Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment his Department has made of the level of victim satisfaction with the criminal justice system.

The Government recognises that public confidence in the criminal justice system is a principle on which a fair and effective criminal justice system is dependent. In order to support victims and witnesses in giving their best evidence, and improve their experience of the criminal justice system, significant progress has been made over the last 18 months to increase the scale of the Section 28 (pre-recorded cross examination) service, with the most recent extension to a third wave of Crown Courts, bringing the total to 34 Section 28 enabled courts across England and Wales. The Section 28 service is now available to at least one court in every Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals (HMCTS) region. HMCTS aim to complete a national roll out of this service to all Crown Courts by the end of this year to support vulnerable victims and witnesses.

The MoJ have put in place robust and flexible plans to ensure we can continue to support victims both within and outside the criminal just system during the pandemic. To date, we have distributed £22m as part of the £76m government package for charities supporting vulnerable people including victims of sexual violence and domestic abuse, made almost £600k of funding available to assist helpline services, and committed an additional £3m per annum to Independent Sexual Violence advisers until 2022. We also mobilised the Victim and Witness Silver Command Group, to engage with stakeholders, ensure criminal justice system wide awareness of issues, and monitor victim related issues with the system. The Group meets fortnightly to discuss topical justice issues as a result of Covid-19, particularly focussed on those with the potential to impact victims and witnesses. The Group identifies developing risks and issues that may have an impact on victim and witness strategy, policy or operational effectiveness and resolves or escalates those issues where necessary to mitigate any potential impact on levels of victim satisfaction.