Victims and Prisoners Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 30th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Con)]

My Lords, I am sorry that due to a family matter I could not be in the House for the Committee stage of this Bill to move the similar amendment tabled earlier. I am very grateful to my noble friend Lady Finn for speaking to that amendment. This amendment was tabled in the House of Commons by Stella Creasy MP based on her experience as a victim of harassment, but it is not unique to her situation. I am grateful, and I know she is too, for the continuing support for this amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and my noble friend Lady Finn, and for the engagement we have had with the Opposition Front Bench. I am also very grateful to Ministers and officials who have engaged with us in recent weeks on the issues raised by this amendment.

To recap briefly, just to put the amendment in context, if an individual makes a malicious complaint about someone to the police, the police can act to remove that record, but malicious reporting to other organisations, whether social services or an employer, as part of a campaign of stalking and harassment, does not carry the same safeguard. As a result, data is retained on individuals who have been targeted maliciously, whether that be workplace harassment, stalking or some other malicious behaviour. Such harassment, stalking or malicious behaviour might well include allegations about the parenting capacity of the victim, but it often takes other forms.

Many victims find that even if the person targeting them has been convicted, their harassment continues because such records remain in existence. This is because current data protection rules mean that records such as this cannot always be deleted. The retention of this data has long-lasting consequences for all individuals involved. In fact, having to repeatedly disclose the existence of the complaint, even if it has been proven to be part of a campaign of stalking or harassment, is in many ways a repetition of that harassment.

I think that where we are now, after that engagement with Ministers and officials, is that there is now a recognition by the Government that reporting by a third party can be used to perpetuate harassment or as part of a stalking campaign, and also that victims should be better supported to have those reports deleted. I understand that the Government’s concern has been to strike a balance between the right to erasure of data held as a result of malicious conduct or intent and the need of organisations to retain data that could become relevant in some future safeguarding context, particularly involving children.

That is why the proposed new clause before the House seeks to enable the deletion of data where a clear threshold is met to show that the report was the result of malice and its retention would continue the harassment. I think all those involved in the discussions, including the Government, agree that the threshold would certainly be reached in the case of a criminal conviction. Many of us also believe that the threshold is reached in the case of a civil order, where such an order is applied for by the police or made by the court, and where a breach of that order is in itself a criminal offence. It is important that we do not put victims off having such orders applied for in order to stop the harassment or stalking behaviour.

It is also important that the burden of getting the data deleted is not placed back on the victim of the stalking and harassment. Careful amendments to statutory guidance and the victims’ code would also be very welcome to ensure that in the right circumstances there is a presumption for the removal of data and the relevant authorities are given clear guidance on how to treat victim applications where malicious reporting is involved.

Having said all that, I shall now listen carefully to the rest of this debate, particularly to what to my noble and learned friend the Minister has to say in reply to these points. This is an important issue that we can do something about in the Bill to support victims of this malicious behaviour, and I hope that the House, Ministers and the Government will take the opportunity to do so. I beg to move.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I was happy to add my name to this amendment, to which several of us spoke at Second Reading and in Committee. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, and Stella Creasy MP for the dogged way in which they have pursued this issue. I give the Government and the Bill team credit for being worn down to the extent that a degree of accord, and indeed a recognition of this particular form of invasive behaviour, have been reached.

There is a lot in the press at the moment about a phenomenon known as sextortion. I would almost call what we are talking about in the amendment a form of domestic terrorism. It is somebody making a completely unfounded allegation about, in this case, somebody else’s fitness to be a parent of small children in order to, in a sense, force a situation in which an investigation has to take place. Even though the investigation finds that there is absolutely no basis in the allegation, the allegation remains on that individual’s record, and that individual is compelled to reveal that allegation in a variety of situations in which they are required to provide due diligence. In each case they have to explain that it was malicious and the result of harassment. That is what we are trying to avoid.

I too am looking forward to what the Minister will say in response. I hope that at Third Reading there will be an amendment that we can all agree with. Your Lordships will be aware that, as Stella Creasy was surprised to find out, we in your Lordships’ House are able to table an amendment at Third Reading. We very much hope that will not be necessary, because we are sure the government amendment will meet what is required. To that extent, the sooner we are able to see the wording of the government amendment and have a further dialogue about it if necessary, so that we are all on the same page at Third Reading, the better. I thank the Minister and the Bill team for being so accommodating.

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, I spoke in Committee on behalf of my noble friend Lady Morgan and I support her amendment today. I commend the tenacity of Stella Creasy, my noble friend and other noble Lords in engaging with various government departments, and I thank my noble friends the Ministers for engaging with her and Stella over some of the more complex issues involved.

I appreciate that this is not completely straightforward, but the fact that it is difficult to reach a conclusion should not prevent us tabling the amendment and getting it right. While it is disappointing that we do not yet have a government amendment to scrutinise, I thank my noble and learned friend the Minister for agreeing to table an amendment that we hope will cover all the areas of concern at Third Reading.

It is hard to overemphasise the toll that malicious complaints take on individuals, their mental health and their family life. I take a real case of someone who suddenly, out of the blue, received a call from the local police sharing details of a complaint made about the treatment of her children. Despite the false claims being robustly rebutted—her children had attended school, were taken to the dentist and were registered with their local GP, despite allegations to the contrary—this mark remains on her record and that of her children. She describes it as feeling like “the sword of Damocles hanging over my head”. It is a constant worry. It is simply not right that many victims find that, even if the person targeting them has been convicted, their harassment continues because such records remain. The retention of this data has lasting consequences for all individuals involved.

I am not going to repeat all the arguments but will quickly emphasise three points. First, limiting this amendment to victims of crime where the data is linked to that crime would ensure that it does not become open to abuse, but stalking and harassment involve many actions by perpetrators, so it is important that the drafting of these amendments should not be too narrow. Secondly, while there needs to be a clear threshold to show that the retention of data will continue the harassment, the removal of data should not be confined to criminal convictions. My noble friend Lady Morgan has made the case for the various thresholds very clearly.

Finally, if an individual makes a malicious complaint about someone to the police, the police can act to remove that record. If chief constables have clear guidance that covers the removal of malicious allegations, it should surely be possible to have similar guidance for malicious reporting to other organisations. I am very grateful that my noble friend the Minister has agreed to explore this further.

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[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to lay Amendments 100 and 101 for your Lordships’ consideration. As we had a considerable debate on them in Committee, I propose to outline only the briefest reasons why I have re-laid these amendments originally laid by the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst.

The whole object of the Bill is to give victims some rights that would at least go some way towards matching the rights for offenders and other participants in the criminal justice system. At present, the permissions for a victim to argue and challenge a sentence for being unduly lenient are completely different from those of everybody else involved in the system. For example, offenders can exceed a 28-day timeframe by exceptionality—all they and their counsel have to do is demonstrate that there really are exceptional circumstances. But, for victims, there is no such exception at all, even if they were not informed by the police or the courts about the sentence itself but were left completely in the dark.

We know from the many stories that were retold in Committee that there is a real sense of injustice. One victim had received notification of the sentence on the 28th day by which she had to apply for a challenge. It was delivered to the Attorney-General’s office, and nobody was there, even though it was within the timeframe. Because it was not opened, she was not permitted to challenge the sentence.

I am very grateful to the Minister for the discussion we have had, and I look forward to hearing him speak from the Dispatch Box. What we seek through these two amendments is to make sure that victims have the right, as everybody else in the criminal justice system does, to say, “Please will the Attorney-General reconsider this sentence for this crime, because we believe that it is unduly lenient?” I beg to move.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

I am happy to add my name to these two amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. There is no need to speak at length about them; it is essentially about trying to ensure that victims have equality of rights, in this case with prospective prisoners. At the moment, frankly, they are disadvantaged and are put through a series of hoops—if, indeed, they can find out what in theory they are entitled to. I shall say no more than that I entirely support everything the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, has said, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, we had a very full debate on this issue in Committee. From these Benches, we are deeply committed to these two amendments. This is a victims’ Bill, and it seems to me that we really need to be doing things to support victims, which is what these two relatively modest amendments do. If the noble Baroness decides to test the opinion of the House, we will support her.

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 26th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to move Amendment 148A and speak to Amendment 148B. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Russell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for their support in this suite of amendments, both of which deal with stalking. They insert two new clauses into the Bill, and they are part of the whole suite of amendments on this.

I will be brief because my noble friend Lady Royall is in the Committee today, and she has been tireless over the years in championing this cause and using every opportunity to find remedies to deal with this pernicious crime, almost always perpetrated by men on women, wrecking lives, sometimes with fatal consequences. These two amendments, and the group following this concerning MAPPS in the name of my noble friend Lord Ponsonby, seek to bring further coherence to law enforcement, record sharing and protection for these victims.

If only the police could see stalking for what it truly is—often a stepping stone on the route to murder—perhaps they would take it more seriously. At present, I am afraid they do not—certainly, it is patchy—and stalking victims are dismissed too easily and too often. They are told, “It’s just online. It will die down. Change your number. Delete your social media accounts. It’s just a lovers’ tiff”.

I will give just one example and then sit down. When the Derbyshire police accepted that they failed Gracie Spinks—who was murdered after reporting her stalker to the police—and when they apologised to her family and promised that lessons would be learned, I could almost feel the weariness of victims, their families, the campaigners and the Victims’ Commissioner in saying, “How often do we have to be told that lessons can be learned when they haven’t been?” That is what these amendments and the ones we have already discussed are about: they seek to make a change. I beg to move.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I was happy to put my name to these to these two amendments, and I am equally happy that the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, is here. She will go into some current and fairly shocking detail about some recent examples of stalking that show that it is as pernicious and present as ever.

Both of these amendments are proposed in the clear and distinctly uncomfortable knowledge that I think all parties acknowledge: we have some way to go, to put it mildly, before we can say, with any degree of truth, that we have the measure of the huge and insidious problem that is stalking. These amendments propose some changes to MAPPA, including perpetrators in MAPPA, as a condition of potential release and licence, and the creation of a register to make perpetrators subject to notification requirements as a condition of release. The important common theme to both these amendments is the requirement for the Secretary of State to commission reviews to look at the issues and challenges around stalking in a comprehensive and informed manner.

But what is repeatedly and continuously frustrating is that we have proper on-the-ground evidence of approaches to stalking that are proving to be effective. In particular, there is the multi-agency stalking intervention programme—MASIP—which has marked a significant advance in our ability to anticipate, identify and tackle the complex issue of stalking. The MASIP model, thankfully funded by the Home Office, has pioneered this approach in London, Cheshire and Hampshire, and it works. Early evidence is compelling and extremely positive. So one just asks oneself: why is it not possible to do this more widely? The approach co-ordinates activity around both the victim and the perpetrator, and it incorporates an essential pathway to address the fixation and obsession in perpetrators that might be contributing to their stalking offending. The final evaluation proves that it works, so why is it so difficult, first, to acknowledge best practice when it is staring one in the face and, secondly, to implement it more widely?

One frustrating thing—here I refer to an article in today’s newspaper—is some news about the Government’s end-of-custody supervised licence programme, which was introduced in the autumn to relieve some of the huge pressure on our overcrowded jails, enabling perpetrators to be released earlier than their recommended sentence. It was put in as a temporary scheme, but it has apparently now been extended indefinitely. That does not mean for ever; it just means that the Government have given no indication of how long they intend to continue to allow this degree of leniency, the sole reason for which is the huge pressure on our prisons.

The Government rather inelegantly call this the problem of demand and supply in the prison population. If you were to try to explain that terminology to victims, they would find it slightly difficult to understand why supply-side economics should govern the early release of some perpetrators, particularly of domestic abuse and stalking, in many cases without the victims knowing what is going on.

We will make concerted progress only when we acknowledge the complexity of stalking and finally design a proactive and joined-up approach that is implemented consistently across all jurisdictions and agency boundaries and effectively identifies, outlaws and penalises any evidence of the unfairness and madness of what we are allowing today—effectively, a postcode lottery for victims.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I have signed Amendments 148A and 148B in this group. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for her introduction and look forward to hearing from the noble Baroness, Lady Royall. The first amendment sets out an important addition to the arrangements for Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements, or MAPPA. We will hear about the detail of these amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, but I want to add that, throughout this Bill and its predecessors in your Lordships’ House, including the Domestic Abuse Bill and the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, we have repeatedly asked for more protection for people who have been victims of serial domestic abuse and, in particular, stalking.

Laura Richards’s ground-breaking work over many years in developing the dashboard profiling and documenting the most serious repeat offenders has changed the way in which specialist police teams view these perpetrators, but—I hesitate to say this for probably the third Bill running—MAPPA are still not applied consistently across police forces. One of the aims of these amendments is to make sure that happens. As we have heard, repeat perpetrators are far too often allowed to commit further crimes, including murder. Shockingly, a couple of years ago police research found that one in 12 domestic rapists was raping outside the home. A violent and controlling man leaving a partner does not mean that the violence ends. Many have extensive histories of abusing multiple women.

Amendment 148A sets out the licence conditions for serial and serious harm domestic abuse and stalking perpetrators, saying that anyone so identified should be part of a MAPPA. Proposed new subsection (4) sets out the definition of a relevant domestic abuse or stalking perpetrator. Similarly, the other amendment says that we must have an effective register. Non-domestic stalkers always seem to be left off. I always raise this problem in your Lordships’ House; there is an assumption that stalking is carried out only by a current partner or an ex-partner—or somebody who would like to be a partner and is therefore regarded as domestic—but about 40% of stalking cases have nothing to do with that at all. As we see from many stories in the papers day after day, these days people such as celebrities face massive amounts of stalking and do not get protection. Often, when people are arrested, it appears that they have stalked others as well.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, made passing reference to the Gracie Spinks case. Derbyshire police and the police force that investigated its failings have learned from that, but we need consistency. I will give one recent example from Laura Richards. Last month a victim, Sadie, had been back in contact with her about her living hell over seven years. She is terrified that her ex will kill her children. In 2018 he was arrested for battery of her eight year-old daughter and an assault on her while she was holding her other daughter. He was convicted in 2019 and received a suspended sentence and restraining order. The police did not arrest him for stalking or coercive control. They told her that, because she had moved away, they would not arrest him for stalking and they would amend the restraining order to a lifelong RO. He has repeatedly breached it. As we discussed on earlier amendments, he then started family court proceedings.

I will not go on, except to say that she has had to flee three more times, and each time has hit problems with the new police force. There has been no consistency. He has a history of abusing others—exactly the point I made about police research finding that one in 12 domestic rapists rapes outside the home. This woman has no solution nearby to stop him continuing to behave in this way and mess up her life and those of her children. We need MAPPA to work effectively. These amendments are the first step in that direction.

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[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I would like to put my name to this amendment, because it is a continuation of the theme around stalking which we have repeatedly returned to in the Bill, as indeed we went on at length about in the Domestic Abuse Act.

In listening to the reply of the Minister to the last group of amendments, I was trying to imagine what a robust list would look like. I was somewhat puzzled as to how it would really have any effect at all. I was also pondering the term “discretionary management”, given that if only 1.4% of stalking cases actually end up in a successful prosecution, it is quite easy for the advisers who are writing the Minister’s brief to talk about percentage increases in performance. If one knows anything about mathematics, it is relatively easy to get rather spell-binding percentage increases in performance by starting from an exceedingly low base—a base of 1.4% of stalkers being successfully prosecuted, I am not a fan of percentages in a situation like this.

As the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, said, effective multiagency co-operation is clearly not working at the moment. This amendment gives the Government the opportunity to provide the single most important thing to make multiagency co-operation work: clear, outstanding, determined and consistent leadership. Leadership which transcends politics and different Ministers being responsible for the same area as the ministerial merry-go-round continues is incredibly important. The attempts by MAPPA to create an effective multiagency co-operation environment are so far not compelling. This amendment is an invitation for the Government to sit down and reflect on the lessons of what has not been and is not working as we would wish it, to create something more fit for purpose, and—in a non-political environment—to create a form of new MAPPS which is nothing to do with politics.

If the Great British electorate—of course, we are not allowed to participate—decide on a change of His Majesty’s Government at some point in the next 12 months, I hope that the department can come up with a form of multiagency co-operation which an incoming Government, should they be of a different political persuasion, would be positive about and could run with and make effective, rather than starting the clock all over again and losing valuable time. During this time, goodness only knows how many more victims will fall to the pursuit of stalkers, many of whom have been operating and stalking for many years, and many of whom are known all too well to the victims, but whom various multiagency authorities seem to be wilfully blind to.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I have also signed Amendment 148C and thank the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, for introducing it, and the noble Lord, Lord Russell, for his very eloquent contribution just now.

I too return to the Minister’s remarks at the end of the previous group, because it will help with this amendment. Part of the problem is that those of us who raise these issues about multiagency protection have assumed the corporate knowledge of the House about the previous six days and of all the amendments we have debated—in particular, those relating to domestic abuse and stalking. I fear that is not the case. One of the reasons we need this report is to ensure that Ministers and officials absolutely see what is happening in the data and bring it to Parliament to be held to account for it.

When I gave an example of a live case, I used the term “restraining order”. In his response to me, the Minister talked about a “stalking protection order”. They are completely different tools. An SPO is given by the police as a sort of special caution. It identifies the crime and says to the offender—there may not even be an offender at that point—that they have to mend their ways. A restraining order is given by the courts—it can happen at various levels of the courts—and is much more serious.

Most stalkers who are on restraining orders now will have been through the earlier processes, including, I am afraid, a number of stalking protection orders. While they may be a useful tool for the one stalker who is obsessed with one person but can get over it, the group of people that we are talking about in the MAPPA arrangements are completely and utterly different. They are extremely obsessed and manipulative people, who are physically dangerous in some cases, and certainly through coercive control. Not only are they a danger to the person for whom a restraining order may have been given but, in all the examples I gave in my speech on the previous group, they are known to be likely to offend with other people and to move around the country to get out of trouble and get away from the police force taking notice of them.

Given that we are talking about the most serious level of offences, whether it is domestic abuse or stalking, we need a consistent system across the country. Amendment 148C, through the report, would hold the Government—whatever Government, of whatever colour—to account, forcing them to produce data to show that they understand the difference. Until that happens, there will be Members of your Lordships’ House who will return, Bill after Bill, with horror stories of murders, attacks and everything else, but nothing will have changed.

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 7th February 2024 Lords Chamber

Data regulations put in place to safeguard our children must not be allowed to become a weapon in the hands of abusive partners, stalkers or those who seek to harass people in public life. The time has come for us to act.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I support effectively all the amendments in this group, but your Lordships will be relieved to hear that I am not going to speak to all of them. I will speak briefly to Amendments 101 and 102, introduced very ably by the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin. The essential point behind these amendments is to try to align this Bill with the clauses in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act that lay down the rules for digital disclosure.

I thought it might be helpful to try to find out what was happening with these new rules and whether they were actually working, so the Victims’ Commissioner’s office put in a request to try and find out. In true and typical form, the Government have not done any evaluation of before and after the Act came into effect specifically in this area.

However, a part of the Project Soteria programme is enacting this new code and some academics are looking at it, so we asked them for their feedback on whether the new code was working in terms of access to private data. They said they had

“seen a move towards better proportionality which they attribute to the Act. They have also seen less threats that investigations will end if the victim does not want to hand over their phone. There is also greater consideration given to alternative means of obtaining digital evidence such as screen shots”,

rather than taking everything off a phone. In conclusion —and this gives kudos to the Government—they said that

“the intentions of parliamentarians to change culture via the legislation do seem to be bearing fruit”,

which is very good news. So, since the evidence shows that it is working, it is not difficult to suggest that what was enacted through that Act should be mirrored exactly in this.

I move to Amendment 106, so ably spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Finn. This is personal for me. I have known Stella Creasy since before she acquired a family, during the troubles and strife of the years that went by before she was blessed with two children. To have an individual who has never met you decide to use an anonymous profile to make complaints about you on the basis that he does not like some of her views, specifically on misogyny and the behaviour of some men, and say that on that basis you are an unfit mother, is simply staggering. It is also staggering that the police decided to take this seriously; they finally admitted that that was wrong and, in doing so, said that the officer had been spoken to and that it was a time for reflection and some learning. My own view is that he should have been given a complete and utter bollocking and should probably have been asked to leave the service, or at least put on probation. That is wholly unacceptable.

So it is wrong that this can happen in the first place. When it happens, if the police decide to take the complaint seriously, having not investigated it, and pass it on to social services, social services are in a sense obliged to put on your record that an investigation is taking place on the basis of the complaint, regardless of whether it has any merit. Despite the fact that Stella’s persecutor was found to be malicious and sentenced, it remains on the record. Waltham Forest says that it can and will do nothing about getting rid of it. Perversely, it says that it will keep it on the record because she is a safeguarding risk to her children, as people in future might try to cause her harm through them. I fail to understand that logic. I do not know what the barriers to entry are to gain employment in Waltham Forest, but I suggest they might be elevated somewhat if that is the degree of logic applied in a situation such as this.

So I implore the Government to look at this seriously. As the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, said, they should sit down and talk with interested parties to understand how this happened and try to work out how to prevent it in future, or how to develop very clear guidance to enable authorities to which complaints might be made to go through a decision tree, to analyse the veracity and probity of such allegations, thinking very carefully about the implications of actions they might take without having fully thought them through.

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[Earl Howe (Con)]

I will be very happy to do that because I fully recognise the seriousness of the issue, and in particular the appalling events that Stella Creasy had to endure.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

The noble Earl has laid out, in his usual exemplary way, the way that the system is meant to work and the way it is designed. I suggest that the acid test would be to go to the officials concerned in Waltham Forest and ask them to describe, without leading the witness, exactly how they see what the noble Earl has just described—how they understand it—and how they therefore see what they can and should do. I suspect the results would be some distance away from what the noble Earl has just described, and therein lies the problem. It is fine to have a system, a process and a code that are meant to work, but if they are not working, which they clearly were not in this case, to put the onus on the individual victim to try to rectify that does not seem like justice, and neither does it seem sensible or proportionate.

[Earl Howe]

I have heard the strength of feeling on this, and I will be more than happy to take the issues raised back to my colleagues and officials in the department. I will be happy to write to noble Lords about this, and I would also be happy to arrange for my noble friend and interested Peers to meet me, or my noble and learned friend Lord Bellamy, to discuss the issues that have arisen.

I turn to Amendment 103, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton. We recognise the importance of ensuring that the distinct needs and experiences of children are reflected in the code of practice that the noble Lord mentions, and that is why we have included specific guidance in the draft code for handling victim information requests for children. I agree with the noble Lord that it is essential to make sure that the final code reflects best practice in this area, and that is why my noble and learned friend Lord Bellamy has instructed officials to review the list of statutory consultees for this code of practice.

I turn next to the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, which seek to require the development of proposals for schemes to give victims of rape access to free independent legal advice and representation. I agree that it is extremely important that victims are confident in their rights and are aware of those rights, particularly when preparing for trial and when requests for their personal information are made; I found much that I could agree with much of the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Marks.

We wanted to ensure that our understanding of this issue is as comprehensive as possible and, to that end, the Government asked the Law Commission to consider the merits of independent legal advice for victims as part of its comprehensive review into the use of evidence in sexual offence prosecutions. The consultation closed in September last year, and we expect the final report to be delivered in the autumn of this year. To avoid making changes at this stage that could pre-empt the outcome of the Law Commission’s review, and to ensure that we are considering all the evidence as a whole, we will consider the Law Commission’s report and respond in due course. There is no reason why the tenor of this debate should not form part of the Government’s deliberations once we have the Law Commission’s report in our hands.

Perhaps I could add something around the therapeutic support issue. Victims of rape should not be told that they cannot access the therapeutic support that they need to heal from the trauma that they have endured. The Crown Prosecution Service pre-trial therapy guidance is absolutely clear that therapy should not be delayed for any reason connected with a criminal investigation or prosecution. The guidance sets out clearly that it is for the victim to make decisions about therapy with their therapist and that criminal justice practitioners should play no role in the decision-making process.

In the rape review action plan, we recognised that victims of rape frequently experience intrusive requests for personal information. To improve that situation, we have taken a number of actions, including legislating through the Bill to introduce a statutory code for the police to ensure that requests for victim information are made only when necessary, proportionate and relevant to a reasonable line of inquiry. The police must also provide full information to the victim on what information has been requested, why it has been requested and how it will be used. A draft code of practice has been published. When it is finalised, it will be statutory, and police will have a duty to have regard to the code when making requests. I hope that that is helpful.

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 5th February 2024 Lords Chamber

I hope this gives your Lordships at least some reassurance that we are committed to ensuring that there is a framework in place to achieve clear awareness, accountability, accessibility and affordability, and appropriate training. I therefore urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, first, I pay tribute to the Minister, who for 25 minutes has responded to this group when he quite clearly would rather be in another place; I do not mean down the Corridor. We all wish him a speedy recovery, but we would also be well advised to keep a fairly safe distance from him for the immediate future.

The Minister said at the beginning that the key to making the victims part of the Bill work is culture change. To mix metaphors, there was culture change with teeth—which sounds like a strange creature for well-paid Harley Street specialists to dream up new procedures for.

Before I continue with that, it would be nice if we could try to stop in its tracks the growing confusion which has come since the arrival in your Lordships’ House of a brace of Russells. I point out that I am a lowly Baron—the bottom of the heap, Lord Russell of Liverpool—and not the much more elevated noble Earl, Lord Russell, who is in his place. To back up my point, I will quote the letter that the noble Earl’s grandfather and my grandfather wrote jointly to the Times in 1959, which I think makes the point rather clear:

“Sir—In order to discourage confusions which have been constantly occurring, we beg herewith to state that neither of us is the other”.


I hope that puts that particular care to rest.

When talking about what the Government are proposing in the victims part of the Bill, the Minister asked the rhetorical question of whether it is a credible structure. Do we need, as the Government are saying, a strengthening and reinforcing of the current structure or—and this is not rhetorical—is the structure itself part of the problem? The structure has been in place in a slightly weakened form for many years and it is clearly not working. The Government have recognised that, and put a commitment in the 2019 manifesto to try to put that right and produce a victims Bill.

In reflecting on how best to respond to the manifest failings in the current structure—although there are some good points—I suggest to the Government that the best solution is not to try to reinforce the current structure by putting sticking plasters and various forms of glue into various parts of it.

I also point out that, while best practice certainly exists—we know it is exists; there are examples all over the country—we also know a great deal about human nature. Human nature is perhaps best exemplified by something known to anybody now in your Lordships’ Chamber who was once a Minister—a political Minister, not of the Church—in any shape or form: hell hath no fury like different government departments trying to ignore one another, and, above all, like a department doing everything it can desperately to avoid taking on any good practice from another department, which might be seen to imply that its own practice was not as good. We have all known about that; “Yes Minister” was a very successful programme for many years, partly on that premise. That is human nature; it is the same with departments of state, police and crime commissioners and the 43 separate police forces in England and Wales—all the different bodies dealing with this.

I come back to what I mentioned last week: the paean for a past age identified by the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, when you could essentially rely on people and parts of the state doing what is expected of them—the “good chaps” theory of government and administration, if you like. There is so much evidence to indicate that, for all sorts of reasons that we will not go into today, that is not happening. We would be doing ourselves, and in particular the Government, a favour if we looked in the mirror and recognised that it is not working.

The Victims’ Commissioner has to be the most obvious channel for dealing with an awful lot of these issues. In particular, the current interim commissioner, who was largely responsible for the role being created in the first place, has direct experience of being a victim at great cost and has, for the last 15 years or more, dedicated her life to helping other victims and to talking to a variety of individuals and organisations to work out how better to understand what victims are going through and to do something to help them. She knows what she is taking about—she really does. When she talks to the Government and suggests, in her usual very polite way, that things are not quite as they may seem and that things may not turn out quite as the Government hope they will, it behoves the entire House to listen to her very carefully.

An unfortunate fact in recent history is that because the noble Baroness’s predecessor as Victims’ Commissioner was not invited to return for a second term of office, there was a significant period when there was no Victims’ Commissioner and no proper voice for victims. That took place at a critical time when the Bill was going through its birth pangs and was being put together. It would be good for the Government to acknowledge the insights and information that the noble Baroness could have given to the inception, crafting and architecture of the Bill—particularly its structure, which we will come back to. The Bill would have been infinitely improved if it had had the benefit of more input from her and the team around her. It is never too late, and I hope that we can use the time between now and Report to have some intensive meetings and discussions in a completely non-combative way. I and others said at the beginning of the Bill that our role is to drain any politics from the Bill to the extent that we can. It is not about politics; it is about people and victims. The Victims’ Commissioner is the obvious driver of culture change; she is better placed to do that than anybody else, and it behoves the Government to acknowledge that and to listen to her.

As for the minimum threshold, I hear what the Minister said about having a range of indicators rather than minimum thresholds. The sceptic in me would point out that if you are asking a range of institutions—which are themselves being asked to work out whether they are meeting those thresholds—to come up with their own preferred indicators, you may possibly not come up with some of the more challenging and awkward indicators. You may well come up with a preferred list of indicators that are rather more easy to accede to. Philosophically, there is at least a question mark over that approach, and we would like to discuss that further.

I say a big thank you to the Government for acknowledging that an annual statement of the state of affairs is very welcome. I think I can see the noble Baroness nodding. We are grateful for that and regard it as a good step forward.

To come back to the role of the Victims’ Commissioner, whoever is in this role should be front and centre in making the Bill as effective as possible, and then being accountable for holding the Government and the different agencies to account for delivering on it. It is not a satisfactory course to expect the Government to hold themselves to account. In theory, the Government have held themselves to account in this area for the last 20 years, and the report card is perhaps not as stellar as the Government would like it to be. I am grateful that the joint criminal boards are acknowledged as an important part of the process; that is a good move.

As far as training is concerned, I am grateful in particular that the Government are looking at the super-complaint that the Suzy Lamplugh Trust put forward on the basis of some dreadful stories. Stalking is incredibly complex. We need to sit down and try to make sure that people understand just how large scale, complex and insidious it is. To expect any public servant—or even victim—to understand what they are dealing with without effective, precise training will not give a good result, as I learned from talking to Richard Spinks, the father of Gracie Spinks, two weeks ago. He was not bitter, but he was desperately disappointed that Gracie had complained to the Derbyshire police more than 40 times about the way she was being threatened and the concerns she had about what might happen—and it did happen. It happened in plain sight, and the Derbyshire police in effect chose to be blindfolded and mute. To their credit, they have acknowledged after the event that they failed egregiously. What was needed was proper training in place, a proper understanding of dealing with this and, above all, proper leadership. If you want real culture change, you need really good leadership. I put it to noble Lords that having the leadership of a really effective Victims’ Commissioner is probably the most effective way to drive this forward.

We all welcome the Minister’s invitation to have further meetings to, as he put it so elegantly, reflect further—hopefully when his sinuses permit. On that basis, I withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 30 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

I beg to move.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, as it happens, I did read the article in the Financial Times, and pressed the little button to save it, because I thought what an interesting idea it expressed, particularly as this Bill was sailing on its way into Committee.

Victims in our system, depending on where they are in the system, are often invisible. I spoke earlier about the case of Gracie Spinks, and the number of times she complained to the police, yet none of it was joined up. Eleven years ago, there was a lady called Helen Pearson, who was repeatedly stabbed in a churchyard after she had been given a new and different reference number for each of the 125 previous reports she had made against her stalker. The failure to link these reports meant that the police had missed vital opportunities to understand the pattern that was building up and the degree of danger that she was potentially under. That is a graphic example: there were 125 different reference numbers for the same person, in each case complaining about the same person. That is not good practice, and it is not acceptable.

We do not have an answer today, but I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Bach, for raising the issue at this stage, to give us a chance to look at it carefully. I know that His Majesty’s Government, and many other institutions, do not have a brilliant track record in implementing new data and information systems, and many careers have suffered as a result. But that is not a good reason for not looking into this and seeing whether we can use modern technology to try to make victims’ experience better, and above all to help the bodies that are charged with trying to identify what those victims are suffering to do something about it. Having a tool such as that suggested by the noble Lord seems a bit of a no-brainer, and it would be an excellent topic for further discussion between now and Report.

[Baroness Newlove (Con)]

I too support the amendment. I am grateful that we have put people into the Bill, because that is what this legislation is about: it is about people. I do not think that victims want to be at the centre of the criminal justice system, but they do want a level playing field; that narrative has been overused, although I mean no disrespect to the noble Lord, whom I met as police and crime commissioner—I loved travelling round the country on trains for two and a half years, meeting everyone, when I was previously Victims’ Commissioner. I agree that the Bill is about people. We hear many times that the police servers do not talk to one another, and all these servers do not seem to interact with all the other agencies or all feed into the Ministry of Justice.

I am delighted that this issue is being raised. This morning we talked about it in the context of the National Health Service. A Times Health Commission report out today looks at a similar thing. Even GPs cannot talk to hospitals, and even consultants within the same hospital cannot talk and get the information out. Again, that is about patients. It is important that we are talking about it at this stage. I would welcome further discussions. Victims are given different messages, different police officers and different everything. It does not mount up. How many recordings and crime reference numbers do we need? It should be one. There is one portal for every police force that a victim can feed into. Therefore, it should be the other way around. A victim should have one record and be able to put the narrative together so that they feel safe in our communities. I welcome the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to my Amendment 53, which would insert the concept:

“Collaboration may include the co-location of services in accordance with the Child House model”.


We have heard much talk about the child house model pilot project at the Lighthouse in Camden. It is a multiagency model for children and young people who have experienced any form of sexual abuse. I urge noble Lords to visit this place; it is a shining example. It is an extraordinarily light, welcoming and unthreatening place where children and young people can go to receive medical help and counselling, but also where they can tell their story. As we have said, children tend to tell their story only once, so if we want justice from these places, this is the place to do it. It is a pilot scheme that needs to be rolled out.

At the moment the Bill seems to be in either/or mode when it talks about local authorities. The amendment would clarify that a multiagency, multiborough or multi-council format could be used as best practice for child victims when, as must happen, this model is rolled out across the country. With that, I beg to move.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak to a variety of amendments. I support the amendment just moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, but I will leave it to the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, to talk about it when he winds up. I will speak to my Amendments 54 and 81. I support Amendments 56 and 59 in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester. I will then speak to my Amendments 58, 60, 62 and 64.

Amendments 54 and 81 return to the subject of stalking. There were 1.6 million victims of stalking in the year ending 2023, so it seems strange that there is relatively little mention of stalking and stalking victims in the Bill. That is something we hope to persuade His Majesty’s Government to consider. Part of that is the importance of independent stalking advocates, which we will come to in a later group. We particularly welcome the Government’s new measures to expand Clause 15 to include guidance about a number of specialist support roles, including, we hope, independent stalking advocates. But I stress that, although what they propose is extremely welcome, it is obviously a very good idea to think about this and develop the list in close co-operation with some of the organisations and bodies closest to the front line in dealing with victims and experiences.

Stalking should certainly be included within the scope of the duty to collaborate in Clause 12. The Minister said in considering the previous group that the Government are looking carefully at the super-complaint made by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust about stalking not being dealt with effectively, but again, we know that it is being dealt with extraordinarily well in some parts of the country. So we know that there are ways of tackling it, but unfortunately that is being done in only a handful of parts of the country. If you are unfortunate enough not to live in those parts, you will have a pretty ghastly experience, like Gracie Spinks and so many other people. That is probably enough on stalking; I think the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, can be relied on to talk about that in more detail, and, very importantly, from direct personal experience, which has its own power.

The two amendments put forward by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester try to ensure that funding for victims and witness support services is sufficient to meet the needs across the country, particularly the demand for specialist domestic abuse services. While the idea of a duty to collaborate is a wonderful one, to be truly effective we judge that it would be helpful if there was a requirement on the Secretary of State to support duty-holders to meet the needs identified by providing adequate and sustainable funding. The figures are not insignificant. Women’s Aid estimates that it would cost at least £238 million per year to meet the need for community-based services across the country. We feel that the Bill is an opportunity to put in some safeguards to provide a legal framework through which sustainable community-based services and funding could be provided.

Turning to Amendment 59, some “93% of frontline workers” surveyed for Refuge’s Local Lifelines report said that

“their service was being impacted by staff shortages”,

and

“64% said their service was impacted by short-term contracts”.

Therefore, the principle of multiyear funding to try to enable these services to be set up to a sustainable and effective level is extremely important. I am sure that the right reverend Prelate will expand on that in a minute.

I come to the last set of amendments—Amendments 58, 60, 62 and 64—which come from working closely with Nicole Jacobs, the domestic abuse commissioner, and her team. There is a patchwork of provision for victims, survivors and their children when trying to access services. Community-based specialist domestic abuse services are literally life-saving and life-changing for many of these victims. Despite this, there is no duty to fund these community-based services, and in the current economic environment, you can imagine that they are not necessarily at the top of every cash-strapped local authority’s “must do” list of services to which to try to apportion diminishing funds.

Without making too much of it, this is a crisis, and in the Bill we have an opportunity to ameliorate that. We must really try to focus our minds on what is required to deliver sustainable, entrenched, well-run, effective services across the country. This Bill is a chance to try to do it right, so I hope we will take that opportunity.

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 56 and 59 in my name; I also support the other amendments in this group. These amendments would all help to firm up the very good intentions set out in Clauses 12 and 13.

In an earlier group, I tabled an amendment to ensure that victim support services were properly signposted; it is no use a service existing if the people it is meant to serve are not able to access it. But now we come to, if anything, a more fundamental point: how do we ensure that the right services exist for victims, and in each and every part of the country?

The Bill as drafted gets much right: it requires policing bodies, integrated care boards and local authorities to collaborate in assessing the needs of victims, producing a published strategy and, indeed, revising that strategy as occasion requires—so far, so good. But, as things stand, and as the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, has indicated, that assessment and strategy could be little more than a combination of the unaffordable and the non-existent—a bit like an overambitious child’s Christmas wish list.

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Howe (Con)]

That is clearly a concern, and we must listen to the domestic abuse commissioner very carefully. I have tried to set out how we have responded within existing powers and structures to improve funding across the piece. If one is not careful, there will be too much micromanagement from the centre. I always resist that, and we know that it can lead to perverse results in all sorts of contexts. I would be very happy to talk further to the noble Baroness about the domestic abuse commissioner’s concerns in this context after we finish the debate, as I am sure my noble and learned friend Lord Bellamy would also be glad to do.

Moreover, as part of the joint needs assessment in the duty, commissioners will be required to have regard to the particular needs of victims with protected characteristics. This could result in the commissioning of by-and-for services.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, for submitting Amendment 64, which would introduce a statutory requirement for certain commissioners and sector stakeholders to be consulted before issuing statutory guidance on the duty to collaborate. The Bill already requires the Secretary of State to consult such persons as they consider appropriate before issuing the guidance, without specifying particular bodies or roles. This is because of the wide-ranging nature of the duty and the key stakeholders involved—a list of relevant consultees could be extensive and change over time. Naturally, the department would continue to engage thoroughly with the various key stakeholders as the guidance develops. Therefore, we do not need a legislative requirement specifying who exactly that should be to enable them to do so.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

I thank the Minister very much for what he said. Does he accept that the officeholder, who is perhaps in the best position of all to guide His Majesty’s Government towards the most effective organisations with which they should be co-operating and talking, is the Victims’ Commissioner himself or herself? The Victims’ Commissioner is at the centre of an information web and, frankly, is likely to be better informed than His Majesty’s Government.

I understand the virtues of police and crime commissioners and, in principle, would agree with the Minister that micromanagement can be a very bad thing. However, if I were a victim, I would be in favour of slightly more micromanagement to make sure that, wherever I lived in England and Wales, the type of service I got was more uniform, consistent and joined up. In evidence, I cite a glossy 2022 document from the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners celebrating

“10 years of PCCs Making a Difference”.

It lays out no fewer than 39 different schemes across England and Wales that different PCCs have put in place for

“advocating for victims; developing innovative services for victims; and using multi-year funding to fund quality services”.

While that is a wonderful idea—let a thousand flowers bloom—what the system is currently sorely lacking is any comprehensive follow-up and measurement to see how effectively all those initiatives work. Do any of them still exist? Have they been developed any further? If some of them are working particularly well, is there an effective mechanism to ensure that other police and crime commissioners are taking on those best practices and applying them in their areas?

[Earl Howe (Con)]

First, I take the noble Lord’s point about the Victims’ Commissioner; I am happy to feed that into the department. Secondly, I come back to the point I made earlier about building transparency into the process. The local strategies will be published and then scrutinised by the oversight forum, which will be ministerially led, so there will be a way for the commissioning practices to be exposed to daylight at the local level. I suggest that that could reveal the kind of disparities that the noble Lord referred to; that would be very helpful, not only as regards funding but for sharing best practice. He raised a very important point, but I like to believe that we have thought about it and are addressing it.

I turn to the issue of stalking. I do not think that any of us could fail to be impressed by the horrific examples given by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. I listened also with care to the noble Lords, Lord Russell of Liverpool and Lord Ponsonby, on this issue. Amendment 54 seeks the inclusion of support services for victims of stalking under the duty to collaborate. Stalking—which I am the first to agree is a tremendously important and emotive issue—can already be covered by the duty. The accompanying statutory guidance will make it clear that stalking is one of a number of crime types that sits across the scope of domestic abuse, serious violence and sexual abuse, and needs should be assessed accordingly. I fully appreciate the concerns raised by stakeholders that, all too often, stalking is considered only as a form of domestic abuse, and support is provided largely on that basis. The definition of serious violence under this duty is deliberately broad to allow commissioners to determine what constitutes serious violence in their local area, which can include stalking as well, including where it is not perpetrated by an intimate partner.

It is important to retain legislative flexibility in this area so that the duty can evolve, if it needs to, just as the overarching offences of serious violence, sexual abuse and domestic abuse evolve. A prescriptive approach, as proposed by the amendment, would restrict our ability to be flexible, but we will continue to engage with commissioners and stakeholders on the guidance as it develops, and with noble Lords who are willing to lend their expertise. I am sure that my noble and learned friend Lord Bellamy would be glad to do that. I can commit him in his absence to meet the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and the noble Lord, Lord Russell, if they would find that helpful.

[Earl Howe (Con)]

Indeed. We come back to the earlier amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, on how one should best join up individual reports of crime, abuse or whatever else so that the police and others can obtain a rounded picture of what is going on. I fully take the point about changing practice. This is perhaps a subject for a longer discussion than today’s debate. I do not pretend to be expert on operational practices at the local level, so it would be wrong of me to chance my arm. The point is well made, and I am very happy to ensure that we have a separate discussion about it before Report.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

Can I make one additional point? The Minister just referred to allowing police and crime commissioners—and, I assume, chief constables—to decide what type of criminality should be regarded as serious or violent. One of the issues with the complexity of stalking is that, in many cases, stalking does not start from a violent position. Stalking, in many cases, can evolve, sometimes over a period of years, in a series of interactions by the predator, in such a way that, unless you know what you are dealing with, it is very hard to understand that there is a pattern developing or what type of stalking it is. We will come to the issue of training and advocates in the next group, but all the evidence produced by using the police force in Cheshire as a test case—to drive through the organisation clear understanding, training, lines of communication and technology to put this all together—has been transformative for the victims.

This is a victims’ Bill. Often, when I hear the Front Bench talking about the response to some amendments, I hear the voice of—understandably—the Government looking down on the victims. I very rarely get a sense of the Government articulating and espousing the rights of the victims themselves as they look up into the system, which they feel is failing them at the moment.

--- Later in debate ---

I realise that in his amendment the Minister will be changing the clause that we would amend here. However, that does not undermine the case for what these two amendments seek to do. I beg to move.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for speaking to these amendments.

We return to stalking; stalking is stalking us yet again, as I am afraid it will continue to do through time immemorial, and until and unless we really grab hold of this. The case for independent stalking advocates is fairly undeniable. One can scarcely imagine what it must feel like when you do not know where to turn, you do not really understand what is going on, and the people that you are turning to for help clearly do not really understand what is going on either. It must be a pretty horrendous state to be in, and the independent stalking advocate can and does make an enormous difference. They can undertake risk assessments and work with the different authorities to ensure that safety plans are put in place to protect victims—and, importantly, where children are involved, those around them—from further harm.

The research that has been done by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust indicates that: 77% of stalking victims are not able to access an independent stalking advocate; 69% could find no advocacy support of any kind whatever; only 4% access support from a non-specialist service; and only 15% of victims were referred to an independent stalking advocate by the police. So even the police themselves, in 85% of cases, failed to point the potential stalking victim in the direction of help.

The demand for such stalking advocates far exceeds current capacity. National stalking services supported a combined total of just under 12,500 stalking victims in 2021, and there were 1.5 million stalking victims in total. Noble Lords can do the maths; that is not a highly impressive percentage. In some parts of the country, there are effectively no local specialist supporting services whatever.

I mentioned earlier that I had the privilege of speaking with Gracie Spinks’s father, Richard Spinks, a couple of weeks ago. One of the extreme examples of the more than 40 reports that Gracie made to the police over an extensive period was a case when, after she had pointed out that she was again being threatened, the police undertook a search in the vicinity of where she lived, and they found a bag of weapons—knives, hammers and so on. What did they conclude from having found that cache of weapons? They told Gracie that they were probably theatre props. Clearly, the officers involved had undergone extensive training, but probably in how to supervise playgroups, rather than in helping victims of crime. That shows the gulf between the sort of support, help and advice that one might expect as a victim of stalking and what actually happens.

As we mentioned on earlier groupings, at the end of 2022 the Suzy Lamplugh Trust submitted a super-complaint against the police, outlining systemic issues such as those that we have talked about in previous groups. One of the recommendations was that the College of Policing

“mandate that all officers that deal with cases of stalking complete training by a specialist stalking training provider, in order to adequately identify, investigate and—

this is very important—

“risk assess cases of stalking”.

We referred earlier to the pilot that the Suzy Lamplugh Trust ran in Cheshire. I conclude by giving some quotes from the senior police officers involved in the study and what they observed happening through the results of this programme. One front-line officer said:

“It’s an injustice that in nearly half of all stalking cases unrelated to prior intimate relationships, victims must rely on luck for access to specialised, local advocacy—something that should be a non-negotiable right. Including Independent Stalking Advocates … in the Victims and Prisoners Bill isn’t just an option; it’s an imperative step towards rectifying this imbalance.”


Finally, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Cheshire said:

“Cheshire’s example shows that multi-agency working delivers results for victims and it benefits all agencies involved. The impact of ISAs”—


independent stalking advocates—

“here is clear to see, and I believe it would hugely enhance our collective ability to deliver justice for victims of stalking if they were to be included in the Bill”.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

3rd reading
Thursday 21st September 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Chichester]

My Lords, before the debate concludes, I speak briefly on behalf of my right reverend friend the Bishop of Bristol to record thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, for all the constructive work that is represented in this Bill and to assure the noble Baroness—

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

I think the right time to speak is at the next stage of the business when we move that the Bill do now pass and have valedictory comments.

Amendment 1 agreed.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 18th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, at this stage—the beginning of another day on Report—I remind the House of my relevant interests as a councillor in Kirklees and a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, who is standing in today for the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, to whom I wish godspeed and a full recovery.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, said, childcare is facing a crisis of unaffordable provision. Many families are simply unable to bear the cost of full-time care, thus restricting parents to reduce their working hours; that has a knock-on effect on their household budgets and puts pressure on the family finances. The Government are bringing these amendments forward rather late in the day—during Report on the Bill, which we started in January—especially given the crisis in not only affordability but provision; as she said, there have been a large number of closures among childminding providers. Given that, we on these Benches support the government amendments because extending childminding to non-domestic settings would be sensible.

However, I have a proviso here; I wonder whether the noble Baroness can respond to it. She has spoken about the regulations facing childminders being the same as those for nursery providers, but she has not spoken in full about the regulations affecting the building premises that may be used by childminders. Clearly, we want them to be appropriate to the age of the children using them. Children from the age of nine months to the toddler stage certainly need safe facilities and different ones from those for which a non-domestic setting might be built. I want to know from the noble Baroness that there will be clear, enforceable regulations around this.

The great majority of childcare is provided by the private sector. Amendment 276 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, would extend that to local authorities. We on these Benches support that extension as it will enable councils to fill the gaps in private provision, which are more likely to be in areas of higher deprivation and in the very communities that the Bill is ostensibly aimed at helping.

With those remarks, we support the Government’s amendments and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly, largely in relation to Labour’s amendment. As the noble Baroness may recall, some of us spoke about the provision of early years facilities in Committee. I want to return to that issue briefly to see whether we can tie up one or two loose ends.

I am most grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Scott and Lady Barran, for the correspondence and meetings that we have had between Committee and Report. The meeting with the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, had the largest number of advisers in the smallest room that I have ever been in; that would not have been possible under Covid. The new DfE advice to local authorities, Securing Developer Contributions for Education, is a great improvement on its predecessor. It is much clearer and on several occasions makes clear and specific mention of early years provision.

However, the response from the department of the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, was slightly less clear. Given her background as an effective head of a local authority, I think she assumes that all local authorities are run as well and professionally as her one was. All I say is that the evidence from a range of local authorities is that their ability to provide early years facilities is not good.

An article last week indicated that local authorities are sitting on a grand total of £3 billion of unused Section 106 money, £420 million of which is for education. It is somewhat disappointing that the LGA spokesman’s response to that said just that doing this is “a complex process” that takes a lot of time. I thought that was local government’s job.

I have four specific questions for the Minister, of which I have given her advance warning. The first is: what we are going to do to monitor whether these funds are being used to expand childcare provision, because there is no central collection of data at the moment. Please can we do something about that?

Secondly, there is an expectation, which is clear in the advice, that existing or new spare primary school capacity will be repurposed for early years services. How will guidance be flexible to ensure that, if there are changes in the birth rate, we do not end up with nurseries closing and have the same problem?

Thirdly, how can we make sure that we are also looking at early years settings that are convenient for people’s work? It is one thing to have early years provision near where you live but, for many working women, it is far more useful and a more efficient use of their time to have early years provision near their place of work. Could the Government say whether they are aware of this potential issue and, if so, what they are doing to try to mitigate it?

Lastly, how will the Government make sure that all local authorities can use this funding on new stand-alone provision if they deem it appropriate, without being reliant on private providers, which may or may not want to operate in the area? This applies to the new infrastructure levy but also to existing sources of funding. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in following the noble Lord, Lord Russell, I should declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and of the NALC. With the greatest respect to the noble Lord, I point out that the impact of austerity and the slashing of central government funding to local government left departments utterly eviscerated and a lack of resources to take actions that may be desperate.

I have two reasons for rising. One is to express the strongest possible Green support for the amendment in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman of Ullock and Lady Twycross, to allow local authorities to provide their own childcare services. These are public services in the community; having them under democratic control is surely an extremely good way to proceed.

In noting that, I have a question to put to the Minister, which arises from issues that I have raised with her previously, on the involvement of private equity and the financial sector in childcare provision. It has been described as becoming a “playground for private equity”. In the last four years, investment funds have more than doubled their stake in Ofsted-registered nurseries. Now more than 1,000 are fully or partially owned by investment funds, which is 7.5% of all places—up from 4% in 2018. Those 81,500 places are being run for profit. We know from their involvement in the social care sector that those companies will have stripped out huge sums and introduced massive instability. We think of what happened with the collapse of Southern Cross and Four Seasons Health Care. Financial engineering is so often behind that.

With that in mind, regarding government Amendment 259 on services in wholly non-domestic premises, the Minister talked about local community centres and village halls. Picking up the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, provided that they have the right facilities, I do not believe that anyone would have any objection to those kinds of premises. However, following the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Russell, about places near where people work, I think it is possible to imagine that we might see private equity invest in building or repurposing a facility, so that it is designed for a lot of small groups of childminders to come together, with private equity and the financial sector sucking huge amounts of money out of that. Could the Minister, either now or perhaps in writing later, tell me what the provisions for non-domestic premises actually mean? If someone set up a for-profit setting, what kind of controls will there be to make that that is not exploitative of the childminders or the children and their parents?

House of Lords: Remote Participation and Hybrid Sittings

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 20th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, has withdrawn from the list, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys.

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[Lord Borwick (Con)]

My Lords, there are so many great and wonderful things about this House that it is hard to identify the changes that have taken place in the last year and their effects. It is a fundamental feature of an engineering project that you should make only one change at a time because otherwise you cannot tell which change caused which effect. We have been forced by this evil virus to change hundreds of things about this great House at the same time. We have expressed our thanks to all those people who have put so much work into achieving those changes, but it is important that when we go back we revert to the last working model rather than developing a brand new type of less than perfect hybrid.

The House has lost many of the great things that make working here such a privilege. Speeches have become assertions rather than arguments. There is no “mood of the House”. There is virtually no gossip, and it seems to me that friendships across the Chamber have become more fragile. We are being watched the whole time by the public whom we serve, as before, but having absolutely none of them present makes all of them more remote. I advocate that we return to the previous way of working in this House of Lords as fast as we reasonably can. We should change back to a self-regulating House from one that follows orders from Public Health England and is then unable to explain or debate those orders.

I feel that there are certain people in the country who have quite enjoyed the lockdown, or perhaps they would say that they disliked it less. We must be careful not to give them the excuse to stay at home if we want the economy to grow and thrive. Certainly, let us learn whatever lessons are available from this extremely expensive virus, but the only way for us to pay off our vast loans is for us to work as hard as possible in our everyday lives.

The country is emerging, perhaps blinking, from these Covid rules, and we should lead it out. The Government have achieved wonderful things, in that there is still an economy to emerge. Some great companies have been forced to close, and we should not forget that it is often the cash-flow stresses of recovery, not shutdown, that cause enterprises to fail. Certainly, we should watch the other place carefully, as I believe that it is hard for us to justify restrictions that have been released there. It is only when Peers are paid to be present here, not paid for work outside, however worthy, that we can approach normality.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

Both the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, and the noble Lord, Lord Desai, have withdrawn so I call the noble Lord, Lord Lucas.

Financial Services Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 1st March 2021 Grand Committee

Against that background, which I hope has been helpful, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

I understand that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, may not have completed her remarks before the Minister began. Does she have anything that she wishes to say?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab) [V]]

Obviously the Minister has now responded. I think I made the point in conclusion that the high-level leadership and thinking, including from the Chancellor and the Governor of the Bank of England, are moving in the same direction. Something more urgent is needed, and the Bill is the ideal mechanism for delivering these changes on the ground; otherwise, we are in danger of this becoming aspirational, when the urgency is more immediate.

I apologise to the Minister. I have just been trying to find out what happened, so I did not hear everything he said. Underpinning all this, I feel that the amendments are worth while and deserve further consideration, and that we need a mechanism to have more targets and better data, assumptions and methodology. We need the regulators to set that; otherwise, if we are not careful, we will end up with annual reports that, as we have said in the past, are just greenwashed and are not in any way held to account. I will finish there and I apologise to noble Lords if they did not hear all the things that I had to say.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

Does the Minister wish to respond? No? In that case, I call the noble Lord, Lord Oates.

[Lord Oates (LD)]

I thank noble Lords from all sides of the Committee for their contributions. I am particularly grateful to those noble Lords who signed the amendments and spoke in the debate. I am grateful also to the Minister for his courteous response and for agreeing to continue to discuss these issues.

The noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, made the point that we are going to need fossil fuels for some time to come. That is precisely the point I covered in my opening remarks. That is why we need to risk existing fossil fuel operations properly and effectively so that they can continue as we transition.

The noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, and the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, questioned which companies Amendments 31 and 32 might apply to. The intention was for them to apply to activities as opposed to specific companies, and specifically to fossil fuel activities to try to avoid capturing some companies’ non-fossil fuel activities. I am perfectly happy to accept that the amendments’ wording might be improved, but that was the intention. The issue we have to deal with is the threat of continued fossil fuel activities beyond what we have the carbon budgets for.

Overall, however, I was struck by the absolute complacency from the Government Benches—the lack of realisation of the issue that we are facing and of the urgency of dealing with it and of trying to use whatever tools we can to address it. The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, appeared to question the very concept of using prudential regulation to achieve the objective of averting climate change. She said that the impacts of climate change were unlikely to find their way into credit risks in the short term. She also said, as the noble Baroness Lady Bennett, reminded us, that banks do not lend in situations where there is a high risk of default. History explicitly and categorically refutes that. The noble Baroness also informed us that credit agencies did not need any help in assessing credit risk—the same agencies which gave their highest ratings to complex securities associated with the subprime mortgage crisis.

Prudential regulation is a tool through which we can, necessarily and legitimately, regulate the sector and ensure its financial stability. My noble friend Lady Kramer quoted the current Bank governor’s rather extraordinary statement that we were not going to use the results of the stress tests of different climate scenarios to inform the size of firms’ capital buffers. But he did say that that does not mean firms should not be thinking about near-term capital requirements. He set out that firms must assess how climate risk could impact their business and review whether additional capital needed to be held against this. He expressly recognised the legitimacy of using capital requirements to tackle climate change.

The IPCC has warned us that if we do not act decisively to mitigate climate change, we are on a global warming path of between 3.8 and 4.8 degrees centigrade by the end of the century, with a range of median values between 2.5 and 7.8 degrees centigrade. That is the seriousness of the situation we face. Central bankers are clear about the huge risk that climate change poses to the financial system. But what is the reaction of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, and the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe? It is to say: “We don’t need to do anything now. Let’s wait and see.” We do not have time to wait and see.

We know the risks we face. If we do not act, we are culpable. Is our excuse to our children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews, and grand-nieces and grand-nephews going to be: “Oh, sorry, it was all too difficult. We were busy trying to measure everything and we thought the banks were quite good at predicting risk anyway, and they all let us down”? The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, asked: why would we deny the City the opportunities of a relatively low-risk, profitable business? There is a simple answer to that: if those activities continue unabated, they will threaten the very future of human society. That is a reality. That is why we have to act.

In view of the Minister’s willingness to continue to discuss these issues, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 28 withdrawn.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 29.

Amendment 29

Moved by

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[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a former chair of StepChange, the debt charity. I put my name down to speak in this group of amendments because they give me an opportunity to raise a wider concern about the access we need to low-cost credit. In fact, this fits in very closely with points already made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, on Amendment 29 and the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, on Amendment 126, and his important point about financial inclusion and the need to make sure that we do not forget that. I am looking forward to the comments to be made by the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer; she will also touch on these issues when she comes to speak.

When responding to a group in an earlier debate, my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe mentioned that he grew up in a household where poverty was a constant worry. He mentioned the “jam jar economy”, which often characterised low-income households. It was cash-based: putting small amounts of coin away for future expenditure. Indeed, research a few years ago showed the surprising conclusion that the lowest paid in our society were often the heaviest savers on many measures, mainly because they had to be. It was done outwith traditional credit sources and topped up where necessary by house-to-house lenders, which were often a vital lifeline.

A key problem I want to highlight is the need to solve the problem of how to expand low-cost credit. My noble friend Lord McNicol, when he was speaking in an earlier group, mentioned the problems revealed by a very interesting report by the University of Edinburgh Business School on the financial health of NHS workers—people who were in employment but receiving low wages. It was based on real-time open banking figures. It showed across the 20,000 or so NHS workers who were surveyed that far too many were heavily reliant on a regular basis on persistent overdrafts and high-cost credit, often borrowing to meet the emergency needs they had from time to time, at APRs of well over 1,000%. The report makes for very interesting reading, and I hope that the Government will have access to it when they come to consider these issues further.

I know that the Government are concerned about this and that their financial inclusion work recognises, as previous Governments have, that the availability of low-cost credit is a major blockage to financial well-being. As the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, said, it also affects the ability of SMEs and sole traders to operate successfully in a difficult economy.

I hope that the Minister can say a bit more about the plans the Government have when she comes to respond. I know that the Government will pray in aid the idea that credit unions will often be the solution; they have been mooted so often in the past but do not seem to grow. Other countries have other models—Germany has its particular banks focused on the local economy and America has the Community Reinvestment Act—which have solved the problems. Is there not time to consider things that might operate more successfully here in the UK?

None of the individual measures outlined in the amendments in this group, welcome though they are, will solve low-cost credit and the drought that we are suffering from. But they make the point well that the regulatory measures in the Bill should not restrict much-needed support from institutions, banks and other organisations such as credit unions to help those who need to borrow but who cannot do so at the rates or in the period of time which are often required by our major institutions. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, has withdrawn from this group, so I call the next speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes.

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, various amendments in this group address different aspects of small and medium-sized banks and other financial institutions, and I am not opposed to having more and different banks in the financial system. Indeed, anyone who has had a bad customer experience with one of the major banks, as I have in the past year, supports more competition and choice. However, I sound a note of caution: we have to be very careful not to send the regulators down a path that could lead to poorer outcomes for consumers.

I am always reminded of the history of building societies, the number of which has shrunk dramatically over the past 100 years or so. These were often small and regionally based, and the numbers have reduced for two main reasons. One reason for this was obviously the liberalisation measures which allowed a number of them to demutualise—one of the more recent trends—but, over time, the other reason was that these were small organisations which were often not managed particularly well and had insufficient financial resilience, and they often had to effectively sell themselves to other building societies in order to protect members when things went wrong.

Against that background, regional banks, as suggested in Amendment 126 in the name of my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond, are, in my view, unlikely to be a panacea. It is less than clear that the failure of a regional bank could easily be prevented in the current regulatory environment. I do not oppose the report that he suggests but I am a bit of a cynic when it comes to seeing that as a useful way forward.

I particularly want to speak to Amendment 91 in this group, in which the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, has suggested restricting access to the term funding scheme if it is not then available for onlending to other banks and providers of finance. I accept that there may be an element of protectionism in the large banks that have access to the term funding scheme not wanting to share that advantage source of finance with other lending institutions. But the scheme suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, would require the major banks to accept the credit risk of dealing with these smaller organisations without any ability to price for that risk. These organisations often struggle to raise equity capital, for good reason: they carry higher risk, they are often not profitable, and they do not all survive.

It seems to me that if the Government think it is a good idea to fund more lenders at preferential rates in order to fund the various lending schemes that have been introduced, they should instruct the Bank of England to vary its lending criteria for the term funding scheme. At the moment, it is restricted to those with access to the discount window facility. It would not take too much to get that changed, without trying to distort the lending decisions of the major banks. If the Bank of England were unwilling to assume that risk itself, it would be open to the Treasury to underwrite it for the Bank, without distorting the decisions made by the banks that do take term funding scheme finance.

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I will look at three aspects, starting with the credit unions, which have just been mentioned. There is a new opportunity here, which we should look at closely. I know that they have been around since the 1820s, but they are very strong in North America, particularly Canada and the USA, and they seem recently to have had a new lease of life in both those markets. It seems to me that consumer expectations are growing on an upward trajectory with no limits in sight. Evidence from both Canada and the USA confirms this. These elevated expectations are creating inherent challenges for any financial institution to keep pace with, due to the experiences being offered by large tech-based organisations such as Amazon. The difference, as we all know, is that the credit unions and all the mutual movements have a close association with their memberships. These memberships may be only as many as 150,000 customers, as in the United States, with possibly a similar number in Canada, but there has been a change in the consumer. The evidence comes from both those two countries—[Interruption.] The evidence is, if the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, would get off the phone for a moment—

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

My Lords, we will stop for a minute while we sort out the problem with the sound.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, has been muted, I am glad to say, so we will now return to the noble Lord, Lord Naseby.

[Lord Naseby (Con) [V]]

I thank the Lord Chairman. As I was just saying, in both the United States and Canada there has been a change in young people’s attitudes to debt. This is one reason why the credit union movement there is seeing better times and beginning to come strongly back to life. However, two other things have happened here. First, during the pandemic, people have had a chance to look in great depth at their own financial situation; many are responding to approaches by building societies, credit unions and the other mutuals by having interactions, on the basis that they know somebody. They do not know anybody in the banks. I do not have a clue who looks after an account that I have at RBS; all I can do is act on the telephone. Secondly, and in addition, what do we see on the ground? Bank after bank are closing branches. Whereas in the old days I could go to the RBS in Biggleswade, and then to Bedford, now they have all gone. There is an opportunity here that should be encouraged.

Secondly, I will look not at cheap credit—I hasten to say—but what is called “home-collected credit”, which I covered to some extent at Second Reading. That is all about consumer choice and a fair price. Home-collected credit has been around for 150 years. It is highly successful: it is the credit of choice for the working classes, if I may use that phrase in today’s world. People who use home-collected credit take out small, short-term loans perhaps three or four times a year, probably around Christmas, Easter, birthdays and days such as that. They know what the terms are; the terms do not change, and if they run over in terms of repayment, there is not some swingeing increase in the rate charged. They get a single credit charge.

On the other side, there are payday loans. Every one of us in politics knows exactly what those loans are about: they compound interest and offer high-frequency, weekly loans that people get hooked on. When they go a bit wrong, the claims management companies—CMCs—leap in with a huge volume of complaints, most of which are manufactured. The problem is that today the FCA appears to be treating all high-cost credit models in the same way. The regulator is taking a singular sector-wide approach to affordability and repeat lending and pays less or no attention to the crucial differences between these two products. Whereas officials once differentiated between the responsible and the harmful models, now they treat them all the same. There is therefore a real danger of the HCCs being driven out of business.

In 2018 no less a man than Andrew Bailey said that people viewed home-collected credit differently from rent-to-own and payday ones, and that this was the model he thought about because the difference with home-collected credit is that the borrower knows the lender. The agent is the lender; that is, it is a different, almost social relationship that goes on and creates different attitudes. I ask the Minister to have a close look at this, and perhaps a discussion with the FCA and the Financial Ombudsman Service, to ensure that there is a clear differentiation in any investigations that they might want to undertake between these two very different models.

Thirdly, with the permission of the Committee, I would like to go back to the Mutuals’ Deferred Shares Bill, which I took through your Lordships’ House in 2015. I was motivated to do so by my interest in the mutual movement and by the financial crash of 2008. It seemed to me that there was a need for mutual insurers and friendly societies to have a means of raising capital. That is what I set about doing and it became law in 2015. That was, for me, a high day for the mutual movement. Today, there are not hundreds of mutual insurers and friendly societies: in fact, the active ones are the 52 that are members of the Association of Financial Mutuals.

What that Bill—which is now an Act—did was important, first, because it gave access to new capital, particularly for the friendly societies and mutual insurers. Secondly, without that new capital, many mutuals would have been driven into inappropriate corporate forms through demutualisation. Thirdly, a lack of capital limits mutuals’ growth and their ability to develop new services, which is what this amendment is all about. Fourthly, like all businesses, mutuals need to be able to benefit from economies of scale. Fifthly, it is important to learn lessons from that financial crisis I mentioned; if financial services businesses are to build up stronger capital bases, they require the legislated regulatory agility with which to do so. Sixthly and lastly, there are direct benefits of being able to issue new shares; debt—the alternative—is of lower quality than equity for firms wishing to build their capital base.

One dimension of the then Bill had two elements to it. I am afraid the Government of the day decided they would not accept the second arm that I put in the Bill originally, which was the proposal to have redeemable share instruments for co-operative and community benefit societies. At the time, the Government said they were

“unpersuaded about the merit of a redeemable share instrument as these societies already have a means of issuing redeemable shares. The Government do not see a clear need and demand for such an instrument”.—[Official Report, 24/10/14; col. 923.]

I think the world has not changed. The Government need to have another long, hard look at the second element of that Bill. Obviously, I withdrew that section, because I was happy to have what I could get.

The mutual world is dynamic. If we have learned nothing else from Covid—I was in isolation for my 10 days because I caught it at the beginning of January—it is that people work very hard on a local level. We need to capitalise on that. Society wants it. The wind is in the right direction. I hope very much that the amendments that both the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, and my very good and noble friend Lord Holmes are putting forward find a following wind—not necessarily in the format they have produced them but certainly in some other format—and come to fruition.

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I hope that I have provided sufficient reassurance to the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, for her to withdraw her amendment and for other noble Lords in this group not to move theirs.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

I have received no requests to speak after the Minister so I now call the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted.

[Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I thank all those who have participated in what has turned out to be quite an interesting debate. It seems that most or all noble Lords have managed to put their fingers on one or two points. It would be useful if the regulators could look through this debate, and maybe the Government could also look through it a little bit more when we get offline.

The noble Lords, Lord Holmes, Lord Naseby, Lord Stevenson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, all linked together the fact that, post-Covid, changes will be going on. Younger people in particular are looking to bank in different ways; they want to use their local services. Although I listened to what the Minister said about this Bill enabling the PRA to act in more proportionate ways, I know for a fact that they can already do that but do not. So there needs to be a little bit more encouragement. To go back to my first amendment, if things were more transparent in terms of having a category and saying, “This is how it is for a bank of small or medium size, or mutual,” we would be able to see how that proportionality works. At the moment, we are told that it is there, or “You can’t do it because of the EU”, and that is simply not true. Let us take the example given by my noble friend Lady Kramer about the MREL. You do not have to have the MREL kicking in at such a level for the medium-sized banks; that was very much introduced as something for the larger and more systemic banks.

My plea is: look at what this is asking. My basic “have regards” provisions were asking for us to have something that shows us the categorisations, layers, tiers and the strata—whatever you want to call them—so that it is clear for everybody. As the Minister herself said, there can be lots of places where things are too complex; it is not just for MREL. That is exactly the point I was trying to address: you have to go across the whole suite of regulations and bring together what is relevant for the different categories, not have the smaller banks having to fight their way through and find out that there is no consistent set of proportionality requirements.

We have started an interesting conversation here; there may well be some point that it is worth us pursuing when we get to Report on categorisation as a “have regard”. I see nothing wrong with that: we are not telling the regulators what to do but asking them to have regard because we think there has not been enough of it already. I am interested in carrying that forward, but, for now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Financial Services Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 22nd February 2021 Grand Committee

I have given a long answer, but I hope that it has been helpful to the Committee. As I hope I made clear, I have some sympathy with many of the issues raised in this debate. Later, we will debate a group of amendments focusing on innovations in financial services so there will be an opportunity to return to the broad theme of this debate, but noble Lords should be in no doubt that the Government are committed to promoting the UK’s competitiveness and seizing the opportunities that Brexit can bring us—but doing so in a responsible and measured way. For these reasons, I ask my noble friend Lord Blackwell to withdraw his amendment at this stage.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

I have received requests to speak after the Minister from the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, and the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe. I call first the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard.

[Viscount Trenchard (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Committee for once again permitting me to speak after the Minister. Even though I have my name to two amendments in this group, I had not realised that the procedural change that the House is about to approve at 8 o’clock this evening—which I think is rather strange—now prevents one from doing so unless one takes an additional step, in a narrow window, of specifically putting one’s name down to individual groups as well.

I had wanted to speak in support of Amendment 2 in the name of my noble friend Lord Bridges of Headley, as moved so ably by my noble friend Lord Blackwell, and to Amendment 6, ably moved by my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe. I thank my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond for his kind words, and most heartily thank my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral both for what he said and for quoting from my 2012 speech on this subject.

Your Lordships may wonder why I have added my name to two different amendments which seek to achieve approximately the same result. This is because there are many ways to raise the importance of competition and the competitiveness of markets, and I have in my mind some further variations of the theme. In any case, I strongly believe that we must move quickly to maximise the attractiveness of London’s markets to be sure that the City, including our wider financial services industry, will remain one of the truly leading global financial centres, with all that that means for our prosperity as a nation.

I had wanted to speak properly and fully within this debate but am now hesitant to do so, as I am sure my noble friend the Minister will appreciate. I had wanted to make several points, and wished to explain why I think the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and, indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, are so wrong in believing that the FSA’s having regard to competitiveness was a cause of the financial crisis, or that competitiveness, of itself, heightens inequality. Either Amendment 2 or Amendment 6 would be an improvement to this Bill. I would like to ask my noble friend the Minister which of the two he prefers, because they are not precisely the same. In any case, as my noble friends Lord Mountevans and Lord Hunt have said, there is strong expectation and hope that the Government will do more to secure the City’s future in relation to improving the competitiveness of the markets.

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[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, I can probably expand this answer to advantage in writing. The Government fully understand the disproportionate effect of some of our regulation on small firms, which is why we are looking critically at whether a more proportionate approach is available to us. It is probably best if I spell out our thoughts in a letter, which I would be happy to copy to all Peers in this debate.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

I have received one additional request to speak after the Minister, and I call the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord the Deputy Leader for his full response in our previous discussion, but there was one figure that he raised in that response that I wanted to ask him about the source of and justification for. That was the claim that the financial sector contributed £76 billion in tax receipts. I am basing this question on work done by a fellow Member of your Lordships’ House, the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, who may not be joining us until later—so I wanted to raise this point now. I understand from his work that this figure comes from a report prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers and includes £42 billion borne by customers in the form of VAT and paid by employees in the form of income tax and national insurance contributions. The remaining £33 billion is an estimate, and the report says that PwC

“has not verified, validated or audited the data and cannot therefore give any undertaking as to the accuracy”.

Could the Minister tell us what further justification the Government have for that figure?

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[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I find myself in some sympathy with the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, on Amendment 5 because this is a grey area where small businesses are perhaps not well served. My noble friend Lord Howe claimed, in his full and comprehensive response to the last debate, that this was not the right time or place to look at the regulatory objectives, as this would better take place under the Government’s future regulatory framework review. I would argue, in support of the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, that small businesses are not well served by the current provisions. If you look at some of the work of the Financial Ombudsman Service, which the Committee has referred to, I would not hold out much hope for a small business claiming redress and a decision under that agreement. I would be delighted if my noble friend were to prove me wrong in summing up this debate.

Amendment 5, in particular, has strengths to commend it and I would very much like to lend it my support. I look forward very much indeed to hearing what my noble friend will say and whether the Government might look favourably on it, a lacuna having been identified in the regulatory framework.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

I call the next speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. Baroness Bennett? We appear to have lost the noble Baroness, so if—

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

Apologies, my Lords, but I have sorted the problem out now. I speak briefly in support of Amendments 5, 73 and 95, in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Bowles, Lady Altmann and Lady Kramer. Although not a generalisation that is 100% true, the gender division of the people on various sides speaking on the Bill is interesting. It made me reflect back to the financial crash of 2007-08 and the role that the extreme gender imbalance in the financial sector was seen to have played within it.

When I thought to look at these issues about exploitation, unconscionable conduct, and legal protection against mis-selling, I went to the website moneysavingexpert.com. In a previous contribution, I referred to the role of such commentators who, using the power of public opinion, often seem to be a stronger check on the behaviour of the financial sector than the Government. But, of course, they are able to work only after the fact. Just looking down the list, we are talking about payment protection insurance, mis-sold ID fraud insurance, the mis-selling of package bank accounts and excessive charges on bank accounts—and that is just talking about individual consumers. A similar list would come up for small business. It is a long tale of woe that has caused a great deal of suffering and harm to individuals and small businesses, the operators of which have often put their whole heart and soul into the business.

What we seem to have now is a strategy of shutting the stable door sometime after the horse has bolted, and after a long delay for debate and inquiry. All three of these amendments are a very strong bolt that we should be sliding home now to protect consumers and small businesses from the overweening, immense power of the financial sector.

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[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 5, 73 and 95 relate to the protection of consumers and small businesses against misconduct. The Government are committed to ensuring that consumers and businesses can use financial services and products with confidence and that there are appropriate protections in place.

Before I comment on the specific amendments, I want to take a moment to set out the wider context. The Government have given the FCA a strong mandate to prevent and take action against inappropriate behaviour in financial services, and it has a wide range of enforcement powers to protect consumers and small business. Noble Lords will appreciate that the majority of business lending is unregulated—that is what the amendments test and probe—but the Government are committed to providing appropriate safeguards for SMEs in accessing financial services, while seeking to avoid driving up the costs of lending and unnecessarily reducing affordable credit options.

In the UK, loans of less than £25,000 to small businesses are treated as regulated consumer credit agreements for the purposes of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. This means that most small businesses already receive regulatory protection. In addition, in April 2019, the remit of the Financial Ombudsman Service was expanded to allow more SMEs to put forward a complaint. This covers 99% of small businesses in the UK. If a complaint is upheld, the FOS could make an award of up to £350,000 in relation to acts or omissions that took place on or after 1 April 2019, when its remit was expanded.

Small and medium-sized businesses also now have access to the Business Banking Resolution Service, an independent, non-governmental body which will provide dispute resolution for businesses which meet the eligibility criteria. The BBRS will address historic cases from 2000 which would now be eligible for FOS but were not at the time, and which have not been through another independent redress scheme. It will address future complaints from businesses with a turnover between £6.5 million and £10 million.

It is with that context in mind that I turn to the specific amendments. Amendment 5 seeks to protect consumers and small businesses from certain types of exploitation by financial services firms providing services to those groups. It proposes imposing new obligations on the FCA when it exercises its general functions. However, it risks putting up the cost of borrowing and limiting the availability of products and services. For example, it could require the FCA to make rules creating additional safeguards designed to ensure that exploitation, as defined by the amendment, does not occur. Given the different levels of financial sophistication of different small businesses, the rules may need to be designed to protect those with minimal levels of sophistication. Given the potential complexity of such new rules, financial institutions may be more reluctant to lend to small businesses.

Amendment 73 would duplicate similar existing protections that I have previously outlined, in a way that could be confusing to consumers, SMEs and lenders. On the issue of unconscionable conduct, in response to the banking crisis and significant conduct failings, Parliament passed legislation leading to the FCA and PRA applying the senior managers and certification regime. The regime aims to reduce harm to consumers and govern market integrity by making individuals more accountable for their actions.

Amendment 95 would broaden the scope of those parties who can seek action for damages related to mis-selling of financial services. However, I argue that these changes are unnecessary, as businesses already have robust avenues for pursuing financial services complaints, which I have already set out.

The Government are committed to regulating only where there is a clear case for doing so. This is to avoid putting additional costs on lenders that could ultimately lead to higher cost for businesses; these would likely be passed on to consumers and could restrict access to affordable finance—a key Government priority.

The Government’s view is that each of these amendments risks duplicating the existing protections that I have set out, while also making lending to SMEs more complex, which could make it harder for them to access affordable credit. Our view is that the existing protections get the balance right between protecting consumers and small businesses and not unduly restricting access to affordable credit options. For these reasons, I ask that these amendments be withdrawn.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

I have received one request to speak after the Minister from the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, who I now call.

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Amendments 6 and 7 not moved.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 8. I call the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara.

Amendment 8

Moved by

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[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity presented by this group of amendments to discuss the importance of financial well-being and inclusion. The Government are proud of our strong record, and I know that making progress on these issues is a personal priority for both the Economic Secretary to the Treasury and the Minister for Pensions and Financial Inclusion. However, I recognise, of course, that there will be people who are struggling with their finances and need further support, particularly at this challenging time.

Given that these are probing amendments and given the invitation, at least from some, for a high-level response, I thought it would be helpful to set out briefly the Government’s approach, working closely with the FCA as well as a wide range of stakeholders, to promote financial inclusion and financial well-being in the UK. The Government produce an annual financial inclusion report; the most recent of these was published in November 2020, outlining our response to the Covid-19 pandemic as well as the progress we have made on issues such as access to affordable credit, support for credit unions and enhancing the use of financial technology. Since 2018, the Government have convened the biannual Financial Inclusion Policy Forum, bringing together key leaders from industry, charities, consumer groups and the FCA, as well as government Ministers, including the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, who was responsible for the passage of this Bill through the other place.

The Government also work with a number of stakeholders to promote people’s financial well-being. This includes engaging closely with the Money and Pensions Service, an arm’s-length body of government, which published its national financial well-being strategy in January last year. The strategy sets out its five agendas for change to improve the UK’s financial well-being over the next 10 years. This includes goals to increase the number of children and young people receiving financial education, to encourage saving, to reduce the use of credit to pay for essentials, to enhance access to affordable credit, to increase the number of people receiving debt advice and to support people to plan for later in life. Delivery plans will be published by the Money and Pensions Service later in the spring and the Government are supportive of this work.

The Government also work with Fair4All Finance, an independent organisation funded by £96 million from the government-backed dormant assets scheme, which was founded to improve the financial well-being of vulnerable consumers through increased access to fair and affordable financial products. To date, Fair4All Finance has focused on affordable credit and developed an affordable credit scale-up programme to help the sector develop a sustainable model for serving people in vulnerable circumstances.

The Government also work closely with the FCA, and I reassure the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, that the FCA is committed to improving the way that regulated firms treat vulnerable consumers. It is one of the FCA’s key areas of focus in its current business plan. Its rules ensure that the fair treatment of vulnerable consumers is required by firms and embedded into its policies and processes. I will give a couple of practical examples, as mentioned in previous groups. First, the FCA’s consultation on the fair treatment of vulnerable consumers closed in September 2020 and the FCA intends to publish further guidance on this matter imminently. Secondly, as discussed in the context of the amendments on a proposed duty of care, the FCA has announced that it will undertake further work to address any potential deficiencies in consumer protection, particularly by reviewing its principles for business. While the FCA delayed this work because of the pandemic, it aims to consult in the first quarter of 2021. I also assure the noble Lord that a number of other matters that he raised, such as the issue of buy now, pay later, will be discussed in subsequent groups of amendments.

I understand that these are probing amendments. I hope that noble Lords will take reassurance, from the measures that I have set out so far, of the Government’s commitment to this area and the commitment by the FCA from the work under way. However, as my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe has argued, the Government do not believe that further statutory duties on the FCA in this area is the right approach.

On the challenge of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, the Government see the value of considering the broader concept of financial well-being to include access to affordable credit and consumer protection, as well as financial education, as an important area for future work by the Government, the FCA and associated stakeholders.

I hope that the Government have demonstrated their commitment to taking this work forward, working closely with the FCA and a wide range of stakeholders, and that this provides sufficient reassurance to noble Lords of the Government’s commitment on this topic for them to withdraw their amendments.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

I have received no requests to speak after the Minister, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. I am deeply embarrassed by all the personal comments and blushed to my roots, which I hope was not too obvious on screen. The noble Lord, Lord Holmes, rightly pointed out the excellent work being carried out by many other agencies and bodies in this area as well as StepChange. I completely endorse his comments; there is a lot of good work going on.

I normally find myself aligned very closely with the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe—sometimes rather embarrassingly, given our respective party positions—but this time I seem to have completely confused her, for which I apologise. The noble Lord, Lord Blackwell, was right that there are two quite separate tracks here, as my noble friend Lord McNicol picked up on. One is setting up a regulatory environment within which more good behaviour and activity by firms enhances the overall capacity of the system to work well in terms of financial capability and well-being. The other is hoping for the wider context that is necessary for all this to happen—particularly starting with education, which is always a hard nut to crack. As the noble Lord rightly said, this could be picked up by employers, trade unions, wider agencies, anybody with an interest in seeing a holistic society using the non-cash elements that my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe was so scared of but yet so sprightly embraced in his unique style.

We all must learn how to operate with new technologies and new operations. My children do not use cash; they have not used cash for 10 years. They are all flashing out ridiculously brightly coloured cards and seem to have a much better track on what they are spending and how well they are doing than I ever did. I completely admit that. However, that is no excuse for me—I must get up there and be part of that process. But there is a role for Government, there is definitely a role for the FCA and the regulator; there is a role for companies that want to go down that track and have the capacity to do so, but there is no fixed agenda for that yet.

I wanted to hear a high-level endorsement by the Minister that this was something worth exploring and working for. She has given that, and I am very grateful. We can see this as a burgeoning programme of work which might well surprise us all in terms of where it might reach and what it might do. We are all rightly trying to support it in a way that will be most appropriate. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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Schedule 1 agreed.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

I remind Members to sanitise their desks and chairs before leaving the room.

Committee adjourned at 7.31pm.

Covid-19 Update

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Wednesday 14th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I assure the noble Lord that dialogue with local leaders at the local government level and between the devolved Administrations is ongoing. There is a lot of working together. Obviously, it is for the devolved Administrations to make judgments on their areas. The Chief Medical Officers also talk regularly, so we are working together closely.

I can also assure the noble Lord that there will be a significant communications campaign about the new tiers. Actually, if noble Lords go on to GOV.UK, there is a postcode checker and some very good, accessible information; we need to make sure that that is getting out to everyone because we need people to follow the rules so that we can hope to turn the tide on the virus.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, has withdrawn so I call the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, this was the most telling comment from the SAGE meeting on 21 September:

“The more rapidly interventions are put in place, and the more stringent they are, the faster the reduction in incidence and prevalence, and the greater the reduction in COVID-related deaths”.


Do the Government not owe it to the public to spell out for them the consequences for health and deaths of the decision to reject the advice from SAGE?