Victims and Prisoners Bill

Lord Roborough Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 30th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, we had a very full debate on this issue in Committee. From these Benches, we are deeply committed to these two amendments. This is a victims’ Bill, and it seems to me that we really need to be doing things to support victims, which is what these two relatively modest amendments do. If the noble Baroness decides to test the opinion of the House, we will support her.

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 100 and 101 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, seek to extend the current time limit for applications under the unduly lenient sentence scheme, which currently must be made within 28 days of sentencing and require a nominated government department to inform victims and families of the scheme, including the relevant time limits.

Having a fixed time limit reflects the importance of finality in sentencing for both victim and offender. While we will keep this limit under consideration, there are no current plans to remove the certainty of an absolute time limit for victims and offenders alike. However, the Government recognise that there is uncertainty over how far in advance of the time limit expiring a victim must ask for a sentence to be reviewed, given the fact that the Attorney-General must refer the case to the Court of Appeal within that fixed time limit. We also recognise that the number of requests made to the law officers and therefore the number of sentences they consider has increased in recent years, due in part to increased awareness of the scheme.

The Government are therefore tabling an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill which will amend the time limit in the unduly lenient sentencing scheme so that, where a request is made to the Attorney-General in the last 14 days of the 28-day limit, the Attorney-General will have 14 days from receipt to consider the request and, if appropriate, make an application to the Court of Appeal for a sentence to be reviewed. This will benefit victims as it will ensure that the Attorney-General will be able to consider requests that are made up until the end of the 28-day period.

As for informing victims about the scheme and the time limits, as I said in Committee, the victims’ code is already clear that victims should be informed about the scheme by the police’s witness care units at the same time as they are told about the sentence. This is expected to be done within six days of sentencing. However, I can go further and commit that when revising the victims’ code, the Government will look at the information about the scheme that is provided to make sure that it is as clear as possible. I hope this reassures the noble Baroness that action is being taken to address the issues she raised very eloquently in Committee and again today. Consequently, I respectfully ask her to withdraw the amendment.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all speakers, especially for their brevity. I particularly thank the Minister for outlining details of how the Government are considering changing this, but we are seeking parity of rights between offenders and victims here. Offenders can still appeal outside 28 days in exceptional circumstances, those exceptional circumstances being judged by the Attorney-General. That is not on offer at the moment. There are not going to be floods of victims applying via these amendments if they have concerns about the finality of sentencing, but for a few victims of very serious crimes, this would provide a small amount of discretion. We heard examples that show how rigid the current system is. Under these amendments, the Attorney-General could easily decide, as they do at the moment for offenders, if there are genuine exceptional circumstances. It is true that the 14-day proposals assist the Attorney-General’s office and the CPS; however, the fundamental injustice remains. Victims, and only victims, still have only 28 days to apply. On these grounds, I wish to test the opinion of the House.

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[Lord Garnier (Con)]

My Lords, I wonder whether I can achieve such a satisfactory result at the end of my little outing.

For my noble friends on the Front Bench, listening to me speaking about this subject, which includes the proposed new clause in my Amendment 101A, it must seem as though they are listening to a cracked record—but for me it is like banging my head against a brick wall. For both of us, it will be nice when it stops.

In brief, my proposed new clause intends to require

“a review to explore how domestic and overseas victims of fraud, bribery and money laundering offences could be better compensated without the need for civil proceedings to recover their losses or compensation”.

I will hardly speak at all about the reasons behind the amendment and the good sense for it, because I already did so in Committee and trailed it, more or less verbatim, prior to that at Second Reading in December. Your Lordships will be pleased to hear that I will not say it a third time. However, what I will say a third time is a matter of formality relevant to the amendment: I declare my interest as a member of the Bar who practises in the field of economic crime.

I thank my noble friend Lord Roborough on the Front Bench, who very kindly arranged for me and Sam Tate—the partner of Reynolds Porter Chamberlain, RPC, the London law firm, who has studied this question with me and others—to meet him last week, along with a number of his officials. We had a very useful and friendly discussion, as one would expect. The conclusion was that there would need to be—guess what?—further discussions before the Government would be prepared to do very much.

I fully understand, and I fully understood then, the difficulties in which the Minister found himself in having the discretion to move this thing forward, but I think we both understand that this needs to be dealt with. It is a matter of morality and good law, and it has nothing whatever to do with party politics. This is not an area of political discord but just a matter of common sense and getting it done.

Essentially, I am trying to make it possible for the victims of fraud and other economic offences that impact on people overseas to be compensated by our English courts. The headline points are these. According to research done by Sam Tate and others at RPC, approximately £1.5 billion has been paid by corporates in fines and disgorgements of profits in the United Kingdom in relation to international corruption cases over the last 10 years, but only 1.4% of that money—about £20 million —has been paid to overseas state victims in compensation.

As I said, I will not repeat what I said at Second Reading and in Committee about the complications that may follow with trying to arrange for compensation to overseas victims to be implemented. It is not an utterly easy thing to do but, equally, it is not utterly difficult. It just requires effort, political will and drive. I hope that the meeting I had with my noble friend the Minister last week and the brevity of my remarks today will encourage the Government to just use a bit of oomph to get this thing going.

If the public listened to what I am saying now— I quite appreciate that they do not—they would realise that it is mad that we prosecute people here for things they did overseas but we do not compensate the victims who are overseas. There are hospitals and schools to be built, and other infrastructure and good causes to benefit from the compensation that ought to be paid.

I will leave it there, because I know that my noble friend the Minister would like to say some very encouraging things about what the Government are going to do, very shortly and certainly before the election, to ensure that this programme is moved forward. I have a draft letter, which I will send to the chairman of the Sentencing Council and which my noble friend has seen; he has heard all my arguments many times before. I just hope that, this third time, I will be able to persuade him to move a little more than an inch towards that milepost that I can see not very far away. I beg to move.

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier for raising this issue in Amendment 101A and for taking the time to meet me the other day to discuss this important issue further. As he is well aware, cases linked to foreign bribery are inherently complex, and the suggestion and detail that he has provided are being given careful consideration by my officials. Given the range of departmental interests engaged, His Majesty’s Government need to give it the consideration it is owed and welcome further conversations once they have digested my noble and learned friend’s points further. I will briefly lay out the Government’s position, which I did not cover fully in Committee.

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[Lord Roborough (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, for these amendments. While the Government understand the intention behind these amendments, we have not been convinced that they are necessary. Existing codes and the establishment of the independent public advocate deliver on many of these amendments’ aims. It may be helpful if I outline the Government’s rationale.

First, we have concerns over the application of this new code. As proposed, the code would apply only to those individuals who are considered victims of major incidents under the definition in this Bill. However, as this Bill is not retrospective, there are currently no victims under this definition. It would be premature to create such a code under the circumstances and we may lack the evidential basis for it at this time.

Secondly, the key aims of the proposed code directly align with the purpose of the independent public advocate, and it is therefore unnecessary. The IPA will help to ensure that victims understand the subsequent investigatory processes. They will help to signpost victims to appropriate support services and play a pivotal role in ensuring that the victims are able to challenge decisions and raise concerns, as part of their role will be to act as a conduit to government, to ensure that the victims are heard in order to effect change in real time.

Thirdly, as we noted in Committee, it is very likely that in many circumstances where a major incident is declared and an advocate is appointed, the victims will be victims of crime or criminal conduct. In these instances, they are already covered under the victims’ code, which sets out the services and support that victims of crime can expect to receive from criminal justice agencies. An additional code for victims of a major incident may therefore be duplicative and as such counterproductive.