Victims and Prisoners Bill

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 18th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. Unfortunately, the House will hear two Sheffield accents within a short time, so I apologise that we always end our sentences on a down note. I will do my best.

I support this Bill. It is time that victims receive statutory support for their rights in a way that suspects have for quite a long time. To get a balancing Bill is a good thing. Despite that, I still have some questions, mainly because I wonder whether all that the Bill intends to achieve will be achieved by some of the remedies that are suggested. I am not sure that they are all entirely effective, and they may, at times, have a counterproductive effect.

First, it seems to me that providing some rights for the victim within the criminal justice system is a good idea, because it is often run for the benefit of the suspect. This is done for good reason: obviously anyone who is charged with an offence might reasonably expect that their defence is provided as a priority. However, at times it seems to result in the victim and the witnesses having to wait two to three years for a case to come to trial so that the defence can prepare their case. That is not a fair balance. There seems to be some balancing weight within the criminal justice system that says that the victim and the witnesses can expect to get to court reasonably quickly, and two to three years—which is not entirely down to the pandemic but is down to a backlog—is surely a condemnation of what the system should be doing.

The second benefit described in the Bill is that there will be cross-inspectorate inspections. This is a good thing. They already happen, to some extent, but this time they will be done from the perspective of the victim, not that of all the people who populate the system. My concern is that inspections take a long time. Reports are published a long time after the event and the victim is still waiting for their issue to be resolved—which I am afraid that the inspectorate reports do not do. The inspectorate publishes recommendations which, if you are lucky, might make a difference in two to three years. They are essential in a way, but I am afraid they do not always achieve what this Bill intends to achieve.

The criminal justice departments in our police services are well populated. There are probably around 10,000 people whose role is to make sure that, from charge through to court, the system goes smoothly. However, what the system actually does is ensure an exchange of documents between the prosecution and the defence. The victims and the witnesses are kept informed, but often not well enough, and often their needs are not considered. It is not about resources but about what priority is given. Again, where is the remedy? As the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, said, how do you get something to change within the police service, the CPS and the courts when you have a complaint? I am not sure that the remedies are in place.

In its conclusion, the Bill talks about the costs that might be included in implementing this as an Act. I think it is a gross undercount of what might be needed. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, mentioned earlier that we will need to invest in this area. However, the numbers involved are very small—£2.5 million for the tribunal process beyond probation, and less than £1 million for each element of the policing, CPS and court settlements. That is quite a big underestimate. If you put this Bill into each of those services, it will be deprioritised. Asking people to do more with the same resources is always a difficult task.

I had hoped that the Bill would say more about what some people have referred to as simplifying sentencing. I still think it is a great dishonesty in sentencing that, when the court announces that someone will spend five years in prison, what they mean is that they will spend three years in prison unless they misbehave or the Parole Board finds that they will misbehave when they leave. Why can we not just say that they will spend three years in prison unless they misbehave? That way, we are not being dishonest with the victim. They do not understand the criminal justice system, and why should they? Some of them will be professionals who understand it well, but it is far better to be open and transparent that this is the process, and then people will not be disappointed. We set their expectations. I am surprised that this Bill has not done something about that. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, said, even the judges struggle to understand the complexity of the sentences that are passed down and the rules that surround them. Surely the public deserve a better or simpler system.

I support the higher test for top-tier offenders being considered by the Minister of State and then a referral to the Upper Tribunal. There have been cases where we have been surprised by the release of people who appeared to be dangerous. It is probably best that at least those cases are reviewed. I take this to be the case; it is applying the same test but by a different set of people. That seems a wise thing.

There is one part of the Bill I wonder about, in its breadth. The description of a victim includes those who are harmed or who have

“seen, heard, or otherwise directly experienced the crime”

in live time. Harm is defined quite extensively in the Bill—so I will not read it out—and does not have to be verified by a third party. I wonder about cases such as bombings and those involving roving terrorist gunmen. Should the Bill leave such a wide scope? The Government may want to consider some kind of conditionality being placed upon that, when you have mass events where there are large numbers of victims. My point is not that victims should not be helped but that, to ensure that you can help them, it is critical that you have defined them in a proper way. I think this is drawn rather widely.

I fully support the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, about interpreters. The police have made some progress in this area but, again, it is an area of cost. Particularly in cities such as London, where over 40% of the population often speak a second language and sometimes a first language that is not English, either victims or suspects—usually about 38% are foreign national offenders—will, on arrest, require some kind of translation. This is either by phone or in person, but it is expensive. Those costs have grown over time—for good reason, because the quality of interpreting has improved, but it imposes more costs on the system and I am not sure that has been considered, either in the Act or in general.

I said that I thought the Bill, well intended as it is—and I think it will make some good progress—might have to answer some acid tests from the public at the end. One or two people have mentioned things they think the system does not currently help with. These are my four or five things that I do not think the system does. Will the Bill make a difference?

Will the victim have a right for the police to attend the scene of a crime when the police say, “We’re not coming”? A shoplifter, for example, or a car theft, or all the other things we keep hearing about where the police do not seem to want to go to the scene of the crime. I find that confusing, and the victim certainly does. Whether you are a vulnerable victim or not, you ought to be able to expect the police to at least come, talk to you about it, have a look at the scene and see whether there is a chance of investigating it. On the telephone is convenient for the police, but I would argue it is not convenient for the victim.

The second area is about economic crime, for which most people seem to have no chance of having any investigation at all. Is this going to make a change in that area? I disagree with the present CPS rule which means there must be a 51% chance of success before it will take a case to court. The victim gets confused by that as well. Why can it not just be a prima facie case? That is one of the biggest disappointments they have. Another area is the time it takes to get to court.

Finally, we still have a very low success rate in terms of sexual offenders. When 70% of victims are vulnerable either through age, infirmity, alcohol, drugs or some other reason, they make not ideal witnesses for a system that demands perfection—they are not always consistent. How do we allow the law to support those victims, when the system itself does not seem very fair to them or their families?

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 31st January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

I shall not be attempting to answer the email that has not yet come through until it does, but my general answer to the noble Baroness is that the whole thrust of the Bill is that each criminal justice body must take reasonable steps to promote awareness of the victims’ code among users of those services and other members of the public, et cetera. I cannot conceive how you could discharge that duty of raising awareness without informing people how to access or go to whatever services they need, so it is implicit in the operation that that sort of information will have to be provided. The way in which it is provided and the detail of it is not for the Bill but for the code and the guidance.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I am sorry to delay things, but there is one thing I am not clear about. Restorative justice at the moment is available for the suspect as an alternate to going to court, with the agreement of the victim. If the right is to be given to the victim to insist on restorative justice, is that an addition to a potential court appearance or an alternate? If the Crown Prosecution Service has decided that there will be a prosecution but the victim insists on their right to restorative justice, does that change that decision? I am not quite clear from the amendments, nor the Minister’s response, how that dilemma is resolved. It may be that I have just misunderstood, in which case I apologise, but I do not quite understand how that gets resolved.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, I may be as underinformed as anyone but my understanding is that the classic case of restorative justice is that once there has been a prosecution and a conviction, there is a process for some kind of reconciliatory interaction between the victim and the offender—for example, of the kind that my noble friend Lord Hodgson so eloquently described—in a way which enables both parties to process and come to terms with what has happened. It is not typically an alternative to having a prosecution in the first place, as I understand it, although that might arise.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Newlove (Con)]

My Lords, I support of all four of the amendments and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, for a thorough explanation. We are talking about victims in the criminal justice system understanding their rights and entitlements in so many languages. We are talking about understanding the legality of words in the English language, and it is no wonder we find these barriers as we go through the system.

The first right under the victims’ code is:

“To be able to understand and to be understood”.


That seems fairly basic, but for many it is not their experience. I have met many victims of other nationalities who have said the same. I am grateful to the VAWG sector communication barriers working group for its guidance, and in particular to the late Ruth Bashall, who was the CEO of Stay Safe East and a tireless advocate for deaf and disabled survivors. They have consistently raised how disabled victims and other victims of crime—for example, those with English as a second language—are severely disadvantaged in accessing justice by the lack of accessible information, communication support and physical access to buildings or facilities. In this context, disabled victims and other victims have fewer rights than suspects, who have some basic rights under PACE—for example, the right to an interpreter.

Though some adjustments, such as the right to an intermediary, are contained in the victims’ code, they are rarely used. I am disappointed that, six years on from my report looking at the availability of intermediaries, A Voice for the Voiceless, I am still hearing that there are far too few intermediaries to meet the demand, and that this is causing significant delays, with the victim sometimes simply withdrawing.

I often hear that information provided to victims is inaccessible. Both my predecessor, Dame Vera Baird, and I have directly asked the criminal justice agencies to provide victim information in clear, accessible language, as well as in Easyread, BSL and other language versions. All too often, communication with victims is lacking, and there is still a great deal of work to be done by agencies to ensure that victims understand and are understood. It is vital that the criminal justice system is accessible to all victims of crime and that they receive the communication support they need. As a first step, the code itself must be accessible. Although, commendably, the Government took steps to make most recent iteration of the code easier to understand, as well as publishing Easyread, translated and children’s versions, it is still not accessible for a large number of victims. The Government must ensure that the code is accessible to all victims of crime.

I want to end on a personal story from a victim who was raped and trafficked from Albania. She was disabled. In Albania, if you are born disabled, your body parts are very valuable, so a baby tends to be hidden if he or she is disabled. She reported the rape when she was in this country and rehoused. She went to a police station. The police looked for an interpreter. They found one who had the same dialect but who was actually from the trafficking gang. She was mortified. She simply could not believe that she had gone to the police station and that that interpreter was taking over her complaint. She withdrew it.

It is not simply about producing someone who can speak a language; it is about understanding a dialect. We need professional people who can help victims through our criminal justice system.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, particularly on the collection of evidence in criminal cases. She is arguing for precision, accuracy and consistency. At the moment, the system suffers in respect of all those three criteria.

The establishing of truth relies on the establishing of accurate evidence. It usually looks for accuracy, precision and consistency, but if we have any doubt about interpretation of another language, all those three things suffer. There is a concern that where the standard of interpreters is not established to a high and consistent level, there is a risk that the obtaining of evidence is damaged. This matters particularly for the police in the initial obtaining of evidence—which is usually an oral account. Eventually, the oral accounts have to be reduced to writing and the written evidence then fed back to the witness or victim to establish whether it relates to what they have told the police officer. If there is a difference in how those are interpreted, the person may not have a proper, accurate account of how they described their experience.

A secondary issue is that if there is not a consistent standard, different interpreters may help the police and the victim during different parts of the process. They may help the victim with the initial account; then there may be a written statement. After an interview with the suspect, the evidence may be checked. It is important that the interpreter is the same person or, if not, that there is a common standard of interpretation. Otherwise, there is a risk that the truth is not established.

Precision matters in obtaining the victim’s or witness’s account. It also matters in interviews to establish the suspect’s account. It matters generally in evidence collection because the person who holds the evidence may not be the person who is going to give it. You need to establish whether the CCTV and all the other digital evidence that is available now is what you want, and to make sure that it is accurate.

Finally, precision matters for juries. They will not only want to hear what is said in court; they will want to compare it with the first account as well. If there is inconsistency, they will want to understand it. If we are not careful, they may judge the victim or the witnesses harshly. In turn, that may impact on the suspect. It is vital that consistency and precision are there. As the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, said, it matters also for the care of victims and witnesses. If we do not understand how people are living, the challenges they face and the nature of their lives, it is very hard to do what this Bill is trying to establish, which is consistency in care for victims in a way which supports them beyond the event and beyond any criminal prosecution.

The noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, brought out well that this is not only about the interpretation of language—that is, what happened, who said what or who did what—it is also about the legal process. An interpreter may be well qualified to interpret language but may not always understand the legal process. Of course, the victim relies on them to understand both. They need good advice to understand how the process will affect them and its impact; for example, in a court case. The evidence may be challenged in a court case to establish its accuracy, but the victim may take this as an attack. In particular, somebody who has a second language may have an experience of another criminal justice system which may not be like ours. It may be more adversarial—sorry, it could not be any more adversarial than ours, could it? It may search for the truth in a different way. They certainly need to understand how our system works if they happen not to have experienced it before.

For all those reasons to do with evidence collection, precision and accuracy, I support the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins. She has been pushing this point for a while. It has not been established; it is time it should be, and this is a great opportunity to do it.

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I also support Amendment 18, which would require the code to provide for interpreting and translation services and, more importantly, for the standards to be expected of the professionals supplying those services.

Good and reliable interpreting and translation is an increasingly necessary part of the justice system in all areas. It is also an expensive part of the system, for which value for money should be important. Most interpreters are good and efficient, but others, regrettably, are less so. A long time ago when in practice, I recall a particularly impatient interpreter helping me and my client who pulled me aside and urged me to get my client to plead guilty, which I politely declined to do. That completely undermined the confidence that either of us could have in that particular interpreter.

At present, as I understand it, court interpreting services are obtained through agencies used by the Courts & Tribunals Service. If this amendment or something like it is enacted, I would assume that the same agencies would be used. In any event, I would hope that care is taken to stipulate, ensure and review the efficiency of the agencies used and the quality of the work they do.

Finally, I would also hope and expect that this amendment, if approved, would be understood to be wide enough to help those requiring sign language and lip-reading assistance. If not, will those requirements be expressly covered by the code?

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 5th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I have signed Amendments 31, 51 and 83 in this group. Amendment 31 would give the Victims’ Commissioner an additional role in ensuring the victims’ code in the event of non-compliance. As other noble Lords have said today and last Wednesday, the real problem with the Bill is that there is no duty on agencies to comply. I support the two previous speakers—nudging agencies will not create the right effect.

Amendment 51, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, would ensure that the justice agencies are properly trained. As with Amendment 83, the aims and objectives of Amendment 51 are something I have laid repeatedly over the decade and more since I have been pushing for training, particularly on matters to do with victims. I am really pleased that the noble Lord has tabled the amendment; I am also pleased that the family courts are beginning to understand that there is a crossover between what happens to victims in the criminal justice system and their experiences in the family court system. I will not say more, because we will be debating a group of amendments on that on Wednesday. However, none of that will happen unless everybody involved in the criminal justice procedure is fully trained. I understand that the justices are extremely concerned that Parliament should ask them to be trained, but it is not just about people sitting on the Bench. This is about everybody who is engaged.

I know that I have said in private and perhaps in public that, when I went to the sentencing of my stalker, I was placed literally next to him. I had no choice of where to sit—that is where the clerk who took me in sat me. It was the first time I had seen him since he was arrested, and it was a real shock to the system. So, when I talk about right through the system, I mean absolutely everything, including the people who help manage the seating areas in the court. Above all, we need a system whereby the family courts will ensure that victims are not victimised twice. It is broader than that, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, for tabling that amendment.

Amendment 83 would ensure that front-line agencies are trained to recognise stalking. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Russell, for expanding it to include higher education places. Stalking in its most unpleasant form is manipulative and coercive. Families and friends of those being stalked are also stalked, meaning that people who come into contact with them, including in schools, colleges, universities and the health system, need to understand when they are being played by a stalker. Because stalkers are very good at it—every single day cases come to court with stalkers behaving in this appalling manipulative way. It is extremely unpleasant and frightening. To train everyone to recognise it, to be able to ask the right questions and, as we discussed last week, to signpost people to the right services, is vital.

There is another reason why Amendment 83 is important. One problem of the Domestic Abuse Act is that it has downgraded non-domestic stalking. The priority in the system is for domestic stalking, and without a specific amendment providing for stalking in one form, we will not see this form of discrimination, which happens simply because it is not domestic—and I am afraid that some people in the criminal justice system think that non-domestic stalking is not as severe.

Overall, from these Benches we welcome the amendments. The deluge of amendments that the Minister is facing is because we know that the victims’ code that the Government have put forward, with which we all agree in principle, will not work without the strengthening of the responsibilities of the Victims’ Commissioner and other agencies involved in managing the lives that victims have after they have become victims.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I support in broad terms the need for the commissioner to have more powers to intervene on behalf of victims, and my questions are about how that should be done most effectively to create the atmosphere that is needed.

For many years we have had people who have intervened on behalf of suspects, but very few people who have been able to intervene on behalf of victims, and I really support that changing. Amendment 30 talks about the ability to produce reports. My questions are about whether the reports are the right way to achieve the outcome, when people in fact want individual interventions for their particular problem. To give more powers to the commissioner to intervene in individual problems might be more powerful.

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 23rd April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gohir (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendments 60 and 64 in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, to which I have added my name. I declare my interests as set out in the register. The charity that I run operates a specialist domestic abuse service. I want to use my charity as an example of why these amendments are needed.

Muslim Women’s Network operates a national specialist helpline. It runs other projects in addition, but because it is not solely a domestic abuse service it has been excluded from stakeholder meetings by decision-makers, and also excluded from funding. For this reason, it is important to define the full breadth of specialist community-based domestic abuse services, which can then be used to hold decision-makers to account if they are excluded from being consulted, or when it comes to applying for funding. It can be quite short-sighted if organisations have that intersectional experience of cases. They also hold important data.

There is a huge funding gap, which has been mentioned. Barriers are put in the way particularly of small, specialist minority-ethnic organisations. We have seen this more in recent years under the current Government. As an example, there are very high thresholds to make grant applications. Thresholds can be so high that they exclude minority groups from putting in funding applications unless they form a coalition, which can be burdensome for a small organisation. The other problem this poses is that, if they form a coalition and there is a lead partner that gets a large chunk of money, most of that money goes out to the other partners in the coalition. That organisation then goes to, say, the charitable foundation sector to try to obtain funding and is told, “You’ve gone over the income threshold; you can’t apply for the funding because you have plenty of money coming in”. It is not considered that most of that money is going back out—this poses another barrier for small, specialist organisations.

These types of issues need to be considered to effectively commission relevant victim support services. I support the other amendments in this group, of course.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 19 from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, principally because it is a good idea in principle that victims should have the reasons why the sentence has been decided. You could argue that the summing up can be a very long process and has to account for all the evidence that is offered; I can therefore understand why the costs might mount for the summing up, but I cannot understand why the costs would mount for the sentencing.

It seems vital for the victim to understand why a sentence was given. There has not always been a reasoned decision as to why a sentence was given, but they are provided more often now, not least because the suspect has the right to appeal their sentence, and they need to understand—as does any appellate court—the reason why a sentence was awarded.

I would have thought, although I have been quietly informed otherwise by a noble and learned neighbour, that all judgments, and the reasons for the sentence, would be written down. Apparently, they are more often ex tempore. That seems a little dangerous to me, but I am not in a position to argue. Apparently, there are times when sentences, and the reasons for them, are written down and published—and there must be times when they are transcribed for appeals et cetera—so, if they are available, that is not an extra cost.

In any case, I would have thought that judgments need to be recorded. If they are recorded, why can they not be shared, certainly for the victims’ reasons? I understand that there might have to be a cut-off point—perhaps for the seriousness of the sentence given, which may be imprisonment compared with a more summary offence—but I cannot quite understand why the sentencing decisions cannot be shared with the victims. It might well be that they do not want to be in court when the sentence is announced, or that they are not available to be in court. Quite often, nobody knows the time at which the sentencing decision will be made: nobody knows exactly when the hearing will finish, when the jury will decide its findings or when the judge will be available to deliver the sentencing judgment.

I support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and if she decides to divide the House I will certainly support it. I realise that the Opposition have decided not to, but I am a little surprised.