Victims and Courts Bill (Second sitting)

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Committee stage
Tuesday 17th June 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Mullan]

Q Finally, one welcome measure in the Bill flips around the concept of where offenders can go and where victims are protected from seeing them, because it should be the offenders that we restrict. We should restrict their mobility so that victims can know that as long as they are not in certain places they will not run into offenders. Your organisations have probably called for that in the past. I am interested in your perspective on how important that will be for victims. Suky, would you like to start?

Suky Bhaker: It is paramount that victims themselves should not feel that they are the ones being restricted by restraining orders. Often our service users tell us that exactly that happens and that the exclusion zones are not broad enough. Without knowing where the perpetrator is or making the zones wide enough, the victims themselves end up being the ones who feel imprisoned and restricted: they do not know where it is safe to go, because they do not know where the offender will be. Those exclusion zones definitely need to be made wider.

Andrea Simon: We also need to think about the practicalities and who will actually ensure that the exclusion zones are adhered to and monitored, and that actions are taken if there are breaches. That is in the broader scope of how we resource probation and policing to make sure that victims can feel reassured that these measures will result in their safety. That is absolutely vital.

Farah Nazeer: We often see orders that just do not make any sense—for example, where a perpetrator and a victim work in quite close proximity and that has not been taken into account, and where children go to school and so on. There needs to be a victim-centred approach when it comes to thinking about the exclusions and where a perpetrator can be. It is a really important principle and a good principle to have, but what we need is the training, the thought and the care that sits behind that, and also the enforcement.

Even the orders issued currently are broken on a regular basis and there are not the resources to address that. It is one thing to set this in motion and put it in place, but how it works on the ground is something that the Committee should really consider when it comes to statutory services’ ability to deliver to the aspirations and ambitions of the Bill, and equally the ability of services on the ground to support victims through varying processes.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Alex Davies-Jones)]

Q Thank you for giving evidence today. Can I take you back to the restriction of parental responsibility? Farah, you mentioned the impact that issues around parental responsibility are having, particularly on domestic abuse victims and children. Our measure in the Bill is quite tight. We have kept it tight because this is a novel approach, so it is restricted to the criminal court element, rather than the family court element.

You said that you welcome the provision and that you want it to be extended further. Can you talk about how the family courts are used in this way at the moment? Obviously, perpetrators and offenders will be able to appeal from the criminal court to the family court. What impact will it have if large swathes of them choose to appeal? That is why we have chosen to keep it quite tight.

Farah Nazeer: From our perspective, the victims we work with—women going through the family courts—see the family courts as a place of further perpetration and trauma, and an instrument of post-separation abuse. They are cross-examined, not believed and made to justify every single aspect of their lives. Although children should be recognised as victims of domestic abuse in their own right, they are often not, and the perpetrator’s rights are put above those of the children, which leads to dire consequences.

It is an astonishing omission that this Bill does not consider the family courts, because they need to be absolutely central. We feel that the Bill currently prioritises justice through a societal lens, but not healing and moving on for the actual victims through the family court, which is the court that the vast majority of victims engage with and causes them the most harm.

It is incredibly important that the Committee considers the implications in the context of the family court setting. No policy area that Women’s Aid works on is a picnic, but this is the worst of all policy areas because we see the instruments of justice being weaponised to harm survivors. We see children harmed all the time, and dying as a result of unsafe contact. If anybody who has been involved in the process were to read the transcript, they would think, “Why on earth would this happen? Why on earth would anyone do this?” It is absolutely astonishing, but it happens day in, day out. This would be a completely lost opportunity if this issue were not considered really carefully as part of this Bill.

[Alex Davies-Jones]

Q Thank you. That is really important.

I want to take you on to the victim helpline and the victim contact scheme. Suky, the Bill will for the first time ever bring victims of stalking and harassment into the victim contact scheme, regardless of sentence. What difference will that make to victims and survivors? Could you outline the importance to victims of being able to access timely communication?

Suky Bhaker: For victims of stalking, the crime is about fixation and obsession, so we are often looking at repeat offences and breaches. Receiving timely information about what is happening to the offender through the helpline and the victim contact scheme is essential, because it is a safety mechanism—it is a risk-assessing tool that lets the victim know how they can keep themselves safe—so it is really pivotal that the scope is increased.

Perpetrators of stalking get sentences of about 14 months on average, and many fall under one year, so it is really important that the scheme covers them. Of course, that does not address the systemic issue of whether that is the right sentencing, but it is at least a mechanism whereby victims can receive that information so that they can carry out safety planning and risk management.

[Alex Davies-Jones]

Q Do any of you want to comment on the importance of the victim notification scheme?

Andrea Simon: Although we think it is a step in the right direction—we recognise that the Government have good intentions to extend the victim contact scheme—we think, on the eligibility and scope, that not all victims and survivors of violence against women and girls will be covered. We are not entirely reassured by how viable the helpline will be for many victims. With the helpline, in particular, the onus is on the victim to get in touch and make contact. The responsibility is not on, say, the probation system to inform victims of what is happening. We believe the correct reading of article 56b of the Istanbul convention, which talks about measures of protection, is that the state should actively inform victims when a perpetrator is to be released. People should not have to proactively reach out in order to get that information through a helpline, which we know will be utilised by some, but not in every case.

We also have concerns when it comes to survivor participation and licence conditions for perpetrators, because some survivors only have access to the helpline and potentially do not have the same level of entitlement as those under the victim contact scheme. We would like some clarity about how, when incorrect information is held or there are changes in circumstances, victim-survivors will be able to provide that information and how it can be fed through into the management of perpetrators. There is a slight lack of clarity about who will be informed and where that information will go, and I just think we have to be really clear in the public communications about the helpline, and about the victim contact scheme in general, to make sure that the public understand it, are aware of it and know how to take it up.

We are also keen to see these measures interact with the sentencing review recommendations and what is forthcoming. Of course, one review recommendation that the Government have taken up is to have the domestic abuse flag as an identifier, which is very welcome, but we would like to see the victim contact scheme essentially extended to everybody, because we know that domestic abuse offences are quite often not flagged up. The flag will help in the future, but not every index offence involves coercive control—for example, it might be criminal damage or some other kind of assault. We are worried about people who will not be able to access the information or access the scheme, so we think it should be extended more widely so that there are not gaps that people can fall through.

Farah Nazeer: I agree with what my colleagues have said. However, I think the helpline is a really strong idea. It is a move in the right direction, but nobody is supported by a helpline when their perpetrator is coming out, so you are having that conversation with the helpline and assuming that the helpline will meet the needs of the expanded victim cohort. Then a victim needs to go to a service. They need regular, routine casework support to support them through the trauma of having somebody come out or maybe come out earlier than expected—all kinds of things. Without the services to support the intentions of the helpline, we will not see that ambition of true victim support realised, so those two things have to work in tandem.

Andrea Simon: We would also recommend that advocates have access to the helpline as well. It is very important that, particularly for those supporting some of the most marginalised survivors, they can access information via the helpline. We would like clarity about their inclusion in the scheme.

[Alex Brewer (North East Hampshire) (LD)]

Q Coming back to parental consent—at the risk of labouring the point—you have all said that you would like that to be extended. Do you think that removing the minimum requirement of a four-year sentence would help to protect more children?

Farah Nazeer: Yes, absolutely. I think part of the challenge is the enduring pro-contact culture within the court setting. While that might have started as a good aspiration, in the context of domestic abuse cases— 60% of family cases are domestic abuse cases—you have a very dangerous equation there, given that the dominant culture is very pro-contact. It is also a system that permeates across the rest of the services that are there to support children. Even when supervised arrangements are put in place, there is not the infrastructure, the monitoring or the accountability framework to ensure that that actually does happen, so the amount of unsafe contact that happens—in spite of unsafe court orders—when it comes to parent contact is significantly larger than the evidence would suggest.

Andrea Simon: I would add that, when we think about the systemic barriers to child sexual abuse convictions, we know that one of those is the enhanced issues around shame, grooming and fear that young children have. The family court itself has got a poor record on this—it often finds children to be poor historians of the abuse. The points that Farah is making about how we look at the family court and the fact that it is not part of the remit of the Bill are important. It is urgent that we review the response to child sexual abuse in the family courts, following the IISCA review and the National Child Safeguarding Practice review. We are disappointed that we are not going to have an opportunity to look further at that within the scope of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Glenn, thank you very much. We are going to have to move on.

[Alex Davies-Jones]

Q Thank you both for coming today. I have had the privilege of meeting and speaking to you both previously a few times, so in the interests of time I will allow other Committee members to ask questions.

[The Chair]

I am grateful to you, Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Mullan]

Q Lastly, the victim contact scheme and the helpline will be made available to a wider group of victims. Do you welcome that? What difference do you think it will make?

Mark Brooks: I absolutely do. The key thing is to make sure that all victims are aware of it. We should make sure that domestic abuse victims, female or male, are far more aware of it, especially where the criminal sanctions have not been large. As you heard from the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, the impact of abuse post-separation or post-sentence—when the criminal sanctions have ended—can often be as traumatic as the crime itself, because it potentially leaves the victim on eggshells for the rest of their life. If they have access to the helpline and know what is happening with the person who committed the crime against them, they can better manage that. As previous witnesses have said, we obviously need more funding for people to go to local support services when their offender is released from prison.

[Alex Davies-Jones]

Q Thank you for coming today, Mark, and thank you for all the work you do to support men and boys who are victims of domestic abuse. As the shadow Minister said, it is really important.

In these evidence sessions, we have heard a lot about the importance of communicating with victims, not just to give them information relating to their perpetrator but to help them understand their rights. Can you tell us about your interaction with the victims code? How will the measures in the Bill relating to compliance, the scrutiny of agencies and the Victims’ Commissioner’s powers help with that?

Mark Brooks: We are continually promoting the victims code, not only through our helpline and our website but through our interaction with practitioners across the domestic abuse sector. The victims code is really important, and it has helped a number of men who have gone through that.

Part of the problem is that male victims, in particular, are often not in the system in the first place, so they do not come forward to the police and to community-based services. Only one in 20 clients of community-based domestic abuse services or independent domestic violence advisers is male. The victims code is really important in supporting men when they are in the system, but the challenge on communication is getting them into the system in the first place.

Anything that better promotes the victims code—I really welcome the new powers for the Victims’ Commissioner to audit the code—is really important. From my wider business experience, I know that if you do not measure it, it does not get done. That is a really important new power for the Victims’ Commissioner.

[Alex Brewer]

Q Do you think the Bill should do more to recognise children as victims?

Mark Brooks: I think the two measures that have been put forward to recognise children as victims of domestic abuse are really important. The previous witnesses talked about the family courts, which are as vexatious a place for men, male victims and dads as they are for mothers. It is really important, when we talk about the family courts and the impact on parents and children, that we have a balanced and nuanced debate, especially because we constantly have men calling us who have had problems with the family courts relating to allegations, as well as protecting their own children.

On the Bill’s measures to protect children in relation to the family courts, some organisations have asked the Government to think about shared parenting or the presumption of contact issue. We think that must remain, primarily because if you start unravelling that, you start unravelling the family unit as the core basis of what is good for children. There need to be more safeguards around protecting children, especially in the family courts, but the presumption of contact, as set out in the Children Act 1989, should remain.