Victims and Prisoners Bill

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 7th February 2024 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Garnier]

112: After Clause 27, insert the following new Clause—
“Compensation for victims of fraud and other economic crimes(1) The Secretary of State must, within one year of the passing of this Act, lay before Parliament a review of victims of fraud, bribery and money laundering offences.(2) The purpose of the review under subsection (1) is to identify how victims of such economic crimes could be better compensated without such victims needing to pursue civil action.(3) The Secretary of State must provide for a public consultation on the review.(4) In this section “victims of economic crime” includes United Kingdom and overseas victims of complex corruption cases where the harm caused by the offending is not easily quantifiable.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause requires a review to explore how domestic and overseas victims of fraud, bribery and money laundering offences could be better compensated without the need for civil proceedings to recover their losses or compensation.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, this amendment is grouped with an amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and is supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. Unfortunately, she cannot be here, so noble Lords will have to deal with me, and I hope I will not detain the Committee very long. I should declare an interest in that I am a barrister in private practice and some of the work that I do involves fraud, bribery and money laundering offences; at least, some of the clients I represent sometimes become involved in that sort of thing. Sometimes, I act for the Serious Fraud Office in prosecuting and dealing with those accused or thought to have been guilty of such things.

The new clause set out in Amendment 112 is designed to require a review to explore how domestic and overseas victims of fraud, bribery and money laundering offences could be better compensated without the need for civil proceedings to recover their losses or compensation. The terms of the new clause are set out on the amendment paper, so I shall not read it out: it is there for those interested to see.

Just before Christmas last year, in December 2023, a company called Entain entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Crown Prosecution Service in response to allegations, which it admitted, that part of Entain had failed to prevent bribery in, most often, Turkey, over a seven-year period. The deferred prosecution agreement that Entain, formerly Ladbrokes, agreed to contained terms which included that it should pay a penalty and a disgorgement of profits of £585 million, plus a charitable donation of £20 million. Prior to that, in the decade or so before the Entain case, multinational companies were fined more than £1.5 billion after investigations by the Serious Fraud Office into corruption abroad, but only 1.4% of those fines, about £20 million, was used to compensate victim countries, according to research by the law firm Reynolds Porter Chamberlain and, in particular, due to the hard work of Mr Sam Tate, a partner of that firm, who, with others in the firm, has made a particular study of this pattern. It seems to me that companies that are convicted in this country of offences which have an effect overseas should be required to compensate their victims overseas—we need to change that.

Much of the corruption involved in these cases has occurred in African countries that are already suffering terrible economic hardship from food and energy crises and from inflation. They are in dire need of economic support to repair the damage caused by corruption. Our own Government have been vocal in their support for compensating foreign state victims of corruption, but the action taken to compensate them tells a different story and, if I may say so, leaves us open to charges of hypocrisy.

Most corruption cases brought before the English courts involve foreign jurisdictions. Therefore, this country is stepping in as the world’s policeman and prosecuting crimes that take place in other countries but keeping all the fines for the Treasury here in the United Kingdom. That is important because corruption causes insidious damage to the poor and the not so poor, particularly in emerging markets. The United Nations has said that it impedes international trade and investment, undermines sustainable development, threatens democracy and deprives citizens of vital public resources. The African Union estimated that in 2015, 25% of the continent’s gross domestic product was lost to corruption. Every company convicted of overseas corruption in this jurisdiction should, I suggest, be ordered to compensate the communities they have harmed; that would be both just and effective. Compensation should come through investment in programmes targeted at decreasing corruption and benefiting local communities by, for example, building and resourcing more schools or hospitals.

At first glance, English law encourages compensation. It is required to take precedence over all other financial sanctions—so far, so good—but as with many noble ambitions, problems lurk in the detail. Compensation is ordered in criminal cases only where the loss is straightforward to assess, even though the trial judge is usually of High Court or senior Crown Court level—that is to say, judges who deal with complex issues every day. Let me give the Committee a couple of examples.

In October 2022, Glencore, the international mining and minerals extraction company, pleaded guilty to widespread corruption in the oil markets of several African states. I interpose here to say that in that case, now long over, I represented the applicant state seeking compensation. Glencore pleaded guilty and was ordered to pay £281 million in penalties and further orders, but not a single penny has been ordered to go back to the communities where the corruption happened, because it was held that compensation would be too complicated to quantify and the overseas state applying for compensation had no legal standing in the case. You could say that I was very lucky to be allowed to speak at all during the proceedings, because the statute says that the people who have the legal standing to make an application to deal with compensation are the prosecutor and the defendant company, and I was not representing either of them. None the less, the judge was kind enough and polite enough to let me advance my submissions to him. He rejected them because the statute prevented his acceding to my application.

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I hope this provides my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier the reassurance that is needed to withdraw this amendment.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, of course I will beg leave in a moment or two to withdraw my amendment. I am very grateful to my noble friend the Minister for his ability, at very short notice, to deal very elegantly with what I would describe as a long hop. The short point is one I made earlier on—that only 1.4% of the value of fines raised in this country has found its way back, under the mechanisms that he refers to, to victims’ estates. That is not enough. That said, I thank him for his offer of a meeting, which I would certainly like to take up, if I may. I thank my noble friend Lord Sandhurst for his support. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Marks, for his very thorough response to my suggestions in Amendment 112, and the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, for his kind remarks.

The reason why I metaphorically doffed my hat at the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, a moment ago, when the noble Lord, Lord Marks, accused me of being the pioneer of deferred prosecution agreements, is because, yes, as a matter of policy, as a Government Minister at the time, I suppose I was responsible for it. I take some pride in it. However, I could not have achieved it without the co-operation of the senior judiciary. From memory, the noble and learned Lord was president of the Queen’s Bench at the time when the late, much-lamented Lord Judge was the Lord Chief Justice. The two of them, with other members of the senior judiciary, dealt with it impeccably as a matter of legal process. They were not in the least bit interested in the politics—neither was I, actually. We were all interested in trying to make the DPA system work. Thanks to cross-party support in the other place and throughout government, and support from the senior judiciary, the deferred prosecution agreement system came in through statute. I am very grateful to all those who helped with that.

I am in danger of going to the church by way of the moon. This is quite an important subject. It needs thought and proper development. Some ideas need to be tested to destruction, but some need to be given a chance—perhaps through a meeting with my noble friend on the Front Bench and others at the Ministry of Justice—to see which parts of this idea are worth germinating. In the light of all that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 112 withdrawn.

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[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I signed this amendment, and it is a rerun for me, as I had similar amendments in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. Most of the arguments that the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, has put forward responded to what the Minister said from the Dispatch Box during the passage of that Bill. These two amendments have been tightened to focus on the real areas of concern. One is not just to inform victims, but also their families; the second is to ensure that the time limit in exceptional circumstances could be extended.

Prior to laying previous amendments, I met Tracey Hanson, whose son Josh Hanson was murdered in 2015. After her son’s killer was sentenced in 2019, no agency made her aware that she was able to appeal the sentence under the ULS scheme. It was only when she approached Claire Waxman, the London Victims’ Commissioner, on the 28th day following the sentencing, that she was made aware of the scheme. Nobody in the system connected with the case contacted her. She was family, obviously not the victim. She submitted her application to the Attorney-General’s Office on the 28th day—that same day—at 8.40 pm. However, this was rejected because it was outside of court hours. At the time, there was no mention of office hours or court hours within the victims’ code or on the Government’s website. Tracey has campaigned for reforms to the unduly lenient sentence scheme, asking for the 28-day time limit to be given flexibility in certain circumstances, such as when the victim or their family is not informed of the scheme. She asked that the scheme be referenced in the judge’s sentencing remarks.

It is worth noting, though, that this still requires statutory responsibility for an agency to communicate those remarks to the victim. Can the Minister respond again—it was not him before; it was his predecessor—to see how we can smooth the journey for victims and families as they go through the judicial process? This particular case is really egregious in having an inflexible time limit for victims and families and yet a flexible one for convicted offenders.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I do not want to take much time. I understand, and indeed sympathise with, the thrust of the remarks of my noble friend and the intention behind his amendment. I am sure it is a good idea for people to know about the unduly lenient sentence scheme, particularly if they are victims. In my experience as a law officer who had to deal with these when I was in office, there did not seem to be any lack of knowledge among the people affected by what they thought were unduly lenient sentences, and we had plenty of applications to us in the law officers’ department to consider them. I say in brackets that, as often as not, not every crime or offence qualifies to come within the scheme. A degree of education needs to be made available in order that the public should realise that not every offence that they read about in the newspapers comes within the unduly lenient sentence scheme.

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[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

Part of the object of the amendments is to ensure that the scheme is published and explained. That is one of the reasons why there is a reference to making sure that, in the judge’s sentencing, he or she refers to the scheme, and then victims and families can be provided with information as they leave the court, or it can be sent to them if they are not there.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

I cannot quite see the wording that the noble Baroness refers to, but I am not sure I think it a good idea for a judge, having promulgated a sentence, then to say, “If anyone doesn’t think I’ve given them enough, perhaps you’d like to complain”. The judge must make his or her own mind up, based on the information in front of them, and do justice in that particular case. If the prosecutor, a witness, the victim or a member of the public wishes to say that that is unduly lenient, they can write to the law officers and see what their consideration of the matter is.

I agree with publicity and with educating everybody about what the system is about. However, I do not agree with encouraging everybody to run to their Member of Parliament, the newspapers or the law officers because they wish the sentence had been different. That way leads to disappointment, quite apart from a bureaucratic mess in the law officers’ department—which is a very small department.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I raise an issue with regard to the time limit. It is not from the wording of the amendment, which I support, but the wording in the victims’ code. At the moment it says that, first:

“The Attorney General must consider the matter as soon as possible”.


What does that mean? Secondly, it says that they must do so

“no later than the 28th calendar day after the sentence was imposed … in business hours and”—

I emphasise this—

“with sufficient time for consideration”.

How can the victim know how long the Attorney-General needs before the 28 days runs out? It is a hard cut-off, but with something rather woolly leading up to it. The victims’ code could do with a little revision to make it quite clear, in addition to the points that my noble friend has made and the very tough example that she gave, just how this would operate. I would not know, to meet that condition, how long before the end of the 28 days I should get a note through the Attorney-General’s door.

Ukraine Update

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

It is obviously up to Ukraine whether it wishes to apply to join NATO. Under NATO’s open-door policy, all European democracies are entitled to pursue membership; the decision over whether to seek membership is for the people of Ukraine.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that kleptocrats, like drug dealers, do not like having their money—their ill-gotten gains—removed from them? We have sanctioned three individuals and five banks. That really is not enough. President Putin has vast sums squirrelled away in the West, held by nominees. The Government must know who these nominees are; I suggest to my noble friend that they speedily sanction all those whom they know to be doing President Putin’s work.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

As I said, the sanctions announced today are only the first tranche, and we will step up sanctions if Russian aggression continues.

Afghanistan

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garnier (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I draw some comfort from what my noble friend Lord Godson has just said but, as other noble Lords have already said, there is no benefit in complaining today about the actions of the United States in pulling out of Afghanistan or the casuistry deployed to justify its decision, despite the obvious and terrible consequences of it doing so for the people of Afghanistan, especially the young women and girls, who face a dark future of repression and sexual abuse. But, if the 20-year sacrifice of our troops and the appalling events in Afghanistan of the last few days tell us anything—and I wish it were otherwise —they highlight some of the unwelcome but indisputable truths about our own country, our international standing, our Government and their leadership which cannot be ignored.

My noble friend Lord Hannan of Kingsclere said that we live in a time of poor options. He is right but, in a time of crisis, the United Kingdom looks to its Prime Minister for an informed opinion, resolution, clear policy, readiness for the unexpected and a sense of purpose. As a member of the United Nations permanent five and the second most important member of NATO, with a once-recognised reputation for probity, steadfastness and national honour, and as a country with the ability to project power diplomatically and militarily, we expect to have some, if not an overriding, influence on the President of the United States and other allied leaders. But it seems we have none.

Mr Biden did not ask for our views because he did not consider them important, nor us a serious interlocutor. Judging from the G7 conference in Cornwall, we are not taken seriously by the leaders of France and Germany either. It does not take much imagination to work out what Presidents Xi and Putin think. The new Government of Iran and the Afghan Taliban now know enough about us to plan their futures untroubled by concerns about what we can or might do. We have arrived at a situation where neither our closest friends nor our foes pay attention to what we say or do and our ambassador and Armed Forces are desperately trying to save people from butchery in Kabul.

When Margaret Thatcher chided President Reagan for invading Grenada, he apologised; when, at the start of the Iraq crisis in August 1990, she told President Bush Sr that

“this is no time to go wobbly”,

he remained resolute. She possessed moral, military and political strength. In the face of the greatest and most obvious foreign policy question that this Government have had to face outside Europe, we find something quite else. I am afraid that we find a failure of leadership, absence from the bridge, delayed decision-making through inadequate intelligence and poor assessment of information and a lack of preparedness. Government is difficult but it is not a branch of the entertainment business. I am not as subtle as my noble friend Lord Howard of Lympne; there is a vacuum at the head of government. It is not only nature that abhors a vacuum.

Business of the House

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Given the pressure on time, to which I referred earlier, I should now appreciate single, short supplementary questions.

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

I welcome the announcement by the Leader of the House that there is to be a debate on the European Union and workers’ rights next week. Could he also provide an opportunity for the House to debate the rights of this House, because without our supporting our own rights, there are no rights for workers? The Court this morning reinforced the importance of parliamentary sovereignty. Will my right hon. Friend make it abundantly clear that this House believes in its own powers and privileges; that they should be sustained; and that we should not enter into the farce that we entered into last Monday, when Parliament made a mistake in relation to Select Committees? [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

It is being chuntered from a sedentary position that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is a lawyer. He is indeed a very distinguished lawyer, but I fear that we will have to wait for the next question to get a brief one.

[Sir Edward Garnier]

I am also a Member of Parliament.

[Mr Speaker]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is also a Member of Parliament, and we have heard him with great courtesy and, indeed, a degree of charity.

Retirement of the Clerk of the House

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

When I first met Robert Rogers, when I first came into the House, I assumed that he was a 19th century duke, simply because he looked like one. He assured me that he was not, however. Since then, I have got to know him very well indeed, not least because his sister-in-law is my son’s godmother. Robert Rogers has led by example. He has shown himself to be a learned man, a kind man and a very great man. We will miss him terribly.

Business of the House

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I, along with Members across the House and the Government, share my hon. Friend’s sense of urgency about ensuring that the flood insurance arrangements are in place in the long term. That was exactly the point made by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson). I reiterate that we took an important step forward yesterday in setting out in the Queen’s Speech our intention to introduce legislation on the water industry, which I hope not least will give a spur to the Association of British Insurers, together with the Government, to finalise the arrangements.

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

Will the Leader of the House arrange for either the Justice Secretary or a Ministry of Justice Minister to make a statement about the arrangements for the re-interment of Richard III? As he will know—the hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) will know this too—the university of Leicester was given a licence by the MOJ to make arrangements for the re-interment of the remains of Richard III by next autumn, but the Plantagenet Alliance—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I think the hon. and learned Gentleman wants a statement on the matter. We are deeply obliged to him.

Crime and Courts Bill [Lords] (Programme) ((No. 3)

Lord Garnier Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

The point today is that the Standing Order No. 24 application related to matters that were part of the planned debate on amendments on Report in the first three hours. In any case, if the House agrees it, the programme motion will take us two hours beyond the normal moment of interruption. I accept that as a consequence of the pressure on the time for debate today, some hon. Members may be disappointed if a particular amendment that they have sponsored or signed does not receive the amount of discussion that they had hoped.

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

This has nothing whatever to do with personal disappointment. These are matters of some considerable importance; otherwise, they would not be in the Bill. The fact that we wish to debate amendments or new clauses—indeed, the amendments and new clauses have been selected—suggests that they are considered to be of some importance by people other than their individual proponents.

Another point that my right hon. Friend perhaps needs to address is that the emergency debate that we have just had surely cannot have been in his mind when the timetable motion was drafted and tabled. He did not know that Mr Speaker would grant the three-hour debate, so the three hours taken out of the debate—or, as he might say, put in the debate—cannot have been in the calculation. We need to be clear about the thinking behind the timetable motion.

[Mr Lansley]

I am quite clear about the thinking behind the timetable motion. We wanted to make sure that there was sufficient time to debate Leveson-related issues. Also, it will also not have escaped my hon. and learned Friend’s notice—it did not escape the notice of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash), who is no longer in his place—that we did not anticipate necessarily that the debate would start at 3.30 pm, not least because I anticipated that the Prime Minister would make a statement on the European Council. Thus, when we consider the overall time available, we find that we are not very far from where we anticipated we would be. My right hon. Friends and I understand that if we cannot have a full debate on all the issues to which the later groups of amendments relates, there will no doubt be future opportunities for us to do so.

Mr Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and other right hon. and hon. Members. Its effect would be to restrict today’s debate to the clauses relating to press conduct and provide an additional third day for consideration on Report, with Third Reading to be scheduled for a future date. I will not trouble the House with questions of how we could fit further days into the diminishing time remaining before the Session concludes, but I would like to make it clear that, as Leader of the House, I have sought with colleagues to provide at least two days on Report for important Bills where necessary and possible. My right hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury, my predecessor as Leader of the House, and I have done that for 14 Bills in this Parliament, which stands in stark contrast to the previous Administration’s record. Indeed, today’s consideration is in addition to what was originally set out in the programme motion the House agreed on Second Reading. It is wholly exceptional to move to three days on Report; that has been given to only two Bills in this Parliament, and only three between 2001-02 and 2009-10.

I reiterate that if we crack on we will have four and a half hours available for further consideration of the Bill on Report and on Third Reading. Given the widespread interest in the issues before us, I hope that the House will agree to the programme motion quickly so that we can proceed with the substantive business.

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[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

It is always great to be a legend in one’s own—whatever the saying is.

The Government’s response to the amendment is unwise and intolerable.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

I will keep taking the tablets, Sir Edward.