“Hillsborough Law”

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Thursday 24th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

I agree with the way that the noble Lord has framed his question. There was an establishment cover-up, which must never happen again. The Prime Minister has made a personal commitment to the affected families to work with them constructively to come up with an appropriate law. Regarding the duty of candour, the Government are clear that what happened following the Hillsborough disaster must never happen again. Under the Hillsborough law, public officials will be bound by a duty of candour with criminal and professional consequences. We are committed to achieving a true cultural change. The Bill cannot change culture on its own, but it can and should act as a catalyst, and we remain committed to launching a programme to encourage cultural change alongside the Bill.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend, as always, for repeating the Government’s commitment to introduce the Hillsborough law, but I am afraid that the families and their representatives feel a little less positive about the engagement that they have had so far. Some worry that they have been briefed against to the newspapers and, generally speaking, they worry about the dilution that the noble Lord, Lord Storey, has warned against.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

I am sorry to hear that from my noble friend. I am aware of very recent interaction with the families in Liverpool. My understanding is that those talks have been going positively, and it is very much hoped that we will be able to reach some form of agreement in the coming weeks and months.

Trial by Jury: Proposed Restrictions

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Monday 14th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for those questions. He is absolutely right that we are not short of jurors. We are also not short of magistrates and there is no shortage of applicants to become magistrates. Sir Brian’s suite of recommendations included increasing the role of the magistrates’ court, as well as introducing the new bench division within the Crown Court, to which the noble Lord alluded. He said that Sir Brian said there will be a 20% saving in time with the new bench division. That is his estimate. I have to say, I think that is very conservative. We already know that for similar cases magistrates’ courts are two or three times quicker than Crown Courts, so I think it is conservative to estimate that we will see only a 20% saving in time with the new bench division courts.

The noble Lord made the point about delays for victims. Of course, that underpins the concern and the reason we are introducing these systemic changes in the first place. It is my understanding that there are about 100 cases in London booked for 2029. I think they may be mainly sex-related cases; I am not sure. That is unacceptable. It is unacceptable for the victims and the defendants, and it is a systemic problem we are trying to address.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to my noble friend the Minister for his long public service as a lay magistrate, as I do to Sir Brian for his long public service as a judge and, post-judiciary, on various inquiries for Governments of both persuasions. I know the Government are considering how to respond to this review and the Gauke review. May I ask my noble friend to take into account that we cannot have one class or one group of people permanently sitting in judgment over another? The lay magistracy, for all its commitment to public service, is not as representative as juries and that needs to be taken on board.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My noble friend makes a fair point. I would say that magistrates are more diverse than judges. Judges already sit in certain types of cases as single judges deciding people’s guilt; they do it in youth courts and family courts, and there are other examples within the civil jurisdiction as well. I think it is also fair to say that in the big conurbations—London and the big cities—there is greater diversity in the magistrate base. I take the point my noble friend makes, but I think that magistrates are respected and we are starting from a strong base if we want to build on the work they are doing.

European Convention on Human Rights: Protocol 12

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Monday 2nd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

So I will write to the noble Lord about that. Nevertheless, my point stands: many other states have considered this and have not at present decided to sign the protocol. It is worth pointing out that none of the larger states within the European Union or the Council of Europe have signed it, either.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government have a duty not just to protect people’s rights and freedoms but to promote public understanding of those rights and freedoms. So can my noble friend the Minister explain why this further innovation of a free-standing right against discrimination in Protocol 12—as opposed to a right against discrimination in the context of other convention rights, such as Article 14, which we are signed up to—would not benefit people, in the light of his comments that the Equality Act already does the trick?

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

The fact of the matter is that we are seeing the law develop in these areas. We have had the Supreme Court judgment. I and the Government believe that the Equality Act is working well, and there will be development in law in this matter going forward. It is also right that there is very little common law associated with Protocol 12 for those states that have signed up to it. So, as I said, the Government are keeping an eye on this matter, but at present they do not believe that it is right to sign up to Protocol 12.

Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 19th May 2025 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Chakrabarti]

1: Clause 1, page 1, leave out lines 5 to 7 and insert—
“(4A) But sentencing guidelines may not require or prohibit the provision of a pre-sentence report by reference to an offender’s protected characteristics alone.”Member’s explanatory statement
This and other amendments in the name of Baroness Chakrabarti replace the reference in clause 1 to “different personal characteristics of an offender” with the tighter definition of “protected characteristics” in the Equality Act. It further restores some discretion to the Sentencing Council as long as guidelines do not require or prohibit pre-sentence reports on the basis of such characteristics alone.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I apologise to the Committee that I was not able to speak at Second Reading because I was unable to stay for the whole debate, but I attended a significant portion of it and I have read Hansard for the rest. I apologise as well that, subject to how long we are engaged in this Committee, I shall have to shuttle between the Moses Room and the Chamber for Committee on the Employment Rights Bill, where I also have amendments—no discourtesy is intended. Who knows, the Chair might give us a nod with her advice as to how business is going in the Chamber. We may have Divisions on the earlier business in the Chamber.

I take this opportunity to welcome my noble friend the Minister to his first Committee stage of a Bill. I am sad that this is the first Bill that he has had to grapple with. I should have liked a more auspicious Bill for him to begin with—but who knows? With the Gauke review to come, I still have high hopes for cross-party or non-party sensible approaches to sentencing, of a kind that I think we heard a little flavour of perhaps at Questions just now.

I have made no secret of the fact that I am not a fan of this Bill, either of the politics or the constitutionality of it, and I also have practical concerns about it. It is a real shame that this Bill came out of a soundbite war, essentially, about two-tier justice, and so on, which was really an extension of the appalling sights that we witnessed last summer. It is a shame that the Government felt it necessary to respond to less than thoughtful voices on all that, and it is a shame that they were unable to reach a sensible diplomatic resolution with the Sentencing Council.

Also, as a proud member of the governing party, I believe in a certain amount of affirmative action. Again, in this regard, I pay tribute to my noble friend the Minister. One reason why he is such an asset to the Government is that the Timpson brand, not just on the high street but in terms of penal reform, is such a well-respected brand, partly for its extraordinarily progressive experiment in a version of affirmative action, offering employment to people who otherwise would not get a look-in, for whom employment makes all the difference—that is, people who have been in custody. I pay all tribute to my noble friend and to his family.

The Labour Party has been a pioneer in affirmative action, with all-women shortlists and the idea that sometimes, to deal with entrenched discrimination and injustice, one has to tilt the dial and try to take some affirmative measures. In a nutshell, that is the spirit of the Lammy report. That is where I am coming from, without making the Second Reading speech that I did not make.

We are where we are, as many noble Lords said at Second Reading. So, in the spirit of good faith and attempting to improve the Bill, I have in my name Amendments 1, 5, 11 and 13 in this group, and I support all the amendments proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, and his colleagues, which I think are in the same spirit, attempting to minimise in particular any constitutional damage. Let us not throw the baby out with the bath water if we are concerned about perceptions of so-called two-tier justice; let us just get this right and make sure, of course, that people are being treated as individuals and not as ciphers for any particular group, but that their circumstances are also appropriately taken into account, which really is the whole point of a pre-sentence report in the first place.

First, in my Amendment 1, I take issue with the broad and quite vague concept of “personal characteristics” offered in the Bill and suggest that, if the Government are so concerned about this sloganistic perception of two-tiered justice, they should probably go to the tighter definitions in the Equality Act of protected characteristics on the one hand, but also not really clip the wings of the Sentencing Council too much: make sure the Sentencing Council does not clip the wings of individual sentencers on the one hand, and let individual sentencers make decisions about when they should and should not require a pre-sentence report. But this concept of personal characteristics is very vague.

I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for his letter of last week, but I think that relying on Strasbourg case law about Article 14 is really not the best approach in the context of domestic law. Not that I am not a great champion of the convention, you understand; there are criteria that are useful at that kind of international law level. But at the domestic level, we should be a bit more granular and precise. In the context of looking at convicted people as individual human beings and at sentencing as an exercise in looking at those individual human beings and at what will help with rehabilitation and preventing reoffending, this very broad, vague concept that is been adopted in the Bill is a mistake and is in grave danger of shutting out the sorts of considerations that actually would be very useful when deciding in the context of rationing.

It is a shame we have to ration pre-sentence reports. Let us be clear—let me put myself on the record. I would like to have a pre-sentence report, ideally, whenever someone is going to be sentenced to a community penalty or to custody, and especially for the first time. If I am going to be told that that is totally unrealistic, so be it, but I certainly do not want their individual circumstances to be shut out of that assessment, and the Bill as currently drafted risks that. That was put incredibly well by a number of noble Lords at Second Reading and I refer colleagues to Hansard on that.

So that is why I suggest in my amendment to Clause 1 that it is one thing to say that a protected characteristic under the Equality Act should never be the reason why you definitely get a PSR or you do not get one, because we are concerned about two-tier justice and all of that—so you should not just get one because you are a woman or because you are black. But if that is part of the matrix of your general experience, knowing what we know about oversentencing and disproportionate outcomes, on the one hand, we need the tighter definition that comes with the Equality Act rather than in the case law from Article 14, and on the other hand, we should not clip the wings of the Sentencing Council too tightly.

Why should we not do that? From a constitutional point of view, the Sentencing Council plays a very important role in bridging the constitutional gap between the Executive and the legislature on the one hand, and sentences and judges on the other hand. What do I mean by that? If Parliament, with or without the initiation of the Government—it usually is on the initiation of the Government, let us be clear—wants to tell judges what to do, Parliament has vehicles for so doing. The primary vehicle is primary legislation and there is also secondary legislation. But the point of sentencing guidelines is not to do that.

The point of the guidelines is so that judges passing sentences of any level rightly and necessarily have discretion, which they must exercise in the interests of individual justice. Sentencing guidelines are about helping them structure that discretion so that we do not have a total postcode lottery and, in a sense, so that brother and sister sentencers can share their thinking about the sorts of factors they might like to have in mind before they sentence or, in this case, before they commission a pre-sentence report. That is what my first amendment is about: do not clip the wings of the Sentencing Council too tightly. Do not use vague terms that come from the jurisprudence of Article 14 rather than the tighter definitions in our established domestic legislation.

Moving on to other amendments in my name in this group, I draw the Committee’s attention to Amendment 5. This flips the dial and looks positively at the sorts of factors we would perhaps want. We have talked about what we do not want the Sentencing Council to be invoking in its guidelines because we are afraid of any suggestion that people are getting special treatment. But what about the sorts of things that ought to encourage the use of pre-sentence reports? I repeat that I would like everyone to get one but, if they have to be rationed, what sorts of factors would we actively want a judge to take into account and therefore the Sentencing Council to take into account and suggest to judges?

These factors are found in my Amendment 5, which includes

“where the sentencer believes that their own life experience is particularly far removed from that of the offender”.

We do not like to talk about this, but that was partly what the Lammy review was about. This is not an affront to people of a particular type; it is just saying that it is very hard. It is one thing to sit in judgment when you are trying to come up with positive, creative community and/or custodial sentences that are going to make things better and not worse. Maybe you should try to understand an offender that you do not understand—so, where the sentencer believes that their own life experience is particularly far removed from that of the offender.

The amendment also includes

“where the sentencer believes that an offender is a member of social group that appears to be over-represented in the prison population”.

I refer once more to the excellent Lammy report, which is how we got here in the first place. I am embarrassed, but also proud, to say that it was commissioned by a Conservative Prime Minister and written by the now Labour Foreign Secretary. It seems to be possible to have a different kind of conversation about sentencing and the criminal justice system, which I hope will continue later this week with the advent of the Gauke review.

The third area for consideration proposed by Amendment 5 is

“where the sentencer believes that an offender or their dependants may be particularly badly”

affected

“by the imposition of a community or custodial sentence”.

A famous Strasbourg judgment, Thlimmenos v Greece, makes a point about equal treatment; it is a very important Strasbourg decision. Non-discrimination is not just about treating people in the same way; it is about understanding the different needs and experiences of different people. If I require everyone coming to my restaurant or hotel to go up a steep staircase, I am shutting out anyone in a wheelchair. Thlimmenos v Greece is the landmark Strasbourg decision that said we also need to think about treating people with different experiences and needs differently in order to enforce the very important human rights principle of equal treatment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

Again, I apologise for not being too repetitive, but I am very keen on making sure that I am accurate in everything that I say. I will write to the right reverend Prelate.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all Members of the Committee who made their very forensic and clear points about the Bill and the manifold problems with it. I am also grateful to my noble friend the Minister, who replied with about as much kindness, courtesy and elegance as it is possible to do in these very tricky circumstances. I will not be pressing my amendments today, and I am glad that he and his advisers will reflect a little more before Report, which I think they would be wise to do.

I will just leave my noble friend with one thought about the points that I made. He has spoken often about preferential treatment, and I remind him of what I said about the high steps to my restaurant or hotel. If I add a ramp, a hoist or a lift for the person in the wheelchair to gain access to a service that they would not otherwise get access to, is that preferential treatment or a genuine, progressive, liberal and even one-nation Conservative attempt to level things out a little? I know what I think, and I suspect what some other Members of this Committee might think as well, but with that I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 1 withdrawn.

Recalled Offenders: Sentencing Limits

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Monday 19th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

The noble Lord is exactly right. When people have been in prison, it is our job to help them when they leave so that they do not come back. Unfortunately, at the moment, far too many people come back. Electronic tagging has an important role to play—and that role will increase. Tagging is not just for making sure that people can be at home on a curfew; it is so that we can track them where they are. There are also sobriety tags. So, yes, there will be a tool at our disposal when people are released after their recall.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, may I risk a thunderbolt by paying tribute to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, and—at the risk of a second thunderbolt—suggest that there is not such a big difference between what he mooted and government policy? There is a distinction between the regulatory misdemeanour of being late for a probation appointment and committing a violent crime. There is something in what he said, and in my noble friend the Minister’s response, about differentiating between a violent crime committed while on release and a minor regulatory misdemeanour that could be dealt with in the way proposed by the Government.

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

My noble friend is right that there is sometimes a big distinction between the offences that people commit. It is important that those committing serious further offences and those who are managed on a MAPPA 2 or 3 are treated differently from those with lower offences. I am clear that everybody who commits an offence needs to be dealt with by the law; but they also need to have an opportunity to rehabilitate themselves so that they do not create further victims in the future.

“Hillsborough Law”

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd April 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Chakrabarti]

To ask His Majesty’s Government when they intend to introduce the ‘Hillsborough Law’ as set out in the Labour Party Manifesto 2024; and what steps they are taking to ensure any such legislation will meet the objectives set out by the bereaved families.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Hillsborough disaster is one of the greatest stains on British history, and the families of those who lost loved ones have shown endless determination to get justice. Having consulted with these groups over the past few weeks, we believe that more time is needed to draft the best version of a Hillsborough law. We remain fully committed to bringing in this legislation at pace.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am grateful, as always, to my noble friend the Minister for his compassion. As far as the families are concerned, the Hillsborough law is the Public Authority (Accountability) Bill, which received a First Reading with cross-party support in 2017. They worry that starting from scratch will lead to a dilution of its vital protections. Will the Government please show them any new draft in advance of introduction? There is considerable irony in such a secretive process over a new duty of candour.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I understand there have been multiple meetings between Hillsborough Law Now and the Government, Andy Burnham, Steve Rotherham, Liverpool MPs and my noble friend Lord Wills. I also understand that the Prime Minister is taking a personal interest in this matter. I know that the Government have undertaken to look very seriously at all the questions raised and will come forward with legislation at pace, as I said in my original Answer.

Sentencing Council Guidelines

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Wednesday 19th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

Our independent judiciary is best placed to decide whether a community or a custodial sentence is required. From my experience, pre-sentence reports can be very useful in supporting the judiciary in their decision-making. They are even more helpful when the pre-sentence report is written by someone who knows the offender well and has a lot of training and background information on that person.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that, contrary to the confected outrage from across the House, sentencing is not a matter for politicians and should be independent of government? Does he also agree that it would be a jolly good thing if all offenders, whoever they are, had the benefit of a pre-sentence report?

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for her question. It is up to the independent judiciary to decide whether to request a pre-sentence report. What we do know is that in a number of cases they are very appropriate. We also know that our judiciary—in which many noble, and noble and learned, Lords in this House have taken an important role—is respected around the world. We need to ensure that that is maintained.

Courts: Backlogs

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

I thank the noble and right reverend Lord for his observations. We are taking a different approach, which is to look at the overall working efficiency of the court system. I acknowledge that there are substantial backlogs, particularly in rape cases, because they are often very complex cases. There is also the added distressing fact that many rape victims drop out of the process because of the lengthy delays. I acknowledge that that is a problem, but we believe that the best way to address this is to look at how the system operates as a whole. We are looking forward to receiving Sir Brian’s recommendations in due course.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I hope my noble friend the Minister knows that I have a lifetime of respect for professional tribunals, lawyers and judges, including Sir Brian, and their fair remuneration. Notwithstanding concerns about the backlog, which are considerable, I hope he agrees with me that there will always be benefit in jury trial for the most serious cases. That benefit is about public confidence, legitimacy and participation in the legal system on which the rule of law depends.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

I completely agree with my noble friend: public confidence is absolutely paramount. That is one reason why jury trials were persisted with—quite rightly—during the Covid period. Having said that, there are certain types of cases where it is maybe not appropriate that a jury trial should be available. I anticipate that Sir Brian is looking at those sorts of cases.

Fundamental Rights and the Rule of Law

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Chakrabarti]

To ask His Majesty’s Government, in the light of threats to fundamental rights and the rule of law, what plans they have to promote greater public information and education in this area.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, with the caveat that the word “eater” on today’s list should read “greater”, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede) (Lab)]

My Lords, as the Prime Minister has made clear, the UK is unequivocally committed to the European Convention on Human Rights. My right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor has said she will champion the rule of law at home and abroad, and my noble and learned friend the Attorney-General has described it as our lodestar. We are committed to rebuilding public trust in our political system by explaining how the rule of law serves us all and by promoting human rights as British values.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister—it is very nice to be able to say that—for that Answer. The Human Rights Act 1998 was a wonderful innovation: a modern bill of rights for this country. There was very little public education and information to go with it, and that has made it vulnerable to attack and misrepresentation, including from allegedly moderate Conservative leadership candidates, even today. Will the Government therefore now use this second opportunity and every resource available, digital and otherwise, in government, to put things right?

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for that question. We consider that the UK’s three national human rights institutions, each with specific jurisdictions and functions, have a role in this. They are the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and the Scottish Human Rights Commission. Each has an “A” status, as rated by the UN, and a role in promoting human rights and awareness of human rights within the United Kingdom.

My noble friend’s original Question went wider than that, to include reinvigorating an appreciation of human rights. While the bodies I have just described have a statutory responsibility, there is nothing to stop central government doing that as well. As I think I pointed out in my initial Answer, both the Lord Chancellor and Attorney-General take this matter extremely seriously and see it as central to what they are doing.

My noble friend also referred to today’s press reports. Tom Tugendhat MP said in his pitch to be leader of the Conservative Party that he is ready to leave the ECHR. That is in marked contrast to what the leadership of the Government are saying.

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 23rd April 2024 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Chakrabarti]

80: Clause 16, page 13, line 14, at end insert “or a sexual offence against the child or a child in the family”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would remove the presumption of custody for children of offenders of child sexual abuse, requiring a Crown Court to make a prohibited steps order protecting the children of an offender on sentencing.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, we are now in the family court because in the real world and in a joined-up justice system, victims are being dealt with not just in the criminal justice system but in the family system.

I have Amendments 80, 83, 84, 91 and 92 in this group. I will try to deal with them as succinctly as possible given the hour and what noble Lords across the House have had to endure in the last 24 hours. I am dealing with three issues. The first relates to Clause 16, the so-called Jade’s law. I will speak to that in a moment. That is covered in Amendments 80, 84—which is consequential on Amendment 80—and 83, which is distinct, but I am led to believe that the usual channels have agreed that Amendments 80, 83 and 84 will be treated as a package. I will wait for someone opposite to jump up and tell me if I am wrong about that.

Amendment 91 deals with “cowboy experts”—I am trying to be as succinct as I can—that is, unregulated experts giving opinions and getting paid. These unregulated opinions and expertise lead to considerable injustice in the family court, including people having to spend a lot of money and people losing responsibility for or contact with their children. Amendment 92 would ensure that those suspected of or charged with domestic abuse, sexual violence and child abuse are not permitted unsupervised access to their children.

Jade’s law is Clause 16, on which the Government are to be commended. Amendments 80, 83 and 84 attempt to tighten up loopholes in Jade’s law, and they are supported by the family of Jade Ward. On account of the time, I will not recount the details of that case. Noble Lords will know that, in its current form as proposed by the Government, Clause 16 places a parent convicted of the murder or manslaughter of the other parent under a prohibited steps order. This is so that we do not have the murderer or manslaughterer effectively controlling the family from behind bars. The Government are to be commended on responding to the campaign and taking up that issue, but we think there is a loophole in that there are sex offenders—not just murderers and manslaughterers—who are attempting the same coercive control, by way of the family courts, from behind bars.

Amendments 80 and 83 would extend Jade’s law and are supported by the family of Jade Ward, whose campaign originally led to Clause 16. We would extend the provisions of Clause 16 to those convicted of a sex offence against a child in the family.

I am aware that, in response to an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill in the other place from my right honourable friend Harriet Harman, the Government have announced that they want to do something and give a concession in our direction in relation to those who rape a child under 13. With huge respect to the Government, that is not enough, because there are very serious sex offences that are not rape and there are very vulnerable children who are just over 13. A child is a child—not least for the purposes of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, if one can still talk about such instruments in Parliament—until they are 18, and certainly there are very serious sex offences that are not rape. So we wish to go further in the ambit of Clause 16, which is Jade’s law.

We also have Amendment 83. This deals with the exception to Jade’s law, as rightly constructed by the Government in the principal amendment. Understandably, and very sensibly in my view, the Government have created, from subsection (5) onwards, an exception to the prohibition in relation to the murderer or the manslaughterer, normally but not always a woman, who is a victim of domestic abuse that led to the murder or manslaughter.

We seek to include domestic abuse, as defined in legislation. At the moment there is an exemption where the offender is convicted of manslaughter and it appears to the Crown Court that this would not be in the interests of justice. We say “the interests of justice” is too vague a concept and they have to be a victim of domestic abuse, as determined by the 2021 Act. “The interests of justice” is too vague a concept to ensure proper protection for all those we seek to protect.

--- Later in debate ---

Government Amendments 81 and 82 clarify certain technical points about the operation of Clause 16, which I do not think I need explain in more detail.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I hope noble Lords will forgive me for forgetting courtesy in my brevity. I failed to mention the various supporters, some of whom have identified themselves: my noble friend Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Helic, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. As always, I am also grateful for their expertise—including correcting an error in the explanatory note—and the expertise of the noble Lord, Lord Meston.

I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord the Minister for understanding the problem with unregulated experts. He alluded to a potentially broader, and quite possibly effective, solution by way of procedure rules and, under pressure from the noble Lord, Lord Meston, said that it would be extraordinary if this did not happen. I will hold my fire until Report and have great hope—

[Noble Lords]

This is Report.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

Then I have no hope. But I will take comfort from the Minister’s comments, because that would be a better, rounder solution in relation to proceedings and it could be broader than just victims. I would prefer that outcome. I hope the Government as a whole will look at unregulated psychologists more generally, in relation not just to proceedings but the public more generally. I take comfort from that and am grateful for it.

On Amendment 83, the current provision for the Jade’s law exemption is vague. If we are trying to deal with domestic abuse, let us call it what it is—it is defined in statute.

On the presumption of parental involvement, the logic of the idea that convicted sex offenders should be presumptively allowed parental involvement escapes me. Jade’s law should be extended. The Minister is almost with me. He wants to act in another Bill, but the clock is ticking for this Parliament and we have a Bill right here on Report in which we could protect children from sex offences, including very serious sex offences that are just short of rape, for reasons which the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, put more graphically and with greater expertise. We should take this opportunity to act. I wish to test the opinion of the House on Amendment 80.