Victims and Prisoners Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 23rd April 2024 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Brinton]

19: Clause 2, page 2, line 36, at end insert—
“(5A) Regulations under subsection (4) must make provision for a person to be able to obtain free of charge, on request, a transcript of the court’s summing up and sentencing remarks from a trial in which—(a) the person was a victim of a crime, and(b) that crime is tried in a court where the hearing is recorded.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment will provide all victims with a right to free transcripts of the sentencing remarks and the judge’s summing up where the trial takes place in a court where the hearing is recorded.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 19 in my name was originally proposed by my honourable friend Sarah Olney MP in another place. It highlights a scandalous failure towards victims, especially in the most serious crimes such as rape, serious sexual assault and stalking. It is completely unacceptable in this day and age that victims are forced to pay thousands of pounds to access a transcript of their own case while defendants can access them as part of their basic rights.

Let me quote:

“Accessing transcripts from proceedings in serious criminal cases is not only a fundamental right of victims but is also essential for maintaining transparency and accountability within the justice system”.


These are not my words, or Sarah Olney MP’s words; they are the words of the Government’s own Minister, Mike Freer.

In order to recover and cope, victims and family members need to be able to understand the reason a verdict has been reached, or the reason a certain sentence was imposed. Without this, many are left traumatised and are unable to move on with their lives. We have heard from many victims, saying they are constantly advised by the police and prosecutors not to attend a trial after they have given their evidence and, worse, not to attend sentencing hearings. Letters from the witness care unit literally capitalised the word “NOT” in “You are NOT required to attend”. Furthermore, videolinks to observe trials are rarely offered or facilitated for victims or bereaved families.

Unfortunately, the Government have cited the cost of court transcripts delivered through contracts with private, profit-making companies, and these prices can be prohibitive. With that, we agree. While the average sentencing remarks may only be £45 to £60, according to the Government, many complex cases can be significantly higher just for these comments—up to £200. The judge’s summing up can be higher still and we have heard of figures of over £500.

We are very grateful to the Government, and to the Minister particularly, for the meetings we had since Committee. We note that there is a pilot proposed. While the pilot proposed by the Government is welcome for these victims, it simply does not go far enough. It would, for example, not support the mother whose partner attempted to murder her and who is unable to move on. The pilot is very narrow in scope, running only for one year, only applying to victims of rape and serious sexual offences, and only giving access to sentencing remarks. Furthermore, we are not quite sure that the Government are clear on what they are hoping the pilot will achieve or demonstrate. We have discussed, with the Minister, the issue about data, and that remains an issue.

Ministers have suggested that transcripts are expensive to produce manually and the technology to automate the process is either expensive or not yet up to the standard. We do understand this point from the Government. This is why my amendment has been tabled, following discussion in Committee. Automation of the process at this stage would be needed only if the cost of producing transcripts was beyond the reach of government. In limiting this amendment to only sentencing remarks and summing up, we believe the cost, while prohibitive to many victims individually, is able to be taken on by the Government to provide open justice.

In conversations, the Government have questioned whether sentencing remarks really present a barrier. We know that they do, and I will give two very brief examples in a minute. Ministers have, on at least two occasions, said victims can go to a Crown Court and listen to the relevant audio recordings from the trial but may not record it themselves or transcribe it. This is wholly impractical, unknown among professionals, and we have never seen it happen once in practice. Having spoken with members of the judiciary, they were unaware that the practice even existed. The victims we are aware of who have tried to access this have all been denied.

The Minister has also previously stated that, in certain cases, a copy of the sentencing remarks can be made available to the public free of charge at the judge’s discretion. If this is true, members of the judiciary whom we have talked to are also unaware of this. We are certainly aware of some cases where they have been refused.

Here are two very brief cases. Juliana Terlizzi was quoted thousands of pounds for a transcript of her trail, and said:

“The trial was a culmination of almost two years I had fought to bring a dangerous, prolific sexual predator to justice. I was shocked to find out that I had to pay over £7,000 to get the transcript and I knew I couldn’t afford that”.


Rowan, whose daughter went through a gruelling court experience said:

“My daughter remains traumatised by her two days on the witness stand where she was character assassinated by the defence barrister.”


To prove the defence acted outside their own code of conduct, the family needed a copy of the court transcript and was quoted £22,000. This puts justice beyond the reach of victims.

There are other victims as well whom I have met and talked to: Charlotte, David, Victoria, Lily and Rosie. Those are not all their real names, because some of them are too scared to have their names mentioned. I particularly thank Claire Waxman and her team at the London Victims’ Commissioner’s office.

I have also signed some other amendments in this group and will be very brief. I have signed Amendments 57 and 59 on collaboration and adding stalking to the duty to collaborate. I have also added my name to Amendment 66 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Russell, on supporting a parliamentary report, once every three years, setting out the position regarding stalking. Importantly, I have also signed the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester’s Amendment 70, about the Secretary of State including statutory guidance on sustainable, multi-year contracts. One of the big problems we have with victim services at the moment is that there is nothing in the medium term, let alone long-term planning.

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Finally, I echo the comment from the noble Lord, Lord Meston—which was also made to me in Edinburgh two weeks ago by senior members of the Scottish judiciary—that in some cases involving sexual offences you have to be very careful about the dissemination of transcripts. That is another aspect to a not entirely straightforward question. I think I have replied to the points raised.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken on this group, and particularly the Minister for his response. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Meston, for his clarification of which parts of the court process are concerned. I was quoting both the judge’s summing up and judgment as well as the bigger costs for a wider trial transcript. I was trying to make the point that it can be asked for now but it is entirely at the judge’s discretion whether it happens and therein lies the problem, which is why we find ourselves here.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, for his help. He said: why can sentencing not be shared? I think that is one of the key points here.

I am very grateful to the Minister for his explanation but the difference between my amendment and the pilot is that the pilot remains at the judge’s discretion, which means that it becomes very difficult to collect any data on the efficacy of allowing victims to have these decisions at the point of judgment.

I was very moved by the comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, relating to Amendment 57 —which I did not comment on earlier—and if the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, wishes to test the opinion of the House, these Benches will support her.

I believe that victims need to see progress in this area. I recognise that my amendment is not what they really want but it would be a step forward and, on that basis, I wish to test the opinion of the House.

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[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is important to acknowledge that we need to improve the kind of data collection that we have. This is a really good idea, and I would like it to be pursued. I have an amendment later on consistency of data. One of the things I felt when I was looking at the issues was that, too often, victims are not counted properly. We know that there is a range of ways to produce crime statistics: discussions about victims can be very emotive and subjective. The more accurate information we have and the more rationally collected it is—a point was made about common sense—the better it is for society, so that it cannot be turned into a political football. We would know exactly what was going on, so that the right kind of research and resources could be allocated. I would like to hear from the Minister some ideas about at least being open to this and experimenting with it. It is eminently worth exploring further, and I would like to hear a positive response.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I spoke in Committee on this issue, and I continue to offer our support from these Benches. I will not repeat the detail of what I said, but through the passage of the Children and Families Act we had to make sure that there was specific identifying data to link up children who were having to access services in more than one department. That picks up very much on a point made by the noble Lords, Lord Bach and Lord Russell, about the complexity of data.

There has been a really good period between Committee and Report in which the Minister and other Ministers have made themselves available for discussing lots of these amendments, but the main problem is that we do not have a lot of data about victims. We have plenty of data about crime, but we just do not understand victims’ experience through data. One of the side benefits of the proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Bach, is that having that unique identifying number will create automatic access to make assessments, while protecting GDPR. I have spoken about that on other Bills, but it is important. I hope that this Government and any future Government will assess this as a key part of better services for victims, because we will better know and understand who they are.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for introducing this amendment. As he said, we had a helpful discussion on this proposal in Committee. The unique identifier for victims is a good idea and may well solve a lot of problems. As he said, why not harness this Bill to do it?

I will briefly repeat a point I made in Committee. I strongly suspect that this is a more difficult problem than it might seem on the surface, given that there are different computing systems in different parts of the system and different ways of collating data. It is a problem. I am well aware of the shortcomings of data retention within the wider criminal justice system. When I sit in a magistrates’ court, I see the PNC for offenders; very often, they will have multiple dates of birth and names. One only hopes that one is dealing with the same individual as recorded on the police national computer. There is a single identifier for the offender, but there may be a fair number of errors in there as well.

Nevertheless, it is a good idea. The noble Lord, Lord Russell, said that it has the virtue of common sense; I almost thought he was going to say that it has the vice of common sense. It needs to be considered carefully. As the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said, we want to hear that the Government are taking this seriously and that there is a programme in place to look at this seriously and try to help victims through this mechanism.

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[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I support the amendments to which the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, has spoken. This was an issue that I came across only when preparing for Second Reading. I do not want to repeat her arguments, and I could not make them as well or as thoroughly as she has, but I was shocked to discover the problems that have arisen in connection with counselling and advice. I also support the firewall amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. We have been here before many times, have we not?

Last week the previous Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, speaking to the committee reviewing the Modern Slavery Act, raised the interesting position of one law enforcement sector withholding information from, or not sharing information with, another law enforcement sector. She came to her conclusion, but I did not read her as having reached it entirely easily. I reached the conclusion that there should be a firewall for the reason put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher: imbalance of power—that is what it is about—between a victim and somebody to whom material is made available for abuse. These are very vulnerable victims. I have circled words such as “later this year” and so on, which the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, mentioned. I will not repeat them, but it would be good to make some progress on this issue.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, my honourable friend Layla Moran laid an amendment about the ending of non-disclosure agreements that prevent victims disclosing information to the police or other services, including confidential support services, ensuring that they cannot be legally enforced. She has campaigned on this issue for some considerable time. She and I both thank the Minister for the progress in Amendment 76, which is undoubtedly a step in the right direction. It certainly will help some victims access the support they need, but we on these Benches regret that this is not enough to fully give victims their voice back. We still need a complete ban on the use of non-disclosure agreements in cases of sexual misconduct, harassment and bullying to ensure that no victim is ever silenced. We will campaign on this in future but appreciate the step forward that has been made in this Bill.

I have signed Amendments 87, 88, 89 and 94 from the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin. I also thank the Minister for the meetings, his Amendment 76 and what he said in introduction—I agree with the response by the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Cotes, talked about third-party data requests, and again it was a privilege to be involved in those meetings. I thank her for her comments and her remaining concerns. She is absolutely right that it does not take us further forward enough.

Finally, I signed Amendment 96 from the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, on the immigration firewall. My noble friend Lady Hamwee was absolutely right: we have been here before. I was just thinking about amendments during the passage of the Illegal Migration Bill, the safety of Rwanda Bill and, I suspect, the Nationality and Borders Bill before that—yet we are not making progress. It is very unfortunate that the Government have gone backwards since the Modern Slavery Act in the protection of these particular victims. I know that across the House we will continue to push for ensuring that the loophole is closed.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, it is really a pleasure to respond to this group from these Benches, because there is real progress. It is important to record thanks to everybody who has made this progress happen. I very much welcome the clarification that the Minister has made in Amendment 76. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is quite right, though, that this is a first step. Indeed, today a useful brief was sent to me and possibly other noble Lords from the Bar Council, which makes the point that the issue of non-disclosure agreements is ripe for legislative change. The Bar Council welcomes the Government’s intention to implement legislative reform and recognises that some NDAs are abusive in nature. NDAs cannot cover criminal acts, and under existing common-law protections many are already unenforceable, but those who are asked to sign them are not always aware of the relevant legal principles. When you have the Bar Council and everybody else on your side, you know that this is an important first step.

On the Government’s amendments, I welcome Amendment 85, as the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, welcomed it. I thank the Minister and his team for listening and for bringing forward this amendment, which was aired in Committee very powerfully indeed by the noble Baronesses, Lady Watkins and Lady Newlove. Then, of course, there is a suite of amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin. I was very pleased to be able to support these in Committee. These Benches are absolutely in favour of them; they have the support of the whole House. I know from the very long time ago when I was a Minister how much work goes into getting to this place. I congratulate the noble Baroness and say how much we are in favour of these amendments.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, is absolutely right to be disappointed about the Government not accepting Amendments 87A and 88A. It is probably clear that we have not come to the end of this. The noble Baroness is quite right in nodding to say, “We have definitely not come to the end of this discussion about what needs to happen to support victims with requests for dealing with digital and other information, and providing the right kind of safeguards for them”.

The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, is right, and she has our Benches’ support for her amendment. If there were to be a Division on this then it would be next week. Between now and then we need to look at what the Minister has said to see if we can push him a bit further than he has gone, and then maybe we could avoid that, but the noble Baroness needs to know that she has these Benches’ support, and probably that of the Liberal Democrats, if we need to take the issue further. All in all, we have made great progress.

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I support Amendment 92. Much of what it seeks to achieve is or ought to be covered by the relevant practice direction in the Family Procedure Rules. As I said in Committee, it is sometimes quite difficult to discover what the state of the investigation has been and what bail conditions apply. It is therefore quite difficult to align bail conditions with orders required by the family court. Nevertheless, I support the amendment because it will, in practice, assist the courts.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I added my name to Amendments 80, 83, 91 and 92, and I support Amendment 84 as well, although I have not signed it. I will not repeat everyone else’s comments, but I support virtually all of them—though I might take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Meston, on a couple of minor details about why amendments have been laid.

I will make one point about Amendment 91 that nobody else has made. The very helpful briefing that we received from the Association of Clinical Psychologists and the Law Society Gazette this week set out the technical anomaly that exists with regulated psychologists. The position of the regulator, the Health and Care Professions Council, is that it wrote to the director of workforce at the Department of Health and Social Care to highlight risks presented by unregulated psychologists, including in relation to the provision of expert evidence. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Meston, that it was writing in a broader way than just for the courts.

In the landmark case of Re C, the President of the Family Division, Sir Andrew McFarlane, determined that the courts could not prohibit the appointment of an unregulated person who called themselves a psychologist as a psychological expert because there is no regulation of the term “psychologist”. The way round this would be to take this amendment, to make it absolutely clear. However, there are slightly broader issues that the Government now need to look at, not just from the courts but the wider health system, to make sure that those who are bound by the HCPC are the ones who are regulated to work in these areas—nobody else should be permitted to do so.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, although this has been a relatively short debate, it has been quite comprehensive. All noble Lords have spoken with brevity about these sensitive issues.

I will highlight two points. First, I pick up the point of the noble Lord, Lord Meston, about how any order made by the Crown Court should automatically be reviewed by the family court. That was a useful addition to the amendment, although I suspect my noble friend may be pressing the amendments as they are. Nevertheless, I thought it was an insightful point.

My other point about Amendment 91, on psychologists and people with professional expertise, is that the problems extend beyond experts. In family courts, I see McKenzie friends who clearly have their own agendas, and it is an issue with which one has to deal—but that is a tangent to the main points in these amendments. If my noble friend chooses to press her amendment, we will of course support her.

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[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 90, which provides for the relaying of information to schools. Schools need accurate and prompt information about what is going on. They need to know, and understand, what is happening, or what is suspected. Therefore, I welcome the amendment. It is almost as important as the information going the other way—that is to say, schools relay information to local authorities and, where appropriate, to the police.

I am afraid to say that there are a few cases I have come across where schools, or individual members of school staff, have been reluctant to get involved in child abuse cases, or where there is suspected child abuse. Albeit this amendment provides for the information to pass the other way—from the authorities to the school—if it serves to do anything it may well encourage the passing of information in both directions.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, from these Benches, we also welcome Amendment 90. I want to add one other issue though. It is very much a one-way system, as the noble Lord, Lord Meston, has announced, and I ask whether the noble Earl will write to me, the noble Lord, and any noble Lords who speak in this group, to report on the Government’s progress on the recommendations that they have accepted following the independent inquiry into child sex abuse. Recommendation 13 is about the need for mandatory reporting, and the Government said, over a year ago, that there would be a full public consultation beginning with a publication of a call for evidence. I have seen neither, but, more importantly, I want to know when we can—perhaps through this Bill—have something going the other way, as the noble Lord so rightly pointed out.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I have a genuine question. Of course, I support the amendment, but the wording here is

“if a member of the force has reasonable grounds to believe that a child who resides in the police area may be a victim of domestic abuse”.

If there is a situation where one of the parents calls the police, and there is what is called a “call-out”, that will be recorded, and that sort of information is made available to courts in particular circumstances. But would the child be seen as a potential victim of domestic abuse because the parents have made that telephone call because of a dispute between the parents?

Nevertheless, I support the duty to notify, but I wonder whether the Minister can answer that specific question.