Victims and Courts Bill

Lorraine Beavers Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 25th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Lorraine Beavers (Blackpool North and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

I welcome the progress that has been made on this Bill. It is right that we are taking steps to rebuild trust in a system that for too long has left victims feeling invisible and unheard. The measures to compel offenders to attend their sentencing hearings are welcome. No family should be denied the chance to see justice simply because an offender refuses to face what they have done. The protections for children, especially in cases of sexual violence, are long overdue.

I will speak specifically about Lords amendments 5 and 6, and about my constituent Katie Brett. Katie’s little sister, Sasha Marsden, was just 16 years old when she was brutally murdered, raped and set on fire. The sheer horror of that crime is beyond words. The pain her family lives with every single day is unimaginable to most of us, yet after enduring the traumatic trial and the devastation of their loss, Katie and her family were faced with another injustice: they had 28 days to challenge the sentence that they believed did not reflect the severity of the crime. What is worse, they were not even told that they had this right.

For the family of a victim, the trial of the perpetrator is always traumatising, but in such a case—Sasha’s family heard the brutal details of her murder for the first time at the trial—most of us would not be emotionally ready to fight another fight and to understand the complex legal processes within 28 days of hearing the sentence. That is 28 days to grieve, 28 days to understand the complex legal system and 28 days to find the strength to fight once more. This is not a meaningful right; this is a barrier.

Katie has shown extraordinary courage in turning her grief into action. Through her campaign for Sasha’s law, she is asking for something perfectly reasonable: more time for victims’ families to seek a review of sentences that they believe are unduly lenient. The Government are absolutely right to be looking at ways to improve communications with victims’ families to ensure that they know their right to appeal under the unduly lenient sentence scheme, but I must make this point to the Minister: 28 days is not enough, even if people are informed of their right to appeal. The period of 28 days is how long someone has to return a T-shirt.

The families deserve longer to consider whether they wish to appeal. I understand the Government’s concern that an end date must still be placed on this longer deadline, which is why Lords amendments 5 and 6 cannot be supported, but I urge them to listen to Katie and the many other families who have suffered at the hands of the status quo, and to ensure that the issue is revisited as the Bill continues its progress.

Offenders are afforded multiple opportunities to appeal, and they are given time, process and support. However, victims’ families are given just one chance, with very limited time for it. This cannot be right. It does not reflect the values that we say our justice system is built on and the values that the Labour Government were elected to put into action. If we are serious about putting victims at the heart of the justice system, we must ensure that their rights are real.

The Bill takes important steps forward, but it must not be the end of the conversation. It must be the beginning of doing better for Katie and Sasha, and for every family forced to navigate grief and injustice at the same time. Let us make sure that our justice system delivers not just outcomes, but humanity, fairness and the time that victims need to truly seek justice.

[Mr Joshua Reynolds (Maidenhead) (LD)]

I will speak to Lord’s amendment 2, which requires the Secretary of State to issue an appendix to the victims code setting out how the code applies to the families of British nationals who are the victims of murder, manslaughter or infanticide abroad. This is not a new argument in this Chamber. I tabled amendments on Report to make precisely this case, I secured an Adjournment debate last year, and I have raised questions with the Minister several times. I thank her for the work she has done with me and others on this topic.

It is also important to thank the charity Murdered Abroad, and specifically Eve Henderson who has been working on this issue for a long time, as well as the late Baroness Newlove who, in her time as Victims’ Commissioner, worked with Murdered Abroad and me to ensure that the amendments tabled to the Bill were workable in the view of the Victims’ Commissioner.

Murdered Abroad is a campaign made up of bereaved families who have turned their grief into a distinct call for change. Families who are part of Murdered Abroad all have one thing in common: a family member of theirs, a British citizen, was murdered while they were outside the UK. Their calls ask for one simple thing: equal treatment. They are asking for the structured statutory support that any family would receive if tragedy struck on British soil, because a British life lost is a British life, no matter where in the world that loss occurs.

Each year around 80 families receive the news that one of their loved ones has been murdered abroad. Sometimes that is via a police officer, but all too often it is from a journalist who has found out the news first and is asking for comment. When tragedy strikes, it sends any family into an unimaginable position, but when it happens outside the UK, families are left with so many other complications they must contend with. They must navigate foreign legal procedures, untranslated documents and distant court proceedings with patchy and often inconsistent support from their own Government, all at a time of trauma, vulnerability and mourning.

Matthew was sitting in a bar when two door staff rushed over and grabbed him. They were joined by two more, who threw him down a metal staircase. At the bottom, witnesses saw them kicking and hitting him. A UK post-mortem identified over 20 injuries on Matthew’s body. When his mother called the FCDO, she was told that he died of alcohol consumption. That same morning, newspapers in Greece ran the headline, “Teen Drinks Himself to Death”. Matthew’s mum had to fight tooth and nail to get a family liaison officer. She also had to fight tooth and nail for translation support to get documents in English. They ended up being paid for by Derbyshire police, because the FCDO would not pay for them.

Alison and Paul’s son Danny was killed in Amsterdam in 2022, aged just 22 years old. They explained how navigating lengthy and complex Dutch judicial procedures in foreign languages, while also having to arrange matters such as repatriation without any support, was an immense challenge. All the while, they were dealing with the trauma of their son having been killed. That loaded on to them and their daughter an untold amount of stress at a time when they needed support from our Government. In such circumstances, the Government should be supporting families in any way they can.

Let me be clear about what Lords amendment 2 does and does not do. It does not seek to interfere with foreign judicial systems and it does not place unworkable demands on the FCDO. What it does do, however, is establish a statutory baseline, ensuring that bereaved families have access to the support and guidance that any other family of a homicide victim would receive.

Lords amendment 2 inserts an appendix into the victims code which states that families must be provided with specific guidance explaining what support they can access. It explains that they must be given information by the British Government about how the foreign criminal justice process works—not getting involved in that process or interfering with it, but explaining what families can expect. It outlines that they should be given a dedicated family liaison officer to support the family at the worst time. Some police forces do that already, but many do not. We have heard that many police forces will tell families they are not entitled to a family liaison officer. Only immense pressure from families makes those police forces back down and give them the family liaison officer they need. When everything else in the world has gone wrong, it should not be up to these British families to have to push the police to give them the family liaison officer they should be entitled to.

The amendment outlines that the Government must provide translation services for such families. Far too many families tell me that they were told by the Government to use Google Translate to get death certificates translated into English. That is not acceptable—that is not something we can accept ever again. One family told me recently how they found out through Google Translate that their son’s organs had been removed from his body. It is not acceptable that Google Translate told them that. We cannot accept that and the Government need to go further to provide translation services for families.

The Government’s position, set out in a letter to Members on 23 March, is that the amendment would “raise expectations” that cannot be met and that it risks “confusing the legislative framework”. Those arguments are remarkable. We are talking about an appendix to the victims code, laying out what support families can expect from the British Government. The suggestion that setting out in statute what support a bereaved family can expect will somehow undermine the coherence of the entire victims code does not stand up to scrutiny. And it is not just me and the Liberal Democrats saying that. The Victims’ Commissioner must believe that too, because she was pleased that the Lords successfully voted for the amendment. I cannot understand how the amendment would raise expectations that cannot be met and confuse the legislative framework, and neither can the Victims’ Commissioner. I do not understand how the Government can think that.

The Minister points to guidance published in January 2026 as evidence of the Government’s commitment. I welcome that guidance, but guidance is guidance. Guidance is not the law. Guidance can be ignored. It has no real enforcement mechanism. If the Government genuinely believe that families deserve support, we must ask the question: why do they not say so in statute?

Last month, I met families from across the country whose loved ones were murdered abroad. Among that group were families who lost loved ones this year, after the new guidance had come into force. The guidance has not protected them. They have fallen through exactly the same gaps that were in the system before the guidance. The reason is clear: guidance is not statutory; it is a guide. It can be ignored and it too often is. What we need is a statutory appendix to the victims code setting out what support victims will receive, and how the Victims’ Commissioner and her team can support it. There is a lack of consistency. Some families are given a family liaison officer and some are told they cannot receive one. That is the problem we are looking at and we must do better.

I will ask one question of the Minister about transparency in the needs assessment carried out by the Victim Support homicide service. What criteria are used to decide on a family’s needs following homicide abroad? Neither the Victims’ Commissioner nor Murdered Abroad charity members are able to find out what results are coming through and what criteria are being used. That is why families so often feel that there is a lack of consistency and accountability.