Transparency of the Parole Board and Victim Support

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My understanding is that the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Attorney-General meet on a regular basis.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, in 2016 the Public Accounts Committee reported:

“The criminal justice system is not good enough at supporting victims and witnesses”.


Your Lordships’ House voted on 12 December 2016 to strengthen the victims’ code, and we held off having another vote in January 2017 only after an undertaking from the Minister at the Dispatch Box that a strategy would be published in the next 12 months. To be told that the review will be undertaken “as soon as possible and possibly by Easter”, as the Minister said in reply to my noble friend just now, is still throwing it into the long grass. What guarantee can the Minister undertake to give the House that there will be such a strategy and that the victims’ code will be strengthened to ensure that mistakes such as this do not happen again?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, the matter of a victims’ strategy is very much at the forefront of our minds. Indeed, I believe that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State observed in the other place that it is in his present inbox. He has only just come into office, but I understand that he intends to address that very strategy.