Victims and Courts Bill

Debate between Lord Keen of Elie and Lord Garnier

2nd reading
Tuesday 16th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to see the noble Baroness, Lady Griffin, in her place, and I wish her a very speedy recovery. I also congratulate her on her precision and the brevity of her remarks. I wish I was going to be as brief as she has been.

[Lord Keen of Elie (Con)]

So do we.

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

So does my noble and learned friend; that is a free drink that he is not going to get.

Unusually for a modern criminal justice Bill, which was ably introduced by the Minister, this is, relatively speaking, a remarkably short one. It has only 18 clauses. It is rather spoiled, however, as there are 53 pages of schedules. I dream of the day when any Government decides to stop producing criminal justice Bills of voluminous length, but there we are.

I understand the political and moral basis for the provisions about defendants who refuse to appear in court to be sentenced. I listened with great care to the noble Lord, Lord Meston, on that. However, I agree with my noble friend Lord Sandhurst’s scepticism about whether they will work in practice. We will see how those arguments develop in Committee.

I do, however, welcome the proposals with regard to the ULS scheme. I had to operate it myself as a law officer when the Minister was at the Crown Prosecution Service. I think it is fair to say that we suffered together in that struggle. There will be more to say in Committee about the NDA provisions, which amend the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024.

This afternoon, I want to address a point about overseas victims not mentioned in the Bill. I spoke about this on 7 February 2024, on the fourth day in Committee on the then Victims and Prisoners Bill. I make no apology for doing so again, and I will table the same amendment to this Bill that I tabled to that Bill. In introducing these remarks, I refer to my interest as a barrister whose practice includes corporate crime cases.

Multinational companies have been fined more than £1.5 billion over the past 10 years or so after investigations by the Serious Fraud Office into corruption abroad. But only 1.4% of those fines—about £20 million—has been used to compensate victim countries or communities abroad. In my view, this needs to change.

Much of this corruption occurs in African countries that are already suffering terrible economic hardship, food and energy crises, and inflation. They are in dire need of economic support to repair the damage caused by corruption.

United Kingdom Governments have been vocal in their support for compensating foreign state victims of corruption. But the action actually taken to compensate foreign states tells a different story and leaves us open to charges of hypocrisy. Most corruption cases brought before the English courts involve foreign jurisdictions. We step in as the world’s policeman, investigating and prosecuting crimes that take place in other countries, but keep all the fines for ourselves. This is important because corruption causes insidious damage to the poor —and the not so poor—particularly in emerging markets. The United Nations says that it

“impedes international trade and investment; undermines sustainable development; threatens democracy and deprives citizens of vital public resources”.

The African Union estimated in 2015 that 25% of the continent’s gross domestic product was lost to corruption. Every company convicted of overseas corruption in this jurisdiction should be ordered to compensate the communities it has harmed. That would be both just and effective. Compensation should come through investment in programmes targeted at decreasing corruption and benefiting local communities; for example, by building and resourcing more schools and 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 and will deal with complex issues every day.

For example, in 2022, in a case in which I appeared for a victim state, Glencore pleaded guilty to widespread corruption in the oil markets of several African states. Although it was ordered to pay £281 million, not a single penny has gone back to the communities where the corruption happened, largely because it was held that the compensation would be too complicated to quantify. The Airbus deferred prosecution agreement tells a similar story. The company was required to pay €991 million to the United Kingdom in fines, but compensation to the numerous Asian countries where the corruption took place formed no part of the agreement.

The process for compensating overseas state victims—and particularly overseas state victims—needs simplification so that real money can be returned to them. An answer perhaps lies in incentivising the corporations that commit the crimes to pay compensation voluntarily on the understanding that it would not increase the total amount, including penalties and costs, that they would have to pay. The company could be given further incentive by receiving a discount on the fine it would still be required to pay to the United Kingdom Treasury, or an increase in the fine if it refuses or fails to make redress.

The required changes are, I suggest, straightforward and would cost the taxpayer nothing. It could create a standard measure of compensation, which would ensure consistency and transparency, as well as avoiding the difficulty of calculating a specific amount of loss or damage in each case. The compensation figure could equal whichever is the higher of the profit made by the company from its corrupt conduct or the amount of the bribes it paid to obtain the profits. This already happens when companies are sentenced, save that all the money goes to the Treasury. The defendant company would pay nothing more, but at least some of the money would benefit the victim state or the communities harmed within it.

Of course, it would be naive to think that compensation paid to a foreign state could never lead to further corruption. That is clearly a risk. To address this, defendant companies would be encouraged or required to enter into an agreement with the relevant state, which would include obligations to comply with United Nations guidance on the treatment of compensation funds and to identify projects for which the funds would be used, possibly with the involvement of a local non-governmental organisation.

To encourage states to enter into these types of agreements, corporations would be permitted to donate the compensation funds, for example, to the World Bank or International Monetary Fund for projects in the region instead, or to pay down a country’s debt, if an agreement cannot otherwise be reached.

The benefit of this approach is that, unlike at present, where there is no disadvantage in doing nothing, it puts the onus on the defendant companies to take restorative action—something that will appeal to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. It also addresses the difficulties in quantifying losses by creating a simple approach that gives companies early sight of the amount that they will have to pay.

The Bill is, I am sure, full of wonderful provisions, but it does lack this wonderful diamond which needs to be added to the ring around the Minister’s finger— I do not know how far I can go with that one. But let us do this. We can then hold our heads high and enhance our national reputation in the fight against international corruption. This is not a matter of party politics. It is a matter of simple justice.