Victims and Courts Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 10th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister and her officials for the helpful meetings between Committee and Report and for the correspondence. I have retabled my amendment from Committee, which would place restrictions on parental responsibility, as Amendment 1, and signed Amendments 2 and 3 from the noble Lord, Lord Meston, which I support. I listened very carefully to the Minister and was grateful to be able to discuss the matter with her. We thank the Government for recognising that there must be a clear position on when those convicted of child sex abuse lose their parental rights. It has been iniquitous that parental rights have trumped the safeguarding of children, even when the person with parental rights has been convicted of child sexual abuse.

However, we are not convinced that this is strong enough and Amendment 1 includes all convicted of child sexual abuse. This is not about the punishment of the offender; it is about protecting all children. The organisation We Stand told us that research from the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse shows that natural parents are the highest offending group in intra-familial child sex abuse, which accounts for two-thirds of offences. As a result, children of convicted child sex offenders are at the most risk.

Any non-abusing or protective parent has a legal duty to protect their child from any child sex offender and at any level of offending. Too many have to fight the family court’s assumption about the rights of a parent, even one who is a convicted child sex abuse offender. Everything is stacked against the protective parent, with little or no legal aid to fight to protect their children and no right to know where the offender is, which also means court papers cannot be served to them. They have no right to the rehabilitation or risk assessments of the offender. That is also extraordinary: how can they comment on them or ask for assessments to be made?

Contrast that with the offender, who has the right to make multiple applications to vary or overturn protective orders and to make repeated requests for contact with the children. This is especially problematic in households where there has also been coercive control and domestic abuse, as repeated requests continue the abuse, but the family courts have too often seen it only through the eyes of the offending parent trying to assert their rights. Judges and other authorities, such as social services and Cafcass, are forced into a legislative anomaly: they must balance potential harm to a child from a convicted sex abuser parent with legislation stating that both parents’ involvement in the child’s life further supports the welfare of that child. This leads to inconsistent outcomes.

Even if the presumption is repealed, this fundamental belief is still enshrined in the introduction and guidance to the Children Act 1989’s key principles. Children of a child sexual abusing parent are often at greater risk than other children, who are automatically protected by criminal restrictions, such as sexual harm prevention orders and registration requirements.

On a technical point, the serious sexual offences listed in new Schedule ZA1 to the Children Act 1989 include both indecent imagery offences and contact offences. Imagery offences have a minimum sentence of a community order; this means we could well argue that serious offences under Clause 3 could be triggered at any sentencing threshold. However, the majority of sentences for indecent imagery tend to fall between three months and a year, while sentencing guidelines for contact offences start at a minimum of one year. Those convicted of these offences would be excluded from the Government’s proposal in Clause 3.

Surely, for safeguarding reasons, now is the time to change the legal responsibility, with the offending parent having to prove why they are safe to exercise parental responsibility, through rehabilitation courses and, of course, assessment by professionals. The position of the court must surely start with the assumption of the protection of the child, not the rights of the offender parent. I beg to move.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 2 and 3, which were laid by the noble Lord, Lord Meston, who apologises for being unable to be in the House today. Rather courageously and dangerously, he has asked me to present the two amendments in his name. I shall do my amateur best.

Amendment 2 would restrict the acquisition of parental responsibility by those convicted of serious sexual offences against a child. The Bill as drafted requires the Crown Court to prohibit convicted offenders from exercising parental responsibility and does so by requiring that the court makes an order when sentencing the offender. However, this would not and does not cover children of convicted offenders who are born after the sentencing hearing. As the current law stands, a convicted child sex offender could still acquire parental responsibility automatically for a child after sentencing—even one day after sentencing—leaving the mother and child unprotected from controlling or obstructive interference by the convicted father.

One accepts that many of the convicted fathers in such cases might not automatically acquire parental responsibility because they are not married to the mother, and it is very unlikely that the mother would then agree that the father should be included on the birth certificate. However, if the father and mother were still married to each other at the time of the child’s birth, the father would automatically acquire parental responsibility. To change that, under current law the mother would have to apply to the family court on notice to the father.

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[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Polak in his Amendment 7.

It is now rightly impossible for any public discussion of the Epstein files and grooming gangs—or rather child rape gangs—not to put victims front and centre. About a year ago, we were discussing child rape gangs in this House, and I flagged to the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, how the recent tragic news of the death of Virginia Guiffre demonstrated the long-term effects of child sexual abuse. I declared at that time my interest that my sister had suffered serious sexual abuse as a young girl and, thereafter, for the rest of her life, suffered long-term depressive and self-destructive effects. I mention that again simply to explain why I have signed the amendment. We can say that victims should be at the forefront but, without taking action, this could sound very much like virtue signalling.

I understand, as my noble friend Lord Polak has highlighted, that specialist domestic abuse and other trauma-focused services, particularly those supporting child victims of sexual abuse, have very high waiting lists, and that where counsellors with the necessary expertise are practising, funding is always inadequate to the need. I suspect that, even if sufficiently high levels of money were forthcoming, workforce shortages would become even more apparent. Have the Government done a needs analysis that would identify prevalence, the scale of the staff shortfall, how many more specialists are needed, how they could be trained and how potential candidates could be identified? Prevalence certainly appears very high. Could all professionals interacting with victims, including teachers, nurses, GPs, and police and prison officers, be given appropriate training in trauma-informed practice so that there was more of a whole-society approach?

I understand that this is straying a little from my noble friend Lord Polak’s amendment, but it gives us the opportunity to hear from the Government how they will put the victims of perpetrators such as Epstein and child rape gangs at the forefront, as they have promised to do.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I was very happy to put my name to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Polak, not least because he and I, every Thursday morning in the post-legislative scrutiny committee for the Domestic Abuse Act, hear from the sector exactly what is going on and, perhaps more pertinently, what is not going on.

The Minister, like me, is a great fan of the “child house” approach to treating children who have had the most appalling direct physical and sexual abuse. It demonstrates what best practice looks like. Best practice really makes an enormous difference and is incredibly efficient, is very incisive and can work very quickly. That is partly why His Majesty’s Government have thankfully decided to roll this out throughout England to a large degree; that is a great step forward.

As we take evidence, we are hearing again and again that there are examples of really good practice. I recognise that it is unrealistic to imagine that His Majesty’s Government are suddenly going to find coffers bursting with money to enable the whole panoply of support services that one would wish victims to be able to access—that is not going to happen. However, I appeal to the Government and their officials to identify those examples of really good or best practice that are making a difference, rather than taking a blanket approach and saying we need to try to cover all support services. Clearly, some are dramatically more effective than others.

My appeal to the Government is to try to strategically identify those support services that are making a huge difference. For example, two areas that make an enormous difference are the independent domestic violence advocates and the independent stalking advocates. The proof of the pudding in both those areas is that when those individuals are involved and work with the victim from very early on, first, the victim’s experience is transformed for the better, but secondly, and more pertinently from the point of view of the Ministry of Justice, there is a much higher chance of the case coming to court and there being a successful prosecution. Not only does it help the victim but it helps the Government achieve their laudable aim to reduce violence against women and girls.

I do not expect the Government to say that there is a magic wand and that Rachel Reeves is the Minister’s new best friend, but I hope that an approach to identifying services similar to the Lighthouse, which really make a performative difference, could be identified more strategically and assisted more proactively and in a more focused way.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I will focus on the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. We seem to have done a bit of mini-regrouping within the group, but I checked with my noble friend Lady Brinton and I think she will wind up the group while introducing her own amendments at the same time.

At the last stage the Minister resisted the proposal for more victim navigators on the basis that the service is already provided, but victim navigators are quite distinct in what they do from the Salvation Army and their subcontractors funded by the Home Office. As I said, I supported the amendment in Committee but I did express a reservation about the ambitious six-month period within which they could be rolled out. Victim navigators are collocated with police in the forces where they work—the term “embedded” with the police seems to be used quite often.

I was a member of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 Committee, and the comments on victim navigators in our report were under the heading “Evidence gathering”. That describes quite a lot of what they do. I will try not to repeat what other noble Lords have said, but the link between support of the victims and the criminal justice system is their job, filling a very specific gap with access to details of cases but with the independence to build trust. They are of great value to the police—and we know how difficult it is to get convictions in this area.

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[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 14; I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Polak, and noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for adding their names to it. It seeks to clarify the definition of a “crime of violence” in the criminal injuries compensation scheme when it refers to the abuse of a child that has happened online. I hope there will be a response to my arguments not dissimilar to the Minister’s response to Amendment 2—namely, that there appears to be a gap that is worthy of being looked into properly and systematically.

Survivors of technology-facilitated child sexual abuse—I am afraid that it has an acronym, TCSA—and other coercive online sexual offences may be refused compensation under the criminal injuries compensation scheme on the basis that the injury did not result from a “crime of violence”, despite the seriousness of the abuse and the criminal offences involved. Amendment 14 seeks to clarify that cases that involve “coercion”, “domination” or “compelled” sexual acts fall within the scope of the scheme.

I am afraid that it will probably not surprise your Lordships that the scale of online child sex abuse is going up dramatically. Over 7,000 offences of sexual communication with a child were recorded in 2023-24, and 122,768 child sexual abuse and exploitation offences were recorded in 2024, of which almost half—42%—had an online element. The criminal injuries compensation scheme obviously cannot accept all the applications made to it for support. Year on year, it has increasingly not been allowing some of the applications that are made. Nevertheless, the number of applications for support involving sexual abuse and sexual assault is going up even more quickly. Some 1,601 applicants who reported sexual assault were refused compensation in 2024-25. The number of refusals under this threshold has increased by just over one-quarter in two years. However, the scheme does not record detailed offence categories, so we do not know exactly how many of those referred to child sexual abuse situations.

To illustrate, I will briefly give an example of exactly what this involves. We are working with a Northern Ireland-based charity called the Marie Collins Foundation, which is particularly focused on trying to help victims of these offences. The foundation recently supported a child who was subjected to sustained online sexual coercion by an adult offender who used manipulation and threats to compel the child to perform sexual acts via digital communication. Over time, the offender established control through grooming, emotional manipulation and threats to expose the child if they did not comply with further sexual demands. The abuse caused significant psychological harm, including anxiety, shame and trauma, consistent with other forms of child sexual abuse.

When the victim applied to the criminal injuries compensation scheme, the claim was initially refused on the basis that the injury did not arise from a crime of violence. But the decision was subsequently overturned on appeal, recognising the seriousness of the abuse and the harm it caused. The case illustrates the uncertainty in how coercive online sexual abuse of children is interpreted within the scheme and the additional burden it places on victims, who have to pursue appeals to the scheme to try to get their case heard.

Amendment 14 seeks to provide clarity by confirming that cases that involve coercion, domination or compelled sexual acts, including those facilitated online, fall within the scope of the scheme. The amendment seeks to provide clarity rather than an expansion of the scheme. It would simply ensure that cases involving coercion, domination or compelled sexual acts, including those facilitated online, are recognised as crimes of violence for the purposes of compensation. This would help the survivors of serious sexual abuse and ensure they are not excluded due to uncertainty over the interpretation of the scheme.

I hope that we do not have any children in the Public Gallery at the moment. I will just briefly describe what some of this involves online. I have already mentioned blackmail, coercion, threats, domination, and emotional and psychological abuse. There is the creation and sharing of sexual images, livestreamed sexual activity and other sexual acts, fear, loss of autonomy, erosion of agency and long-term psychological harm. The children are sometimes asked or invited to insert various objects into parts of their body. Some of the things that happen are simply unspeakable. The purpose of the amendment is to draw this to the attention of the Government and to ask that this be looked at carefully and seriously, not least because, as we know, in so many cases happening in the online world, the volume and types of abuse are increasing exponentially.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, I added my name to Amendment 14, alongside that of my noble friend Lord Russell, and he has adequately explained the gap.

I started, unfortunately, looking at child sexual abuse in 2012. Unfortunately, in the period since then, I have had the misfortune to look at a great deal of child sexual abuse and I say that it is an act of violence against the person in the image.

While the noble Lord, Lord Russell, was speaking, I remembered one of the very first experiences I had. I filmed an interview with a young girl at the moment she realised that the person online, who she thought was her lover, was indeed a groomer. In the next moment, she realised that she had been recorded, and in the next moment, she realised that the recording had been shared. In those moments, I watched a heartbreak, faith-break and trust-break. That young child tried to commit suicide twice in the following summer. We were able to get her help and, thankfully, she is now a survivor and not a victim. I am standing up only to stay that what happens online does not stay online. What happens online is violence. What happens to children online must not be ignored by the law.

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[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

Given the incidence of appeals where initially it was ruled that it was not a crime of violence but, on it being investigated further, it was acknowledged that it did count as a crime of violence, can the Government request that that be looked into more carefully and closely? The incidence of such crimes, which may or may not be viewed as crimes of violence, is increasing rapidly. Clarification from the board as to what criteria it is using, so that those who have suffered have a much clearer idea of whether that might be included, would be extremely helpful to them and save a lot of time and anguish.

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I will certainly take that away and write to the noble Lord. A number of things are in issue here. For example, I do not know how many appeals across the board are successful. It may be that it is a greater number for this category of cases; it may be a smaller number. I simply do not know, so I will write to the noble Lord.

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[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I have tabled Amendment 10 in this group, on bereaved victims of murder abroad. I have also signed the three amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Russell, on victims of mentally disordered offenders.

To speak briefly to those amendments, which we are happy to support from these Benches, it is very important that hospital managers and senior clinicians take a balanced approach regarding victims of offenders who are detained under the Mental Health Act. Unfortunately, hospital managers and clinicians often withhold data that could be released which would assist victims—and worse, not even tell them that they are withholding it. The amendments set out a balanced approach for hospitals and would require written reasons to be given to the victim for any decision to withhold some or all of the information requested. The third amendment would create an independent route for victims to appeal where a hospital manager has decided not to share information.

I turn to my Amendment 10, which seeks a pathway for bereaved victims of murder abroad. We had an extensive debate on this in Committee, and I am grateful to the Minister for the very helpful and informative meeting with Home Office and FCDO staff who specialise in this area, including those who liaise with the coroners service and support victims whose family members have been murdered abroad.

With around 80 British nationals being murdered abroad each year, the numbers may appear low, but families are not just navigating the horror of a murder, which is bad enough at home in the UK, but doing so in a country where legal systems will differ. There are also likely to be language barriers. Even worse is managing the complex logistical issues of repatriation of the body—which, speaking from personal family experience, is hard even with a natural death—as well as coping with limited police updates from afar.

The problem is that these people are not recognised as formal victims of crime because the murder occurred outside the United Kingdom, nor do they receive any of the relevant protections and entitlements given to their UK equivalents. These Benches thank the Government for their recently updated family information guide on murder and manslaughter abroad, and on how the differing parts of the Government will work. We believe this is a good start and we understand that these new arrangements will take time to bed in.

The Minister mentioned in Committee that the homicide service, which is currently run by Victim Support, is being retendered at the moment. Is there any news yet as to whether the budget for that service is being absolutely sustained? I realise that times are hard, but we cannot have a service that cannot function and support these families because it does not have the resources that it needs. It is clear from the guide that the homicide service is the key that keeps on top of all the different moving parts and keeps the victims informed.

However, it is early days, and I know from talking to Murdered Abroad that there are still real concerns about how this will work effectively. Too often, despite the best intentions of the very willing staff across the board, families still struggle for information, support or translation services. That is why we have retabled our amendment, which sets out the application of the victims’ code in respect to victims of murder, manslaughter or infanticide abroad. We do not seek for these families to be treated exactly the same as UK victims. Rather, the amendment seeks an appendix to the victims’ code that sets out which services they can access, and only those.

I hope that the Minister feels that this is a supportive mechanism which would give core strength to the excellent but invisible work of those in the Home Office, the FCDO and our embassies, and the coroners service, as well as of Murdered Abroad. Above all, it would support the bereaved families at the worst time of their lives. At present, I am minded to test the opinion of the House, but I really hope for a more positive response from the Minister on the recognition of the status of these victims.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I was pleased to add my name to Amendment 10, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. I thank the Minister for the very helpful meeting that we had with the FCDO and the officials charged with this responsibility. The person in charge of it, who is very impressive, has the slightly alarming job title of director, consular and crisis, which I do not think I would particularly like to have on my business card, but she and her team were very reassuring and forthcoming.

For those of us who have been pushing repeatedly in different pieces of legislation to acknowledge that the families of those who are murdered abroad have slightly been left out in the cold—it has been rather Russian roulette as to whether they have been fortunate enough to have interacted with a consular team who have been on the ball, helpful and proactive—one of the effects of that pushing is that the message appears to have taken root. We were reassured, on questioning that team in quite a lot of detail about the training they do and the support they are able to give, so I am extremely grateful for that.

However, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. To have a more holistic, clearer, and more efficient process to allow the victims, who are, usually, living in this country to access help, support and advice quickly, to have some processes in place similar to what UK victims of other crimes receive under the victims’ code, and to have a more proximate approach for those families of those people who are murdered abroad is a justified cause. I hope that the Minister will be able to clarify slightly more than she was able to in Committee.

I turn briefly to Amendments 17, 18 and 19, which are about the response that victims of mentally disordered offenders get—or do not get, because there are various systemic problems within the NHS, which has its own rules about the type of information it can give. That means a slight lack of clarity for people in terms of understanding exactly what they can and cannot do. The Minister said very helpfully in Committee that her officials are working closely with the Department of Health and Social Care to consider routes by which this could be improved. I hope that she will be able to update the House on the progress they are making and whether there will be any positive outcomes from that.

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

My Lords, I will express support for Amendment 20 moved by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen; my noble friend Lady Brinton will address the other amendments in the group. Amendment 20, to remove Clause 12 from the Bill, may be technical but it is important because the regrettable fact is that, as is now well known, the relevant authorities and the police lack the resources to prosecute all crime reported to them. As a result, a significant proportion of reported crime goes insufficiently investigated and, too often, unprosecuted.

That is true across a whole range of offences, from shop theft to some offences of violence and many cases of fraud. There is therefore a practical need for private prosecutions, and that practical need is complementary to the traditional—and we would say justified—view that it is not and should not be solely for the state to prosecute breaches of the criminal law. It is also open to private citizens and organisations to bring private prosecutions, and that is an important aspect of access to justice.

It is certainly true that there are some cases where prosecutions require the consent of the DPP or the Attorney-General, but those tend to be special cases where Parliament has decided that that restriction is appropriate. An important feature of private prosecutions in this jurisdiction, and of their successfully being brought, is that the prosecution is entitled to recover the bulk of the prosecution costs from central funds by payment at a reasonable rate; the noble and learned Lord has stressed the importance of the reasonable rate.

The noble and learned Lord is right to say that a significant proportion of such prosecutions are brought by charities, including Macmillan and Help for Heroes. Those charities are often the victims of fraudulent schemes. Other private prosecutions are, of course, brought by commercial organisations, notably retailers which suffer substantial losses as a result of theft from shops. They may be commercial organisations, and they may have a commercial motivation for the prosecutions, but as a matter of simple and instinctive justice and a matter of principle, it is not and should not be the sole responsibility of the state to initiate prosecutions. Nor should the state fail to assist financially those who bring meritorious prosecutions against those who transgress the criminal law. When I say assist financially, I mean bear the costs of successful prosecutions, in large part.

The fact is that organisations may be deterred from bringing private prosecutions if their costs recovery is capped at a level that makes them unaffordable or uneconomic. Furthermore, if frauds against charities or offences against others, whether not for profit or commercial, cannot be prosecuted, the prevalence of those offences may be increased, to the general detriment of society as a whole. Yet, Clause 12, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, said, would introduce a mechanism for capping the amounts payable to prosecutors for their costs and cannot be read in any other way.

My understanding is that the Government say they will consult on this proposal to cap prosecution costs recovery but want to see a reserved power in this Bill first. We think that is the wrong way round. The Government should carry out their consultation and then, in the light of the consultation, abandon, as we would hope, the idea of a cap on costs recovery or introduce any necessary legislation, following and taking into account the results of the consultation. It follows that Clause 12 is an utterly undesirable clause. It is not worth saving and cannot be saved, and we therefore support Amendment 20, which would remove it from this Bill.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I will comment briefly on Amendment 29. During the passage of the Sentencing Act, we discussed the concern about early release schemes for those categories of offenders in some detail. As a result, about two weeks ago, the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, kindly had a meeting after the passage of the Act. The Domestic Abuse Commissioner, the Victims’ Commissioner and the noble Baroness, Lady May of Maidenhead, were there to talk to the Minister about our concerns.

The outcome of that—had I thought of it, I would have spoken to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, to inform him—is agreement by the MoJ to form a working party with the offices of both the commissioners and their teams to review the scheme and the training of the Probation Service and start using some of the expertise of the third sector and its knowledge of the perpetrators and experience of the victims. That will be fed into the training of the Probation Service. There is a very positive move going on within the MoJ which I hope and think will directly address the concerns the noble and learned Lord mentioned when he was speaking to Amendment 29.

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

My Lords, I have a brief observation about Clause 12. The costs of private prosecution mean that money disappears from the overall Treasury contribution to the justice system. I think we should pause long and hard before we remove the power of the Government to control those costs. My own experience is that the costs of private prosecutions can, in many cases, be excessive. They are not subject to the rigorous discipline of CPS costs. If we deny the Government the power to regulate, we will come to regret it.

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[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, in Committee, we welcomed the Government’s recognition that there are practical issues in ensuring that victims are told of the sentencing within the 28-day limit, and under the present rules they cannot ask the Attorney-General to review the sentence as unduly lenient. My Amendments 26 and 27 would specifically allow for the 28-day timeframe to be extended in exceptional circumstances, which may include, but is not limited to, delays in being told. It also strengthens the route for victims to be told with a duty to inform victims.

In Committee, we had an extensive probing debate about increasing 26 days to 56 days, and Amendment 25 from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, relays that in Amendment 24. However, my amendment tries to focus entirely on giving victims the right, if something has gone wrong and only in the most exceptional circumstances, to ask the AG to extend the period for a submission. We genuinely think that this safety net is the best way to do that. If the Government accept the formal route to notifying victims set out in Amendment 27, the most common reason for not being notified should almost completely stop. Other exceptional circumstances—including, perhaps, a victim being in hospital during the period—might be permitted.

The Minister was concerned that too many expectations would be raised, but we have not pressed on detail. It would be down to the AG’s office to provide a guidance note for victims that would notify them of their rights, as well as the type of extraordinary circumstance. Currently, victims do not have access to this, and because of other problems about who should inform them, their right to ask for consideration of an unduly lenient sentence falls. This should be remedied and, subject to the Minister’s response, I may wish to test the opinion of the House.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly. I put my name to both amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, which we first laid in Committee. In essence, what the Minister said when she wound up this group in Committee was “We are listening and I am making a listening speech”. I hope that, even though she has been on her feet for much of today, she is still in listening mode. I do appreciate, as I think we all do, the way she has approached both Committee and Report; it is a refreshing change from some experiences one has had in recent years. I look forward to what I hope will be a positive “listening” response.

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

My Lords, I express my thanks to Claire Waxman, the Victims’ Commissioner, and to Tracey Hanson and Katie Brett, who have campaigned with great commitment on behalf of victims.

In Committee, much was said on all sides about the importance of the unduly lenient sentence scheme in ensuring consistency. As all who participated know, it is not an appeal for victims who are dissatisfied by the length or type of sentence: rather, it is a legal safeguard, exercisable by the Attorney-General, to correct sentences that fall outside the appropriate range. As such, it is a constitutional safeguard vested in the Attorney-General as guardian of the public interest, not a mechanism for anyone to relitigate sentencing. That said, victims will often play a vital role in drawing cases to the Attorney-General’s attention for consideration: we recognise and indeed encourage that.

As is generally known, the time limit is a strict one: 28 days with no exceptions. The Government are aware of and have listened to the comments of the victims and those supporting them, who have long complained that the system just is not working for them; in particular, that they are often not told about the ULS scheme; and, in any event, 28 days is not long enough.

Against that background, I turn to the amendments concerning the time limits, in the names of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and the noble Lords, Lord Russell and Lord Sandhurst. Your Lordships will be aware that the Government had been considering tabling their own amendment to increase the time limit. As I said in Committee, we hoped to bring something forward on Report. Today, I take up the invitation of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, to set out why we have not done so.

This is fundamentally a Bill for victims. Unsurprisingly, victims have told us that they want to be listened to by the Government. Both victims and the Victims’ Commissioner have told us clearly that increasing the time limit to 56 days would not address the problem they face. They have told us that any time limit, whether it is 28 days, 56 days or 365 days, is meaningless if they are not informed about the ULS scheme in the first place.

Plainly, all victims should be told. There are mechanisms in place for doing so, but we have heard enough from victims to make it clear to us that there are occasions on which this is not happening. To paraphrase what I said today in an earlier group, a right is not much of a right if you do not know about it.

To the victims, I say: we have heard you and we will continue to listen. The victims asked us not to bring forward our amendment extending the time limit to 56 days, and so we have not done so. This explains why we cannot accept Amendments 24 and 25.

I turn to Amendment 26 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. I thank her for not only raising the issue but for the positive and constructive talks we have had. As some of your Lordships may have gathered, the noble Baroness and I have been spending rather a lot of time together over the last few weeks. I have enjoyed every moment, of course. I can understand why it is felt that an exception from the strict time limit would be a good thing, but there are a number of issues with it, and I will try to deal with these briefly.

First, it seeks to treat a symptom of the problem rather than tackling the cause. The underlying problem is that some victims are apparently not being told about the ULS scheme. The noble Baroness’s amendment seeks to address that by creating a mechanism to bypass the time limit if that happens. But this Government are not here to patch up the symptoms; the Government’s view is that we must address the root cause—victims are telling us that they are not being informed—rather than create a mechanism that responds only after the problem has occurred.

The second issue is the question of what exceptional circumstances would mean in practice. The Government’s concern is that the amendment will be self-defeating, because “exceptional” has its ordinary meaning—something unusual, not typical—and cannot be exhaustively defined in legislation, but something that is not genuinely unusual cannot be described as exceptional. Given that the noble Baroness’s reason for tabling the amendment is, regrettably, that victims do not get told about it, if they are not told, it cannot be exceptional. This is very likely to apply to the very cases that would not be able to take advantage of the law. I hope the noble Baroness will understand why the Government cannot accept the amendment and that she will work with me and my officials as we look to address the real issue: ensuring that victims are notified of the scheme in the first place.

Amendment 30 in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, would require a public consultation. The Law Commission did exactly this. The Law Commission has held a public consultation on the ULS scheme, including specific questions about the 28-day time limit. Holding another one would be a waste of taxpayers’ money. I hope your Lordships will join me in looking forward to the commission’s final report when it is published later this year. The Government will, of course, consider its findings carefully.

I turn briefly to the remaining amendments, which seek to place a statutory duty on a designated government department or the Crown Prosecution Service to notify the victims. Again, there is no issue between us about the fact that the Government need to ensure that every victim is told. I entirely agree with what the noble Baroness is trying to achieve, but I want to persuade her that there is a better way of doing it.

The amendments seek to create a duty which already exists. Police in witness care units are already responsible for informing victims about the unduly lenient sentence scheme. Using primary legislation to try to make people do what they are already required to do is not the best way of going about things. These amendments impose a duplicative statutory duty, potentially with different timeframes or differing lines of accountability. It must be self-evident that this risks confusion rather than clarity, particularly where concurrent statutory duties could blur operational responsibilities. The fear is that the victims might actually, as a result, end up worse off.

I therefore ask your Lordships to work with us, the Victims’ Commissioner and the victims themselves to get to the heart of the issue and develop practical, workable improvements to notification and awareness. We want every victim to be properly informed, in good time, so that they can exercise their rights with confidence. Our focus is on fixing the long-standing problems with notification rather than changing the time limits themselves.

We already have the commitment of the Attorney-General’s Office, the CPS, the Home Office and the National Police Chiefs’ Council to work closely with us to improve awareness of the scheme. They have all urgently assessed what actions can be taken in their respective areas. There is a quite a detailed plan.

Given the time, I will undertake to write to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, rather than read out the next four pages of my speech, for which I do not think anybody would thank me. For these reasons, I ask the noble and learned Lord to withdraw his amendment.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 2nd March 2026 Lords Chamber

A risk is something that can be mitigated. A harm is something already done. This is an opportunity to deal with a risk here and now—not maybe and not sometime in the future. I beg to move.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Kidron—I was very happy to put my name to this. The noble Baroness and others in this Chamber were at a meeting that we had at lunchtime today with a variety of really knowledgeable experts in this area. Even for those of us who have been to these sorts of meetings in the last few years fairly regularly, the latest news is really deeply shocking. I cannot even begin to tell your Lordships how shocking it is.

Indeed, there was an expert from Finland there who is about to deliver a very comprehensive analysis of the status quo, which will be delivered to Ofcom and published shortly. She was unable to give any details; however, she did tell us—I must confess that I am not that shockable, but I did find this pretty shocking—that the earliest instance that this research has discovered of a child being abused sexually was a child who was seven hours old, if noble Lords can believe that. What is more, we were told that there are manuals available on the web and the dark web which tell perpetrators, if they wish to sexually abuse newly born infants, how to do so in such a way that it is not able to be medically identified.

It reminds one slightly of the recent, very brave, interview that Gisèle Pelicot gave, which some of your Lordships may have seen—if noble Lords have not, I recommend it—in which it appeared that the reason that Gisèle did not realise what was happening to her was that her husband had availed himself of sufficient medical knowledge to know that, when he drugged her, he also put muscle relaxants into the medication. The normal physical reaction of anyone’s body, particularly a female body, when it is being violated is to resist it and seize up; in the case where you had muscle relaxants administered, of course, that was not the case, so, when Gisèle woke up, she did not feel well, but she did not realise what had happened. There are manuals on the web telling perpetrators how to do that with newly born infants in order that it is not identified. This is the world we are living in.

I am reminded of an analogy that we often used to use when I was a management consultant, when we were trying to indicate to a business that things were getting slightly out of control and not going the way they wanted: the parable of the frog in the water, which is gently increasing in temperature until the point that it realises it is being boiled alive, by which time it is too late. If you look at the scale of the abuse that is happening and the way in which artificial intelligence is accelerating this exponentially, it is never too late, but I can only add to the words of my noble friend Lady Kidron: how much longer do we have to keep on beseeching the Government to listen?

I reminded the meeting of a meeting I had a few months ago with a Minister from another department and her team. The Minister was female and all the advisers were female. We asked them, “How many of you have children, and what age are they?” They told us, and we then described some of the things that are happening to children of that age. You could see a visible change in demeanour and body language. This is not something that is happening to other people, or happening remotely on the BBC news or online; it is happening to us and our children, and it becomes deeply personal. The reason why the noble Baroness and others of us feel so passionately about this is that it is happening all around us—to our children, grandchildren, nephews and nieces—and we appear to be blind to what is going on.

We are blind in the sense of finding solutions that will work and blind to even trying solutions that may not be perfect but at least indicate a level of intent to do something about it. The companies that are the aim of the noble Baroness’s amendment know what they are doing; they are aware of what they are allowing. They are probably doing some risk analysis, which is probably not very good reading, but they know exactly what they are doing. To try to limit the Government’s approach to only those engines that have clearly been designed primarily to produce child sexual abuse material is the tip of the iceberg. It is all the other ones that are doing the damage. Until and unless we face up to that, zero in on them in such a way that they have to pay attention, and make it seriously painful for them, we are not going to change anything.

I appeal to the House, should the noble Baroness decide to take this to a vote, to send a clear signal to the Government about what is going on. Those of us in this House who are involved in this are frequently approached by the Government’s own Back-Benchers from another place—many of whom have young children —who are deeply concerned about what is going on. They are desperate for their Government to show real leadership and, rather than having consultation after consultation, to take action. So I appeal to the Government to look at this very seriously and I appeal to the House, if the noble Baroness decides to divide, to go with her.

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The amendment will use existing regulatory policies and take privacy issues into consideration. It will place a responsibility on manufacturers and distributors who are already subject to product safety law. We owe it not only to the survivors of child sexual abuse material but to any potential victim who is being targeted right now as we speak. I urge the Government to please, please, accept this amendment.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful, as I am sure the whole House is, to the noble Lord, Lord Nash, for tabling this amendment. We are all familiar with regular updates on our smartphones that eat more and more of the memory and use up more and more of the battery. They happen systematically, usually for security reasons, very regularly and seamlessly. However, I was not aware, until the noble Lord tabled his amendment and we had some discussions and meetings around it, that the technology that we are talking about to intercede and stop our devices being able to access or use this sort of material already exists to some degree on our telephones. Who among us who has an iPhone, like me, knew that the software to prevent and screen child sexual abuse material already exists but can be activated only if you go into the parental controls and turn it on—at which point it then starts working? I had no idea that that was embedded in my phone.

The technology exists. The large manufacturers of these gadgets already have access to that technology. In some instances, they have already developed it to a very sophisticated level but, for all sorts of reasons, have chosen not to roll it out. One of the major arguments used against this sort of thing being rolled out is from the free speech brigade—one of whose protagonists I am glad to see is not in the Chamber today. They will always say that free speech trumps everything else. It is an unfortunate choice of verb, but that is the argument put forward.

But the reality is that the technology we are talking about works in such a way that in no way, shape or form does it prevent free speech. It does not in any way, shape or form intervene with those platforms which are encrypted. It operates separately to those platforms but works in such a way that, without revealing what is going on in those encrypted messages, it stops the sort of material that we are talking about actually getting involved in the first place. In my view, that is not exactly an interdiction of free speech.

For all these reasons, I ask the Government to look at this very carefully and closely. We are not dealing with some wonderful space age technology that has yet to be developed; we are talking about technology which already exists. There are individuals who have a huge amount of knowledge and experience in this area. It is probably a brilliant example of His Majesty’s Government pursuing one of their avowed aims, which is to work more closely with foreign jurisdictions together in this sort of area.

For all these reasons, I hope that the Government will give a positive response, and that we will not have, “Oh, it is very difficult”, or, even worse, that we will have a consultation. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, in speaking on issues related to online safety, I seem to spend most of my time apologising for the fact that the Act is not as up-to-date, efficient or effective as it should be, but here is another example of where technology has overtaken the good work that we did all those years ago to try to bring forward that legislation.

I learned about this at the same meeting that has been referred to already. At first sight, it looks as though it is an answer to a lot of problems that we have with the way in which younger people in particular interact with the internet. Those of us who were involved in pursuing what is now the Online Safety Act will be aware that we were largely looking at the user end of the material and cycle, looking at the apps and their interactions, that were being generated by those who were involved in servicing the internet. We did not look at technology in the hardware side at all and had no real thought about anything that we were dealing with in the then Bill affecting it. Yet this seems a very interesting and easy-to-adopt technology that would solve a lot of problems in relation to issues about the spread of material, which we would think should not be available where there are things like age bars or other means of providing gaps in the access to it.

There are always going to be problems with how we manage the changeover between childhood and adulthood, and we are aware that the technology is moving fast on that as well. It may well be that what is current today may be out of date by the time this Bill becomes law. But the Government should look very closely at the way in which this technology operates to prevent, at the equipment level, access to material which should not be seen by children particularly.

There will, as the noble Lord, Lord Russell, has said, be issues about free speech, and I do not think we should underestimate those. There are obviously ways in which this could be used against societal values; but for the particularity of how children are to be protected, making it impossible for them to access material, which they should by law not see, on the equipment they buy seems a very useful way forward, and I commend it to Ministers.

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[Baroness Shawcross-Wolfson (Con)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Owen of Alderley Edge for the tenacity and expertise that she has brought to this issue. I acknowledge how far the Government have moved in response to her work and thank the Minister for her work and that of her department on this issue and willingness to listen. We now have a large number of government amendments to address concerns across take-down, screenshotting and semen issues. There has been huge progress. However, I support all my noble friend’s amendments and will speak very briefly to two of them.

Amendment 273 is, as we have heard, needed to ensure that those who perpetrate intimate image abuse are not allowed to keep the images. As it stands, it is extraordinary that perpetrators can leave court with intimate images of their victims still in their possession in some form. That cannot be allowed to continue. I hope that noble Lords from across the whole House will support my noble friend if we need a Division on this.

On the take-down service, I gently press the Government, as my noble friend has set out, on how their approach will deliver the protection for victims that her Amendments 274 and 276 would. The Prime Minister promised the public “one and done”, as we have heard: once an abusive image is identified, it should come down from all platforms permanently. That is the right promise. However, as my noble friend has set out, it is not clear that the Government’s proposal will deliver on that promise. Without a centralised comprehensive register, I do not see how it can be delivered. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response on this point.

The Government’s amendments reflect genuine and welcome progress on these issues. I very much hope that the Minister can take the final steps that are needed today.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, for her tenacity and the way in which she has consistently spoken up for the victims.

I will speak briefly to Amendments 273 and 274. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, in his usual reassuringly expensive way, managed to pinpoint what this amendment is about. In effect, it would give courts an undertaking that they have a duty to see that the images that somebody has been convicted for taking and disseminating are destroyed. That seems unarguable. I hope that the Minister, with all her experience, can demonstrate why that should not be the case, because for almost everybody in the Chamber it seems to be a no-brainer.

In Amendment 274, we are revisiting some of the discussions that we had in Committee and on Report during the passage of the Online Safety Bill on the difficulty that victims have in being left to their own devices to deal with this, platform by platform, because each platform deals—or does not deal—with complaints in a different way. To have the indignity of having had something unmentionable done to you, which could happen on more than one platform, and then to have to individually pursue each platform and find that each platform has a different way of dealing with it and different hoops to go through, is piling injury upon insult.

We argued as well as we could during the passage of what became the Act that there should be much more thought given to the experience of victims as they try to confront what has happened to them and bring the organisations that have inflicted it on them, or enabled it, to book.

The way in which it has currently emerged from the Act and the way in which victims are still experiencing this huge variability and inconsistency is clearly an injustice, and I hope the Government will recognise that. Even if they are not ready and able to do something about it this evening, we would be most grateful for an undertaking that they will look at this very carefully and come back with something that the noble Baroness and the rest of us might find acceptable.

[Lord Mann (Lab)]

My Lords, I find it hard to comprehend any reason why anybody on the Labour Benches could possibly contemplate not voting for these amendments. On Amendment 273, if the argument is, “Oh, leave it with us”, that is not convincing. The Labour Party has some problems with young women voters and problems with women voters; it has problems with all voters actually at the moment. There has to be more than “Leave it with us” as a response.

I say to male Labour Party members—I am speaking to the Labour Party, but I want to emphasise the point —that I have no intention of going back to my daughters and granddaughters without this, or something equivalent or better, going through. If the Labour Party thinks that it can stop that, it is a moment of some crisis.

That is not necessarily what I am hearing from the Minister’s opening remarks, but I have no intention of doing anything that would stop this, in this form or a better one, becoming law. I think I once met the Minister in her former life, but I have not had the pleasure of meeting her since she has been a Minister here. I found it refreshing that she had already made a number of—“concessions” is the wrong word—discussed and thought-through changes, having been prepared to listen. I thought that was refreshing; we are not hearing or seeing enough of Ministers who are prepared to do that. It is a weakness in all Governments in recent times, so it is very refreshing.

I hope to hear how we are going to accept these changes, because there is not a case to answer, in relation to Amendment 273, that this should be stopped. I am looking forward to a continuity of the very welcome approach, which will make my remarks totally redundant by showing that there is a new spirit emerging in how we work to get the best possible legislation that we can all be proud of.

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[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, briefly, I support the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin. It has been a very grim afternoon, I have to say, repeatedly hearing some of the most horrendous things that can happen to women and children. I say to the Minister, for whom I have a great deal of respect and who spoke passionately—a word normally associated with me—that this is still too little, too late and too long across a number of these issues. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Levitt, is relatively new in the House, but we have been debating these things for eight years and I remember having this exact discussion during the Online Safety Bill. We have to just move on. We cannot keep on saying that it moves quickly and then allowing ourselves to move this slowly.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, made a really strong case that online porn affects real life. It is real-life violence and there is this unbelievably vast overlap with child sexual abuse. It is that mess that we have to see as one and, in that sense, the noble Baroness made the case for all of her amendments. I want to quickly mention government Amendment 272, which establishes an offence if a person makes or adapts, or

“supplies or offers to supply a thing, for use as a generator of … intimate images”.

What has happened to that amendment is exactly the same as what happened to the child sexual abuse amendment that has the same form. It deals with intentionality and says: “If you absolutely intend to do this, it will be illegal. But if it happens in general, on any old piece of software that somebody hasn’t bothered to train properly or put protections in, then you’re not caught”. I believe that is what the noble Baroness has in her broader amendment about software.

I really want to make the point that there seems to be a reluctance to catch general- purpose technology in these issues of child abuse, violence against women, intimate image abuse and pornography, and I hope that the Government are listening. We cannot avoid general-purpose technology if that is what is spreading, creating and making this situation available across communities. It is in that space that so many children first see porn. It is in that space that so many women are abused and that so much child sexual abuse is present.

I urge the Minister to think about the breadth and not just the intentionality, because in my view it does not really matter whether it is accidental on the part of the company. I finish by saying that I had the privilege of meeting Yoshua Bengio last week, who is absolutely central to the development of AI and neural networks, and so on. He said, and I paraphrase: show me the incentive and I will show you the design.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly, partly as a male of the species, since we are largely responsible for the situation we are describing. We are behind these business models, we are the sex that is making all the money out of it, and, in most cases, we are the abusers. It behoves us to acknowledge that and speak up about it.

I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin. As a mother of young children, she has, on our behalf, subsumed herself for over two years in a world that most of us can barely imagine. That must have been an extraordinarily unpleasant and difficult experience. I pay tribute to her for doing it, because I am not sure many of us would have taken that on or lasted the course.

With that in mind, given the time and thought that she has given to this, the number of experts she has spoken to, the number of international parameters and comparators she has taken into account in looking at this, and the detailed way in which she has analysed the business models that underline this highly profitable business, it behoves all of us, and particularly the Government, to listen very carefully. The amendments that she has brought forth are not something that she dreamed up overnight; they are based on her detailed and painful knowledge of exactly how this business operates. She is identifying some gaps in the laudable approach the Government are taking to try to do something about this.

With my business experience hat on, I say that a major fault that businesses make is overpromising and underdelivering. His Majesty’s Government are in grave danger of doing exactly that in many of these areas to do with violence against women and girls. It is wonderful to have the headlines and to say, “We are taking this seriously and we are doing something about it”, but the devil is in the detail, and the detail is effective implementation. To effectively implement, you have to understand the business model, and, as people have said previously, you have to be prepared to disrupt it.

[Baroness Shawcross-Wolfson (Con)]

My Lords, more than 40 years ago, Parliament ensured that pornographic material that was deemed too degrading, too explicit or too dangerous could not be distributed. Parliament never changed its mind, but technology overtook the law, which is why we now have the absurd situation where content is illegal when viewed on a DVD but legal and freely available on the internet. That is why we desperately need Amendment 298 to deliver online/offline parity. I too pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Bertin, her team and all the other noble Lords in this House who have, as we have heard, campaigned tirelessly on this issue for many years.

Moving on to my noble friend’s other amendments, I support all of them, but I will speak briefly to three of them. I welcome the Government’s commitment to tackle incest pornography but, without including stepfamily relationships, this new amendment will have little to no impact on the actual content available. The videos will be the same; they will merely be retitled. My noble friend has already explained the popularity and violence of the “barely legal” teen pornography content. Other countries have already legislated to prevent this type of material proliferating. Amendment 300A would ensure that we did the same.

Finally, Amendment 300 is about preventing exploitation and abuse. The porn industry makes money from violence against girls and women. It is an industry that we know profits from human trafficking. This is not an industry that we can trust to do the right things. So I strongly support this amendment, and I very much hope that my noble friend will test the opinion of the House on this and all her other amendments if Ministers are not able to move further.

Victims and Courts Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 11th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as an anti-racism adviser to the Labour leadership. I added my name to Amendment 62 tabled by my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti. I hope noble Lords understand why I have done this, given my years of campaigning for race equality, in the criminal justice space in particular. Our amendment is essential but also modest and proportionate. We do not say that creative expression can never be admissible in criminal trials. We just say that there must be a strict rule against racial prejudice in particular. It is not new in our system to try to ensure that prejudice associated with criminal evidence should not outweigh its probative value, nor, unfortunately, is it new to find the police and the prosecution system working against people of colour when they should be protecting everyone from all our diverse communities equally. As my noble friend said, we would not dream of prosecuting a middle-class, middle-aged, white person for crimes on the basis of them writing or enjoying crime fiction. Why then are we happily prosecuting young Black men and boys on the basis of rap and drill music? I think we all know why. We talk about equality before the law, but 28 years after the Lawrence inquiry, we know the principle is still not a reality.

My noble friend Lady Chakrabarti mentioned a young Mancunian man, a model student, a head boy aspiring to be a law student who had an unconditional offer to study law at the University of Birmingham—until the police and the prosecutors wrongly mistook him for a youngster in a nine-second video in which drill music was playing in the background. Through reliance on this ridiculous evidence, he was convicted of violent conspiracy. His conviction was overturned, but only after he served three years in prison. I urge the Committee to support our amendment and my noble friends in the Government to accept it.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to speak to Amendment 61. In doing a little background on this, I looked at the Law Society’s response to the MoJ call for evidence, which it produced last April. I wish to read two brief excerpts, because I think they are both particularly pertinent to what we are talking about. The first says:

“But given the increasing complexity of computational systems, computers should not be assumed to be operating correctly. Instead”—


this is important, because this is what other jurisdictions outside the UK systematically do—

“it should be evidenced and demonstrated through assurance, regular review, and disclosure of the technical standards applied by the system”.

That is what happens in Germany. That is what happens in France. That is what mostly happens in the United States.

Secondly, returning to the issue of artificial intelligence, the Law Society has been thinking about this and is clearly very worried about it. I quote again:

“Careful consideration needs to be given to emerging AI technologies that overlap with but go beyond the scope of this call for evidence. For AI, an additional layer of certification for meeting internationally recognised standards is important to ensure accountability and transparency, especially if they were designed and developed”—


which they mostly are—

“outside of the jurisdiction … Attention must be given to the ability for domestic regulation and requirements to be adhered to for computer systems and AI tools that are built outside of the jurisdiction”.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, it is six years since the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and I were among the members of a newly formed committee that looked at—I do not think I have got the title quite right—advanced technology in the justice system. We were concerned, among other things, about the need for a human in the loop and whether it was possible to have a human in the loop. We were given very firm assurances by two Home Secretaries, which I do not think convinced the committee at all.

We were also concerned about the attitude, “X must be right because the computer says so”. Have we actually moved on from that? I do not think so. On that basis —and was it my noble friend who added facial recognition into the mix?—we support the amendment.

I am deliberately going fairly fast because I do not need to add a whole lot to what has already been said. On Amendment 62, there have been a number of occasions when I have heard a rapper and realised how very clever the work was. I really admired what I heard. Then I thought back to the occasion decades ago when my father started criticising my musical taste and calling it Simon and Godawful. Tastes change; generations move on and develop. I cannot speak to the detailed content of all rap and drill, but I think we are in danger of dismissing the importance of this music to the generation that produces it.

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[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

That is exactly what the Government are evaluating. I cannot go any further than that today, but those are all the things that are being considered. I cannot go any further than to say that I am listening.

I turn to Amendment 62, in the names of my noble friends Lady Chakrabarti and Lady Lawrence. I am very aware of these issues, particularly in relation to rap and drill. I knew about this amendment, but in the course of my practice and when I was a judge I have been to a number of lectures on the subject and read a number of articles, including some by Keir Monteith, King’s Counsel, who I see is sitting below the Bar today.

The question here, on the use of this material, is one of relevance. Like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, I do not want to go into a boring exegesis of when evidence is admissible and when it is not. The real concern here is to make sure that if—and it is a big if—this evidence is to be used then it has proper probative value, on the basis that it goes further than either that this defendant is a bad person because they like rap and drill music or, even worse, some spurious and crude racial stereotypes. Judges have a duty to ensure that only evidence meeting these standards is adduced and they should exclude any evidence that does not meet the required threshold—that is not a matter of discretion. However, I understand the concerns about the fact that that has not happened in all cases.

It is axiomatic to say that creative and artistic expression is of itself not a crime, and it is rare that it would feature in the evidence of a prosecution unless it inherently involved criminal activity, such as damaging another person’s property with graffiti or drawing sexual images of children. As for musical expression, the Crown Prosecution Service is clear that creating or listening to music is not a crime, but it says that, on occasion, it has encountered cases where, upon investigation into a violent offence, it became clear that drill and rap music had been used in the build-up to encourage or incite violence or to reveal information about a crime that only the attackers would know. These instances are rare and, importantly, are already subject to rigorous scrutiny under existing evidential rules. However, I am aware of the disquiet, and we understand the community concerns.

I take the point made by my noble friend Lady Lawrence. I am a lover of crime fiction but I do not think anyone is ever going to use that in a prosecution against me—well, I hope they do not. She makes a valid point.

The Crown Prosecution Service is actively consulting on this matter through a public consultation, seeking views on whether formal prosecution guidance should be issued regarding the use of musical expression evidence. We want to ensure that any future approach is clear and informed by a wide range of perspectives.

It is the Government’s view that, as currently drafted, the amendment would be unduly restrictive and would, in effect, frustrate the ability of the Crown to adduce relevant and probative evidence before the court, with the potential consequences of frustrating justice for victims in some serious cases. The Government intend to await the outcome of the CPS consultation and announce next steps in due course. I invite all noble Lords not to press their amendments.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I did not speak to Amendment 62 when I briefly got up but I did some research on it. I think it is usually the case in a particular area of law that, where you have a body of experts in particular areas of evidence, it is not uncommon for those experts to be used by both the prosecution and the defence. In doing my research on Amendment 62, I found that that is not the case. The so-called experts who are used by the prosecution are solely used by the prosecution, while the experts who are used by the defence—who would be able to talk knowledgably in the sort of detail that the noble Lord, Lord Bailey, was able to give us—are used only by the defence. That in itself tells you that there is something wrong.

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I do not disagree with the noble Lord. I have already made it clear that I understand the disquiet, the concerns about it and the very real possibility for something that is in fact crude racial stereotyping to look as though it is evidence. That is why we need to await the outcome of the CPS consultation.

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Moved by

[Lord Russell of Liverpool]

63: After Clause 12, insert the following new Clause—
“Discontinuance of proceedings: victims' right to review(1) The Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 is amended as follows.(2) In section 23A (Discontinuance of proceedings after accused has been sent for trial), subsection (2), omit “indictment is preferred” and insert “start of the trial on indictment, as defined in section 22(11A) of this Act.””Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would extend the period a case can be discontinued in the Crown Court, to bring it in line with the Magistrates Court. This would mean that the CPS could discontinue a case at the Crown Court with the option to reopen it following a successful VRR, if it concludes that it made an error stopping the prosecution.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I start by addressing the Minister and saying, “No pressure”. I think this amendment is particularly pertinent to her because it talks directly about the Crown Prosecution Service and some of the things it does and does not do. She will know more, I suspect, than anybody else in the Committee about the detail of what I am about to address.

The purpose of the amendment is to enable the Crown Prosecution Service to discontinue proceedings in the Crown Court up until the trial, bringing it in line with its opportunity to do so in the magistrates’ court. Importantly, this change would mean that proceedings could be ended at a later point and still reinstated where it was determined that the prosecution was ended in error. For victims of crime, this is an important safeguard which would enable them to meaningfully exercise their right to challenge Crown Prosecution Service decision-making.

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[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

My Lords, I will start with a little trip down memory lane. In either 2010 or 2011, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, when sitting in the Court of Appeal, heard a case called Killick. That was a case where prosecution had been restarted and, as part of his judgment in relation to it, the noble and learned Lord said that the Crown Prosecution Service needed to come up with a system that would allow victims to challenge a decision not to prosecute, without them having to bring judicial review proceedings. As he may remember, I was the prosecutor who remade the decision to charge in that case and, as a result, the Crown Prosecution Service—under a certain Director of Public Prosecutions, who may be known to your Lordships in another context at the moment, and I, working as his principal legal adviser—devised the victims’ right to review scheme.

I wrote much of the legal guidance, so the noble Lord, Lord Russell, is correct when he says I know quite a lot about it. I am a huge fan of the victims’ right to review scheme, because although the Crown Prosecution Service is in many ways a completely wonderful organisation, everybody is human and sometimes people get things wrong—and when we get it wrong, we want to put it right. Obviously, a right is not a right unless it has a remedy attached to it, and that is a real problem in some of these cases. The noble Lord knows, because I discussed this with him when we met, that my practice when I was dealing with reviews of cases was always that if I took the decision to offer no evidence, I would write to the victim and say, “In 14 days I am proposing to do this, unless you want to make representations to me as to why I should not, or seek judicial review proceedings”. I completely get the issue here.

The only note of caution I will sound is this. It would be a substantial change, with wide-ranging implications for both victims and defendants. For that reason, it needs to be considered carefully, because discontinuing a case is not simply putting a pause into proceedings. Restitution requires fresh proceedings, starting back in the magistrates’ court, which risks delay and uncertainty for both victims and defendants. It does not go straight back into the Crown Court as a restart. That is why robust safeguards and controls, which are not in this amendment, are essential when making these decisions.

For example, in the magistrates’ court procedure, which this amendment seeks to replicate, the defence can refuse to accept a discontinuance and insist on no evidence being offered, or insist that the Crown Prosecution Service makes a decision as to what it is going to do. We are anxious to ensure that discontinuance is not, for example, used in the Crown Court as a way of getting an adjournment that would not be got under other circumstances, as in saying: “We don’t have enough evidence here. We need another three months to get it, so we’re going to discontinue and then restart”. That could create awful uncertainty, both for victims and defendants, as to what is going on. There are, for example, cases where somebody is a youth at the time they are charged and, if the case is then discontinued, they may then be tried as an adult later on.

I am not saying that I do not understand the problem or that this may not be part of the solution, but it needs to be considered carefully. What we plan to do is to consider this proposal further in the context of the wider court reforms and Sir Brian Leveson’s most recent report, with his recommendations for improving efficiency. I also welcome the expansion of the CPS pilot, strengthening victims’ voices before final decisions to offer no evidence are made. The outcome of that pilot will also inform our thinking. For the time being, I invite the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

I thank the Minister very much for her response. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for adding her name and for the examples she put forward. As I surmised, the Minister does indeed know what she is talking about—on a 24 hours a day, seven days a week basis, from what we have heard—and she is looking remarkably well on it.

I thank the Minister very much for the broadly positive way in which she has responded. I think she acknowledged, as we have all acknowledged, that there is an issue and an inconsistency here. But putting it right is not a matter of just snapping one’s fingers and changing one thing, because that has knock-on effects. I am hoping that the Minister will agree to have some follow-up discussions between now and Report, to see either what it will be possible to do by Report or what changes one can start instituting or committing to look at carefully, which can then be enacted later. But on that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 63 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Garnier (Con)]

I can see what the printed words say, but if the Crown Prosecution Service was to write to the victim saying, “Do you realise that you can apply to the law officers to have this sentence reviewed by the Court of Appeal?”, it would give an imprimatur and an indication. That is the implication, and we should resist it.

I do not want to go on too long. Anybody can write to the law officers to say, “Will you review this sentence?” It does have to be a victim, or the family or next of kin of a deceased victim. There are plenty of avenues available to the public and to victims if they wish to explore this. To come back to my first point, we need to exercise a degree of caution before opening the floodgates to lots of disappointment.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, briefly, I support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, to which I have added my name. I have listened carefully to what the noble and learned Lord has said, but this is not an attempt to encourage lots of challenges to unduly lenient sentences. It is, above all, an attempt to achieve a degree of parity between the way offenders and defendants are treated.

The intent of the amendment it to suggest that a government department nominated by the Secretary of State should do the informing. It would need to be a body that was viewed as genuinely neutral, but it would be perfectly possible to inform the victim of their right and make quite clear the orbit within which an appeal against an unduly lenient sentence is likely to be successful and the parameters beyond which it would be highly unlikely to be considered, so as to make very clear to the victim, from the very beginning, the possibility of their having a case that might be over the threshold as opposed to being clearly below the threshold. It is entirely possible to imagine that one could create that.

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, when I say that I will be brief, I will be very brief. I have listened carefully to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier. He is quite right in his observations, and particularly about the ultimate test of whether a sentence is set aside because it is unduly lenient. However, I think the answers have already been made by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and the noble Lord, Lord Russell: this is a notification. The CPS is not taking a position on the merits of making the application; it is just setting up a timetable.

Victims and Courts Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 9th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I also put my name to Amendment 46, which was originally laid by Sarah Champion in the Commons; the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, has spoken to it comprehensively, so I will not add anything to that. Instead, I will speak to Amendment 47 in my name, which, in many ways, is very closely related. Amendment 46 came through discussions with Claire Waxman, the Victims’ Commissioner; Amendment 47 comes through working with another organisation, the Marie Collins Foundation in Northern Ireland, which specifically works with child sex abuse victims who have been abused online.

Amendment 47 is an attempt to find, in essence, a clearer definition of what is harmful to CSA victims and, in a sense, to give the Government breathing space while they decide whether they need to go further and be clearer. Under the current CICS, a crime is considered violent only if it involves physical injury, the threat of immediate violence or a non-consensual sexual assault. To a large extent, that excludes online child sexual abuse.

There was a court case in 2023, where an individual called “RN” went to court against the CICA. The Court of Appeal in this case confirmed that online grooming may fall within the scheme where threats cause a child to fear immediate physical violence even if the threats are made remotely. However, the court also said that many online cases would still fall outside the scheme and that this can produce outcomes that are counterintuitive and unjust. It also made it clear—this is the reason for the amendment—that any broader clarification of coverage is a matter for Parliament and not for judicial interpretation.

What we are trying to achieve is to recognise exactly what this type of abuse is. It commonly consists of a combination of blackmail, coercion, threats and domination, which are, in effect, a combination of emotional and psychological abuse. It involves compelled actions, such as the creation and sharing of sexual images, livestreamed sexual activity, or other sexual acts directed by an offender against the child—all of which is online. It results in sustained fear, loss of autonomy and erosion of individual agency. It can also lead to long-term psychological harm, including trauma-related conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression and so on.

What we are trying to achieve is, first, to capture online-only child sex abuse cases where the nature of abuse is such that the conduct meets the scheme’s existing criteria for a crime of violence. Secondly, it seeks to operate within the existing legal framework by clarifying how violence is understood, rather than by redefining CSA or injury. Thirdly, it proposes to support consistent and workable decision-making by the CICA on online-only CSA cases, which is not the case at the moment. Fourthly, it would avoid creating any hierarchy of abuse by grounding eligibility in established scheme principles. Fifthly, and lastly, it would provide an interim pragmatic response, pending wider consideration of scheme reform.

I hope that the Government will look at the evidence, take on board what is happening and, in particular, as is often the case with online abuse, look at the scale at which this is increasing year on year, to see whether it is something that needs to be looked at more clearly and recognised in law for the harm that it is doing.

[Lord Sandhurst (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, for bringing forward their amendments and helping to shape what has been a valuable debate about the issue of just compensation for victims.

Amendment 40, in the name of my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier, raises an important concern about how the victims of fraud, bribery and money laundering offences can be better compensated both domestically and abroad. Indeed, I have heard his arguments on more than one occasion before and never failed to be persuaded by them.

These crimes do not just inflict monetary loss on victims; they often involve sophisticated deception. They can cause significant psychological distress, emotional trauma and lasting insecurity. More widely, they undermine trust in our society, and so deserve the Government’s attention. The Government must look carefully at my noble and learned friend’s suggestions for a review. It could be important and beneficial for the City of London, as a centre of finance of worldwide renown. If we can take the lead on this, that would be an encouragement to people to do business here.

This brings me to Amendment 67, in my name. I should say that a gremlin came in here—and I am not blaming the typist. Where it says:

“Sentencing guidelines on court fines”,


it should of course say compensation orders. The amendment is intended to correct an imbalance for victims. Its purpose is clear: to ensure that victims are compensated properly, according to the actual value of items stolen. This principle would apply in cases of fraud, burglary or theft, and in any other crime which has resulted in a victim suffering financial loss. The responsibility for repayment should be put squarely on the offender through the issuing of compensation orders. It is only right and just that offenders pay back the value of what they have stolen to their victims. There should be a direct link, so that offenders fully face up to the consequences of their actions in a real and logical way.

This measure is simply proportionate. At present, offenders may not be made even to begin to compensate for the damage inflicted, which only adds further insult to injury. To correct this imbalance, the amendment would require the Sentencing Council to revise the relevant sentencing guidelines within 18 months of the Bill receiving Royal Assent. This would lead to a more consistent approach across cases, and sentencing would recognise and account for the amount actually taken or lost. Justice for victims should be material, not merely symbolic. That would help to strengthen public confidence in our courts. We urge the Minister to give serious consideration to the amendment.

Amendment 46, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and Amendment 47, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, concern the criminal injuries compensation scheme. The former seeks to broaden its eligibility to all victims of child abuse; the latter aims to bring online-only child sexual abuse into the scope of recognition of the scheme. It is important that the scheme keeps apace with the evolving landscape in which criminal activity now takes place. All victims must be properly supported, with access to the appropriate mechanisms for compensation and redress. I look forward to hearing the response of the Minister, on how the scheme can be updated.

Victims and Courts Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 9th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I have four amendments in this group, three of which, like that just proposed powerfully by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, seek to explore the thinking behind the four-year minimum prison sentence required by Clause 3 to trigger the duty of the Crown Court to make a prohibited steps order to restrict the offender’s parental responsibility. My Amendments 15 and 19 would lower the minimum sentence required to one of more than six months.

Before I develop the argument a little further, I will comment on a couple of points made by the noble Baroness. Much of what she said, I entirely agree with, but please let us not talk about parental rights. The central reform of the Children Act 1989 was to substitute for the concept of parental rights the concept of parental responsibility, which is why it appears in the Bill and has been part of our law for a long time. As I have already said, it replaced the reference to rights as determining who had authority over aspects of the child’s life or upbringing. The other point I am afraid I take issue with is her suggestion that, in too many cases, the court sees matters only through the eyes of the parent who is seeking to assert his rights or responsibilities. That, I suggest, is not correct, and it is certainly not my experience of how the family courts work.

Returning to the substance of these amendments, it is clearly difficult to determine where to draw the line in such cases, bearing in mind that a convicted person whose sentence does not cross that line is still quite liable to have any parental responsibility restricted by the family court if it cannot be done in the Crown Court. During debates in another place, the logic of the four-year minimum sentence was questioned. The Minister there argued that the four-year threshold provided a predetermined marker of seriousness for cases in which the restriction of parental responsibility by the Crown Court is to happen automatically.

The Minister said that the Government wanted to minimise the strain placed on the family court. There is force in those points at a practical level. As I suggested at Second Reading, one reason to draw the line at four years is to make best use of the resources, expertise and powers of both the criminal and the family court respectively, without overburdening either. However, one disadvantage of leaving too many of these cases to the family court is that it would deprive the mother and other family members of the benefit of the automatic suspension of parental responsibility, which the Bill provides. Indeed, it would require those who want to restrict parental responsibility to make their own applications to the family court, possibly without legal assistance, as the noble Baroness has indicated.

It is possible, by use of Ministry of Justice statistics for 2023, to get some approximation of the cases involved, which would give some idea of the number of offenders and the number of children who would be affected. In this respect, I am indebted to Amanda Newby, associate professor at Northumbria University, for her research and expert assistance on this and other amendments. In 2023, in England and Wales, there were 1,924 cases of serious sexual abuse, where an immediate prison sentence of between four and 15 years was imposed, in addition to which there were 44 sentences of life imprisonment. In the same year, there were some 1,093 cases involving serious child sexual abuse, where an immediate prison sentence of more than six months and less than four years was imposed. Only 59 such offenders were sentenced to six months or less.

Those statistics all involve adult offenders. It is clearly not possible to ascertain how many of those held parental responsibility for a child at the time of sentencing, but I suggest that it could have been considerably lower. On that basis, moving the threshold down to more than six months’ imprisonment would or could increase the number of potential cases by approximately 1,000 annually—although I repeat that many of those probably would not hold parental responsibility. That likely increase does show that a significant number of children would not be protected under the Bill if the threshold is not lowered. That is indeed an argument for lowering the threshold, as I hope I have indicated.

Amendment 27, in my name, perhaps illustrates some of the difficulties in drawing lines. The offence of sexual communication with a child under Section 15A of the 2003 Act is not covered by the Bill as presently drafted, because the maximum sentence for that offence is two years. That was an offence added in 2015 to the 2003 Act to cover a specific form of sexually motivated grooming, and it might now be thought that it should be covered by the provisions of this Bill. Essentially, it should be accepted that one real difficulty is that the Crown Court, under the Bill, is going to be required to make orders under the Children Act for which the family court is generally the more appropriate forum. Further, the Bill does not contain any provision for mandatory review by the family court, as was provided under Section 18 of the Victims and Prisoners Act, known as Jade’s law. In the family court, the other parent would have the status of a party and could be represented, and that court would have access to the relevant family history and to evidence in the form of professional welfare and other reports if required. In other words, quite frankly, there are compelling arguments either way.

Amendment 34 is in my name and has the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. It does not concern sexual offences but, rather, seeks to extend what is now known as Jade’s law, which was enacted under the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024. As the noble Baroness reminded us, Section 18 restricts parental responsibility where one parent kills the other and is convicted of murder or a specific category of manslaughter. At the suggestion of the Victims’ Commissioner, we seek to amend that provision to include the attempted murder by one parent of the other.

I do not recall that being suggested when the 2024 Act passed through Parliament—the omission of attempted murder may have been an oversight—but there was some caution when, at various stages, suggestions of extending Jade’s law to other offences of violence were ventilated. Be that as it may, I submit that it is clearly appropriate to include attempted murder involving the most extreme form of non-fatal assault. To do so would relieve the victim from the obligation to seek the perpetrator’s agreement on decisions concerning the child and, if agreement is not forthcoming, from having to apply to the court.

The Victims’ Commissioner has become aware of the concerns of survivors of attempted murder when the offender has retained parental responsibility over their children. Without giving details, I had to deal with a case where the convicted parent used his status to obstruct the other parent, clearly motivated only by a desire for revenge, causing the other parent further distress and expense, as well as an inescapable fear of what he might try to do when released from prison. People in that position should be relieved and shielded from having to go to court unless absolutely necessary to do so.

Finally, I join the noble Baroness in mentioning the commencement of Section 18—Jade’s law. It is not retrospective and has yet to be brought into force, so the reality is that nobody has yet benefited from it. Can the Minister say when it will be put into effect?

I do not want to trespass on arguments to be advanced on other amendments, but I share the curiosity about the provisions in the Bill covering what would happen in the event of an acquittal on appeal or when a sentence is reduced on appeal. To that I add the question of whether prohibited steps could be made where a sentence is increased on appeal or under the unduly lenient sentence scheme to one of more than four years.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly to support the noble Lord, Lord Meston, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, on Amendment 34. As they mentioned, the Victims’ Commissioner has been approached by a variety of individuals who survived attempted murder by their other half or partner. In those cases, they face a dilemma. In some cases, the difference between being murdered or not is a matter of an ambulance arriving two minutes earlier and managing to stop a murder attempt, whereas if it arrived two minutes later that person might have died. Alternatively, it might be a matter of a neighbour hearing what was going on and making a telephone call so that the authorities arrive in time. It is a very narrow difference, frankly, as to whether somebody ends up dead or injured but alive.

In some of those instances, the perpetrator, who has gone to prison, retains parental responsibility but may not know that. The surviving partner has a dilemma: if they bring it to the attention of the partner who is in prison and he is unaware of those rights, he may be tempted to try to use them to disrupt the life of the surviving partner. I do not think that anybody would wish that to happen.

In the instance that a survivor feels strongly enough that they want to try to go through the courts to have the parental responsibility of the person who tried to kill them stripped away, the onus is on the survivor to go through the family courts. That can be quite a lengthy and complicated process. It is often made more difficult because the quality and flow of relevant information between the criminal court, which sends the attempted murderer to prison, and the family court is not always as open and as clear as it might be.

For all those reasons, I hope that, when she comes to reply, the Minister can clarify the Government’s view on this and, in particular, why commencement of the original Jade’s law seems to have been delayed. What is holding it up? How quickly can we expect it to be put into operation?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Keen of Elie (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have tabled amendments in this group which concern the operation of Clauses 6 and 7 and the scope and operation of the victim contact scheme. I turn first to Amendment 42 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. I recognise the intention behind this amendment and the principle that underpins it: that victims whose close family members have been murdered, killed unlawfully or subjected to infanticide abroad should not find themselves falling between the cracks of the victims’ code simply because the offence occurred outside the United Kingdom. There is a strong case for ensuring that any victim should receive clear information and appropriate support on how to engage with the criminal justice system. The amendment seeks to give effect to that principle by requiring an appendix to the victims’ code setting out how it applies in such circumstances.

That said, it is also right to acknowledge that this amendment raises practical and operational questions that would need careful consideration. These include questions about jurisdiction, the extent to which criminal justice processes are engaged domestically, and how responsibilities would be allocated between domestic agencies and those overseas. I therefore look to the Minister to address how the Government would envisage this operating in practice while recognising and engaging with the important principle that the amendment seeks to advance.

Amendments 47A and 47B, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Russell, extend the definition of “victim” to include those who have experienced persistent antisocial behaviour meeting the statutory threshold for an antisocial behaviour case review. They also create a victim identifier linked to compliance with the victims’ code across criminal justice agencies. Both proposals are ideas that I am sure will instigate interesting debate; I look forward to hearing the noble Lord expand on them, and the Government’s response.

Amendments 56 and 57 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby—which may or may not be spoken to—concern transparency and accountability in decisions taken by hospital managers not to disclose information requested under Sections 44F or 44K. Clearly, if hospital managers are to be entrusted with the discretion to withhold information in cases that may directly affect victim safety, it is entirely reasonable that there should be clear written reasons for such decisions and a meaningful route to appeal. Transparency in decision-making is essential, not only for victims but for other parties, such as the Probation Service, which are tasked with managing risks.

I turn to Amendments 36 and 37 in my name. Amendment 36 is a technical amendment that adds the National Crime Agency to the list of relevant bodies to which Clause 6 does not apply. Given the National Crime Agency’s distinct operational role and intelligence-handling functions, it may be appropriate that it be expressly included in that provision. I hope the Government will see this amendment as a sensible clarification rather than as a point of contention.

Amendment 37 would require the Secretary of State to extend the victim contact scheme to certain categories of victim who are currently excluded from it—victims of offenders sentenced to less than 12 months for violent and sexual offences; victims of coercive or controlling behaviour, stalking or harassment; and bereaved families in cases of manslaughter or death by dangerous driving. It would also require information to be communicated in a timely manner and for annual data to be published on the scheme’s uptake and accessibility.

The importance of this amendment has only been heightened by recent legislative developments. The Sentencing Bill, which has now passed, represented a marked shift in sentencing policy, particularly through the automatic and blanket presumption against short custodial sentences, regardless of offence type. During the passage of that legislation, particularly in debate in this House, a number of noble Lords repeatedly raised the consequences for victims. Although the Government may respond by saying that in exceptional circumstances this presumption may be overturned, the reality is rather clearer. An increasing number of offenders convicted of violent and sexual offences will now serve their sentences in the community, rather than in custody.

From the victim’s perspective, that is not an abstract policy choice. It has immediate and practical consequences for their perception of justice being served, for their sense of safety, for their ability to plan their lives and for their need to receive appropriate information. Under the current framework, many of these victims are excluded from the victim contact scheme because the custodial threshold is not met. That is now, I suggest, a glaring inconsistency in the light of the Government’s Sentencing Act. If anything, victims whose offenders are serving sentences in the community have a greater need for timely, accurate and trauma-informed information, not a lesser one. Further, without timeliness the scheme risks becoming meaningless. Information provided late is often information too late to be of use, and, without transparencies, such as through the publication of annual data on uptake and accessibility, there can be no meaningful accountability for offenders or for the Government.

We now live in a sentencing landscape that places a far greater reliance on community supervision. The Government have said that they expect to more or less double the number of people being tagged rather than incarcerated. The need for transparency and accurate data has never been more pressing. Amendment 37 insists that, where the state chooses to sentence offenders in the community, it must accept the corresponding responsibility to support and protect victims properly. In the absence of custody, robust victim engagement is really not an option; it is essential. I therefore urge the Government to engage seriously with this amendment and, if they are minded to resist it, explain how victims are to be adequately protected in a system that is going to leave an increasing number of offenders in the community. I beg to move.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 42, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay; to the two amendments in my name, Amendments 47A and 47B—I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for adding her name to them; and to Amendments 55, 56 and 57, on which the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, may speak to us by some supernatural means. I am not quite sure, but the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and I will try to cover it.

I point out that what all these amendments have in common is that they have been laid with the active engagement and support of the Victims’ Commissioner, Claire Waxman. The Minister mentioned that she knows and has a high regard for her. Rather than going on at great length about each amendment, although I am sure that your Lordships are dying to hear about them, I suspect that it would be better to have follow-up meetings involving Claire Waxman to go into the detail as to why she feels, and we feel, that these amendments are important enough to raise in Committee.

On bereaved victims of murder abroad, as in Amendment 42, we covered this ground in previous legislation when we attempted to get it into a Bill. My noble friend Lady Finlay will be able to go into much more detail about this but, in essence, we are dealing with a slight anomaly in the way that victims are treated. On average per annum, between 80 and 90 individuals who are UK citizens are murdered while they are abroad. At the moment, the experience of their families when those unfortunate incidents happen ranges from quite good to absolutely appalling. That is because there is no consistency in the way they are treated.

The Government have made attempts to get their house in order on what happens within the United Kingdom’s jurisdiction. Where we seem to have an issue is in getting the FCDO to apply a form of guidance, and above all training, across its key consulates in the areas where these incidents take place to ensure that those consulates are properly equipped, if and when such a tragedy appears, to deal with it effectively and consistently. The experience from the victims whose loved ones have been murdered abroad is that, in some cases, the consulates are absolutely brilliant and go out of their way to be helpful, while in other instances the victim truly is left entirely on their own. In particular, if this has happened when the partner of the person who has been murdered is abroad, they may find no help whatever and not be familiar with the language of that country. You can imagine the complexity and agony of trying to deal with all of that, on top of the shock of having had somebody very close to you murdered. However, my noble friend will go into that in more detail.

What Amendments 47A and 47B have in common is that for certain victims of antisocial behaviour, when that behaviour really is persistent—it often conforms to an escalating pattern—and has a deep effect on the victim, there is not consistency at the moment in the way that is dealt with. Amendment 47A tries to ensure that the authorities are more effective in identifying that pattern of behaviour and are able to join the dots, put them together and recognise that the behaviour has triggered a threshold at which proper support and access to victim services should be allowed.

Again, Amendment 47B is about joining up the dots. The way in which antisocial behaviour is dealt with is that it might come to the attention of the police, or it might come to the attention of a local authority or a housing association. There is no consistent way of that information, first, being recorded in a consistent and helpful manner, and, secondly, being communicated across those different boundaries in a way that enables whichever of those three jurisdictions is looking at the pattern of behaviour to pull the evidence together that it needs to understand exactly what has been going on. This is a request for a unique identifier for each victim which would, I hope, be the start of a process to enable that information to be channelled in a more consistent and co-ordinated manner. That would obviously be helpful to the victims, but also extremely helpful to whichever authority is trying to identify just how severe that pattern of antisocial behaviour is, and whether the effect it is having on the subject—the victim—is sufficient for it to trigger comprehensive wraparound support.

Lastly, I will deal with the three amendments that I think the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, will deal with in more detail. They concern where somebody in one’s family has been murdered by an individual who is identified as mentally disordered and who is then detained because of their mental disorder. The ability of the victims to get access to the sort of information which they can get from the Prison Service and the courts is completely different from what is able to be accessed from the hospital system. Again, some hospitals and hospital managers go out of their way to be understanding and helpful, and try to give the victims whatever succour and information they can. Others refuse point blank. They say that a variety of laws and processes prevent them doing that and that they are not at liberty to do it. All that we and the Victims’ Commissioner are asking is to look at this closely.

Julian Hendy, the founder of an organisation called Hundred Families, is very involved in this; he can give chapter, book and verse. First, we need to establish just how much of a problem this is, perhaps through meetings. Secondly, what are the different ways in which we might do something about it? Thirdly, how complicated is that: does it need to be in primary legislation, or are there other ways of doing it?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for raising this point. Our current position is that we do not believe that that is necessary, but I am happy to meet her and get her to try to persuade me why I am wrong and she is right—there is my challenge to the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Finlay.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

The FCDO has a duty of care and a responsibility for UK citizens when they are in whichever country. It does not seem too bizarre or extreme to hope that it would accept a degree of responsibility for the very small number of unfortunate victims who, for whatever reason, are unlawfully killed in the course of a year. For the FCDO to accept that that is part of its responsibility—a very small part, albeit an important one—and to prepare itself thoroughly enough to be able to fulfil that duty in a professional, proper and sensitive way in the unhappy event that it is required does not seem too much to ask.

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

The noble Lord, Lord Russell, puts it very persuasively and it is extremely tempting, particularly given that I do not speak for the FCDO, to say that it sounds utterly reasonable. However, I am sure he will understand why I cannot give that kind of commitment from the Dispatch Box, but I can commit to meeting and discussing this further.

Sentencing Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

3rd reading
Monday 12th January 2026 Lords Chamber

In conclusion, while we continue to oppose significant aspects of the Bill, I remain grateful to all noble Lords for their engagement with it. I urge the Government to reflect carefully on the amendment relating to sentencing remarks, and I have no doubt that these issues will return to your Lordships’ House in due course.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I will not follow the noble and learned Lord who has just sat down and go into the politics of this because I do not think this is the time or place. I do, however, congratulate the Minister on the way he has managed the Bill through this House. It is an exemplary example of someone coming in from the private sector with a successful track record of leading an unusual business and transferring that expertise, apparently effortlessly and flawlessly, into your Lordships’ House. He is an example for other new arrivals on the Front Bench alongside him to learn from; a few seminars with him would do them the world of good.

I will now briefly return to a subject that will not surprise the Minister or the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart, which is an issue we spoke about and had meetings about: perpetrators of domestic abuse and stalkers being released earlier than they should be. The Minister has been kind enough to suggest another meeting, so I can tell him that knocking on his door will be the Domestic Abuse Commissioner Dame Nicole Jacobs and the new Victims’ Commissioner Claire Waxman; her diary permitting, the Minister can also expect the noble Baroness, Lady May of Maidenhead, who will provide some real weight, and I gather she is one of the people who made the Minister actually think about going into public life. Finally, I will be there as the token male.

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I thank all noble and learned and noble Lords for their very kind feedback. I have never had an appraisal in my career; this is the first one I have had, and I will take the feedback. All noble Lords are welcome to knock on my door at any time, because I learn so much from what they bring, which makes what I am trying to do far better. I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords and my noble friend Lord Lemos for guiding me along the way on this and for contributing on very important parts of this Bill. Everyone has contributed to make this a very good Bill. Again, I thank all noble Lords and I beg to move.

Sentencing Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 6th January 2026 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, my Amendments 79 to 81 would make the 56-day fixed period of recall a maximum period and not a fixed period, while my Amendment 87 would make automatic release after a recall subject to an exclusion in those cases where it applied, particularly for serious offenders.

Recalls can and often do follow relatively trivial breaches of licence conditions, and that is one of the criticisms that is frequently made of recalls from licence. The 56-day fixed period of recall addresses the question of how long a recall should be and prevents it being indefinite, but we suggest that 56 days may be in some circumstances too long, so we would prefer a flexible period. The 56-day fixed period under the Bill would apply irrespective of the seriousness or otherwise of the breach that brought about the recall, and it may often therefore be unjust. Eight weeks is a long time, and it may be far too long. As we know, it may follow, for example, a prisoner simply missing a probation appointment.

As I pointed out in Committee, recall is likely to cost an offender who had found employment following a release on licence—we have heard how important finding a job is for offenders. Where such an offender has found work, the recall may jeopardise that. It might risk a newly released offender’s housing—again, we know how difficult it is to find housing—or participation in educational, skills or vocational programmes or other rehabilitative programmes. Indeed, more seriously, it might affect an offender’s mental health treatment or treatment for addiction or substance abuse or gambling addiction.

A shorter recall might also carry those risks, but the likelihood is far less, and in a case where a shorter recall would be appropriate, those consequences should be avoided. Furthermore, an unnecessarily long recall for a minor infringement of licence conditions would not reduce the prison capacity shortage; indeed, it would make it worse. A shorter recall might mitigate that.

However, there are cases where a 56-day recall may be too short. Our Amendment 87 seeks for the automatic release provision to take effect subject to a provision excluding that automatic release for those who had committed more serious offences. The list of offences, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, pointed out, is a list that his party have adopted for other purposes, but in this case we accept it as a list of serious offences. However, the point about this part is that it only applies to exclude automatic recall, so that recall would be discretionary. That would apply for serious sexual offenders and for stalkers who had been recalled for harassing or stalking their victims on a repeat occasion. They would not be entitled to automatic release.

This short suite of amendments introduces an element of flexibility into the recall system. It seeks for the 56 days to be a maximum period and where it was too long it would not be applied. In the case of a serious offender whose recall ought to be much longer, it would not lead to automatic release. I beg to move.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 82, 83 and 86 in my name. This is a continuation of a discussion that we had in Committee, which is particularly focused on concern about the unintended consequences of domestic abuse perpetrators being released when they still present a potential grave danger to the women that they were abusing and the women’s families and children.

We and the Domestic Abuse Commissioner welcome the measures in this Bill to improve the identification of domestic abuse perpetrators and the commitment from government to resource HM Prison and Probation Service to increase its capacity to do better. There is also much to be welcomed in the VAWG strategy—so much that you wonder whether it will be possible to do it all. The ambition is laudable; the proof will be in the implementation. We want to highlight that achieving this laudable commitment requires improvements across the criminal justice system that are embedded to ensure that victims and survivors are kept safer than they have been to date.

I am particularly grateful to the Minister for the time that he spent with me and with some of the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s officials. We had a very interesting meeting with Kim Thornden-Edwards, the new Chief Probation Officer for England and Wales, whom I found to be very formidable indeed. Speaking as a former headhunter, I would say that whoever chose her did an excellent job. She will up the game of the Probation Service and turbocharge it, which it needs.

We also welcome the assurances given around investment in the system and the improvements to the processes, which are very necessary. However, the key concern is that this cannot be achieved rapidly and certainly not overnight. The Domestic Abuse Commissioner remains highly concerned that mistakes may be made and that some mistakes may have very unfortunate consequences. Her concern is to mitigate that to the extent that it is possible.

In Committee, the Minister proposed amendments that would ensure that any offender recalled on the basis of contact with their victim would not be automatically released after 56 days but would be risk assessed and held in custody until their risk to the victim has reduced and can be safely managed in the community. Although we are reassured by the investment into prisons and probation and the commitments to improve the risk-assessment process, it is absolutely critical that safeguards are put in place as quickly as possible to prevent the release of the wrong people by mistake.

I anticipate that the response of the Minister to the amendments that have been laid, and which I am talking to, will be, essentially, that there is a programme in place across the system to improve a whole range of areas, including the identification of domestic abuse perpetrators and the level of risk they present, and that to try to carve out a particular area for specific oversight separately to the rest is unhelpful to the programme as it is conceived. I can understand and accept that.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I entirely understand the sentiments. I cannot commit to that today, but I will take the point away.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

I will give the Minister a little bit of context, because she has not been in this House very long, for which she is probably very grateful. Many of us speaking today were very involved in the genesis and ultimate passage of the Online Safety Act. That took six years to happen. When we passed that Act, we thought we were being crystal clear, in both Houses of Parliament, on what we intended to happen and what we intended the regulator to do. One of reasons why her ministerial colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, got a pretty hard time from this Committee on 27 November was that we felt there was a certain unwillingness to recognise the degree of frustration many of us feel about how the Online Safety Act is being enacted.

In particular, on 27 November, the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, told us that the Molly Rose Foundation has, in effect, given up on hoping that Ofcom will actually do its job, because Ofcom has told the foundation that its attitude and strategy in enacting the Online Safety Act, when dealing with the large platforms, is what it calls “tactical ambiguity”. If I were a lawyer for one of the large platforms, I would think that having a regulator that was applying tactical ambiguity was absolutely wonderful; it would be exactly what I would hope for. What we are looking for is action from His Majesty’s Government, and when it happens, we are not looking for any kind of ambiguity.

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

I have already said that I have heard, and indeed share, the anger and frustration in Committee. I may not have been in your Lordships’ House for that long, but I have not been living underneath a stone. Given my previous existence, I am acutely aware of these debates. What is obvious to us all is that, however well-intentioned past attempts have been, these things are still happening. If we want them to stop, we have to do something about them. I do not believe I can go further than I have at the moment; all I can say is that the will is there.

Sentencing Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 3rd December 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Russell of Liverpool]

93C: After Clause 19, insert the following new Clause—
“Unduly lenient sentences scheme: extension to victims of technology-assisted child sexual abuse offences(1) The Criminal Justice Act 1988 is amended as follows.(2) In section 36 (reviews of sentencing), after subsection (2) insert—“(2A) An application may be made to the Attorney General to review any sentence passed by either a Magistrates’ or Crown Court under the terms set out in this section.(2B) An application can be made under subsection (2A) where a sentence has been passed for one or more offence under the following provisions, in either the Magistrates’ or Crown Court— (a) section 1 of the Protection of Children Act 1978,(b) section 160 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, or(c) section 62 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009.(2C) An application can be made under subsection (2A) by a victim, or their next of kin where the victim is a minor, of one of the specified offences under subsection (2B)(a) to (c).”.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new clause would extend the Unduly Lenient Sentence Scheme, allowing victims of technology assisted child sexual abuse offences, and their next of kin where the victim is a minor, to apply to the scheme regardless of where the sentence was passed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I am glad to see that we are picking up the pace slightly. The last group was a fairly brisk 13 or 14 minutes, so let us hope we can keep this up and get the Minister to bed at a half-decent hour. Of course, we are missing the joys of hearing about the somewhat shaky condition of the American constitution by being in the Chamber at the moment.

This amendment is linked to Amendment 34, which we discussed last week. Again, this is as a result of working in co-operation with an organisation I mentioned last week: the Marie Collins Foundation. I will start by referring to statements by various bodies that illustrate the nature of the problem this amendment seeks to flag up. The following quotation is from the 2023 report of the College of Policing and the NPCC on the national analysis of police-recorded child sexual abuse and exploitation:

“Within the online space, perpetrators of sexual grooming are most commonly adults aged 18 to 29 years. This highlights the risk posed to children in the online space by adults looking to abuse and exploit them. Abuse of children by adults is more likely to be hidden and requires a strong law enforcement response focusing on pursuing perpetrators, as well as a response focused on prevention”.


The next quotation is from the National Crime Agency this year, in the national strategic assessment of serious and organised crime:

“We estimated in the National Strategic Assessment 2024 that 710,000 to 840,000 adults in the UK pose varying degrees of sexual risks to children”,


a pretty horrifying total.

“However, police recorded crime does not effectively reflect the full scale of online offending, as one offence can relate to multiple instances of child sexual abuse material, and the most serious physical offence is recorded instead of any precursor online offences such as grooming”.

Lastly, hot off the press, as of yesterday, is part 2 of the Angiolini inquiry, which is pretty horrifying reading for those of your Lordships who have not read it. On page 173, under the heading, “The effect of pornography and social media”, Dame Angiolini says that

“there needs to be recognition of the link between perpetrators’ online behaviours and their behaviours in the physical world”.

They are directly linked.

The key issues in this area are, first of all, an overreliance on non-custodial sentences. In 2020, 80% of those sentenced for sexual communication with a child avoided prison. It is the magistrates’ courts rather than the criminal courts that dominate the outcomes. Online child safety risk is escalating rapidly. The Internet Watch Foundation reported an 830% rise in child sexual abuse material on the internet since 2014, making 2024 the worst year on record. The phenomenon of technology-assisted child sexual abuse—I think I introduced your Lordships to the acronym, TACSA, last week—lives in the shadow of child sexual abuse and is underrecognised.

We all acknowledge—it is the reason that we are talking about this Bill—that there is an issue with capacity in prison places. One factor in this area is that offenders can effectively strategise what the outcome of their offence might be. If it is a sufficiently heinous offence, with a lot of class A material, for example, on their computers, rather than going to the criminal court, where it is quite possible they might get a custodial sentence, what they can opt to do, and many of them do, is plead guilty, which automatically means the case goes to the magistrates’ court, in which case the sentencing powers are much more limited. This is a tactical way in which it is possible to get out of jail early by pleading guilty and opting to go to a magistrates’ court. That is causing a lot of concern, particularly, as you might imagine, to victims.

There is a coverage gap to do with the unduly lenient sentence scheme, because that reviews only Crown Court sentences. If a magistrates’ court with a particularly unpleasant case decides that a custodial sentence is the right way to go, there is no appeal mechanism under the unduly lenient sentence scheme to challenge that. Further, there is a misconception of harm. This type of online abuse is regarded as less serious than contact forms of child abuse. However, there is an increasing amount of research making the direct link that those who start off abusing children online are particularly statistically likely at some point to go on and actually do it physically.

I turn to what one would like to see happen. The first thing is improved parity and sentencing range for this particular type of egregious online abuse, so that the technological abuse of a child has parity with the physical abuse of a child—or they are brought more into balance, because at the moment, there is a clear imbalance between the two. Secondly, we should expand the unduly lenient sentence scheme to include all offences of this type, so they could be looked at if a magistrates’ court has given a rather lenient sentence. In an ideal world, one would like to prohibit the use of suspended sentences for these kinds of offences, many of which are deeply unpleasant. We should prohibit the use of what is called good-character mitigation in many of these cases. It is very hard to use good-character mitigation when an individual is found, as in some cases, to have more than 1,000 examples of class A child abuse material on their computer.

Last week, in response to discussion about Amendment 34, the Minister said on mitigation, or the ability to challenge the sentence, that it was possible for the offence to be challenged under the unduly lenient sentence scheme

“where the court is of the opinion that the offender is dangerous”.—[Official Report, 26/11/25; col. 1369.]

However, that does not cover the cases that I mentioned that go through the magistrates’ courts.

Finally, I shall give one or two examples of what happens when individuals go through the magistrates’ court. An 18 year-old from east London who had 183 category A images got a two-year community order. A 62 year-old from Cumbria had 503 category A images, and he got an eight-month sentence, suspended for 18 months, and 200 hours of unpaid work. A 26 year-old from Norfolk had 69 category A videos, and he was sentenced to six months in jail, suspended for 12 months. And the list goes on. One of our more energetic newspapers, the Sun, profiled a large number of these individuals under the usually slightly brash headline. Basically, it said that something is wrong with the system if this is what is happening.

I have explained the background to why I have brought this amendment forward. It would be really helpful for us to look at this in more detail. The Minister indicated last week that he would be interested to hear more about this particular foundation and what it does. If he is willing, I would very much like to follow up his invitation to talk about this in more detail and to lay out what is happening and the imbalance that there is currently in the system, which is allowing a lot of deeply unpleasant men to get away with virtually no sentence whatever. On that basis, I beg to move.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

The noble Lord reminds me of a comment that was made, I think, during the proceedings on this Bill, but which is certainly apt. The online world and what my generation would regard as a different, real world have actually come together, and it is one world now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, for this amendment and for raising awareness of the Marie Collins Foundation on the first day of Committee. I am looking forward to meeting a representative of the foundation, with the noble Lord, on this matter, I think in the coming weeks.

The unduly lenient sentence scheme allows any person to request that the Attorney-General consider referring a sentence to the Court of Appeal for review if they believe it is unduly lenient. I have in fact been listening to some very interesting podcasts to learn more about this topic. This amendment would create a specific right for victims of technology-assisted child sexual abuse offences and, where the victim is a child, for their next of kin to apply to the unduly lenient sentence scheme, even where the sentence was imposed in a magistrates’ court. Currently, the unduly lenient sentence scheme covers all indictable-only offences, such as murder, manslaughter, rape and robbery, as well as certain specified triable either way offences sentenced in the Crown Court, including stalking and most child sex offences.

Parliament intended the unduly lenient sentence scheme to be an exceptional power and any expansion of its scope must be approached with great care. The Law Commission is currently reviewing criminal appeals, including the range of offences within the scheme, and expects to publish recommendations in late 2026. When it comes to sentencing for child sexual offences, the data shows significant variation by offence type. Around 20% of offenders convicted of sexual offences against children receive an immediate custodial sentence. This rises to approximately 70% for the most serious crimes, such as sexual assault of a child under 13, familial sexual offences and possession of indecent or prohibited images. These patterns have remained broadly consistent over the past five years.

As I have noted previously in Committee, sentencing decisions in individual cases are for our independent judiciary, guided by robust Sentencing Council guidelines that already address technology-enabled offending. For example, the guidelines require courts to consider intended harm even where no actual child exists and to take account of aggravating factors such as image sharing, abuse of trust and threats. While I fully recognise the importance and severity of the issue raised by the noble Lord, given the exceptional nature of the unduly lenient sentence scheme and the ongoing Law Commission review of criminal appeals, I respectfully ask him to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

I thank the Minister for his response, which was pretty much what I think probably all of us expected. There is a case to be made for looking at this more carefully. The exponential rise in the volume of this type of abuse using technology has outpaced the ability of the system to understand what is going on. It has outpaced the statistics that the Minister mentioned. That is the tip of the iceberg; it does not actually tell one what is going on.

As in so many cases to do with the online world, we are all behind the curve. This is happening now, in plain sight; it is not theoretical. I hope that, in the meetings that we will have, we can explore this more fully and explain the extent and the depth of this and the deeply worrying link that is increasingly being demonstrated between perpetrators abusing online, using images, and then at some point moving on to actual physical abuse of children. I hope that we can explore that in more detail. I thank all noble Lords who contributed and, on that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 93C withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Russell of Liverpool]

114: Clause 29, page 56, line 5, leave out “both” and insert “more”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment, linked to another in the name of Lord Russell of Liverpool, enables an additional condition to be added for consideration by the Secretary of State, when determining if an offender should not be released at the end of the section 255BA automatic release period.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 118 and the related Amendments 114 and 115 in my name. I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady May of Maidenhead and Lady Jones, and the noble Lord, Lord Polak, for adding their names to these amendments. I am concerned that the provisions in Part 2, which allow the automatic re-release of recalled offenders after 56 days, will put victims of domestic abuse at serious risk of harm if, as drafted, perpetrators of domestic abuse remain eligible for automatic re-release.

These amendments have the full support of Nicole Jacobs, the Domestic Abuse Commissioner. She stated her concerns directly to the Secretary of State, David Lammy, in a letter on 11 November.

For victims and survivors of crimes such as domestic abuse and stalking, their perpetrators know everything about them: where they live and work, where their children go to school, and all their regular routines. They remain fixated on their victims, and escalations in the risks they pose are consistently in relation to particular individuals. If we think about this provision from the perspective of a domestic abuse victim, they are already likely to have been subject to years of abuse before reaching the point where their perpetrator is convicted and sentenced.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

Yes.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I thought so, but I got confused.

Amendment 118 responds to a serious problem: automatic release after 56 days of individuals who have been recalled specifically because they breached the licence condition relating to the victim of the original offence. In other words, they have shown, as the noble Lord, Lord Russell, said, that they are willing, even while on licence, to breach restrictions designed to keep that victim safe. This is a behaviour that may indicate continuing risk, which, under Bill as it stands, will not be assessed before release.

The victims, overwhelmingly women in these circumstances, must not be put in this potential danger. The amendment is essential to ensure that if there is a victim-related breach, the individual is not released automatically. If necessary, the case must go before a parole board—an expert independent body whose very purpose is to assess risk. The Government have been very clear through the Bill that their aim is to ensure that public safety remains paramount. This amendment seeks to deliver on that aim.

--- Later in debate ---

The Secretary of State has the power to cancel a recall if satisfied that the offender has complied with their licence condition. This is unchanged by the Bill. I am confident that the safeguards already built in to the Bill provide the necessary assurance to address the noble Lords’ concerns. I therefore respectfully ask them not to press their amendments.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, can I ask for a bit of advice on the procedure, because we got slightly out of order in this group? Mistakenly, the first four amendments in the group were not moved but were then spoken to. I stood up first and spoke to Amendment 114, so I am not quite sure whether it is me who is meant to reply to the Minister, but if everyone is happy and Jake the clerk is happy, then I am happy.

I thank the Minister for his response, but the Domestic Abuse Commissioner feels that she has genuine reasons for concern. It would be helpful, if the Minister agrees, for him to meet us between now and Report. We feel strongly enough that if we are not able to resolve this to her satisfaction, we will certainly want to bring it back on Report and may take it to a Division.

[Lord Timpson (Lab)]

I am very happy to meet as suggested. It is a very good idea.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

I thank the Minister. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 114 withdrawn.

Sentencing Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 26th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, indicated, the motivation behind Amendment 34 is broadly similar to what he has just described in his own amendments. Indeed, later in the Bill, at some point next week, there is a series of amendments that I have laid, working with Nicole Jacobs, the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, specifically to try to make sure that when we are looking at early release provisions, a particularly hard and clear focus is placed on domestic abuse perpetrators, who have very high levels of recidivism and can be particularly dangerous.

The motivation behind this amendment came partly from an interaction with an organisation in Northern Ireland called the Marie Collins Foundation, which is particularly concerned about yet another acronym I have learned—TACSA—which sounds like an injury to your ankle. It actually means technically assisted child sexual abuse, an activity that is prevalent and growing extremely quickly, assisted by technology. There was a particularly egregious example of a father of several daughters, resident in one of our larger cities outside London, who was found to have drilled a series of holes around his home, particularly into the bathrooms and lavatories, to be able to watch his daughters as they were going about what one does in bathrooms and lavatories. I am afraid this is, believe it or not, not that unusual.

I completely follow the logic that has been put forward by several noble Lords, including the noble and learned Lord by my side, which is that we should not and must not be too specific in the Bill. But some clear guidance is required, whether that comes from the Sentencing Council or some other bodies. While I am not a professional politician, professional politicians in office know all too well the opprobrium and publicity that come their way when—not “if”—somebody is released from prison who should not have been, and does something dreadful yet again, or when somebody who should go to prison does not, for reasons to do with trying to alleviate the pressure on the prison population, and then does something really awful. Everybody will say: “Why didn’t we pick that up at the time?”.

We need to think about this very carefully. I understand fully the reasons behind why we are trying to alleviate the pressure on prisons and His Majesty’s occasionally loyal Opposition have quite a lot to answer for, given the state we are currently in. But we need to be very careful about this; that is really all I have to say.