Prisoners (Disclosure of Information About Victims) Bill

Baroness Kennedy of Cradley Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 20th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barker]

My Lords, I was inspired to table Amendment 19, which stands in my name, by three experiences. The first was that, prior to the Bill’s Second Reading, I spent a considerable amount of time talking to Helen McCourt’s mother. She stressed to me the importance of families being informed fully and involved in hearings about release.

My second experience happened very many years ago. I knew Iris Bentley, and I watched her in her latter years as she came to the end of her decades-long campaign to obtain a pardon for her brother Derek Bentley. She was a woman of immense fortitude, diligence and grace. They are very different cases, but in both, the amount of time and effort it took for those women to seek and obtain justice from a system that largely ignored them was remarkable. They were two very strong, determined women who refused to be ignored. Not everyone is so resilient, and nor should they need to be. They should automatically be involved and included by the criminal justice system.

My third experience is that I lived for many years in a Pennine town. Anyone who did at that time could not be unaware of or unsympathetic to the suffering of the families of the Moors murder victims—and that suffering continues today.

From talking to Marie McCourt, I understand that there are at most 100 prisoners to whom this legislation would apply. There are not that many, but the families of their victims suffer perhaps more than anybody else in the criminal justice system. For them, not to be told that a release hearing will take place, nor where and when it will take place, is a trauma. These hearings might happen many years after there has been a conviction, but their importance to victims and victims’ families never diminishes. One needs only to look at what happened to the victims of John Worboys to know about the importance of making sure that people are informed and included.

By the time a release hearing is reached, relatives who are desperate to know what has happened to their loved one are running out of time and the means to compel the prisoner in question to tell them what has happened. It is wrong not only to ignore them but not to advise them that they might not be involved in something that they might see as their last hope of achieving a resolution.

My amendment would place in the Bill that it is the right of relatives to receive information about the timing and location of a release hearing and about their rights, particularly in relation to judicial review. In putting this in the Bill, my intention is that the Parole Board will know right from the moment that the sentence is passed that it is under an obligation to maintain contact with victims’ families and that the onus is on the board, not the families, to maintain contact. It is not unusual for families to be told that they have not been contacted because they have moved or their details have changed, and the Parole Board has simply failed to keep their details up to date.

Release hearings and the prospect of release are a time of heightened anxiety for victims’ families. It can be a grave disappointment that there is no further prospect of the prisoner disclosing information about the victim, but for some there is also the knowledge that the perpetrator will be released into the community and might well know or discover where their victim’s family lives. I know that victims are very fearful of that. At that time, the onus should be on the Parole Board to keep victims’ families fully informed. It is the very least that they should expect. This might be a seemingly simple procedural matter, but it is of immense importance to people who are victims of these prisoners. Therefore, it is in that vein that I beg to move.

[Baroness Kennedy of Cradley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendment. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, that much more needs to be done to support victims in the parole process. The amendment would provide information rights for victims and their families, which are desperately needed. As I noted at Second Reading, many parents involved in the George case sadly found out about her release on Facebook or via the local newspaper. That is completely unacceptable. I am sure that every effort was made to contact the parents in that case, but the system places the onus on the victim or their families, as the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, eloquently set out. It is made their responsibility to opt in and keep in touch with victim liaison officers; it has to be the other way around. The Parole Board should have a duty to ensure that accurate information is given to victims and their families in an appropriate timeframe. The amendment would give them that reassurance.

I particularly welcome proposed new subsection (3). Rather than there being an opt-in approach, victims and their families should automatically be included in the scheme for information unless they opt out. In a meeting a few months ago, the Victims Commissioner and the chair of the Parole Board acknowledged that not all victims opted into the victim contact scheme. They noted that this caused distress to those who failed to opt in and who later discovered through third parties that the offender had been released. They agreed that the current requirement for victims to opt into the scheme was a concern. The amendment addresses that concern. In addition, technology should be developed to modernise information flow to victims and their families so that they can keep their contact details up to date and keep up to date with the details of the case.

The type of additional support outlined in the amendment will not only help victims and their families but help to build public confidence in the system. I hope that the Minister will highlight his support for the principles raised in the amendment, commit to improving the victim experience of the parole process and give assurances that the needs and experiences of victims and their families will be central to the pending review of the parole system. Will he indicate whether he is willing to discuss the amendment further before Report?

[Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the Bill and am sorry that I was unable to speak at Second Reading. I pay tribute to the ground-breaking work done by my colleague in the other place, Conor McGinn, following the campaign by Marie McCourt, the mother of Helen, who was tragically murdered and whose remains have never been found or their location revealed by her murderer, now released.

It is right that the refusal by serious offenders to disclose information about their victims—including the whereabouts of a murdered victim and the identities of child victims in the case of offenders who take or make indecent images—is always taken into account by the Parole Board when making decisions about their possible release, and will now be a statutory requirement.

I support Amendment 19 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and the noble Lord, Lord German, and believe the effectiveness of the Bill will be proved only if we can assure victims that their concerns are a priority in the justice system. Victims cannot be an afterthought; there have been too many occasions in the past when painful interviews with the bereaved, still suffering terrible grief, are broadcast in which they say that no one had told them in advance that those who had done terrible things to their loved ones had been released.

The Victims Commissioner reported recently that victims are less satisfied than ever that their views are taken into consideration. Can the Government assure the House that victim involvement in Parole Board decisions will improve with the passing of this Bill? I hope that the amendment will therefore be accepted. I know that the Government will point to a future, wider root-and-branch review of the operation of the Parole Board as a way of increasing transparency, but they have an immediate opportunity to do so by accepting Amendment 19.