Miscarriages of Justice

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Wednesday 14th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble and learned friend the Minister, whose department is seized of the work on the welfare of jurors, who are exposed to traumatic evidence in that peculiar environment where they are cut off from their daily routines and support structures because we do not want them harmed. However, in the context of this Question, could he raise this issue up the list of priorities? We do not want a juror to be so traumatised—I think that contempt of court rules allow them to reveal this —that they begin to question their capacity to deliberate, and then have a question mark over the verdict for that reason.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My noble friend makes a perfectly fair point. It is essential to our system that jurors be properly looked after, and the Government will continue to consider the points raised in her question.

Jurors: Mental Health Impact

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Tuesday 28th March 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Berridge]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the emotional, psychological and mental health impact on jurors of sitting in serious criminal trials.

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

My Lords, research into the impact of jury service has found that most people enjoy their service and find the experience interesting and informative. We know that some people can find it distressing. Anyone feeling this way is encouraged to contact their GP, who can put them in touch with the necessary support services. We are currently looking at options, including providing guidance to courts, to explore what more can be done.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble and learned friend for that Answer but there are now increasing reports in the media of those having adverse reactions to the evidence that they are hearing, and the type of evidence they are having to hear is more graphic and often video footage. Will my noble and learned friend outline whether there are plans to have a proper systemic review of a court centre and talk to jurors before, and particularly after, their experience to see whether people are being adversely impacted by doing jury service?

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, the latest research was done by Professor Cheryl Thomas in 2020: 81% of those who had served on a jury said that they would be “happy to serve again”; 78% found it “interesting”. At the same time, it is quite true that 42% found the experience “stressful”. It is an issue, and the department is exploring options. What shape those options will take—whether there should be some sort of counselling service, whether it should be authorised by a judge and who would provide it—are all questions currently under consideration.

Divorce: Financial Provision

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Wednesday 8th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, I hope to make a further announcement immediately before or shortly after the Easter Recess. Matters are being finalised at the moment. Typically, Law Commission work takes place in two phases. There is an initial phase of the kind I have just outlined, where the problem is identified and comparative studies are made. That is typically followed by a consultation phase in which all stakeholders’ views are fully taken into account, which results in final recommendations and possibly draft legislation. That process will probably take at least two years.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, not only is this law antiquated—it is 50 years old—but there is an out-of-date view, which I found even among those in their twenties and thirties, that if you are cohabiting you are in some sort of arrangement called common-law marriage, which does not exist, and that the court would have powers under the Matrimonial Causes Act. So without going to the Law Commission, can my noble and learned friend the Minister please raise awareness that actually, that is not the legal position and there is an even more complex situation if you are not in a legal relationship such as a marriage or civil partnership?

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, cohabitation is not envisaged as being within the review we have been talking about today. It does raise important issues and the Government keep them under review.

Mental Capacity Act 2005: Small Payments Scheme

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Thursday 2nd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, I cannot comment on how fund providers operate their relevant systems. The number of adults holding child trust funds who have become adults and lack capacity is quite small—it is thought to be around 1% to 2% percent—but it is none the less significant and the risk of abuse is quite prominent.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I have recently been alongside someone who had tried to become an appointee. Can my noble friend the Minister please talk to the DWP about its system to become an appointee for somebody, because it is not simple? Is there not then a case for basically not duplicating the processes? Once you get through the appointee hoops, which are considerable, should you not automatically get a deputyship—so you just have to do it once?

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are extremely reluctant at the moment to confuse two things. One is the processes by which the DWP works, and the other is the legal process by which an adult lacking capacity can have somebody else act on their behalf. That is a job for the Court of Protection. It is not just a question of child trust funds, although that is an important issue. This can go on throughout a child’s life, and it is quite likely that a child lacking capacity who reaches the age of 18 will continue to lack capacity for many years to come, and there will be important decisions to take. That really should be supervised by the Court of Protection and not by the DWP.

Prison Capacity

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, in relation to specific costs, no, but in relation to the general question of whether we should improve and develop educational facilities in prison, particularly so that prisoners can read, yes, the Government entirely agree with that aspiration.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I serve on the Joint Committee on the Draft Mental Health Bill, which has been mentioned before. In a secure mental health hospital, there will be prisoners who are civilian patients as well as people who have been transferred from the prison estate. Hopefully, of course, they are treated and then are well enough to go back into the prison estate. However, do we have an issue here of people still being within secure mental health hospitals, where beds are scarce, because they cannot be moved back into the prison estate?

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

We do have an issue, as my noble friend puts it, around managing mental health in the community and among prisoners. I hope the Mental Health Bill will help to address that. This is an ongoing problem of which the Government are well aware and to which we are working towards solutions.

Lammy Review

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, certainly, judges are provided with domestic abuse training. The Equal Treatment Bench Book places particular emphasis on avoiding bias in sentencing and related outcomes. The judiciary, whose task it is to ensure absolute absence of bias, is well appraised of this problem and working on it.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I am currently serving on the Joint Committee scrutinising the draft Mental Health Bill. The Lammy Review made it clear that black and minority ethnic prisoners are more likely to have undiagnosed mental health issues, learning disabilities or autism. Will my noble friend the Minister confirm that the scheme of court liaison mental health practitioners being in all courts when people appear in front of them for the first time is going to be rolled out? Will priority be given to youth courts, as it is quite common for young offenders under 21 to have a patchy record in school, which is obviously one of the main places they would be diagnosed as having a learning disability or being autistic?

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

I can give my noble friend the assurance that she seeks. Through the community sentence treatment requirements programme we are working with health agencies to improve access to mental health services for those who need them. In particular, liaison and diversion services are funded by the NHS and should now be present in all police custody suites and magistrates’ courts to provide early intervention for vulnerable people, acting as a point of referral and providing a prompt response to concerns raised by police, probation or youth offending teams. I hope that has addressed the question asked.

Coroners (Determination of Suicide) Bill [HL]

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 28th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by thanking the right reverend Prelate for bringing his Private Member’s Bill for the third time before Parliament. If he believed in luck, I would say “third time lucky”. I am pleased to see that the Bill has been widened beyond gambling being recorded as a relevant causative factor in a death by suicide.

I wish to briefly address one of the reasons given previously by His Majesty’s Government as to why this sensible piece of legislation is not possible and one of the implications for our cultural understanding of suicide. His Majesty’s Government have said that if we introduce a statement of relevant causative factors for deaths by suicide then we would have to introduce it for all the causes a coroner might state for a death—namely, misadventure, unlawful killing, accident et cetera. However, suicide as a cause of death stands alone and needs to be treated separately, as it is the only cause of death that will be affected potentially by any introduction of assisted dying or assisted suicide legislation. No one would suggest that we would have assisted dying by way of misadventure or accident; sadly, I think we might end up with unlawful killing. Why would the Government not want to assist parliamentarians to have this evidence when next considering such legislation, which, I might add, I strongly oppose?

The right reverend Prelate outlined the comments from the coroner in the inquest into the tragic suicide of Molly Russell. I have high hopes for the Online Safety Bill and the duty of care it will create to ensure that, when on the internet, children and vulnerable adults do not have access to the type of material Molly viewed. However, any provision, if legalised, on assisted dying or assisted suicide would of course be on the internet, so legislation is also going to have to create a miraculous Chinese wall to ensure lawful assisted suicide information is kept away from other footage, such as that which Molly viewed.

We know from the work done, particularly by the right reverend Prelate, that we would need to potentially block from gambling sites, or prescribe limits on, links to any lawful assisted suicide website. I hope this brief description of this information on the internet outlines the difficulties we would have in this task. I think it might be impossible, but without the causes and factors behind suicides, as outlined in this Bill, it is definitely impossible.

Further, this data would enable more detailed analysis of the role of mental health in deaths by suicide. I am currently serving on the pre-legislative scrutiny committee of the draft mental health Bill. The current Mental Health Act sits on the hard-won moral tectonic plate that suicide is not criminal but to be prevented and not encouraged or aided. Under the Mental Health Act, even when you have capacity—a factor I think many people do not realise—the state can detain you when you are ill and can forcibly treat you to avoid you committing suicide. Recently, a healthy 23 year-old woman in Belgium chose to be euthanised although she was physically fit and well but was mentally unwell after being in the vicinity, although uninjured physically, of a terrorist incident. The data on causes of suicide that this Bill asks for will enable parliamentarians to consider, when looking at assisted suicide, whether it should be given on the basis of psychiatric illness alone. It is a controversial proposal.

The Government have always maintained that assisted dying or assisted suicide is a conscience issue for parliamentarians, but I would argue that not collecting this data is perilously close to the Government leaning in favour of such legislation. A recent peer-reviewed article by Dr Jones, in volume 11 of the Journal of Ethics in Mental Health, found that some assisted dying legislatures have seen increased non-assisted dying suicide rates. It is therefore essential for legislators to have such data to assess the risk of increasing the rates of suicide in England and Wales through the introduction of any such legislation.

It is a hard-won principle that the state should protect its citizens from harm, whether from foreign states, third-party actors, other citizens or themselves. I fear that we might tamper with this moral tectonic plate without the necessary data. So I hope that His Majesty’s Government will give the Bill the time in the other place that it needs to become law.

Magistrates

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks]

The noble Lord is right; it was as long ago as 2003 that this potential increase in sentence was statutorily allowed. A number of factors have been taken into account by successive Governments. He makes an important point about cost savings. He is quite right; it is, of course, much cheaper to use magistrates than go to the Crown Court and, if they have appropriate powers, it is more likely that magistrates will deal with the matter. We have to bear in mind—I think the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, directed his question towards this matter—the possible effect on the prison population and how magistrates will feel able, or want, to use any increase in powers. It is a difficult question.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend mentioned the incredibly high level of training and expertise that magistrates have. When looking at this Question in relation to today’s first Question, of course the overwhelming majority of motoring offences are also dealt with in the magistrates’ court. On training, will my noble friend the Minister please outline what plans the Government have to ensure that when driverless cars become a reality on our roads, with the potentially complex issues to do with the programming of those cars in the eventuality of an accident, we will still have the expertise in the magistrates’ courts to ensure that the overwhelming majority of such cases are tried in those courts?

[Lord Faulks]

My noble friend makes a good point. The senior presiding judge and HMCTS review the needs of the magistrates’ courts annually, including training for district judges and magistrates. All interested parties are consulted such as local Bench chairmen and local branches of the Magistrates’ Association. The training would include any new potential offences or situations identified through various routes. Clearly, they should include a new concept such as that to which my noble friend refers.

Court Proceedings: Written Transcripts

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Berridge]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that there is open justice, and in particular open access to transcripts of proceedings in open court, in the light of the availability of digital technology.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Faulks) (Con)]

My Lords, we recognise the importance of a transparent and open justice system. Transcripts of proceedings in open court are available on request, although safeguards are in place to protect vulnerable parties. Our reforms to courts and tribunals will make much better use of digital technology to ensure a more efficient, proportionate and accessible system for all.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for my noble friend’s Answer, but on 27 April he stated that Her Majesty’s Government would make court proceedings more accessible and make it easier for the public to understand court proceedings. In April this year, I made a request via the Library for the sentencing remarks in a hearing in open court, and the cost per hour turned out to be £144 plus VAT. Will my noble friend undertake not only to use digital technology but to ensure that the Ministry of Justice gets value for money and that our courts are accessible? On investigation, it seems that numerous companies are operating to record proceedings in numerous parts of the country, so there also seems to be scope for economies of scale in this area.

[Lord Faulks]

I am grateful to my noble friend. She is quite right: she drew the ministry’s attention to her difficulties. There are a number of contracts in existence, and some of them have been extended at various times. The ministry is currently progressing a re-procurement of all court and tribunal transcription services, and new contracts are anticipated by the end of 2016. The cost of transcripts depends on the length of the hearing. There is a difference between sentencing remarks, by which we mean the remarks accompanying the judge actually passing sentence, and the sentencing hearing, which can be very much longer and cost something like £800 or £900 per day in the Crown Court and rather more in the High Court. If you can refine your search, it tends to be very much cheaper.

Lords Spiritual (Women) Bill

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, it is a relief to sit down to write a speech on this issue and think that just about everything has been said, so I shall be succinct but expand briefly on a point I have raised before. As I have lived in Stockport and fought in vain to represent it in the other place, I was particularly pleased to see that the first woman bishop to be appointed was the Bishop of Stockport.

I welcome this legislation as I wrote to this effect in The House Magazine many months ago outlining that whatever one’s view might be on church governance, the nation’s legislature is a different matter and women must be represented. I am grateful for the previous debates on this matter as they have enabled me to hear from my noble friend Lady Perry and others who have fought this battle for many years with compassion and grace. The next generation like me can sometimes forget how hard the going has been on an issue like this. This issue is also important due to the global nature of the Anglican communion and, of course, there are women bishops in many provinces already. I learnt from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark that sometimes diocesan bishops are requested to travel overseas as somewhat of a representative of the Archbishop of Canterbury, such as his recent trip with the Holy See delegation to the Middle East. It would be such a powerful statement if on such occasions in the future the representative of the most reverend Primate is a woman.

However, you sometimes have to be careful about what you wish for as bringing in women could leave the major metropolitan centres of the north-west unrepresented for many years. The representative nature of the Bishops’ Benches is one of the things the Church of England prides itself on, so I hope that the fine tuning of the system to add Bishops to the Lords spiritual can be done in the same manner as the changes the House is gradually making before the whole Chamber is reformed. Is it really appropriate in the 21st century not to bring in automatically Birmingham and either Liverpool or Manchester over the diocese of Winchester which includes, merely legally at the moment, the Channel Islands, which are not part of the United Kingdom?

I turn now to the matter I wish to expand upon. The photograph of the bishops taken at the consecration of the Bishop of Stockport unfortunately raises a further issue for the Lords spiritual, which is the lack of racial diversity. In October 2015, it was a privilege to witness the most reverend Primate address 40,000 people at the ExCeL centre from the Redeemed Christian Church of God, a Nigerian-based denomination which is the fastest growing church in the UK. His apology and request for forgiveness for the past behaviour of some of the Anglican Church towards Britain’s black community was most moving. I hope it will lead to a true partnership and perhaps to leaders for the Anglican Church coming through joint initiatives with RCCG and Pastor Agu Irukwu, who I suspect the most reverend Primate would poach for the Anglican Church, given half a chance.

Is this issue of the lack of racial diversity unconnected to the matter I raised previously of the lack of diversity of educational and social background of diocesan leaders? Much of the racial diversity of our independent schools comes from overseas students who, of course, would be good to recruit, but surely not alone. Does this stone not need fully unturning and looking at? I am sorry to say that I was not entirely satisfied with the response of the most reverend Primate in a previous debate who said that when he has been involved in selection, background is never raised. As many noble Lords will have experienced, the issues are unconscious bias and barriers to entry. At the very least, they are worthy of investigation. Would the church not benefit from something like Vicar First mirroring Teach First for graduates? Not all the people I knew when I left university were able, through contacts, to raise a year or so’s support. Is the most reverend Primate satisfied that all the apprentices or volunteers that many churches have are on the London living wage as recommended by the Church of England? Of course, no one is asked outright what their dad did for a living or what type of school they went to. To use the analogy of racism again, I have had direct experience of people anglicising their names and suddenly finding that the same CV gets them a job interview. Both barriers to entry and unconscious bias are worthy of inquiry. I welcome the transparency that the Green proposals will bring, but without investigation, I remain to be convinced that the lack of social and educational diversity is not linked to the lack of racial diversity.

Finally, it may be time for us to stop speaking but not to down tools. The Anglican Church’s attitude to women is about more than allowing women bishops. It is so encouraging to see females in senior management roles in Lambeth Palace—Kay Brock is chief of staff, Jo Bailey Wells is chaplain and Ailsa Anderson is head of media, but it may be harder and take longer to change the culture within some parts of the Anglican Church. I hope to see that institution one day mirror the respect and value for my opinion displayed by the Lords spiritual. It is sometimes rather odd to be a younger person in a workplace such as this and to refer to your colleagues as bishops. I hope that attitude of respect and valuing opinion will find its way all the way down to the pews in the Anglican Church.