on to be a victim of post-separation stalking. That is largely misunderstood by criminal justice agencies.
It is important to put stalking specialists into clause 15 because there are lots of cases where people are stalked by strangers, work colleagues and housemates. When we debated the Domestic Abuse Bill, an amendment tabled by Liberal Democrat members of the Committee was about whether abuse in a student house share could be considered domestic abuse. Stalking sits distinctly in many cases involving strangers, colleagues and house shares.
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
I want to highlight the brilliant point made by my hon. Friend, as well as by my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham. Does she agree that children—girls especially, but boys as well—are often stalked, which is extremely frightening and scary for them, and that that also needs to be highlighted and addressed in the Bill?
Jess Phillips
Absolutely. For any hon. Member who has experienced stalking themselves—unfortunately, we are a prime category for some of this stalking behaviour—it will not come as a surprise that, from my experience, the first threat place that people go to is to antagonise me about my sons, where they go to school and that sort of information. Children are undoubtedly used, often completely unawares, as part of a pattern of stalking, creating further stress and multiple victims in that instance. Children are often targeted and used in circumstances to attack an adult. As somebody who has run IDVA and ISVA services—in fact, the organisation I used to work for now has specific stalking advocates—I know that stalking is distinct, specific and different. The element of post-separation domestic abuse, as well as the important fact that it is a stranger-based issue, makes the argument for the need for that specialism.
Sarah Champion
The Minister argued that IDVAs and ISVAs both engage with the criminal justice sector and therefore need to be recognised as such in the Bill. In my hon. Friend’s experience, is it the same for stalking advocates?
Jess Phillips
Absolutely. A case that I handled very recently was a post-separation issue, but was not at the relevant risk level. As I said earlier today, a person has to be at incredibly high risk of harm to be allocated an IDVA who will take them through the criminal justice system, or they have to be going through the criminal justice system.
In the case that I handled, a person broke up with somebody who, six months later, started turning up at her place of work. The victim then went to the police station and said, “This is my ex-partner,” but she could not point to any particular history of abuse or anything that had been criminal at the time. She said, “He’s now turning up at my place of work and sending me messages on Facebook,” but that is not at the level that will get anyone access to an independent domestic violence adviser. I immediately said, “Do you have a stalking protection order in place?” She said, “What’s a stalking protection order?” She had been to the police, but she did not have a specialist advocate with her, or even just somebody telling her what question to ask. She now has a stalking protection order in place, because she knows what one is.
There is a need for specialist advocacy in cases that will never breach the criminal space of domestic abuse or the risk level that would allow for an IDVA. That is very important, because those cases can still be criminal without ever touching the desk of one of those agencies. I therefore totally support my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham, and I imagine that the Secretary of State for Justice may agree with us.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Rotherham for amendments 56 and 57 and grateful to her and the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley, for this debate. The amendments would expand the Bill’s requirement for the Secretary of State to issue guidance on ISVAs and IDVAs so that it also included independent stalking advocacy caseworkers. Specialist stalking services, including independent stalking advocacy caseworkers, do vital work to identify risk and provide practical guidance and safety advice for victims. They can help victims to navigate the criminal justice system. The hon. Member for Lewisham East was right to highlight that this crime can affect children as well as adults, and we should not forget that.
The Government are committed to protecting and supporting victims of stalking. The hon. Member for Rotherham was right to highlight the huge impact that stalking can have and the trauma that can result, and the shadow Minister was adroit at gently reminding me of my boss’s views and work on this subject in the past. For example, the Government introduced stalking protection orders in 2020, and almost 1,000 were issued in the first 23 months. The Home Office also continues to part-fund the national stalking helpline, which is run by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, to which I pay tribute, and provided £160,430 between April 2022 and March 2023. We have also provided funding for police-led projects to tackle the behaviour of stalkers and thereby provide greater protection to victims. In May, we announced awards to 10 police and crime commissioners to fund perpetrator interventions, wholly or partly, between April 2023 and March 2025.
In the Bill, we have chosen to focus on guidance for ISVAs and IDVAs because the consultation highlighted that greater consistency and awareness of ISVAs and IDVAs was particularly needed, especially given the number now working across the sector. We believe that that can best be addressed through statutory guidance. I agree that independent stalking advocacy caseworkers, or ISACs—I may just stick to the full wording—are important and can be just as effective, but we are not yet convinced that Government intervention by way of statutory guidance is necessary on the basis of the evidence that we have seen thus far. We do not feel that there is the same pressing need to drive further awareness and consistency of the roles, given the degree of consistency that exists.
I am, however, open to working with the hon. Member for Rotherham—and with the shadow Minister if she wishes to join, as I suspect she might—to continue to reflect on and consider how and whether Government support to independent stalking advocacy caseworkers can be improved. But I also believe that it will be important to assess the impact and effectiveness of the guidance on ISVAs and IDVAs, subject to the passage of the Bill, before considering whether to extend it to other groups in the same format. As I say, I am happy to engage with the hon. Member for Rotherham in that respect.
On the point about hierarchy or the lack thereof, I reassure the hon. Lady that guidance for ISVAs and IDVAs should not be taken to indicate any sort of funding or other hierarchy of them over independent stalking advocacy caseworkers or any other type of specialist support. Funding decisions for different types of support are made by local commissioners based on their assessment of the local need, and the guidance on ISVAs and IDVAs will be explicit that there should be no presumption of a hierarchy when it comes to those funding decisions.
Sarah Champion
I just want to re-read the statistic that victims not supported by an advocate had a one-in-1,000 chance of their perpetrator getting convicted, compared with a one-in-four chance for those who had a stalking advocate. The Minister knows that pretty much all my time in Parliament has been spent trying to prevent abuse. This seems a very worthy investment and a very worthy amendment to the Bill. I will grab with both hands the opportunity to meet him and understand why he does not, at this point, agree.
Sarah Champion
I am happy to go to a beach somewhere. At this point, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Sarah Champion
I beg to move amendment 62, in clause 15, page 12, line 5, at end insert—
“(c) any other specialist community-based services relevant to the criminal conduct.”
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 61, in clause 15, page 12, line 12, at end insert—
“(c) ‘specialist community-based service’ means a person who provides a relevant service to individuals based on a protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010 or the specific nature of the crime faced by the victim.”
Amendment 58, in clause 15, page 12, line 13, leave out “or (b)” and insert “, (b) or (c)”.
Amendment 59, in clause 15, page 12, line 16, leave out subsection (4) and insert—
“(4) Guidance under this section about service providers under subsection (1) must include provision about—
(a) the role of such providers;
(b) the services they provide to—
(i) victims, including (where relevant) victims who are children or have other protected characteristics, or
(ii) persons who are not victims, where that service is provided in connection with a service provided to a victim;
(c) how such providers and other persons who have functions relating to victims, or any aspect of the criminal justice system, should work together;
(d) appropriate training and qualifications for such providers.”
Amendment 60, in clause 15, page 12, line 28, leave out from beginning to “must” and insert
“The service providers listed in subsection (1)”.
New clause 18—Guidance about community-based specialist domestic abuse services—
“(1) The Secretary of State must issue guidance about community-based specialist domestic abuse services.
(2) Guidance under this section must include provision about—
(a) the definition and role of community-based specialist domestic abuse services;
(b) the support that such services provide to—
(i) victims, including (where relevant) victims who are children or have other protected characteristics, or
(ii) persons who are not victims, where that service is provided in connection with a service provided to a victim;
(c) how such services and other persons who have functions relating to victims, or any aspect of the criminal justice system, should work together;
(d) appropriate training and qualifications for providers of such services.
(3) Providers of community-based specialist domestic abuse services must have regard to guidance under this section when exercising their functions.
(4) Any other person who has functions relating to victims, or any aspect of the criminal justice system, must have regard to guidance under this section where—
(a) the person is exercising such a function, and
(b) the guidance is relevant to the exercise of that function.
(5) Subsection (4) does not apply to anything done by any person acting in a judicial capacity, or on the instructions of or on behalf of such a person.
(6) In this section, ‘domestic abuse’ has the same meaning as in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 (see section 1 of that Act).”
Sarah Champion
The amendments are all on specialist community-based support, which I have a great deal of time and respect for. I know that the Minister is very aware of its value, so I hope that I am pushing at an open door in support of it, even if he might have different opinions about where that support should land.
Going back to amendment 57, I repeat that the inclusion of guidance and IDVAs and ISVAs in the Bill is genuinely very welcome. I commend the Minister for that, and I mean no disrespect to him in what I will say next: there are concerns that defining only those roles will direct victims to support based in the criminal justice system rather than whichever form suits them best. The Domestic Abuse Commissioner has stressed that most victims and survivors do not go into the criminal justice system, so we must ensure that support and investment beyond IDVAs and ISVAs is easily accessible.
I appreciate that the Minister has made it clear that a victim does not need to report a crime to access support. I am therefore concerned that it is a serious oversight by him not to make it clearer that specialist support that does not go through a criminal footing is equally regarded in the Bill. My amendment 62 complements and reflects the intention behind new clause 19 in ensuring that all forms of specialist support are seen as just as crucial as that provided by ISVAs and IDVAs. It also aligns with amendment 26, tabled by the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington, which I very much support. I am glad that he has brought referring victims to restorative justice services into the debate.
It must be the victim’s choice which route they pursue to cope with and recover from the crimes that have been committed against them. Since the duty on local authorities to provide accommodation-based support was enacted in the Domestic Abuse Act, providing that form of support is now an overwhelming focus within the majority of local authority commissioning strategies, at the expense of other forms. However, the vast majority of victims also want to access support in the community, with 83% wanting counselling or therapeutic support. For victims of domestic abuse accessing support, 70% would do so via community-based services. According to SafeLives, the vast majority of victims never spend time in refuge accommodation. Women’s Aid’s annual survey reported that, in a single year, 187,000 children and 156,000 women were supported by community-based services. Thank goodness they were there. I commend them. Refuge’s recent report “Local Lifelines” found that 95% of survivors supported by Refuge use community-based services.
Jess Phillips
I rise to speak to new clause 18—is that where we are at? Yes, because Sarah spoke to all the provisions together. I will make some remarks too, although I imagine they are relatively similar. I should not have called her Sarah; I meant my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham—I apologise for using her name. I did not say “you”, but I did break that particular protocol. It has been a long day.
Jess Phillips
In his remarks, the Minister said that consultation highlighted the need to define IDVAs and ISVAs, and that may well be true in the purest sense of what they were initially intended to be—certainly much more with IDVAs than ISVAs—which was about specific guidance. We had court-based IDVAs when we used to have specialist domestic abuse courts everywhere, and it is absolutely right that it becomes about the criminal justice system.
I have to say that ISVAs were not about the criminal justice system originally, and their services took a much more holistic approach. The term became what we called anyone who supports someone who comes forward about sexual violence and abuse. In domestic abuse services, of course, there were both; we had floating support, housing support and refuge support workers, as well as people who may be going through the courts, so it made sense to have a different name. That is just a potted history of IDVAs and ISVAs.
The consultation may have said that it was important to identify and define IDVAs and ISVAs and to ensure that criminal justice agencies—specifically judges and the courts—take them seriously. Who could disagree with that? However, if we were to consult any agency that runs IDVA or ISVA services, or domestic abuse and sexual violence services, not one of them would think that it should be exclusively about IDVAs and ISVAs. If we are going to lean on consultation in one regard, then the evidence here is that the sector is not against the definitions, but rather the narrowness of the definitions. Throughout the day, the Minister has talked about the danger of narrow definitions—I just point out that irony.
New clause 18 follows on from the previous debate about community-based, specialist domestic abuse services, which come in a variety of forms. Women and children seek support and help in different ways, including outreach support, floating support, formal counselling and support groups—the list goes on. By only formalising the IDVA models, we risk creating a tiered hierarchy and adversely affecting other models of community-based specialist provision. Once again, that then poses the risk of more generic services, or services that are run in-house.
What is to stop Birmingham City Council saying, “We have a load of ISVAs that work in our service. We are going to train a load of ISVAs and we will take any funding in-house”? I have great respect to Birmingham City Council—I was a member of the council for some years—but it is not a specialist domestic abuse service, and nor should it ever be trusted to be one. It is not independent; they are the people who run the housing; they are the people an ISVA will sometimes have to help a victim take to court—that happens quite regularly. Regarding Victim Support, with the greatest respect to it as an organisation, it is not a specialist sexual violence service, and yet, across the country, it does have ISVA services.
I find the creep towards the generic a worry. Actually, it is not a worry; it is a fact. I have seen it; it is happening, and it has been happening in a new commissioning environment for some time. I have outlined the evidence of the trend already, and the same warnings apply here. Crucially, victims with protected characteristics value and need access to holistic support and intersectional advocacy from organisations led by and for black and minoritised women and those providing specialist advocacy for LGBT+ and for deaf and disabled victims, and I also mentioned specialist services for victims of forces-based violence. Those organisations commonly sit outside the IDVA model but are crucial to the provision of support for such groups.
Another thing that worries me concerns allowing somebody to go into court, be that a family court or another civil court environment for non-molestation orders or other domestic abuse protection orders—there are various different orders, which are currently not worth the paper they are written on, but they exist, so let us pretend they are a solution. If someone does not have an IDVA qualification and is a floating community-based support worker from the local LGBT specialist support service, a judge will not allow that person into the court, because of the idea of that qualification. Also, how do we know that people do not call themselves IDVAs and ISVAs without the qualification? It is not like having a degree; it is a different thing. So there are some real dangers in this. I have seen these things happen. Even though I am qualified in this space, I was not allowed to sit with a rape victim in court recently, because I was not an ISVA. That seems like a—
Jess Phillips
It does seem like a hierarchy. Obviously, I won the argument on that, but that was what I was initially told. There are many examples of why this is a problem.
Studies have shown that disabled women are twice as likely to experience domestic abuse. They are also twice as likely to suffer rape and sexual assault. Yet, the charity SafeLives’s multi-agency risk assessment conference data shows that, nationally, only 3.9% of referrals are disabled victims. Disabled women are four times more likely to report abuse by multiple perpetrators and to experience abuse for longer. Disabled women are more likely to experience abuse by a family member than non-disabled women. Stay Safe East is a user-led specialist organisation supporting disabled victims, and its experience with clients mirrors those harrowing statistics.
Disabled victims may also face specific forms of domestic abuse or their circumstances or impairment being weaponised against them—for example, control of food or drink or medication, withdrawal of care, restricting access to disability equipment, restricting access to other professional advice or help, theft of benefits, and the threat that they will be put into care or have their children taken away from them. Those specific experiences and intersecting discriminations mean that organisations that can provide tailored and holistic care are crucial and wanted by victims. Likewise, in research by the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, it was found that people wanted specialist services. Those services, such as Stay Safe East, are small—I do not want to speak out of turn, but I think four people work there, so it is not a big organisation. However, it is one of the only specialist domestic abuse organisations; those people are not all IDVAs, yet this is absolutely the specialist agency.
The new clause and the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham are to try to ensure that judges and police forces—judges more so, but police forces too—will understand. They are quite rigid about who is allowed in, who is not and who they can take advice from. I really worry that we are about to undermine vast swathes of very professional and learned specialists just on the basis of a qualification they do or do not have.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to hon. Members for their amendments, and I will seek to respond to them all in turn.
Amendments 62 and 61 would expand clause 15 so that the Secretary of State would be required to issue guidance about specialist community-based services for victims, in addition to ISVAs and IDVAs. I understand the concerns that the clause’s focus on ISVAs and IDVAs alone could result in the Government being seen to place their focus on them above other forms of community-based support. I recognise that there are mixed views in the sector about that, and concerns have been expressed. Let me reassure the Committee that that is not the case and that the intention behind the amendments can be addressed through other means.
Edward Argar
I will refrain from biting—I almost did.
To help ensure that women and girls are safe everywhere, in July 2021, we published our cross-Government tackling violence against women and girls strategy. That was followed by a cross-Government tackling domestic abuse plan in March 2022, investing more than £230 million of cross-Government funding into tackling this hideous crime, including more than £140 million for supporting victims and more than £81 million for tackling perpetrators.
Through the commitments set out in those strategies, the Government aim to transform how systems and society respond to violence against women and girls. That is in addition to the increased funding for support services and the increased numbers of ISVAs and IDVAs that I have already referenced. I hope that that demonstrates, to some extent, how we are taking action to further support the sector.
We have chosen a narrower focus for the Bill’s measures to issue guidance than new clause 18 would. IDVAs are a particular type of community-based specialist support service for victims of domestic abuse; our focus on them is in response to the victims Bill consultation. I know that, as the hon. Members for Rotherham and for Birmingham, Yardley set out, IDVAs are only one part of the domestic abuse support landscape, as they predominantly support high-risk victims. However, as I have said in relation to similar amendments, we do not believe that Government intervention through guidance issued about all community-based specialist domestic abuse services is the right approach.
The hon. Member for Rotherham said in our debate on new clause 19 that these services offer a vast range of support, including counselling, advice, advocacy and helplines. We want to get the balance right: we want Government intervention only when it is needed and will yield a positive benefit to support services. Our general approach is to set national commissioning standards and then allow local decision making by local commissioners. National guidance, such as the victims funding strategy and the national statement of expectations, sets standards but empowers commissioners to fund services of a quality and type that meet their local needs.
Our view is that additional guidance for ISVAs and IDVAs is necessary, given the growing number of roles and the lack of consistency. However, given the wide variety of roles within all community-based services, it is less clear what guidance about their roles, training and qualifications would bring, except possibly additional complexity and work for them. The key point is that ISVAs and IDVAs are particularly involved with the criminal justice process.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley highlighted the judicial discretion in this space and the approaches adopted by judges in their courts. I will not stray into that. Although we cannot direct or guide judges because they are quite rightly independent, we can improve their confidence in the professionalism and the work of ISVAs and IDVAs through this guidance, because of that particular intersection with the criminal justice process.
I always welcome further discussion with the hon. Member for Rotherham, as I hope I have made clear in the past few days, but I encourage her not to press the amendment to a Division.
Sarah Champion
I thank the Minister for his comments. I understand but disagree with his argument, but I will not press the amendment to a vote. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to consider new clause 8—Assessment of numbers of independent domestic violence and sexual violence advisors, stalking advocates and specialist support services—
“Within six months of the passing of this Act, and annually thereafter, the Secretary of State must—
(a) make an assessment of the adequacy of the number of independent domestic violence and sexual violence advisors, stalking advocates, and specialist support services in each region of England and Wales, having regard to the population in each region, and
(b) publish that assessment.”
This new clause would require the SoS to make an assessment of the adequacy of the number of ISVAs, IDVAs, stalking advocates and specialist support services in each region of England and Wales.
Edward Argar
With your permission, Mr Hosie, I will address clause 15 and then, once I have heard Opposition Members’ arguments, speak to new clause 8 at the end.
Clause 15 introduces a measure that seeks to improve consistency and awareness of the roles of independent sexual violence advisers and independent domestic violence advisers, who play a crucial role in supporting the needs of victims. We heard during the victims Bill consultation about the need for improved information, awareness and consistency in relation to the ISVA and IDVA roles. In particular, we were told that their remit is not sufficiently clear, which could hamper effective collaboration; that their service provision is not always consistent; and that the existing guidance is outdated and unclear in some places. However, we know that there is a crucial need to allow flexibility and innovation in how ISVAs and IDVAs support victims as an independent sector.
Clause 15 seeks to address that issue by placing a duty on the Secretary of State to issue guidance about ISVAs and IDVAs and placing a duty on ISVAs, IDVAs and other relevant persons to have regard to the guidance. We believe that statutory guidance can strike the right balance by raising awareness and improving consistency without stifling independence and flexibility. It will cover minimum expectations and best practice for ISVAs and IDVAs working with victims and other agencies and services, and will seek to support practical improvements in how agencies work with ISVAs and IDVAs.
We have focused on ISVAs and IDVAs, as they are some of the most common and well-known support roles for victims of sexual and domestic abuse. We recognise the value they add in reducing the attrition of victims who have engaged with the criminal justice process, and preventing them from feeling that they have to drop out at any point. That reflects their crucial role in the criminal justice system in particular. We know that those who received their support are nearly 50% less likely to withdraw from the process. It is also important, as we increase the number of ISVAs and IDVAs to over 1,000 by 2024-25, that the roles achieve greater awareness and consistency to provide the quality service victims deserve.
However, we absolutely do not intend this measure to detract from the important diversity of the wider support sector, or inadvertently to create a hierarchy of support services in which only ISVAs and IDVAs are commissioned or favoured. We are carefully working with the sector to develop the guidance to make sure we get this right. We will ensure that the guidance clearly recognises the wider support sector and makes clear to commissioners their responsibility to consider all victims. That guidance, which will be required by the clause, will therefore meet an evidenced need for a growing part of the support sector. It will be one part of the ongoing and wider work that the Government are focused on to improve support for victims.
Sarah Champion
I rise to speak to new clause 8, which is a slender amendment and my last, so I hope the Minister will look favourably on it.
For years, as we know from our debates in Committee, victims and survivors have faced a postcode lottery in support services, but access to sexual violence advocates, domestic violence advocates and stalking advocates varies hugely around the country. For the Bill to be successful, we need an accurate picture of what such services look like now. If we do not know where the gaps are, how will we fill them sufficiently?
The Domestic Abuse Commissioner has done excellent mapping work across the country and shown where the gaps are in provision for domestic abuse victims, but victims of all crime face patchy services. Support services differ greatly, depending on where in the country victims access them. As my hon. Friends and I have outlined, stalking advocates are crucial for women all over the country but are rarely accessible for most victims, even though they dramatically increase the chance of prosecution.
ISVAs and IDVAs provide crucial services, but if not all victims can access them, not all victims can have their rights met. The criminal justice system is incredibly difficult to navigate. An advocate is crucial for justice to be achieved and support to be received. I urge the Minister to accept that there are huge gaps in the provision available and, by accepting new clause 8, to require the Secretary of State to carry out a review.
Jess Phillips
It would be lovely to know how many ISVAs and IDVAs there are across the country, and what that means, because we also have hospital IDVAs who do not necessarily interact with the criminal justice system at all, but are responsive in accident and emergency. It would be lovely to know that, so I agree with new clause 8—I had ticked it off eagerly and could not see the number for a moment.
I have some real concerns about the clause standing part of the Bill, in particular about the hierarchy. I will not push the clause to a vote today, as I imagine that this is an area that will evolve. I want to see the professionalism of the sector that I worked for, but perhaps the professionalism of the job that I once had should include something about the levels of pay. I guarantee that writing the level of professionalism into a particular job title will not mean that anyone who does it breaches being paid more than £30,000 a year, if they are lucky. On one side, we want professionalism, but on the other side we are happy to allow a group of, frankly, quite low-paid women to do this very difficult work that we respect enough to write into our law. I have concerns about the clause as a whole, but I will agree that it can stand part for now.
Edward Argar
I will respond briefly to new clause 8, tabled by the hon. Member for Rotherham, which seeks to require an assessment of the Secretary of State and that that assessment is published annually.
As the hon. Lady pointed out, understanding the needs of victims and the provision available to them is crucial to ensuring that future services are commissioned and designed to support victims adequately. However, that needs to be appropriately balanced to ensure that processes are not burdensome on the services themselves, which is routinely of concern to them.
Our approach recognises that the needs of victims, and the provision currently available, will differ locally. We therefore devolve responsibility for commissioning and funding to local bodies that can appropriately assess and consider local needs. That ensures a tailored approach to commissioning services for communities. I am pleased to reassure the hon. Member for Rotherham that there are already a range of mechanisms in place for monitoring victims’ needs and the provision of services.
Edward Argar
I beg to move amendment 31, in clause 22, page 18, line 3, leave out “a disclosure or” and insert “the”.
See the explanatory statement to Amendment 34.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Government amendments 32 to 34.
Clause stand part.
Edward Argar
I shall be relatively brisk. As with the Government amendments moved earlier, these are minor, technical amendments. They relate to the provisions on data protection. We are making these amendments across the Bill to ensure that the terminology on data protection is consistent. For example, the amendments will remove superfluous words that could be confusing, as “processing” information can cover a range of activity, including “disclosure”, which is mentioned separately. These changes primarily clarify the provisions and ensure that they work as intended; they do not constitute a policy change and are not intended to have substantive effects.
Clause 22 makes it clear that where data handling is required, the appropriate data protection legislation must still be followed. Where data processing is required under part 1 of the Bill, it is predominately for performance improvement and strategic monitoring—for example, in relation to compliance with the victims code. We do not anticipate that this will require the sharing of personal data. Nevertheless, it is vital that we ensure that the necessary protections are in place so that the collecting and handling of data is done fairly, lawfully and for specified purposes, and that nothing compromises victims’ confidentiality or jeopardises their ability to consent to access services and support. We have already engaged with the UK’s Data Protection Authority during the development of these requirements and will carry out further consultation during the development of the regulations in so far as any requirements relate to the processing of personal data.
Anna McMorrin
I rise only to agree with the Minister. I have no comments to make on the clause, because it is an important part of ensuring that the Bill works in terms of data protection.
Amendment agreed to.
Amendments made: 32, in clause 22, page 18, line 4, leave out “disclosure or”.
See the explanatory statement to Amendment 34.
Amendment 33, in clause 22, page 18, line 5, leave out “a disclosure or processing” and insert “it”.
See the explanatory statement to Amendment 34.
Amendment 34, in clause 22, page 18, line 11, leave out “has” and insert “and ‘processing’ have”.—(Edward Argar.)
This amendment and Amendments 31, 32 and 33 give “processing” of information the same meaning as in the Data Protection Act 2018. Processing includes disclosure and other uses of information, so there is no need to refer separately to disclosure.
Clause 22, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 23
Consequential provision
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Edward Argar
I will now be even brisker: the Bill provides a new statutory framework for the victims code, so this clause will repeal the existing provisions, so that the updated statutory basis of the code is clear. That requires repealing the relevant provisions relating to the victims code in the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004. Once in force, these provisions will allow a new victims code made under this Bill to come into effect, and the current victims code will cease to operate.
The clause also makes sure that other relevant legislation reflects that change. This includes the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman—the Parliamentary Commissioner—to accept complaints about the victims code, and the Victims’ Commissioner, given their responsibility for overseeing the operation of the code.
Anna McMorrin
This part of the Bill refers to the code of practice for victims. We need to ensure that if this Bill progresses, much of what has been discussed is reflected in it as we move forward, so that it is improved for victims—because that is what this is about. It is about victims’ experiences and real lives. The vast majority of victims do not get their entitlements. We currently have a Bill that falls short of that, but I hope that together we can robustly improve it and ensure that victims’ lives and experiences are changed for the better.
Edward Argar
I note what the shadow Minister said. While there may be areas where we disagreed as we went through part 1 of the Bill, I am grateful thus far for the positive and constructive tone adopted by Members on both sides of the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 23 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned.— (Fay Jones.)
Victims and Prisoners Bill (Eleventh sitting)
Thursday 6th July 2023
(2 years ago)
Public Bill CommitteesVictims and Prisoners Act 2024 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 6 July 2023 - (6 Jul 2023)
The Chair
I inform Members about the normal preliminaries: phones and electronic devices should be on silent; no food or drinks are permitted in Committee apart from the water provided; and please give speaking notes to Hansard colleagues or email to hansardnotes@parliament.uk.
Clause 24
Appointment of independent public advocate
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 20, in clause 24, page 18, line 33, leave out “may” and insert “must”.
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to appoint an individual to act as an independent public advocate for victims of a major incident.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 21, in clause 24, page 19, line 2, leave out—
“appears to the Secretary of State to have”.
This amendment would alter the definition of a major incident so that an incident that has caused the death of, or serious harm to, a significant number of individuals is automatically defined as a major incident.
Anna McMorrin
I thank the organisations Inquest, Hillsborough Law Now and Justice for working with me on these amendments. I also pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood, who has shown such steadfast commitment in the fight for justice for the families of Hillsborough through so many years. I am sure that it brings a lot comfort to those families to know that they have a fierce advocate in this place.
My right hon. Friend first introduced her Public Advocate Bill to Parliament in 2016. It has subsequently been blocked 15 times in the past two Sessions—
Anna McMorrin
Twenty-two times—I thank my right hon. Friend for the correction. Furthermore, I put on the record my tribute to Lord Wills, who has twice attempted to legislate for an independent advocate, in 2014 and 2015. I hope that the Minister today has come with a different approach, will heed the words of my colleagues and will co-operate with regard to the issues raised by my right hon. Friend.
I also put on the record that Labour stands unequivocally with the Hillsborough families. We have called repeatedly for the Hillsborough law; making it a reality will be a priority of a Labour Government.
I state my bitter disappointment that we have reached the debate on part 2 of the Bill, yet the Government have still not responded to the report of the Right Rev. James Jones, “The patronising disposition of unaccountable power”, published six years ago in 2017. That is truly intolerable.
Part 2 of the Bill must ensure that lessons are learned and that never again will families bereaved by public disaster have to endure smear campaigns against their loved ones. Families must never again have to spend three decades campaigning to get truth and justice. Unamended, however—this is where my amendments come in—part 2 falls woefully short of that. There will be more public disasters—since Hillsborough, to name but a few, there has been the Westminster terror attack, the Manchester Arena terror attack and the Grenfell Tower fire.
Lord Wills, Minister of State for Justice from 2007 to 2010, stated in evidence that the Bill was fundamentally flawed. The proposals for the independent public advocate fail in the Justice Secretary’s aim. The Justice Secretary said that
“to deliver justice, victims must be treated not as mere spectators of the criminal justice system, but as core participants in it.”—[Official Report, 15 May 2023; Vol. 732, c. 583.]
However, the proposals do not give the bereaved families effective agency. Instead, as Lord Wills said:
“the Bill gives the Secretary of State unfettered powers to appoint an independent public advocate or not to do so, and unfettered powers to dismiss an independent public advocate.”––[Official Report, Victims and Prisoners Public Bill Committee, 22 June 2023; c. 91, Q176.]
Lord Wills went even further, stating that the Secretary of State will have “too much unfettered discretion”.
Amendments 20 and 21 are aimed at correcting that issue, ultimately limiting the Secretary of State’s discretion over the appointment of an independent public advocate. It is deeply concerning that the clause does not require the Secretary of State to appoint an advocate; rather, the Secretary of State “may” do so. Without a duty on the Secretary of State always to appoint an advocate, some bereaved families may receive additional support to which other families are not entitled, worsening the inconsistencies that already exist in the post-death investigation system. That was rightly identified in 2021 by the Select Committee on Justice. For the advocate post to be effective, it should be a mandatory appointment with the duties and functions of the advocate arising in the event of a major disaster, rather than at the discretion of the Secretary of State.
It is equally concerning that the responsibility for declaring a major incident again lies with the Secretary of State. That cannot remain in the Bill. Amendment 21 would change the definition of “major incident” to ensure that a major incident is one where it causes the death of, or serious harm to, a significant number of individuals, rather than where it simply “appears to the Secretary of State” to have caused the death of, or serious harm to, a significant number of individuals. The discretion of the Secretary of State in both those matters is something that Opposition Members and stakeholders are deeply troubled by.
Maria Eagle
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Hosie. I begin by thanking my hon. Friend for her kind words about my long-standing efforts in respect of a public advocate, which arose out of my experience as a constituency MP seeking to represent some of the bereaved families of those who were killed at Hillsborough, and also survivors of Hillsborough—we often forget survivors. Many thousands of people in the ground on that day saw what happened and were subsequently pretty traumatised. Some have been in a terrible state for many years. I still meet people who tell me what happened to them on that day and say that they have never told anybody in the intervening 34 years.
One can imagine the state that some of the people are in in terms of their mental health, particularly when there has been a cover-up that has lasted for so many years seeking to blame fans for what happened, rather than an acceptance of responsibility. We must remember that within four months of the disaster, the first interim report of the first public inquiry placed responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the police, which they never accepted and then chose to campaign to overturn.
When I first met my constituents as an MP in 1997—I had known some of them before as a lawyer—the first thing they said to me was that the police had used the inquest to overturn the Taylor inquiry. Of course, I had the lawyer’s response and said, “No, inquests have a different purpose”, but I quickly understood what they meant when I saw what had happened.
In reality, the cover-up at Hillsborough began on the day and was then pursued at great cost and expense using taxpayers’ money over decades. In fact, at the second inquest, the same points were put by the police lawyers. Even now one hears similar arguments being put: “It was the Liverpool fans; they were ticketless; they were drunk. They pushed their way into the ground and killed their own.” One even hears it in the chants, which, mercifully, the Football Association is now trying to deal with. “Tragedy chanting”, as it is known, is done to Liverpool fans at grounds all over the country. That kind of issue resonates for decades for many thousands of people. That is why I am convinced we as a society must seek to get the aftermath of disasters right.
If we can stop things going wrong—as wrong as they have with Hillsborough—we can save a lot of money and a lot of heartache. We can certainly make sure that the families of those killed in disasters, who suddenly face the worst moments of their lives in the full glare of publicity, do not also have to deal with public authorities’ intent on not getting at the truth and finding out what happened to the families’ loved ones, or not supporting them in every way possible, and in some cases trying to blame them for what happened. In all the cases that I have come across, the authorities try to make sure that they do not get the blame. That defensiveness often drives the behaviour of public authorities in the aftermath of disasters.
That is why I rise to support amendments 20 and 21, which were tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North. Clause 24 gives total discretion to the Secretary of State, and there is no requirement about what he should consider in making the appointment and no requirement that he should consult those affected.
My experience of having to deal with disasters as a constituency MP does not just include the Hillsborough disaster. There have been others: the MV Derbyshire disaster happened long before I became an MP, the Alder Hey organ scandal was another that I had to deal with, and I have constituents affected by the Manchester Arena bombing. A number of other disasters have happened during my time in this House. One issue is always the same: the Secretary of State gaining the trust of those affected is an incredibly important part of ensuring that things do not go wrong.
The Secretary of State should be required to appoint an advocate, thus removing his discretion. We will have an argument—a discussion—later about whether the advocate should be a standing appointment. On balance, I think it should be, but if it is to be an ad hoc appointment, the Secretary of State should not have discretion about whether to appoint when there has been a major incident. There should always be an appointment. I therefore support amendment 20.
There is also an issue about how we define “major incident”. I always think of these things as public disasters in which a number of people have died—that is my definition—but the Government have chosen to define it slightly differently. No doubt the Minister can enlighten us about precisely how the Government see the interpretation of that phrase.
Anything that can give families some comfort that the Secretary of State is acting in their interests, not with unfettered powers and not without having to discuss things with them, would be an advance on the current drafting. For those reasons, I support the amendments.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Edward Argar)
At the outset, I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood for her campaigning on this issue over many years on behalf of not only her constituents, but others whom she has probably never met but who look to her for the leadership that she has shown. They will be grateful for everything that she has done. I also pay tribute to her for the tone that she consistently adopts, which is measured and reasonable.
The right hon. Lady and I had the opportunity to meet, and she introduced me to one of her constituents, whom we subsequently saw before the Committee. The right hon. Lady highlighted the issues of agency and transparency and why the families, having been through all that they have been through, approach these matters in a particular way and have the perspective that they do. We have talked about Hillsborough. Of course, this applies, in recent times, to Grenfell and Manchester Arena, and the survivors and the families of the victims of those horrific events. I also pay tribute to Lord Wills and to my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) for her work on this issue.
I hope that there is agreement across this Committee Room today on a determination to get it right. There may be discussion about what getting it right looks like, and there may be differences of opinion on that. However, this is a genuine opportunity for this House, for this Parliament, to do something of huge import, notwithstanding the fact that there may be areas where we disagree or approach the issue from slightly different perspectives. There should be a fair degree of consensus and a determination to get the right outcome.
I preface my remarks on all these amendments and clauses with this: I look forward to our discussions today, but I also look forward to the opportunity, where there are areas where we do not coalesce around a single approach, to use the summer recess and beyond, before the Bill comes back on Report, to work with the Opposition, the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood, and others to see whether we can move closer together during those months. I hope that the right hon. Lady will take me up on that offer to engage throughout the coming months.
Anna McMorrin
I thank the Minister for his tone in setting out how he is prepared to work with us through the summer to improve the Bill, and specifically on the amendments. My right hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood made heartfelt points about her conversations with constituents and the families impacted. We know that so many families have not had answers for so long, and it has touched many deeply. It goes far and wide across the country.
We tabled the two amendments because, as I set out in my argument, the Secretary of State has far too much discretion at the moment, which is deeply troubling. I therefore want to ensure that we work together to improve the clause and make it more robust, and to ensure that the Secretary of State does not have unfettered discretion. I will not push amendment 20 to a vote, but I appreciate that the Minister will work with us to make improvements. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Maria Eagle
I beg to move amendment 65, in clause 24, page 18, line 35, at end insert—
“(1A) In doing so, the Secretary of State must have regard to—
(a) the views of bereaved families,
(b) the relative benefits of an Independent Public Advocate, a public inquiry, or an Independent Panel in relation to cost, timeliness, and transparency of the major incident in question,
(c) any wider public interest”
This amendment would ensure that in exercising the Secretary of State’s discretion as to whether an Independent Public Advocate should be appointed, the Secretary of State must consider the views of the bereaved families and the relatives of how best to get the truth of what happened in the major incident concerned in a timely fashion.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 66, in clause 24, page 19, line 8, at end insert—
“(4A) An individual may be appointed as an advocate in respect of a major incident only if the Secretary of State has consulted the victims of that incident.”
This amendment ensures that the families are consulted by the Secretary of State about who is an advocate.
Maria Eagle
I very much welcome the fact that clause 24 enables the Secretary of State to appoint an independent public advocate, no matter how much we might disagree about how we should do it—whether it should be a standing appointment or done on an ad hoc basis, precisely what functions the independent public advocate will have, how he ought to go about his role and, indeed, what that role ought to be. I think there are some differences in all those areas, but there are no differences between us about the fact that there ought to be an independent public advocate.
Across the Committee and the House, we have recognised that something about the aftermath of public disasters—the Minister calls them major incidents; I call them public disasters—is remiss. The way in which we as a society respond to them does not work at present. Although we can hope to minimise the number of disasters, we can never stop them entirely. There have been more since Hillsborough, and there have been more since I introduced my Public Advocate (No. 2) Bill to the Commons and Lord Wills introduced the Public Advocate Bill to the Lords. It would be best if we could get a better arrangement. We all agree on that; the issue is just about how.
The amendment has arisen from my 26 years’ experience of campaigning with the Hillsborough families and survivors to get to the truth of what happened on the day. Usually, families want to know what happened to their loved ones, especially if they have lost them. They want to know that it will not happen to anybody ever again, because they feel the deep distress and pain of having to deal with these issues in the public glare and on all the newspaper front pages. Going suddenly from nowhere to that is pretty hard for people, so they want to know that it will not happen again.
Families want to know that their loved ones have not been lost in vain and that lessons will be learned, and they want to be able to have faith that the investigations over the subsequent period will get to the truth and will not be some way of covering up what happened in order to excuse the feelings—and usually the pockets—of the public authorities that might have some responsibility for it.
The role and functions of the public advocate, as set out in the clause, do not quite accord with what I think is necessary, but I hope that we can agree in due course to improve the Bill so that it becomes a turning point, which it can be, in how we as a society deal with the aftermath of public disasters and the terrible burdens they place on those who become victims, rather than it being a missed opportunity. Clause 24(1) gives the Secretary of State discretion to
“appoint an individual to act as an independent public advocate for victims of a major incident”.
A “major incident” is defined in subsection (2). As we have already mentioned, the clause as currently drafted gives the Secretary of State total discretion about whether to appoint an advocate. Under subsection (4), the person may be appointed only if the Secretary of State considers the person “qualified” and “appropriate”. Subsection (5) details that the person may be qualified by virtue of qualifications, their relationship with a “geographical or other community” or “any other matter” the Secretary of State considers relevant. He has total discretion to consider whether and who to appoint.
Nothing in clause 24 gives any kind of say or agency to the victims of the disaster, whether they be families of the deceased or survivors. That is an omission, and a missed opportunity. At this early stage, the Secretary of State could give the families immediate reassurance—that what they think matters, that their feelings matter and that they have some kind of role in how the state is going to deal with what has happened. Families and survivors of major incidents and disasters often feel powerless in the aftermath as the processes of the state begin to grind forward. Inquiries, inquests—they grind into gear and it makes families feel done to, rather than a part of: they feel that they have no power or role in these matters.
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
I thank my right hon. Friend for making such a meaningful speech about putting victims first, at the heart of the process. For the independent advocate to really play their role, the victims need to have a say on whether an independent advocate needs to be appointed. The role is there primarily for the victims, not for the Secretary of State.
Maria Eagle
I agree with that. It is easy to lose trust, and it is hard to gain it; it is very hard to regain it once it is lost—that is my experience of these things.
I will give one example. When Jack Straw became Home Secretary in 1997, he was convinced that something needed to be done, in the aftermath of the drama-documentary “Hillsborough”, which raised some of the issues about what had gone wrong. We should remember that that was some eight years after the disaster—a long time ago, but only eight years after the disaster. A lot of things had already gone wrong in that time. He did not want to set up another public inquiry. What he came to was the Stuart-Smith scrutiny, which looked again at some evidence and reported back a year later.
When Lord Justice Stuart-Smith went to Liverpool to meet the families, the families had been misinformed about precisely which floor of the building he was on, so they were a few minutes late. He immediately made a joke about how they were late like the Liverpool fans on the day. That was not funny; it was crass in the extreme. It showed that he had taken on board utterly the police account of events. People may not know—some will—that a key part of the police smears about Hillsborough, to try to deflect the blame, was that Liverpool fans had turned up late. It immediately destroyed any credibility for that inquiry. The families thought very carefully about walking out and not co-operating with it. I am absolutely certain that there were ructions in the Home Office at the time about what should be done.
I use the example to illustrate the point that the families must have trust in the person and in how the state is to proceed if such an inquiry is to work. The failure of that inquiry wasted a year, upset the families very deeply and destroyed some of the credibility that the new Government of the time had with the families about what could be done to put matters in respect of Hillsborough right. The inquiry revealed one thing that was of use in the end, which was that statements had been altered by the police. That was the first inquiry that reported on that point, but Lord Justice Stuart-Smith did not think it important because it had not fooled Lord Justice Taylor. He was right in that respect; he was wrong in others. With one comment, the trust of the families were gone. They were obviously not consulted about who should head the inquiry. A judge was asked for, a judge was put forward, and that was the unfortunate consequence.
Anna McMorrin
I rise to support my right hon. Friend on these two amendments. The pain of these bereaved families runs deep and the resonance of what happened, particularly at Hillsborough, runs incredibly wide, as we have heard described so brilliantly by my right hon. Friend. But of course the point is widely known and acknowledged across many of the debates and discussions that go on.
These are two core issues, right at the heart of the matter: inclusion of the bereaved families, who are going through that pain, in these decisions, and inclusion of those families when consulting. We need to ensure that they are consulted. They have felt disenfranchised. They have felt left behind. This change would make up for it.
Edward Argar
First, I should have said in response to the previous set of amendments that I am grateful to the shadow Minister for her tone on this part of the Bill and the way Opposition Front Benchers are approaching it. We may find that there remain, after Committee stage, some areas where we have differences, but I think it is incumbent on both sides of the House to work together, to the best of our ability, to try to find a way forward that delivers on our shared objectives.
The right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood mentioned Jack Straw in 1997. I can remember the Labour party coming to power in 1997—I had just finished my A-levels and left school at the time. I believe that that was when the right hon. Lady entered this House.
Edward Argar
Therefore I am always sensitive to the depth of experience and knowledge that the right hon. Lady brings as a parliamentarian to these proceedings. I am very grateful to her for these amendments, which seek to give agency to the families bereaved by a major incident—or public disaster, to use her terminology—provide them with influence over who is appointed as an advocate, and specifically define criteria to which the Secretary of State must have due regard when appointing an advocate.
The right hon. Lady is absolutely right to highlight the importance of trust and agency. First, on trust, we all know as politicians that it is very easy to very swiftly lose trust. It takes an awfully long time to rebuild it afterwards. That is why—this is my second point—she is absolutely right to highlight the importance of tone and language. In the aftermath of a major public disaster like the one that we have been discussing, particularly when it is many years down the line of—for want of a better way of putting it—having to fight the system to get the truth, people are, understandably, very sensitive to the language and tone, so I am sympathetic to the aims of these amendments. I want to say again that the Government do recognise the need to give families a voice and some sort of agency in decisions about the support that is provided.
My concern is that the practicalities of consulting families in the immediate aftermath of a disaster could be difficult, especially at a time when they are dealing with their immediate grief. At that point, they may not necessarily have coalesced into a support group—a single group or a number of groups—and may still be disparate individuals, with different views, who may not be in a position to compute what they might like to see in the future, because of the immediate consequences.
Maria Eagle
Perhaps a standing appointment is the answer, because such a person, who was there anyway, would be able immediately to spring into action and consult the families.
Edward Argar
This goes to my slight concern about the amendments. I am concerned that identifying and consulting bereaved families and victims, and trying to avoid missing anyone or people feeling that they did not have agency because they were not identified or engaged at the time, could risk delaying the IPA being appointed and support reaching victims. I take the right hon. Lady’s point, and I suspect that we will return to this when we talk about the nature of the appointment, but there are questions of timing and speed versus engagement, and how we would practically go about this. I know it is not the intention of the right hon. Lady, who wishes to ensure agency for families, and I am happy to continue our conversation to see if there is a way we can strike that balance between agency and engagement, but also avoid delay in practical terms. At present, victims would be able to make their representations to the Secretary of State, use their MPs and, ultimately, challenge a decision in court.
The Government intend to ensure that advocates are on the ground to provide support as swiftly as possible after a major incident. To ensure that support is tailored to a particular incident, our approach, which I suspect we will also debate later today, is to set up a register of advocates from a range of different professions, backgrounds and geographical areas. That will help to ensure that, as far as possible, those appointed have the necessary skills and expertise directly relevant to the incident in question or to the community or geography where it occurred. The views of the victims may well become apparent in the weeks following the appointment of an advocate and may have an important bearing on the appointment of a second or third advocate, or a team. One such advocate could, under the provisions as drafted, be put forward for appointment from the community affected by the major incident.
I recognise and understand the intent behind the amendments. In our conversations, the right hon. Lady has impressed on me just how important the sense of having agency and influence is for victims, survivors and families of victims in the aftermath of an incident. My concern is that there is a risk that the amendments could cause unnecessary delays in support reaching victims, which would run counter to the purpose of the IPA. None the less, given the right hon. Lady’s points about agency and the sense of powerlessness, I am happy to engage with her to see if there is a way that we can square the circle of timeliness, agency and engagement.
Maria Eagle
I do not intend to press the amendments to a vote. The Minister is being his usual constructive self, and I am sure that over the summer between all of us we will be able to rewrite the Bill so it looks a lot more like mine. [Laughter.] Sorry, I let that slip. We will be able to improve the Bill significantly so that it will do an appropriate and, hopefully, good job for those caught up in public disasters. On the basis of the Minister’s assurances, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Anna McMorrin
I beg to move amendment 22, in clause 24, page 19, line 8, at end insert—
“(4A) If the circumstances in subsection (2) are not met, the Secretary of State may still declare a major incident where there is a significant public interest in doing so.
(4B) Where the Secretary of State declares a major incident under subsection (4A), they must appoint an individual to act as an independent public advocate for victims of that incident.”
This amendment would enable the Secretary of State to designate incidents other than those that meet the definition of major incidents as such where there is a significant public interest in doing so.
Amendment 22 aims to alleviate the restrictive nature of granting a major incident only in the circumstances outlined in clause 24. It recognises that there may be incidents that do not have a direct impact on a significant number of people in the way that the definition of a major incident in the Bill requires, but that should none the less be considered major incidents for the purpose of appointing a public advocate. Such incidents include those where a relatively small number of people have died or suffered serious harm in circumstances that suggest serious systemic failings on the part of a public body, and those where there appears to be a serious risk that such circumstances may recur or that a significant number of people may be harmed in the future. In such instances, effective investigations into the deaths, so that lessons can be learned and further harm avoided, would be in the public interest. The appointment of an independent advocate in such cases would ensure that by promoting transparency, enabling victims to get to the truth and ensuring accountability, just as the former Lord Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab), outlined in the Chamber during the debate on independent public advocates on 1 March.
As I have said, I disagree with the amount of discretion that the Bill outlines for the Secretary of State, but if clause 24 is not amended the Secretary of State should at least have the discretion to declare instances, such as those described in the Bill, that would not fall under the definition of major incidents currently provided, and therefore appoint an advocate in respect of them.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Cardiff North for tabling the amendment, which would expand the scope of the IPA by giving the Secretary of State the power to appoint an IPA to support victims of an incident that does not meet the definition of a major incident in the Bill, but where the Secretary of State believes there is a significant public interest in doing so.
I understand the intention behind the amendment, particularly when taken alongside amendments 20 and 21, which we just debated. Amendment 22 would give back the Secretary of State some discretion to appoint an IPA following an event if they wanted to. However, it is important to remember that the IPA is intended to respond to exceptional events that present unique challenges. We use the term “major incidents”, but I acknowledge the term “public disaster” and I can understand why the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood uses it. I fear that the amendment may set a potentially unhelpful expectation and precedent that the IPA might be appointed to support victims who have not been caught up in a major incident, thereby increasing the scope and diluting the focus of the IPA. It would, for example, allow the appointment of an IPA where there are no injuries or fatalities. That is not the policy intention in part 2 of the Bill.
We are seeking to keep the focus narrowly on the intention to have the IPA in place for major incidents. We will debate some of the nuances and sub-elements of that, I suspect, but we want to keep that focus. In fact, not all events that involve fatalities or injuries will require the support of the IPA. Any event that results in harm and/or loss of life is a serious, but the intention and focus of the IPA is that it will become involved in only those circumstances where ensuring the effective engagement of the bereaved families and victims is likely to be a particular challenge and the IPA can add value in helping to give them agency.
Clause 24 already provides the Secretary of State with the necessary discretion when declaring a major incident to take account of a broad range of factors, which will probably include the public interest. As I have stated, we will publish a policy statement that sets out the factors to be considered. I note the intention behind the amendment, but I hope the hon. Member for Cardiff North will not press it to a Division.
Anna McMorrin
I thank the Minister for his reply. I accept his assurance that where it is in the public interest, declaring major incidents will be within the scope of the Secretary of State’s discretion. If I am wrong in that, perhaps he will intervene. I am grateful to him for putting that on record.
I would us to find a way to keep the focus on where there is a significant public interest—for example, when a relatively small number of people have died or suffered harm but the circumstances suggest serious systemic failings on the part of a public body. In those circumstances it would be in the public interest and lessons can be learned for the future. I hope we can move forward, as the Minister has given the assurance that an incident would be included, if that was in the public interest. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Maria Eagle
I beg to move amendment 67, in clause 24, page 19, line 23, leave out “or close friends”.
This amendment would narrow the definition of “victim” to close family members of those who have died or suffered serious harm as a result of the incident and make more certain who falls within the definition.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 68, in clause 24, page 19, line 24, at end insert—
“(8) For the purposes of clause 24 (7), close family members means—
(a) a husband, wife or civil partner from a marriage or partnership that was in existence at the time of the event;
(b) a child;
(c) a grandchild;
(d) a parent;
(e) a sibling;
(f) a half-sibling;
(g) a grandparent;
(h) a niece or nephew;
(i) a half-aunt or half-uncle;
(j) a cohabitant with the deceased;
(k) the executor of the deceased’s last will and testament;”.
This amendment defines the meaning of close family member in clause 24.
Maria Eagle
Amendment 67 and 68 are probing amendments, which are intended to explore who the Government intend to be the recipient of help from the public advocate that they are establishing under the Bill.
Clause 24(7)(a) defines the victims who are to benefit from the service of the public advocate, once appointed, as
“individuals who have been harmed by the incident (whether or not that harm is serious harm)”.
That seems to mean survivors, who are certainly one group that the public advocate should aim to help, but subsection (7)(b) says that victims also include
“close family members or close friends of individuals who have died or suffered serious harm as a result of the incident.”
The paragraph does not define “close family members”; nor does it define “close friends”, which is a much more uncertain and ambiguous term than “close family members”, although there is uncertainty in both.
Suppose that I am a second cousin. Is that “close family”? What about an aunt who is particularly close to a niece who has unfortunately died. Is that close enough? Or does it depend on the specific relationship in each case? If so, is the close family member supposed to prove that a family relationship that looks, on the face of it, to be a little distant is in fact close? What about a close friend? That could be anyone.
Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
I well remember being in Manchester on the day of the Arena bombing. I was not at the Arena, but the sense of shock in the city was palpable. One of the news items that day was about the sad loss of Nell Jones, a 14-year-old girl from Cheshire. Her teacher said of the class:
“They’ve lost a sister not a classmate”,
and explained that they had been together since reception class. I think there is a bit of scope for a close friend to be included.
Maria Eagle
I do not disagree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman about trying to cope with all situations, but it is quite hard—as a lawyer, he knows this—to get the definitions right. Through the probing amendments I am seeking to get the Government to be clear. Like most lawyers, I work on the assumption that uncertainty is undesirable—although it can be lucrative. In this context, wrangles over who might be allowed to get support are certainly not desirable.
The amendments are about trying to get the Government to set out a little more clearly than they do in the Bill precisely what they mean by these unusual phrases. I cannot think of another piece of legislation that refers to “close friends”. Perhaps the Minister will have an example that will show that I have not looked far enough—no doubt he will. That is the point of the probing amendments: simply to get to the bottom of precisely what the Minister is seeking to achieve.
Anna McMorrin
I completely support the probing amendments, and I am intrigued to hear what the Minister has to say in response.
Edward Argar
I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood for her amendments. I appreciate that she is, both as a parliamentarian and with her legal background, exploring what greater clarity can be provided. I sympathise with her. I take her point about ambiguity occasionally being beneficial to the legal profession but not necessarily to others, and about the desire to be as clear as possible about whom the IPA will support.
Our concern is about placing a definition of “close family members” in the Bill. We are all conscious, from our constituency work and more broadly, that there is no set family structure. A person’s second cousin, aunt or whoever may be much closer to that person than a very close relative is. We have sought create a degree of flexibility, so that the Bill can capture those who need support. Our approach is to use guidance to more clearly define how that would work, while still allowing the IPA a degree of discretion and flexibility. I am happy to work with the right hon. Lady on that guidance. With her legal mind as well as her parliamentary one, we might square that circle.
I would not support removing the ability of the IPA to support a close friend of a victim, because I fear that doing so could have the unintended consequence of excluding some victims from support. There may be some circumstances where someone injured in a major incident cannot receive the support of the IPA directly and does not have any close family ties, but has a close friend, a companion or another person who is deeply affected by what has happened, and who may be the only person they have left. We would wish such people to have the agency to engage with the IPA and receive their support directly. We therefore think that it is appropriate to allow the IPA to provide support to a close friend. I do not imagine that necessarily being the norm, but the provision is a safeguard to avoid being unduly restrictive and inadvertently excluding people.
I am reminded of the bombing of the Admiral Duncan pub, when a number of people who were actually partners of victims, but who were not confident enough to be out, therefore described themselves as close friends. I would hope, as I think would all Members, that the world has moved on since then, but there is a risk that if we tighten the definition too much, people like that might not get the support they need. I hope that the world and society have moved on, but I just want to ensure that we have that safeguard in place.
I do understand the right hon. Lady’s intention in tabling the amendments, but I believe that they would narrow the definition of a victim in a such a way as inadvertently to exclude people who needed support. However, I am open to working with her—with her legal brain, as well as her parliamentary one—on the guidance to see whether we could, without being unduly prescriptive and while still being permissive, tighten it up a little more from a legal perspective. I am happy to work with her on that.
Maria Eagle
As I said at the beginning of my remarks, these ae probing amendments. The Minister is right that they narrowed the definition, but only to probe. On the basis of the assurances that he has given, I am quite content to withdraw the amendments. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 15—Appointment of a standing independent public advocate—
“(1) The Secretary of State must appoint an individual to act as an independent public advocate for victims of major incidents.
(2) The Secretary of State must pay to or in respect of an advocate—
(a) such remuneration as the Secretary of State considers appropriate;
(b) reasonable costs incurred by the advocate in connection with the exercise of their functions, including those incurred in connection with proceedings relating to the exercise (or purported exercise) of those functions;
(c) such other sums by way of allowances or gratuities as the Secretary of State considers appropriate.
(3) The Secretary of State must make provision for the advocate to have an efficient and effective system of support, including secretarial support, in connection with the exercise of their functions.
(4) The independent public advocate may undertake the functions set out in section [functions and powers of the independent public advocate] for a particular event when—
(a) invited to do so by the Secretary of State, or
(b) for that event both requirements one and two have been met.
(5) Requirement one is that, in the advocate’s opinion, a major incident has occurred.
(6) A major incident is an incident that has caused the death of, or serious harm to, a significant number of individuals and involved—
(a) serious health and safety issues,
(b) a failure in regulation, or
(c) other events of serious concern.
(7) For these purposes, ‘harm’ includes physical, mental or emotional harm.
(8) In reaching an opinion under subsection (5), the advocate must have regard to previous decisions of the advocate.
(9) Requirement two is that the advocate has been asked to undertake their functions by fifty per cent plus one or more of the total of—
(a) representatives of those deceased due to the event, and
(b) any injured survivors of the event.”
Edward Argar
I will speak to clause 24 now, and to new clause 15 in my concluding remarks, once I have heard what the right hon. Member for Garston and Halewood wishes to say about it.
Clause 24 enables the Secretary of State to appoint independent public advocates for victims of a major incident. Thankfully, major incidents—or public disasters—involving significant loss of life and serious injury are relatively rare in this country. However, they do happen, and when they do the processes that follow can be complex and daunting for victims and the bereaved. Despite the progress made in recent years, it is clear, as the right hon. Lady eloquently set out, that significant concerns remain about the extent to which the voices of the victims are heard, the agency that they have, and how fully they are supported in participating in the processes that aim to establish what happened and why. Clause 24 marks an important step forward.
As well as giving the Secretary of State the power to appoint an advocate, the clause defines “major incident” and “harm” for part 2 of the Bill. It is not possible to predict the exact nature of future incidents or disasters where an IPA may be required. The definition of a major incident is therefore intentionally broad to ensure that the Secretary of State has maximum flexibility to appoint an IPA to respond to a wide range of incidents.
The Government’s intention is to appoint an advocate as soon as possible after a major incident. Clause 24 sets out the sorts of things that the Secretary of State may consider when deciding whether an individual is appropriate to be appointed as an advocate. Those include previous qualifications, the individual’s geographical location and the impacted community and its needs. That ensures that decisions are made with a victim-centric approach. In taking a decision to appoint an advocate, the Secretary of State may have regard to the geographical area of the incident and, as previously set out, any particular community directly affected.
The Secretary of State will be able to appoint more than one advocate in respect of the same major incident where that is deemed necessary. Each major incident will be different and likely to require a specific set of skills and experience from the advocate. The clause seeks to ensure that there is enough flexibility to appoint the right people, and we believe that having the ability to appoint multiple advocates will help to provide the necessary resilience and diversity.
The Government believes it is right that the decision to stand up the IPA rests with the Secretary of State, who is accountable to Parliament for their decisions and for public expenditure. We do not think that a permanent body is necessary, given the rarity of the events in question. Nor do we believe that it is right to require victims to make such a decision when they are dealing with the immediate impact of their injuries and grief. However, we do recognise the importance of giving victims agency, which is why we are continuing to think about the role that victims can play in the appointment of more than one advocate following the immediate aftermath. I offer to work with the right. hon Lady to see if there is a way we can square that circle.
The clause also enables the Secretary of State to appoint a community leader if representations are made by the community. If an incident occurs and the IPA is not stood up, victims will be able to make representations to the IPA secretariat or their local elected MP to ask for one to be appointed. Those representations will be carefully considered, and a decision on whether to appoint an advocate can always be revisited.
Anna McMorrin
Most of my comments about my amendments still stand. It is incredibly important that we bear in mind the words of Lord Wills, who said that a different approach is needed. He quoted the Justice Secretary’s comment that
“victims must be treated not as mere spectators of the criminal justice system, but as core participants in it.”—[Official Report, 15 May 2023; Vol. 732, c. 583.]
At present, as Lord Wills says,
“the Bill gives the Secretary of State unfettered powers”.––[Official Report, Victims and Prisoners Public Bill Committee, 22 June 2023; c. 91, Q176.]
I hope that we can work together to improve the clause as the Minister suggests.
Maria Eagle
Before I say a few things about clause 24 stand part, I would like to speak to my new clause 15.
At the beginning of our consideration of part 2 of the Bill, I said that my own Public Advocate Bill and the Government’s Bill envisage the role of a public advocate somewhat differently, although there are points of similarity. New clause 15 sets out roles and functions that are closer to what I would like to see in the Bill. It would require the Secretary to State to appoint an individual to act as a public advocate for victims of major incidents, and to ensure an efficient and effective means of support, with appropriate remuneration and reasonable costs, to carry out the functions assigned to the post. It would be a standing appointment, rather than an ad-hoc appointment on a case-by-case basis.
Sir Oliver Heald
I have been closely following the right hon. Lady’s points about consulting victims, but a standing appointment may not be suitable for each set of circumstances or each set of victims. How does she square that circle?
Maria Eagle
My own view is that these kinds of public disaster occur infrequently. My main worry is whether a single standing appointment would be able to cope if more than one disaster occurred at the same time. As I envisage it, the independence of the role and the fact that it is a standing appointment would enable that person to act swiftly. It would have to be somebody who is a people person and is able to relate to individuals in trauma. The appointment itself would have to take into account the kind of qualities that the person would need, but I believe a proper person could be found who would be suitable in most circumstances.
Sir Oliver Heald
Under the Bill’s approach, the Minister appointing a public advocate would be looking at the geography, the communities and the skills necessary for a particular major incident. With a standing appointment, we might end up with somebody who would be good for one incident but not another.
Maria Eagle
I acknowledge that there are pros and cons to both approaches. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is pointing out what he sees as the downside of a standing appointment. One could envisage circumstances in which a standing appointment may have downsides, but there are also upsides. In the end, to get their legislation through, the Government must judge which approach they prefer. I simply seek to persuade the Minister and the Government that a standing appointment may have more pros than cons—and more pros than an ad hoc appointment, which has downsides too. My approach has always been that there should be a standing appointment rather than an ad hoc one.
There was extensive support for that approach in this Committee’s evidence sessions. Bishop James Jones said:
“I do not think that that independence is sufficiently guaranteed by the Bill as it stands; I think it can be guaranteed only if it is a standing appointment.”—[Official Report, Victims and Prisoners Public Bill Committee, 22 June 2023, col. 87, Q168.]
He made the point that independence is tremendously important, and that that requires a standing appointment. He also said:
“Contrary to the Government’s proposal, I believe that there should be a standing independent public advocate. Why? Because in the immediate aftermath of a public tragedy, people are grief-stricken and traumatised. They are unprepared and disorientated, and they no longer feel in control of their life. It is in that immediate moment that they need an advocate—somebody who will represent them to Government and signpost them to the agencies that are available to support them in that moment of trauma.”—[Official Report, Victims and Prisoners Public Bill Committee, 22 June 2023, col. 86, Q166.]
Lord Wills, too, believes that there should be a standing appointment. That is perhaps not surprising, because the Bill he introduced in the Lords, which has just had its Second Reading, includes a standing appointment. He said:
“I believe it should be a standing appointment, for the reasons that the bishop set out extremely well. In the turmoil of the aftermath of a big public disaster, it is important that someone is on the ground immediately to support the families. I do believe that, and I think it is a perfectly achievable position to have. A secretariat could be drawn together at short notice—a standing secretariat, as it were. It would be doing work within the civil service, but when a public disaster happened it could be brought to bear to act as a secretariat for the independent public advocate.
I hate to think of what might happen. If you imagine a big terrorist incident, for example, the Government would be in turmoil anyway, and then they would have to find the time and space to go through all the selection processes, find out people’s availability and negotiate terms of reference. In the meantime, the poor families are left without anyone to support them, as they always have been up until now. It rather defeats the object of this whole exercise. So I am in favour of having a standing appointment.”—[Official Report, Victims and Prisoners Public Bill Committee, 22 June 2023, col. 93, Q179.]
We can see that there are pros and cons, whichever way one decides to do that. I just happen to have come down on the side of a standing appointment being preferable on balance. That is the approach that Michael Wills and I took when drafting our own version, which has the advantage of the postholder being able to go into action immediately with no delay required.
My new clause envisages two scenarios in which the advocate is called into action. The first is where the Secretary of State invites him to get involved; I hope the Minister will be pleased to see that I am not entirely excluding action by the Secretary of State. The second is if the advocate thinks a major incident has occurred that meets the requirement under new clause 15(6) and the advocate has been asked to undertake the function by a majority of representatives of the deceased and injured survivors of the incident.
That part of the clause puts into legislation my idea, and Lord Wills’s idea, that there should be agency for the families, that they must have a role in deciding whether the advocate gets involved and that the advocate himself should decide whether the definition of major incident or public disaster is met. Subsection (6) defines a major incident as one
“that has caused the death of, or serious harm to, a significant number of individuals and involved—
(a) serious health and safety issues,
(b) a failure in regulation, or
(c) other events of serious concern.”
The key difference from the Bill as drafted by the Government is that the affected families and survivors can get the advocate—who will already be in post—involved, should a majority of them wish to do so, even if the Secretary of State has not asked the advocate to get involved. The advocate can make it clear that he thinks that an incident meets the threshold for his involvement—if, indeed, he thinks that—on the basis of precedent. Obviously there will have to be a few involvements before precedent can come into it.
That would deliver one of the key requirements for a public advocate to succeed, in my view, which is to ensure that the affected families have some agency about whether his services should be called upon in respect of a particular incident. Those families must feel that they can call the advocate in to help them navigate the aftermath and get to the truth.
The trust and confidence of the families of the deceased and survivors is a crucial requirement for the post of public advocate to be introduced successfully. Enabling them to have a meaningful say in whether the advocate should be involved is an important way to establish that trust from an early stage. It also emphasises the independence of the advocate at a very early stage of his involvement: if the families ask him to get involved, and