Victims Strategy

Debate between Paul Scully and Debbie Abrahams

Thursday 11th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)]

Let me begin by echoing what has been said by Members, including my hon. Friend the Minister, about the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) and the amazing work that she has done. She is championing her constituents, as her name suggests, and it is important that she does not become a victim in any sense. There should be no witch hunt surrounding any of us who do our jobs and champion our constituents.

I welcomed what the Minister said in introducing the victims strategy, which is an important piece of the jigsaw that includes the need to reduce crime overall, to secure justice for victims and to reassure people and make them feel safe. The serious violence strategy, the Offensive Weapons Bill, the forthcoming domestic abuse Bill and this victims strategy should be all of a piece rather than working in isolation.

If the Minister wants any advice on how to roll out the strategy and make it a really meaningful document, he could do worse than come down to the Churchill Room at 7 o’clock this evening. Coincidentally, a couple of my constituents, Ray and Vi Donovan, will be attending a dinner there. They run the Chris Donovan Trust. What happened to them was this. Chris was walking along the street with his brother one day. He was beaten up, left to die, run over and dragged by a car—murdered, 16 years ago.

Ray and Vi, who naturally experienced a lot of anger and horror at losing their child, have turned that horror, that anger and frustration, into an incredible charity. They actually met the perpetrators who served their sentence, and they now go out into prisons and schools and work on restorative justice. They realise that victims are not just the people who have lost loved ones, and that any serious crime such as murder creates any number of victims because people’s lives are written off.

Ray and Vi also work with other charities. Along with the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), who is in the Chamber, I attended an awards ceremony that they hosted recently. They present awards to other small charities, typically run by the families of other victims of serious crime who have been murdered. They have taken that negative energy and turned it into something really positive to prevent people from going down the same path and creating more victims. One of the people to whom they awarded a prize was the Victims’ Commissioner for London, Claire Waxman, who had suffered a horrendous amount of abuse from a long-term stalker.

I have often spoken about domestic abuse in this place, and I am glad that the subject has arisen now. We must go further in ensuring that we support domestic abuse victims fully. A family member has gone through some harrowing times over the last few years because of her controlling, coercive partner. Fortunately, she did not have to be cross-examined, but that is not always the case, despite the Government’s best efforts. I know that many courts are working to try to separate entrances—certainly in the criminal courts people cannot be cross-examined by the alleged perpetrator, but in the family courts they can. Organisations such as Women’s Aid have given many examples of that.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman’s constituent has been affected by the fact that universal credit payments are made to only one member of the household, but that can make the position even worse for families in which domestic abuse is an issue. He might like to have a word with the Secretary of State, who does not seem to want to introduce split payments to this flawed process.

[Paul Scully]

I do not think that that applies in the case that I have mentioned, but the hon. Lady has made a very interesting point.

We need to do more to ensure that victims cannot be questioned by perpetrators, which, effectively, extends suffering for many years.

There have been more than 100 victims in London this year. We have seen victim after victim portrayed in photographs in the Evening Standard. That senseless loss of life is often, but not solely, a result of gang activities. It is important to remember these victims’ names, from Kyall Parnell, who was only 17 and who was stabbed in Tulse Hill on New Year’s Eve, to Sandra Zmijan, whose body was found in a back garden in west London only about three weeks ago, on 24 September.

Just this week I was walking through Victoria station on my way to Westminster, as I usually do on my daily commute, and saw members of the Metropolitan police and some family members and activists handing out leaflets and posters. They wanted to find one of the most wanted people, Shane O’Brien. He murdered someone three years ago, and we must not forget his victim’s name: Josh Hanson, who was murdered in Eastcote in Hillingdon three years ago. They are trying to find Shane O’Brien and bring him to justice, so that Josh Hanson’s family, who are victims as well, can have some justice. If anybody can help, the incident room can be reached on 0208 785 8099, or people can report via Crimestoppers. We need to look at all these things as part of a holistic solution in London and across the country.

That wider solution includes ensuring we can protect our police on the street. I am working closely, as our party’s vice-chairman for London, with Shaun Bailey, who is talking about putting 1,000 more police on the street, using lessons from New York, which is utilising artificial intelligence and technology to release police from certain activities and on to the frontline. But this is not just about money, although that is important—I know every London MP of every political hue calls for extra resource for the Met police; it is also about how that money is spent. The Met police have £110 million from Government—from the precept, and therefore from the Mayor as well. So this has come from right across the board: the Mayor has the money, and he has given it to the Met police, and now we have to make sure that they can use it effectively to recruit the policemen we need.

We must move on from that consideration, too, because by the time someone has a knife in their hand and a policemen has found them, it is too late. We need to reach these people far earlier—not at secondary school, but at primary school.

The victims strategy fits in well in the London knife crime context not just through the ability to give someone who has been a victim and is a member of a gang the emotional support they need, but by having a way of removing them from the situation that would allow them to enter into gang retribution, so that we can break the cycle. The victims strategy can be used as a method of breaking the cycle, too.