Victims and Courts Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 9th February 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Brinton]

38: After Clause 7, insert the following new Clause—
“Duty to commission support services for caregivers of victims of abuse and exploitation(1) This section applies in respect of victims of offences relating to—(a) domestic abuse,(b) sexual violence, or(c) child criminal exploitation, where the victim—(i) at the time of the offence, was under the age of 18, or(ii) is an adult at risk of harm.(2) It is the duty of relevant authorities to commission sufficient and specific services for the parent, guardian or person who has responsibility for the victim under subsection (1) for the purpose of securing the rights of the victim under the Victims Code of Practice for England and Wales.(3) Victim is defined as outlined in Section 1 of the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024.(4) The services commissioned and provided under subsection (2) must be—(a) appropriate to the needs of the caregiver in supporting the victim,(b) trauma-informed and culturally competent, and(c) accessible without unreasonable delay or procedural burden. (5) In exercising their duty under this section, relevant authorities must have regard to guidance issued by the Secretary of State.(6) The Secretary of State must publish such guidance within six months of the passing of this Act, following consultation with relevant stakeholders including—(a) victim support organisations,(b) organisations representing children and vulnerable adults, and(c) persons with the lived-experience of the effects of sexual or violent offences.(7) In this section—“child criminal exploitation” has the meaning given in the Crime and Policing Act 2026;“adult at risk of harm” means a person aged 18 or over who—(a) has needs for care and support,(b) is experiencing, or is at risk of, abuse or neglect, and(c) as a result of those needs is unable to protect themselves against the abuse or neglect or the risk of it;“relevant authorities” has the meaning given in section 13 of the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment places a duty on relevant authorities to provide specific services to the parent, guardian or person who has responsibility for a victim of domestic abuse, sexual violence or child criminal exploitation for the purposes of securing the rights of the victim under the Victims Code.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I laid Amendment 38, which proposes a duty to commission support services for caregivers of victims of abuse and exploitation. I am grateful to Restitute for its briefing, not just for this Bill but over the years. Cath Pickles from Restitute and her colleagues do an amazing job working with the caregivers—mainly parents, but also siblings—of victims of very serious abuse who have to pick up the pieces after the abuse, witnessing lives lived in trauma. Of course, it is obvious that, over time, many of these caregivers are traumatised, too.

Cath said in an interview with the Daily Express that the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse had findings showing that non-offending parents, particularly mothers, of survivors can experience psychological effects similar to those of the victims. A recent independent report by the University of Suffolk showed that Restitute has built a model of support for victims’ families from literally nothing. However, despite the sea change across the country, Cath knows from her bitter personal experience of the guilt, shame, stigmatisation and isolation that the work that Restitute can do is far from enough and more is needed. That is why Amendment 38 is so important.

It is important to recognise that support does not confer victim status for sentencing, compensation or criminal proceedings, but it can last for the mother—as it is in most cases—who often has to accept a child back into her home who has been an adult elsewhere and has been raped or badly sexually assaulted and may not be able to work or live independently for a very long time. That will of course affect the very close family caregivers. The Child Sexual Abuse Centre is due to publish national guidance in April. It is thought that it will explicitly recognise that parents and carers should be treated as victims in their own right, reflecting the harm that they experience as a consequence of child sexual abuse and the criminal justice response.

The amendment would provide clarity and coherence. It recognises that parents and carers of child or vulnerable adult victims may require proportionate support, distinct from evidential witness support. It would not expand sentencing or compensation rights, or dilute the primacy of the direct victim. However, it would resolve a documented structural inconsistency and support safeguarding, justice outcomes and cost-effective early intervention. Is the Minister prepared to meet me and Cath Pickles to discuss these issues further?

Amendment 43, also in my name, seeks to strengthen victims’ rights to access to restorative justice services. I thank the Common Ground Justice Project and the Why Me? group for their briefing. Today, we have heard so many different speeches mentioning the ongoing trauma faced by victims of serious crime. Many find that moving on is very difficult and they feel unheard. Restorative justice provides an opportunity for them to have a dialogue with the person who harmed them. They have the chance to explain the impact of the crime, then and now, to ask questions to understand why it happened, and to then have a way to move forward, which is often positive not just for them but for the offender.

At a time when only one in 10 victims trusts the criminal justice system, restorative justice achieves 85% victim satisfaction, reduces reoffending by up to 27% and saves £14 for every £1 invested in it. Despite these incredible impacts, access to restorative justice is poor and, shockingly, 95% of victims are not even told about it. We know that restorative justice providers have the capacity to do more, but poor awareness and low numbers of referrals are depriving victims of the opportunity to have their say.

The MoJ mechanism for improving RJ, re:hub, needs radical improvement and putting on a proper footing. The amendment seeks a legal right for all victims of crime to be told about restorative justice at all stages of the criminal justice process and to be offered a referral if that is the right thing. My honourable friend Paul Kohler MP laid this amendment in the Commons, and we were pleased with the Commons Minister’s positive response. We have laid it here because we think that this is the perfect time and the perfect Bill for the Government to make this commitment and make the UK a world leader in restorative justice. Paul is passionate about restorative justice because he was seriously attacked in his home. He and his wife and daughter met one of the attackers and it transformed Paul and his family. It was not about forgiveness, though that can be a byproduct. What it can really do is give victims an understanding and the ability to move on. What is more, it can help the offender as well.

In these tough financial times, using RJ consistently throughout the system would create substantial savings on spending across all the different bodies involved, because of its ability to substantially reduce offending—by up to 27%, as research has shown. I beg to move.

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[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I thank all the speakers in this debate. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, for his support and curiosity on how the Minister would respond. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, my noble friend Lady Hamwee and the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, for speaking so powerfully on the issue of navigators for victims of modern slavery as well.

I thank the Minister for her response, too. She will not be surprised to hear that I do not quite agree with everything that she said. On Amendment 38 and the support for caregivers, she said it was not necessary for this cohort because they can already access support. It is not necessarily clear to that particular cohort that it is available, because they present as trying to fight for the support for their child. That is part of the problem and, as a result, the personal trauma and damage that they live with is often quite repressed. One reason for the amendment was to find a mechanism where people actually say, “And how are you? What can we do to support you?”. I asked the Minister earlier if it would be possible to have a meeting. It would be good, perhaps, to assess this. It is also financial—perhaps the Chancellor of the Exchequer should hear—because often these parents give up work to look after their children. Their lifestyles change, so it is a very big deal, but I thank the Minister for what she said on that point.

I am glad the Government agree that restorative justice can work. I am sorry to be a bit of a pain, but we were clear in our Amendment 43, in subsection (3) of its proposed new clause, that

“a victim must at all times give informed consent, and participation in any restorative justice process shall be voluntary”.

That is the core, because it would not work if not. The Minister said that it might be a problem for victims of stalking, for example, because they might not want to do it, but that is easy, as they can say, “No, I’m not interested in meeting my stalker”—I personally never want to meet my stalker; absolutely no, sorry—but that crime is of a different nature and there are plenty of other crimes, particularly some of the slightly lower-level ones, where if it really reduces reoffending that much, the Government have to look at it. On that basis, I really hope that the Government will seriously look at expanding it beyond its very small nature at the moment, where it seems to be a few people who might be interested rather than recognising that it will transform the court system and the justice system overall. I beg to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 38 withdrawn.

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[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

My brief observations draw on my experience of what happened about 20 years ago when the statements were being developed. For more serious cases, such as murder and manslaughter, there was an attempt to give the victim’s family an advocate. It had transpired that drafting these statements was not easy, and so this was trialled for a few years. It proved to be an extremely expensive way forward, and the scheme came to an end with the financial crisis of 2008.

That left us with the problem, in all these cases, of how you formulate what was then called a victim impact statement and is now called a personal statement? They are extraordinarily difficult to formulate. Those with experience of civil cases will know that, if you ask a witness to produce something in his own words, or you ask the claimant in a case to do the same, you get something you could never put before the court, because it would never really convey what had to be put forward. Therefore, the way in which progress was made was along the cautious lines of developing guidance. I think such guidance always needs to be kept under review. You need consultation with the Crown Court judges, who see this all the time. Clarity in the guidance is essential, but I greatly caution against allowing a victim to do more than explain to the court the way in which the crime has affected the victim, his family and the community. Going beyond that seems to raise all sorts of problems, and the last thing one wants to do is to revictimise a victim by saying, “You shouldn’t say that in court”. Clarity is essential, but I say, with respect to the noble and learned Lord, that his formulation goes too wide of the mark.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I shall add a couple of very brief points. First, from my own experience, also nearly 20 years ago now when I was a victim of stalking, as were some of my colleagues, I found that the police encouraged me to make a victim statement, but we were advised quite specifically to talk not about what the stalker had done but solely about the effect on us of what he had done: in other words, to completely avoid making any comment about him or his actions. That was quite difficult. I was advised very heavily not to get involved and show how emotional many of us were as a result of his actions, and I chose not to do that at all.

However, I talked last week to Glenn Youens, the father of a four year-old who was killed. He and his family were asked if they wanted to do a victim impact statement, and the police advised them not to use certain language because the court had advised them not to. They were told that bluntness might upset the perpetrator, they could not call him a child killer; they were not allowed any props in court, such as their daughter’s teddy bear; and the CPS advised them not to appeal the unduly lenient sentence, because it might actually make the Attorney-General get less for him in the long run. So, this particular family’s experience of making a statement was the exact opposite of what it was intended to be. While I have some sympathy with some elements of the amendment from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, I think I am more with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, on the grounds that we would have to design it so carefully to make sure that a victim is doing it willingly and that they are able to say what they want without jeopardising the court process. I am afraid that that would also mean very strict guidance on the officials helping them not to do so in a way that prevents victims speaking in their own voice.

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for talking about what happened to her, because in your Lordships’ House, that kind of personal experience really resonates with all of us. I thank her for that. I also thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, for speaking from his experience in the courts. He speaks with a great deal of authority and I know the House has vast respect for him.

Let me start with that with which we all agree: of course I recognise that victim personal statements are a powerful tool for victims and their families to tell the court about the effect that these crimes have had on them. The victim personal statement is also important for the judge when deciding the appropriate sentence. The VPS provides evidence and information which can help the judge in determining the seriousness of the offence as part of the sentencing process, and plainly it is right that victims should have a voice in that. However, it is also right that this must be done fairly. I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, that there are limits to what can be said in the VPS, as we cannot have legally irrelevant matters—for example, other behaviour of which the defendant has not been convicted. The judge is not by law allowed to take account of such things.

That said, I too have heard from victims and their families about their concerns about how the VPS process operates in practice. I completely understand how frustrating it must be to be told that they cannot express themselves in the way in which they expected to be able to, or to include all the information which they feel the judge ought to have. We agree that further work is needed to consider how we can make sure that victims fully understand the process, including the value of being able to have their voice heard in the sentencing process, but also an explanation as to why there have to be limitations on this.

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[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, this is not the first time I have argued that this jurisdiction does not do enough to ensure that domestic—but more importantly, overseas—victims of economic crime committed by people or organisations based here are adequately compensated for their losses.

If the last Government and the present one have been less than enthusiastic about my proposals, I have received support from, among others, Sam Tate, a partner of the London law firm, Clyde & Co, other legal practitioners who have read my speeches and articles on this subject over the years, and from Sam Hickey, a lawyer qualified in Australia and the United States, in his paper entitled Compensating the Victims of Foreign Bribery: UK Legislation, Practice and Recommended Reforms, published in February 2025 by the International Centre for Asset Recovery, which is part of the Basel Institute on Governance, at Basel University in Switzerland.

Having been the initiator politically of the deferred prosecution agreement—DPA—system in this jurisdiction, and as a vocal advocate for the extension of the failure to prevent economic crime regime, and, I should make clear, also as a barrister whose practice includes economic crime cases, I have taken a long-term interest in this aspect of our justice system. It is, regrettably, my experience from the time I was reappointed as the shadow Attorney-General in 2009, then as Solicitor-General during the early part of the coalition Government in 2010, followed by what is now 14 years on the government and opposition Back Benches, both here and in the other place, that all three parties of government—the Conservative Party, the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party—have acknowledged with warm words the problems my amendment outlines but have not done enough to make the necessary practical changes.

I do not say that the United Kingdom has done nothing, and there is a reasonable case to suggest that we have been at the forefront of efforts to get a grip on foreign corruption. Several of the DPA cases concluded here have involved admitted allegations of failure to prevent bribery overseas, leading to the imposition of serious financial penalties. But when it comes to compensating the overseas victims of these offences, we have fallen short. It is not right that Crown Court judges—and it will usually be High Court or senior Crown Court judges well able to make the necessary assessments with the right evidence who will be dealing with these cases—should feel inhibited by existing statute law and practice from assessing and awarding compensation to the victims I had in mind because the assessment is or may be thought to be complicated. These judges deal with complex points of law and evidence every day, and victims should not be required to take out separate civil proceedings that are expensive in terms of cost and time in order to get justice.

As I said in your Lordships’ House on 7 February 2024, since the introduction of DPAs in 2014, the courts had by then fined corporations more than £1.5 billion for violations of the Bribery Act, yet only 1.4% of that sum had been given to the citizens of victim countries of the indicted corruption. We are therefore open to charges of hypocrisy, because the United Kingdom has been essentially acting as the world’s policeman while keeping the fines for the Treasury.

Sam Hickey in his paper makes six recommendations on how we can improve our performance as providers of just and appropriate compensation to the victims of overseas corruption. Having overburdened the House only last Thursday evening with my thoughts on the need to reform the criminal law of joint enterprise, I will not go into such depth or detail in arguing for my amendment today. But I recommend that the Minister just takes a few minutes to read Mr Hickey’s paper and the basis for his recommendations, even though he kindly makes several references to things I have already said in your Lordships’ House. If the Minister is really short of sleep, I invite her to read my speeches and published articles on the subject—but in any event, Mr Hickey’s paper should be part of the review I am asking for via Amendment 40.

In essence, Mr Hickey and I, both jointly and severally, urge upon the Government—and I have said as much myself several times in this House and in the articles I have written—that we should no longer simply rely on legal principles relating to compensation orders in favour of identifiable human victims in this jurisdiction when deciding whether to include compensation in the terms of a DPA or when sentencing a corporate defendant following a conviction or plea of guilty by the Crown Court. There should be a rebuttable presumption in favour of including compensation in such agreements or following conviction. Where compensation is included in the terms of a DPA, it should be tailored to the facts of each case.

More specifically, the Serious Fraud Office, as the usual prosecutor in cases of this sort, should actively apply for compensation to be awarded to discrete victims who have suffered quantifiable losses. In the case of Glencore, the SFO did not, despite my prompting when I was acting for the Government of Nigeria, seek to apply for compensation. There were legislative problems that prevented the court dealing with it, but at least the judge had the decency to hear my argument before saying, “Thanks, but no thanks”. However, it does seem to me that there should be a preference for compensation to be put toward the benefit of victim communities or societies in the foreign state through, for example, infrastructure projects such as schools or medical facilities, or towards the reduction of national debt. If none of those is possible, compensation moneys should be put towards the anti-corruption initiatives of governments, NGOs or international organisations—as I have suggested in the past, a United Nations ESCO account might be a suitable destination—as a final resort to ensure that some measure of compensation is paid in every case.

In any event, we should legislate for a rebuttable presumption in favour of real compensation. We should, as I have suggested before, consider a variety of methods for calculating the amount of compensation, including a victim’s losses, the value of the bribe, a percentage of the fines and penalties, or the gross profit of the briber. If there are no discrete victims with quantifiable losses, we should look to whichever measure of compensation is the greatest.

We should devise a formal procedure that victims, states and NGOs could use to request compensation. We need to clarify the concepts underlying compensatory practices, including the kinds of remedies available, the harm that might lead to compensation and the victims who might receive it. We also need, as I have said on several occasions before, to incentivise corporations to pay compensation by, for example, subtracting the compensation from the penalty. I accept that it could be said of my argument that repetition never made a bad point better. But I gently suggest that successive government failures to listen to a reasonable argument, year after year, is not evidence of its successful refutation but of a wilful or negligent refusal to see what is in front of them: that is to say, injustice piled on injustice, and corrupt companies being given license to bribe with impunity and to act without concern for their victims because it is happening out of sight and overseas. Amendment 40 is, if I may say so, a moderate amendment in its ambitions—perhaps too moderate—but it is certainly worthy of the Government’s consideration, and I urge them to do so. I beg to move.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I have tabled Amendment 46 in this group. In the Commons, it was tabled by Sarah Champion MP, who has long argued for supporting victims effectively and has a particular interest in the function of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority. The amendment asks the Secretary of State to amend the criminal injuries compensation scheme to widen eligibility for compensation to all victims of child sex abuse, including online-facilitated sexual abuse, to ensure applicants with unspent convictions are not automatically excluded where offences are linked to the circumstances of their sexual abuse, and to increase the time limit for applications for compensation from victims of child sexual abuse to seven years. I will not give any more detail of that.

The reason for this is that, until the 2012 scheme, a crime was generally considered violent if it involved physical injury, the threat of immediate violence or a non-consensual sexual assault. Those were the ones the compensation scheme could look at. In practice, this means that many cases of online child sexual abuse are excluded, even where the abuse involves sustained coercion, blackmail or domination and the child experiences profound and lasting harm.

We know that victims often face significant barriers in accessing compensation for this reason. There is a problem with the strict time limits that the CICA imposes, because that means that many traumatised victims, who may be navigating complex criminal justice processes and/or are unaware of their eligibility, often struggle to apply in time. The independent inquiry into child sexual abuse report on accountability and reparations recommended extending the time limit for child sexual abuse cases and giving claims officers greater discretion, but these proposals were sadly rejected by the previous Government.

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Moved by

[Baroness Brinton]

41: After Clause 7, insert the following new Clause—
“Access to free court transcripts for victims(1) Victims of criminal offences shall be entitled to receive, without charge, court transcripts of—(a) sentencing remarks;(b) judicial summings-up;(c) bail decisions and conditions relevant to their case.(2) The Secretary of State must ensure that such transcripts are provided within 14 days of a request.(3) The duty under subsection (1) shall apply irrespective of whether the victim gave evidence in the case.”Member's explanatory statement
This new clause would give victims a right to receive, free of charge, court transcripts of sentencing remarks, judicial summings-up, and bail decisions relevant to their case. It requires that transcripts be provided within 14 days of a request and clarifies that this right applies whether or not the victim gave evidence in the case.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, from these Benches, the Liberal Democrats have been concerned for a long time about the victim’s right to access court transcripts. We have tabled amendments to a number of Bills, including, most recently, the now Victim and Prisoners Act 2024, and I have Amendment 41 to this Bill. I thank open justice campaigners for the contact that we have had with them during the Victims and Prisoners Act and since then.

During the Victims and Prisoners Bill, the then Minister finally agreed to a trial in certain locations that would ensure that victims could have access to sentencing remarks but to nothing else. Ministers of both this and the last Government have said that it would just cost too much to extend the scheme but, as we have said, the process that is used is extraordinarily expensive, and technology should be our friend these days. To give the Committee a feel of some of the figures that we have been made aware of, we have seen people quoted £30 for a copy of sentencing remarks to over £300 for an original transcript, and where victims requested a transcript of the entire court case we have seen figures of £7,500 and even £22,000.

Victims and their families are in principle able to access remarks at no cost. I am not just talking about since the pilot; I am talking about some of the other things, and I will come on to the detail later on. They can sometimes get access at no cost, but the problem is that the paperwork that some courts have required families to fill out is burdensome and intrusive, requiring families to declare salaries, debts, bank balances and more. That really should not be the case when they are getting to the end of a trial, with all the burdens that that has brought them.

Amendment 41 would go beyond sentencing remarks but not as far as our amendments to the Victims and Prisoners Bill. It would include transcripts of judicial summings-up, bail decisions and conditions that are relevant to their case. It would also set a time limit for the Secretary of State to ensure that the transcripts were provided within 14 days.

We thank the Government for confirming that access to the judge’s sentencing remarks is being rolled out across the country, but we remain concerned that some victims need access to more. This is because for far too long, as we discussed in an earlier group, victims have been advised by the police and prosecutors either not to attend a trial or to frame their own remarks carefully.

I have three brief quotes on that. The first is:

“I wanted to go and watch the trial after I had given my evidence but was told by the prosecution barrister that it would not look good with the jury. The police said the same. I didn’t really question it. I was so scared to do anything that *might* have a detrimental effect on the outcome”.


Another victim said:

“We were advised not to attend because it may make us look bitter”.


And another said:

“I was told I couldn’t watch the court case after giving evidence as I’d look like I wasn’t scared of the perpetrator and it could harm the jury’s decision”.


Open justice campaigners say:

“This advice from professionals is in direct contrast to Judges we meet, who very much want the victims to attend hearings”.


So there is a gap there.

The reason why we propose including judicial summings-up and bail decisions is that there is often more detail in things like bail decisions and conditions that affect the victim directly. I have recently been involved in advising a family where there was a bail condition that required the alleged perpetrator not to go within two miles of the victim. That was changed without the victim’s knowledge, and suddenly she found the perpetrator nearby and could not understand why. A victim in that sort of instance should be able to ask for the details of those. It was clear that she was completely unaware that the bail conditions had been changed after the perpetrator’s solicitor had asked for a hearing. For judicial summing up, there is often more detail in there that can help the victim to come to terms with the entire process. That is one reason why we are pushing for that.

We would still like occasionally for some victims in really traumatic cases, particularly where a therapist advises this—this is not in the amendment, and there is a reason for that—to be able to access the entire court transcript, but we recognise that that is unlikely until technology can provide it at virtually no cost to the court. I think we are nearly there, but at the moment the structure of the way in which people can apply for help and the way that transcripts are made is overly expensive, given the world that we are living in in 2026. I beg to move.

[Lord Keen of Elie (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak in support of Amendment 41, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and Amendment 73 in my name. Both these amendments are designed to strengthen victims’ engagement with the justice system by enhancing access to, and the availability of, transcripts of important court decisions.

We give full and unequivocal support to Amendment 41. This is a broader right than the one we were able to secure during the passage of the Sentencing Bill, where our amendments sought to ensure victims’ access to transcripts of sentencing remarks. Initially, that amendment was opposed by the Government, who argued that embedding a statutory duty for universal access and universal publication would create significant operational and resource pressures and risk increasing judicial workload.

The importance of these amendments has been further underscored by the report—released, I believe, today—that the Ministry of Justice has instructed the deletion of a substantial archive of court records held by Courtsdesk: data analysis that supports journalists and civil society in scrutinising the justice system. That archive has long been relied on to track sentencing outcomes and judicial decisions. Its removal has understandably raised concerns about the future accessibility of court information and the practical operation of open justice.

In that context, the case for clear, structured and victim-centred access to sentencing information becomes even more compelling. If independent archives and informal routes to transparency are diminishing, it is all the more important that Parliament ensures that formal mechanisms exist to guarantee access to core judicial material, particularly for victims whose lives are directly affected by these decisions.

In previous debates, Ministers made it clear that they supported the principle of transparency and of victim access to sentencing remarks. Sentencing remarks can already be published in high-profile cases but the Government maintained that expanding those limited provisions into a broad statutory requirement, as initially tabled, was not necessary to achieve the objective of openness and could impose burdens that the current system was not equipped to bear. We therefore tabled a more diluted version of our amendment to extend free provision of Crown Court sentencing transcripts to victims who request them.

The importance of this measure cannot, in my view, be overstated. Sentencing remarks explain the judge’s reasoning as well as the factors taken into account when outlining legal judgment behind a sentence. For victims and their families, this explanation is essential to understanding why justice has been administered in the way it has and becomes particularly important in the context of, for example, unduly lenient sentence appeals.

Amendment 73 complements the amendment passed in the Sentencing Bill, now the Sentencing Act, by addressing the publication of sentencing remarks online. It would require that, when a request is made for sentencing remarks delivered in the Crown Court, those remarks are made available publicly online within 14 days, subject to an important safeguard. The court must first inform the applicant of their right to request that the remarks not be published and, if such a request is made, the remarks must not be published.

This opt-out mechanism is a proportionate and indeed pragmatic response to government concerns that prevented broad publication being adopted previously. Ministers explained that, while they supported the principle of transparency, they could not accept a universal statutory obligation to publish all sentencing remarks, citing the risk of significant workload increases and resource pressures on an already stretched judiciary and courts system. By allowing individuals to choose not to have their own remarks published, this amendment preserves transparency for the public while safeguarding privacy and individual choice and reducing operational risk.

We stand in favour of open justice: the principle that justice must not only be done but be seen to be done. When victims and the wider public can access the reasoning behind sentencing decisions, confidence in the rule of law and in the integrity of judicial decision-making is strengthened. A criminal justice system that is opaque risks undermining the very legitimacy that it seeks to uphold. If victims cannot see the reasoning behind the rulings that affect their lives, they and the public will struggle to have confidence that justice has actually been done. When sentences are handed down with discretion and complexity, the need for transparency is greater, not less. For these reasons, we support Amendment 41 and look forward to the Minister’s response to Amendment 73.

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[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

The problem is that the witness care unit does not always provide that information.

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

That is what needs to be looked at, then. Providing transcripts is not going to solve anything that would not be solved by making sure that the witness care unit does what it is meant to do. The noble Baroness gave the example of the victim who had not been told that the bail conditions had been amended. That simply should not happen. That is not a transcript issue, though; it is a witness care unit issue. It is something that plainly needs looking at, though, if it is a problem.

In addition, the vast majority of bail decisions are dealt with at magistrates’ courts, where proceedings are not currently recorded and cannot therefore be transcribed. Without that recording ability in place, it would not be operationally feasible to create a statutory entitlement of the kind proposed. We cannot extend an entitlement that the system is not yet equipped to deliver. As the noble Baroness will know, one of the proposals the Government seem likely to accept from Sir Brian Leveson’s review of the criminal courts is that all proceedings in the magistrates’ courts should be recorded, and that it will become a court of record. At that point the situation may change, but at the moment we simply cannot provide transcripts of bail decisions in the magistrates’ court.

In the Government’s view, a transcript of the summing-up is unlikely, in most cases, to add significant value for many victims. The summing-up consists of two parts: there is a set of directions on the law, which are written out and handed to the jury, and these could be given to the victim without any difficulty at all if it would help them. Most victims are not especially interested in what is said about the application of the law. The only other thing it contains is a summary of the evidence, wherein the judge decides the level of detail to include, what to put in and what to leave out. The important thing to note is that the summary has to be even-handed, and the judge is not meant to make any comment one way or the other, so the summing-up is not going to help the victim to understand how or why the jury reached its verdict. As these remarks are not an explanation of the outcome, victims may well feel that the summing-up bears little resemblance to their lived experience of the case. So there is a real danger of the summing-up being misunderstood and, in some instances, causing further distress, rather than providing clarity or closure.

For these reasons, we do not propose to extend free provision to include summings-up in cases where the defendants are acquitted. Expanding access further would also create significant operational and funding pressures. Providing transcripts of bail decisions and summings-up free of charge would require a substantial increase in resources, diverting key and limited resources away from core court functions. Importantly, it would take resources away from implementing our existing commitment to provide free sentencing remarks to all victims who request them.

I have heard what the noble Baroness said to me and to the Committee about victims being discouraged from attending the rest of the trial on many occasions. It should not happen. When I was a judge, I used to say to the victim, once they had completed their evidence, “Would you like to observe the rest of the trial? I can have arrangements made for you to do so; we encourage you to do so, and that includes attending remotely where you can’t be seen but you will be able to see and hear, and we can have those arrangements made”. It ought to happen all the time. If it does not, again, that is something that we should look at.

I turn to Amendment 73 in the names of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, and the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst. While the Government remain firmly committed to improving transparency across the justice system, this has to be balanced carefully against our capacity to deliver existing priorities and commitments. Imposing a blanket obligation to publish all sentencing remarks where they have been requested would create significant operational and financial pressures at a time when we are focused on rolling out free access to Crown Court sentencing remarks for all victims, a major step towards increased transparency in its own right. The level of anonymisation required to protect victims’ identities in a published transcript is very different from the level required in a transcript provided to the victim themselves. It is not just a question of redacting the name; it is also a question of removing any other details which might permit a jigsaw identification of the victim. That anonymisation cannot yet reliably be carried out using AI; it has to be done manually and it would have to be done by a judge, taking them away from other duties and inevitably adding to the backlog.

Furthermore, this amendment as drafted places no constraints on who may request a transcript. It could be the offender; it could be their family; it could be a journalist or simply a curious member of the public. A situation where the victim does not have an opportunity to object to sentencing remarks containing intimate details of their case being published online, but another requester does, is not a proposal that this Government can support, and it is likely to contravene the victim’s Article 8 rights.

I reassure noble Lords that the Government’s commitment to openness and transparency is ongoing. In cases of high public interest, sentencing remarks are already made publicly available online. Furthermore, broadcasting of sentencing remarks is possible, with the agreement of the judge, providing an additional route through which the public may access this information. We are also actively exploring the opportunities offered by AI to reduce the cost of producing transcripts in the future. I therefore invite the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment and the noble and learned Lord not to press his.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, particularly my noble friend Lady Hamwee for giving details of the ridiculous form that victims have been asked to fill in to access sentencing remarks for free. I hope the noble Baroness will look at that and make sure that it does not continue in this format. I also thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, for his amendment and I very much appreciate what the Minister said, but I think we are looking for transparency in the longer term. I remain concerned, as is the noble and learned Lord, about the closure or erasure of information from Courtsdesk. I hope we might be able to discuss that in another forum, because it is extremely concerning that it seems to be happening very quickly and suddenly— I am sorry for that quick diversion, given the hour.

I thank the Minister for her explanation. I am not surprised that she has raised the issue of costs. I appreciate the issue about magistrates’ courts, and I really hope that Sir Brian Leveson manages to resolve that in his report in a way that will make it work. Judicial summings-up are important. When we meet on Wednesday, we will be looking at unduly lenient sentences, and judicial summings-up are very helpful to victims if they are considering making an application to the Attorney-General—they have quite a lot of information in them. Victims may not understand it, but if they are going that far, they are likely to consult a solicitor or somebody else involved, and it is quite likely to be helpful.

I think the issue about bail conditions is important, barring the example I gave, which may not have been quite correct. Again, it is useful for victims to see in writing, when something has been gabbled off, exactly what all the conditions are. This is particularly important in domestic abuse and stalking cases, where there may be a perpetrator who is particularly following people and there may have been some form of abuse. However, I am very aware of the hour, and I hope we can continue discussions with the noble Baroness outside your Lordships’ Committee, so I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 41 withdrawn.