Victims and Courts Bill (First sitting)

Caroline Voaden Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 17th June 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Alex Davies-Jones]

Q You mentioned the Law Commission review of the unduly lenient sentence scheme. How important do you feel it is that we let the Law Commission complete that before we make any changes to the ULS?

Sarah Hammond: It is important to get a wide range of evidence. I have been working in the CPS for 27 years, so I have seen only one side of it, and there will obviously be lots of different aspects. As I said, if there is that wide body of evidence that suggests that people are being disadvantaged by that timescale, it is important to get all the information around that before any decisions are made.

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

Q Which areas of the Bill, if any, do you think will pose challenges for the Crown Prosecution Service?

Sarah Hammond: As always, there is a collective challenge when a Bill becomes law just to work out how things will work in practice and how implementation will work. Take the restriction on parental responsibility. It will be important for the CPS to work with the Government, police and local authorities to obtain the relevant information about evidence of parental responsibility and put that before a judge to make the decision without causing any further delays in the system. Once the Bill becomes law, it is a case of working through some of the processes to make sure that the implementation is smooth and we have those clear processes in place.

[Caroline Voaden]

Q What impact do you think broadening the potential pool of prosecutors will have on the backlog in the court system?

Sarah Hammond: It will enable us to recruit more. As I have said, it is quite a competitive market out there. There will be more people eligible to become Crown prosecutors. That will include people who are qualified under the provisions relating to the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives. We also have a number of associate prosecutors who have worked for the CPS for many years and have great experience. However, I do not think that is the complete solution to it. While we can possibly recruit more Crown prosecutors, a system-wide approach is needed to tackle those backlogs and delays and give justice for victims.

[Caroline Voaden]

Q Do you not have any concerns about the quality of the service if you are widening the pool to people with other qualifications?

Sarah Hammond: There is a balance between ensuring that we widen the service and not letting professional standards drop. We have a very comprehensive induction and training programme for Crown prosecutors. They have a 12-week induction programme when they join us. For those who join us who perhaps do not have experience of criminal law or have stepped out of criminal law for a while, there is also a separate course that serves as a refresher into the basic principles of criminal law. I am happy that there are some safeguards and training in there to ensure that prosecutors are of the standard we require.

[Tristan Osborne (Chatham and Aylesford) (Lab)]

Q I have two questions. The first relates to queries raised around the associate standard, for which you are looking to recruit. Are there any minimum standards that you would look for in any candidate for the new associate roles, and what is the current vacancy rate at the CPS that we need to fill through this? The second question concerns private prosecutions. Do you think there will be any potential impact on the CPS in terms of an increase in the use of private provision and prosecutions?

Sarah Hammond: If I may, I will take the first question in two parts. I do not have that figure on the current recruitment rate with me today, but we can write in and let you have it. On minimum standards, we would have an interview process for people to become Crown prosecutors. There would be minimum standards for people to pass that interview stage, and we would not lower them just because we are broadening the pool of Crown prosecutors. It is important that professional standards do not slip.

I am not aware of any reason why private prosecutions would increase as a result of the particular recruitment issues, but if that is problem, obviously we will look into it, and work with our colleagues on that as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Davies-Jones]

Q What are the benefits of the Bill having the first ever duty to co-operate among housing providers, the Victims’ Commissioner and other relevant authorities? What will that do for victims of ASB?

Charlotte Hamilton-Kay: It is a really great step. We need more accountability, and oversight of all agencies involved in managing antisocial behaviour, and the duty to co-operate with the Victims’ Commissioner, is a really great start to that. There is a huge postcode lottery and disparity across England and Wales in the way that victims of antisocial behaviour are supported, the way their cases are managed and what action is taken on different behaviours. Anything we can do to bring a nationalised approach would be really beneficial to victims.

Rebecca Bryant: I think there is a balance. We welcome the Victims’ Commissioner having the authority, and the co-operation element, but the arena of social housing, local authorities and antisocial behaviour is very crowded at the moment. You have the social housing regulator, which is currently looking at housing providers in relation to the consumer standard, which includes antisocial behaviour—their approach to it, the number of cases per 1,000 and the respondents’ satisfaction with how they respond to it. That is not just for housing providers; it includes local authorities with housing stock. That is one side.

You also have the local government ombudsman and the housing ombudsman, which both deal with individual people who are not satisfied with the response they have received from the agency we are talking about. We are very supportive of antisocial behaviour victims and approaches being at the forefront of the Victims’ Commissioner’s mind, and her or him being able to pull together responses, require people to respond and perhaps look at themes and areas where we can strengthen our support and guidance for agencies that work in this arena, but what will that actually look like? We are currently working on that with the current Victims’ Commissioner. At the moment it is quite vague. There would have to be a tightening up of what element she is going to look at, bearing in mind that the ASB case review, the housing ombudsman, the local authority ombudsman and the social housing regulator are all looking at the same thing.

[Caroline Voaden]

Q What measures to improve the situation around antisocial behaviour would you have liked to see in the Bill that are not in it?

Rebecca Bryant: Funded universal support for victims of antisocial behaviour. It has been made clear by not only us but the previous panel that antisocial behaviour is a very broad church and often includes criminal activity, but it is not recorded as a crime. We use antisocial behaviour legislation, as it is under the current regime and as it will be in future with the Crime and Policing Bill, as that stands, for the use or threat of violence, for example. We all know that using or threatening violence is a crime, yet we use antisocial behaviour legislation to respond to it. It can involve drug dealing, cuckooing properties, criminal damage—all those things are crimes.

If you are a victim of crime and you report it as a crime to the police, you will get an automatic offer of victim support. When you are dealing with an antisocial behaviour case, you might report it to the local authority or to a housing provider, and you do not get immediate access to victim support. We know from our own research and research from the Victims’ Commissioner, various different reports and colleagues like ASB Help that what supports a victim is having a named person who can support them through the process. That person can guide them through often very complex and difficult situations in relation to taking legal action, or if the perpetrator is vulnerable and has multiple issues around mental health, drugs and alcohol, and the significant delays in the civil justice system mean that the case may go on for a long time.

We need specialist victim support that is universal and independent. I should stress the independence because, often, when a complainant makes a complaint to a housing provider and a local authority, they will be part of a caseload of many. They will be given some support and guidance, and some people have specialist training to do that, but we would seriously support having an independent specialist to provide that kind of support—for example, Victim Support, which is commissioned and funded. It is very much a postcode lottery at the moment. There are some police and crime commissioners in the country who fund specialist ASB victim support, but they are few and far between. It really is a postcode lottery as to what you get where you live. That is what I think is missing.

Charlotte Hamilton-Kay: I absolutely agree with that. We can talk about victims of a single instance of minor crime, which I do not say easily; it is the criminal version of “low level”. If, for example, someone smashed your plant pots on your front doorstep, that is a crime and you are entitled to support for it. But if you have been suffering sleepless nights for 12 months because a neighbour has kept you awake constantly, you are losing your job because you are falling asleep at work, and you have experienced a constant campaign, there is no one there. If there was a statutory agency to provide support, that could be life-altering for some people. It is a very important thing that we continue to campaign for.

With the best will in the world, a lot of the measures are a great step forward for victims of antisocial behaviour, but if we do not allocate the resources and ensure that the training and experience is there for frontline practitioners, then we are only as good as our weakest link. We need to ensure that we support our frontline practitioners who work in the field of antisocial behaviour to get the job right. If they do not have the resources to do the job properly, they are not going to be able to. If they have not got the training and the knowledge to understand the vulnerabilities and the different caveats of antisocial behaviour, they are not going to be able to do the job properly. That is immediately where we fall down. Unfortunately, the buck will stop with them, so we are dutybound to make sure they have adequate support to do it right.

[Caroline Voaden]

Q Rebecca, you talked about situations in which there is a complex mixture of housing and mental health issues, and possibly drugs and alcohol, and the housing association or local authority struggles to move the person on because it is not clear where they would go. Do you think the agencies involved have the tools and resources they need to comply with the Bill in respect of the Victims’ Commissioner?

Rebecca Bryant: I would say that the vast majority of local authorities and housing providers up and down the country resource their response to antisocial behaviour, but there has been a significant impact on that since 2008, with austerity and the cuts that have happened across local authorities. I believe that the toolkit itself is strong. There is a mixture of early intervention and prevention, which we absolutely know work. Around 75% of complaints around antisocial behaviour are resolved first time. When we are talking about taking cases to court, we are only talking about a small minority of all the complaints.

There is something there about us understanding the real picture of antisocial behaviour in the country. A million incidents of antisocial behaviour were reported to the police last year, but our YouGov survey suggests that over 50% of people do not report antisocial behaviour, so imagine doubling that number to 2 million, and then adding on top the incidents recorded by housing providers and local authorities: we are probably looking at more like 4 million or 5 million incidents of antisocial behaviour. It is a really significant problem; it is pernicious and causes great damage to communities and individuals alike.

There are certain things that we strongly feel should happen. We did some work with the all-party parliamentary group a couple of years ago, looking into the complexity of antisocial behaviour. We made a recommendation that there should be a pilot for a specialist housing court that could look at the complexity around antisocial behaviour. You are asking an ASB officer to be an enforcement person, a mediator, a victim support person, a mental health expert and a social worker.

We recognise that people who perpetrate antisocial behaviour can often be victims themselves and have had traumatic experiences—adverse childhood experiences—in their lives, which might be the root cause of their antisocial behaviour. We need to have something like a specialist court, and we need the judiciary who look at antisocial behaviour to be trained to understand the complexity, because we often find that judges are not necessarily trained in antisocial behaviour when they look at complex cases.

The resources required are wide. It is about not just local authorities and housing providers but the community safety partnership, because we know that a partnership response is what resolves antisocial behaviour. It is not about one single agency, and it is certainly not just within the auspices of the police.

[Mr Brash]

Q In my experience, housing is often at the heart of antisocial behaviour and the related problems and, of course, at the heart of that is usually the tenant. What are your views about how the provisions in the Bill can be effectively communicated to tenants so that they have knowledge of what their rights are and how to access them, in relation to local authorities and social landlords?

Rebecca Bryant: We have long called for a campaign on antisocial behaviour to explain rights. That is one of the reasons why we have Antisocial Behaviour Awareness Week, when we talk about how to report and what people should expect when they report antisocial behaviour. I liked the idea from Victim Support that perhaps we should have a charter that explains people’s rights: you can ask for an ASB case review, you can make a complaint to the ombudsman if you are dissatisfied, and you can—if this element of the Bill passes—make a complaint to or request support from the Victims’ Commissioner.

Equally, we must remember that this is about stopping antisocial behaviour. Often when members of the public report antisocial behaviour, they are looking for a specific outcome. That outcome might be to evict the person who is the perpetrator, when actually, that is not our role. Our role is to stop the antisocial behaviour from happening. So there is always something, on behalf of housing providers and local authorities, about managing the expectations of the individual who is making the complaint and being really clear on what antisocial behaviour is, what you can resolve as an individual, and what we can do to support you as an organisation. We need to be much clearer about what people can expect from us as the agencies and our response.

Charlotte Hamilton-Kay: Absolutely. I will make a couple of points. Rebecca has mentioned the ASB case review. The disparity in its administration across England and Wales is a real issue for victims. We released a report last year that showed there are some areas in England and Wales that, in four years, have still not held one ASB case review, and this legislation has been around for over 11 years. That is purely because victims are not aware of the case review’s existence. They are not able to make an application because it is not publicised. We have to ask why it is not publicised. Practitioners feel that it is a complaint process and will involve them being questioned on why they have made the decisions they have made in case management, and victims are really missing out on the opportunity to explain the impact of what they are experiencing.

As Baroness Newlove mentioned, we really need to standardise the threshold for an ASB case review application, so there are no additional caveats—it is three instances in six months and that is it. We also need to standardise how it is publicised and how victims are made aware of it, because a lot of people are still unaware. A report that you at Resolve issued in the last couple of years said that 87% of people were still unaware of this tool’s existence, so in 11 years we have not done a very good job of making people aware of it.

Finally, on the concept of a victim being able to express what they are experiencing, when we are talking about tenants, everybody experiences things differently. What might be really impactful to me could just go straight over your head. It is all about your personal circumstances and what your experience is, what your triggers are and what you happen to have been experiencing that day. We need to be very clear about what is antisocial behaviour, what is unreasonable behaviour and what is inconsiderate behaviour, and manage the expectations of what people can and cannot demand change to. Managing the expectations of victims is part of the support network. When they know what to expect and what can and cannot happen, and when they are not dealing with that unknown, it makes it a lot easier for them to cope.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Voaden]

Q Thank you for coming in to give evidence. In areas such as support for victims of sexual violence and rape, helplines have been closed down over the past few months and years because of a lack of funding. How confident are you that the funding and resources will be there to set this helpline up and keep it going further down the line?

Clare Moody: I cannot comment on future spending and where that will go. We would share the view that resourcing matters for the helpline. The nature of services is that they generate demand. It is not just about services for the helpline; it is about wider victim services support. That is for funding decisions that are beyond my remit.

[Caroline Voaden]

Q As a police and crime commissioner, would you like to see increased funding for other victim services?

Clare Moody: As a police and crime commissioner, I am always going to ask for increased funding.

[Caroline Voaden]

Q Are you confident that the helpline will give victims the information they need about the perpetrator? Will things be joined up enough for a national helpline to be able to answer a question that could come in from anywhere in the country? As far as I understand it, there will not be different helplines in different police areas.

Genna Telfer: That is always a challenge. It is a challenge that we are trying to work through at the moment in terms of code compliance and how we share information through different agencies. There is a piece of work going on between policing, the MOJ and the CPS to try to work out how we align all our data—how we have the right people giving the right information at the right time, but also access to that data.

The first thing is whether the data is right. There is a whole piece of work going on in the MOJ at the moment around data auditing and checking. The second thing is how the communication is happening. We have just launched a joint communications framework between policing and the CPS, which gives our witness care units practical examples of what they communicate and when. In future, we would like, potentially, to look beyond that to go into probation and expand it further. There is another piece of work ongoing around technology and how that could assist us to do some of this. That is subject to funding, because none of that comes cheap, but absolutely, the intention is to try to align that as much as possible. There will probably always be some gaps when you are transferring from one agency to another, but as much as we can, we are trying to join it up, so that the victim gets the right information, ideally from the right place.

[Caroline Voaden]

Q It sounds like quite a lot of work to do behind the scenes to make this function properly.

Genna Telfer: Yes, absolutely.

[Sally Jameson (Doncaster Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q Before I ask my question, I declare my interest as a member of the Prison Officers Association, a former POA branch chair, and a former prison officer at the rank of SO trained in control and restraint, PAVA and SPEAR.

I want to ask a specific question on the Opposition amendment on restraint and gagging in court. I understand the Government’s position, allowing reasonable force at the judge’s discretion. As you will know from policing history, the use of force is on a spectrum from minimal right up to the top end. I have never heard of being able to gag. It is certainly not a technique that is used in the Prison Service; it is not in the “Use of force” manual and it is not part of the training. Were the Opposition amendment to be made, how would you suggest that it be done? What do you think the impact on the courtroom more widely would be if we were to take forward gagging? Do you believe it is even legal under current rules?

Genna Telfer: Obviously it is not something we are trained in, or something we do, so there would be a whole training implication. We do use spit hoods—that is probably as close to that that we get, in terms of putting something over someone’s head, but that does not affect sound and even those are quite controversial, so they are used quite sparingly. It is difficult, because if we did not do that, we are back to the disruption point and potentially removing people straightaway for contempt of court.

On the legality, I do not know—it is something that we would have to have a look into. If it were agreed, it would need to be checked whether it was legal, and then there would be a whole range of training. But that is not something policing would do; it would be the Prison Service involved in that, rather than us.

I can talk about my own experience. I was an officer safety trainer, so I have quite a lot of knowledge and, again, that would be really difficult to do. We use leg restraints, handcuffs and things, but to restrain someone effectively and to gag them to move them into a courtroom, I think would be really challenging.

Clare Moody: I go back to the point that I was making earlier about not making this a theatre show. I think that would somehow make it a spectacle, and it puts the perpetrator at the centre of all the attention. As I said earlier, this is about justice for the victims, and I think that there would be real problems with that. Adding to the points that Genna made about the practicalities of it, making a show of it, or making theatre in the courtroom, I do not think is the appropriate thing to do.

Victims and Courts Bill (Second sitting)

Caroline Voaden Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 17th June 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Mullan]

Q I will move on to talk about the expansion of the victim contact scheme. Are there resource implications for the service in extending it, and what are your initial views on how capable you will be of meeting those expanded resource requirements?

Chris Jennings: There are some resource implications, but not massive ones that are causing us particular concern at this stage. A lot of the legislation is about bringing work that we already do on to a statutory footing, so we are not adding a huge amount of new work into the system, albeit the helpline is an expanded service that will be new. However, for the victim contact scheme, there is nothing massive, and we have published an impact assessment that sets out our views on that, and the numbers of new staff and resources are not massive.

Kim Thornden-Edwards: We already operate with a helpline that addresses some aspects of this. We would be looking to build on and expand the resources into that helpline. We already have resources in place, so it will just be about building out from that. As Chris says, our impact assessment so far does not indicate that a significant uplift in resources will be required, but we will keep that under review.

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

Q To follow up on the previous question, there are long-standing concerns about staffing levels in the Probation Service. As the Bill will bring more victims under the auspices of the victim contact scheme, more victims might use it. You sound pretty confident that you will be able to manage that, but if you are already facing staffing challenges, how do you think that will look if a lot more victims suddenly want to use that scheme and helpline?

Chris Jennings: We have staffing challenges in different ways in the Probation Service. Victim liaison officers are a particular group of staff that we recruit through a particular route. It is not the same route that we recruit probation officers through, and that is not the same route that we recruit unpaid work supervisors through. There are different role types within the service, and some of them are under more pressure than others. VLOs are not one of the areas where we are under most pressure, despite your description being absolutely true for some of the other areas.

There is also a geographic spread of where we are under pressure operationally; it is not the same everywhere. Some places are very well resourced and some are less well resourced. Those combinations lead us to a place where we do not think that resourcing should be the thing that holds us back from making a success of this. Of course, we have to pay close attention to it, because if the numbers go up more than we anticipate, we will need to make sure that we resource that adequately, but we are not hugely worried about it at the moment.

Kim Thornden-Edwards: The victim contact scheme is a discrete service, so we do not transfer staff across or expect people to do a multiple brief on it. It is a discrete service that we recruit to separately. Our recruitment of victim liaison officers has been on an upward trajectory over the last 10 months. The banding and grading, and therefore the salary, of victim contact officers also increased last year, so we anticipate that there will be further uptake in terms of recruitment. Across the Probation Service, most grades saw an increase over the last year, so we are generally on an upward trajectory for staffing. You may be familiar with the Lord Chancellor’s announcement that we will look to recruit a further 1,300 probation officer staff during this financial year. We anticipate continued significant growth of probation areas over the period of the spending review.

[Caroline Voaden]

Q Are you confident that you have the resources and capacity to give the officers involved in the victim contact scheme the training they require in domestic abuse, abuse and traumatic sexual violence and their particular effects on the victims they will deal with through this helpline?

Chris Jennings: Yes. We are very used to dealing with the impacts of all those sorts of crimes in our world. It is the bread and butter of what we do. We will need to make sure that we give people the appropriate skills and training and do not throw them in at the deep end, but we are well used to doing that and we have the skills to do it. I have no reason not to be confident that we can make that work.

Kim Thornden-Edwards: We are also building on a service that is delivering good outcomes currently. In 2024, so very recently, His Majesty’s inspectorate of probation, which provides our external scrutiny, found our statutory victim work to be outstanding for three of our regional inspections. We also had an inspection in 2023 of general victim services that found the services to be good. We are building on a good level of service delivery currently and victim liaison officers who are doing a good job. We are very concerned to ensure that their training remains relevant and pertinent to the specific issues that the victims who use our service are often involved in. There is dedicated training for domestic abuse.

We are also concerned, as the service, and particularly the helpline, expands and extends, to ensure that those who deliver the helpline will be involved in the most appropriate training, including domestic abuse and a trauma-informed approach. We will build in those training requirements at every juncture and for every member of staff involved in the scheme.

[Tristan Osborne]

Q I have two questions. First, is it correct to say that your officers in court settings are not trained to gag prisoners or to engage in restraint of prisoners to present them before the court? Would it require wholesale retraining of officers in the system to engage in that change of behaviour?

My second question is about restriction zones. We are pivoting away from exclusion zones to restriction zones, which is giving more focus to victims. Do you think the monitoring is in place for the Probation Service to be able to manage that change of approach, to ensure that there is a pivot away from the rights of the perpetrator to the rights of the victim?

Chris Jennings: Maybe I should pick up the first question. Depending on how a perpetrator appears before the court—whether they are beaming in from prison via video link or attending in person at court—there are different responsibilities in terms of who undertakes the potential restraint of the prisoner. If we deliver somebody to court, court officers take custody of that person and look after them in the dock. I am less able to speak about the skills of the court staff, because it was many years ago that I worked in the court service and I do not feel up to date.

If you are in prison and beaming in via video link, I guess—to an earlier question—it would be possible to train prison officers who are already skilled in some forms of control and restraint in a different way. My instinct would be, although I am not perfectly qualified, that for court staff that would be quite a leap.

Kim Thornden-Edwards: On your second question about a switch from exclusion zones to restriction zones, we are currently working through the finer detail of that policy change and its impact and implications. We will take stock and determine what policy change is required to enable staff to make the change, what practice and operational guidance and instructions will be required, and what training element will be required, should that be necessary. We will be working through all those potential implications to this change. Our staff are very well versed in exclusion zones and understanding those. I am confident that they will be able to understand the change in emphasis and what some of the implications are, and will be able to bring the necessary degree of professionalism, integrity and foresight to those arrangements.

Chris Jennings: Our relationship with the police will be key, too. We work closely in partnership with them on these sorts of things. That will be required during this change, too, to maintain those close operational relationships on the frontline.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Mullan]

Finally, I just point out again that our amendment addresses the issue of making threats, for example. Those are things that you cannot do anyway, in terms of free speech, so our amendment covers that issue also. I encourage the Minister to look at our amendment again more closely, to see whether she can support it.

[Caroline Voaden]

Q I would like to talk about the measures to change parental responsibility. Could you tell us why the provision in the Bill applies only to people who have been convicted of offences against their own children and not serious sexual offences against other children?

Alex Davies-Jones: I am happy to clarify the Government’s thinking behind why we have kept this measure quite tight. It is important to say at the outset that there are other mechanisms to remove parental responsibility from offenders and perpetrators, and those mechanisms will still remain, such as the family court process.

What this measure does is quite novel: it removes parental responsibility at the point of conviction in the criminal courts, and it is an untested measure in doing so. It is important that we can see the impact this will have on victims, survivors and, first and foremost, children. It is important to stress that perpetrators will be able to appeal this through the family courts, and they will be able to apply for legal aid through the system as a result of this.

Therefore we feel that, at this point in time, it is important to keep such a novel approach quite tight. That is why we have chosen to restrict it to offenders who have been committed of any sexual offence against their own children and been sentenced to four years or more. We are not saying that we would not be open to expanding it in the future, but, as I think we heard quite clearly throughout the evidence sessions today, we must consider the impact this could have on the family court system as it currently stands.

The family court is under immense pressure. Sadly, another element of the criminal justice system that we inherited from the previous Government is the immense pressure from the backlog. You also heard about the issues that currently stand within the family court, and how many victims and survivors, particularly victims of domestic abuse, feel that it retraumatises them. I would not want to put any other victims through that process, and that is why the Government have chosen to target this measure, as a starting point, at that specific cohort. We feel it is a novel approach; it has never been done this way, and so we have chosen to be quite specific with it.

[Caroline Voaden]

Q I think you have answered my follow-up question, which was whether you think that if somebody has committed a serious sexual offence against a child, they should not have parental responsibility for any child.

Alex Davies-Jones: There is a mechanism available to remove parental responsibility via that route, currently through the family courts. I am aware that that would require the other parent to take the perpetrating parent to the family court, and I have been made aware that it is not easy to do that, but that route is available. That is why we have chosen to keep this measure quite tight at present.

[Caroline Voaden]

Q One more question on that: why did you settle on four years?

Alex Davies-Jones: Because there are sadly quite a lot of sex offenders in this country, so extending the measure to any sex offender could bring waves of people into scope. We are not saying that that is not appropriate, but this is a novel approach and those perpetrators can have parental responsibility stripped through other means. I am very cautious about putting extra strain on the family courts, given the issues that they face. At present, we want to keep it to any sexual offence where the perpetrator gets four years or more in prison and it is against their own child, in order to keep that child safe from the perpetrator.

[Caroline Voaden]

Q If the four years is reduced on appeal, would that measure still stand?

Alex Davies-Jones: I would have to come back to you to clarify that point, but I am happy to do so.

[Anneliese Midgley (Knowsley) (Lab)]

Q I thank the Minister for listening to my constituent Cheryl Korbel, the mother of Olivia Pratt-Korbel, who was killed by a stranger when she was nine years old. He did not attend his sentence hearing. You listened to her and acted. Another part of her ask, which is in the Bill but not spelled out so much, is for sanctions if the offender refuses to turn up to the sentence hearing. Can you say a bit more about what that would look like? What mechanisms—they are not currently in the Bill—can be used to compel them? The point that my constituent made is that, for someone whose sentence is four years or even 10, a few extra years would be compelling, but if it is life imprisonment, that would essentially be meaningless.

Alex Davies-Jones: Thank you for that question. We have built on the previous Government’s measure to compel perpetrators to attend their sentencing hearings. The previous measure was merely an extra two years on their prison sentence. As you have stated, and as victims have told us, for someone serving a whole-life order or life imprisonment, an extra two years on their sentence is not really an incentive to come to court.

We listened to the Pratt-Korbels and other families who have been through this horrific situation, and have done something quite novel. For the first time ever in this Bill, judges will be given powers to issue sanctions on perpetrators once they are in prison. We have not listed those sanctions on the face of the Bill because we do not want to be prescriptive. A whole range of measures is available, and we feel that listing them in the Bill would be too restrictive. By not doing so, we enable judges to use every tool at their disposal to issue sanctions in prison. They include, for example, limitations on access to a gym, to work programmes or to television. We are looking at visit restrictions, and salaries can be taken away if the offender is in a work programme. All that can be looked at in the round; those are all available to a judge as part of a sanctions programme.

We want perpetrators to attend their sentencing hearings in person. You heard how important it is to victims and survivors to have them there in person to hear justice being done. We have looked at all the practical ways in which that can be done. We have worked with stakeholders, including the judiciary and prison governors, and we felt that this is the best course of action.

Humanist Marriage

Caroline Voaden Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Members for Tamworth (Sarah Edwards) and for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) and my hon. Friend the Member for Henley and Thame (Freddie van Mierlo) for securing the debate.

I declare an interest: in September 2011, I had a humanist wedding. We chose a beautiful setting in the countryside and got married in a carpentry workshop, where my husband had worked for many years before all his workmates beautifully transformed it into a unique setting for a wedding. Many guests said it was one of the most special weddings they had been to, partly because it was so different from a traditional wedding. The kids loved the ice-cream van that gave out free ice creams all afternoon. The vows were written by us, the ceremony was designed by us, and we were both able to include our children in the ceremony, which was very meaningful. Having lost my first husband to cancer eight years before, the ceremony was a really special and joyous occasion marking the beginning of a new chapter for all of us after some very bleak times.

But we did have to get married two days before in a registry office, because our ceremony was not legal, so I now have two wedding anniversaries, which is complicated enough—three if we count the first one as well. The occasion that I remember as my wedding was not actually my wedding, and that feels wrong and outdated in a modern society.

I would like to compare the situation here with Scotland, where humanist marriages have been legally recognised and have exploded in number. There are more humanist marriages there than all the other faith and belief-based marriages combined. It is hard to unpick cause and effect, but in Scotland the legal recognition of humanist marriages coincided with the end of a long-term decline in the number of marriages there. My hon. Friend the Member for Henley and Thame talked about how he travelled to Scotland so that he could have a legally recognised humanist marriage. No doubt thousands of others have done the same thing—the modern-day equivalent of eloping to Gretna Green—but that really should not be necessary. It is time for England and Wales to catch up with Scotland and Northern Ireland, where humanist marriages are recognised.

It is well past time to allow people to have a humanist ceremony recognised in law. The 1,200 couples a year who have humanist weddings here should have the same opportunity to marry in line with their beliefs as their religious counterparts. It is needed under the Human Rights Act 1998. The High Court ruled in 2020 that the lack of legal recognition is discrimination, and said the Government have to act.

As we have heard, 95% of respondents to one consultation supported it. A 2025 YouGov poll found 70% in favour and only 15% opposed, and there was also a majority of every religious group in favour. This is not a controversial decision.

It is also good for marriage: freedom of information data from Scotland shows that couples married in a humanist ceremony—I am very pleased to read this—are almost four times less likely to divorce compared with all other types of marriage.

Lastly—the Government will like this bit—it is free. Laying an order under the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act would cost nothing. All it needs is a positive affirmation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Caroline Voaden Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)]

18. What assessment she has made of the adequacy of rehabilitative programmes in prisons.

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

24. What assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of increasing support for rehabilitation programmes.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Sir Nicholas Dakin)]

A key priority of this Government is that our prisons rehabilitate offenders, making them better citizens rather than better criminals. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the fantastic prison staff, who mentor and support prisoners in custody every day. I saw at first hand the benefit of the creating future opportunities programme when I visited HMP Humber in April.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Nicholas Dakin]

The hon. Member is right to highlight dyslexia, and neurodiversity is common among people in our prisons. That is why we have neurodiversity officers in each prison to ensure that we are doing our very best for these people so that they can be rehabilitated and become better citizens when they come out of prison.

[Caroline Voaden]

The former chief inspector of prisons said that LandWorks in my constituency

“provides one of the best examples in the country of how we can reduce reoffending, turn lives around and prevent future victims.”

Its reoffending rate is just 6%. The Government have announced £2.3 billion towards prison builds over the next two years. When will they commit to investing in projects like LandWorks that can radically reduce the prison population, transform the lives of offenders and cut crime?

[Sir Nicholas Dakin]

Third sector organisations like LandWorks deliver valuable rehabilitation, wellbeing support and advocacy services across England and Wales, and they partner effectively with HMPPS in many different ways. The work of key organisations like the one the hon. Member mentions is incredibly important and essential in reducing reoffending, and we continue to invest in it. I would be happy to meet her to discuss the matter further and see what more can be done.

Independent Sentencing Review

Caroline Voaden Excerpts

Thursday 22nd May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

My hon. Friend puts it very well, and he is absolutely right. We have made more progress on the deportation of foreign national offenders than the previous Government and we will go further. We accept the review’s recommendations on reducing the threshold for early removal from 50% to 30%. For offenders who get less than three years in prison, we will work with the Home Office on proposals to move to immediate deportation.

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

The national average reoffending rate for people who have done a short-term sentence is 54%. Among those who graduate from a prisoner rehabilitation programme in my constituency, the average reoffending rate is just 6%—and the programme is still in touch with every single graduate, after operating for 10 years. In the spirit of trying to reduce the prison population, does the Lord Chancellor agree that such rehabilitation programmes are absolutely crucial and that investing in rehabilitation not only keeps people safe in the community because it reduces the reoffending rate, but helps the mission to free up prison places for the dangerous criminals who absolutely need to be there?

[Shabana Mahmood]

The hon. Lady makes a good point. I pay tribute to the work that is going on in her constituency. As I have said before, 80% of offenders in this country are reoffenders. That tells us how broken our system is, and how imperative it is that we sort it out.

Victims and Courts Bill

Caroline Voaden Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 20th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

The hon. Member is talking about the length of time it can take for victims of sexual violence to get over their trauma and seek help. Does he agree that organisations such as Rape Crisis do absolutely vital work in helping survivors of sexual abuse and rape to move past what has happened? Does he also agree that it would be a fantastic improvement to the Bill if there was some national Government oversight of how much money is put into funding such victim services?

[Jas Athwal]

Certainly, coming from a local council that is strapped for cash, I agree with the hon. Member’s emphasis; we must look at that as we go forward.

The Bill will prevent perpetrators from being involved in a child’s life, safeguarding children from further trauma and enabling them to start healing. This new restriction is shamefully overdue. Our current system is not built for survivors; it is full of gaps and loopholes for predators, reflects society’s biases and is perilously hard to navigate. To truly centre survivors, the Bill should go further. The automatic restriction of parental responsibility should be extended so that if an individual abuses any child, not just their own, their parental rights are automatically removed. That would further safeguard children, saving families the vast personal and emotional cost of navigating the family court system and ultimately preventing the retraumatisation of survivors and their families.

I welcome the Government’s actions to begin building a justice system that finally centres survivors, rather than treating them like an afterthought, and I hope this Bill will empower those who have not been properly protected for so long. However, as we know, there is still so much further to go and so many more battles remain to be fought in order to prevent sexual violence and empower victim-survivors—online, in our schools, in our homes and on our streets. This Bill is a desperately needed first step, but it must be the beginning of our campaign to get justice for victim-survivors, not the end.

Oral Answers to Questions

Caroline Voaden Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Nicholas Dakin]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. We must do whatever we can to move people away from a life of crime and keep the public safe. This year, despite the fiscal challenges we inherited, we are investing more than £100 million in youth offending teams across the country to identify children and divert them away from crime. With turnaround funding, Staffordshire youth offending team delivered skill-building activities for children in antisocial behaviour hotspots during a successful six-week summer programme.

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Are we really sure that this question is linked to young people in Staffordshire committing crime?

[Caroline Voaden]

It might not be about Staffordshire, but we also have young people in Devon. We have a case in my constituency of a young offender who has been arrested multiple times and put under a court order, but the presumption is against incarceration because of his age. Local residents tell me that there is a disaster waiting to happen—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The hon. Member is not linking her question to the original, so we are going to move on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank the Chair of the Justice Committee for raising an important issue for his own constituents that also has wider significance. I will publish the full terms of reference and place them in the Libraries of both Houses very soon. Regardless of whether the review goes into the specifics of every other type of case, I am sure that it will make findings on how such cases, particularly involving people with mental health conditions, are properly managed. I am sure that those findings will be of interest not just to our Department but to others, and will be implemented by the Government in due course.

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

We have a case in my constituency of a young offender, well below 16, who is causing havoc—he has been arrested many times—and is not complying with a court order. The assumption is against incarceration because of his age. Will the Minister explain what work the Government are doing to crack down on prolific offending by young people well below 16 who are causing stress and fear in their local communities?

[Sir Nicholas Dakin]

I am very happy to answer queries about that particular issue, if the hon. Lady wishes to write to me. The Government have increased the youth offending team budget this year and continue to invest in the turnaround programme. As I said before, it has been shown that young people who are engaged in that programme have only a 5% chance of reoffending.

Bereaved Parents: Birth Certificates

Caroline Voaden Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

Twenty-two years ago, I became part of a club that no one wants to join: the young widows club. My husband Nick died of oesophageal cancer, and I was left with an 18-month-old baby and a toddler. Over the course of the next couple of years, I met dozens of young widows, including Beth, whose husband Simon had died of bowel cancer just two days before their beautiful baby daughter Elsa was born. Beth and I navigated this strange and unwelcome new reality together, spending time with our three little girls, who were all too young to understand the awfulness of what had happened.

Beth was part of an even smaller, even more unlucky club than me: the one where you have to give birth alone, to a baby you have longed for, while at the same time grieving for the partner you have lost and the future you will never share. For many of those tragically unlucky women, it gets even worse. Every year in the UK, around 200 young bereaved women are drawn into a ridiculous, unnecessary and costly legal battle to have their baby’s father’s name registered on the birth certificate. Incredibly, in 2025, if a woman is pregnant when their partner dies but they are not married, the law says that they cannot automatically name the father on the birth certificate. If ever there was a case of adding insult to injury, that has to be it.

The law seems to think that if a woman is legally married, there is no question but that her baby is her husband’s. But if she has been living in a committed relationship, perhaps for years on end, the fact that she does not have a ring on her finger means that the paternity of her child is in question. Having been through the unimaginable experience of losing her partner while carrying his child, and then giving birth alone, she is then expected to enter into a legal process to prove that he was indeed the father, so that the child does not grow up with a blank space on their birth certificate. This is out of date, out of touch and, frankly, quite traumatic for all those involved. Women have described it as demeaning, insulting and overwhelming.

The reality is that more and more couples are choosing to live together without getting married. In 2022, the number of children born outside marriage in the UK surpassed the number of babies born to parents who were married or in a civil partnership for the first time since records began in 1845, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics. It is high time the law was updated to remove this anachronistic insult to unmarried mothers.

Not long after I was widowed, I became involved with a brilliant organisation called WAY—Widowed and Young. It is where I met Beth and made many other lifelong friends. WAY has been running the Blank Space campaign to try to change this out-of-date law, which penalises people for not being married. I commend WAY for its campaigning and am proud to bring this issue before the Minister so that the anomaly can be addressed. The women I will talk about are all members of WAY, and I thank them for sharing their stories.

Nicola and her partner Stewart had been through a successful in vitro fertilisation journey, which was needed because he had had testicular cancer 10 years earlier. Six weeks after a positive pregnancy test, they found out that Stewart’s cancer had returned, and he died seven months into Nicola’s pregnancy, so he never got the chance to meet the son he had so desperately fought for. Nicola booked an appointment with the registrar, knowing that she would be going alone, but she took as much paperwork as possible to show that Stewart was the father. She had a range of hospital documents signed by him, which not only proved that he was the father but detailed his documented wishes for their embryos if he were to die. However, the registrar explained to Nicola that because she and Stewart were not married, he had to be physically present to be named on the birth certificate. Her evidence did not count, and she was sent away with a birth certificate that had a blank space where Stewart’s name should have been. Nicola says:

“We had made this baby together, literally and scientifically, and for him not to be recognised at all was devastating.”

It took a year and over £1,000 to get to court. Stewart’s father went along to attend the hearing with Nicola, and it took just a few minutes for the court to discuss and approve the change, and to add Stewart’s name to the birth certificate. It was almost as if the court could not believe that she had had to go through the process in the first place. Given the overwhelming evidence and the support of blood relatives, it was the obvious decision. She says:

“To have to go through this whilst bringing up a newborn on my own and grieving was utterly humiliating and exhausting.”

I can attest to the fact that no young widow who is learning to be a mum and grieving at the same time should ever have to fight to have their partner listed on a birth certificate, and many of them cannot afford to do so, even if they wanted to.

Paula was 18 weeks pregnant when her partner was killed while cycling to work. Despite having his DNA and a proven 99.9% match, it took three and a half years for her to get a birth certificate with his name on it, and the process cost nearly £3,000.

Eleanor’s partner Robin was killed in a road traffic accident 18 days before his baby daughter was born. Eleanor says:

“If you haven’t been through this situation, you may not understand how demeaning this rule is. It made me feel like I wasn’t to be trusted, as if an unmarried woman has no rights or voice. My partner and I lived together and planned to have a child—we just weren’t married. It wasn’t a one-night stand, and simple tax records would have proven that. While I shouldn’t have had to prove anything beyond my word, I would have willingly provided documentation and statements from both our families to confirm our relationship.”

In the end, the complexity and expense of having to fight the system proved too much for Eleanor, so her daughter’s birth certificate was never changed and the blank space remains.

These examples show just how difficult and cruel this situation is, and they also show that the process can be very different depending on where a woman lives, which court she applies to, and who hears the application. Like so many other things, it can become a bit of a postcode lottery.

Under UK law, a birth needs to be registered within 42 days. If the parents are unmarried, they both have to be present to be named on the birth certificate—one parent cannot add the other. If a parent has died, the surviving parent can amend the birth certificate at a future date to include the deceased parent’s name, but they have to apply first to the family court for a declaration of parentage. This involves a form and a court fee of £365, and the court application takes three to four months to be processed. Then, at an initial court hearing, a senior family judge will consider the application. Many judges have never come across this process, and I have read stories of young widows not only having to go through the process themselves, but having to explain it to judges and court administrators while doing so.

There may be a second hearing some months later, and in between there will be requests for DNA, evidence and witness statements. If the court approves, it will issue a document confirming that the deceased person was the child’s parent, and it then makes a declaration at a court hearing. This will then be sent to the registrar of births, deaths and marriages, and it can then take several more weeks for the re-registering of the birth to be completed.

I am sure I do not need to tell Members that this is a tortuous process—one of those bits of bureaucracy that seems ridiculous when we spell out the whole process, as I have done here. At the best of times it would be frustrating and slow. At the worst of times, it can simply be too much to cope with. The paperwork of death is long, frustrating and sometimes complicated. I remember being told by one organisation that it had to have written confirmation from my husband to close an account, even though I had written to it to say that he had died. I would like to think that things have moved on in the last 23 years, but we seem to have created a system that overcomplicates everything.

Clearly, it would not be right for someone to be able to put someone else’s name down on a birth certificate as the father without reasonable proof; what WAY is campaigning for is a way to resolve this issue so that women whose partners have died during pregnancy can follow a clear and simple process to register their partner on their child’s birth certificate. It should not cost thousands of pounds, and it should not be so complicated that some women just give up through frustration.

In Switzerland, France and Germany, unmarried fathers can declare their parentage early in the pregnancy to protect their rights. We have parental responsibility agreements here for unmarried fathers, so perhaps one answer would be to bring that forward into pregnancy so that if the worst, most unimaginable tragedy happened during pregnancy, there would be one less thing for newly widowed mums to have to worry about. Doctors could make a record of who the father is when the pregnancy is first entered into medical records, and this could be used as a legal document. Advice could be given at antenatal appointments, bringing people’s attention to the issues that can arise for parents who are not married, so that they could be more aware. The executor could be called in as a witness to confirm paternity. There are ways around this if we are creative and clever. In honour of Nicola, Paula, Elanor and their children, I look forward to hearing how the Minister will take this dilemma forward and hopefully find an answer.

When you are widowed young, you lose so much. You lose the partner you love, you lose the life you had built together and you lose the future you had planned. Your children lose their father—or sometimes their mother—their family is never the same again, and their lives will be shaped in many ways by the loss, however young they are when it happened. Being widowed when pregnant is all this and more. The trauma of birthing and grieving at the same time runs deep and lasts a lifetime. I really hope that the Government will move swiftly to make some changes so that one tiny little bit of this awful journey is made easier for those who have to navigate it.