Legal System: Prosecutorial Policy

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, on securing this important debate. In December 2016, your Lordships’ House voted to strengthen the current victims’ code in a number of ways, including giving a duty to all the agencies involved in any case to follow the code. The duty is presently much weaker than that. At considerations of Commons amendments in January last year the then Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, said from the Dispatch Box that the Government would publish their strategy to strengthen the victims’ code within the year. We know that it has been delayed and we will continue to hold the current Minister and others to account for a consultation by Easter, and for a strategy to be published this calendar year. The fact that it is one year overdue has already affected the lives of a number of victims adversely; we know that there are flaws in the system.

In the short time available in this debate, I will focus on the experience of the most vulnerable victims. This week the Victims’ Commissioner, the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, who I see is in her place, published her excellent review into the provision of registered intermediaries for children and vulnerable victims and witnesses. The review makes chilling reading. These RIs are trained to work with children and those with specific conditions who need extra support to be able to give evidence in court. In example after example, police officers and CPS advisers—as well as the RIs themselves—talk about how the CPS and the court process, and especially funding problems, are denying these victims and witnesses their rights under our judicial system.

For example, the review says:

“One police officer described how she carried out an interview with a male victim of assault with severe learning disability. She said, ‘every time he spoke he just giggled and could not communicate with her. He responded really well to the male RI, who was able to simplify the questions sufficiently for him to understand and answer them. It made a big difference. The RI struggled a bit but eventually got a full account of what happened. It meant that the man could have access to justice!’”.


In 2016, an HMIC inspection into child protection at the Metropolitan Police Service reported that senior officers,

“recognised the limited availability of RIs and the negative effect this has on the quality of the service provided to children and young people and have raised with relevant partner organisations such as the Ministry of Justice”.

It was also reported that the delays and slow processes in being able to hire an RI were hindering children and vulnerable people in getting access to the help they needed.

To quote again from the report:

“One CPS advocate described her involvement in a case in which the victim was a 15-year-old girl who was assaulted on her way home. The girl had severe brain damage as a child. A statement was taken and the police officer felt that the victim was able to do the ABE”—


the evidence—

“on her own ... The police and the CPS could not agree and the funding for an RI was refused in this case”.

However, there are some good examples, too. The Norwich constabulary uses the achieving best evidence language screening toolkit, known as ABELS, to screen for the communication needs of victims. Other constabularies receive information from schools or social workers for children aged under 10. The problem is that practice is inconsistent—particularly so for vulnerable adult victims and witnesses. What is the Ministry of Justice doing to ensure that best practice is disseminated to all constabularies—and, if ABELS is the gold standard, will it ensure that this gold practice is rolled out?

Police officers report that the form filling and box ticking to request an RI is overly bureaucratic and time-consuming. Once completed, it takes an average of four weeks for an RI to be allocated. This is a long time in the memory of a small child—or of some adults with learning difficulties—and police officers talked in the report about the conundrum that they face. One said: “I thought, ‘I’m just not waiting—I can’t’. That case involved a three year-old child. Because the child was three, I knew the memory retention wouldn’t be great”. The parents of the child had warned that her memory would not be great and said, “You need to get this done sooner rather than later because of that”. The National Crime Agency said, “You can’t have one for another four to five weeks”. The officer said, “That’s too late” and explained: “In a case like that I have to make a decision—do I sit and wait that long, and risk losing the information, or do I try and obtain it another way?”. What does the Minister propose should be done to simplify the allocation of RIs so that evidence can be taken from these vulnerable witnesses speedily?

Time does not permit me to go through the recommendations of this excellent review, which seems to echo many of the other problems cited with the early stages of the criminal justice system as experienced by victims. But the review is clear on the need for a much better overview and management of processes. I suspect that if that happened there would also be fewer delays and cost overruns and, even more important, less need to re-run trials because evidence has not been produced early enough or effectively enough. For children, young people and vulnerable victims this is particularly true.

We know from previous reports that a large percentage of victims are deeply unhappy with the way that the criminal justice systems treats them. For this group of vulnerable victims, the state has an extra duty to ensure that support is offered as quickly and effectively as possible, both to ensure a smoother journey for the case through the criminal justice system and to ensure that their voice is heard, with appropriate support and justice given.