Victims and Courts Bill (First sitting)

Alex Davies-Jones Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 17th June 2025 Public Bill Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Alex Davies-Jones)]

Q Thank you, Sarah, for coming to give evidence to us today. How do you think the measures currently in the Bill will help with the prosecutorial capacity issue that we have at the moment?

Sarah Hammond: We welcome the focus in the Bill on broadening the pool of professionals who are eligible to become crown prosecutors. Recruitment can be challenging. It is a competitive market out there, so I think measures that broaden the pool of people from which we can recruit will be really helpful. We have other measures in place that will assist with the recruitment of crown prosecutors. We have just launched a scheme called Go Prosecute for senior crown prosecutors, aimed at professionals who have perhaps stepped out of criminal law practice for a while for various reasons. We would offer them a 12-month contract, with a view to extension, to come back into the field of criminal law practice and would support them to do so.

[Alex Davies-Jones]

Q What do you see as being the future benefits of having extra capacity within the CPS as a result of the measures in the Bill?

Sarah Hammond: It will allow us to recruit. We were very pleased with the settlement that we received in the spending review, which gives us the capacity to take the legal workforce to the levels that we really need to be able to prosecute cases effectively. The measures in the Bill will also allow for a more diverse workforce. It will allow people who have perhaps had different experiences and backgrounds in the profession to become Crown prosecutors.

As a whole, I do not think it can solve all the problems with backlogs and delays, and there is a duty on everybody in the justice system to ensure that we are maximising productivity and efficiency as well within the systems. We have just started a programme of continuous improvement, and I know that it is a priority for the Director of Public Prosecutions personally. We are looking at all our systems and processes to make sure that we are stripping out any inefficiencies and waste.

[Alex Davies-Jones]

Q You mentioned the Law Commission review of the unduly lenient sentence scheme. How important do you feel it is that we let the Law Commission complete that before we make any changes to the ULS?

Sarah Hammond: It is important to get a wide range of evidence. I have been working in the CPS for 27 years, so I have seen only one side of it, and there will obviously be lots of different aspects. As I said, if there is that wide body of evidence that suggests that people are being disadvantaged by that timescale, it is important to get all the information around that before any decisions are made.

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

Q Which areas of the Bill, if any, do you think will pose challenges for the Crown Prosecution Service?

Sarah Hammond: As always, there is a collective challenge when a Bill becomes law just to work out how things will work in practice and how implementation will work. Take the restriction on parental responsibility. It will be important for the CPS to work with the Government, police and local authorities to obtain the relevant information about evidence of parental responsibility and put that before a judge to make the decision without causing any further delays in the system. Once the Bill becomes law, it is a case of working through some of the processes to make sure that the implementation is smooth and we have those clear processes in place.

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[Dr Mullan]

Q A final question from me. I am conscious of time, so I will direct this question to Dame Nicole because of your particular expertise in domestic abuse.

You will be aware that the Bill introduces a duty on the court to make an order to remove parental responsibility in respect of any children for whom an offender has parental responsibility, if they have been sentenced to four or more years. We have laid an amendment to suggest that provision should apply if an offender is convicted of an offence against any child, not just a child for whom they have parental responsibility, and to any offender who has a custodial sentence. Which do you think is the preferable approach, or, more generally, what are your views on removing parental responsibility for those convicted of child sex abuse?

Dame Nicole Jacobs: I am very aware of dysfunctions within how domestic abuse is understood in the family court. It is positive to clarify to the court that, with certain offences, allowing parental responsibility should be considered inappropriate. Even saying that, though, I am a bit cautious about a completely black-and-white approach. I agree with the provisions in the Bill, but you would have to think very carefully about the range of other offences—for equivalent convictions against other children, absolutely, but I do not know enough about what is being proposed in terms of the range of other offences.

While we are on the subject of family court, one of the long-standing clarifications needed from Government is about a presumption of parental involvement. The Government were looking into that literally years ago, when I was first appointed as a designate, and it has not been resolved. That should be either clarified through this legislation or just clarified full stop. In the family court, the welfare checklist in the Children Act 1989, which is adequate in considering the safety of a child, is often confused with a presumption of parental involvement. I believe that the safety of children, who are recognised as victims in their own right in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, should be paramount.

[Alex Davies-Jones]

Q Thank you all for coming to give evidence to us today.

Going back to non-attendance at sentencing hearings, what impact will compelling perpetrators to attend their sentencing hearings have on victims and their families, and will giving the judge—for the first time ever—the ability to issue sanctions on them once they are in prison make a difference in terms of helping victims and families feel that they getting justice?

Dame Nicole Jacobs: As Baroness Newlove said, it depends on the victim and the family, and the context of the situation. For many people, it would be heartening to feel that there is an ability to compel someone to come to court to hear their sentence and the consequences of their actions, which have devastated the lives of those people. But I could also imagine, especially in the context of domestic abuse, situations in which the victim, or their family if they have been murdered, would find some of that difficult. You would have to understand those dynamics.

In the context of domestic abuse, for example, there could be a very clear notion that that would be the just thing to do. There could be another example where, because of the nature of the family—keep in mind that for domestic abuse, I am looking through the lens of the fact that the victim and perpetrator are very well known to each other; that is not the case for all sorts of other crimes—there could be dynamics that are more complex. That is why what both Katie and Baroness Newlove have said, about understanding that the victim and families will feel confident and engaged and able to speak, is really important.

We must also keep in mind, especially with domestic abuse, that there could be family members and people involved as victims who have radically different views. Again, there is a complexity to this that does not necessarily always come through in a very black-and-white provision.

Baroness Newlove: Again, I want to support the family. The decisions we are making here are for the professionals to make the courtroom run seamlessly, but it could happen instantly—if the defendant just does not come down, how are we going to manage the emotions on the day, as well as the emotions they have gone through on the journey? I really want to make sure that they are supported.

I see that there is going to be a penal order in prison. I could go on a bit about that myself, but I will not—that is out of scope. I welcome that provision, but am also concerned about how it is managed. If the governor of the prison sees that that is going to be detrimental to their health and wellbeing, it might not happen, and so then where is the transparency about that being delivered for the victim? I think we need to do further work and look at that, because there is very little communication to victims. Nobody knows what they do in prison. Victims are told what they are doing, but they get very little information. For me this is a step forward, but what happens at the end of the day is far more important.

[Alex Davies-Jones]

Q I will come back to you, Baroness Newlove, and then I would like to bring you in on this, Katie. In the Bill, we are introducing a victim contact scheme with, for the first time ever, a dedicated helpline for victims and survivors to get that information. In relation to your report, Dame Nicole, we know that many offenders for domestic abuse get less than 12 months of custodial sentence, which makes them ineligible for the contact scheme. For the first time ever they will have a helpline that they will be able to call. What difference will that form of communication that we are bringing in with this Bill make to victims and survivors?

Dame Nicole Jacobs: I cannot underscore enough how important it is for this gap to be filled. It is exactly as you say; there are so many victims who, if they do not meet the criteria of the victim contact scheme, are literally not in the frame for any advice or support. Yet there are all these changes, whether that is an early release or just any information at all, such as the conditions of release. I get these calls at my office—I am sure we all do. They are very hard to problem-solve through; you have to find the right person within probation who may be able to tell you, and it is a huge gap.

I am really pleased about the provision adding offences to the full victim contact scheme, such as coercive and controlling behaviour, stalking and harassment. That is really welcome. More people will be eligible for the victim contact scheme. I remind you of what I am told by probation—that victims who are eligible for the scheme do not always have contact because some of the contact details are lost or the fact that they are eligible for that scheme is maybe not known to them. That brings us back to the same theme: where is the end-to-end support for victims?

I think a helpline will really fill a gap. My question about the helpline is whether the resource is adequate. That is a question that needs to be answered, or at least there needs to be an iterative process, where we can see that and build on it. My guess is that the helpline will start feeling very much like casework. It will not be as simple as victims calling and saying, “Can you tell me some information?” or an advocate calling on their behalf. They will want to then say, “I do not think these conditions are adequate”, and they will have a lot of questions. There is a lot of logistics behind the scenes that I worry about, and whether they will have the access to the information they need.

I am sure I should hand over to Katie and Baroness Newlove, who see a lot of this happening too. The answer is yes; it is great to have the helpline, but there is a question mark in my mind about the resourcing and whether we will quickly learn that there is much more need for a caseworking approach.

Certainly, the biggest gap remaining for me is victims whose offender is in prison for something that is not a domestic abuse-related crime. That is the biggest difficulty in all this. Very often—say if it is a drug-related crime—it has “nothing” to do with domestic abuse, but they are a known perpetrator, and those victims need to be able to access the line.

[Alex Davies-Jones]

Q Before you come in on that point, Katie, obviously you will be aware of the new domestic abuse flag that we are bringing in as part of the sentencing review, so that will be possible in future.

Dame Nicole Jacobs: I am very pleased about that. It is a big step forward.

Katie Kempen: I agree with Nicole. We support the extension of the victim contact scheme, and we think it is hugely valuable to have that access to information—victims tell us that all the time. As has been said, in the last year or so, it would have been an invaluable resource for victims to be able to access.

On Nicole’s concerns about resourcing, as an organisation that runs a helpline, I would say that up to £200,000 for the helpline feels quite optimistic. The operational challenges that we bump into include that people are often in mental health distress when they access these contact lines, so the calls take longer and you need your staff to be trained in safeguarding, data protection, referrals and so on, which all takes time and investment.

The other element from our perspective is the knock-on impact this will have on victim services. It is estimated that the phone call will last about 28 minutes, and we will then need to pick it up and explain to the victim what their rights are, where they can go from here and where they can get further information. Undoubtedly, we will need to give additional emotional support—the phone call is likely to be quite traumatic for them. We need to see additional investment in the victim services that will be picking up the additional demand that comes from the scheme, although I would say it is a hugely welcome step forward.

[Alex Brewer (North East Hampshire) (LD)]

Q What do you think will be the impact of the new definition of “victim” for the purposes of the victim contact scheme?

Katie Kempen: We think it is clear and makes it quite accessible. From our perspective, if possible, we would like to see the eligibility for the victim contact scheme to go to all victims of domestic abuse. As Nicole mentioned, a person might not be convicted of a DA-related offence, but there is none the less an impact on the victim. You have referred to flagging as part of the sentencing review, and we think that could help. Where possible, we would like to see it extended. However, it seems as though the reforms will make it easier and clearer for victims to access support information.

Baroness Newlove: I agree.

Dame Nicole Jacobs: I would just underscore for the Committee that the inclusion of children is very important. I recently published a report on children, “Victims in their own right?”—that question mark was on purpose. One aspect of the report was mapping 700 services for children in England and Wales, and the fact that one in five say that they do not have adequate funding, which had led to curtailment.

If I had to name one of the largest gaps we have in victim services—I would say there are gaps across the board—it is the huge gap in relation to children. That goes back to this continual theme. Under the Victims and Prisoners Act, we have the duty to collaborate. I was a huge champion for that, and I am now very involved in its enactment, but it does not create any new funds for services for victims; it says to local areas, “You have a duty to collaborate on the funding streams that currently exist”.

I would say that a huge gap in this Bill is a duty to fund community-based services. Without wishing to embarrass Katie by talking about the incredible work that is done by Victim Support, there is a range of services that are the foundation of support for victims. They do not sit in core budgets like other kinds of public services do. That is one thing we have to fundamentally address for victims to have that kind of end-to-end support. I will not labour it any more, but I have to point out the biggest gap. It is great to have children defined, but what does that mean?

Katie Kempen: The reality for us is that the budgets for commissioning services are being cut, so the services that we can provide are being cut. The increase in national insurance contributions has obviously hit the sector really hard as well. We support all this work to improve the victim experience, but it needs to go hand in hand with a well-resourced victim sector that can take victims from the point of the crime occurring—even pre-charge and pre-contacting the police—right to the end of the criminal justice process.

Baroness Newlove: Can I bring it back to the information for victims? The one thing I am really concerned about is the importance of what information is given to victims, because it is very patchy. They are being told, “We cannot tell you whether the offender has been released”, and they cannot be told where the offender lives or what the offender knows about their exclusion zones. I truly welcome the fact that we will hopefully turn it into a restriction zone, because I have mapped my life out, and I have three offenders who know exactly where I am.

More importantly, the information takes too long and is very clunky. The victim liaison officer tries to do as much as they can, but I think this is an ideal opportunity—I am looking at the Minister—to let the victim know that, if the offender has been released, he does not live in the area; he lives 300 miles away. That gives comfort. I have met a victim who is petrified that the offender lives near her, because nobody will tell her where the offender is. We are not saying police must pinpoint where he is, but, if that offender lives 300 miles away, she can at least go out the door and go to the shops without feeling that he will be around the corner. That is really important. Why are we nervous about sharing information about offenders when offenders can know a lot about victims?

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[Dr Mullan]

Q I appreciate that some of what you deal with would not end up involving a magistrate passing a sentence, but sometimes that will be the case. Would it benefit transparency for victims, even at a magistrates level, to have a record of the remarks that were made in relation to why the sentence was passed?

Rebecca Bryant: Absolutely, yes, I do. What is taken into account around sentencing is often rather opaque, as is whether someone actually has to attend the sentencing. Victims need to be able to see justice done, because they have had a traumatic experience and have perhaps gone through the process of giving evidence live and having to face the person who has perpetrated the antisocial behaviour, crime or community safety issue. Having access to the sentencing report and the sentencing itself, and understanding that their victim impact statement is being read out and taken into account, would be significantly beneficial.

Charlotte Hamilton-Kay: I agree. We have to look at everything on a case-by-case basis, and in some situations it would not be appropriate—a victim would not feel comfortable with it. The problem with antisocial behaviour is, again, that grey area between ASB and crime. Impact is the biggest factor, and a victim needs to have that voice and explain how they have been impacted, but we certainly do not want the secondary traumatisation of coming face to face with someone who potentially does not acknowledge what they have done. You would have to look at the complexities of each case.

[Alex Davies-Jones]

Q What are the benefits of the Bill having the first ever duty to co-operate among housing providers, the Victims’ Commissioner and other relevant authorities? What will that do for victims of ASB?

Charlotte Hamilton-Kay: It is a really great step. We need more accountability, and oversight of all agencies involved in managing antisocial behaviour, and the duty to co-operate with the Victims’ Commissioner, is a really great start to that. There is a huge postcode lottery and disparity across England and Wales in the way that victims of antisocial behaviour are supported, the way their cases are managed and what action is taken on different behaviours. Anything we can do to bring a nationalised approach would be really beneficial to victims.

Rebecca Bryant: I think there is a balance. We welcome the Victims’ Commissioner having the authority, and the co-operation element, but the arena of social housing, local authorities and antisocial behaviour is very crowded at the moment. You have the social housing regulator, which is currently looking at housing providers in relation to the consumer standard, which includes antisocial behaviour—their approach to it, the number of cases per 1,000 and the respondents’ satisfaction with how they respond to it. That is not just for housing providers; it includes local authorities with housing stock. That is one side.

You also have the local government ombudsman and the housing ombudsman, which both deal with individual people who are not satisfied with the response they have received from the agency we are talking about. We are very supportive of antisocial behaviour victims and approaches being at the forefront of the Victims’ Commissioner’s mind, and her or him being able to pull together responses, require people to respond and perhaps look at themes and areas where we can strengthen our support and guidance for agencies that work in this arena, but what will that actually look like? We are currently working on that with the current Victims’ Commissioner. At the moment it is quite vague. There would have to be a tightening up of what element she is going to look at, bearing in mind that the ASB case review, the housing ombudsman, the local authority ombudsman and the social housing regulator are all looking at the same thing.

[Caroline Voaden]

Q What measures to improve the situation around antisocial behaviour would you have liked to see in the Bill that are not in it?

Rebecca Bryant: Funded universal support for victims of antisocial behaviour. It has been made clear by not only us but the previous panel that antisocial behaviour is a very broad church and often includes criminal activity, but it is not recorded as a crime. We use antisocial behaviour legislation, as it is under the current regime and as it will be in future with the Crime and Policing Bill, as that stands, for the use or threat of violence, for example. We all know that using or threatening violence is a crime, yet we use antisocial behaviour legislation to respond to it. It can involve drug dealing, cuckooing properties, criminal damage—all those things are crimes.

If you are a victim of crime and you report it as a crime to the police, you will get an automatic offer of victim support. When you are dealing with an antisocial behaviour case, you might report it to the local authority or to a housing provider, and you do not get immediate access to victim support. We know from our own research and research from the Victims’ Commissioner, various different reports and colleagues like ASB Help that what supports a victim is having a named person who can support them through the process. That person can guide them through often very complex and difficult situations in relation to taking legal action, or if the perpetrator is vulnerable and has multiple issues around mental health, drugs and alcohol, and the significant delays in the civil justice system mean that the case may go on for a long time.

We need specialist victim support that is universal and independent. I should stress the independence because, often, when a complainant makes a complaint to a housing provider and a local authority, they will be part of a caseload of many. They will be given some support and guidance, and some people have specialist training to do that, but we would seriously support having an independent specialist to provide that kind of support—for example, Victim Support, which is commissioned and funded. It is very much a postcode lottery at the moment. There are some police and crime commissioners in the country who fund specialist ASB victim support, but they are few and far between. It really is a postcode lottery as to what you get where you live. That is what I think is missing.

Charlotte Hamilton-Kay: I absolutely agree with that. We can talk about victims of a single instance of minor crime, which I do not say easily; it is the criminal version of “low level”. If, for example, someone smashed your plant pots on your front doorstep, that is a crime and you are entitled to support for it. But if you have been suffering sleepless nights for 12 months because a neighbour has kept you awake constantly, you are losing your job because you are falling asleep at work, and you have experienced a constant campaign, there is no one there. If there was a statutory agency to provide support, that could be life-altering for some people. It is a very important thing that we continue to campaign for.

With the best will in the world, a lot of the measures are a great step forward for victims of antisocial behaviour, but if we do not allocate the resources and ensure that the training and experience is there for frontline practitioners, then we are only as good as our weakest link. We need to ensure that we support our frontline practitioners who work in the field of antisocial behaviour to get the job right. If they do not have the resources to do the job properly, they are not going to be able to. If they have not got the training and the knowledge to understand the vulnerabilities and the different caveats of antisocial behaviour, they are not going to be able to do the job properly. That is immediately where we fall down. Unfortunately, the buck will stop with them, so we are dutybound to make sure they have adequate support to do it right.

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[Dr Mullan]

Do you want to add anything, Clare?

Clare Moody: In terms of the involvement of the victim in that decision making, as Genna said, there are complications around getting the perpetrator into the courtroom, but who would not want them to see the justice that is being meted out and for the victims to have that opportunity? But yes, the consultation would make sense.

[Alex Davies-Jones]

Q On that point specifically, the non-attendance of sentencing hearings, we feel that we have gone as far as we can in the Bill in terms of introducing prison sanctions and other sanctions that can be given to the perpetrators to enable their attendance at their sentencing hearings. It is the first time ever that judges will have these powers at their discretion. You mentioned concerns around “reasonable force” in getting them to the courtroom. That is one thing that is available under the Bill. The Opposition have also tabled an amendment about the ability to gag and restrain perpetrators who attend. Do you have any thoughts on that and on how workable it would be?

Genna Telfer: As I said, moving anyone who does not want to be moved is very difficult. We do it all the time in policing; we have to move people when they do not want to. It is difficult, it takes a lot of people and it takes a lot of resource. There is a risk of injury to the prison staff who are moving them. What we are trying to achieve, versus the impact of trying to do that, might be the balance that is needed. I think that while it is good to have it in there, prison entitlements and the potential extension of the sentence are probably more the tools to do this than the actual physical restraint of people.

Clare Moody: I would say exactly that. An accidental outcome of this should not be the greater traumatisation of victims. The process might wind up with some kind of scene that involves centring the perpetrator, rather than what the victims have been through. I think there needs to be care around that in ensuring that victims are still at the heart of the process.

[Alex Davies-Jones]

Q Bringing it back to victims, which is exactly what the Bill is meant to be about, one of the new measures in the Bill concerns the victim contact scheme and a dedicated helpline for victims, so that they can have and request information about their perpetrators—for example, about conditions placed on them—and their cases. As frontline officers, dealing with this every day, what difference do you think will that make to victims and survivors?

Genna Telfer: I think it will simplify it. At the moment we have two schemes—the contact scheme and the notification scheme—with different eligibility, so it will make it slightly easier. The helpline is a great idea, but it needs to be resourced properly, as with anything. If it is not, then we are setting an expectation for victims that might not be met, which might frustrate them further. A concern for us in policing is whether, if it is not resourced properly within probation, it falls back to policing to address, when we might not have the information or resource to do it. But in principle, absolutely, I think it is a great idea.

Clare Moody: Again, I agree with that. It is about simplification, clarity, support for victims, and the value that that adds. Of course, there will not be straightforward calls. Victims will be calling in and asking, “But what about this?” or “Can you tell me this?” to get more information. There will be complexity in the calls that come in and the response to them. There needs to be resourcing for that, and there may be a knock-on to wider victim services, because there will be questions that fall out of that and through to the victim services support sector.

[Alex Davies-Jones]

Q How do you see the new powers that the Bill gives the Victims’ Commissioner affecting work with police and PCCs, particularly on victims of antisocial behaviour?

Clare Moody: Those powers are welcome. One of the points about the new powers is the reporting. It is about aligning what is going on with those powers. Where police and crime commissioners have a responsibility for antisocial behaviour reviews, how does that align with the work of the Victims’ Commissioner? With all of this, it is about making sure that there is simplicity in the system for victims and that there is not duplication, and aligning things. For example, as police and crime commissioners, we do local reporting through the local criminal justice boards, and we report into the Ministry of Justice through that. How does that sit alongside the work of the Victims’ Commissioner, so that there is not a multiplicity of reports and we are pointing in the same direction of benefits and changes that we need to see for victims?

Genna Telfer: Yes, it has to complement what PCCs are doing through the local criminal justice boards. Any additional support we can get to work with partners is welcome. As was described earlier, ASB is definitely not just an enforcement issue; it is the whole partnership piece. We welcome the additional powers around housing. As Clare said, it has to complement what is going on locally.