Victims and Courts Bill

Lord Meston Excerpts

Tuesday 16th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I join in welcoming the Bill. The Long Title states that it is to

“make provision about the experience of victims within the criminal justice system”.

In that context, it is strange to be considering such a Bill in the absence of Lady Newlove. A good test of what can be achieved by the Bill will be whether she would have approved of it. I am sure we all hope that our final product would meet with her approval.

I will focus on two topics: the power to order an offender to attend court for sentencing and the proposed restrictions on parental responsibility. The problem of convicted criminals in serious cases who refuse to attend court for a sentencing hearing is relatively new, but regrettably it has not gone away, and the Government are now right to deal with it by involving deterrent measures.

Sentencing judges are well used to dealing with attention-seeking misbehaviour by some offenders, but the Bill gives a clearer framework for the powers available to the judge, not just when the offender fails or refuses to attend, but when he does attend and interrupts the hearing or otherwise misbehaves and has to be removed.

A sentencing hearing is important, because it is when the offender is made publicly accountable for his criminal action and has to confront the disapproval of society for what he has done, and to hear the evidence of the impact on the victim and the victim’s family. A refusal to attend adds insult to injury and highlights the lack of any remorse. It was in one such case rightly described by the judge as “spineless”.

Clearly, when a very long sentence is inevitable, a relatively short additional sentence may not persuade such a defendant with little or nothing to lose to co-operate or to behave. There is a limit to what can be expected of prison or custody officers in manhandling a resistant offender into the dock. There can in those cases be a risk of making a bad situation look worse. However, clarification in the Bill that reasonable force may be used if necessary and proportionate is welcome.

The important point of these new provisions is that victims can be reassured that they will be heard and that offenders will know that if they think about not attending there will be consequences, not just in the longer term with a further sentence that may have little or no real meaning, but in the short term with the new prison sanctions order.

Turning to Clauses 3 and 4, it is clearly right and necessary to introduce an effective mechanism to curtail any exercise of parental responsibility by fathers who commit sexual offences against a child. That must mean a sexual offence against any child, not just a child for whom the man may have had parental responsibility: that is what I now understand the Bill to intend, as the Minister has been good enough to confirm. I welcome that confirmation, because paragraph 176 of the Explanatory Notes accompanying the Bill suggests that it might still be restricted to offences against the children for whom the man holds parental responsibility. I understand that not to be correct.

I suspect that none of us has any reservations about the essential principles underlying these proposals. The chair of the Bar Council has said:

“Parental responsibility should not be regarded as an inalienable right which is retained regardless of parental behaviour and actions … Restricting parental responsibility for perpetrators of child sex offences is a strong protective measure for those left behind after acts of violence and abuse within a family”.


I suggest that this should also apply to any such serious sexual acts committed outside the family context which are wholly incompatible with the retention of parental responsibility.

Without getting too involved in the details of the current law, it is important to appreciate that not all fathers automatically have parental responsibility. If not married to the mother, a father would acquire it only with her agreement for him to be registered and named as the father on the birth certificate, or by later agreement or order. It is also important to appreciate that the family court can and does already terminate, suspend or restrict parental responsibility when there is a risk of significant harm to the child or siblings, and when the father’s conduct and retention of parental responsibility have become an intolerable concern to the mother. But there have been cases in which obstructive fathers, out of malice or lack of insight or empathy, force a mother into protracted and costly litigation to protect the children and herself, as their mother, and to remove the need for her to involve the father in decision-making about their future care and upbringing.

At least, in the cases covered by this Bill, a more summary mechanism will be made available. The Bill builds on Section 18 of the 2024 Act—Jade’s law, which is not yet in force. It will prevent the exercise of parental responsibility but without actually altogether terminating parental responsibility. Clause 3 requires a sentence of at least four years before it operates. That leaves the cases of those with lesser sentences remaining to be dealt with in the family court, as now. I accept that there is a need to draw lines so as to make best use of the resources, expertise and powers of both courts without overburdening either, but where lines are drawn may need more exploration during the passage of the Bill.

I will briefly raise some other procedural and evidential points. First, has consideration been given to any mechanism to restrict applications for, or the exercise of, parental responsibility during what is now likely to be a long period between the initial charge and the final sentencing? Is that to be left to bail conditions or to the family court on a separate application by the mother or a local authority, or could the Crown Court now be given power to make an interim order?

Secondly, assuming that the Crown Court will be making orders covering all children for whom the defendant has parental responsibility without later review by the family court, how will the Crown Court get reliable information about who those children are and about their status and circumstances, particularly if the defendant is unwilling or unable to assist and the court has no access to existing court orders concerning those children? Regrettably, some men have selective memories about their offspring. How will the mothers of those children be identified, located and then informed about what the Crown Court is doing or may have done?

Finally, as to children who have been or may have been conceived as a result of rape, it may be difficult at the time of sentencing to ascertain whether the child was in fact so conceived, if there was a pre-existing relationship between the couple continuing at least until the rape. The difficulty no doubt already exists if the Criminal Court has to decide whether the mother’s enforced pregnancy was an aggravating factor for sentencing purposes in rape cases.

Broadly, however, in cases of uncertainty, I welcome the measures in the new Section 10F. This requires the Crown Court to notify the local authority, which will have to assess the likely co-operation or otherwise of the mother and any possible need for orders from the family court. This may require further fact-finding. In this regard, I consider that the Bill goes as far as it needs to in such situations. Subject to those comments, most of the Bill’s provisions are welcome.