Victims and Prisoners Bill

Debate between Lord Russell of Liverpool and Baroness Newlove

Committee stage
Monday 5th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

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

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

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

[Baroness Newlove (Con)]

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

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

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Debate between Lord Russell of Liverpool and Baroness Newlove

Committee stage
Wednesday 31st January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Newlove (Con)]

My Lords, the role of the commissioner is to review the operation of the victims’ code. The 2004 Act, which introduced the code, also created the post of a Victims’ Commissioner. It was the clear intention of the Government and Parliament that an independent Victims’ Commissioner should be able to champion the needs of victims and challenge the Government when code entitlements were not being complied with. Given the concerns many of us have about code compliance, the importance of the commissioner role cannot be overstated.

Since 2004, there have been just three Victims’ Commissioners: the noble Baroness, Lady Casey; Dame Vera Baird; and me. We have all come to the post through very different journeys, but, as those of your Lordships who know the three of us will testify, we have one attribute in common: we are, shall we say, a feisty bunch. However, I have to tell your Lordships, and I feel sure that my erstwhile fellow commissioners would agree, that there are times when being feisty is simply not enough.

Twenty years after the role was created, the time has come to give future Victims’ Commissioners the tools to do the job Parliament intended. This means that, when the commissioner makes recommendations, the Government and agencies take the trouble to consider them and respond. In my experience, this rarely happens. I therefore welcome the provisions in the Bill to make this a statutory requirement.

However, we need to go further. A basic requirement should be that the Victims’ Commissioner is consulted when the Government amend the code or issue statutory guidance in relation to it. Yes, the Government do consult me, but as a favour, not as a statutory duty. All too often, the consultation comes after the policy has been developed, and occasionally on the day it is to be announced, giving the sense of a fait accompli. Changes in the law will not necessarily stop this happening, but it is a start. That is why I am supporting Amendments 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 35, 43 and 48 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti.

I also welcome Amendment 49, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, which requires criminal justice agencies to co-operate with future Victims’ Commissioners. Again, if successful, this clause will not take effect until after I have left office. In my experience, many agencies I deal with are very helpful. HMPPS, for example, is particularly helpful. With some others, it can vary. For an independent Victims’ Commissioner to offer robust scrutiny, they need to have access to data and information relating to their statutory duties.

The duty set out in this amendment is not without precedent. The domestic abuse commissioner has exactly the same power. I understand it has never had to be used, but all parties concerned know it exists. These amendments combined will change the dynamics of the relationship of the commissioner with the agencies and with government. It makes her or him a formal part of the criminal justice architecture, and it gives them the authority to speak and be listened to.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I will amplify what the noble Baroness just said by actually quoting from the Government’s own description of the Bill and what is in it. A paragraph headed

“What happens if victims do not receive their entitlements?”


says:

“We think that all the measures set out will strengthen the service victims receive. As the Code is a statutory code of practice, all relevant bodies should already comply with it”.


We know they are not, so the status quo we are starting from is, to a very large degree, that the bodies which are meant to be complying with the statutory code of practice are not doing so. The paragraph continues:

“However, if things go wrong, victims can make a complaint”.


It is up to victims themselves, who may or may not be aware of what their rights are under the statutory code, to identify that they are not receiving their rights, and then it is up to them to make a complaint. What is the Victims’ Commissioner for if not to act as the obvious channel and filter for all such complaints so they can go directly through her or him to His Majesty’s Government?

What the Government have described here is a complete, accurate illustration of the problem we have. It is not working at the moment. What the Government have said will improve it, on the basis of the evidence we have, but, frankly, the arguments we have heard so far do not really give us any room for optimism, so I suspect I speak for everybody in the Committee when I say that, rather like my school reports, I think the Government “should do better”.

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Debate between Lord Russell of Liverpool and Baroness Newlove

Committee stage
Wednesday 31st January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Newlove (Con)]

My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group on child victims. I thank my noble friend Lord Polak for speaking about Poppy’s story. She is in the Chamber—a very gracious young woman who articulated her story very well. As a mother, when I watched my children have to give evidence, covered in blood, on the actions against their father—my sisters were told to turn in a corner when they were trying to ID on a VIPER parade—I called them “my heroines”. And Poppy is a heroine. As a mum, I felt that evening for her mum because, believe you me, as mothers we want to wrap you in cotton wool to protect you from pain. It was very emotional to listen to, and I send my huge respects to her mum as well.

This Bill needs to take into account the needs of all victims, but especially children. Children need to be recognised in this Bill. They are victims in their own right. As I said, my three daughters witnessed every kick and punch to their father, having to pull his tongue out because he was choking on his blood and say goodbye while he was in a coma. They live with that on a daily basis. They were not treated as children—they were told to act properly, because they were children.

Children who have been victims of crime, especially sexual abuse and exploitation, are among the most vulnerable in our society. This type of abuse can devastate the lives of children, impacting on their mental health, relationships and education. We in this Chamber have a responsibility to make sure that this Bill recognises and provides for them. The needs of children are not the same as those of adults, so they require specific provision that is designed for them, not against them. The victims’ code should consider children’s specific needs. They should be able to access registered intermediaries who can help them give their best evidence and, when they are interviewed, it should be done by people with specialist training in interviewing children.

When I was last in this role, I undertook a report on registered intermediaries. One of its findings was that the police and the CPS had a lack of awareness of the existence of registered intermediaries and how they worked. That was in 2018 and it is still the case now. This Bill gives us an ideal opportunity to make sure that these code rights are secured for our children. They are our future and we must care for them. That is the key here.

Children must have a needs assessment that takes into account their individual requirements, and we must have properly funded victims’ services, such as the “child house” model. This offers children who have experienced sexual abuse a child-focused, targeted response that can support children and their families as they recover from their ordeal—although, to be honest, they never recover; they survive. Currently, there is only one “child house” in the UK, which is the Lighthouse, in London, and, as a northerner, it really gets me to say that.

Children face a postcode lottery when it comes to support services. An FoI request by Barnardo’s to PCCs found that, of all the local authorities that responded, 68% had not in the last 12 months commissioned any support services for child victims of sexual exploitation. That is why I support these amendments, both as the Victims’ Commissioner and as legislator in this House—but, more importantly, as a mother of three daughters who, to this day, suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder because they felt they were not listened to but were told what to do. As a mother, I could not give them a hug because I might persuade them to give other evidence.

This amendment is so important for children and the victims of crime. We need to make sure the Bill provides specialist support services designed for children—in fact, designed for children, by children, because they will know their individual needs and vulnerabilities. We have a duty to help them cope and recover from such horrific and traumatic experiences.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly and cover all the amendments, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove. I put on the record that I am a governor of Coram, the oldest children’s charity in the United Kingdom, and I am a trustee of the Foundling Museum.

Like other noble Lords, I have had the privilege of listening to some of the child survivors of child abuse. It is difficult for them to speak of their experiences; it is also extraordinarily difficult to listen to them—it really is. I pay tribute to Poppy, who described the trauma she went through in the most brilliant, clear way, without undue emotion or embellishment, and it was far more powerful than anything I—or, I suspect, any of us—will say this evening. It is an honour to try to speak on their behalf, although I fear we are poor substitutes for the way in which they are able to describe what they went through.

What they are asking for is very simple. It is one word: recognition—that is, recognition of the fact that they are not adults. The vast majority of victims whom we are going to talk about during the course of the Bill, including, of course, the part about prisoners, are adults. However, a very significant proportion of victims are not adults, and children have very specific needs and are particularly vulnerable and open to manipulation. They can often have great difficulty in understanding what is going on around them and discerning what is right and what is wrong, depending on who is telling them what. To help them navigate their way through some of the situations which adults—usually—have landed them in, requires particularly sensitive, careful and deeply knowledgeable treatment. At the moment, the reality is that it is a postcode lottery for children.

My colleague on the Cross Benches, the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, is well known for his theory about some of the difficulties we appear to have got ourselves into in this country. We still seem to subscribe to what might be called the “good chaps” code of government: assuming that, if you tell people what it is they should do, that is what they will do. If one has a law, a code or guidance, the assumption is that people will read the guidance and then follow and adhere to it in a consistent manner. However, the evidence we have is overwhelming. When it comes to the treatment of children, there is a total and utter lack of consistency. There are statistics to back this up, and financial statistics which explain the cost of it. It is unacceptable that large parts of the country are effectively a desert when it comes to helping children who might get into the same sort of ghastly situation that Poppy was in.

As a Cross-Bencher I am not going make a political point, but, if I was a member of His Majesty’s Government, after being in office since 2010 and looking at the state of the way in which children are treated as victims at the moment, it is not a record I would feel proud to defend. It would be nice, for a change, to hear people say, “We have tried various things and spent money on them, but it is not all working and we acknowledge that. We have learned from it and we are doing something about it”. But to try and continue with the “good chaps” version of government—in which you tell people what they should be doing and they do it—is just fantasy. We need to wake up to that and do something about it, for all the poor children who deserve much better.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Lord Russell of Liverpool and Baroness Newlove

Lords Hansard - part two & Committee stage
Monday 25th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Newlove (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 53. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Coaker; to be perfectly honest, he has made my speech for me. I also thank the noble Lords, Lord Rosser and Lord Russell, for supporting this amendment.

Basically, everything has been said. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, asked in his passionate speech, why are we still talking about this issue? I know that the Minister listens; however, having spoken to Barnardo’s, and as a former Victims’ Commissioner and a victim of violent crime involving alcohol, I have a passionate desire to ensure that we get this right for children, because we are missing the criminal exploitation of children. I have met many victims of child sexual exploitation; what is the difference between that and child criminal exploitation? We need a multiagency approach—I feel that I am always on repeat in talking about this issue. The language and the proposals are the same, but we have to work together a bit more thoroughly and transparently.

I have attended many summits at No. 10, on sexual exploitation, knife crime—you name it, I have been to most of them over the past 11 years. Today we are still talking about serious violence, which is linked to criminal exploitation, and sadly it especially affects our young children. As the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, said, last week a 14 year-old was charged with murder. What kind of society are we living in today?

The violence in question is very serious. Last week, the police in England and Wales reported that between 11 and 17 October, they made just under 1,500 arrests. They seized weapons such as zombie knives, samurai swords and firearms, as well as £1.3 million in cash and drugs, by targeting those involved in organised drug crimes and county lines. Alongside the arrests, 2,500 vulnerable people, including children, were identified as in need of safeguarding. That is within just six days. It is an achievement to get all this together, but it clearly demonstrates that serious violence and criminal exploitation do not adhere to local area boundaries. We spoke in this Chamber about county lines but, once we had highlighted it, the drug lords widened their operations, moving the children across the country.

We have a duty to safeguard these children. Serious violence and child criminal exploitation are child abuse. If we are to stop this spreading, there has to be accountability. We like to talk the talk but, unfortunately, we are not walking the walk when it comes to what these children are put through in their daily lives. I have met 14 and 12 year-olds who are the most vulnerable in our society, absolutely captured by criminality. They do not have the education to say no, and they live in fear because the abusers do not stop at humanity. They like to grab their homes. They bring their families. We have drill videos and cuckooing—there is lots of this different lingo, and it all involves children, who are the drug mules in all of this.

Can you imagine having a child who gets involved in this, and your home then being scrutinised by a big fellow—most of them were—with a huge Samurai sword or a machete down his trousers? He looks quite normal to anyone else. Drill videos contain the lingo that gives messages to gangs. This is not in my script, by the way; this is about people I have met. This is about children who have no way of getting out. They need support on the ground.

That is why I am asking for this amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, put it well when he said that we need accountability. The amendment would ensure that the Secretary of State appoints a board known as the

“National Serious Violence Oversight Board”.

The Secretary of State would chair it and it would be accountable to Parliament; it would not be just window dressing.

The amendment proposes that we monitor delivery of the new serious violence duty across the country. This is not just for individual authorities to deal with; it is cross-country. The board would provide a national picture, identify national trends, see what is and is not working and share learning across the country. As I have said, no one agency can tackle this problem. I hope that the Minister will consider this amendment and see the benefits of establishing this oversight board.

“Ensuring accountability” are the two words that should be important, not “lessons learned”, when the horse has already bolted. A national serious violence oversight board would enable analysis of the national trends and proper scrutiny of what is and is not working. We owe it to these children to give them a better future.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support what my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, has just said. I echo her praise and thanks to another friend, the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, an ex-Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe colleague, for his diagnosis—because that is essentially what this probing amendment is about.

It has become extremely fashionable for Her Majesty’s Government to do two things when they feel they are getting into difficult waters. First, they give responses whereby a series of rather large-sounding sums of money are trotted out to show that they care and are doing something about it. Usually, there is no mention of what effect those large sums are having.

The second thing Her Majesty’s Government have developed a particular tic for is developing strategies. As I have said before in this Chamber, when I hear too many strategies coming from various directions, my instinctive reaction is to reach for my tin hat and head for the trenches. By their very nature, strategies are aspirational. They try to understand a problem, and they suggest a solution. They do not guarantee what the outcomes will be, and they rarely have built into them accurate measures and KPIs to actually work out whether the much-vaunted strategy is delivering.

I entirely agree with publishing strategies, not least because in reading them and tearing them apart, you can work out whether they are complete rubbish or complete and utter rubbish or contain a germ of common sense and a direction. To take the example of the report which Her Majesty’s Inspectorate produced only three days after Second Reading of this Bill, what Zoë Billingham produced is a fairly coruscating read. If your Lordships have not read it, I recommend it, but probably not just before bedtime. It takes apart at all these strategies and initiatives, all the money that has been thrown in all sorts of directions in considerable sums over many years, and measures how effective all that effort has been. The report says in very stark terms—Zoë Billingham repeated this on “Woman’s Hour” a few days later in even clearer English—that it is simply not working because it is not joined up. Having a series of local strategies does not result in a national strategy that will deliver.

This probing amendment is designed to ask Her Majesty’s Government to look at the past, the present and the evidence of what has not been achieved, rather than the precious little that has, and not to repeat the mistakes of the past, with wonderful vague promises and aspirations—particularly when we are dealing with issues such as violence against women and girls and the effect on children, when we know we owe it to them to do better. We need proper oversight. There is a difference between a report and a strategy. We need a mechanism that measures and holds the Government and all the different statutory bodies involved to account. That is what the amendment is about, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply.