Victims and Courts Bill

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 9th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I appreciate that the noble and learned Lord is probing at this stage and I am with him in wanting to see procedures from the point of view of victims, but I simply do not know whether magistrates have the same powers as Crown Court judges. When we debated this issue before, we were told about the powers that judges have now, without the need for an extension.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, came quite close to my question. Magistrates come from a very different background. Do they currently have the same powers as the judges who will be covered by this legislation, quite apart from the powers that are given by the Bill, in dealing with recalcitrant—if that is the right word—defendants?

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, for the way in which he has explained these amendments. I am also extremely grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, for injecting a note of caution and to my noble friend Lady Hamwee for injecting a note of questioning about the proposed amendments.

In their explanatory statement, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, and the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, state that the amendments in this group probe

“the rationale behind restricting the power to order offenders to attend a sentencing hearing to only the Crown Courts”.

The noble and learned Lord explained why he suggests that there is no difference, for the purpose of this power, between the Crown Courts and the magistrates’ courts.

I should make it clear that we on these Benches start from the position that defendants should be obliged to attend court for their sentencing hearings. But the fact that they are obliged to attend court does not lead to the conclusion that the courts ought to have the power to get them to court however much they wish to resist.

It is, of course, important from the victims’ point of view—this is a point that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, made—that the defendants who have committed offences against them are in court for the occasion when they are brought to justice. It is appropriate, therefore, that in the right cases, the court should have the power to order them to do so.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, pointed out what a serious power this is. It is particularly a serious power, as I will come to say, because the use of force is sanctioned to get defendants to court. We have heard tell, in the press and in the House of Commons, from some of the wilder speeches—if I may put it that way—of, in effect, the court having the power to order that offenders be brought to court by considerable force and in chains. I am quite clear that that is not the way the Bill puts it; it puts it in terms of the use of force being reasonable, proportionate and appropriate. Nevertheless, it is a very serious power.

It is also important from the offenders’ point of view that they should come to court, first, to hear what the court says about their offences as well as what their counsel and the prosecution say about their offences. It is also important because their attending court and listening, hopefully with some care, to what goes on at their sentencing hearing may be taken as a sign of their understanding of the import of the hearing. If an order is made, the breach of such an order to attend court for a sentencing hearing is a sign of a lack of remorse on the part of the defendant. A lack of remorse will usually involve a court treating a defendant more severely than it might treat a defendant who does show remorse for the offences that they have committed and an understanding of the impact of those offences on the victims.

The scheme of this Bill is to bring in a very strong regime of compulsion with a specific incorporation of provisions about contempt of court and significantly, as I adumbrated, about the right to use force to bring defendants to court who are unwilling and refuse to attend their sentencing hearings. The conditions for the new regime, as set out in the Bill, are that the defendant has been convicted and is in custody awaiting sentencing by the Crown Court. That brings into play the kind of reservation that the noble and learned Lord spoke about. This new regime is designed to deal with serious offences. A third condition is that the offender has refused or is likely to refuse to attend the sentencing hearing.

It follows that the code for punishment for contempt should be confined to adult offenders. The amendments seek to make this procedure and all its features applicable to a wider group of offenders, and to magistrates’ courts as well as Crown Courts. I ask the Minister and the noble and learned Lord when they close how far a change to include magistrates’ courts will help victims. One can see how it is justified and might help victims in serious cases, but I question how far the use of force will ever be in the public interest. One must question the purpose of the use of force. It could be twofold. It could be to force offenders to face up to their offences and help them to avoid reoffending. It could be to help the victims by letting them see that those who have committed offences against them are being brought to justice. There may be force in that.

However, there is also a risk, which may be important, of forced attendance becoming a means for defendants to get publicity for themselves, their offences and their resistance to justice: to portray themselves as public martyrs and, in some cases, to make political gestures that could be thoroughly undesirable. If these orders became the norm, those dangers would be real. If it is to have a positive effect, this power is likely to be much more effective for serious cases in the Crown Court than it is for cases in the magistrates’ court. Of course we take the point that the scope of hearings in magistrates’ courts has been increased over what it was before the distinction was changed. Nevertheless, I will be very interested to hear the Minister’s response on the distinction. Our position at the moment is that the distinction is plainly justified.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington (CB)]

My Lords, in general I support these amendments, particularly those put forward by my noble friend Lady Finlay. Having been in charge of some of these investigations over a long period of time, take it from me that they are very difficult, indeed nearly impossible, when the victim dies outside the jurisdiction. In a lot of cases, in the old days, talking to the DPP, some of us went out there personally to actually do the investigations. It was difficult in a way that is not necessary, and I think that what has been outlined by my noble friend is absolutely common sense. In the old days, if I might refer to them, things were a bit simpler: we dealt with the police, who were sometimes not quite up to our standards, and we tried to form some relationship. However, things have got more difficult in terms of the technical side of the law, so I make a kind of brief supplication, basically, as a practitioner over a long period of time: I really think that some of these amendments would have a massive effect on securing justice for victims, particularly in those places where we do not have any jurisdiction whatever.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord has just used the phrase “common sense”, and I think that that is what is expected by people who are affected, who know that they could look to consular services for help if they have lost a passport, but not in such a difficult situation as this. I simply say—and this is not addressed to the noble Baroness but possibly to some of her colleagues—that over the period that we have discussed this issue, there has almost been a sense of, “That’s the Foreign Office, it’s not us”. If we could get this into the victims’ code, it might mean a duty on the FCDO to be prepared to be more effective, and actually to be more effective.

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 36 in the names of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, and the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, seeks to add agreements entered into by the National Crime Agency, the NCA, to the list of agreements in new subsection (7) that are exempt from the measure. Non-disclosure agreements, or NDAs, should not be used to silence victims or cover up crime: I think we can all agree on that. New subsections (7) and (8) of Clause 6 provide that the provision will not apply to a narrow cohort of specified agreements, in the interests of national security.