Victims and Courts Bill

Lord Bailey of Paddington Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 16th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a bit daunting to speak after one of the lawyers in this place. I am not a lawyer. I, as always, will speak to the Bill from the perspective of poor communities. My first plea to the Minister is to remember that in this country there is a great myth that poor people are the perpetrators of crime, whereas most poor people’s experience of crime is as a victim. It is from that point of view that I come to this debate.

I welcome the Government’s intention to put victims at the heart of the criminal justice system; I think I can safely say that that is an objective that we on the Conservative Benches share. However, good intentions are not enough. The test is whether the Bill strengthens public confidence, delivers justice in practice and protects victims, not whether it simply moves more cases through the system. A lot of poorer people are hearing, “The prisons are full and the courts are full, so we won’t bother doing it properly. We’ll just put them through quickly”. I want to be clear that the single greatest driver of crime is the idea that you are going to get away with it. I spent over three decades working in the poorest communities, so I know that crime is committed by a small number of people very regularly, who have the conversation about what risk they are taking. If you are going to put victims at the centre of this, that is one of the key questions you have to answer.

Ministers will say that the system is backed up or clogged up. I accept that the backlog is serious, but removing juries does not fix the cause of this delay. It does not create more judges, more courtrooms or more capacity. Jury trials are not the problem; they are a safeguard. Faster justice can be seen as less legitimate and will weaken confidence. I was one of the people who did the Lammy Review with David Lammy, and he was very strong at the time that poorer communities, particularly non-white communities, feel much safer in front of a jury. If you remove that now, you could be removing the confidence of those communities in our system in its entirety. These are the sections of our public most exposed to criminal behaviour, so we need to think very carefully about what we do on that.

Clause 3 restricts parental responsibility only where a sentence is four years or more. I expect that Ministers will say that they had to draw a line somewhere, and I accept that, but why here? An offender with a sentence of three years and 11 months still remains a serious risk; victims will struggle to understand why safeguarding suddenly applies at four years. If the Government do not explain this logic carefully, public confidence will suffer. The reason I made the comment about speaking after a lawyer is that lawyers have this in their thinking, and they look at the world through the rules they have learned; most poor people are trying to make ends meet. Things need to be simple. Simplicity is fairness, and I want to be clear about that. Most people do not have the time to pore over the fine detail in the way we do in your Lordships’ House.

I welcome improvements in the unduly lenient sentence scheme, but for victims the issue is not intent but access. The current 28-day limit is simply unrealistic for many victims and their families who are grieving, traumatised and trying to navigate a complex legal process. I know Ministers will say that they will keep this under review, but can I gently suggest that victims need certainty not future monitoring?

I want to end on this idea of court backlogs. I return to my theme that getting away with it is the single biggest driver. I expect that Ministers will say that this Bill is not intended to solve every problem in the justice system—of course that is reasonable—but the court backlog is a central problem facing victims today. One of the biggest problems is seeing the perpetrator, as far as you are concerned, walking around “free as a bird”, to use the expression that one young man used with me this morning. That has to be addressed, but this Bill contains little to address it directly. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, was very clear about what goes on in court and I think that needs looking at, because the jury system and the speed at which we get people through is why people think the British criminal justice system is the best—particularly people who, in their life experience, may find themselves in front of it.

The Bill contains measures that I welcome, but it also raises serious questions. If the Government’s aim is to rebuild confidence in the criminal justice system, reforms must be logical, coherent and visibly on the side of victims. I look forward to scrutinising the Bill as we go through the process, because I truly believe that the Minister wants to do the right thing. I want to be part of helping that happen, because I believe this is far beyond party shenanigans. This is about what it means to exist in Britain today.