House of Lords

Wednesday 31st January 2024 Lords Chamber

Wednesday 31 January 2024

15:00

Prayers—read by the Lord Bishop of London.

Homelessness: Veterans

Wednesday 31st January 2024 Lords Chamber

Question

15:07

Asked by

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the increasing levels of homelessness among former armed forces personnel; and what steps they are taking to tackle homelessness among veterans.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Baroness Neville- Rolfe) (Con)]

The Government doubt that the statistics available prove that there is an increasing level of homelessness among veterans. However, any homelessness among veterans needs to be tackled, which is why we have established a number of policies to achieve this important objective. We are committed to ensuring that no veteran is rough sleeping due to a lack of provision.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, we surely all agree, across your Lordships’ House, that the very least we owe those who have served this country in our Armed Forces is that at the end of their service they should have either affordable supported housing with wraparound support or a General Needs home. Sadly, because of the national housing crisis, that is no longer the case. Last year, in spite of the pledges made under Operation Fortitude, there was an increase in homelessness among Armed Forces veterans of 14%, with 2,110 households affected, up from 1,850 the previous year. What steps are the Government taking to join up the work done by the Ministry of Defence, DLUHC and local government to ensure that no one who has served our country ends up sleeping on the streets?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I should say first that the level of veteran homelessness remains very low: less than 1% of households are owed a homeless duty. I agree with everything the noble Baroness has said about the importance of looking after our veterans. The increase can mainly be attributed to improved recording at local authority level. Local authorities now report on all support needs and relevant life experiences, rather than current support needs only. She rightly asks what we are doing. We have a large package of measures. There is Operation Fortitude, a hotline to support veterans into housing—the first of its kind—which has housed over 477 veterans. We have a dedicated £8 million fund, establishing 900 units of veteran supported housing. There is a whole range of help, including online help by the Veterans UK helpline, which helps to join up what we are doing. These different packages were championed by Minister Mercer, but co-ordinated very much with DLUHC and the MoD.

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, everyone regrets anyone being homeless, especially veterans. As a veteran myself, I can say that. When I was the Minister responsible for veterans in the Ministry of Defence, which was immediately after the Labour Government left office, there was a lot of talk about veteran homelessness then. I went to see Veterans Aid, an excellent organisation that operates out of London. The man in charge of it, an ex-RAF wing commander, said, “Not everyone who says they’re a veteran actually is one, but they get better treatment if they are”. Does my noble friend agree that, as she has so rightly said, not everyone who says they are a veteran is one, but they get better benefits if they are?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The way I look at it, we need to help veterans. We have the veterans covenant, to say that those who serve or have served in the Armed Forces, and their families, are treated fairly. It was right that we changed the law in 2012 so that veterans with urgent housing needs are always given high priority for social housing. Of course, local authorities have to make sure that people who say they are veterans are veterans, but we must move forward and not be deterred by the odd difficultly. It is great that so few veterans are homeless; we should celebrate that.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, as the Minister pointed out, it is right we ensure that veterans are not homeless. One thing that it is important to remember is that the vast majority of veterans transition into civilian life without difficulty. However, for those who come from certain backgrounds, there must be opportunities, all the way through their serving life to talk about transitioning to civilian life and to think about future accommodation. A recent report funded by the Forces in Mind Trust put forward proposals for a road map to end veteran homelessness. Has the Minister had a chance to look at the report? Are the Government thinking about ensuring the opportunity for service personnel, while they are serving, to think about housing post-service?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I have not seen the report but I would be very interested to look at it, and I thank the noble Baroness. In my former life as a private-sector employer in the retail industry, we had many veterans working for us. As their term of duty comes to an end, service personnel must look forward and think about opportunities. The discipline that they learn in the Army, and so many skills, can bring great things to the workforce.

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, homelessness among veterans is not an isolated issue; very often it is connected with other problems, such as mental health challenges. These are challenges that often present years after veterans have left service. What action are the Government taking to ensure that these various aspects of the problem are being dealt with in a holistic way and not just in stovepipes?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I certainly agree. We try to be as holistic as possible in the help we provide. On mental health in particular, we invest £17 million a year in an amazing scheme called Op Courage. We have had 30,000 referrals, which shows the scale of the issue, and we are working now with NHS England on a public awareness campaign to promote Op Courage and what we can do in places such as GP surgeries and trusts in the way that the noble and gallant Lord has suggested.

[Baroness Lampard (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, shall we hear from my noble friend Lady Lampard, followed by the noble Lord, Lord Browne?

[Baroness Lampard (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as the chair of GambleAware. Veterans are 10 times more likely than non-veterans to experience gambling harms, and to gamble as a way of coping with distress. The financial consequences of gambling harms are more than likely to contribute to homelessness among veterans. Third sector organisations such as Beacon Counselling, which was commissioned by GambleAware as part of the National Gambling Support Network, do brilliant work to reduce the impact of the heightened risk to the Armed Forces community. Can the Minister tell the House how the Government intend to address the need to protect veterans from experiencing gambling harms and, to that end, how they intend to work in partnership with charities doing vital work in this area?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Veterans can access a range of support, including via the 24/7 Veterans’ Gateway, which deals with gambling, as well as housing and so on. There is also, of course, a national gambling helpline giving advice. There is dedicated support through Op Courage for mental health, which is often linked to gambling. The other things that I have mentioned can all help with this difficult issue, which obviously goes much wider than veterans.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, the data that supports the conclusion that homelessness among veterans is increasing is uniquely English data. The Scottish data, which was most recently published in August 2023 and relates to the period between 2008 and 2022, shows that the number of veterans assessed as homeless or, importantly, at risk of homelessness has halved from 1,335 to 640. Would it not, on this occasion, be an idea to find out what Scottish councils, NGOs and the Scottish Government are doing to have achieved this?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I am always glad to hear of good practice, wherever it is, but, as I tried to explain at the beginning, we have changed the way that we are counting veteran homelessness in local authorities. That does not mean that we should not do more or not learn from the devolveds when they do things better. A result that halves numbers is very good. However, as I said, there are almost no veterans rough sleeping now, due to the variety of provision that this Government have provided and the underpinning of the priority that homeless veterans get for social housing, which I think everybody supports.

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

My Lords, I sometimes worry that Questions such as this convey a wider impression that military service somehow leads to long-term social disadvantage. That is just not the case. A glance at the figures on the national census from England and Wales shows that, if you have not done military service, you have a 20% chance of reaching the age of 65 and only a 5.1% chance of passing the age of 80. By comparison, a military veteran has a 53% chance of reaching 65 and a 31.8% chance of passing 80—a remarkable statistic, even by the standards of this House. Does the Minister therefore not agree that, at a time of grave recruiting challenges, such irresistible evidence of the life benefits of military service should be celebrated and more widely reported?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I can agree that military service leads to many advantages, not only full-time military service but working in the reserves. We should encourage young people to look at this option.

Prisons: Suicides

Wednesday 31st January 2024 Lords Chamber

Question

15:18

Asked by

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to reduce the number of suicides in prisons in England and Wales.

[The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Stewart of Dirleton) (Con)]

My Lords, every self-inflicted death in custody is a tragedy. We continue to do all that we can to improve the safety of prisoners. Our vision, set out in the Prisons Strategy White Paper, includes plans to make prisons safer for staff and prisoners. We have also announced additional funding to expand the prison workforce to enable a greater focus on creating a regime that supports safety.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

I thank the Minister for his reply. In the 12 months to last September, there were 93 deaths by suicide in prison, an increase of 22% on the previous year. This is paralleled by the huge increase in self-harming in prison, which is at 10 times the rate of the wider community. One of the factors in this is of course the extent of mental health problems among prisoners—nine out of 10—and the slowness with which they are referred to the appropriate medical services. What steps have the Government taken to speed up the process whereby those with mental health problems are pointed in the direction of those who can offer them help, so that they do not spend so long in isolation in segregated units?

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

My Lords, we published the National Partnership Agreement for Health and Social Care for England on 23 February 2023, setting out a shared priority to deliver safe, decent and effective care, and improve health outcomes for people in prison and on probation. As part of the measures we have taken, new prison officers are trained in measures to assess and identify persons potentially at risk. The existing cohort of prison officers is receiving additional training, as understanding of the complex nature of this problem develops. There are increased facilities for sharing knowledge so that individual insights are passed between prison staff, the medical and psychological staff assisting them and the prisoners themselves, because we have measures to allow prisoners to mentor one another.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, would my noble friend agree that the number of suicides in prisons is likely to fall if we could reduce the number of people with mental health issues being sent to prison and, furthermore, if we could increase the amount of meaningful out-of-cell activity offered to prisoners?

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

My Lords, I agree wholeheartedly with both points raised by the noble Viscount. The range of opportunities for activity outwith the prison estate, and within the estate by way of leisure and recreation, is an important matter that the Government are looking at.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, it has been nearly a decade since the Minister for Prisons asked me to undertake a review of the self-inflicted deaths of young people in the prison estate. Since then, things have got worse. The reality is that prisons are more overcrowded. The very positive suggestions that the Minister made in answer to the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, about how people will be trained to provide support, will work only if there are sufficient numbers of staff who stay sufficiently long in the job for it to work.

The Minister has also just said that efforts are made for rehabilitation, training and education. Again, if prisons are so overcrowded and there are such staff shortages that people cannot be escorted to the extracurricular activities he described, how on earth is this going to work? Is not the reality that this Government have lost control of prisons and of the fundamental responsibility to rehabilitate people into society?

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

My Lords, as of 30 September 2023, there were 23,058 prison officers in bands 3 to 5. That is an important cohort, because those are the bands who have access to prisoners in the areas and respects of which the noble Lord has spoken. That is an increase of 1,441 officers on the previous year, which amounts to an increase of 6.7% in the number of officers in that cohort in full employment.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, one-third of all prison suicides occur very early—within the first week in custody. Research shows that isolation from relationships or a breakdown in communication can play a decisive role. Prison receptions can be very chaotic places and it can take days, rather than hours, to establish contact with family members, who are also very worried. What are the Government doing to improve care when people arrive in prison and, in particular, to ensure that early contact with families is made?

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that question and for the informal discussion we had prior to Questions today. We know that the risk of suicide can be higher when prisoners are on remand and in the early days of their sentence, when the experience of prison is new and shocking, or for that matter when they have been recalled to custody. We have digitally streamlined the reception processes to flag risk information earlier, in the manner I was describing earlier to the noble Lord.

We are promoting supportive conversations between staff and prisoners. All incoming prisoners are interviewed in reception areas to assess their risk of self-harm. There is a risk identification toolkit—a training measure for officers—which helps staff assess risk effectively and provides appropriate support to manage identified risk. We are rolling out a peer support project—this is the sort of work I was discussing with the noble Lord earlier—where prisoners mentor one another, thereby, most importantly, inculcating supportiveness and strengthening and encouraging self-worth.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, in recent weeks, I have met two young female prison officers who have dealt with suicide and attempted suicide. We have heard from the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, about the increase in suicide and self-harm. My noble friend Lord Harris alluded to the reduction in experience of prison officers. The figures are that the number of prison officers with 10 years’ or more experience fell from 34% to 28% in the 12 months to December 2023. Does the noble and learned Lord accept that these two facts are linked? What is he doing to try to increase the length of time that prison officers stay in the service?

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

My Lords, as I said in response to a previous question, the number of officers in key cohorts has increased over the past year. As to the rest of the question that the noble Lord poses, I do not have the information to hand but, with his indulgence, I shall write to him, or have the Minister in the responsible department write to him, on the subject.

[The Lord Bishop of London]

My Lords, the recently announced proposed change to the recall period for serving IPP sentences is welcomed. What assessment has the Minister made of the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman’s recommendation that prisoners’ IPP status should be considered as a potential risk factor for suicide and self-harm?

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate for that question. IPP prisoners are a matter of concern to many noble Lords. It remains a priority for the Government that all those on IPP sentences receive the support they need to progress towards safe release from custody. The Government continue to focus on the rehabilitation of IPP prisoners through a refreshed and updated action plan, published in April 2023, providing a robust and effective sentence plan tailored to individual needs and recognising the difficulties, of which the right reverend Prelate is aware, of persons facing a very long period of incarceration and the attendant difficulties that that causes them emotionally.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, the House will understand the answers given by the noble and learned Lord in relation to the training of individual officers, but that does not deal with the problem of increasing suicides attributable to really serious staff shortages. Increased numbers of staff have to be taken alongside increasing prisoner populations. So what is being done to improve the detection and diagnosis of mental ill-health of prisoners and, crucially, what steps are being taken to improve or reduce waiting times for psychiatric treatment and placement of prisoners in hospitals where hospital placements are needed for mentally ill prisoners?

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

My Lords, most prisoners with mental health needs are able to receive the care and treatment that they need within prison. The group to which the noble Lord refers, those with acute problems requiring treatment in hospital, have to be referred, assessed and transferred to hospital under the Mental Health Act. We are determined to ensure that these transfers take place in a timely manner. We are working with health and justice partners and will continue to work to provide a non-statutory independent role designed to improve oversight and to monitor delivery of the 28-day time limit for transfers set out in NHS England’s good practice guidance. There is also a pilot health and justice hub in the north-east of England, improving the way in which courts, health services and prisons work together at local levels better to support those with severe mental illness, with a view to smoothing their pathway into the correct treatment.

UK-EU Trade: Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

Wednesday 31st January 2024 Lords Chamber

Question

15:29

Asked by

[Baroness Quin]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have, if any, to meet representatives of small and medium-sized enterprises to discuss non-tariff barriers to trade between the United Kingdom and European Union.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business and Trade and Scotland Office (Lord Offord of Garvel) (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her Question. We engage extensively with representatives of small and medium-sized enterprises and trade associations across the UK. This includes engagement that I and my fellow Ministers undertake. As Minister for Small Business, Minister Hollinrake routinely meets these representatives and business leaders. As Minister for Exports, I spend a lot of effort meeting SME exporters. We are leading a whole-government effort to break down barriers, including non-tariff barriers with our partners in the EU and across the world.

[Baroness Quin (Lab)]

When the former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, announced his trade deal with the EU in 2020, he said there would be no non-tariff barriers to trade between us and the EU. That claim has turned out to be spectacularly false, given the extra bureaucracy and costs that many businesses, particularly small businesses, are facing as a result of that deal. As we know, these burdens are due to get worse, not better, in the coming months. Given that in a supplementary question I cannot list all the businesses that I know have been badly impacted, I ask the Minister whether, if I send the details of those firms, his department will look at these things urgently and see in what ways the burdens can be reduced or removed.

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness. There is no question that there has been friction in our trade, especially with the EU 27. We have tariff-free trade; a lot of the friction is not of our doing, but we must deal with it.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

There is a huge amount of effort going on in the department to break down these trade barriers. We have already removed 178 trade barriers—48 of those are worth £6.5 billion alone. Within all our country embassies we have a team working directly with our SMEs to remove these barriers. This will ease the process.

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

My Lords, the trade and co-operation agreement has a structure of 24 committees, trade specialised committees included, which are meant to work together to produce mutually beneficial improvements in the process of trade. The snappily named Trade Specialised Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade looks into this area, I assume. That committee met only once last year. I realise that committees can work when they do not meet, but will the Minister comment on the fact that it met only once? Can he assure the House that all of the mechanics of the trade and co-operation agreement are sweating hard to try to improve the situation?

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank the noble Earl. Yes, indeed, there are many committees in Europe—it is one of the reasons we decided to come out. Where we are working most effectively is country by country, and we are finding that, for example, when we deal with Belgium we can solve the problem with British lawyers working in Belgium. We can do the same in Luxembourg. With Sweden we work hard directly with its team on our chilled and frozen food. With Austria we are working on training permits for our staff to move there. We are much more effective on a country-by-country basis than at the higher committee level.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister will have seen yesterday’s reports in the FT that average businesses are facing extra costs of £100,000 to navigate this friction. The Minister has painted a very optimistic and active picture of what his department is doing, but the effects do not seem to be working through. The British Chambers of Commerce and Make UK say that nine out of 10 organisations have seen little progress over the last three years. Does the Minister accept that more has to be done and that perhaps he does have to engage with those committees he just derided?

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord. We have 5.5 million companies in the UK, of which 3 million are sole traders which operate underneath the VAT threshold. We have 2.5 million SMEs, of which 300,000 export. I meet exporters regularly and what I find when I do the Made in the UK, Sold to the World roadshows in Cardiff, Belfast, Lisburn, Glasgow, Dundee, Birmingham and around the country is that the SMEs are the most innovative when it comes to selling internationally. They are getting around these problems. DBT is working with them. We have a network of international trade advisers who come to their businesses regularly. We have the in-house teams in the embassies. We are working through these issues and, when we move through it, trade will be greatly expanded.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend recall that when the single market began in the early 1990s, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry at the time—it was me—made many bullish speeches about the beneficial impact this would have on our exports to the EU. Sadly, over the ensuing quarter of a century, our goods exports to the EU stagnated, growing by less than 1% per annum. By contrast, our exports under WTO terms to the rest of the world grew by 90%. Would it not be surprising if, given that membership was not a great benefit to our exports, leaving would do us much harm? Indeed, the Library figures show that our exports to Europe have held up better than our exports to the rest of the world since the referendum.

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for sharing his great expertise in this area. As we discussed yesterday, Europe’s share of global trade is declining: it has halved from one-third to 16%, and it is heading towards 10%. That is why we are striking trade deals around the world, such as the CPTPP and with India, which we could not do when in the EU. SMEs are enthusiastically taking full advantage of that. I met a company recently that sells high-end tennis wear to US consumers; when it was built during Covid, it could not sell to Australia because it was too expensive and difficult. Now that we have signed a free trade agreement with Australia, the margins have gone up, the time limit has come down and it is trading successfully there.

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

My Lords, small businesses have reported that access to export markets has been hindered lately by import licences and EU regulations and they have either retreated or considered retreating to domestic markets. In addition to the Minister’s meetings with exporters, have the Government made any assessment of the impact of such decisions, and what consideration have they given to possible ways of maintaining access to European markets for these businesses?

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord. As I said yesterday, Europe remains a massive part of our trade—41% with the EU 27 and 48% with the euro 34—and that will continue to be the case. However, the growth areas for our markets will be the US and the rest of the world. SMEs recognise that and are pivoting to the Indo-Pacific region. DBT is putting a lot of effort into helping them get there fast and profitably.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

Will my noble friend make sure that there is complete fairness between exports of food and agricultural products from Great Britain to the EU and those from the EU to this country? Will he update the House on the position of seed potatoes? Can we export them directly to the EU at this time?

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank my noble friend. Seed potatoes are a specialised area so I will need to write to her on that.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister says that trade with Europe is as important today as it was three years ago, and it is. However, the Government’s refusal to negotiate positively with the European Union is causing major problems for many industries. Is that not what we are hearing from every source other than the Government?

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

The reality, as we said yesterday, is that our economy is 80% services and 20% goods, but our exports are 50/50, because our goods are good. We make things that people, especially in Europe, want to buy. European countries are coming to us and saying that they want to get rid of these barriers because they want our goods imported. We are working on a country-by-country basis and it is improving all the time.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, yesterday the Minister admitted to me that UK trade with the EU has declined but said that UK trade in services and goods with the rest of the world was going “gangbusters”. I looked up two things this morning. First, UK trade with the EU has declined by 1.4%, which is regrettable, but UK trade with the rest of the world has also declined, by more than 4%. The second thing I looked up was the definition of “gangbusters”, which means “very well”. Would he like to correct the record? Given that EU trade with the rest of the world has gone up while ours has gone down, why does he think that that is the case?

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for that stat-fest. I said yesterday that the most difficult part of the pie chart is the 24% of our manufactured goods to the EU 27, but the other 70% is increasing in particular services, which have gone up by 19% over the last five years, relative to inflation. That is why I said that the rest of our exports are trading very well.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, will the Minister reassure the House that we will now spend far more time working with the European Union to enhance our trade with our closest trading neighbours, particularly bearing in mind that the EU represents a pretty high proportion of our trade?

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I can absolutely assure the noble Baroness of that. My DBT colleague in the other place, Minister Hands, is putting a huge amount of effort into breaking down these barriers with individual European countries, getting faster access and getting rid of the friction in Europe.

Temporary Accommodation Costs

Wednesday 31st January 2024 Lords Chamber

Question

15:39

Asked by

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact on local authority finances caused by the rising cost of temporary accommodation.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)]

My Lords, local authorities deliver vital homelessness services, and we recognise the pressure that the cost of temporary accommodation places on councils. As we announced recently, total core spending power for councils in England will rise by 7.5% for 2023-24 to 2024-25—an above-inflation increase. In addition, we are providing more than £1 billion over three years to councils through the homelessness prevention grant, with a further £120 million UK-wide funding in 2024-25, announced at Autumn Statement, to help prevent homelessness.

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

I thank the Minister for that Answer. I recently visited a secondary school in Manchester which now has to make significant bespoke provision out of its school budget for pupils who are living in bed and breakfast hotels. Those students are only a tiny fraction of nearly 140,000 children in temporary accommodation, which represents a 14% rise in the last year. What assessment, if any, have the Government made of this issue? Will the Minister commit to improving the data available so that the impact of living in temporary accommodation on children, particularly on their education, can be fully understood, and local authorities can be supported to enable their schools to address and minimise it?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I thank the right reverend Prelate for that question. No one wants to see families with children in temporary accommodation, and I am sure that every local authority across the country is doing everything they can to stop it happening. But sometimes, in emergency situations, it is important for the short term that those families have a roof over their head, a safe and secure place to go. We continue to work with the Local Government Association and local authorities on how many there are in such accommodation, and what more we can do—for instance, stopping people going into temporary accommodation in the first place. With the £1 billion grant for local authority homelessness prevention, we can also start to improve the quality of any temporary accommodation that we might have to use.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, the right reverend Prelate is quite right to draw attention to the pressure on local authority budgets. Given the hundreds of millions of pounds that we are spending on accommodating illegal migrants, might a possible solution for the right reverend Prelate and his colleagues be to go through Division Lobbies and support the Rwanda Bill?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I do not think that is within this Question. I will leave it to my noble friend to fight his corner on that one.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, many housing associations have been encouraged to develop homes for shared ownership, yet current trends illustrate that there has been a reduction in applications for this type of accommodation due to increases in mortgage rates and concerns regarding responsibility for maintenance—relating to the Grenfell Tower event. Can the Minister say whether capital could be made available for councils to purchase some of those empty properties and reduce temporary accommodation used for families?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

Through their powers, local authorities can look to purchase accommodation. In the last two Budgets, we have given special dispensation to local councils, first, on special borrowing and, secondly, on their moneys from the right to buy. It is up to local authorities to look at the ways they can provide those houses, but I will take that back to the department as an idea.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, as the Minister has rightly said, the Government are allocating £1 billion to reduce homelessness. Unfortunately, it is clearly not working, as homelessness is at a 25-year high, with the result that local authorities have to spend increasing proportions of their budget on their statutory duty—which they want to undertake—to house people without a home. For example, Eastbourne Borough Council has an annual budget of £15 million but is spending £4.9 million each year on its statutory homeless duty. That is not sustainable. What are the Government to do?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

As I have said, on 24 January, the Government announced additional measures for local authority funding worth £600 million, including £500 million of new funding for adult and children’s social care. It means that core spending powers will be up by £4.5 billion next year. This is what we are doing to help local authorities with all the pressures on their budgets at this time.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, local councils across the UK have warned that they are increasingly facing bankruptcy because of the rising cost of preventing homelessness. The National Housing Federation predicts that the number of children living in temporary accommodation will rise from 131,000 to 310,000 by 2045. It says that social housing waiting lists will grow to 1.8 million households by 2045—an increase of more than 50%. What practical steps are the Government taking to tackle the tremendous cost of temporary accommodation and homelessness?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I think I have already answered most of that. We have increased the amount of money going to the base budgets of local authorities across the country this year. We are giving money to prevent homelessness—which is as important as dealing with the issue. As I have said, we are giving money to councils so that they can build better properties and access better temporary accommodation. We are doing all we can in what has been quite a difficult economic climate. However, we are coming out of it, things are beginning to look better, and houses are being built.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend will not be surprised to hear that I think we should be building a lot more houses. In the meantime, should we not consider amending the Renters (Reform) Bill, now in another place, to increase substantially the amount of long-term institutional investment in private renting and relieve some of the pressures on the market that we have been hearing about?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right. The Government will support institutional investment in the private sector as well as in the social rented sector, provided, of course, that they stick to the rules and we can regulate them. That includes Build to Rent homes, which can boost supply and drive up standards. We are offering support through the £1.5 billion levelling up home building fund being delivered through Homes England to provide loans, equity investment and joint ventures to encourage such institutional investment companies and to support new Build to Rent developments. I think they will be a growing part of the market.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the Devon Housing Commission. I can confirm that the rise in temporary accommodation is not just in London and the conurbations. Devon is deeply affected, and that affects the budgets of local authorities. What progress is being made with the Government’s proposals to enable local authorities to limit the switching or changing of use of ordinary private rented accommodation into Airbnb holiday accommodation and short-term lets, which is having a huge effect in Devon and elsewhere?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

The noble Lord is right. I am aware of this issue. I do not have the up-to- date facts with me so, if he does not mind, I will write to him.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords, the last Labour Government almost did away with homelessness. It is a Conservative policy which has created this scandal for the British people. Does the Minister have a plan? If so, can she tell the House how much it would cost to end homelessness and how that money would be allocated? Otherwise, it will continue to be a blight on society.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I wish it were as simple as that. Yes, we have a plan to build more houses in this country—importantly, more affordable houses and houses for social rent. As I said, at a time when we have been through a difficult economic situation, we have more people needing temporary accommodation. It is important that we are there to pick up those who need emergency roofs over their heads. They need to feel safe and secure. Quite honestly, I think they would rather be in temporary accommodation than on the streets.

Media Bill

1st reading
Wednesday 31st January 2024 Lords Chamber

First Reading

15:50

The Bill was brought from the Commons, read a first time and ordered to be printed.

Post Office Network Subsidy Scheme (Amendment) Order 2024

Wednesday 31st January 2024 Lords Chamber

Maternity Leave, Adoption Leave and Shared Parental Leave (Amendment) Regulations 2024

Motions to Approve

15:50

Moved by

[Lord Offord of Garvel]

That the draft order and regulations laid before the House on 11 December 2023 be approved.

Relevant document: 8th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Considered in Grand Committee on 30 January.

Motions agreed.

Combined Authorities (Mayors) Filling of Vacancies Order 2017 (Amendment) Regulations 2024

Wednesday 31st January 2024 Lords Chamber

Combined Authorities (Mayoral Elections) Order 2017 (Amendment) Regulations 2024

Motions to Approve

15:50

Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

That the draft regulations laid before the House on 11 December 2023 be approved. Considered in Grand Committee on 30 January.

Motions agreed.

Telegraph Media Group: Proposed Sale to RedBird IMI

Wednesday 31st January 2024 Lords Chamber

Commons Urgent Question

The following Answer to an Urgent Question was given in the House of Commons on Tuesday 30 January.

“I am grateful to my honourable friend for tabling the Urgent Question for the second time in as many days. This is a media-focused day for me, as I will take the Media Bill through its remaining stages straight after the Urgent Question, so forgive me if one has made me insufficiently prepared for the other, or vice versa.

I am in the frustrating circumstance that I can say only what is publicly known and nothing of the specifics in answer to questions about the ownership of the Telegraph Media Group, which contains two of the world’s greatest newspapers—The Sunday Telegraph and The Daily Telegraph—and, in The Spectator, the oldest surviving weekly magazine in the world.

As honourable Members will be aware, my right honourable and learned friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has issued a public interest intervention notice in respect of the anticipated acquisition of the group by RB Investco Ltd, further to the notice issued in November in respect of the RedBird IMI media joint venture, which remains in force. She is leading this process and examining it in great detail and with great care, but it is a quasi-judicial process, involving the Competition and Markets Authority, which looks at jurisdictional and competition matters, and Ofcom, which will be reporting to her on public interest considerations in relation to the media, expressly accurate presentation of the news and free expression of opinion. Both reports will be returned on 11 March.

My right honourable and learned friend, as a very assiduous and diligent KC, is making sure that I, as Media Minister, am absolutely excluded from the process, because that is what it demands. I am not permitted to know about the scrutiny that is under way, or to interfere with it. She is also not permitted to take into account any political or presentational concerns in her deliberations, and we would not wish to cause there to be any chink of light here that would leave the process open to judicial review. That leaves me in an unenviable position: I face understandable expert probing by honourable Members, to whom I can offer no answer beyond what is in the public domain. However, this Urgent Question is as much an opportunity for honourable Members to make their concerns clear and their views known as it is an opportunity for me to answer them. So I say: be heard, loud and clear.

Straight after this Urgent Question, I will take the Media Bill through its remaining stages and make the case for that legislation in broad terms. I will argue that a free media, not interfered with by Government or indeed Governments, able to articulate and reflect a broad range of views, free to speak and create, and able to project to the world what democracy, a plurality of views and debate truly mean, is something important that we should value. In many respects, it underpins what we mean by a free society. Of course, we all know that; it is something that we repeat, automaton-like, in a way that risks giving rise to complacency. However, as I watch the actions of authoritarian states in these times of turbulence; as I see western democracies in a knot of angst over our values; and as I see our populations question, from the safety of these shores, whether our values still matter, I am reminded of the need to make that case again and again.

I cannot speak to the specific media ownership question—I know honourable Members will understand that, and will help me keep within the tramlines—but I can speak about media freedom; the need for media to be separate from political and government interference; the importance of a British voice, domestically and internationally; and the pride we can feel in media institutions, such as those in the Telegraph Media Group, some of which date back two centuries and drove changes in this nation as profound as the Great Reform Act. To this day, those who write for those institutions ask questions of us all with a rare inquisitiveness and preoccupation with truth.”

15:51

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, I find myself in the somewhat novel position of fiercely defending the interests of the Telegraph newspaper group and the Spectator in the interests of press freedom.

There was a fairly remarkable debate in the Commons yesterday because, on a Question about transparency and protecting democracy, the Minister’s answer was mainly that she could not answer any questions. I must gently say that this questioning is not designed to trip Ministers up; these are serious concerns, put forward thoughtfully by Members of all parties right across the House. I therefore hope the Minister will be able to answer two of those questions today. First, can the Minister point to any existing examples of a nation state with “differing media values”—as the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee delicately put it yesterday—acquiring a major newspaper of another country? Secondly, and in the light of the proposed sale, do His Majesty’s Government have any plans to review existing rules on media ownership, and if not, does the Minister think they should?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay) (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his questions and welcome him to the ranks of Telegraph and Spectator readers—I hope he will enjoy what he sees in their pages. He will understand that the Secretary of State is acting in a quasi-judicial capacity following the provisions laid out in the Enterprise Act 2002. She is considering whether mergers raise media public interest concerns. She has issued public interest intervention notices, reflecting the concerns that she continues to have that there may be public interest considerations in this case: the

“accurate presentation of news; and … free expression of opinion”

as set out in Section 58 of the Enterprise Act, which are relevant to this planned acquisition. I hope the noble Lord will understand that, as she is acting in a quasi-judicial capacity, it is essential that she does not take into account, and that there be no perception that she has taken or is taking into account, any political or presentational considerations. I therefore find myself in the same position as my honourable friend Julia Lopez in another place yesterday in being limited in what I can say while that quasi-judicial process unfurls.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, alluded to, the strength of feeling against this deal in the House of Commons yesterday was widespread and from all quarters of that place, and I would be surprised if there was much support in this House for the deal going ahead. Notwithstanding what my noble friend said about the Secretary of State acting in a quasi-judicial capacity in considering this matter, could he none the less give us an indication of how soon the Secretary of State can reach her decision? It seems to most people that the reasons for objecting to this deal are fundamental and points of principle, not necessarily points of technicality, and it should not require a great deal of time for her to reach her decision.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The public interest intervention notices which the Secretary of State issued trigger the requirement for the Competition and Markets Authority to report to her on jurisdictional and competition matters and for Ofcom to report to her on the specified media public interest considerations. She has asked them to submit their reports by 9 am on 11 March 2024.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones tabled an amendment on Monday on the issue of media plurality. The Minister’s reply was that:

“The Government are currently reviewing the recommendations on changes to the media public interest test in Ofcom’s 2021 statement”.—[Official Report, 29/1/24; col. GC 291.]


That is over two years ago. Following on from the previous contribution, when does the Minister now expect to respond, and can he not expedite this? Of course, cynics say that he will now be able to do this because it is the Daily Telegraph; if it was the Guardian or the Independent, we would be waiting much longer.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

As the noble Lord said, the Government are currently reviewing the recommendations on changes to the media public interest test that were set out in Ofcom’s 2021 statement on media plurality to ensure that we fully understand the implications of such changes, including on the industry, whatever the title. I am confident that this work will be completed soon, which will allow the Government to respond in due course.

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as an employee of the Daily Telegraph. May I ask the Minister a couple of points that I do not think depend on the quasi-judicial process? First, can he confirm that, when this was an auction organised by Lloyds Bank, before it took its current form, the Government stipulated that there should be no more than a 25% maximum owned by a Middle Eastern power? Can he also tell us whether, in the investigations going on, there is any investigation of this issue from a national security point of view?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I will be careful in what I say to the noble Lord because of the quasi-judicial role which the Secretary of State is following as she awaits the views of the Competition and Markets Authority and Ofcom, as I set out, but she issued a new public interest intervention notice on 26 January, following RedBird IMI making changes to the corporate structure of the potential acquiring entities of the Telegraph Media Group. That created a new limited partnership which would hold all shares in RB Investco, the proposed purchaser of the Telegraph Media Group. Having considered representations, the Secretary of State came to the conclusion that this corporate restructure created a new relevant merger situation and that, therefore, a new public intervention notice should be issued. The one she issued previously on 30 November in relation to the anticipated acquisition remains in force; that is because it covers a different relevant merger situation. Ofcom and the CMA will report on both to her by the deadline that I set out.

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that Stephen Welch, who is the independent director at the Telegraph and Spectator tasked with steering the sale through, has recently been named as a defendant in a case against the FTSE company ICG in the Dublin High Court? ICG and other defendants, including Stephen Welch, have been accused, inter alia, of intimidation, conspiracy and misrepresentation. Does the Minister agree that he should stand down from the Telegraph while he clears his name in this other case?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The Secretary of State is making her decision in a quasi-judicial capacity under the stipulations of the provisions of the Enterprise Act 2002.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

My Lords, I will not ask the Minister to respond about the Secretary of State’s role, but the Minister will be aware that assurances have been reported in the papers that RedBird IMI would provide an independent advisory board to ensure journalistic independence. Can he tell us his assessment of the word “independent” going alongside “advisory”? Will he contemplate what the impact of that board will be, given that Meta’s advisory board has done nothing to improve Meta’s standing?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I hope the noble Baroness will forgive me, but I think it is important that I and other Ministers do not opine on anything while the Secretary of State is making her decision in the capacity she is making it in. As I say, it is important that there should be no perception that she is taking into account any political or presentational considerations. She is, of course, considering all of the relevant information as set out under the Enterprise Act.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest, as many years ago I had to make decisions as a Secretary of State in a quasi-judicial capacity and I understand the difficulties the Minister has. But, for goodness’ sake, it is an absolute no-brainer that you do not wish a national newspaper to be owned, however indirectly, by what is proposed. Why should it take so long for Ofcom and everyone else to come to the obvious conclusion and put us all out of our misery?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

Ofcom and the Competition and Markets Authority have functions set out under the Enterprise Act. They are carrying out those functions at the moment. The Secretary of State looks forward to receiving their reports by the deadline that she has set out. She will then take into account what they recommend to her.

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Committee stage
Wednesday 31st January 2024 Lords Chamber

Committee (2nd Day)

Relevant documents: 7th Report from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, 1st Report from the Constitution Committee. Welsh Legislative Consent sought.

16:02

Clause 2: The victims’ code

Debate on Amendment 13 resumed.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the chance to participate—I thought I was going to be cut off at the knees at the end of the last session when the Committee was adjourned promptly. I also apologise to the Committee because I did not participate in the Second Reading debate. I intervene this afternoon to support Amendment 14 tabled by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and supported by my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier, the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the other amendments concerned with restorative justice or RJ.

I have quite a personal reason for this because when I came into your Lordships’ House some years ago, my best friend rang me to say that his best friend from school had just been made a chief constable and was very interested in this thing called restorative justice, and would I be prepared to go and meet him? I said I would, of course. I knew virtually nothing about RJ at that time. I went to meet the chief constable and he explained to me how he thought we were missing a trick in not using RJ more widely to deal with what he described as our lamentable record in reoffending.

He arranged for me to go and get involved in some cases, hear the facts and even, with the permission of the participants, sit in as a facilitator on one or two cases. I got a great deal of first-hand experience of how RJ might or might not work. All he said when I finished was, “Will you just repay me by raising RJ and speaking about it in the House of Lords in the future?”. So here I am this afternoon, keeping faith with my friend, the chief constable. From my great experience, then, the key issue—this important point was made by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries—was that it works only if each participant, on the two sides of the argument or the case, is prepared to get inside the head of the other. That was an important part of what I learned while I was there.

I will not talk at length about what I learned specifically, but it is worth briefly recounting one case. A confirmed drug user with a charge-sheet as long as your arm saw an empty house and thought he would break in, find a piece of electrical equipment, take it, flog it and use the proceeds to feed his habit. Unfortunately for him, the house was not empty. The owner of the house, a designer, had a small studio upstairs on the second floor. He came downstairs to find this man in the hall and asked, “What are you doing?”. The man said, “I’ve come to read the gas meter”. The owner said, “Bad idea, because there’s no gas in this house. We don’t have gas”. A struggle ensued, during which the owner of the house hit the man over the head with a flowerpot. There are pictures of the person with blood streaming down his face when the police arrived and arrested him.

From this unprepossessing, unlikely beginning, a case of RJ was introduced. The men met a few times then, as was inevitably right, the burglar got a custodial sentence. The men corresponded while he was in prison and a degree of agreement and understanding—the ability of both sides to put the past behind them and do better in future, from the point of view of the perpetrator —was arrived at. When I talked to the perpetrator, I asked, “What was it?”. He said, “You can see my charge-sheet. All I saw on it were names but, this time, when I met the owner of the house, he said, ‘Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve terrified my family. My two teenage daughters will no longer sleep in separate bedrooms upstairs; they share a room next door to me and my wife. My wife has every single door and window locked—everything locked. You have completely wrecked our security as a family. What do you think about that?’”. Although he did not put it this way, it was a bit of a lightbulb moment for him.

On the other side, when I talked to the owner of the house, he said, “When we began to talk to the chap, he had had a hopeless start. He had a single mum—not much of a single mum, really—and was in and out of care, with little to no educational achievement. Inevitably, his life was largely devoted to crime”. From these two understandings came an ability to work together; it put them, in particular the perpetrator, to an important and life-affirming task to live better and have a worthwhile lifetime.

That is a great, moving story but I said to the chief constable, “There must be a but”. He said, “Of course there’s a but”. He was anxious then, as I think I would be anxious today, not to put too much weight on restorative justice. He said, “There are two things you can do to make sure that RJ does better”. The first is that you need—these are the words from the briefing, not the chief constable—“voluntary and honest participation” by both sides. That is straightforward.

Not in the briefing is the second point that he made: you need expert, trained facilitators. Being expert and trained means, first, that you move the conversation forward but not so that you avoid tackling the awful, painful issues that lie at the heart of the problem; and, secondly, that you are tough enough to blow the whistle when you believe that somebody is not trying. This is not always easy to do because, sometimes, a bit of effort has been invested and people are reluctant to let the case go, but someone has to realise that there are cases in which people will, in the famous phrase, swing the lead in the hope of a reduced sentence. The facilitator needs to be well trained. As the chief constable would say, “A facilitator cannot take on too many cases because they’re quite emotionally exhausting if you get really stuck into these people’s lives”.

The chief constable, if he were standing here, would say, “I certainly would not want RJ to be presented as a silver bullet”—the point made by my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier. “Above all,” he would say, “I don’t want it to be presented as a cheap silver bullet because it isn’t—at least, not in the short run. However, if you can turn a number of cases round, the long-term savings and benefits to society are incalculable.

Our re-offending rates remain too high—the same situation as when I met the chief constable. We surely have an opportunity now to be imaginative in our thinking about how to reduce offending rates. We need new tools in our toolbox, and restorative justice would be an important one. I hope my noble and learned friend the Minister will react sympathetically to Amendment 14. That would give me great pleasure, because it would mean that I have kept faith with my friend the chief constable.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that his faith will be even better kept if he keeps on advocating RJ? Does he also agree that it has its limitations, one of which is that there is a need, in the case he has described, for drug addiction treatment to go alongside it in some way? One must look at the underlying causes, as he has well indicated.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

I could not disagree with that. I suspect that there are a whole host of issues behind habitual offending which we need to think about, of which drug addiction is one. People involved in this policy area are clearly more experienced than I am.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, this is the first group of amendments which really gets into victims’ rights—not just what is expressed in the victims’ code, but ensuring that they can access it. The noble Baroness, Lady Gohir, started the group with the important issue of a victim’s right to challenge decisions, including but not only relating to multiple perpetrators. I thank her for that, because that and some of the cultural issues she raised are important in ensuring that victims’ services are tailored to victims’ needs and are not a tick-box exercise.

I thank Restorative Justice for All for its briefing, and all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. I will not repeat it all, but we know that restorative justice is a well-established and evidence-based alternative that certainly does not let offenders off the hook; it is as difficult for offenders as it often is for the victims. Restorative Justice for All wrote to us because it is concerned about how long it has been since issues about the right to restorative justice were addressed. It goes back to an EU directive of 2012, yet there is still no absolute right available. That needs to be remedied.

Unfortunately, under this Bill there is no obligation for criminal justice agencies to inform harmed parties about restorative justice systems. When we come to later amendments, we will be fighting hard to ensure that that does become a requirement, because victims deserve no less. The other part of this group also talks about signposting of services. I am grateful to the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harris of Pentregarth, who believes that the perpetrators need restorative justice as much. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester said that being told there is a code is a start, but much more is needed. I suspect that the Minister will try to say that having such a system would be expensive. However, we know that not having the alternative is even more expensive not just in terms of the consequences for victims’ lives, but for the criminal justice system, parole and stopping recidivism. Without restorative justice, all those costs will continue to pile on.

I do hope that the Minister will bring us some good news. I gently remind him that in the costings for this Bill we were reminded that Part 4, on prisoners, will cost around £0.5 billion, but only a very token amount is allocated for victims’ services. Perhaps that balance is not yet quite right.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, as I often do, that we are now digging into how this legislation can be improved for victims. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Gohir, on raising the issue of the gap in proceedings whereby, if there are multiple perpetrators, some of whom are not charged and some of whom are, the victim does not have the right to challenge why people are not being charged. That clearly needs to be remedied, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s suggestion.

16:15

Amendment 15, to which I added my name, aims to ensure that victims are aware of and signposted to a full range of specialist services, including specialist advocacy support. I read that and thought we were having a “duh” moment: it is completely obvious that that is what should happen—why do we even have to say it? The reason why is that it currently looks like the onus is on the victim to search out the remedies and support they need. This amendment is about reversing that situation, and I would like to thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester for tabling it, even though it is obvious that this needs to happen. We need to say that, and we need the Government to look at how this legislation will ensure that it does.

We had a good exchange last week about the importance of restorative justice, which the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, mentioned just now. I think we all agree that of most importance are the use of the word “appropriate”, and making sure that those services are properly resourced and supported to ensure that this happens. We are keen to support these amendments, and I look forward to what the Minister has to say.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Bellamy) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken to this group of amendments. The Government appreciate the considerable work that goes into preparing amendments and arguments and bringing issues before this House.

By way of a brief reminder, in general terms the Government have a threefold approach to the Bill. The first is to set out general principles of the victims’ code included in Clause 2(3), supplemented by regulations in subsection (4). The second approach is to put the detail and the operational information that victims need in the code, rather than in the Bill. I commend to your Lordships the latest draft version of the code, published in June 2023, which sets out the 12 rights in a particularly user-friendly way. The third approach is to create a system whereby victims are aware of the code, and the relevant criminal justice bodies comply with their obligations under the code. The mechanism for this is set out in Clauses 6 to 10, supplemented by guidance under Clause 11.

I have reiterated that framework because, in the Government’s view, a lot of the debate we have had today is about what should be in the Bill and what should be in the code, in guidance or elsewhere in the framework. There may be no disagreement in principle about the importance of many of the things we are discussing, be it restorative justice or the right to object to a charging decision, but the question we are on now concerns the way the Bill should be drafted. The broad view of the Government on most of the amendments in this group and subsequent groups is that the matter is either already covered in the code or should be covered in the code, rather than being expressly on the face of the Bill. That is the Government’s broad position.

Turning to the amendments, I take first the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Gohir, relating to multiple perpetrators and the fact that in some cases if only one perpetrator is charged, the victim may be aggrieved because other perpetrators were not charged. First of all, this is a good example of how it should work; the principle of a right to challenge, from the victim’s point of view, is set out in Clause 2(9). The implementation of that principle in this context is in code right 6, which refers to the victim’s right of review scheme in respect of various police and CPS decisions. The noble Baroness rightly draws attention to an apparent lacuna in the CPS part of the scheme, which currently does not cater for the situation where only one of several perpetrators is charged. The Government are very happy to look again at that issue and to discuss with the relevant agencies how that lacuna should be addressed.

As the Government see it, this is a very good example, rightly drawn to public attention, of a possible gap in the code that should be addressed by making improvements to the code rather than putting the issue directly in the statute. The draft code itself, in its present form, will be subject to further consultation anyway under Clause 3 if and when the Bill is passed. That is essentially the Government’s position on Amendment 13.

I take next the important issue of restorative justice, of which the Government are wholly supportive. Amendment 14, in the name of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and Amendments 16, 17, 22, 32 and 52, in the name of, in particular, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, aim to ensure that on the face of the Bill victims should have access to restorative justice—that is the broad thrust of it—and that the Secretary of State should issue guidance about that.

The Government entirely accept that restorative justice is extremely important; again, I salute, if I may, the words of my noble friend Lord Hodgson in raising this issue so eloquently. However, important though it is, the Government do not feel that restorative justice should be elevated above all the other victim services by being specifically included in the Bill. Once you start including specific services in the Bill, either you have a very long list or you have to prioritise certain things. The Government’s view is that the structure should be that the Bill contains short principles, and almost everything else is in the code or guidance. To do otherwise is to introduce rigidity and might have the somewhat perverse effect of concentrating what are admittedly limited resources on some specified kind of support at the expense of other, equally valuable, kinds of support.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)]

I think we are all very sympathetic to the idea that a huge amount could go in the code and the guidance, certainly as far as restorative justice is concerned. But the third part of what the Minister said the purpose of this Bill was is to ensure that the criminal justice system knows what its responsibilities are. Surely some things could go in there, including restorative justice. Will the Minister look particularly carefully at the evidence produced by the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, about how at least 27% of people would have taken up restorative justice if they had been asked? Would he not come to the conclusion, perhaps, that it is only if it is on the face of the Bill that that situation will be remedied?

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, as the noble and right reverend Lord invites me, I will look again at that evidence and the whole argument. However, in relation to this aspect, noble Lords should be aware that access to all the supporting services and processes in the criminal justice system are already part of the principles under Clause 2(3). In the implementation of those rights, access to justice is already specifically provided for under right 3 in the present draft code, which, among other things, requires the police to provide all the information you need to exercise that right.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, the problem with Clause 2(2) is that it is followed by Clause 2(3), which starts by saying, “The victims’ code must” but then in all its sub-paragraphs says simply that things “should” be provided, so it is watered down. I apologise for being pedantic on this point but it goes to the heart of what the Minister is trying to do. I believe he is saying to us that there is enough in the Bill that will support victims in regulation, but the problem is that there is no watertight “must” in the Bill as it stands.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, I think we will come to the “must”/“should” point a bit later when we discuss the amendments proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti. If I may, I will deal with that issue in general, in an umbrella way, in that context.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I want to pick up the point made by the Minister about victim services going into the code rather than into the Bill. I feel I should apologise that although I have three degrees, none of them is in law—I often regret that these days—so perhaps I am wrestling with some technical questions here.

It seems to me that we are not just talking about restorative justice as a victim service. If you have been a victim of a crime, it goes to court, the police investigate and the criminal is punished; all those might be regarded as victim services but they are all in other Acts—they already exist as an absolute legal right that is laid down. What we do not currently have in any Bill is a right to restorative justice that is balanced. We are saying that restorative justice needs to be in there with an equal or at least appropriate level of weight, and it will not have that unless it is in the Bill.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, if I may say so, what one should put in the Bill and in the code are matters of judgment and balance. In relation to restorative justice, which we are on, there have already been extensive discussions in the other place. The Government have said, first, that the code should include the right of victims to receive more information about restorative justice, particularly at the point of sentence, and that the importance of restorative justice services should be included in guidance to police and crime commissioners under Clause 11. I think that partly meets, and maybe substantially meets, the point made by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, that you need to have in writing somewhere an emphasis on supplying restorative justice. The Government’s position on restorative justice is that that is a proper recognition of the importance of restorative justice.

One should also bear in mind in this context that restorative justice does not just happen; it also needs the consent of the offender, and is quite a delicate operation. You need a facilitator, and so forth. It is one of many services, mechanisms and procedures that are available. The Government’s position is that we should not spell out in the Bill all the mechanisms and procedures that are available but we should work hard to ensure that the code itself, the guidance thereunder and the arrangements for awareness that we will be discussing in due course together raise the profile of restorative justice so that it has its proper place in the system among other things. That is the Government’s position. No one is denying the importance of restorative justice. No one is saying it is a waste of time or should not be there; on the contrary, we are saying that its profile should be raised. The only argument is about how we do that, and Government’s position is that we do not do it by an amendment to the Bill itself.

16:30

On restorative justice, there was one particular point that I think the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, made that I could perhaps quickly deal with, if she would like me to. The right presently set out as right 3 in the code depends on the offence having been reported to the police. As the noble Baroness pointed out, you can be a victim without anything having been reported to the police. I venture to say that the sharp eye of the noble Baroness has identified a small anomaly in the wording there. It may, in the Government’s view, be more of a distinction without a difference, if I may put it that way, because it is most unlikely in practical terms that restorative justice could work without something being reported to the police. I thank the noble Baroness for the point and hope I have responded to it.

Broadly the same arguments apply to Amendment 15, proposed by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, in relation to signposting. It is perfectly clear, as a matter of principle, that victims should be given the information they need, be able to access services, and have the opportunity to have their views heard and so forth under Clause 2(3). The rest of the detailed signposting is, in the Government’s view, a matter for the code rather than the Bill. It is expressed at the moment in some detail under right 4 of the code. We will further have the obligation to promote awareness under Clause 6, and the guidance in that respect to be expected under Clause 11. The Government’s position is that this should result in a robust system for signposting of the kind the right reverend Prelate is quite understandably seeking.

Finally, I turn to Amendment 17, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, regarding a victims’ hub. The Government’s understanding is that several police and crime commissioners are already trialling this model. However, the victim services we are talking about may be provided in many ways, depending on the needs and resources of the area in question. Again, the Government do not feel we should elevate one particular way of doing it—however good, and despite its undoubted attraction—but leave it to local police and crime commissioners to organise their services in a way that is best for their local area. This is potentially a matter for guidance later on.

Given the remarks I have made in reply to the amendments, your Lordships may think it is a strength of the structure of the Bill that is has built into it inherent flexibility and opportunity for criminal justice bodies, wherever they are in the country, to learn from each other and adapt to their own particular circumstances.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I am quite a localist normally, but is this not the very point? A single point of contact that is not prescribing what is available locally but is “signposting”—to use the right reverend Prelate’s word—should be provided, so that any victim, anywhere, will know where to go. They might not necessarily take the step of taking advantage of it, but it seems to me pretty central to the way services are made known that something such as this should go into the Bill.

I should also say that my noble friend Lady Brinton was trying to email me something, but it has not come through, so she may have another point.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

I shall not be attempting to answer the email that has not yet come through until it does, but my general answer to the noble Baroness is that the whole thrust of the Bill is that each criminal justice body must take reasonable steps to promote awareness of the victims’ code among users of those services and other members of the public, et cetera. I cannot conceive how you could discharge that duty of raising awareness without informing people how to access or go to whatever services they need, so it is implicit in the operation that that sort of information will have to be provided. The way in which it is provided and the detail of it is not for the Bill but for the code and the guidance.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I am sorry to delay things, but there is one thing I am not clear about. Restorative justice at the moment is available for the suspect as an alternate to going to court, with the agreement of the victim. If the right is to be given to the victim to insist on restorative justice, is that an addition to a potential court appearance or an alternate? If the Crown Prosecution Service has decided that there will be a prosecution but the victim insists on their right to restorative justice, does that change that decision? I am not quite clear from the amendments, nor the Minister’s response, how that dilemma is resolved. It may be that I have just misunderstood, in which case I apologise, but I do not quite understand how that gets resolved.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, I may be as underinformed as anyone but my understanding is that the classic case of restorative justice is that once there has been a prosecution and a conviction, there is a process for some kind of reconciliatory interaction between the victim and the offender—for example, of the kind that my noble friend Lord Hodgson so eloquently described—in a way which enables both parties to process and come to terms with what has happened. It is not typically an alternative to having a prosecution in the first place, as I understand it, although that might arise.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I know there is an unwritten convention that noble Lords should not intervene when they were not able to be here at the beginning of a group, which in this case was last week, but I do not think that convention prevents me asking a question. Is it not really important that people in the prison system are able to understand what they can do for themselves, and for the victim, by engaging with restorative justice? That is one of the reasons I put my name to Amendment 14. The right honourable Stephen Timms in the other place is an excellent example: he has corresponded with, and is arranging to meet, the perpetrator of the attack on him many years ago. That will, I hope, assist them both—the perpetrator in her release and her future—and give some consolation through her coming together with the victim, who in this case was Stephen Timms.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, for his question. I would obviously not dream of making any procedural point, as it is a very fair question. I do not think it is clearly envisaged in the Bill or the code, as it stands at the moment, that it should be the perpetrator who is seeking some sort of restorative justice, rather than it being something that the victim is entitled to. The noble Lord’s point is well made and we should think further about it.

[Baroness Gohir (CB)]

I thank noble Lords who have spoken on this group and those who supported Amendment 13. I thank the Minister for his response on the concerns raised in the group, particularly on ways to address the gaps in victims’ right to review. Although I am encouraged, I remain concerned, so I hope that the Minister will be able to share a draft code and continue the discussions. For now, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 13.

Amendment 13 withdrawn.

Amendments 14 to 17 not moved.

Amendment 18

Moved by

[Baroness Coussins]

18: Clause 2, page 2, line 27, at end insert—
“(3A) Where interpreting and translation services are needed, the victims’ code must specify that specialist, qualified and experienced professionals must be engaged.”

[Baroness Coussins (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to the four amendments in the second group in my name, which are supported by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds and the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin. These amendments concern the issue of interpreting and translation in relation to the victims’ code. I gave an outline of my case at Second Reading, so I shall not of course repeat that today.

Since then, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy, has been kind enough to meet me to discuss my amendments. I am very grateful to him for taking the time to hear me out. I should first declare my interests as co-chair of the all-party group on modern languages, and vice-president of the Chartered Institute of Linguists. I am indebted to the chartered institute, to the National Register of Public Service Interpreters and to the Bell Foundation for their helpful background briefings, constructive proposals and hard evidence of why these amendments are needed.

Amendment 18 adds an extra specification to the face of the Bill about what the victims’ code must do, in addition to what is already listed in Clause 2(3). The current interim code states that victims have the right of

“access to interpretation and translation services”

if needed.

As a technical aside, the word currently used in the code is “interpretation” rather than “interpreting”. However, I have used the word “interpreting” as it is the more accurate word and the word already used in other MoJ contexts. I have discussed with the Minister why this word should be brought into the text of the code itself. In case other noble Lords are beginning to nod off and think that I am splitting hairs unbearably, I will explain. The word “interpretation” implies analysis and paraphrasing, whereas the word “interpreting” explicitly means repeating in another language exactly, accurately and only what the speaker has said, without any commentary, advice or suggestions—all of which would be totally unprofessional and anathema to any properly trained and qualified interpreter.

With the technical detail over, I go back to Amendment 18. It is vital that this overarching requirement be enshrined in the Bill and not left to the code, guidance or regulations. As I said at Second Reading, it is completely unacceptable that unqualified, underqualified or inexperienced individuals should be used as interpreters, especially in situations which are dangerous, sensitive, emotional or otherwise challenging for victims.

We know from thoroughly documented experience in the criminal justice system, and other areas of the public sector such as the health service, that a general or vague commitment to interpreting and translation services does not always deliver what is needed or required in practice. If it is left to guidance only, we also know from the NHS experience that there is no monitoring of whether the guidance is observed. Public service interpreters are specialist, qualified and trained professionals. A member of the family does not count. A teenage child certainly does not count. A neighbour does not count. A court official who happens to speak the same language at home does not count. Google Translate certainly does not count.

Put simply, fair access to justice for non-English speakers should be a legal right, not a guideline, recommendation or piece of good practice advice. If the need for a professionally qualified interpreter is stated only in a code or piece of guidance, it is in practice effectively optional. If it is on the face of the Bill, it becomes mandatory and enables us to put a stop to bogus or unqualified people pretending to be interpreters. In the world of public service delivery, that makes all the difference.

We know from various surveys, including one commissioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, that awareness that the code even exists is at very low levels. How much lower must the awareness levels be for people with poor or no English?

At the same time, different scenarios might legitimately demand different levels of qualification or experience. This is why the MoJ, in the light of discussions that I held with the Minister’s predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, over the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, embarked on a thorough independent review of the qualifications and experience required of court and tribunal interpreters. I believe that it is close to publication, in time for the issuing of the next invitation to tender for contracted-out language services.

16:45

So please let us not fall into the trap with this Bill of the left hand of the MoJ not knowing what the right hand is up to. Let us have a coherent system, without contradictory provisions for language services in the criminal justice system. A victim giving a witness statement in her home, on the street or in the workplace must have the same right of access to appropriately qualified and experienced professional interpreting as the victim giving evidence in court.

My amendment does not propose specifying exactly which qualification for which type or what level of complexity of case we are talking about, as this will vary and must be carefully worked out in a detailed discussion involving all stakeholders. I learned my lesson from the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, that that degree of detail is not appropriate for a Bill—but it is vital to be absolutely clear, as in my amendment, that a non-negotiable bottom line must be that only specialist qualified and experienced professionals be engaged.

I would hope that, when it comes to regulations, the MoJ, whether dealing with courts or victims in other scenarios, will at least match the criteria adopted by the police-approved interpreters and translators scheme, known as PAIT, which uses the level 6 diploma in public service interpreting as a default standard and has adopted the code of conduct agreed by the National Register of Public Service Interpreters. At the moment, neither the police scheme nor the MoJ currently requires interpreters to be on the national register, despite its expertise in standard setting. But the CPS does, so the requirement is potentially worth keeping under review.

The next two amendments in this group, Amendments 25 and 33, simply tidy up and complete the need to be explicit and avoid the all too frequent outcome of overlooking the needs of victims whose first language is not English. Amendment 25 would guarantee that, when the draft of the new victims’ code is published, it is published in a range of languages in addition to English. We know that the current version is available in 15 other languages, but approximately 300 languages are spoken in the UK. I am not suggesting for a minute that we have translations permanently on the shelves in all these languages, but it would be sensible to have some built-in bespoke flexibility to determine at the time how many and which other languages would be helpful.

For example, we know that there are some rare languages for which there is not even a public service interpreting qualification, even though there is a demand for those languages in the public sector. The national register has strict protocols on the criteria for engaging interpreters in these circumstances. Demand may vary significantly from one area to another, so flexibility is essential, and my amendment would ensure that this is not overlooked.

Similarly, Amendment 33 would simply require criminal justice bodies providing services in any police area, when taking steps to promote awareness of the code, to include in their target groups those whose first language is not English. Until that becomes second nature, which evidence from the Bell Foundation and others shows us it is not, the obligation needs to be in the Bill.

The fourth and last of my amendments, Amendment 47, is to Clause 11(2)(b), which deals with the guidance on code awareness and the way in which information is collected. The subsection specifies that particular attention be paid to data relating to

“children or individuals who have protected characteristics within the meaning of the Equality Act”.

My amendment would add to that list the words

“and people who have a first language other than English”.

This is because spoken language, or linguistic diversity, is not one of the protected characteristics under our equality legislation, and yet it is self-evident—again, from Bell Foundation research and much else—that inequalities, ranging from lack of information to a diminished quality of justice and human rights, may often still occur. Once again, unless proactively and explicitly required, we will not have data to tell us for whom, how often, in what form, in what circumstances and in what languages the services of interpreters and translators are needed, and therefore what provision—in human or budgetary resources—needs to be available.

I hope the Minister will see fit to encourage His Majesty’s Government to accept all four of my amendments, as I believe they will all improve the Bill and enable the Government better to achieve what they clearly wish to achieve for the benefit of victims—all victims. I beg to move.

[The Lord Bishop of Leeds]

My Lords, I apologise that I was not able to be present at Second Reading—the day job had to take precedence. I rise to endorse thoroughly what the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, said in her speech. I wish not to speak to each amendment but to add a bit of heft to what she said. I do not exactly declare this as an interest, but I was a professional linguist before I went into the Church, so language has been important to me right the way through.

We heard in the Minister’s response earlier that victims must get the information they need. They also must get it in a form they are able to read, or hear, and understand. In this country language is often misunderstood or not taken as seriously as it ought to be, or as one might find in some countries in continental Europe, for example, where you live on boundaries and have to operate in a number of languages. Because we are an island nation, this is something we do not necessarily experience.

Having trained as a translator and interpreter—these are very different skills and professions—I understand the problems of inaccuracy and of getting even nuance wrong. We are talking here about victims who are already seriously disadvantaged. That disadvantage, that damage, should not be exacerbated by running the risk of them simply not being able to be understood, or to understand what is being represented to them.

There is something here about professionalism. If noble Lords do not believe that this is important, I hope they watched the funeral of Nelson Mandela, where the deaf interpreter simply went awry—it looked like he was conducting an orchestra, but badly. He said afterwards that he was simply overawed by the experience, but many people doubted that he had the skill to do what he had been signed up and paid to do. It really matters. I found it very entertaining but not very edifying, so I emphasise the need for professionalism in this.

The noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, referred to Google Translate, which most linguists go to for a bit of a laugh and to see what it suggests. When I lecture in German at German universities, I often run my texts through it for the entertainment value, but it is rarely accurate. Now we have translation by AI systems—Google Translate is that, really—which can be entertaining too. They can be helpful if you need a bit of a boost, but you would not rely on them for something that was important for life and death.

That is why the national register is so important. My understanding is that this country has a shortage of not only linguists—I could say much more about that—but qualified linguists able to go on the register and do what we are asking them to do. That triggers a different question. We cannot just say that we do not have the qualified people and therefore must make do; we have a bigger challenge to emphasise the importance of language learning, which has many knock-on effects for how we understand people and culture. As I often repeat, the former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, when giving advice to younger Germans asking him about going into politics, wrote: “Don’t even consider it unless you have at least two foreign languages to a competent degree, because you can’t understand yourself and your own culture unless you look through the lens of another. For that you need language, because language goes deep”. Some things cannot be translated; you need a degree of expertise to deal with them.

There is a wider issue, but I will not bang that drum any further now. This is fundamentally a matter of justice. If victims are to be heard and to hear accurately, this ought to be in the Bill.

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for bringing forward this amendment. When I spoke at Second Reading, I did not realise that this dimension might arise—clearly it can, and it is important. I address the Committee as one of a small minority here who do not have English as their first language. In fact, I calculated over the Easter Recess that I speak in English less than 10% of the time. This Bill will impact not just England but Wales, where Welsh is an official language. I do not see much evidence in the Bill of any adjustment being made for that purpose.

Fundamentally, the Bill deals with victims. There are perhaps four groups of victims for whom the language dimension is critical. First, there are children; at home in Wales, a large number of children—certainly tens of thousands—have Welsh as their first language. They acquire English as a second language as they get older, but under pressure they will no doubt want to revert to their first language, which is the natural language in which they express themselves. Another group of great importance to me and a number of other noble Lords is disabled people. When put under stress, they need assistance. If there is additional stress from dealing in a language that is not their first, they will need assistance.

That is also true for elderly people. As people get older, they revert to their first language, particularly those who have had strokes. People from Wales have found themselves in residential homes in the south of England; the staff think they are speaking gibberish, but they are reverting to their first language. That group also needs to be brought in. Finally, there is the general group of people who are under stress, whatever their age or background, and need to be helped to express themselves in their first language. This is important in Wales. Reference was made a moment ago to the Children’s Commissioner. We have our own Children’s Commissioner for Wales and our own framework, but I am not sure that the Bill takes that on board. Clearly, provision needs to be made.

The day has now passed when an ad hoc translator would be whistled up for a court case from those who happened to be around—usually a minister or a teacher, who could roughly translate what was being said. I have mentioned before in this House how many people over the centuries—although not in this or the last—were hanged without understanding a word of what was going on in the court that declared them guilty.

17:00

That is an extreme situation, but victims under stress and pressure need the explanation and discussion in a language they understand. In Wales, there are minority, inward-moving communities with a whole host of other languages, as there are in large cities around England. Many of those communities have children who speak their own language and Welsh; they acquire English at a later stage.

I support these amendments—and I thank the noble Baroness for the work she has done on them—because of their importance in ensuring that justice is provided for the victims and those who are vulnerable. In the context of Wales, we need that dimension to be brought on board. I will be very interested to know, when the Minister winds up this short debate, what consultation there has been with people in Wales, and if there has not been any, what he proposes to do between now and Third Reading.

[Baroness Newlove (Con)]

My Lords, I support of all four of the amendments and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, for a thorough explanation. We are talking about victims in the criminal justice system understanding their rights and entitlements in so many languages. We are talking about understanding the legality of words in the English language, and it is no wonder we find these barriers as we go through the system.

The first right under the victims’ code is:

“To be able to understand and to be understood”.


That seems fairly basic, but for many it is not their experience. I have met many victims of other nationalities who have said the same. I am grateful to the VAWG sector communication barriers working group for its guidance, and in particular to the late Ruth Bashall, who was the CEO of Stay Safe East and a tireless advocate for deaf and disabled survivors. They have consistently raised how disabled victims and other victims of crime—for example, those with English as a second language—are severely disadvantaged in accessing justice by the lack of accessible information, communication support and physical access to buildings or facilities. In this context, disabled victims and other victims have fewer rights than suspects, who have some basic rights under PACE—for example, the right to an interpreter.

Though some adjustments, such as the right to an intermediary, are contained in the victims’ code, they are rarely used. I am disappointed that, six years on from my report looking at the availability of intermediaries, A Voice for the Voiceless, I am still hearing that there are far too few intermediaries to meet the demand, and that this is causing significant delays, with the victim sometimes simply withdrawing.

I often hear that information provided to victims is inaccessible. Both my predecessor, Dame Vera Baird, and I have directly asked the criminal justice agencies to provide victim information in clear, accessible language, as well as in Easyread, BSL and other language versions. All too often, communication with victims is lacking, and there is still a great deal of work to be done by agencies to ensure that victims understand and are understood. It is vital that the criminal justice system is accessible to all victims of crime and that they receive the communication support they need. As a first step, the code itself must be accessible. Although, commendably, the Government took steps to make most recent iteration of the code easier to understand, as well as publishing Easyread, translated and children’s versions, it is still not accessible for a large number of victims. The Government must ensure that the code is accessible to all victims of crime.

I want to end on a personal story from a victim who was raped and trafficked from Albania. She was disabled. In Albania, if you are born disabled, your body parts are very valuable, so a baby tends to be hidden if he or she is disabled. She reported the rape when she was in this country and rehoused. She went to a police station. The police looked for an interpreter. They found one who had the same dialect but who was actually from the trafficking gang. She was mortified. She simply could not believe that she had gone to the police station and that that interpreter was taking over her complaint. She withdrew it.

It is not simply about producing someone who can speak a language; it is about understanding a dialect. We need professional people who can help victims through our criminal justice system.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, particularly on the collection of evidence in criminal cases. She is arguing for precision, accuracy and consistency. At the moment, the system suffers in respect of all those three criteria.

The establishing of truth relies on the establishing of accurate evidence. It usually looks for accuracy, precision and consistency, but if we have any doubt about interpretation of another language, all those three things suffer. There is a concern that where the standard of interpreters is not established to a high and consistent level, there is a risk that the obtaining of evidence is damaged. This matters particularly for the police in the initial obtaining of evidence—which is usually an oral account. Eventually, the oral accounts have to be reduced to writing and the written evidence then fed back to the witness or victim to establish whether it relates to what they have told the police officer. If there is a difference in how those are interpreted, the person may not have a proper, accurate account of how they described their experience.

A secondary issue is that if there is not a consistent standard, different interpreters may help the police and the victim during different parts of the process. They may help the victim with the initial account; then there may be a written statement. After an interview with the suspect, the evidence may be checked. It is important that the interpreter is the same person or, if not, that there is a common standard of interpretation. Otherwise, there is a risk that the truth is not established.

Precision matters in obtaining the victim’s or witness’s account. It also matters in interviews to establish the suspect’s account. It matters generally in evidence collection because the person who holds the evidence may not be the person who is going to give it. You need to establish whether the CCTV and all the other digital evidence that is available now is what you want, and to make sure that it is accurate.

Finally, precision matters for juries. They will not only want to hear what is said in court; they will want to compare it with the first account as well. If there is inconsistency, they will want to understand it. If we are not careful, they may judge the victim or the witnesses harshly. In turn, that may impact on the suspect. It is vital that consistency and precision are there. As the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, said, it matters also for the care of victims and witnesses. If we do not understand how people are living, the challenges they face and the nature of their lives, it is very hard to do what this Bill is trying to establish, which is consistency in care for victims in a way which supports them beyond the event and beyond any criminal prosecution.

The noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, brought out well that this is not only about the interpretation of language—that is, what happened, who said what or who did what—it is also about the legal process. An interpreter may be well qualified to interpret language but may not always understand the legal process. Of course, the victim relies on them to understand both. They need good advice to understand how the process will affect them and its impact; for example, in a court case. The evidence may be challenged in a court case to establish its accuracy, but the victim may take this as an attack. In particular, somebody who has a second language may have an experience of another criminal justice system which may not be like ours. It may be more adversarial—sorry, it could not be any more adversarial than ours, could it? It may search for the truth in a different way. They certainly need to understand how our system works if they happen not to have experienced it before.

For all those reasons to do with evidence collection, precision and accuracy, I support the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins. She has been pushing this point for a while. It has not been established; it is time it should be, and this is a great opportunity to do it.

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I also support Amendment 18, which would require the code to provide for interpreting and translation services and, more importantly, for the standards to be expected of the professionals supplying those services.

Good and reliable interpreting and translation is an increasingly necessary part of the justice system in all areas. It is also an expensive part of the system, for which value for money should be important. Most interpreters are good and efficient, but others, regrettably, are less so. A long time ago when in practice, I recall a particularly impatient interpreter helping me and my client who pulled me aside and urged me to get my client to plead guilty, which I politely declined to do. That completely undermined the confidence that either of us could have in that particular interpreter.

At present, as I understand it, court interpreting services are obtained through agencies used by the Courts & Tribunals Service. If this amendment or something like it is enacted, I would assume that the same agencies would be used. In any event, I would hope that care is taken to stipulate, ensure and review the efficiency of the agencies used and the quality of the work they do.

Finally, I would also hope and expect that this amendment, if approved, would be understood to be wide enough to help those requiring sign language and lip-reading assistance. If not, will those requirements be expressly covered by the code?

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, I also apologise for being unable to be present for Second Reading. I will speak very briefly in view of the comprehensive opening speech on this group of amendments by the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, and the speeches from all other noble Lords. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, for a sustained campaign on the need for professional interpreting and translation services. We have travelled this road before in other contexts, but I hope that the Government will pay the closest attention to her arguments and her justification for these amendments.

The first point is an obvious and a human one. Just as for witnesses, complainants and defendants in formal criminal justice proceedings, so for victims in understanding the code and in securing, receiving and understanding services, the experience of being a victim is extremely traumatic, emotional, often unique in the victims’ experience, and it is very difficult for the victim to comprehend what is happening to them—in short, it is difficult to understand in a human way. These problems are all the more acute for victims whose first language is not English.

However, the main point that the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, made, and the point of these amendments and the conclusion, while in the context of that initial human point, is thoroughly supported by her arguments. Complete understanding of the language is vital. What is needed, therefore, is a service that as closely as possible diminishes and removes language barriers, so what is written and stated in English is understandable to the victim, and what is written and stated in the victim’s native language is understandable in English. That can be reliably achieved only if the translation is full, accurate and direct.

The stress the noble Baroness places on the distinction between “interpreting” and “interpretation” is of the greatest importance. It is crucial that, just as in courts, when evidence, submissions or judgments are delivered, in the context of victims’ needs the translator’s or interpreter’s view must not be interpolated between the service provider and the victim or between the code and the victim. Translation and interpretation should convey exactly and straightforwardly what is said or written to and by the victim.

There is a risk, which is well known in courts and other contexts, that when non-professional, unqualified or inexperienced translating or interpreting services are involved, the directness and accuracy are compromised, not just because mistakes of meaning may be made but because the translator’s or interpreter’s own ideas and understanding colour, embroider or develop the meaning of what is written or of what is being said. This process may, and often does, reflect the best of intentions on the part of the interpreter—the intentions of those who are genuinely trying to help.

We should not underestimate the temptation for people, including professional service providers, looking for understanding or expression in order to seek or accept help when that is well-meaning but unprofessional, and the risk that those good intentions may involve. That risk, whether well-intentioned, or, as in the example of the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, of the interpreter in the police station who was effectively on the other side, always needs to be minimised, and these amendments offer a good chance of achieving that minimisation.

17:15

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendments, and I particularly emphasise the points we have heard about having people with expertise. The right reverend Prelate spoke very clearly about this.

This can also be very much affected by dialect-inflected accents which mean that it can be very hard for everyone, including members of the judiciary, to understand what is being said. I spoke before in your Lordships’ House about an occasion where I actually heard the word “car” misread as “cow”. Of course, you do not really want a collision with either, but the Highway Code can deal with only one of those two. In the interests of justice, clarity is important and interpreters must be well trained. The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, mentioned Wales, where I spend a lot of time. Of course, there is a huge area here for confusion. We need people who are to a certain extent site-specific. For example, if you are in Newcastle or Liverpool, you may well—if you come from London and, like me, from the BBC—have trouble understanding exactly what is going on. But it is imperative in the name of justice that people are well-trained and can really do the job properly, so I strongly support my noble friend’s amendments and I very much look forward to what the Minister has to say about them.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Benjamin would have liked to speak from these Benches today, but, unfortunately, she cannot be here. She told me that, in signing all these amendments, she supports the attempt of the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, to strengthen interpretation, in particular, but also access to services in other languages. Much has been said, and I will not repeat it, but we need to commend the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, who has from every possible aspect in your Lordships’ House—whether in debates or on legislation—ensured that we think about the importance of other languages that are not our first or our own. One of the key things that has come through this short debate is that that relates to not just the traditional languages that we may have perceived through learning at school or going on holiday but the rights of people who are deaf to have BSL interpreters; to have easy-read or particular interpreter support for children or those with learning difficulties is equally vital.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds reminded us that this is all about fair access for victims, and he talked about “the culture”. I worked at Cambridge University for 20 years in various roles and on two or three occasions had to help foreign-language students when they had been victims of crime. They had good English, but they did not have confident English to deal with what had happened to them in the aftermath of an incident, let alone understand the culture of how our system works—whether it is the police or the criminal justice system. Having an interpreter to whom they can explain what has happened and in return to hear how the process will happen—importantly, that must neutral, as many noble Lords have mentioned—is vital.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, for raising the issue of vulnerable groups because that is important too. He might be amused to know that I am now the step-grandmother of a six year-old child for whom Welsh is very much her first language—I am trying to catch up. A child of that age just speaks the language as it comes and even in the family environment it can throw you when you do not understand. How much more important is that when you are navigating a system such as the criminal justice system?

My noble friend Lord Marks set out the important reasons for the criminal justice system that we professionalise language and interpretative services. We absolutely support that on these Benches and I hope the Minister will listen favourably to all the comments that have been made so far.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, for this group of amendments, to which I have put my name. I echo the point that she has had a sustained campaign on this through a number of Bills and I very much hope that this group of amendments will reinforce her campaign, if I can put it like that, and the Minister will look at it favourably. She gave various examples of shortcomings in the court system where interpretations go wrong and I have had personal experience of every single one of the shortcomings that she highlighted. I suspect that anyone else who has worked in the courts, particularly in our metropolitan cities, will have experienced those shortcomings as well.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds spoke about his work as a linguist and I think I am right in saying that he is a Russian linguist—he is nodding his head a bit. It reminded me of when I understood the difference between interpretation and interpreting. That was when I was working in Ukraine and had a Russian interpreter interpreting for me. She was so fluent that she could talk simultaneously in whatever conversation was happening and, she told me, she also did her shopping list in her head at the same time. That is how fluent she was. There really are some remarkable people who do this work. The other thing I learned through various aspects of my life is that there are specialisms within interpreting and it is very important that you recognise the limits of the interpreters one is dealing with at any particular time.

This brings me on to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove. She gave the example of an Albanian gang member who was involved in interpreting in a case of alleged rape. One thing I have become aware of in dealing with domestic abuse, particularly when it is minority groups with minority languages, is that you have to be very cautious about who the interpreter is. The information that comes through the interviews with the lawyers and the like can easily leak out into the wider community of that group and can undermine the woman in whatever legal remedy she is seeking. It is a point that I absolutely recognise.

The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, talked about the processes themselves and the noble Lord, Lord Meston, talked about value for money. He also spoke about sign language and lip-reading, both of which I have experienced in court. It is quite an exhaustive process and I understand that it is quite expensive when you have to have relays of sign language interpreters when one is dealing with particular cases. Nevertheless, there is a fundamental point underlined in this group of amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, about access to justice and we need to make sure that the standards are as high as possibly can be obtained.

The noble Lord, Lord Marks, said, “Don’t underestimate good intentions when interpreters are interpreting”. Many times, I have seen them try to help understanding by overexplaining things, which actually undermines one side or another of the case. I understand that this is a difficult, sensitive issue but I very much hope that, when he comes to reply, the Minister will give as much reassurance as he possibly can—both that standards are kept at the highest possible level and that all necessary procedures and protocols are properly reflected—so that the aspirations of the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, can be fully met.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, for raising this important topic. I join in the general commendation of the way in which she presented her amendments and the way in which noble Lords have subsequently supported them.

In relation to the remarks of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds, I will, if I may, trespass on your Lordships’ indulgence. Let me say that, having had to work for several years in an entirely foreign language and an entirely unfamiliar legal system, I am quite conscious of the difficulty that one has. There comes a point—in my experience, at least—when you get stuck between two stools and you cannot say anything in either language in trying to express yourself. So the subject matter of what we are discussing is well understood.

Perhaps we might start with the common ground. It goes without saying that interpreting—I emphasise that word—and translation services must be of the highest quality and clarity in the criminal justice system, as well as tailored to the victim’s needs. As far as the Ministry of Justice is concerned, interpreting and translation services are provided under contracts where the various standards and requirements are laid down. As I think the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, pointed out, those arrangements have been subject to ongoing and extensive review, which I hope will be completed shortly—at least not before long—to ensure that we have the highest quality. Obviously, the general objective is fairly self-evident: in the justice system, you must have a high standard of interpreting and translation. For the CPS, interpreters must be on the National Register of Public Service Interpreters. That is the first area of common ground.

The second area of common ground is that, for those whose first language is not English, the right to understand and be understood is enshrined in the code. It is right 1—the most important right of all—and is set out on page 15 of the present draft of the code, which says that

“providers must communicate in simple and accessible language and all translation or interpretation”—

I take the point that it says “interpretation” but probably should say “interpreting”—

“services must be offered free of charge to the victim”.

So this is recognised as a right. If it is not always achieved, as the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, feels, that is, in effect, why we are here. The whole structure of the Bill aims to remedy possible defects and create a system in which we can raise standards progressively and consistently across the country, commissioning bodies can learn from each other and we can improve the service available to victims, generally speaking; that is an operational issue rather than an issue of principle. No one is disputing the broad thrust of the comments that have been made.

Here, once again, we come to what is in some ways the philosophical issue behind everything that we have been discussing: to what extent should we introduce matters in the Bill and to what extent should we deal with the operational and detailed aspects in the code or in guidance? On that point, the common ground tends to be a little more limited, if I may say so.

17:30

Taking Amendment 18 first, it is in Clause 2, which is the keystone of the Bill. Clause 2(3) provides that victims must be provided with information to help them to understand the process. However, do we in the Bill, on the face of the principle, need to refer specifically to interpreting and translation services? The Government’s position at the moment is that the position of those who are not entirely comfortable with English as a first language is a matter that should be dealt with in the code and does not qualify for specific mention in those very generally expressed principles in the Bill.

As a corollary to that, whatever may be the defects in the interpreting services that are currently provided by the courts and the strength of those services, this Bill is not the right vehicle with which to regulate interpreting services or to root out bogus interpreters. That is for other measures in other contexts. So the Government’s view on Amendment 18 is that the victims there referred to are already covered by right 1 of the existing code. They are not persuaded that the arguments are strong enough to merit a specific amendment to Clause 2.

Amendment 25 would require any consultation on the code, under Clause 3, to be carried out in a range of languages. As the noble Baroness herself emphasised, the existing code is now published in 15 of the most used languages in this country. An impartial observer might say that it was quite a creditable achievement, frankly, to publish something like this in 15 languages. And that is apart from English and Welsh—of course it is published in Welsh and of course consultations are carried on in Welsh. Addressing the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, I say that, if there is any particularly Welsh aspect, of course it should be fully taken into account. I entirely accept that point.

However, translating a consultation into a range of languages is somewhat different from translating a code into a range of languages. Across government, consultations in one form or another happen daily and are invariably published in English and Welsh— and very often in British Sign Language as well. As a matter of principle, the Government do not consider that there is a case for publishing such consultations in languages other than our two working languages, English and Welsh—and nor do they consider that there sufficient grounds to make an exception in this particular Bill as far as the consultations are concerned.

Amendment 33 relates to the duties of criminal justice boards to raise awareness under Clause 6. Amendment 47 relates to guidance: the duty that applies to all victims, regardless of their language. That duty to raise awareness already applies, irrespective of what the first language of the victim is. How criminal justice bodies are to do that under Clause 6 will be subject to statutory guidance under Clause 11. It is certainly the Government’s expectation that such guidance will refer to the needs of non-English speakers. How can we raise awareness without addressing the situation of victims who do not speak English as their mother tongue?

In answer to the reassurances that have been sought about how that guidance is constructed and what its content is, I am very happy to consider, with quite an open mind, what should be in that guidance and how we should go about making sure that criminal justice bodies are fully apprised of the need to reach victims whose first language is not English; that is the Government’s position on this group of amendments.

[Baroness Coussins (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who spoke in support of my amendments in this group. I also thank the Minister for his reply. He drew a distinction between principles, which he said should be in the Bill, and operational guidance. I would argue that surely it must be a non-negotiable, bottom-line principle that interpreting and translation services should be provided by qualified trained professionals; that to me sounds like a principle. An example of an operational guideline would be specifying a level of diploma qualification for a particular category of case, situation or scenario. So I urge the Minister to be emboldened by the unanimous support around the Chamber for this set of amendments and to negotiate for a bit more room for manoeuvre, particularly on Amendment 18.

To answer his question about Amendment 25 and why we should have consultations in translation, the surveys conducted by the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, showed that awareness of the code was very low. If we want to know what all victims, not just native English speakers, think about it, we need to consult properly, not partially.

I will beg leave to withdraw my amendment at this stage, but I fully expect to come back at a later stage to press further. I hope that, in the meantime, the Minister might agree to meet me again to see whether we can find any of that room for manoeuvre.

Amendment 18 withdrawn.

Amendment 19 not moved.

Amendment 20

Moved by

[Baroness Brinton]

20: Clause 2, page 2, line 36, at end insert—
“(5A) Regulations under subsection (4) must make provision for a person to be able to obtain free of charge, on request, a transcript of a trial in which the person was involved as a victim.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment aims to provide victims of crime with a right to free transcripts for the trial in which they were involved.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I have tabled Amendment 20 and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, for signing it. The background to this amendment is that victims and their family members often feel that they are bystanders in the justice process, unable to have their voices heard and sometimes actively dissuaded from having any involvement in proceedings. We believe that open justice means transparency for the public, but even more so for the victim, because they have arguably the most vested interest in seeing justice done.

My honourable friend Sarah Olney had an Adjournment Debate down the other end and correspondence with Ministers Edward Argar and Mike Freer on this issue. She tabled an amendment to this Bill when it was in the Commons; it was not selected for debate, but she continued to take the matter up and Ed Argar announced in the Commons a one-year pilot scheme to enable victims of rape and other serious sexual offences to request Crown Court sentencing remarks. But this is insufficient, and it is the reason we have retabled this amendment.

We have heard in some of the stories from victims that they are not just actively dissuaded from returning to court after they have given their evidence but that various people in the criminal justice system have told them that they should not return to court. The reason for that is they are told, whether by court officials, their own counsel or even the judge, that their presence in the court will affect the jury’s attitude towards them and, as a result, might mean that the jury would go against them—as if they wish to be voyeurs in the case in which they have been victimised.

Claire Waxman, a long-term victim of stalking, was told repeatedly not to attend her offender’s sentencing as it could make her look vindictive. Another victim said: “I was told I could not watch the court case after giving evidence, as I’d look like I wasn’t scared of the perpetrator and it could harm the jury’s decision”.

After inquiry, we have some data that shows there is a range from about £30 for a copy of a judgment to more than £300 for an original transcript of sentencing remarks. Where a victim requires a transcript of the entire court case, we have seen figures going from about £7,500 to £22,000. That is absolutely unacceptable.

Sarah Olney reported that in 2020 one of her constituents was raped and drugged by a former partner, who was sentenced to 18 years in spring 2022. Her psychiatrist advised her to apply to the court to obtain a copy of the trial transcript, to aid her recovery and understanding. Her application for a free transcript was denied by the court, and she was then quoted £7,500. That was unaffordable, as she has been unable to work following the attack because of PTSD. Unlike many other victims she attended the 10-day trial, but she said she could barely remember what was said due to emotional distress.

Judges need to ensure that the discrimination that is happening is cut out. The Bill cannot address that, but I would be really grateful if the Minister gave some thought as to how we can stop victims being victimised yet again in the middle of their own court process when their case is being debated. The current system of fees flies in the face of open justice, because a victim must pay for the details of their justice. Many will not want it, but some will. The psychiatrist of the lady I just referred to thought it was absolutely key for her to come to terms with what had happened to her, and indeed to her offender.

Technology has moved on, I suspect, since concern was first raised about this. One of the issues is how easy it is to get access to audio in Crown Courts. That would leave the victim, even if they could not get a written transcript, to be able to listen to a judgment, at the very least. We know that this is already available in coroners’ courts—and without charge. Why not in Crown Courts?

Above all, AI technology means that the old days of having to get a stenographer to listen to audio and spend many days typing it, perhaps getting some of it checked back to make sure that names and exact details are right, are long gone. Obviously a court would not want something that had not been checked to go out, but the really long part of it has been completely overtaken by events.

As Mike Freer MP said in the debate in the other place:

“The ability to access transcripts from court proceedings is an essential part of maintaining transparency and accountability within the system”.—[Official Report, Commons, 16/11/23; col. 848.]


From these Benches we really wish the pilot well, but the pilot itself is too narrow and does not cover the wider range of crimes that victims are covered by in Part 1 of the Bill. Secondly, the pilot has not even started and will run for at least a year. I hope that the Minister will consider expanding it a bit—at least for the pilot to cover other crimes, but also to ensure that it is not a wonderful pilot that will then sink into the long grass. I beg to move.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, in this amendment. I pay tribute to her and to Sarah Olney, who has been meticulous in her pursuit of clarity on this issue.

At a trial, the judge’s summing-up and sentencing remarks in particular are of obvious and great importance to victims. As the noble Lord, Lord Marks, said in the debate on the previous group, for many victims the experience of being in court is highly stressful and often quite traumatic, and one would not exactly have total recall of what was going on. Indeed, I suspect that most of your Lordships would not have total recall of many of our proceedings here. The ability to read and review the summing up and sentencing and ensure that they are taken fully on board is surely a fundamental right.

17:45

Imagine the proceedings of Parliament without the record in Hansard. What is said in both Houses, particularly at the Dispatch Box, is often used to interpret the intent of particular elements of policy or legislation. What is said matters—and what is said by a judge in court is of equal importance, particularly to the victim, and particularly when it comes to parole hearings.

We are asking His Majesty’s Government to provide all Crown Court sentencing remarks to victims upon request, at no cost; for all Crown Court sentencing remarks in due course to be published as a matter of public record and interest, like Hansard; and, also in due course, for the transcripts or audio of hearings to be provided to victims upon request, again at no cost. As the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said, technology is advancing at such a pace that it is really not that difficult for simultaneous transcriptions to be made in real time.

This is not a new issue. In 2011 a fellow Cross-Bencher, the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, led a review into the needs of families bereaved by homicide. She pointed out the imbalance between the established rights of defendants and appellants to access transcripts and the great difficulties experienced by victims and their families. Recommendation 13 of the Lammy Review in 2017 came to a similar conclusion, and in 2022 the Commons Justice Committee’s report, Open Justice: Court Reporting in the Digital Age, made a similar recommendation.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, mentioned, the Minister in the Commons who has been dealing with this, Mike Freer, has inadvertently demonstrated the inadequacies of the current arrangements during his interactions with Sarah Olney, such as in his suggestion that victims should be allowed to listen to the audio of a trial or hearing but only while physically in the courthouse, being supervised by an employee of that court. That is wholly impractical, not least because some trials go on for several days or even weeks.

We would welcome a crystal clear statement from the Front Bench of the rights of victims currently to access transcripts, especially summing up and sentencing, such that all the authorities and bodies involved, reading what is said at the Dispatch Box, would understand exactly what the situation is. That is manifestly not so today. As a senior official in one of the commissioner’s offices wrote to me in an email yesterday, at the moment trying to get clarity on this issue is

“like nailing jelly to the ceiling”.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a total privilege as always to dip my first toe into your Lordships’ Committee on this very important Bill. It is a pleasure, not for the first time, to be in support—it is always very loud at that end of the Chamber; I am just saying —of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool. I would say that they robbed my arguments, but they are their arguments and we share them.

I think the amendment is a no-brainer. It is not partisan and not controversial. In a previous era, the controversy would have been about cost. The argument against it in a previous era would have been, “Goodness me, we would need armies of people”, probably women, “sitting there, typing away with headphones on, to deliver these transcripts in real time”—but of course we are not in that place any more. Even in that previous era I might have argued, because I am who I am, that it was a price worth paying, but we are not in that place.

I also give respect to the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, whose previous group I heard—she is not in her place at the moment—because in a way my argument and what we are discussing in this group is similar to what I just heard.

The cost implication is not such a problem now because of AI—there is wicked old AI but also positive AI, right? AI is already being used across public services, in the City and in financial services. I have some qualms about AI making decisions instead of humans that have a huge impact, but not when it is supporting transparency. This amendment is, in a way, about translation, just like the last group was. How can victims be part of this process if they do not have a record of what happened?

The noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, made an analogy with Hansard, and it is quite a good one. Looking at friends around the House, I ask how many times, in honesty, when the adrenaline is going and the heart is pacing, have noble Lords left the Chamber to be glared at or congratulated by friends and colleagues, and remembered word-for-word what happened. And I am talking about noble Lords who have the privilege of being legislators and being in this place. This is the point the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, made so well. If that is a problem for us as human beings, imagine not being a noble Lord giving wisdom in your Lordships’ House, but instead a victim of crime with all the pressures we all know about. They go into the court and, in the current underfunded system, do not even know if they will bump into the defendant and the family members, or know what will be said about them or what their community think, et cetera. This applies as much to the previous group on language translation as it does to this important amendment on transcription.

How lucky are we, in this generation, with all the challenges we face, to have the technology that would now allow us to give a transcript to a victim of what happened? This is not a partisan amendment; this is not a difficult amendment. This is something that the Minister—who I know really cares, from a lifetime of public service to the rule of law—and his colleagues could deliver. I really believe that this is so deliverable. Therefore, I urge the Minister and his colleagues, hopefully with the benefit of AI so no one has to take everything down, really to think about this. It is an easy win for everyone. To have a record they could look at after the event with family, friends and lawyers could make such a difference to people who are scared, excluded, have adrenaline rushing and experience the fight or flight of being a victim—sometimes of minor crimes and sometimes very serious crimes. I look at my noble friend Lord Winston. I sometimes think we could do with this when we go into see an oncologist. In these difficult moments in life, if we could have this opportunity, with family, friends and advisers, to look at a record of what happened, it could really help people. As I say, it is not a partisan or ideological amendment, but such amazing 21st-century common sense. I support the noble Baroness.

[Baroness Newlove (Con)]

My Lords, I am listening to all of this. My brief, from my team, is to correspond with Ministers, but I will speak, I hope in a succinct way—because I do waffle at times and get so distracted because I am that passionate—and as eloquently as other speakers in the Chamber.

I have dealt with transcripts—I am showing my age here—since 1980. This is how I know we should not have to have this discussion. As a committal court assistant, I used to take evidence down and do these transcripts the old-fashioned way with headphones and typing. That got abolished because of cutbacks. I then became a legal PA where I did barristers’ briefs. Again, everything was all there for the client, the defendant and everyone else, indexed.

Then came Garry’s murder. I listened to everything at a 10-week court trial. I listened to my daughters giving evidence. They wanted to come back and sit in the court, but as a mum I advised them it was too brutal for them. I am very glad I did, because five QCs goaded by defenders is not something I want my children to see after seeing their dad kicked to death. So, I know that element of it. I did get a summary of the judge’s direction, but I do not remember that document to be perfectly honest because it is so traumatising. I found a lot more out from the media, believe it or not, because they could see the dock and they give out everything 24/7—even to this day, I check on things because my mind is a blur.

Parole hearings are where statements are made. People do not know what date the parole hearing will be, they are just asked to do it and it goes off—not into the iCloud, but into something they cannot control. In all of this, the defendants and the barristers for the offender have a copy. The offender has a right to see these copies. In parole hearings, the offender has a right to see what I say about the impact of the crime. Surely, we should be able not to pilot this scheme, but to have the decency to just give a copy. We can go to the Post Office and pay 15p for a photocopy of a document. We have a digital system now even for passport photographs; we can go in a photo booth and give a code number and it appears on GOV.UK. Surely, we can have a copy of the transcript—the direction, the sentencing, how it was all resolved—for whenever a victim decides to pick it up. It is at their discretion, but surely we should not be looking at the monetary value of their damage, of the direction of the sentence and the direction for the judge, because it is so important to victims.

I ask my noble and learned friend: could we have further discussions and make sure that every victim of crime, not just those of rape and sexual abuse, has the opportunity to have that document whether in their hand or digitally? For too long it has been the offender’s right to see everything and surely now, while we are discussing victims legislation, we could have that in this Bill, to say they have a right free of charge, and let them have that document for sound peace of mind.

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, what this debate has shown is the need for some clarity about what can and cannot properly be provided to the victim after criminal proceedings. While I understood and supported the provision of a transcript, the conventional view always was, at least until I heard the arguments today, that the provision of a transcript of the whole trial would be very expensive and probably, in many cases, unnecessary and of little benefit. However, if modern technology enables it to be done much less expensively, then so be it. Indeed, the transcript or a recording could and should be provided. Subject to that, clearly a free transcript of the sentencing remarks of the judge or bench, or a transcript of the summing up in cases in which there has been a contested trial and an acquittal, could be of considerable value in helping victims and their families understand what was decided and why.

In particular, the sentencing remarks may help victims and their families to understand what account was taken of the impact on the victim and the court’s assessment of harm. In some cases, a transcript could also be provided to those offering counselling, therapeutic services and treatment to victims, or otherwise offering them professional advice. However, I would like to hear what can now be usefully provided without enormous expense, in the light of modern technological advances.

18:00

I would offer one word of caution: there must be categories of case, such as those involving sexual offences, particularly against children, in which there should be clear restrictions on the copying and distribution of transcripts. There should be a binding requirement to keep transcripts and recordings secure and confidential to avoid their falling into the wrong hands, particularly of those who might seek some gratification from reading details of such offences.

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, I too speak in favour of this amendment on court transcripts. I too pay tribute to Sarah Olney, the Victims’ Commissioner, brave survivors, and others who have been campaigning on this issue.

I once gave evidence, a long time ago. It was extremely difficult and a challenging experience. To be honest, I struggled afterwards to remember a single word that I had said. Courts are not normal places. The language, formality and methods of cross-examination are completely different from anything we experience in everyday life. Some might even argue that giving evidence in court is more intimidating than giving a speech in your Lordships’ House—except that when I speak here, unlike in court, every word is recorded and available online, free of charge.

In a court, you would naturally expect to be able to tell your story, to be listened to and then to be asked some questions. Instead, you are led towards blunt choices and decisive statements. You are often challenged on your credibility, truthfulness and ability to remember, let alone your morality and intimate details of your personal life. Doing this when you have been a victim of a violent or sexual crime must be horrific and re-traumatising. Often, victims are not present in court. They may be scared of facing attackers, wrongly advised or just unable to face it all again.

When the outcomes of legal proceedings are not what was wanted or expected, victims really want to know why. For justice to be done, it must be seen to be done. If there is no transcript, how do victims begin to comprehend what has happened in court, why it happened and how they might set about responding to the results? No money means no record: the victim is victimised again, this time by the justice system itself. The right of a victim to a transcript—a record of a legal case—seems like a fundamental part of our justice system. How did we get to a common place where the most basic of things is so inaccessible to and unattainable by so many people?

We live in a technological world. My laptop can easily be dictated to. AI tools, as other noble Lords have mentioned, are readily available. My phone can make an audio recording. Yet the evidence and testimony of victims, the evidence of their attackers and the summing-up of the judge are all unattainable. They are secret preserves of the legal system alone. What good does this do and how can it be? It cannot be beyond the wit of man and government to provide this information at either no cost or a reasonable cost.

No doubt there are practical problems that need addressing. I am certain that the Government have entered into some poor contracts for court transcripts. Technology has moved on, faster than expected, and now the exorbitant costs and contractual obligations perhaps leave the Government between a rock and a hard place. However, the idea that transcripts of legal cases are being charged at anywhere between £7,000 and £20,000 is just not acceptable. The Bill must set down a marker that the failure of this part of our legal system must end.

I acknowledge that the Government have argued that there are cost implications and have made some concessions. These are welcome, particularly the open justice consultation, and we recognise that a one-year pilot has been announced to enable victims of rape and other serious sexual offences to request Crown Court sentencing remarks, free of charge. This is welcome, but what happens after the pilot? Who assesses it and is there a commitment beyond that? It is too little and does not go far enough.

This service should be available to victims of all crimes, not just one group. We do not want to see a victims’ hierarchy established. As a minimum, all victims must have access to sentencing remarks. Ideally, full court transcripts should be made available when asked for. In the interim, the Government must do more to cover the excessive cost, especially for bereaved victims. I question whether the current contracts for transcript services provide anyone with any value for money. The Government should look to bring them to an end and, instead, work to find better and more cost-effective ways in which this can be done. I hope the Government are aware of the strength of feeling on all sides of the Committee on this issue and are of an open mind, willing to find better and faster solutions then they have up until now.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, it will be abundantly clear what our view is from these Benches, but I am speaking formally from them to support this amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, referred to Sarah Olney as being meticulous—she always is.

The recent public discussion about dissatisfaction with sentences has made me think about this issue. Without wanting in any way to disparage, and I do not, the comments of relatives and the victims of crimes themselves who make public statements on the steps of the court, one wonders how much they have been able to take in. That is no criticism of them, but they are responding to a very emotional experience and will have been emotional while hearing, or possibly not very thoroughly hearing, what has been said. I had a very minor example of that experience myself last week. I went to a medical appointment and a friend came with me. When we discussed afterwards in the car what the consultant had said, our recollections were completely different.

I want to ask the Minister some questions about the pilot which has been announced. I wonder whether he can give some details. Is it in all courts for the category of crimes that has been announced? What monitoring will there be of how the pilot is going and how will it be evaluated? Like other speakers, though, I would like to go straight to a new procedure.

I am not sure whether the technology actually comes within the category of artificial intelligence; it may be a much earlier generation than that. There are other noble Lords in the Chamber who probably could have answered this question, had I thought to ask them before we started the debate, but are the judge’s remarks not normally written down before the judge makes them? That might differ among members of the judiciary —I am looking at the noble Lord, Lord Meston.

[Lord Meston (CB)]

Only sometimes.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

I suppose it is like our written notes: sometimes we have them, sometimes we do not and sometimes we do not follow them.

We have heard that Minister Freer is looking at how audio recordings can be used. I wonder whether there is any more news on this than has been in the semi-public domain so far. The suggestion of listening to a recording or reading a transcript while supervised reminds me of the arrangements made for a very few senior politicians to read the assessments of the Chilcot inquiry. To me, like to others, that is not a sensible arrangement.

In any event, as I understand it, in magistrates’ courts recordings are not made. For a victim to have to sit in court and listen it is very likely that she or he will be close to the family and friends of the defendant. As my noble friend Lady Brinton said, it is a matter of open justice. This debate confirms that the adversarial system treats the victim as little more than a witness.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions. I appreciate that this places the Minister in a somewhat interesting situation; yet again, he finds that the Committee is united on this issue, as I think we are.

As when I last spoke a few minutes ago, when I first read this amendment, I thought, “Oh, for goodness’ sake”. What is the problem with people having access to the transcripts of the case that affects them as victims? As this debate has proceeded, and I have learned more about the barriers and what happens to people—supervised listening and people discouraged from going into court to listen to proceedings—I feel even more that this is an important matter which would enormously strengthen our victims’ code and the way victims are treated.

Let us think about how every single word that is said in public in this place is available to watch, and re-watch if you really want to, and to read—the committee transcripts may take a little while to be published, but they are there—and how important that is for our proceedings and for us to be able to do our job so much better. It is not a difficult thing to do given technology today; it is not difficult for those things to happen in this place. Think how much more important that would be for somebody who was the victim of crime.

In many ways, access to information about the proceedings that affect them is symbolic of victims’ rights. I accept that child victims would need to be considered because, apart from anything else, we would not want a child to be able to be identified through transcripts of their proceedings, but it is not beyond our wit to sort that out. A pilot is good, but there is a matter of principle here that the Government will need to address.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, as my name has just been mentioned in this short debate, I will make a quick interjection and give the example of medical treatment of patients. It is extremely common to have a detailed conversation with a patient who has listened and apparently understood exactly what has been said, but then you find that they have understood nothing at all and are later really confused about their treatment.

Perhaps I may tell a very short story. I once had an extremely well-off woman who was totally infertile; she had no chance of a pregnancy. I spent an hour and a half talking to her explaining why this was the case and that there was no possibility of her being pregnant. However, 18 months later, she came into my clinic— she had flown in from another country—and said, “Dr Winston, I am pleased to tell you that, as you predicted, I am now pregnant”, and she was. I was a complete fool; I was wrong. It is really important to understand that, because this is a situation that happens quite often, and it is significant in terms of a court when you are very anxious.

18:15

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, it is heartening to hear a story with a happy ending in one respect, as we are generally dealing with unhappy or less happy outcomes.

This Government are very much in favour of open justice as a general proposition, and we are in the middle of a consultation on it. This debate should—I will make sure that it happens—figure in the evidence presented to that consultation so that we can see where we go. Anecdotally and in terms of the shape of things to come, we are already live-streaming the proceedings of the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal and the Competition Appeal Tribunal, which I used to have something to do with many years ago. Hopefully, in the years ahead, this problem will diminish if not be resolved through those kinds of technical developments. The twin obstacles are cost and the state of the technology.

It is true that this House, through the—in historical terms—quite expensive use of the Hansard reporters and the more recent introduction of our technology, is able to read and see what is happening. But we are one place. Every day in this country, hundreds of courts are in operation. To stream, record or make immediately available the proceedings of those courts is quite a challenge.

At the moment, a judge’s sentencing remarks are made freely available in cases of murder, manslaughter or causing death on the road. From this spring, as has been mentioned, we will run a further one-year trial of similar arrangements in cases of rape and serious sexual offences. That will, I hope, further inform which way we should go. I am not in a position to give further details on exactly how many courts will be covered by that pilot and on other matters raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. However, I will write to the Committee to fully inform it.

It is less well known, and I do not think it will be an answer to the problem, that a victim can go to a Crown Court building to listen to a tape of the proceedings if that can be suitably arranged. That right is not very well known. It may not be quite in the direction that the technology is going.

To come back to the present situation and our twin obstacles of cost and technology, some of the figures of cost have been mentioned; it is expensive to do it manually. As to the technology, we have made considerable advances in the use of technology during the pandemic. Most courts can operate remote hearings of one sort or another.

Although I hold no ministerial responsibility for criminal justice, in terms of my day job, I was somewhat surprised and worried by some of the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, about witnesses being asked to leave the court and not to listen. I would have thought that in many court buildings these days there would be another room where the victim concerned could watch the proceedings on a screen, for example.

[Baroness Newlove (Con)]

Unfortunately, there are no rooms available to do that. I would love that—and I welcome my noble and learned friend the Minister’s warm tone in hoping that there were—but there are not. I went past two rooms in the murder trial that were video-link rooms. There are no rooms in our court buildings for families, witnesses or anyone else to watch privately and be taken care of. That is why it is so important that we try to assist them by giving them these scripts, so they can reflect on the proceedings whenever they want to.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

That would be enormously helpful in many civil and family cases as well, and it simply is not available.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

I am very grateful for those interventions. I have personally seen this in operation in Manchester, but it may have been that the court had particular availability of rooms that is not generally the case.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

That is where Ministers are taken.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

I recognise the nature of the problem.

The modern versions of AI, or whatever generation of technology we are talking about, have opened up recent possibilities for us. Of course, any Government have every incentive to reduce cost. Why should we spend money on transcription, if it can be done more effectively and cheaply? The view currently taken is that a 99.5% accuracy is required. When we last trialled this in 2022 that level was not achieved, so we have not further proceeded with that development at the moment —but it remains a distinct possibility.

There is a specific situation with the magistrates’ courts whereby we do not even have recordings, let alone transcription. But again, if those courts now have screens that can be adapted in some way, the further development of technology is going to be the answer to the problem. At the moment the Government, although very sympathetic to the point, do not feel that they are in a position to accept a statutory obligation to provide a victim with a free transcript of the trial. We are working through the development with regard to sentencing remarks.

Of course, I will keep this under review and discuss it further with my noble friend Lady Newlove and others. The noble Lord, Lord Meston, makes very sensible points about the nature of some of these transcripts. We are going to have to be very careful in some cases. That is a quite separate issue.

With regret, I do not feel that the Government can accept Amendment 20 in its present form, but I hope I have explained the direction of travel as far as the future is concerned.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, and the noble Earl, Lord Russell, who talked about their personal experiences, which was extremely valuable. I will not rehearse what has been said and repeated by others. I think the Minister needs to understand that the opinion of those who have contributed is somewhat different; certainly, the issue is worth discussing. I hope he will be prepared to have a meeting with those of us who are here. For example, we have just had a debate about the importance of being able to find rooms, but many speakers said that it was still too early for a traumatised victim to be able to take in the proceedings.

To give noble Lords my own experience, when I went into the court to hear my stalker being sentence, I was not just near his family; I was next to him—that far away. The result was that I did not hear a word of the sentencing, so thank goodness journalists covered it. I missed the absolute key bit, because all I was thinking about was how close he was to me. Extra rooms would be enormously helpful, and I believe the court system needs to find a way to make sure juries understand that victims should not be penalised if they wish to listen. I do not have an answer to that but, if the Minister agrees to a meeting, perhaps we will have that as one of the topics for discussion.

My final brief point is that in your Lordships’ House we already use Zoom and Teams. I chair a disability committee for the Local Government Association— I am a vice-president of the LGA—and we have deaf and hard-of-hearing people in the group. I use close captioning for every single one of those meetings, and it can be saved. This is not a future technology; it is available. If the Government and the court system do not recognise where these are, we will lose the benefit of what is happening now by not harnessing the technology available to help victims who really need it. I hope the Minister will agree to a meeting.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, before my noble friend withdraws the amendment, as I suspect she is about to, I ask the Minister whether the Government could make some representations to the Sentencing Council, if that is the appropriate way to do it, after hearing what noble Lords have said about their experiences. This is a matter for sentences as well.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I am very grateful to my noble friend, and I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

I am going to give the Minister an opportunity to respond, if he wishes.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

Thank you. The Sentencing Council point is an interesting one, which I will reflect on. As for the request from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, of course I am prepared to have another meeting.

Amendment 20 withdrawn.

Amendment 21

Moved by

[Lord Hampton]

21: Clause 2, page 3, leave out lines 8 and 9 and insert—
“(8) The victims’ code must make different provision for children and vulnerable and intimidated victims, and may make other different provision including for—”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would ensure that the distinct needs and rights of children and vulnerable and intimated witnesses are reflected in the Victims’ Code.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, this is where I again declare my interest as a state secondary school teacher in east London. I will speak to Amendments 21, 34, 61, 118 and 119 in my name in this group. I thank the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for help with these amendments, as well as the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, and my noble friend Lord Russell of Liverpool for adding their names to them.

At Second Reading, at the Cross-Bench meeting with the Minister and on the first day in Committee, the Minister stuck to his message that the Bill covers all victims, including children. I will try to continue to persuade him otherwise. As the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, said on the first day, we should put children at the top of the hierarchy of victims. I slightly disagree with my noble friend Lord Russell, who said that there should not be a hierarchy of victims. There is a hierarchy of victims, and children should be at the top of it. I am also aware that everything needs to be accessible, accountable and affordable.

We cannot lump all victims together. As the Children’s Commissioner said last week, children do not disclose like adults. It is important that children are treated differently as victims, and that is reflected in the amendments we have proposed. This will bear fruit not only in getting justice and restorative justice but, even more importantly, in repairing the damage done to those young victims and allowing them to become healthy adults. Would it not be lovely if a government department were to make decisions that could save money for other departments in future, and maybe future Governments? Could that be the Minister’s lasting legacy? The amount of work that the Children’s Commissioner, the Victims’ Commissioner, the children’s coalition and many other organisations are putting into this Bill, plus the number of noble Lords speaking to amendments, shows that we have a once-in-a-generation chance to put children first and really invest in our future.

Amendment 21 would make a different provision for children, ensuring that distinct needs and rights of children and vulnerable and intimidated victims were reflected in the victims’ code. They have different needs, and this needs to be reflected in the Bill to make it accessible.

Amendment 34 would insert “including children”. This is a vital amendment, which we talked about on the first day. It would mean that the victims’ code had to be promoted to children specifically, as well as to victims in general, as we need to make children aware—and they are not, at the moment—that if they are victims, they have rights. There should be a statutory obligation to advertise this in schools and possibly online—wherever—as a way of spreading this information so that it becomes widely understood. It would have little or no cost attached to it; it is affordable.

18:30

Amendment 61 is to ensure visible consistency within the police force areas—to, hopefully, drive up quality—but also brings the provisions into line with the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999. This is not about adding children as victims but rather driving up the “quality and consistency” of reporting. Anything that drives up quality and consistency must be a good thing. This gives us accountability and transparency.

Amendments 118 and 119 deal with independent advocacy services for children and not just victims, as does Amendment 108 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Polak, and other noble Lords, and my Amendment 53 in a later group. We have talked already, in Committee and on the first day, about the “child house” model such as The Lighthouse in Camden, which we were lucky enough to visit last week. It is a multi-agency way of embedding child advocates in the system that gives us the perfect opportunity to put something in place that has a profound effect on child victims. Advocates can guide children through the justice system, reducing the trauma and aiding the healing process, which will save money across the board and have a demonstrable uptake in prosecutions. As we were told at The Lighthouse, children only tell their story once—so that needs to be in a space where they are supported and feel comfortable, but also where evidence can be gathered that could be used to obtain justice. Why would you not bring this in?

To give an example of why we need advocacy for child victims from the start, we had a recent case where, following a run of significant altercations with their mother, a child considered signing themselves into care, under the guidance of a social worker. While this was being considered, a further incident happened. The police were then involved and the child was removed from the home for their own safety. They would usually stay with a maternal uncle, but because the child was making allegations about the conduct of their mother, the uncle refused to house them. Three days after this incident, the child turned 18 and was therefore no longer eligible for care or input from children’s social services. Despite being a full-time pupil and having no means or experience in looking after themselves, they were effectively homeless and classed as an adult in the eyes of the supporting agencies. This was the day before the Christmas holidays, so no professional was going to see this person for two weeks or know if they were safe and had somewhere to live.

Young people are expected to be in education or training until they are, in most cases, past the age of 18, but the services around them have not shifted to recognise this. The school is then left with a young person to support, solely through the use of charities. With an advocate they would have someone to advise and help them—this is affordable if you consider the expense of the alternative.

The Government are still treating victims as a homogenous mass in the Bill as it stands. These amendments give more definition to allow children to be treated differently, to reflect their very different needs, to try to minimise trauma, to promote healing and to gain justice for them. It is sad that in government, any Government, there seems to be no appetite to spend money now to save money in the future. I am interested to hear the Minister’s response. With that, I beg to move.

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, I shall not detain the Committee. I have my name on several amendments, but they have one theme, which I spoke about last week. It is an honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, who is a schoolteacher and knows what he is talking about. I was a youth worker many years ago—that was my profession in my early adult years—so I was pleased to support several amendments and put my name to Amendments 44, 46, 55, 66, 68, 70, 71 and 73.

I will make one contribution, which I hope the Minister will take away and understand why children should be right on the face of the Bill. I remember last week when we discussed this, the Minister kindly turned around and said that he appreciated what we had all been saying and that maybe this is guidance and that we did not want to change the way the Bill looked. Well, we are adding one word: “children”. It means so much to the children’s organisations that are working daily.

Amendment 108 concerns a

“Duty to commission support for children and young people”.


This proposes the inclusion of a new clause after Clause 27, placing a duty on relevant local commissioning bodies to commission specialist support and advocacy services for children and young people who are victims of abuse and exploitation. It is imperative that we address the unique needs of this demographic, whose abuse has a devastating and long-lasting effect on them, on their families and on society more broadly. They cannot, and should not, be left unsupported, or be lost to the broader category of adult victims.

There is a scarcity of support and advocacy services available for child victims. A recent study by the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse found that, across England and Wales, there are just 468 services providing support to victims and survivors of child sexual abuse and their families, despite an estimated 500,000 children suffering some sort of abuse every year. There is a clear lack of support services available.

Advocacy services also play a vital role in supporting child victims, helping them to navigate the complex criminal justice and support service systems. Advocacy services include such roles as the child independent domestic violence advisers—the CHIDVAs. I will not repeat the others as your Lordships know them. However, they are few and far between. New freedom of information data from Barnardo’s has found that just 84 child independent domestic violence advisers, and 112 child independent sexual violence advisers were commissioned by police and crime commissioners this year. Its research found that a staggering, additional 1,900 CHIDVAs and almost 500 CHISVAs are needed to support the number of identified children who are victims of domestic and sexual abuse. I emphasise the word “identified”—there are many, I am sure, whom we do not know.

What is available to support children is just a drop in the ocean. Yet we know that these services can have a huge benefit to children and society more broadly. This can include reducing the impact of harm and other future risks, including going missing from home, alcohol and drug abuse, accommodation and housing needs, and interaction with the criminal justice system in the future. As was said just now, a little investment now will save a lot in the future. The Government’s own costings found that the cost of contact child sexual abuse is at least £10.1 billion annually—which, I believe, is a conservative estimate. Investment in support and advocacy services for child victims will reduce these costs in the long term. Barnardo’s and Pro Bono Economics evidence found that for every £1 invested in specific support services for child sexual exploitation, it can save the taxpayer up to £12.

In essence, Amendment 108 is about putting the duty on commissioners to protect and support children who are victims of crime by making funding specific, and directing it toward children’s needs to create a system where no child is left without the necessary support, regardless of their circumstances.

Amendment 109 proposes a duty on the Victims’ Commissioner and Secretary of State to conduct a review and issue a national statement on the current state of support for children who are victims of crime. This review is critical in assessing the adequacy of existing provision, identifying unmet needs, and evaluating the current investment in these services, to ensure transparency for the provision of these services.

The review will cover the current volume of provision and unmet need and the level of investment in these services. This information will then be made public through a report, to be published and laid before Parliament within three months of the Bill becoming an Act. The purpose of this amendment is to foster transparency and accountability in the support provided to child victims. By clearly outlining what is already being provided—where the gaps exist and how much funding is allocated—we can ensure that our efforts are targeted and effective. These two amendments seek to fortify our commitment to the protection and support of children who have suffered at the hands of crime.

If I may, I will repeat the testimony of a very brave young woman called Poppy Eyre—I am honoured that she is sitting in the Chamber—who has made it clear to me and to other noble Lords why these amendments and the others that I have signed are crucial additions to the Bill. Before I continue, I should preface that some may find what I am about to share distressing—and I apologise to Poppy that I probably will not do it justice.

Poppy grew up in the countryside with her siblings and parents: an idyllic setting surrounded by nature and space. Yet, at the far too young age of four, she was molested by her grandfather. While most four year-olds were focused on playing, Poppy was preparing for the end of a CBeebies episode, followed by humiliation and sexual abuse by her grandfather in her own home. Yet how could Poppy truly know or voice that what was happening to her was wrong? She would never question her grandfather, whom she trusted and loved. She assumed it was normal. Yet the shame and negativity that manifested as a result of her abuse led Poppy to develop thoughts of guilt and hatred that led to physical illness and anxiety.

At the age of 11, Poppy found the courage to tell her mother after another sleepless night of physical and emotional anxiety. I want to quote Poppy directly on what opening up about her experience did for her:

“Admitting what had happened was the best thing I think I could have ever done for myself. It’s a funny word admit … it indicates fault, but that was my mindset at the time. For the first time in my life I didn’t feel responsible. This moment in my story is very unusual. The fact I was believed is something that many don’t experience”.


Over time, Poppy was able to gain some understanding of the enormity of what had happened to her and, along with her mother, she decided it was time to go to the police. Only at this point did Poppy begin to understand that she was the victim and survivor of a crime, that that crime was sexual abuse and that her grandfather was the perpetrator. She wanted to seek justice.

Seven years ago, Poppy found herself at the intersection of vulnerability and strength, navigating a court process that, surprisingly, restored her faith in the system. When she approached the police, they embraced her case with gravity and compassion, providing crucial support during the investigation. Poppy was connected with specialist counselling services that became a lifeline in one of the darkest periods of her life. Her healing journey underscored the potential of the justice system to offer assurance and validation. In the courtroom, justice was not merely a word but a tangible reality. Poppy’s age was considered and she was treated with respect and understanding. The system functioned as it should and Poppy received the justice she deserved.

Yet, unfortunately, Poppy’s journey is not representative of all survivors. Too many brave individuals who have come forward with their stories have been denied justice, their pain compounded by a system that failed them. There are far too many heartbreaking stories of those who were just not believed or supported and were denied the closure they deserved. The justice system possesses the power to heal, but it also has the potential to inflict further harm. There is a collective responsibility to acknowledge its flaws and work together to address them. No survivor should be left feeling abandoned or disbelieved. They must have access to support and advocacy services. It is our collective duty to ensure that the justice and support Poppy experienced become the norm, not the exception.

These amendments are one step towards ensuring that all survivors of these crimes are supported like Poppy was. We cannot waste the opportunity of this Victims and Prisoners Bill and let the thought remain that support and advocacy services for child victims are just an optional extra. They are a life-saving necessity and must be available for all child victims.

18:45

[Baroness Newlove (Con)]

My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group on child victims. I thank my noble friend Lord Polak for speaking about Poppy’s story. She is in the Chamber—a very gracious young woman who articulated her story very well. As a mother, when I watched my children have to give evidence, covered in blood, on the actions against their father—my sisters were told to turn in a corner when they were trying to ID on a VIPER parade—I called them “my heroines”. And Poppy is a heroine. As a mum, I felt that evening for her mum because, believe you me, as mothers we want to wrap you in cotton wool to protect you from pain. It was very emotional to listen to, and I send my huge respects to her mum as well.

This Bill needs to take into account the needs of all victims, but especially children. Children need to be recognised in this Bill. They are victims in their own right. As I said, my three daughters witnessed every kick and punch to their father, having to pull his tongue out because he was choking on his blood and say goodbye while he was in a coma. They live with that on a daily basis. They were not treated as children—they were told to act properly, because they were children.

Children who have been victims of crime, especially sexual abuse and exploitation, are among the most vulnerable in our society. This type of abuse can devastate the lives of children, impacting on their mental health, relationships and education. We in this Chamber have a responsibility to make sure that this Bill recognises and provides for them. The needs of children are not the same as those of adults, so they require specific provision that is designed for them, not against them. The victims’ code should consider children’s specific needs. They should be able to access registered intermediaries who can help them give their best evidence and, when they are interviewed, it should be done by people with specialist training in interviewing children.

When I was last in this role, I undertook a report on registered intermediaries. One of its findings was that the police and the CPS had a lack of awareness of the existence of registered intermediaries and how they worked. That was in 2018 and it is still the case now. This Bill gives us an ideal opportunity to make sure that these code rights are secured for our children. They are our future and we must care for them. That is the key here.

Children must have a needs assessment that takes into account their individual requirements, and we must have properly funded victims’ services, such as the “child house” model. This offers children who have experienced sexual abuse a child-focused, targeted response that can support children and their families as they recover from their ordeal—although, to be honest, they never recover; they survive. Currently, there is only one “child house” in the UK, which is the Lighthouse, in London, and, as a northerner, it really gets me to say that.

Children face a postcode lottery when it comes to support services. An FoI request by Barnardo’s to PCCs found that, of all the local authorities that responded, 68% had not in the last 12 months commissioned any support services for child victims of sexual exploitation. That is why I support these amendments, both as the Victims’ Commissioner and as legislator in this House—but, more importantly, as a mother of three daughters who, to this day, suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder because they felt they were not listened to but were told what to do. As a mother, I could not give them a hug because I might persuade them to give other evidence.

This amendment is so important for children and the victims of crime. We need to make sure the Bill provides specialist support services designed for children—in fact, designed for children, by children, because they will know their individual needs and vulnerabilities. We have a duty to help them cope and recover from such horrific and traumatic experiences.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly and cover all the amendments, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove. I put on the record that I am a governor of Coram, the oldest children’s charity in the United Kingdom, and I am a trustee of the Foundling Museum.

Like other noble Lords, I have had the privilege of listening to some of the child survivors of child abuse. It is difficult for them to speak of their experiences; it is also extraordinarily difficult to listen to them—it really is. I pay tribute to Poppy, who described the trauma she went through in the most brilliant, clear way, without undue emotion or embellishment, and it was far more powerful than anything I—or, I suspect, any of us—will say this evening. It is an honour to try to speak on their behalf, although I fear we are poor substitutes for the way in which they are able to describe what they went through.

What they are asking for is very simple. It is one word: recognition—that is, recognition of the fact that they are not adults. The vast majority of victims whom we are going to talk about during the course of the Bill, including, of course, the part about prisoners, are adults. However, a very significant proportion of victims are not adults, and children have very specific needs and are particularly vulnerable and open to manipulation. They can often have great difficulty in understanding what is going on around them and discerning what is right and what is wrong, depending on who is telling them what. To help them navigate their way through some of the situations which adults—usually—have landed them in, requires particularly sensitive, careful and deeply knowledgeable treatment. At the moment, the reality is that it is a postcode lottery for children.

My colleague on the Cross Benches, the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, is well known for his theory about some of the difficulties we appear to have got ourselves into in this country. We still seem to subscribe to what might be called the “good chaps” code of government: assuming that, if you tell people what it is they should do, that is what they will do. If one has a law, a code or guidance, the assumption is that people will read the guidance and then follow and adhere to it in a consistent manner. However, the evidence we have is overwhelming. When it comes to the treatment of children, there is a total and utter lack of consistency. There are statistics to back this up, and financial statistics which explain the cost of it. It is unacceptable that large parts of the country are effectively a desert when it comes to helping children who might get into the same sort of ghastly situation that Poppy was in.

As a Cross-Bencher I am not going make a political point, but, if I was a member of His Majesty’s Government, after being in office since 2010 and looking at the state of the way in which children are treated as victims at the moment, it is not a record I would feel proud to defend. It would be nice, for a change, to hear people say, “We have tried various things and spent money on them, but it is not all working and we acknowledge that. We have learned from it and we are doing something about it”. But to try and continue with the “good chaps” version of government—in which you tell people what they should be doing and they do it—is just fantasy. We need to wake up to that and do something about it, for all the poor children who deserve much better.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak on Amendments 108 and 109, in the absence of the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, who would have made a contribution. She comments that child abuse and exploitation can happen to any child, in any family, in any location, and, as she would always say, “Childhood lasts a lifetime”. Child abuse and exploitation can have a detrimental impact on children that stays with them for the rest of their lives, harming their mental health, their development and sense of trust. Right at this moment, there is a child experiencing this type of trauma. Of course, it also has a devastating impact on their family and friends, and society as whole. As a country, we still do not provide or fund anywhere near enough for specialist support services to stand up for children’s rights and those who have experienced devastating trauma and abuse. It is shameful that, as a nation, children are left with the horror of abuse, and suffer in silence without any statutory right to support.

Support services are vital for child victims. They give children a space to work through their trauma and begin to recover, offering mental health and counselling services, and advocacy services which help children and their families to navigate the complexity of statutory agencies and the criminal justice system. Child-centred services, such as the Lighthouse, which was described earlier, can also reduce the impact of harm and other risks later in life, including going missing from home, alcohol and drug misuse, homelessness and interaction with the criminal justice system.

In one study, more than eight in 10 male prisoners said they had experienced at least one adverse childhood experience, which includes physical and sexual abuse, and domestic abuse. Yet local services, mostly run by the voluntary and community sectors, are chronically underfunded and undervalued. The Centre of Expertise on Child Sex Abuse, which is hosted by Barnardo’s, has recently published a comprehensive study of the current landscape. I will not go into the detail because the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, has already covered the results. But just as much as Barnardo’s and the other children’s charities feel that they have a moral duty to support vulnerable children and young people, we cannot continue to see these vital support services as just a charitable add-on that is nice to have. These are life-saving services for a lot of children who have experienced abuse and exploitation. We must ensure that enough are available to support the number of children who, every year, face abuse and exploitation.

From these Benches, we support the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Polak, which would place a duty on the relevant authorities to commission sufficient child-specific support services for child victims of abuse and exploitation.

My own Amendment 100A in this group follows on from the very thorough report from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, which gave the Government 20 recommendations, of which the first is a statutory duty of mandatory reporting, by which those in certain employment, whether paid or voluntary, and regulated professions should report allegations of child sex abuse to relevant authorities. The Government have yet to respond on these recommendations. I hope that will change soon.

This Bill is not the right place for an amendment on mandatory reporting. The amendment would provide children and young people with the status of a victim if a person in a regulated profession had a suspicion that they were a victim of child sex abuse. As we have heard from most speakers on this group of amendments, children and adults react differently to trauma. Children need specialist help right from the start. Giving them that recognition as a victim is vital.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, the discussion on this group has been remarkable. I agree with everything that all noble Lords have said. Indeed, I went to many of the same meetings about which other noble Lords have spoken so eloquently.

19:00

One of the particularly powerful parts of Poppy’s speech was when she said that the criminal justice system did not work too badly in her case. We heard of other examples where things had gone wrong and where systems could be improved, but her testimony— if that is the right word—was all the more powerful because the system actually worked for her.

The noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, is a governor of Coram. In my work as a family magistrate, I have given many lectures at Coram over the years. I recognise the central point he was making about the postcode lottery of provision for children in different circumstances.

I was trying to think of something additional that I could contribute to this debate because it has been so powerful. I was reflecting on my experience as a youth magistrate. The title of this group, if you like, is “child victims”. We have been talking about child sexual victims, but as a youth magistrate I have twice had child defendants who could not come to court because they had been murdered. They were young men who had been involved in a gang-based lifestyle, often including drugs or knife crime, and they were murdered before they could get to court. The spectrum of victims is wider.

The Minister has sat here and heard these moving speeches. I notice that the Government have tabled Amendment 74, which we will come to in due course. In a sense, it should really have been in this group; I do not know why it has been put where it is. The Government’s new amendment would replace the existing Clause 15 with a new clause that would require the Secretary of State to issue guidance about victim support roles and the various support roles for children. In a sense, this is the Minister’s defence to all the points that have been made in the debate on this group.

The point I was going to make was made by the noble Lord, Lord Polak, in speaking to Amendment 108. It reinforced the point I made at Second Reading. Rather than just having a rather sterile debate about whether everything in the victims’ code should be statutory or non-statutory, perhaps we should look at the particular elements of the code that would benefit from having a statutory basis because they have particular knock-on effects. The noble Lord, Lord Polak, was talking about commissioning victims’ services. I am advised that there is evidence that, if they were on a statutory basis like domestic abuse-type requirements, the funders would give more money to those sorts of services than when they are non-statutory. That is one important example. It is more productive, particularly in Committee, to look at the detail of the proposals, rather than having this rather sterile debate about everything or nothing being on a statutory basis.

It has been a privilege to speak briefly in this debate. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all speakers in this debate. Like others, I particularly salute Poppy and her story. The whole purpose and point of the Bill is that the system should function as it apparently did in Poppy’s case; I am glad that it did. We should bring everything up to that level. It is part of levelling up. The Government have brought forward quite an extensive framework in which the improvement in the rights of victims, victims’ awareness, accessibility of services and the duties of police and crime commissioners and local agencies are being given a tremendous shove. I think that was the phrase I used at Second Reading. I respectfully do not accept the description by the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, that this is “good chaps” stuff. This is serious stuff to deal with a serious problem.

I support the last comments of the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, that it is a bit sterile to argue whether this word or that word should or should not be in the Bill—whether it should be “must” or “should”—and get all legalistic about it. We should really be discussing the practicalities, the costs and how we do it. That is more about what we do with the code itself than about having a sterile debate on the statutory framework. Those who are pursuing the interests of victims should not, I respectfully suggest, get hung up on exactly what the statute is saying; they should be thinking about what we should do in practical terms. From the government side, I rather welcome that general suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby. Let us get down in the weeds on some of this.

On the general question of the treatment of children in the Bill, I draw your Lordships’ attention to the fact that children are already quite extensively referenced in the statutory framework. Clause 11 is about:

“Guidance on code awareness and reviewing compliance”.


Clause 11(2)(b) says that the guidance may include provision about

“the way in which information is collected (and in particular, how information in relation to children or individuals who have protected characteristics within the meaning of the Equality Act 2010 is collected)”.

Clause 13 is about the crucial stages of needs assessment and the collaboration of the relevant authorities. Clause 13(4) says:

“When making an assessment under subsection (3), the relevant authorities must have regard to the particular needs of victims who are children or have protected characteristics within the meaning of the Equality Act”.


Lastly, as the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, has just pointed out, a similar phrase appears in Amendment 74 —the proposed new Clause 15. The same phrase is in the existing clause as well. Talking about guidance about specified victim support roles, proposed new Clause 15(5) says:

“Guidance under this section must (where relevant) make provision in relation to victims who are children or have protected characteristics within the meaning of the Equality Act”.


We already have a statutory framework for getting to where I think all your Lordships would want to be.

What, then, is the next stage? In the Government’s view, it is to make sure that we have it right in the code. The code already deals with children on page 7 and provides that they and other victims who have protected characteristics have enhanced rights, so that you have the right to receive information earlier, or better information, in various ways, and those enhanced rights are there in the code.

What the code does not do at the moment is to distinguish clearly between children and other vulnerable or intimidated persons or those who have protected characteristics under the Equality Act. Therefore, the Government are very open to considering how we develop a section in the code that deals specifically with children, and we are working with that aim, with the Children’s Commissioner, to deliver on that commitment to address children’s needs in the code. We started with a round table activity last week, attended by academics, criminal justice bodies and other important stakeholders, including the domestic abuse commissioner. We have to meld the respective roles of the Children’s Commissioner and the domestic abuse commissioner, who I think jointly wrote an article in the national press not very long ago saying that we must do better—indeed, perhaps arguably, we should.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

This is absolutely no criticism of the Minister himself. The Government have often tended to focus on domestic abuse, but child victims are not always victims through domestic abuse. Can the Minister reassure the House that while it is important that the domestic abuse commissioner is involved, the focus will remain on the experience of the child victim, wherever it has happened?

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

I am extremely grateful for that important intervention. As a number of noble Lords pointed out, although from various quarters adults can—sometimes quite vociferously—speak for themselves, children cannot, on the whole. They are the silent ones. We have heroines such as Poppy but on the whole, we are dealing with a cohort that does not have the ability to raise its own profile, for that fairly obvious reason. I am grateful indeed to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for making that point. For myself—I cannot commit the Government—I would say that we need available a part of the code or something that is particularly child friendly, so that at least some children can themselves consult it and understand their rights. So the Government’s door is not at all closed on this point. If I may say so again— I am conscious that sometimes I sound a bit like a broken record—can we please work on the practicalities of the code and on bringing everybody up to the same sort of level, rather than getting hung up on rather dry legal points?

I think I have covered in general terms the spirit, drift and direction of the amendments. I have to make one point on Amendment 100A which it does not at all please me to have to make. The difficulty with that amendment, as the Government see it, is that it relates to cases of suspected abuse. We have in the Bill a definition that turns on the existence of criminal conduct, and if there is criminal conduct, there is a victim. The Government at the moment are reluctant to extend that to suspected criminal conduct. That is a difficulty.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

But that is not quite right, though, is it? I do not believe that the definition of a victim in the Bill requires there to have been even a charge of criminal conduct, let alone a conviction, so I do not quite understand the reasoning that says we are concerned about suspected criminal conduct.

19:15

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

Any suspected child sexual abuse would be a crime, as covered under Schedule 1. In that context sexual abuse is covered, particularly that of minors.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

We may slightly be dancing angels on a pin. It may well be that if a regulated professional says to an authority, “I suspect there is criminal conduct”, there is enough there to say that there actually is criminal conduct to enable—

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

For clarity, it is important, given that I intervened on the Minister before, to refer the Committee to Clause 1, “Meaning of ‘victim’”, and to subsection (5) in particular, which says that

“It is immaterial … that … no person has reported the offence”


or that

“no person has been charged with or convicted of the offence”.

Therefore, if no person has even reported the offence but a victim is still a victim, I believe—with huge respect to the Minister—that victims of suspected crime are included in the definition of “victim” that is the foundation of His Majesty’s Government’s Bill.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, I am not sure that we are really in disagreement on this. As I think I pointed out several times on the last occasion, criminal conduct does not depend on whether something has been reported; I had a discussion with the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, about that before. We are discussing what level of evidence there has to be before somebody has to say that there is criminal conduct. Somebody has to judge whether there is criminal conduct if the thing has not been reported to the police, prosecuted or charged. It may well be that, in the circumstances the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, refers to, the fact of that kind of reference may be enough to establish criminal conduct. However, if it turns out that the suspicion is wrong, there has not been criminal conduct. That is the only point I am making: it is either covered already, or it should not be extended to the situation being envisaged. I do not think I have made myself very clear, but I was struggling to do so.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord. As the debate we have just had demonstrates, the problem is that we need more clarity. If it is covered in the Bill—we are not convinced that it is, which is why we tabled the amendment—for children it needs to be made clear in the Bill, because of IICSA’s first recommendation about mandatory reporting, which we hope will come in due course. I understand that the Government have not made a decision on that, but at least it would nod to that recommendation, saying, “If somebody in a regulated profession believes that a child is a victim, and has a suspicion or belief that they have been the victim of CSA, then they are a victim”. It would be clear, and I am not sure that it is clear in Clause 1(5).

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, I need to think about this point. The amendment came in a little later than some of the other amendments, so I will take it under advisement. I see the point that is being made.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

That, in my short experience of this House, was the most extraordinarily powerful debate and I thank everybody who took part in it. I was honoured—and I genuinely mean honoured—to hear Poppy speak recently, and anybody who was in that room will carry it with them for the rest of their lives.

I thank the Minister for his advice, and a lot of other people. There have been some extraordinary experiences. The experiences of the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, have been extraordinary. The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, talked about the murders of the people in the court cases. I will go away with the good chaps theory of the noble Lord, Lord Russell, as an example. What I am taking away from this, because I am an optimist, is that the Government’s door is not at all closed. The advice is that we look at the code. There are mentions of children in the Bill, but not many. We will look at the code, but thankfully the Government’s door is not closed, and I beg to withdraw my Amendment 21.

Amendment 21 withdrawn.

Amendment 22 not moved.

Amendment 23

Moved by

[Baroness Chakrabarti]

23: Leave out Clause 2 and insert the following new Clause—
“The victims’ code(1) Schedule (The victims’ code) to this Act contains the code of practice as to the services to be provided to victims by persons having functions relating to—(a) victims, or(b) any aspect of the criminal justice system.(2) In this Part, the “victims’ code” means the code of practice in Schedule (The victims’ code) as from time to time amended by way of subsection (4) below.(3) The victims’ code shall make provision for services which reflect the principles that victims—(a) must be provided with information to help them understand the criminal justice process;(b) must be able to access services which support them (including, where appropriate, specialist services);(c) must have the opportunity to make their views heard in the criminal justice process;(d) must be able to challenge decisions which have a direct impact on them.(4) The Secretary of State may amend the victims’ code by way of regulations made by statutory instrument.(5) A statutory instrument containing regulations under this section may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.(6) But the Secretary of State may make regulations under subsection (4) only if satisfied that such amendment would not result in a significant—(a) reduction in the quality or extent of the services provided in accordance with the victims’ code, or(b) restriction in the description of persons to whom services are provided in accordance with the victims’ code.(7) The victims’ code may restrict or vary the application of its provisions to— (a) victims of specified descriptions (including those who are victims by virtue of specific conduct or conduct constituting specified offences);(b) specified persons who have functions of the kind mentioned in subsection (1).(8) The victims’ code may include provision requiring or permitting the services which are to be provided to a victim to be provided to one or more other persons—(a) instead of the victim (for example, where the victim has died), or(b) as well as the victim.(9) The victims’ code may make different provision for different purposes including different provision for—(a) victims of different descriptions;(b) persons who have different functions of a kind mentioned in subsection (1);(c) different areas.(10) The victims’ code may not require anything to be done by a person acting in—(a) a judicial capacity, or on the instructions of or on behalf of such a person; (b) the discharge of a prosecution function, if that function involves the exercise of a discretion.(11) In this section, “specified” means specified in the victims’ code.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment places the victims’ code on a firmer statutory footing as a Schedule to the Bill, amendable by regulations subject to the affirmative procedure. Another amendment will follow to add the Schedule referred to in this clause.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

It is an interesting time for me to be beginning this group. I do not know whether the usual channels have had the opportunity to consider timing.

House resumed.

19:22

Sitting suspended.

Schools: Financial Education

Wednesday 31st January 2024 Lords Chamber

Question for Short Debate

19:30

Asked by

[Baroness Sater]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to improve the financial literacy of children through the provision of financial education in schools.

[Baroness Sater (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to bring this debate to the House and thank all those who will contribute today. I declare my interest as an officer of the APPG on Financial Education for Young People.

Many of us will remember the world of piggy banks where real cash was kept; you could spend only what you had and no more. With physical money, life was somewhat simpler. Our children are living in a complex world of complicated financial decisions. Buying anything can be a minefield, from tempting credit offers, easy credit store cards and hire purchase to leasing and PCPs, and then there are scams, cyberattacks and payday loans. It is mind-boggling.

Banking is now significantly online. Contactless cards and payment by mobile phone make payments wonderfully easy, but spending is made easier too. It is all too quick to spend beyond your means.

I want to focus on a few things today. First, financial literacy is a life skill vital in preparing our young people for a rewarding life. Schools have an important role to play, so I hope today’s debate will focus on how we can strengthen and support provision in schools.

The London Institute of Banking & Finance reported in 2023 that 68% of children worry about money and their personal finances. Only 8% cited school as their main source of financial education, down from 15% the previous year.

Worrying about money is stressful. A survey of adults in the UK by Santander highlighted that 70% reported that better financial education would have improved their ability to manage their finances during the cost of living crisis, and two-thirds of young people believe that a lack of financial education has led them down the path of debt.

Money worries are the most important cause of anxiety in the UK, according to research from the Mental Health Foundation. Giving children the skills to manage their money and make informed decisions so they understand savings and investments, pensions, mortgages and loans can have a positive impact on their financial security in the future and on their mental well-being.

In 2023, GoHenry with Censuswide and Development Economics reported that prioritising financial education could have a positive impact on the wider economy too, adding nearly £6.98 billion into the UK economy each year and up to £202 billion by 2050. Children and young people are eager to learn. In March last year, the Institute of Banking & Finance reported that 82% would like to learn more about money and finance in school and college, up from 72% a year earlier. Research also tells us that parents want it too.

Secondly, financial education is not a statutory part of the national curriculum in primary schools in England. It is, however, embedded in the primary schools of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Research by Cambridge University, published by the Money and Pensions Service, indicates that habits and attitudes towards money are formed by the age of seven. Therefore, we should make sure that all primary school children, wherever they may live, have access to financial education.

According to a survey of primary school teachers by EVERFI in 2020, 82% considered teaching financial education to be very important, but 70% of them stated that financial literacy was not given enough importance. Positively, the Centre for Financial Capability identified that one in three primary-aged children receive some form of financial education, and there are some very good examples of financial literacy being taught in primary schools, but this means that in England it is a lottery as to whether you receive it or not. Making financial literacy a statutory part of the primary school curriculum would correct this, so I hope that my noble friend the Minister can make it happen.

It is a different picture in secondary schools. In 2014, provision of financial education became statutory in local authority schools, but delivery is variable and there are gaps. Those gaps are striking. The Money and Pensions Service comments that only 47% of seven to 17 year-olds in the UK—that is around 4.8 million children—receive a meaningful financial education.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Financial Education for Young People’s Building Beyond Barriers report in 2023 noted that over half of teachers did not know that financial education was part of the curriculum, yet we know that three in four teachers believe that teachers should play a leading role. The report tells us that financial education is considered challenging by teachers, with training, time and funding being key barriers. A survey commissioned by the Bank of England found that almost two-thirds of teachers felt that there was not enough time or resources to get financial education into the school year. We know that the curriculum is already under pressure with many other priorities, but we also know that teachers want to teach financial education and children want to learn it.

It is important to note that excellent materials are available from third parties and charities which help teachers deliver good financial education. Some of these resources, for example those produced by Young Enterprise and MyBnk, can bring teaching financial education to life by providing real-life situations, but sadly they are not delivered or available across all schools, adding to the lottery of life.

My third area of focus is where the provision of financial education should sit in the secondary curriculum. It presently sits in citizenship and maths programmes but not in PSHE, although it can sometimes be delivered in PSHE for those aged 11 to 16. We welcome the Prime Minister’s recently announced intention to have every child leave school with good numeracy skills. That is important to help them navigate their finances but so too are their values and attitudes towards money.

Financial education is not based on maths alone, and it would be doing it a disservice to try to put most of it within the maths curriculum, as some suggest. The importance of emergency funds—how would you cope if you suddenly lost your income, for example?—or the risk of identity theft are not topics for maths. This debate continues, and the recently announced House of Commons inquiry will no doubt look at this and how we strengthen financial education in all schools.

I turn briefly to Ofsted. It has a role to play. The APPG on Financial Education for Young People recommended that Ofsted undertake deep dives on the subject and be commissioned to map where financial literacy goals align with existing points in the curriculum. The APPG also recommended that Ofsted explore whether financial education should be in the education inspection framework. Those are all good proposals which I hope might gain traction.

The recent announcement by the Government to support financial inclusion through the dormant assets fund is very welcome. From that fund, the Government have pledged £87.5 million, and we are waiting to hear how it will be spent on financial education with a focus on children. The Centre for Financial Capability has made some interesting recommendations on how new funds could be spent, proposing financial education instructors for schools in the most deprived areas, free financial education teacher training, a hub of resources, and long-term evaluation to assess outcomes. Together with creating a financial capability innovation fund to stimulate new ideas, experimentation and collaboration, these are all good ideas. Can my noble friend the Minister provide any update on the dormant asset delivery and when the funds might be distributed?

Things are moving forward. The launch of the Money and Pensions Service’s 10-year strategy 2020-30 goes to the heart of financial well-being and includes a national goal to have 2 million more children and young people getting a meaningful financial education by 2030. This is a positive step forward, but perhaps we are not being ambitious enough. Would it not be good to have all children leave school with a good financial education well before 2030?

What we are doing at present is not enough. From research conducted by MyBnk and Comparethemarket, we know that only two in five young adults—41%—in the UK are financially literate. In some parts of the UK, we do have schools and teachers delivering high-quality financial education, but the education you receive should not be dependent on where in the country you live and the type of school you go to. We want every school and every teacher to be able to deliver a comprehensive and meaningful offer so that all children can leave school having a positive relationship with money and their personal finances.

I hope that this debate takes us a little further in helping to make that happen. We can make a real difference to people’s lives for this generation and for generations to follow. Let us seize the opportunity.

19:40

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, for securing this debate and introducing it so effectively. It is a shame that noble Lords have such a short speaking time this evening but I suppose that is testament to the fact that so many of us feel strongly about the need for young people to be properly prepared in financial literacy. The Education Select Committee feels the same; yesterday, it began its inquiry on this subject.

I want to concentrate on the need to include financial education as a compulsory part of primary education. As the noble Baroness said, research for the Money and Pensions Service suggested that money habits are formed as early as the age of seven, highlighting the importance of starting to educate children about financial matters at primary school. This position was emphasised by organisations such as the Centre for Financial Capability, Kickstart Money, Parentkind and the Centre for Social Justice in briefings for this debate, yet England remains the only part of the UK where financial education is not included in the national curriculum at primary school level.

That point is clearly stated by the Money and Pensions Service, an arm’s-length body of government sponsored by the DWP, which says on its website:

“In England, financial education is included in the national curriculum in secondary schools only”.


Yet, in answer to an Oral Question in your Lordships’ House on 13 March last year, the Minister said that

“at key stage 1, the compulsory curriculum includes helping children understand how they make choices about how to spend, how to save and how to use money”.—[Official Report, 14/3/23; col. 1192.]

If the Minister maintains that position, she is in denial because only around a third of primary school pupils receive any meaningful form of financial education.

The government-funded Money and Pensions Service also said in a report published four months ago:

“The earlier the better—interventions at a young age can positively enhance financial capability”.


So what are we waiting for? The simple answer is this: a Labour Government, who will review the curriculum. I am confident that the embedding of financial education in the primary curriculum will soon be a fact of school life, bringing England into line with the rest of the UK. Future generations and the economy will be the beneficiaries.

19:43

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for introducing this short debate and doing it so well. I have five points to make in the short time I am allowed.

First, as we have heard, the 2023 MaPS survey showed that children’s attitudes to money have developed by the age of seven. To encourage good habits and discourage bad ones, they need education young. As the noble Lord said, it should start in primary school.

Secondly, financial education is supposed to be part of the secondary school curriculum. The 2023 survey by Comparethemarket and others reported that only 40% of young adult respondents were considered financially literate, while 61% of young adult respondents did not recall receiving financial education at school. Some of them probably did but obviously it was not adequate.

That is not surprising; I come to my third point. It is estimated that 11 to 18 year-olds need at least 30 hours of financial education in a school year to become financially literate. However, in fact, those who do receive such education—somewhere around 50% or 60%—get about 48 minutes a month. I calculate that to be around nine hours a year—well short of the 30 hours necessary. It is too little to too few.

Fourthly, we now know that schools have a vital role from early in life. Financial education is part of the curriculum but the evidence is that two in five teachers are not even aware that it is a required part. It has been found that, of those who are aware, more than half find it challenging to teach. Perhaps that is not surprising because it is not part of their training.

Fifthly, and lastly, we must train teachers and embed this in their continuing professional development. We must ensure that it is taught across all schools and at all ages. The more disadvantaged the child, the greater the need; they will not learn it from their parents. The duty to provide financial education should therefore be put on a statutory basis and include primary schools.

19:45

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a state secondary school teacher in design and technology. I join in the thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, for raising this important topic.

As ever, we are talking about the difference between following the curriculum and educating our children. Nick Gibb has been quoted as describing having “good maths” as the gateway to lifelong financial stability, and pointed out that financial knowledge already forms a compulsory part of the national curriculum in secondary school. However, as has been mentioned, only 41% of young adults are financially literate—whatever that means. I would contend that that figure is much lower in reality.

Core skills in maths need to be taught but we also need to get to a stage where students can learn financial skills—such as how to compare offers in a supermarket, read a simple balance sheet, shop around for a mortgage or fill in a tax return—as well as other vital skills that are either ignored or left for excellent charities such as Young Enterprise to fulfil during those rare PSHE days. At this point, I must declare that Young Enterprise used to be a client of mine when I was a photographer many years ago.

Might it be not only that children could learn some very useful skills but that those skills could perhaps be used in later life for them to start a business, employ people and pay their taxes? In fact, I think that every student who leaves school at 18 should have started at least one business while they were at school. Would that not be fun to learn and teach? Might it inspire students to return to school and teachers to enjoy teaching?

19:47

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, for securing this debate and introducing it so clearly. I declare my interests as stated in the register.

The evidence finds that a child’s attitude towards money is well developed by the age of seven. The foundations of our skills in managing money are laid in these early years. Yet, unlike in the secondary curriculum, financial education is absent from the requirements of the primary curriculum in England. This is seen by 60% of teachers as a key obstacle to its high-quality delivery. Further challenges include training, time and funding. Young Money and City Pay it Forward are examples of external providers supporting teachers with high-quality resources and training.

LifeSavers is the financial education programme delivered to primary schools by the Just Finance Foundation, of which my most reverend friend the Archbishop of Canterbury is president. It provides teachers with training, resources and lesson plans, while its innovative saving clubs give children hands-on experience, enabling them to put money-managing skills into practice. It provides a values-based approach and equips teachers to explore with children not only how to use money but how we think about it—that is, what it means to be wise, generous, just and thankful with money. By 2023, it had worked with 202 schools, reaching 53,257 children nationwide.

What are the Government doing to ensure that teachers are supported and equipped to teach financial education as a requirement of the primary curriculum? Will they adopt a collaborative approach with external schemes? Surely we want all children to learn the skills of wise money management, enabling them to live generously with money and finance not as a god but as a servant of God’s, humanity’s and creation’s good.

19:49

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lady Sater for tabling this important debate. I also thank my friend Vivi Friedgut, who is here in the Chamber, the founder of Blackbullion, an educational technology start-up which is on a mission to empower millions of students to create a better financial future. The company is chaired by my noble friend Lord Fink, who was unable to be here this evening.

In discussion Vivi told me quite clearly that the current system is not working and that everyone seems to be looking for a single and simple panacea. No such thing exists. It is a journey, not a destination. From wanting as ever to be practical, I say to the Minister: we need more teacher education. If teachers are confident, they are best placed to weave it into a variety of subjects to bring them to life. Integrate elements of this financial education into other relevant subjects—maths, history, geography, economics, business, life skills—to create a holistic understanding and complement this with dedicated workshops or group work to provide real-world context.

Forever being practical, I urge the Minister to meet with Vivi and my noble friend Lord Fink. What they have done among students at universities has created a collaboration between the Bank of England and Pearson Education, and the educational help for financial education is enormous. Some 700,000 students, not just in Britain, are benefiting from the information. Surely, we can use that same technology to get this education across to children—because I notice that even primary school children seem to be holding mobile phones. So I urge the Minister, if he has the time, to meet with Lord Fink and Vivi.

19:51

[Lord Parekh (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, on securing this debate and introducing it so well.

In two minutes I can do no more than raise three important points about financial education. In a survey, over two-thirds of secondary school teachers did not know that financial education was a curriculum requirement. Nearly two-thirds of young adults did not remember receiving it. As was pointed out earlier, for those who did receive it, it amounted to no more than 48 minutes, as opposed to the 30-hours minimum requirement.

Starting with that kind of base, I want to ask three questions about financial education. First, why does it have such a low profile; why is it not widely known, properly researched and talked about? Secondly, what are the consequences of marginalising financial education in this way? If a child’s attitude to money is shaped by the age of seven, what happens to those children who are past the age of seven but have not been exposed to this kind of education at all?

My third question relates to the content of financial education. What will you teach in financial education? Will it simply be how to spend money and how to save it? If it is to be proper financial education, it must be about the financial system and about explaining to a child what it is to have £1 and how a piece of paper acquires the value of £1 or £5: in other words, explaining to them how our system works and why money is in some sense central to our social system. Once we do this, children will begin to understand how our society is propelled by money, why it is pathologically obsessed with money and what can be done to avoid the consequences of that obsession.

19:54

[Lord Sarfraz (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Sater for securing this debate and for her very powerful opening remarks.

Many kids today will be alive and transacting in the year 2100. A child who is in year 4 today will in 2100 be only in their 80s and will probably live another 20 years after that. So, when we design content, it needs to be future-proof and include ideas such as “Making money is not a bad thing. Taking risks and losing money—by starting a business, for example—is not the end of the world”. I declare an interest, having done that several times.

Thinking big about opportunities is good. I remember that, when the Government set out the ambition of the UK being a global science superpower, many Members of your Lordships’ House objected, saying it was arrogant. I cannot get my head around that. Our kids should be unashamedly ambitious. The world’s population in their lifetime will be just under 12 billion. So, if they are lucky enough to make money, we should teach them to be thoughtful and impactful with it.

So let us do all that we can to get third-party providers delivering programmes in schools that focus on the future of money, whether that is decentralised assets or cryptocurrency—not to mention AI, which will completely change insurance, investing and savings as we know them.

The next time your child or grandchild decides to create an avatar to sell virtual cookies, taking payment in cryptocurrency, please do not stop them; let them have a shot at it.

19:56

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps I can extend the list of desiderata from my noble friend Lord Sarfraz. I would like every pupil, by the time they leave school, to have taken note of some counterintuitive precepts—things that you have to be taught because they do not come naturally. For example, prices are not intrinsic in the way that volume or weight is. That seems an obvious point: if a travel agent puts up its prices during school holidays, it is not because it is being greedy but because it is responding to supply and demand. I feel that I have to say that, having listened to the questions earlier today when people were talking about price gouging and profiteering—vocabulary that I used to associate with authoritarian regimes.

Secondly, imports are a prize, not a concession. Buying high-quality stuff for less money frees up your assets and frees up your time so that you can spend it on other things, buy other stuff—that is what drives the entire economy. It is amazing how many people are against xenophobia in every context except honestly produced, good-value imported goods.

Thirdly, jobs are a burden rather than a gain—or rather, they are a means to an end. The end is to live well. If we can live well working shorter hours as a result of extended supply lines and globalisation, that is a good thing. I wish politicians did not feel the need to defend every deal by saying that it “creates jobs”. You can create jobs by employing people for the state—that does not create wealth. What creates wealth is innovation.

Finally, and most importantly, opportunity costs are real. Things have consequences, even the things that we do not immediately see, what Frédéric Bastiat called

“ce qu’on ne voit pas”—

the unseen things. If, for example, you are strongly in favour of supporting Ukraine, fine, but do not then complain if there is a rise in energy bills. Things have a cost. If you are strongly in favour of preserving unspoilt land and stopping housing around you, fine, but do not then complain if house prices rise. If you strongly supported the lockdown, do not complain about inflation afterwards. If we grasped those things, we would be more informed voters, we would be more fulfilled citizens and, by the time that we came here, we would be more useful legislators.

19:58

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, for introducing this important debate. I agree with most of what has been said. Clearly, more must be done and the schools have an important role.

At the risk of being a bit of a grouch, I will say that we must recognise the limitations of financial education. It is important that most of our most important financial decisions, the most complex and difficult, tend to be long-term, such as deciding what pension you will have, what sort of mortgage or what to do with an inheritance, should you receive one. These decisions will be taken long after those involved have left school. Of course, good education involves practice, but you cannot practice taking a pension. The nature of what you teach in financial education should be focused on familiarity rather than the actual decisions that are taken in particular circumstances.

I will just add that I sometimes think that legislators cheerfully place difficult financial decisions on people—freedom of choice in pensions is the one I have in mind, but I am sure there are other examples—because they think people will be financially educated. A policy that requires everyone to be financially educated is a bad policy.

20:00

[The Earl of Effingham (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, for raising this debate, which I believe is of fundamental importance. As I think we all subscribe to, education has the power and the ability to hold the keys to many amazing things.

There should be four pillars to our education system: food education; physical education; financial education; and academic education. As a general broad-brush view, most people in the UK would aspire to home ownership, a decent upbringing for their children and the ability to retire in later life. All four of those educational pillars will play a key role in this outcome, but financial education arguably plays the most significant one.

Helping the young population now will have the hugely positive effect of helping them to help their own daughters and sons in 20 years’ time. Financial insecurity leads to anxiety, stress, and depression, but financial education at an early age will mitigate these risks.

Compound interest is one of the wonders of the financial world, but without a decent financial education, schoolchildren will not know that by investing only £10 per week from the age of 18, they can potentially have a retirement pot of £400,000 based on an annualised return of 9%. I do not believe it would be a difficult sell to let these children know that, in exchange for £10 per week, they could potentially have £400,000 at the age of 68. It is an easy message to get out there.

So, in this two-minute timeframe, I ask the Minister: what are the Government doing to support parents and carers in this financial education mission? Data shows that the greatest impact comes when the message is delivered by those individuals in the home, as well as those in school, and we should do everything we can to ensure that message reaches the target audience.

20:02

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, on doing most of the heavy lifting, which was just as well considering the sprint relay event that followed it.

The noble Lord, Lord Polak, caught my thoughts most clearly when he said this must be embedded throughout the education system. I was thinking of Jane Austen, who writes about little other than money; if you look at English, and then look at Dickens, they all go there. History records it as well—the fact you have these institutions that come down to us—but it depends on the bit you are doing; the Tudors may not be quite as relevant as the first Labour Government after the war, but it is all there. You need to reinforce the idea—the noble Lord, Lord Davies, caught that as well, that it is an idea you are going for—and the maths behind it, such as compound interest and interest rates, as the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, said, and apply it and put it across.

My question to the Minister is: when does she think this reinforcing of ideas across the curriculum stands a chance of being integrated into a programme of study that most people will come across? We want to make it so that you cannot avoid this subject, and not just fall asleep and write it off because you do not like it—if anybody here says they did not do that during a lesson at school, they are lying to themselves. There are people who will simply not get it, but if the idea is bounced around, some may stand a chance of it being ingrained. This is a big subject with lots of ramifications and tentacles. If you treat it as a one-off lesson substitution, you will annoy everybody who likes the subject that you are cutting, and you will guarantee that some just will not get it at all.

20:04

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, on securing this interesting debate, which has had a number of similar but significant contributions from across the House.

I echo my noble friend Lord Parekh’s question about why this gets very little attention—everybody here has found it fascinating—and I have been wondering why. As the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, said, worrying about money causes anxiety, and ensuring children get the knowledge they need is vital to equip them for life. A number of speakers, including my noble friend Lord Watson and the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham have noted how early a child’s money habits can be formed.

Currently, as I think every speaker has noted, financial education is included in the national curriculum only in secondary schools. It is a welcome addition to the curriculum, but it is arguably too little too late. As the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, said, it is subject to a postcode lottery, and the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, highlighted that 30 hours a year may be required for this to be effective.

Financial education is not the same as maths; as the noble Lord, Lord Polak, said, it can be woven into many subjects, including Jane Austen, as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, pointed out. Maths skills need to be cemented at a much earlier stage and, as the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, said, this should include practical skills such as comparing prices, budgeting, understanding interest rates and household bills. As my noble friend Lord Watson said, it is also Labour’s view that this should be done at an earlier stage.

I have not got time to go through what everybody else said, but I note an important point made in a paper by the Centre for Social Justice on the number of children who are problem gamblers. Shockingly, according to the NAO, there are 55,000 problem gamblers aged 11 to 16 in England, with a further 85,000 in this age group at risk. I apologise for getting that in at the end, because no one else had raised it, but I wonder how the Government are looking to use financial education to address what seems to be a serious issue, not least in relation to online financial safety. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

20:06

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on securing this short but very important debate, and I thank noble Lords for their contributions.

Economic and financial education are important parts of a broad and balanced curriculum and are essential knowledge for young people to manage their money well and to make sound financial decisions, particularly sound long-term decisions, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton. As my noble friend Lady Sater rightly pointed out, they are an important contributor to our economic growth.

As noble Lords have noted, financial knowledge is compulsory in the national curriculum for mathematics at key stages 1 to 4, and in the secondary curriculum in citizenship. Mathematics provides the underlying knowledge, and putting maths in a financial context can help to bring it to life for pupils. More specific knowledge is contained in the citizenship national curriculum in secondary school, but it can also be taught in primaries.

Schools have flexibility on how they deliver the curriculum. I have heard from a number of schools, including the Danesfield School in Buckinghamshire, about programmes that they have developed to enable pupils to develop practical money management skills, such as through a school bank, through which children can earn, spend, get overdrawn and understand the impact of interest rates. What struck me particularly was that that was developed entirely for a post-cash world, with no cash being used any more.

A number of your Lordships, including my noble friends Lady Sater and Lord Sandhurst, and the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, referred to financial attitudes and habits being established by the age of seven. I will refer back to the original research that noble Lords were referring to, which was from the University of Cambridge in 2013.

I quote from the research:

“In summary, the evidence indicates that teaching young children explicit forms of ‘financial’ knowledge per se is likely to be ineffectual in shaping or changing their behaviours”.


It goes on to say—this is in my words, not quoting directly from the research, but I hope I have captured it accurately—that the focus should rather be on developing “habits of mind”, namely self-regulation and the capacity to defer gratification, and helping children to understand the future in concrete terms. My noble friend Lord Sandhurst touched on that. I raise it because I think it is important; schools clearly have a critical role in shaping and helping to instil these important behaviours in children, but so do parents and so do we as a society. Indeed, my noble friend Lord Sarfraz captured so eloquently the importance of attitudes, aspiration and self-belief.

The noble Lord, Lord Parekh, asked why financial education is so low-profile. I stress that without good numeracy we cannot have good financial literacy. Good numeracy is the gateway to long-term financial stability. Since 2010 we have transformed mathematics teaching in this country by introducing the mastery pedagogy, used by the top-performing east Asian countries, to secure a deep understanding of mathematics. Going forward, the advanced British standard will ensure that all students study maths to 18, further strengthening key maths skills and developing students’ confidence to deal with finances in later life.

My noble friend Lord Polak and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham both asked what we are doing to build the confidence of teachers; the right reverend Prelate also asked about collaboration. Of course, we are already collaborating with a number of organisations. In particular, the Money and Pensions Service provides guidance that signposts high-quality and quality-assured resources, including from the financial services sector, which play a key role in financial education at home and in the classroom. Training is obviously important for building teachers’ knowledge, confidence and skill. That is why the department is working with the Money and Pensions Service to deliver teacher webinars this academic year, focused on teaching about money in a cashless society. I do not know whether they will be as fun as the outline that the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, gave us, but I live in hope.

Together with my noble friend Lady Sater and other noble Lords, I recognise the really important work of charities in this area. We heard several mentions of the work of Young Enterprise, with its delivery of the quality mark, and the important work delivered by MyBnk, as well as the Lifesavers programme which, as I think the right reverend Prelate mentioned, also focuses on attitudes, which ties in with our own view. I would be delighted to meet with the founder of Blackbullion and hear more about its important work.

There is obviously the important issue of resources to build financial capability; my noble friend asked for an update on plans for the dormant assets fund. I cannot give her quite the update I would like to, but I assure her that the department continues to work closely with the Treasury and DCMS, and we will announce further details on our plans for the financial inclusion part of the dormant assets work. I will make sure that my noble friend is updated when that occurs.

I absolutely agree with your Lordships that a good financial education can also contribute to lower debt levels. Also important is an understanding of fraud and its risks, which can have such an impact on mental well-being. The Home Office recently launched new fraud education resources in collaboration with the National Crime Agency and the Association for Citizenship Teaching.

My noble friend mentioned the work of the Education Select Committee and the all-party parliamentary group. We obviously work closely with both, and I know that my right honourable friend the Minister for Schools will shortly meet the APPG chair to discuss its findings and future plans.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, asked when the UK strategy for financial well-being would be fully integrated. Back in 2020 the Money and Pensions Service published a UK Strategy for Financial Wellbeing, which sets a national goal of 2 million more children and young people receiving a meaningful financial education by 2030. This is supported by a delivery plan for each of the UK nations.

My noble friend Lord Effingham asked about our messaging for parents. We do quite a lot in that area. The Money and Pensions Service has some digital content, Talk Learn Do, which is a financial education programme for parents and carers of children aged between three and 11, to help them talk about and understand money. There is also a plan to develop a similar programme for parents of children aged between 12 and 17; the discovery phase has been undertaken, and the Money and Pensions Service is planning next steps. There is also a Money and Pensions Service grant programme, which is testing approaches to support teacher training with a particular focus on financial education for children and young people who are vulnerable—for example, children in care and care leavers.

The noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, asked about the risks of gambling. She is absolutely right to focus on that. The department has published training modules for schools as part of the RSHE curriculum, which cover the risks of gambling and debt. Through health education, pupils are also taught how to recognise early signs of mental well-being concerns, how to self-regulate and the benefits of rationing the amount of time they spend online, which is obviously part of the wider picture.

My noble friend referred to the approaches taken by the devolved Administrations. Of course, they are tailored to smaller and much less autonomous groups of schools than we have in England. Our current focus is really on the skills, such as arithmetic, that underpin a pupil’s ability to manage budgets and money, but also character development, which is so important in terms of attitudes.

The Government believe that it is crucial for children to build knowledge that supports their financial literacy over time, and that it is also critical to build attitudes as early as possible. We believe that rooting financial education in mathematics and citizenship focuses the curriculum on the key knowledge that pupils will need to manage their finances confidently. I am not sure whether the curriculum contains all the conceptual ideas that my noble friend Lord Hannan raised, but it certainly gave us food for thought.

We are building on recent reforms, and the webinars that we are delivering with the Money and Pensions Service are the next step in that. Our understanding of financial literacy is through a combination of knowledge and behaviours. Schools, but importantly families too, have a critical part to play in that.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, referred to Jane Austen and Dickens. I am going to go further back and quote Cicero, which might be unfashionable but I think is appropriate for this debate. He said: “Frugality includes all other virtues”.

20:20

Sitting suspended.

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Committee stage
Wednesday 31st January 2024 Lords Chamber

Committee (2nd Day) (Continued)

20:30

Debate on Amendment 23 resumed.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, now we are once again resolved into a Committee, I can say that it is particularly humbling to follow the last group. Once more, I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, and to all the other survivors and survivor advocates we have heard from this evening and will hear from again, no doubt, before this Bill is done.

In speaking to Amendment 23 I shall also speak to its consequentials, Amendments 139 and 140, with support, for which I am grateful, from my noble Fred—my noble friend Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede—and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. I hope the Minister will forgive me because this may be caricatured as legalism, angels dancing on the head of a pin, et cetera, or legal weeds, but I believe that putting the victims’ code on a firm statutory footing is incredibly important and something all parties and all Members of your Lordships’ House ought to support.

My reasoning is twofold. In a later suite of amendments, I will suggest that the victims’ code needs more teeth—not the sharpest teeth, but just some teeth. We will debate that later. If we are going to create some statutory powers to enforce the victims’ code, which I think is a pretty good code, we should all think about the fact that we have it. I thank the Public Bill Office and all those who were involved in putting the code on the many pages the Committee will see. It is a code full of very positive rights for victims but, sadly, too many of them are not real in practice at the moment. So, I am grateful for that.

One of the reasons I want to put the code on a statutory footing, as I have said, is that I am dovetailing these amendments with later amendments to give the Victims’ Commissioner some modest powers to enforce this noble code when it is not put into practice by the public authorities that have that duty. But even before we get to the amendments that will come later in the Committee’s consideration, there is value in putting this code on a statutory footing in the Bill, which is supposed to be a Bill for victims.

I have been a human rights lawyer for 30 years this year. That is an admission one does not want to make for all sorts of reasons—some personal and some political, I guess—and I have so much respect for English and Welsh common law. I believe it has done so much for fair trial rights and defendants’ rights: the golden thread and so on. Ironically, it is international human rights norms that taught me most about victims’ rights. The presumption of innocence, the burden of proof and all of that is pre-ECHR in our system, and I defend it. If anyone googles me, they will find all sorts of associations—“I am a terrible person who supports terrorists and murderers” and so on. I do not, but I do really believe in fair trials. I do not believe that any victim benefits from a miscarriage of justice. When there is a miscarriage of justice, there are two victims—and many more.

It is slightly ironic that, in our contemporary politics, politicians get brownie points for saying, “Let’s lock up more people. Let’s lock them up for longer. Let’s create more criminal offences” and “Let’s put more statutory provision on the books”—not to get stuck in the legal weeds or dance on the head of a pin, but as performative politics. Yet we do not create the facilities the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, has been campaigning for: simple things such as a separate room for the victim at a murder trial, translations, and transcripts. All the things we were debating earlier this evening just cannot happen, but what can happen is longer sentences, more crimes et cetera. We can do that legislation —the legal weeds stuff—but we cannot do the basics.

I respect fair trials, and I respect a great piece of human rights legislation that goes back to 1984. The Thatcher years’ Police and Criminal Evidence Act did so much for suspects’ rights and defendants’ rights, including in the police station—and not just in its codes, but in the Act itself. It is framework legislation that creates all sorts of precious and important rights for suspects and defendants.

I believe that victims need at least the equivalent of that. It is a modest ask. For someone who completely believes in the presumption of innocence, fair trials and suspects’ and defendants’ rights, it is time for victims to have their equivalent. Putting the victims’ code on a statutory footing to make the Bill the equivalent of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 for suspects and defendants would be the least that we can do for victims of crime.

Even without my later suite of amendments, which would give the Victims’ Commissioner some enforcement powers—modest ones, which we will discuss later—putting this on the face of the Bill would pay respect to victims. In this age once more of connectivity, it would make the code more widely known, talked about and accessible. I also propose that, because this would now be in primary legislation, it would be amendable only by affirmative resolution in both Houses. I also argue that the Victims’ Commissioner should at least be consulted alongside the Attorney-General and so on, because otherwise this is all talk.

We have been doing this talk for many years in a performative, posturing arms race. Noble Lords know what I am talking about—and there is no monopoly of vice or virtue in any part of your Lordships’ House. This is the least we can do. Do we believe in victims’ rights? Let us put them into the Bill, and then debate later what we do about them and the enforcement powers which I believe the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, and those who follow her should have. I beg to move Amendment 23 and hope I will have the unanimous support of the Committee.

[Baroness Newlove (Con)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 23. In my previous term as Victims’ Commissioner, a government lawyer once described the victims’ code to me as “persuasive guidance”. Those two words spoke volumes to me, because they go to the very heart of what is going wrong with the treatment of victims in our criminal justice system. If the Bill is to have a substantial impact on the victim experience, the first thing we need to change is the culture of the criminal justice system. I fear that victims’ entitlements are all often viewed as “Nice to do”, “If we can”, or “How can we tick the victim box with minimum effort?” This clearly came across in the findings of the joint inspection report on the delivery of victims’ entitlements, published on 23 December.

Victims need to be seen as participants in the justice process and not as observers. For this to happen, they need more than “persuasive guidance”; they need statutory rights. We do not talk about the defendant having “persuasive guidance”. They have statutory rights, and rightly so—we would not expect anything less. Rights are to be respected and adhered to. As we have seen over the past 20 years, entitlements in the victims’ code have been viewed by many practitioners as no more than this persuasive guidance. For this reason, I support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, which seeks to place the victims’ code into a Schedule to the Bill.

If this amendment is successful, for the first time we will be able to say that victims have statutory rights. This would be a significant step forward for the victims and place a much greater responsibility on key agencies to deliver compliance. The amendment cannot by itself change the landscape but, if coupled with greater accountability, effective scrutiny and better public awareness, it is one of the many steps we need to take if we are to deliver transformative change for victims.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, very briefly, I can only entirely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove. If something like this does not happen, what we are all asking ourselves is: will anything really change? The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, contrasted the last part of the Bill, which has more substantive legislative power that will go on to its face, with the part of the Bill we are talking about at the moment, which is largely advisory and selective. It tells people what they should do. However, it does not tell people what they must do.

Most importantly, it does not even give the Victims’ Commissioner, himself or herself, the authority to insist. Unfortunately, the noble Baroness’s predecessor did not have her tenure extended because, I gather, she was felt by certain members of the current Government to be somewhat unhelpful in her attitude and demeanour; thus her tenure was not renewed. Until the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, was put in on an interim basis, the role of Victims’ Commissioner was vacant for a significant period. That is not good or acceptable. It speaks volumes to some people about the level of real intent of His Majesty’s Government to put their legislative money where their mouth is.

I do not think I need to say any more than that. The onus is on the Government to demonstrate that this law will have real teeth and that the code, wherever it is, needs to be complied with and understood. The track record of the past few years has resulted in these amendments being put forward. There is a loss of faith in His Majesty’s Government’s true intent to put muscle and weight behind the provisions in the code, so the onus is on them to explain, on Report if the House so chooses, why we should not insist on amendments such as these.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, to answer the noble Lord’s rhetorical question, or perhaps pre-empting it, the Justice Committee in the House of Commons said that this was

“not … strong enough to drive the necessary cultural change”.

At the heart of the Second Reading debate was the importance of compliance with the code. If the code is not statutory, compliance is that much harder to achieve. We heard from the Minister at Second Reading, and in his letter following it—for which I was grateful—about guidance proposed by the Government for where non-compliance is severe and persistent, and how the ministerial taskforce may issue a public non-compliance notification. That is much too convoluted. One can see that it would take very serious non-compliance—something very dramatic—for such a non-compliance notification to be issued. I am sure it would be regarded as a very extreme step. We should not have to get to that point. It should be the norm and understood by the affected stakeholders—I hate that word—that they must comply.

20:45

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a member of the justice committee, and I endorse everything that has been said by speakers in this debate. I do not need to repeat their reasons; I shall be expanding on them in the same vein when we debate Amendment 51.

We have to give teeth to this. There has to be cultural change and it has to be a change that affects those in the Crown Prosecution Service and police at ground level because those above them will know that, if they default, something not so nice—a failure to get promotion or something practical—may happen because they will have a black mark against them by having failed to implement the victims’ code. We need teeth.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with everyone who has spoken so far. I say to the Minister that, given the mentions earlier today about putting the victims’ code on a statutory footing, the brevity of this debate is in inverse proportion to the importance of the amendments. We appreciate that the Government have not come as far as us. I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Hamwee, who helpfully set out the concerns of the committee that she quoted about this not being strong enough to get compliance.

I want to go back over a little bit of history. When I joined your Lordships’ House in 2011, a number of inquiries were going on relating to victims of crime. I became vice-chair of the all-party group on victims of crime. That group introduced the stalking inquiry report, which led to stalking law reform. Between 2011 and 2019, this House debated the role of a victim’s code and the victims of crime on many occasions. I had a Private Member’s Bill on the issue which had its Second Reading in July 2019. Not only did the Conservative manifesto of 2019 mention it but there was more detail about it in an addendum to it. I have no doubt that that was due to the work of the then Victims’ Commissioner, who is the Victims’ Commissioner again, sitting on the opposite Benches.

All that was because the current system does not work; it is quite simple. Until the services that have to provide the victims’ code are made to do so, there will be no incentive for them to deliver it if they have other pressures. It is the old thing: if you have to do something, then you will. You will have targets and you will be judged by your performance. Without that—if this is just a “thing too much—it will not happen.

As we come to the end of this Parliament, I want to say that it was a key tenet of the Conservative manifesto to make sure that a victims’ code was enshrined in law, but what we have seen is not what was spoken about during that general election campaign.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

I find myself in a difficult situation, because in the previous group I had said that we should not have a sterile debate about whether we should have all the victims’ code on a statutory basis, and I challenged the Minister to look at individual provisions that should be on a statutory basis. I understand that that is not the tenor of the debate that we have been having in this group. However, Amendment 108, which was spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Polak, in the previous debate, looked at a specific element—namely, to do with the relevant local commissioning of bodies for specialist support for children who are victims, and whether that should be on a statutory basis, so as to put it on a similar basis to that for domestic abuse victims. I do not think that the Minister answered that amendment. While on the one hand I acknowledge the point that having an all-or-nothing approach may not be the best use of our time, on the other, it would be helpful if the Minister addressed the specific proposals in the amendments in the previous group.

Having said that, we are at a relatively early point in Committee, and there will be opportunities to bring these matters back. As my noble friend said, she has a further group of amendments looking at the powers of the Victims’ Commissioner. Having explained my position to the Minister, I look forward to his response.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Bellamy) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and others, who have spoken in this part of the debate. To take up at once the challenge of the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, the Government’s position is that there are no specific amendments, including Amendment 108, which could or should be promoted into the Bill—they should all be dealt with in the code, in the right place. The difficulty of putting specific matters in the Bill, among other difficulties, is that you make a policy choice, irrespective of the available resources and the available situation in different areas, and so forth, as to which—

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

I was just going to finish my sentence, but of course I give way to the noble Baroness.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am sorry for being premature. I totally see the Minister’s point about the challenge of taking particular parts of the victims’ code and putting them in the Bill. That is why some of us are offering the suggestion that the whole victims’ code should be in statute. I hope that that would assist the Minister, because he would then not be picking and choosing particular aspects of the code, as the whole code of victims’ rights in this country would be in primary legislation, subject to amendment and so on. That would make victims’ rights a little bit closer to the appropriate rights of suspects, defendants and convicted criminals.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for that intervention and clarification. Perhaps I could explain why the Government do not think that this is a positive way to go.

The first point is that the present code is still a statutory code. It is grounded in statute, authorised by statute, has been subject to negative resolution in Parliament and therefore has a legal status. The Government’s position is that putting the code in a schedule to the Bill does not materially increase its legal enforceability, or indeed its legal status. Therefore, there does not seem to the Government to be a compelling reason to do it in either case. The Government would consider the present code to be subject to judicial review. There could be a legal challenge; in fact, the legislation on the face of it accepts that the code is admissible in legal proceedings, and so forth. So we already have a statutory code, and we are dealing with quite a fine point—whether putting in a schedule really has any material effect. The Government’s position is that, certainly legally, it has no effect—but in practice there is a very significant downside.

The downside is that what you have on the statute is no longer user-friendly and no longer contains the information that victims want when they reach for the code and want to know what to do, where to go, what the telephone number is and what the website is that they need to consult. You cannot put that in the statute, and I invite noble Lords to compare the code as currently reproduced in the amendment we are discussing with the code as published. The latter sets out 12 rights very clearly, has boxes that explain various things, tells you where to go, elaborates on the rights, et cetera, all in very user-friendly language. Either you abandon that—in which case, you abandon the signposting and everything we were discussing in the previous group—or you have two documents. And that, in the Government’s view, is not very satisfactory. Although we all have touching faith in the interest of the general public to read long schedules in the statutes that we pass, that is not actually the way to raise awareness. You raise awareness through other means.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

I am sorry to intervene. I have been listening and have found the arguments very persuasive. If the Government are saying it does not make any difference to put it into the statute itself—and yet I know from briefings I have received that there is a very strong push from bodies on the ground saying we do need the code in the statute—why can we not have the statute and then a user-friendly version of it? That does not seem to me such a terrible thing.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

The Government’s view is, first, that there is no need to go down this route at all, because the present structure of the code under the existing legislation creates statutory duties, obligations and rights that can be enforced by one route or another. If you burden the statute with this, the Government’s position is that it has no real effect, either in law or in any other way, but does have the complication that you must have—as I think the noble Baroness is conceding —at least two documents. That, again, overburdens the system, and the document that is trying to be user-friendly and communicative may turn out to be more difficult to draft, if you are always stuck with the framework of what is in the statute. So it gets us nowhere and simply complicates life.

[Baroness Newlove (Con)]

I am sorry, I am not a legal person, so I am just trying to join the dots, if you will bear with me. I think what is really insulting to victims is that it is like a two-tier level—one is a code and one is a law. What we want is to make sure that that persuasive guidance is in law, because it is about accountability and while it is in the code—with the words “should” or “must” or “do”—there is no accountability. So I am confused by the Minister saying it makes no difference if it is put in law and that it is easy language. It is nothing to do with that. It is important for victims to know that they have legal rights—not to take away from the offenders’ rights, but to start a level playing field—so I am a bit confused about my noble and learned friend’s response, as it does not make sense to me, and I am not a lawyer.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for her intervention. Let me have another go at explaining it. The code is not in itself a statute. Once you go down the route of having a code and not a statute, you effectively have a framework that is still a legal framework—it is still legal guidance that gives people rights. The code says that you have 12 rights and lists them: this is what the authorities have to do and this is what you do if those rights are not observed. It is a legal framework; we are talking about degrees of legal right, but these are legal rights. If you wanted to, you could go to court and say that you have not had them.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

No, you could not.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

Well, that is not the Government’s advice.

21:00

[Baroness Newlove (Con)]

I am sorry, but I think there is a miscommunication here. The courts may be saying that these are your rights, but they are not legal rights. My inbox is full of victims not getting their rights under the code. I have been doing this since 2012 and have been at every code launch—you name it—but it just does not happen because the profession does not see this as law. It sees it as a code, so there is no legal route to accountability. It is all down to agencies which, if we are to line all the ducks up, have no funding and are short of staff—and again, the victim has not had that communication. My noble and learned friend talked about raising awareness of the code because nobody knows about it, so I am at a loss to understand this impression that “They have a right and they should do this”. As we saw recently in the Nottingham case, there is a miscommunication of rights and what they do: it is not being delivered.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

Before the noble and learned Lord gets up—I know that is the inverse of the usual statement—perhaps it might be helpful if I cited something from the code and then asked a question. The second right states:

“You have the right to have the details of the crime recorded by the police without unjustified delay after the incident”.


We know that there are a lot of delays, but let us put that to one side. Where does it say in legislation that governs the actions of the police—whether that is primary legislation, secondary legislation, codes of practice or statutory guidance—that they have to do this? The problem is that we cannot find any of the rights in the victims’ code reflected in the statutory duties of the agencies listed in it. Please tell me I am wrong; I would be delighted to be wrong.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

If I may say so, sometimes one is in the middle of the flow of one’s argument and people jump up and down when one has not quite finished explaining the overall framework. The essential problem here is not the code itself, as the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, kindly said—it is not a bad document, I venture to suggest—but a lack of awareness, police not doing their job and nobody knowing quite what should be done if that were to happen. The idea behind the basic framework of this legislation is to force the relevant bodies to take steps to comply with the code. That is why Clause 6 says:

“Each criminal justice body which provides services … must … take … steps”


and “must … keep under review”. Clause 7 provides that they must provide various activities, et cetera, and must collect information, that a local policing body must do this, that and the other and that the various constabularies referred to later must do these things. The idea is that we have a code and a framework, and we must make sure that the bodies responsible for enabling victims’ rights do so.

In the Government’s view, you do not materially increase the likelihood of them doing so by putting the code into a schedule, any more than you increase that likelihood—to deal with another point—by converting a “should” into a “must”. That is another bit of fine tuning. The principles of the code are set out in Clause 2; for example, that you “should provide information”. You could say that you “must provide information”, but that does not really change the enforceability unless you have a whole statutory framework for what the information should be, who should provide it and how it is to be done. That is all in the code at the moment, where it should be.

I do not want to refer again to angels dancing on pins, but I think we are slightly at cross-purposes as to what we mean by things “in law”, “legal enforceability”, or “statutory codes”. That is the Government’s basic position on this.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

I do not want to stop the Minister when he is in full flow. I understand how difficult it must be when people leap up because he has a comma in the middle of a sentence.

It seems to me the Minister has already conceded the next group of amendments, which are about compliance and data monitoring. Can he remind us why in Clause 2 it is “should”, not “must”, since he has just cited and relied on other clauses which use “must”? I do not know whether I have elevated myself to the status of an angel with that.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

I think the short answer is that the purposes of those later clauses is to impose a statutory duty on the relevant bodies. The purpose of Clause 2(3) is to set out the principles. In terms of these, the Government’s view is that “should” is a more appropriate word than “must”, because the principles are very broadly expressed. Noble Lords might argue that “should” and “must” are almost interchangeable. I think we are again drawing really fine distinctions.

Perhaps I could just deal with two or three other points that arise on this part of the Bill. One is the question of the affirmative procedure as against the negative procedure. If I may say so, at the moment the code is subject to the negative procedure. Noble Lords can pray a resolution against it—of course there is going to be a debate in Parliament. I would respectfully suggest that it is more flexible than our somewhat—on some occasions at least—torrid debates in the Moses Room on affirmative resolutions. Noble Lords cannot change anything, it is very formalistic, and I respectfully suggest that making it an affirmative resolution is not a material improvement.

To keep the whole structure flexible and adaptable—I have used various words beginning with “a”, and I think I could add “adaptable” to this cohort—the Government suggest that it is not a useful move to put the code without the accompanying description in the statute itself; that in itself has no material effect on the Government’s view.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am grateful to all noble Lords who participated in this debate.

I remind noble Lords that Clause 5 makes it clear that failure to comply with the victims’ code, currently and as proposed in the Bill, does not make a person liable to criminal or civil proceedings. The code has no legal teeth.

Let us cut through a bit of the legal waffle. The noble Baroness the Victims’ Commissioner is right: this is a code without enforceability. No victim can enforce their rights in any court in the land, and even the Victims’ Commissioner appointed by the Government of the day cannot enforce the code. That is why the amendments in this group dovetail with later amendments which would give the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, and her successors and heirs, some modest powers to issue notices to public authorities, to publish those notices and, in extremis, to take legal action.

With the greatest respect to the Minister, to say that there is no difference between the scheme that is offered in these amendments and the current position is just not accurate as a statement of law. He said that this amendment is unnecessary and unhelpful. I hope that I have dealt with that. He said he did not want to burden the legislation with a schedule. I do not want to burden victims because this Bill is supposed to be about them. I know where the balance of the argument is between a few extra pages in a schedule and this toothless, illusory, broken promise to victims.

As for the arguments about how clunky it looks to have a code in a schedule to legislation, compared with the sparkly thing that could be on the Victims’ Commissioner’s website, we have that all the time. The convention rights—which may not be totally popular with everyone on the Benches opposite—are popular with me and mean a lot to people. They are in a schedule to the Human Rights Act. They are popularised in all sorts of ways to all sorts of people. They know that this is not a code of guidance; it is a Bill of Rights.

As I have said before, parties on both sides of this House have, for many years, talked the talk about victims’ rights—more legislation, longer prison sentences, et cetera—but have not actually delivered a right to see the transcript, to have a separate room at the court, to be treated with dignity. Let us have this debate but let us not pretend that there is no legislative or legal difference between the current and proposed positions.

I am disappointed by the Minister’s response. Because I have so much respect for him as a lawyer and a former senior judge, I urge him and his colleagues to think again about this. It would not cost a penny, but it would mean so much to so many people. Putting this and the subsequent amendments that we will debate on a legislative footing would give the Victims’ Commissioner some judgment and power to give this code teeth.

For the time being—but only for the time being—I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 23 withdrawn.

Clause 2 agreed.

Clause 3: Preparing and issuing the victims’ code

Amendment 24

Moved by

[Baroness Chakrabarti]

24: Clause 3, page 3, line 28, at end insert “and the Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses”
Member's explanatory statement
This refers to the duty on the Secretary of State to prepare a draft Victims’ Code. The Victims’ Commissioner has a statutory duty to “review the operation” of the Victims Code. The amendment would put a statutory duty on the Secretary of State to consult the Commissioner when making any changes to the victims' code or issuing any statutory guidance relating to it.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, at the risk of trying the Committee’s patience, we are now talking about the role of the Victims’ Commissioner. Again, the thrust of these amendments moves in a similar direction and gets more into the specifics of the role of the commissioner.

Even under the scheme as currently proposed by the Government under the various provisions of the Bill, the government-appointed Victims’ Commissioner has very little respect and power. Even in places where the Secretary of State must, for example, consult the Attorney-General, there is no similar obligation to consult the Victims’ Commissioner. I find that constitutionally odd. It seems that one does not require a statutory duty to consult the Attorney-General. One hopes that in a rule-of-law Government and with cabinet government, it would be commonplace, without statutory provision, for Home Secretaries, Justice Secretaries and Cabinets to consult the Attorney-General. Maybe I live in the past and that is another place.

The Victims’ Commissioner is a creature of statute; therefore, there should be statutory duties to consult the Victims’ Commissioner, particularly when there are the sorts of provisions that the Government are already proposing in their own scheme.

I have, perhaps, taken up too much time already. In short, wherever there are powers and duties and anything proposed in the Government’s case to protect the victims by improving the code or compliance with the code, there must be a role for the Victims’ Commissioner. The Government should not be afraid of that because they appoint the Victims’ Commissioner. One would hope that they would appoint someone whom they trust and respect and who has at least enough judgment to be the guardian of the victims’ code and of this whole approach.

Anything less is really, as the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, suggested in her remarks earlier, a bit of an insult to victims. This is not just a toothless tiger; at the moment I wonder where even the gums are. It is embarrassing. At least in the Government’s own case, with their own scheme as currently devised, this suite of amendments, to put it shortly, is putting the Victims’ Commissioner in every place where she should be.

21:15

[Baroness Newlove (Con)]

My Lords, the role of the commissioner is to review the operation of the victims’ code. The 2004 Act, which introduced the code, also created the post of a Victims’ Commissioner. It was the clear intention of the Government and Parliament that an independent Victims’ Commissioner should be able to champion the needs of victims and challenge the Government when code entitlements were not being complied with. Given the concerns many of us have about code compliance, the importance of the commissioner role cannot be overstated.

Since 2004, there have been just three Victims’ Commissioners: the noble Baroness, Lady Casey; Dame Vera Baird; and me. We have all come to the post through very different journeys, but, as those of your Lordships who know the three of us will testify, we have one attribute in common: we are, shall we say, a feisty bunch. However, I have to tell your Lordships, and I feel sure that my erstwhile fellow commissioners would agree, that there are times when being feisty is simply not enough.

Twenty years after the role was created, the time has come to give future Victims’ Commissioners the tools to do the job Parliament intended. This means that, when the commissioner makes recommendations, the Government and agencies take the trouble to consider them and respond. In my experience, this rarely happens. I therefore welcome the provisions in the Bill to make this a statutory requirement.

However, we need to go further. A basic requirement should be that the Victims’ Commissioner is consulted when the Government amend the code or issue statutory guidance in relation to it. Yes, the Government do consult me, but as a favour, not as a statutory duty. All too often, the consultation comes after the policy has been developed, and occasionally on the day it is to be announced, giving the sense of a fait accompli. Changes in the law will not necessarily stop this happening, but it is a start. That is why I am supporting Amendments 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 35, 43 and 48 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti.

I also welcome Amendment 49, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, which requires criminal justice agencies to co-operate with future Victims’ Commissioners. Again, if successful, this clause will not take effect until after I have left office. In my experience, many agencies I deal with are very helpful. HMPPS, for example, is particularly helpful. With some others, it can vary. For an independent Victims’ Commissioner to offer robust scrutiny, they need to have access to data and information relating to their statutory duties.

The duty set out in this amendment is not without precedent. The domestic abuse commissioner has exactly the same power. I understand it has never had to be used, but all parties concerned know it exists. These amendments combined will change the dynamics of the relationship of the commissioner with the agencies and with government. It makes her or him a formal part of the criminal justice architecture, and it gives them the authority to speak and be listened to.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I will amplify what the noble Baroness just said by actually quoting from the Government’s own description of the Bill and what is in it. A paragraph headed

“What happens if victims do not receive their entitlements?”


says:

“We think that all the measures set out will strengthen the service victims receive. As the Code is a statutory code of practice, all relevant bodies should already comply with it”.


We know they are not, so the status quo we are starting from is, to a very large degree, that the bodies which are meant to be complying with the statutory code of practice are not doing so. The paragraph continues:

“However, if things go wrong, victims can make a complaint”.


It is up to victims themselves, who may or may not be aware of what their rights are under the statutory code, to identify that they are not receiving their rights, and then it is up to them to make a complaint. What is the Victims’ Commissioner for if not to act as the obvious channel and filter for all such complaints so they can go directly through her or him to His Majesty’s Government?

What the Government have described here is a complete, accurate illustration of the problem we have. It is not working at the moment. What the Government have said will improve it, on the basis of the evidence we have, but, frankly, the arguments we have heard so far do not really give us any room for optimism, so I suspect I speak for everybody in the Committee when I say that, rather like my school reports, I think the Government “should do better”.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I have my name to Amendment 49 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, on the duty to co-operate—which seems to me not something that should have to be said, but clearly does. It is another aspect of compliance. As ever, it is important to have the data on which to make recommendations and directions, give advice, or whatever. That is what Amendment 49 is about. It is about providing the tools for the independent Victims’ Commissioner to be effective. The amendment is based on the importance of monitoring compliance with the code, and one would think that the commissioner will be expected to be on top of the data. That needs co-operation. I think that is probably enough said. I am very much on the same page and the same paragraph as other speakers.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

From these Benches, I will be extremely brief, because I agree with everything that has been said. I signed Amendments 27 and 29 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and I absolutely support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, which my noble friend Lady Hamwee has also signed. We cannot have commissioners who are commissioners in name only. They need clear roles, responsibilities and powers, and clear limits to those powers. The problem at the moment is that they do not, so we support the amendments.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, said it right when she said that it is time to give the Victims’ Commissioner the statutory place and rights that are appropriate. That is exactly the point of this suite of amendments. They aim to do two things. One is to give the Victims’ Commissioner the right status to be able to get the right information and have the right relationships to make them most effective, but it is also placing duties on other organisations to co-operate with the Victims’ Commissioner. That is what this suite of amendments is about. That means that they are very important. They also reflect the powers that other commissioners have in this space.

We have a group of amendments which give the Victims’ Commissioner a statutory duty to review the operation of the victims’ code, placing a statutory duty on the Secretary of State to consult the commissioner when making any changes to the victims’ code or issuing any statutory guidance relating to it. The amendment refers to the duty of the Secretary of State to consider any representations in relation to the drafting of the victims’ code in consultation with the Attorney-General. Again, I thought, “Why do you have to say that?” But, actually, I think we have to.

Amendments 27 and 29 alter the procedure for amending the victims’ code to require formal consultation with the Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses—I did not think that was necessary either, but if we need to say that, then we do—and affirmative parliamentary procedures.

Amendment 28 refers to

“the duty on the Secretary of State to consult the Attorney General on any revisions”.

Amendment 35 refers to

“the Secretary of State’s duty to issue regulations on the information to be collected by PCCs at a local level”.

Amendment 43 also places a duty on the Secretary of State to

“issue regulations on the timing and format of the information”.

This is about relationships that the Victims’ Commissioner needs to have to do their job effectively—with the Attorney-General, with PCCs, with the agencies with which the commissioner has to work.

My amendment—again, you would not think it would be necessary, but it clearly is—states that there is a specific public authority duty

“to co-operate with the Commissioner in any way that the Commissioner considers necessary for the purposes of monitoring compliance with the victims’ code”.

If we do not give the Victims’ Commissioner the power to ensure that the code is being complied with, we are not taking victims seriously. If we do not do that, we do not place the right kind of duties on the Secretary of State. We also need to make sure that the way the Victims’ Commissioner works is joined up with all the different agencies that she—it has always been “she” so far—needs to have.

We are very keen on this group of amendments because it does those two things: it gives the Victims’ Commissioner power, and it places a duty on different parts of the state to provide, as the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, said, formal parts of criminal justice infrastructure. This a powerful suite of amendments that I hope the Minister will agree to, and certainly will discuss with us as we move forward.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

I am very grateful, once again, to all noble Lords who have spoken to this group of amendments, which is related to the previous group. I am very sorry if the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and I have managed to fall out over what is actually a legal discussion. Maybe we can pursue some of the points that were made in the previous group further, so that we understand each other and where those who support those amendments are coming from.

As far as this group of amendments is concerned, I will take first the amendment that would place a specific duty on specified public authorities to co-operate with the Victims’ Commissioner. I do not think anyone is in any doubt—and certainly the Government are not—that the Victims’ Commissioner plays a most important role that requires collaboration across the criminal justice system and the support sector. We recognise that there is other legislation affecting the domestic abuse commissioner which gives them the kind of powers that I think are partly, at least, being sought under this amendment.

I cannot at this moment accept the amendment, as I am sure noble Lords completely understand. But I am very much open to working with the Victims’ Commissioner and the House on whether there is any common ground on this approach, which would help us build up the bricks we are looking to build up to create the building that will enable this whole system to be more effective.

As regards the amendments to require the Secretary of State to consult the Victims’ Commissioner, I first make an extremely nerdy point, just for clarification. Clause 3(3) states:

“In preparing the draft the Secretary of State must consult the Attorney General”.


That is probably a bit confusing at the outset, but what is essentially being said is that the Secretary of State must consult relevant Ministers responsible for the bodies to which the draft is to apply: the Lord Chancellor, the Home Secretary—both of whom are englobed in the phrase “Secretary of State”—and the Attorney-General, who is responsible for the Crown Prosecution Service and similar justice bodies. It is a sort of ministerial consultation.

As to the question of consulting the Victims’ Commissioner on the code, further amendments to the code and so forth, I cannot imagine any circumstances in which the commissioner would not be consulted on all these matters. We have not set out in the Bill all the stakeholders that should be consulted but I would very much like to continue to work with the Victims’ Commissioner on this issue and how we continue to recognise that vital role. Again, may we take this amendment under advisement and see how far we can go?

21:30

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I am mindful of the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove: because the Victims’ Commissioner is not a statutory consultee, consultations often arrive as the policy is announced. It is a tick-box exercise. The point of making someone a statutory consultee is that they have to be notified as the process starts, not as it ends. If the Minister is going to have a discussion with the noble Lords who have spoken in this debate, it would be really helpful to understand how the position outlined by the noble Baroness can be prevented.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure that that point deserves full consideration alongside other points.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am grateful to all noble Lords in the Committee, in particular the Minister. He will forgive me if I was overly animated; I hope he does not think that we have fallen out as I find it hard to envisage circumstances in which we would do so.

I am grateful for the Minister’s clarification of the Government’s intention in Clause 3(3): that the consultation will be broader than just the Attorney-General and will include the whole Cabinet or any relevant Secretary of State. I may be a fool but I always thought that, in our constitution, the Cabinet, the Government and the Secretary of State were virtually indivisible and there was no need to create statutory duties on individual Secretaries of State to consult each other. I may be wrong about that but the Minister’s argument is that he needs provision in the Bill for the Secretary of State to consult the Attorney-General, yet no similar provision is required for the Secretary of State to consult the statutory creature—the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, does not look like a statutory creature; she is a wonderful human creature—that is the Victim’s Commissioner. I am confused about that but perhaps, in due course, the Minister and his colleagues will deliberate it; I like the noises that I am hearing about possible reflection.

Without provisions of this kind and of the kind that we will debate in the next group, this whole part of the Bill will be Conan Doyle. In particular, for fans of Conan Doyle, this is The Adventure of Silver Blaze. This is the curious incident of the victims’ code that made friends and did not always bark in the night. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment and not bark in the night.

Amendment 24 withdrawn.

Amendments 25 to 27 not moved.

Clause 3 agreed.

Clause 4: Revising the victims’ code

Amendments 28 and 29 not moved.

Clause 4 agreed.

Amendment 30

Moved by

[Lord Russell of Liverpool]

30: After Clause 4, insert the following new Clause—
“Compliance with the code: minimum thresholds(1) The Secretary of State must by regulations issue minimum threshold levels of compliance with each right of the victims’ code.(2) If a minimum threshold is breached by an organisation for two consecutive years, the Secretary of State must commission an inspection of that body with regard to that breach.(3) The Secretary of State must, as soon as is reasonably practicable, lay before Parliament the report of any such inspection.” Member’s explanatory statement
This clause requires the Secretary of State to establish for agencies listed in the victims’ code minimum levels of compliance with code entitlements, which, if breached, will prompt independent inspections.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, we are starting this group, but I suspect that we will stop it in about 29 minutes, so we will make what progress we can.

In moving Amendment 30, I will speak also to a large number of amendments in this group: Amendments 37 to 46, 50 and 83. They come in three groups. Amendment 30 is to do with requiring the Secretary of State to set minimum threshold levels of compliance for each right of the victims’ code, carrying on from the discussion that we had on the previous group. The group of amendments consecutive from Amendment 44 seek to place a statutory duty on the Victims’ Commissioner to compile and publish an independent annual report on justice agencies’ compliance with the victims’ code. Amendment 83 is an old chestnut for the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and me, to do with training for the police to better understand and deal with stalkers.

Starting with Amendment 30, which is about the minimum threshold levels of compliance for each right in the code, during the pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill, the Justice Committee stated:

“As drafted, the Bill fails to adequately address the issue of agencies’ noncompliance with the Code—we are concerned by this given that it is one of the principal reasons for the Bill”.


Therefore, this amendment has been designed, working very closely with the Victims’ Commissioner and her office, precisely to fill the gap that was identified by the Justice Committee.

For many people, experiencing crime is a life-changing event, as the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, has testified on more than one occasion. It is the effect of not just the crime but the justice process that may follow it which victims have to endure. While we know that some victims receive an exemplary service, this is not everyone’s experience. Victims can end up in a very bad place, feeling lost, voiceless, in a complex and seemingly unfeeling system, feeling like a bystander, being told about rights which in theory they have but which are probably not properly explained to them and certainly do not feel as if they are being received.

Clearly, this should not be the case and I do not think that it ever was the intent of His Majesty’s Government when they were drafting the original Bill, the code and now this Bill. However, we are where we are. While the victims’ code sets out the minimum level of service that victims should receive, that they should be treated with respect, dignity, sensitivity, compassion and courtesy, be provided with information and updates about their case and be referred to the right support services, we know that this is not always the case, and a systematic lack of compliance with the code means that many victims are being let down.

The most recent survey by the Victims’ Commissioner found that only 29% of victims had been offered the opportunity to make a victim personal statement, despite that being one of the key rights under the code. That is under one-third, on a part of the code which the Minister said a few minutes ago is a statutory requirement to deliver. That is not a very impressive scorecard. The Bill as it stands does go some way to address this: it places the key principles of the code in law and introduces a duty on criminal justice agencies to collect and share data. However, while these are welcome steps, they do not go far enough. They go some way towards monitoring victims’ rights, but they do not ensure that victims receive them. Introducing minimum compliance thresholds will strengthen accountability and provide a means of putting the victims’ code into force.

Organisations which persistently—by which one means over a period of two consecutive years—and systematically fail to meet the thresholds will be subject to an inspectorate inspection to investigate problems and drive improvements. The thresholds that will be put in place by this amendment will make absolutely clear the levels of service that victims must receive. They will provide a systemic and consistent way of holding justice agencies to account for how they treat victims. If victims are consistently not being referred to support services, not being provided with updates and not been given the chance to make a victim personal statement, this amendment provides a clear way of identifying this, of escalating it and, perhaps most important of all, putting it right.

The Government made it a laudable aim of the Bill to

“put victims’ interests firmly at the heart of the justice system”,

but we contend that the Bill falls somewhat short of that.

The next series of amendments, from Amendment 44 onwards, seeks to place a statutory duty on the Victims’ Commissioner to compile and publish an independent annual report on the compliance of justice agencies with the victims’ code. The Government are committing in the Bill to collect the sort of data that will identify what is happening out there, but data alone will not deliver the culture change that is required to ensure that victims are treated better within our justice system. We must go further to ensure that victims have guaranteed rights, not apparently guaranteed favours.

Clause 10 requires the Secretary of State to produce an annual national report on code compliance. The Government are proposing that they collect, analyse and publish a report on code compliance themselves. Sceptics could possibly perceive that the Ministry of Justice is, in effect, marking its own homework. I suppose the question we are asking is: do we feel that is right? I think we feel that there should be—this is absolutely crucial—robust and independent scrutiny of code compliance. The proposed system of police and crime commissioners collecting compliance data locally, and the Ministry of Justice preparing a national report, provides neither independent rigour nor effective challenge.

One of the core remits of the Victims’ Commissioner is to monitor how criminal justice agencies comply with the victims’ code. Surely, as this is a core function of this office, it only follows that it is right and proper that the Victims’ Commissioner should be the person to collect, analyse and publish this report on code compliance. It is only by having a truly independent appraisal of code compliance, issued by the Government’s own appointed Victims’ Commissioner, that we can start to deliver true accountability, with criminal justice agencies fully held to account on their delivery of victims’ code rights.

Lastly, there is the matter of training for dealing with stalking. Last week, I had the privilege of speaking virtually to Richard Spinks, the father of Gracie Spinks; your Lordships may remember this particularly horrendous case where Gracie was attacked and killed by a man, a rejected partner, who had been stalking her continuously for an extended period. She had made more than 40 complaints to Derbyshire police; but they did, in effect, nothing. The coroner’s report was absolutely devastating. The Derbyshire police were not trained; they did no proper assessment of the level of risk; and they were found to be guilty of gross negligence. One of the results of this was that South Yorkshire Police, which was brought in to investigate the lamentable performance of the Derbyshire Constabulary, was so affected by what it found in this investigation that it resolved to go back and transform the way it prepares for, deals with and understands cases of stalking. The effect was such that it saw how bad bad could be.

The good news is that there is some good practice out there. I thank the Suzy Lamplugh Trust for giving those of us who have tried to advocate for better policing and understanding of stalking for many years such enormous support. It has embarked on a scheme in Cheshire, working with the Cheshire Constabulary, which is, undoubtedly, the best in class. The police are properly trained; they can assess risk quickly and effectively; they are organised in such a way that they are properly resourced and can act very quickly. They have excellent internal communication channels, which is not the case in every force, and are able to make it work.

Perhaps I can just remind noble Lords of the sheer complexity of stalking, because there are many different kinds of stalker. The most common is the rejected stalker; I think that was the individual who was in the BBC news today—the gentleman who was confronting police officers with a crossbow two days ago, and who was shot dead. He had not only a crossbow but body armour, several knives and machetes et cetera, and he was determined to break into the bedroom of a woman who lived in that area, no doubt to try to kill her. This is a man who had a record of harassment and bad behaviour, and was supposedly under monitoring by the police. None the less, he managed to accumulate this variety of weapons and personal armour, and we must be very thankful that the police managed to intervene and at least put the perpetrator out of his self-inflicted misery, although I am sure that the trauma felt by the intended victim will live with her for a great many years.

21:45

There are several other types of stalker; each has different characteristics and drivers. We know enough from the work over the years to be able to anticipate the type of behaviours they will exhibit and the type of threats they are likely to bring to bear. If you understand it and identify it quickly when a victim complains of stalking harassment, you are in a much better position to do something about it with knowledge and purpose, and in a way that is actually helpful to the victim.

I do not need to reiterate the sheer scale of stalking, but it is by far the largest single cause of harassment to victims in this country. It is approaching 1.9 million cases per year, which is a staggering statistic. I think I have said enough, and I beg to move.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, this group is about giving teeth to the toothless tiger that is the victims’ code. To be clear, currently in law, and as proposed by the Government’s scheme in this Bill, the only indirect enforceability would be that if anybody has any other kind of proceedings against a relevant public authority, the victims’ code can be taken into account. That is it. That is not an enforceable right in any usual sense of the concept, because enforceable rights require duties that must be enforced.

Various options have been proffered by noble Lords in the Committee in the various amendments in this group. Mine is Amendment 31, on which I am grateful for the support of my noble friend Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede and, once more, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. I propose here that the teeth, to some extent, go to the Victims’ Commissioner. As I said in the debate on the previous group, the Government appoint the Victims’ Commissioner; this is not some dangerous person who will be litigating everywhere. This is an appropriate person who has been appointed by the Government of the day.

I am not suggesting that victims should be able to sue directly in the courts on the victims’ code. Frankly, there is no legal aid for them to do so anyway, and I do not want them to be traumatised by more litigation when they have been so traumatised by the principal proceedings in which they have had such a bad experience. But I do want them to have real rather than illusory rights, which can be enforced.

The thing about enforceable rights is that they become more real just because they exist, because the public authorities concerned will take note. I believe they will take greater note when they know that down the road, in extremis, there is a potential reckoning if they continue to ignore victims in the way that they have, to deprioritise them or to do whatever it is that has led to some of the stories we have heard in Committee this evening.

My proposed scheme is to replace the current Clause 5, the toothless tiger, with the following enforcement procedure. Incidentally, this is not about specific cases. It is not about the Victims’ Commissioner doing something that she does not do at the moment and getting involved in this criminal case or that; there would be obvious problems with that. This is about general practice. When, for example, it comes to the notice of the Victims’ Commissioner that women are being treated appallingly when they report rape and have their mobile phones taken or are not allowed to speak to counsellors—clearly things that would never happen in real life; I am just hypothesising for a moment—the Victims’ Commissioner in the first instance would do what she does already, which is to try to engage with the public authorities at length and persuade them that there is a problem in general that needs to be dealt with.

However, there are measures in the proposed new Clause 5(4) for when that is not being complied with. In the first instance, in Clause 5(4)(a), the Victims’ Commissioner would be able to issue a notice of general guidance. It would not be about a specific case but would be general guidance to the relevant public authority about its practice that, in her view, was not complying with the code. Whether it is about separate rooms in the Crown Court or the information being required, the victim is not being treated according to the code, so the commissioner issues the notice, initially in private.

If that is not complied with within a reasonable period of time, under Clause 5(4)(b), the next tool in the armoury—which is still pretty modest—is that the Victims’ Commissioner would be able to publish that notice. In my view, that public notice is another tool for accountability in relation to the intransigence of public authorities that are simply not complying with the code.

There is then a further step. One would hope that it would very rarely happen, but maybe sometimes it would need to. This is not about specific cases and would not involve individual victims having to go through legal proceedings, but in extremis the Victims’ Commissioner would be able to start proceedings in an appropriate court or tribunal, defined in rules by the Government, to seek enforcement of the code. That would be only the Victims’ Commissioner, not any litigant in the land who was being mischievous with their money, or lefty human rights lawyers and all that stuff. It would be the Victims’ Commissioner, who is trusted and was appointed by the Secretary of State in the first place.

I think that is a pretty modest and balanced scheme for giving the toothless tiger not great big scary teeth but just some milk teeth so they can nudge these public authorities, which have had all this time and all these years with the current code and the current scheme, which is going to be replicated in the Bill proposed by the Government. It would get the Victims’ Commissioner a little bit more by way of a power to deliver for the victims that she serves.

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, I hope I can do this in the time allotted, as they say.

I shall speak to Amendment 51 on training in relation to support for victims. Very simply, Clause 6 directs that criminal justice bodies must take reasonable steps to promote awareness of the victims’ code to victims and other members of the public, but the Bill does not mandate that professionals within these bodies receive any training in the code. There is no point in this provision in Clause 6 if those who are to carry it out—those who are acting on the ground within the agencies, under the chief constable or within the prosecution service—are not aware of their duties or trained properly to deliver them. This part of the Bill risks being a fig leaf. To make it effective, those responsible for it must be trained in delivery. Is this not just common sense?

The evidence base is that there is a need to provide training and that it is clear that there is a widespread lack of awareness of victims’ rights. I take you back to two surveys. In 2019, the London victims’ commissioner conducted a review into compliance with the victims’ code of practice. She heard from over 2,000 victims of crime. The review revealed examples of unacceptable service. It showed that a proportion of those who work in the criminal justice service lack the skills or training to understand and respond to victims’ needs effectively. Victims suffer the consequences of those problems time and again; they simply were not informed of their rights. In short, the code was not delivering.

Let me give some examples. Fewer than a third of the victims reported being told about the code of practice. Of course, some of them may have forgotten, but certainly a large proportion were not told. As a result, they did not know what their rights were—they did not know they had any rights. It is no use giving the victims rights if they do not know about them. Largely, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service are not trained to do this. It is not because they are wicked people; they just do not know about it. There are many other deficiencies. Read the review if you want to know more.

More recently, in June 2022 the office of the Victims’ Commissioner launched the Victim Survey, an online survey of victims of crime in England and Wales that asked them about their experiences as a victim of crime. I will give a few examples. Fewer than a third, only 29% of respondents, were aware of the victims’ code. The same percentage said that they were offered the opportunity to make a victim personal statement. In other words, if that is right, 71% were not offered that opportunity. Again, allowing for some people not being very capable or bright, it shows a large proportion, on any basis, were not informed of really basic information.

Data from the user satisfaction survey in London shows that only 25% of victims were made aware of the victims’ code. In the same period, the answers showed that 50% were offered victim support services—in other words, half were not; and 59% were given the opportunity to make a victim personal statement, so around 40% were not. It is the “nots” we are interested in here. Only 12% were offered information on compensation. Again, making allowances for the fact that it may not have been appropriate or necessary and that some people are forgetful, a large proportion were not told about possible compensation and how to claim it, and that is important. Even a small amount of compensation can make an individual who has been the victim of crime feel a bit less disgruntled. I speak as someone who sat as a recorder in the Crown Court for 20 years.

Those are all rights in the victims’ code. They are all failures; just read the survey for more. It is plain that there is no training. We need it and it should made part of the statute. So, I commend this amendment to the Committee.

Debate on Amendment 30 adjourned.

House resumed.

House adjourned at 9.58pm.