Criminal Justice Reform

Debate between Lord Lemos and Lord Russell of Liverpool

Tuesday 8th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I have the privilege of serving on the post-legislative scrutiny committee on the Domestic Abuse Act, and I am reassured by the Minister’s focus on victims. Obviously, we are liaising closely with both the Domestic Abuse Commissioner and the Victims’ Commissioner, and I can assure him that there continues to be a very high level of concern among victims, not least because of the failures of communication in making clear to them, and, quite often, their children, what degree of harm they may be in the way of. I will ask one specific question about the response to breaches of either exclusion zones or restriction zones. Those will be only as effective as the monitoring of, and the responses to, any breaches. If an offender wants to breach, they will breach. What processes are in place to ensure that probation receives timely notification of any breach, and that the police can react swiftly? Will responses to breaches actually keep the victims safe in the moment, or will they simply be identified and acted on retrospectively?

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the noble Lord for the work he has done on this; we have discussed it many times. On his specific question, I think I have already indicated that, under the way we will be managing probation data, probation officers will know the whereabouts of offenders on tags in as close as possible to real time. At the moment, that is not the case.

The key thing in relation to domestic abuse victims is, as I have said, that the way in which they feel safe, and are safe, is if the system—the Probation Service—knows where people are and what they are up to, and can keep victims safe from access by those people. The noble Lord knows that what we have rolled out in DAPOL—domestic abuse perpetrators on licence—has been very successful. We have introduced 2,000 of these and will roll them out across the country by the end of the year.

With domestic abuse, it is one thing ensuring that justice is done and getting a trial and so on, but in my experience of talking to domestic abuse victims, the primary thing is that they want to feel safe, and they want their families and their children to feel safe. The way in which we can achieve that is, in large measure, in the short term, partly through the intensive community supervision provisions that we are making.

I am out of time—I find it difficult to shut up on this subject—but may I make one final offer to your Lordships? Because we have had a number of questions about probation, I will arrange for an all-Peers presentation on the changes we are making, in particular the intensive supervision model, including in relation to domestic abuse. I want noble Lords to really feel they have understood those things, and then I will be happy to take any further questions.