Victims and Courts Bill

Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 16th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, I say at the outset that, as far as the speakers in the gap are concerned, the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, need not fear to intervene in the gap, as he has done on other occasions before my speaking. He is always very welcome. It was very good to hear the noble Lord, Lord Gove, speaking in the gap, with his experience and showing above all that this is very much a non-party-political debate. We are all worried about the concerns he expressed.

From these Benches, as my noble friends Lady Brinton and Lady Hamwee in particular have said, we broadly welcome the Bill. Just by way of introduction, for too long, victims in our criminal courts were largely ignored and unprotected by the system and were, frankly, shamefully treated as bit-part players in the business of criminal justice as no more than witnesses. When offenders pleaded guilty, they were often not even informed about the date and place of trial. Certainly, they were not given an opportunity to make any meaningful contribution to the procedure of the case.

Recent years, however, have seen a great deal of welcome change. The introduction of victim impact statements and the attention that is now paid to them; the establishment of the office of the Victims’ Commissioner, given statutory authority in 2004; and the formal introduction of the victims’ code and its statutory strengthening by the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 have all been important milestones along the way. Now we genuinely have a system that seeks to put victims of crime at its heart, but in many ways this important ambition is not achieved in practice. It is hoped that the measures in the Bill will close some of the gaps, but certainly not all of them.

I join everyone else in paying a warm tribute to Baroness Newlove, with whom I worked on a number of important measures to improve our system. She had such an important influence on the criminal justice system and on public awareness of the importance of victims and of looking after them in society as a whole. I welcome the appointment of Claire Waxman to the post; she has done a wonderful job as Victims’ Commissioner for London, and I believe that she will do a wonderful job as Victims’ Commissioner.

The Bill takes forward the Government’s intention to strengthen the position of victims, and it fits particularly with their ambition to halve violence against women and girls. Among the most important and welcome provisions of the Bill are those in Clauses 3 to 5, as the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, pointed out, and Schedules 1 and 2 that go with them; they include restricting parental responsibility for convicted sex offenders committing offences against children and requiring the court to make a prohibited steps order. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Meston, about the good sense and the likely utility of these measures. We welcome them and the general valuable protection of vulnerable children who are at risk of violence or abuse from convicted offenders.

I am bound to add one note of caution, however: on these Benches we would prefer to see greater discretion in the courts about the making of prohibited steps orders. Sometimes we resort too quickly to mandatory requirements where those may not be necessary or appropriate in every case.

I turn to non-disclosure agreements and the measures in Clause 6 for avoiding unacceptable provisions in such agreements. It is clear that NDAs have often been misused—often, but not always, in the context of employment—and used to prevent victims and direct witnesses from reporting behaviour that is patently criminal. Kinds of behaviour that should be reported but where NDAs can be used to silence victims are abuse, including sexual abuse, bullying, and racial, religious or sex discrimination. Some protection of victims has been offered by the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024, but Clause 6 will strengthen the protection for victims and direct witnesses, and it is welcome.

It is a major step forward that the victim contact scheme is to be strengthened. This will make it easier for victims to be kept informed about the release of perpetrators; in particular, it will introduce a dedicated helpline for victims. Victims of stalkers, for example, shamefully have been ignored too often in the past. They have had good reason to complain about the lack of information they have been entitled to receive. I note the important contribution of my noble friend Lady Brinton in the past.

It is right that the definition of victims should be widened, as it will be by Schedule 2, to include bereaved family members and children who have witnessed domestic abuse. We would like to see a reporting obligation on the working of the victim contact scheme to include reports on its accessibility to victims and on its uptake. We would like to see proposals for improvement of the scheme made public on a regular basis.

Strengthening the powers of the Victims’ Commissioner to give the commissioner the power to act in the general public interest where particular cases or circumstances or the plight of particular victims raise questions of general importance will broaden the commissioner’s office to enable her to work more effectively in the public interest.

I have not so far mentioned as particularly important the powers in Clauses 1 and 2 to compel the attendance of defendants at their sentencing hearings. Of course I agree with the Government that defendants should be obliged to attend sentencing hearings, and I recognise the importance to victims of obliging offenders to look them in the eye, as the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, mentioned in opening. Victim impact needs to be understood by the public and by defendants, as the noble Lord, Lord Meston, said. So of course the court should have the power to order defendants to attend such hearings, and it is right that they should do so and right that those who fail to do so should be penalised.

But is there any real point in including a power, as the Bill does, for a prison or custody officer to use reasonable force to compel such attendance? What force is reasonable for that purpose? We have read press stories of offenders being likely to be bound and gagged to bring them to court. Indeed, these were fuelled and reinforced by amendments the Conservatives introduced in the Commons to sanction such treatment—a concept that may have been supported today by the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, although I am not sure he meant to go as far as perhaps he did.

I question whether we wish to risk giving offenders the chance of appearing publicly as martyrs and making the criminal justice system into a public spectacle of what could be seen or portrayed as oppression, whether fairly or unfairly. Far better, I suggest, to make the order to treat non-compliance as contempt, as the Bill suggests; to allow judicial discretion, as the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, suggested; and to sanction it with reasonable but not excessive extra time in custody or financial penalties as appropriate, just as we would for other contempts of court. Unusually, in this case I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Meston, that extra sentences would not act as a deterrent to defendants thinking of avoiding their sentencing hearings. I suspect I share the doubt of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, about the use of force.

I turn to a number of amendments to the Bill that we wish to see and propose to introduce. First, we need to be sure that victim support services will be improved by these measures and adequately funded. My noble friend Lady Hamwee made some important points on victim support services and the degree to which provision needs to be made, increased and properly resourced. We would want to see not just national government but local authorities required to produce victim support strategies for meeting the needs of victims of offences relating to domestic or family-related abuse, sexual offences or child criminal exploitation in their areas. My noble friend Lady Benjamin talked of trauma-informed support for victims, particularly child victims. We want to see reports on support services for victims as they are developed, especially for child victims. But such reports should also include the carers for victims, whether they be for children or for elderly or disabled victims of crime.

We will also introduce an amendment seeking a commitment to make transcripts of sentencing remarks and summings up available to victims. I agree with those who suggested that a solution based on new technology and AI may make it easier, but the availability of transcripts is very important and should not be put off by a supposed lack of resources. I welcome the agreement of the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, both on the importance of transcripts and on the lack of validity of the excuse that the cost is a justifiable reason for failing to address this issue.

No one who heard the sentencing today of Paul Doyle by Judge Menary, to more than 21 years’ imprisonment for the dreadful road rage attack on the Liverpool Football Club victory parade, could fail to realise the need for public awareness of sentencing and its justification. While public awareness is vital, victim understanding is just as important—even more so. The provision of transcripts and of sentencing hearings is therefore a crucial service.

I look forward to considering the important amendments to be moved by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, on improving our provisions for compensation in a corporate context. The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, put that in the frame of restorative justice. I agree with him that that is an interesting and sensible way of introducing this topic and of taking the approach that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, suggests.

We also support the amendment proposed in the House of Commons by Joshua Reynolds MP to amend the victims’ code to ensure that it will apply to assisting relatives of victims of murder or manslaughter committed abroad.

On the unduly lenient sentence scheme, my noble friend Lady Brinton outlined the degree to which we do not believe that the short extra time to be given to the Attorney-General to introduce an application goes far enough. There is, I suggest, no reason in principle why the unduly lenient sentence scheme should not ensure that questioning the leniency of sentences is as available as appeals against excessive sentences are available to offenders.

Before closing, I say this: for all the merits of this Bill, as my noble friend Lady Brinton and others have highlighted, it exposes a glaring failure in the Government’s approach to the criminal justice system: the failure to take sufficient measures to address the delays in the criminal justice system which have led to the current appalling court backlogs. As the last speaker in the gap, the noble Lord, Lord Gove, said that the most important thing for victims is speedy and effective justice, and he emphasised the importance of the qualified criminal Bar in providing that.

The delay in court hearings has been the starkest denial of victims’ rights to justice that we can imagine, as the depressing prevalence of abandoned cases in the face of delay attests, and that is particularly so in the case of sexual offences. For every victim in a case that is abandoned because it is not brought to trial in a reasonable time, that is a denial of justice. It is a betrayal by society of that victim, who justifiably loses any confidence that the system or the state is on the victim’s side.

The noble Baroness, Lady Maclean of Redditch, in what was an important speech, said that no one expects to be a victim of crime. She highlighted the lack of political attention that crime therefore attracts. That also means that she highlighted the lack of resources allocated by government to criminal justice as a result.

I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Bailey of Paddington, said about the importance of not just cutting but ending these disastrous delays. Like him, I do not accept that the only way of cutting delays is by restricting jury trials, which I regard as extremely important. It is a question of resources, of efficiency, and of being more adventurous in the ways we deal with this. It is a question of more court sitting days and more hours; of better repair and refurbishment of disused and decrepit buildings; of ensuring that we do not have courts standing empty; and of ensuring that we have more barristers, solicitors, judges, all properly remunerated and attracted to continue the work they do in their professional lives.

On efficiency, we need to improve prison delivery services and all those wasteful things that cause endless adjournments. Prosecutors need to avoid overcharging when that will make no difference to ultimate disposal or sentence. We need to make more use of new technology for listing, for pre-trial hearings and for evidence preparation and presentation, making cases more economic. We need to have an overall inventive approach. If we do that and cut the delays, we will be doing more for victims than what we do in the Bill. Meanwhile, what we do in the Bill is of course extremely important, and that is why, generally, we welcome it and will seek to improve it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I would, of course, always say that I am right, would I not? In that sense, they are wrong.

The noble and learned Lord made the point about needing to invest in people. I will give another gentle reminder about who was in power for the past 14 years.

Turning to the question of the unduly lenient scheme, I entirely agree with noble Lords that there is no point in having a right that nobody knows they have, and we plainly are not getting this right in terms of information. It needs to be more broadly known about. The question of whether 28 days is the appropriate period is one to which the Government are giving urgent consideration. The noble Lord, Lord Marks, said that it should be made the same as for defendants. It is: they have 28 days. That is where the period came from: there is parity between the two. But that does not necessarily mean it must remain.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

As the noble Baroness knows, the period for appeal is extendable in certain circumstances. That is quite an important provision.

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

That is very rare. If you appeal out of time, you have pretty much had it. You need to have a really good reason to do so. I now turn to—