Victims and Prisoners Bill

Debate between Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Bishop of Manchester

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, as I said at Second Reading, this is a good Bill for victims. It contains many provisions that I strongly support. I hope and believe that we can make it an even better Bill by working across the House, which is the mood tonight, as it was then.

I put my name to Amendment 10 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby. I also support other amendments in this group, including those that my right reverend friend the Bishop of Bristol, who is unable to be in her place today, has signed. Amendments in this group seek to clarify how the Bill properly addresses the needs of children.

Amendment 10 places on the face of the Bill a short but clear definition of “child criminal exploitation”. This would include any child under 18 who is

“encouraged, expected or required to take part in any activity that constitutes a criminal offence”.

This is not widening the definition of a victim, merely giving it clarity. I learned in my teens that if I was on the receiving end of some wrongdoing, I was a child. By contrast, if I was deemed the perpetrator, I suddenly became a youth.

We have also heard too often in your Lordships’ House of the adultification of children. It is an ugly word for an ugly phenomenon, where a child is treated as a grown-up when they are caught up in wrongdoing. Moreover, we know that in the absence of a strong countervailing pressure, this is disproportionately applied to black children. This has been a long-standing concern of many civil society organisations focused on countering the exploitation of children. I hope we can begin to respond to it today.

In my own diocese of Manchester, we are still reeling from the discovery of the extent of grooming gangs exploiting children for sexual crimes, most notably—but I doubt exclusively—in Rochdale. If the children caught up in these crimes had been seen by the authorities primarily as victims, and treated as such, I believe that the gangs would have been brought to justice far sooner.

Getting a clear definition of child criminal exploitation into the Bill will, I hope and pray, not only improve this legislation but set a precedent for how we treat child victims better, both in future legislation and in practice at every stage of the criminal justice system. I hope that the Minister will either accept our words as on the Marshalled List or come back to us on Report with a suitable government amendment to that effect.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 9 in this group. It concerns verbal abuse to children and, in terms of the challenges the Minister set us with the four As, it is concerned with raising awareness.

I share the view of other noble Lords that it is important to get children into the Bill, particularly in relation to this clause. My amendment seeks to make it clear that when it comes to the definition of “harm” in Clause 1(4)(a), it should include a definition that embraces children and includes verbal harm.

My amendment has been inspired by the work of an inspirational, newish charity called Words Matter, which I believe to be the first charity in the world focused solely on verbal harm to children. It aims to eradicate this damaging and underestimated form of abuse, and I pay tribute to its inspirational founder, Jessica Bondy.

We all understand verbal abuse. It can mean negative words, and language that causes harm to children. It can take the form of blaming, insulting, belittling, intimidating, demeaning, disrespecting, scolding, frightening, ridiculing, criticising, name-calling or threatening a child. It does not constitute only shouting. In fact, abuse can be quiet, insidious and subtle in tone, where volume and facial expression play a part. We have probably all personally experienced verbal abuse, certainly in the profession we are in. It can be extraordinarily damaging, particularly to young people.

We know that children’s brains are responsive to relationships as they grow up with words, tones and sounds around them. The noble Lord, Lord Polak, has just talked about the long-lasting impact on people who were sexually abused many years ago, and destructive language can have some of the same impact. If one looks at what comprises child maltreatment—physical, sexual and emotional abuse, and neglect—verbal abuse is a key attribute of many of those aspects. It can also be individually damaging to a child’s development, perhaps as damaging as other currently recognised and forensically established subtypes of maltreatment.

We believe that emotional abuse, including verbal abuse, is on the rise, and is perhaps the most prevalent form of child maltreatment. A systematic review of childhood abuse undertaken by UCL and Wingate University in the US found that verbal abuse does profound damage to a child over their lifetime, affecting their self-esteem, confidence, future potential and ability to function at home, school and the workplace, really affecting life outcomes for them.

The study commissioned by Words Matter found that this kind of abuse is pervasive in society. That study, which it recently undertook, revealed that two in five children aged 11 to 17 experience adults regularly using hurtful and upsetting words to blame, insult or criticise them—that is, around 2 million children in this country.

The real problem here is a lack of awareness, because without awareness you cannot have strategies and policies to try to deal with it or engage in the educational programmes that are needed, particularly to help teachers, parents and other adults who are in a situation to try to change their behaviour. I do not pretend that an amendment tonight would magically deal with this issue, but in the spirit of the Minister’s wind-up on previous groups, I hope that by drawing attention to it he will be able to say something constructive about how we might tackle verbal abuse and protect children in the future.