Victims and Prisoners Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 18th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, as I so often find myself saying in your Lordships’ House, in the Green Party, when we are talking about justice policy, we would not start from here. Green political philosophy puts at its heart restorative justice. That means putting the victim at the centre in aiming to restore—or ideally, improve—their condition comparative to what it was before the crime, and ensuring that the offender’s rehabilitation is built on making amends both to the individual victim and to the community.

Paragraph CJ201 of our Policies for a Sustainable Society sets out, as one of its key objectives:

“To assist the victims of criminal acts as much as possible”.


I note that, when I look at the CPS website, there is a restorative justice page that was updated in February this year. It notes that restorative justice can play a part at any stage of the criminal justice process. It does, however, go on to note that it is most often associated with conditional cautioning. A phrase that particularly caught my attention was,

“where trained personnel are available, it should always be considered”.

My question for the Minister now—or perhaps he could elaborate later in writing—is: where do the Government see restorative justice? I have looked carefully at the Bill and there does not seem to be an obvious way in which that is considered part of it. I would be interested to see whether there is any part of the Bill that is seen to be associated with that and to learn how the Government see restorative justice as part of the overall system.

Of course, if we were approaching the Bill from that perspective, any Bill by definition would involve both victims and offenders—but that, of course, is not where we start with this Bill. So I begin by sharing the disappointment expressed by many that this is now a victims and prisoners Bill. Surely, we would be in a better place if there were now two separate Bills, with a chance for both Houses to fully focus on victims in particular, their care and support, rather than finding ourselves at the same time dealing with some extremely knotty and long-running problems, notably the clear injustice of the IPP—imprisonment for public protection —sentences.

Looking at that focus on victims, we come back to the issue of resources, but also of commitments of resources. I note the excellent briefing from Victim Support, which calls for the Government to commit in the Bill to ensuring that all the rights of the victims’ code are monitored and reported on by criminal justice agencies, not just some of the rights. It says—and I suspect this will find a great deal of support in your Lordships’ House—that this has to be written on the face of the Bill. Victim Support also says—and I have to concur—that the Government should be sharing and publicly consulting on the data proposed for the monitoring of victims’ rights while the Bill is progressing through your Lordships’ House. So often we find ourselves saying very similar things.

In discussing the word “must”, I have to associate myself with the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, about the need to replace many of the “shoulds” in this Bill with “musts”; although we might have to bring in the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, at that point, because she has her own inimitable perspective on those particular debates.

Talking again about resources, the lack of support for community-based services, particularly for victims of domestic abuse, is something that I have been talking about for at least a decade. So many of our community-based services have to rely on a year-by-year, bid-by-bid state of total uncertainty about funding. We have seen some changes and improvements on that in the most recent years, but still we need to ensure that, if we are going to identify needs through the joint strategic needs assessment introduced by the Bill, there is actually the ability to deal with those needs. It is really important, when we look at the independent domestic violence adviser role, that that has to be an absolutely independent role. We have seen from the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, for example, how strong and important such advocates can be right across the functioning of our society.

According to the Local Government Association’s briefing—I declare my interest as a vice-president of the LGA—the Bill states that PCCs, health bodies and local authorities must work together in commissioning support services for the victims of domestic abuse, serious violence and sexual violence. That is a great objective, but we all know just how incredibly stretched local government and all such services are. The recent report by the domestic abuse commissioner noted that insecure and insufficient funding was a key driver of services struggling to meet demand. I have pointed out in a number of different contexts that it is important to acknowledge the needs of victims of crime and bereaved families from abroad, ensuring their right to access support in England and Wales. I have raised in Written Questions the issue of ensuring that people who are British residents but not British citizens, and who were victims of crime abroad, get consular support and support when they return home.

Observant noble Lords may have noticed that I am speaking on issues that more regularly fall within the purview of my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. I am sure that she will be picking up on some of these during the progress of the Bill, but there are a couple of issues on which your Lordships’ House may well hear from me again. One is protecting and supporting victims of major incidents and government wrongdoing. The Minister is already aware of my interest, which I raised with him during the Hillsborough Statement repeat, in the “Truth About Zane” campaign, which concerns the tragic death of young Zane Gbangbola. I am pleased to tell the Minister that Zane’s parents are keen to take up the offer to share with the department their experience of having an extreme inequality of arms in Zane’s inquest, with fully lawyered-up public bodies against a grieving family forced to resort to crowdfunding and pro bono support.

I note that the proposed independent public advocate, added after pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill and without consultations with organisations such as Inquest, Justice or any related to Hillsborough, is being instructed at the discretion of the Secretary of State, rather than the circumstances in which it is to be appointed being set out in statute. That surely cannot be right. I also note that there is no equality of treatment between the victims of major incidents and the victims of state wrongdoing and other crimes, nor any government justification for this disparity. In another revisiting of issues—I see a very familiar cast in this area—I particularly associate myself with the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, on the importance of services for victims of crime with no recourse to public funds, an issue which many of us addressed during consideration of the Domestic Abuse Bill, and the firewalling of immigration matters from victims of domestic abuse and other crimes.

I see that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, is not in his place, but hopefully he will see in Hansard later that although he and I are perhaps not very often aligned on economic matters, I very much associate myself with his remarks about the victims of economic crime. He focused on corruption and overseas victims of economic crime—I would add victims of economic crime in the UK. To quote UK Finance, we are

“the fraud capital of the world”.

We are not doing enough for fraud and corruption victims around the world. I hope that I can work with the noble and learned Lord on those issues.