Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

I pay tribute to those who provide the therapeutic services at Aylesbury YOI, whom I have met in the past. We have clearly stated that we see young adults right up to the age of 25 as a group that need treatment that is different from other cohorts, and we have specialist models for operational delivery to support prisons holding young adults to get the best results for that group. The curriculum at Aylesbury includes personal and social development skills, business, horticulture, barbering and decorating, and we will reinforce that with our new national prisoner education service, which is focused on work-based training and skills.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab) [V]]

It is crucial that victims’ rights are recognised and protected in their dealings with police, prosecutors and courts. Dame Vera Baird QC, the Victims’ Commissioner, has called on Ministers to make good on promises to give crime victims enforceable rights in law. She is right. The code consultation was a good first step, but where is the victims law up to?

[Robert Buckland]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that important point, and I pay tribute to the work of the Victims’ Commissioner and, indeed, her predecessor. The hon. Gentleman will be glad to know that a wider consultation on the new, revised victims code has been finished. We will be publishing the revised victims code in the next several weeks. It is a much smaller, user-friendly document. But further than that, we will legislate as soon as possible, within the next year, for a victims law to enshrine the rights contained in the code and elsewhere, to give victims the higher protection that both he and I want to see.