Victims and Courts Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Caroline Voaden and Alex Davies-Jones

Thursday 19th June 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Alex Davies-Jones]

I agree that the current situation in the family courts is difficult, and it can be traumatic for parents who are seeking to have a parental order removed. That is why we have taken the measure in the Bill. It is a new approach, through which we seek to remove parental responsibility on automatic conviction in the Crown court. As I said in oral evidence, this is not something we do lightly, but we feel that it is necessary in order to protect offenders’ and perpetrators’ own children from the most serious offences. I am happy to work with the hon. Member for North East Hampshire to consider what further work we can do to reform the family courts. The Department is working closely on that, and we know we need to get it right in order to protect all children from these crimes, whether or not restrictions to parental responsibility are sought via the family courts or automatically, with this measure, in the Crown court.

Amendments 18, 24 and 8 seek to expand the circumstances in which the Crown court should make a prohibited steps order to include cases in which the offences were committed against any child. Again, it is important to be clear that child sexual abuse is an abhorrent crime that leaves a lasting impact on victims and their families. Those affected have my deepest sympathies, and it is they who we must have in our minds when we debate the measure.

The current provision is carefully targeted. It ensures that automatic restrictions on the exercise of parental responsibility apply only when there is a direct and recognised relationship between the offender and the child victims. Our focus on offenders who have committed a serious child sexual abuse offence against a child for whom they hold parental responsibility is based on a desire to tackle the cases involving child sexual abuse with the highest direct harm to the perpetrator’s children. This is, as I have already said, a novel and untested change to the law, and the response from perpetrators is unpredictable. We know that perpetrators often seek to use the family courts, as we have already heard, to further traumatise victims, and they could therefore seek to appeal the removal of responsibility.

[Caroline Voaden]

Does the Minister agree that somebody who has been convicted of a serious child sexual offence against a child for whom they do not have parental responsibility still poses a danger to their own child?

[Alex Davies-Jones]

I agree with that point. It is important that we recognise, as I have stated, that there are other measures to remove a person’s parental responsibility for their own child through the family courts. I stress that this is a novel approach. We need to look at the justice system as a whole; we cannot consider our various courts in isolation. The measure being carried out in the Crown court could make an impact on the delays that exist in the family courts, thanks to the backlog that we inherited from the previous Government. I do not wish to exacerbate that, or to traumatise any other children and families who are going through the family courts, by further increasing that backlog. For that reason, we wish to keep the measure quite small and novel, as it is untested at present; however, once we have seen how it works, there is the possibility perhaps to go further in the future.

Victims and Courts Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Caroline Voaden and Alex Davies-Jones

Thursday 19th June 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Alex Davies-Jones]

I am happy to reassure the hon. Member on that point. These provisions have been drafted in consultation with colleagues, including from HMPPS, to ensure that we have the necessary resources. He will know that we have provided additional funding for the new helpline, and for the additional resources required to expand the victim contact scheme. That is all laid out in the economic impact assessment of the legislation. We will, of course, keep it under review to ensure that adequate resources are available to support victims, and give them the communication that they require.

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

The Liberal Democrats’ new clause 11 would give access to the victim contact scheme for victims of violent and sexual offences where the offender is sentenced to less than 12 months. I think the Minister said that such access is included under the provisions of the Bill.

The new clause also mentions access for

“victims in cases involving coercive or controlling behaviour, stalking, or harassment and…death by dangerous driving”.

[Alex Davies-Jones]

They are included.

[Caroline Voaden]

I thank the Minister for clarifying that. New clause 11 would also require the Government to produce annual reports on the uptake and accessibility of the scheme, increasing transparency and accountability. We believe that it is important to know who is using the scheme so that we can know who is not accessing it. That will help us to improve the scheme, and to widen access to those victims who, for whatever reason, have not heard about the scheme or managed to access it.

On the training for the people managing and running the helpline, could the Minister give me some reassurance that there is funding and capacity available to give adequate training in gender-based violence and the effects of stalking and sexual violence on people, and particularly women, who may be quite scared about the potential release of an offender and what that means?

[Alex Davies-Jones]

I thank the hon. Lady for those questions. I can happily and wholeheartedly reassure her on the last point. She will have heard the evidence given the Committee by colleagues in the Probation Service, who were quite forthright about the trauma-informed training provided to call handlers, which is so vital in such cases. They are well used to that, and we have provided additional funding and resources to enable training to continue so that they are well equipped to deal with the increased caseload that the expansion of the scheme and the new helpline will provide. On the annual report, the hon. Lady will have heard me say that there is a duty under the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 to provide an annual report on victims code compliance. The victims code includes the right to information—the right to be notified—so that will be included in the compliance report.

However, I take on board the hon. Lady’s comments about the need to make sure that victims are aware of the scheme, and that they are able to apply to it. All that will be brought into the victims code consultation that we will take forward later this year, to ensure that we bring more victims up to speed on what their rights are and what they are entitled to under the criminal justice system. We have a long way to go to ensure that victims are aware of their rights on the whole—not just rights to communication and contact.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 5 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

Clause 6

Commissioner’s power to act in individual cases relevant to public policy

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Victims and Courts Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Caroline Voaden and Alex Davies-Jones

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.

--- 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.