Victims and Prisoners Bill

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 31st January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the chance to participate—I thought I was going to be cut off at the knees at the end of the last session when the Committee was adjourned promptly. I also apologise to the Committee because I did not participate in the Second Reading debate. I intervene this afternoon to support Amendment 14 tabled by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and supported by my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier, the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the other amendments concerned with restorative justice or RJ.

I have quite a personal reason for this because when I came into your Lordships’ House some years ago, my best friend rang me to say that his best friend from school had just been made a chief constable and was very interested in this thing called restorative justice, and would I be prepared to go and meet him? I said I would, of course. I knew virtually nothing about RJ at that time. I went to meet the chief constable and he explained to me how he thought we were missing a trick in not using RJ more widely to deal with what he described as our lamentable record in reoffending.

He arranged for me to go and get involved in some cases, hear the facts and even, with the permission of the participants, sit in as a facilitator on one or two cases. I got a great deal of first-hand experience of how RJ might or might not work. All he said when I finished was, “Will you just repay me by raising RJ and speaking about it in the House of Lords in the future?”. So here I am this afternoon, keeping faith with my friend, the chief constable. From my great experience, then, the key issue—this important point was made by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries—was that it works only if each participant, on the two sides of the argument or the case, is prepared to get inside the head of the other. That was an important part of what I learned while I was there.

I will not talk at length about what I learned specifically, but it is worth briefly recounting one case. A confirmed drug user with a charge-sheet as long as your arm saw an empty house and thought he would break in, find a piece of electrical equipment, take it, flog it and use the proceeds to feed his habit. Unfortunately for him, the house was not empty. The owner of the house, a designer, had a small studio upstairs on the second floor. He came downstairs to find this man in the hall and asked, “What are you doing?”. The man said, “I’ve come to read the gas meter”. The owner said, “Bad idea, because there’s no gas in this house. We don’t have gas”. A struggle ensued, during which the owner of the house hit the man over the head with a flowerpot. There are pictures of the person with blood streaming down his face when the police arrived and arrested him.

From this unprepossessing, unlikely beginning, a case of RJ was introduced. The men met a few times then, as was inevitably right, the burglar got a custodial sentence. The men corresponded while he was in prison and a degree of agreement and understanding—the ability of both sides to put the past behind them and do better in future, from the point of view of the perpetrator —was arrived at. When I talked to the perpetrator, I asked, “What was it?”. He said, “You can see my charge-sheet. All I saw on it were names but, this time, when I met the owner of the house, he said, ‘Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve terrified my family. My two teenage daughters will no longer sleep in separate bedrooms upstairs; they share a room next door to me and my wife. My wife has every single door and window locked—everything locked. You have completely wrecked our security as a family. What do you think about that?’”. Although he did not put it this way, it was a bit of a lightbulb moment for him.

On the other side, when I talked to the owner of the house, he said, “When we began to talk to the chap, he had had a hopeless start. He had a single mum—not much of a single mum, really—and was in and out of care, with little to no educational achievement. Inevitably, his life was largely devoted to crime”. From these two understandings came an ability to work together; it put them, in particular the perpetrator, to an important and life-affirming task to live better and have a worthwhile lifetime.

That is a great, moving story but I said to the chief constable, “There must be a but”. He said, “Of course there’s a but”. He was anxious then, as I think I would be anxious today, not to put too much weight on restorative justice. He said, “There are two things you can do to make sure that RJ does better”. The first is that you need—these are the words from the briefing, not the chief constable—“voluntary and honest participation” by both sides. That is straightforward.

Not in the briefing is the second point that he made: you need expert, trained facilitators. Being expert and trained means, first, that you move the conversation forward but not so that you avoid tackling the awful, painful issues that lie at the heart of the problem; and, secondly, that you are tough enough to blow the whistle when you believe that somebody is not trying. This is not always easy to do because, sometimes, a bit of effort has been invested and people are reluctant to let the case go, but someone has to realise that there are cases in which people will, in the famous phrase, swing the lead in the hope of a reduced sentence. The facilitator needs to be well trained. As the chief constable would say, “A facilitator cannot take on too many cases because they’re quite emotionally exhausting if you get really stuck into these people’s lives”.

The chief constable, if he were standing here, would say, “I certainly would not want RJ to be presented as a silver bullet”—the point made by my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier. “Above all,” he would say, “I don’t want it to be presented as a cheap silver bullet because it isn’t—at least, not in the short run. However, if you can turn a number of cases round, the long-term savings and benefits to society are incalculable.

Our re-offending rates remain too high—the same situation as when I met the chief constable. We surely have an opportunity now to be imaginative in our thinking about how to reduce offending rates. We need new tools in our toolbox, and restorative justice would be an important one. I hope my noble and learned friend the Minister will react sympathetically to Amendment 14. That would give me great pleasure, because it would mean that I have kept faith with my friend the chief constable.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that his faith will be even better kept if he keeps on advocating RJ? Does he also agree that it has its limitations, one of which is that there is a need, in the case he has described, for drug addiction treatment to go alongside it in some way? One must look at the underlying causes, as he has well indicated.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

I could not disagree with that. I suspect that there are a whole host of issues behind habitual offending which we need to think about, of which drug addiction is one. People involved in this policy area are clearly more experienced than I am.

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Given the remarks I have made in reply to the amendments, your Lordships may think it is a strength of the structure of the Bill that is has built into it inherent flexibility and opportunity for criminal justice bodies, wherever they are in the country, to learn from each other and adapt to their own particular circumstances.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I am quite a localist normally, but is this not the very point? A single point of contact that is not prescribing what is available locally but is “signposting”—to use the right reverend Prelate’s word—should be provided, so that any victim, anywhere, will know where to go. They might not necessarily take the step of taking advantage of it, but it seems to me pretty central to the way services are made known that something such as this should go into the Bill.

I should also say that my noble friend Lady Brinton was trying to email me something, but it has not come through, so she may have another point.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

I shall not be attempting to answer the email that has not yet come through until it does, but my general answer to the noble Baroness is that the whole thrust of the Bill is that each criminal justice body must take reasonable steps to promote awareness of the victims’ code among users of those services and other members of the public, et cetera. I cannot conceive how you could discharge that duty of raising awareness without informing people how to access or go to whatever services they need, so it is implicit in the operation that that sort of information will have to be provided. The way in which it is provided and the detail of it is not for the Bill but for the code and the guidance.

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[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, I too speak in favour of this amendment on court transcripts. I too pay tribute to Sarah Olney, the Victims’ Commissioner, brave survivors, and others who have been campaigning on this issue.

I once gave evidence, a long time ago. It was extremely difficult and a challenging experience. To be honest, I struggled afterwards to remember a single word that I had said. Courts are not normal places. The language, formality and methods of cross-examination are completely different from anything we experience in everyday life. Some might even argue that giving evidence in court is more intimidating than giving a speech in your Lordships’ House—except that when I speak here, unlike in court, every word is recorded and available online, free of charge.

In a court, you would naturally expect to be able to tell your story, to be listened to and then to be asked some questions. Instead, you are led towards blunt choices and decisive statements. You are often challenged on your credibility, truthfulness and ability to remember, let alone your morality and intimate details of your personal life. Doing this when you have been a victim of a violent or sexual crime must be horrific and re-traumatising. Often, victims are not present in court. They may be scared of facing attackers, wrongly advised or just unable to face it all again.

When the outcomes of legal proceedings are not what was wanted or expected, victims really want to know why. For justice to be done, it must be seen to be done. If there is no transcript, how do victims begin to comprehend what has happened in court, why it happened and how they might set about responding to the results? No money means no record: the victim is victimised again, this time by the justice system itself. The right of a victim to a transcript—a record of a legal case—seems like a fundamental part of our justice system. How did we get to a common place where the most basic of things is so inaccessible to and unattainable by so many people?

We live in a technological world. My laptop can easily be dictated to. AI tools, as other noble Lords have mentioned, are readily available. My phone can make an audio recording. Yet the evidence and testimony of victims, the evidence of their attackers and the summing-up of the judge are all unattainable. They are secret preserves of the legal system alone. What good does this do and how can it be? It cannot be beyond the wit of man and government to provide this information at either no cost or a reasonable cost.

No doubt there are practical problems that need addressing. I am certain that the Government have entered into some poor contracts for court transcripts. Technology has moved on, faster than expected, and now the exorbitant costs and contractual obligations perhaps leave the Government between a rock and a hard place. However, the idea that transcripts of legal cases are being charged at anywhere between £7,000 and £20,000 is just not acceptable. The Bill must set down a marker that the failure of this part of our legal system must end.

I acknowledge that the Government have argued that there are cost implications and have made some concessions. These are welcome, particularly the open justice consultation, and we recognise that a one-year pilot has been announced to enable victims of rape and other serious sexual offences to request Crown Court sentencing remarks, free of charge. This is welcome, but what happens after the pilot? Who assesses it and is there a commitment beyond that? It is too little and does not go far enough.

This service should be available to victims of all crimes, not just one group. We do not want to see a victims’ hierarchy established. As a minimum, all victims must have access to sentencing remarks. Ideally, full court transcripts should be made available when asked for. In the interim, the Government must do more to cover the excessive cost, especially for bereaved victims. I question whether the current contracts for transcript services provide anyone with any value for money. The Government should look to bring them to an end and, instead, work to find better and more cost-effective ways in which this can be done. I hope the Government are aware of the strength of feeling on all sides of the Committee on this issue and are of an open mind, willing to find better and faster solutions then they have up until now.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, it will be abundantly clear what our view is from these Benches, but I am speaking formally from them to support this amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, referred to Sarah Olney as being meticulous—she always is.

The recent public discussion about dissatisfaction with sentences has made me think about this issue. Without wanting in any way to disparage, and I do not, the comments of relatives and the victims of crimes themselves who make public statements on the steps of the court, one wonders how much they have been able to take in. That is no criticism of them, but they are responding to a very emotional experience and will have been emotional while hearing, or possibly not very thoroughly hearing, what has been said. I had a very minor example of that experience myself last week. I went to a medical appointment and a friend came with me. When we discussed afterwards in the car what the consultant had said, our recollections were completely different.

I want to ask the Minister some questions about the pilot which has been announced. I wonder whether he can give some details. Is it in all courts for the category of crimes that has been announced? What monitoring will there be of how the pilot is going and how will it be evaluated? Like other speakers, though, I would like to go straight to a new procedure.

I am not sure whether the technology actually comes within the category of artificial intelligence; it may be a much earlier generation than that. There are other noble Lords in the Chamber who probably could have answered this question, had I thought to ask them before we started the debate, but are the judge’s remarks not normally written down before the judge makes them? That might differ among members of the judiciary —I am looking at the noble Lord, Lord Meston.

[Lord Meston (CB)]

Only sometimes.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

I suppose it is like our written notes: sometimes we have them, sometimes we do not and sometimes we do not follow them.

We have heard that Minister Freer is looking at how audio recordings can be used. I wonder whether there is any more news on this than has been in the semi-public domain so far. The suggestion of listening to a recording or reading a transcript while supervised reminds me of the arrangements made for a very few senior politicians to read the assessments of the Chilcot inquiry. To me, like to others, that is not a sensible arrangement.

In any event, as I understand it, in magistrates’ courts recordings are not made. For a victim to have to sit in court and listen it is very likely that she or he will be close to the family and friends of the defendant. As my noble friend Lady Brinton said, it is a matter of open justice. This debate confirms that the adversarial system treats the victim as little more than a witness.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions. I appreciate that this places the Minister in a somewhat interesting situation; yet again, he finds that the Committee is united on this issue, as I think we are.

As when I last spoke a few minutes ago, when I first read this amendment, I thought, “Oh, for goodness’ sake”. What is the problem with people having access to the transcripts of the case that affects them as victims? As this debate has proceeded, and I have learned more about the barriers and what happens to people—supervised listening and people discouraged from going into court to listen to proceedings—I feel even more that this is an important matter which would enormously strengthen our victims’ code and the way victims are treated.

Let us think about how every single word that is said in public in this place is available to watch, and re-watch if you really want to, and to read—the committee transcripts may take a little while to be published, but they are there—and how important that is for our proceedings and for us to be able to do our job so much better. It is not a difficult thing to do given technology today; it is not difficult for those things to happen in this place. Think how much more important that would be for somebody who was the victim of crime.

In many ways, access to information about the proceedings that affect them is symbolic of victims’ rights. I accept that child victims would need to be considered because, apart from anything else, we would not want a child to be able to be identified through transcripts of their proceedings, but it is not beyond our wit to sort that out. A pilot is good, but there is a matter of principle here that the Government will need to address.

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[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, and the noble Earl, Lord Russell, who talked about their personal experiences, which was extremely valuable. I will not rehearse what has been said and repeated by others. I think the Minister needs to understand that the opinion of those who have contributed is somewhat different; certainly, the issue is worth discussing. I hope he will be prepared to have a meeting with those of us who are here. For example, we have just had a debate about the importance of being able to find rooms, but many speakers said that it was still too early for a traumatised victim to be able to take in the proceedings.

To give noble Lords my own experience, when I went into the court to hear my stalker being sentence, I was not just near his family; I was next to him—that far away. The result was that I did not hear a word of the sentencing, so thank goodness journalists covered it. I missed the absolute key bit, because all I was thinking about was how close he was to me. Extra rooms would be enormously helpful, and I believe the court system needs to find a way to make sure juries understand that victims should not be penalised if they wish to listen. I do not have an answer to that but, if the Minister agrees to a meeting, perhaps we will have that as one of the topics for discussion.

My final brief point is that in your Lordships’ House we already use Zoom and Teams. I chair a disability committee for the Local Government Association— I am a vice-president of the LGA—and we have deaf and hard-of-hearing people in the group. I use close captioning for every single one of those meetings, and it can be saved. This is not a future technology; it is available. If the Government and the court system do not recognise where these are, we will lose the benefit of what is happening now by not harnessing the technology available to help victims who really need it. I hope the Minister will agree to a meeting.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, before my noble friend withdraws the amendment, as I suspect she is about to, I ask the Minister whether the Government could make some representations to the Sentencing Council, if that is the appropriate way to do it, after hearing what noble Lords have said about their experiences. This is a matter for sentences as well.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I am very grateful to my noble friend, and I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.