Victims and Prisoners Bill

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th February 2024 Lords Chamber

However, victims and families of the Hillsborough tragedy, the Grenfell Tower fire and the Shoreham air disaster, for example, would not come under the enhanced service and would find it distressingly difficult to navigate in the days, months and years after the incident. Will the Minister say why the decision was taken to exclude those victims of major incidents that were not very serious criminal incidents, not obviously criminal incidents or definitely not criminal incidents under the rights of the victims’ code? I support both amendments.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, there is obvious scope for confusion on the part of—I try not to use the word “victim”, because I do not want to cause confusion—people who are caught up in incidents which may or may not be criminal. We could be in danger of causing resentment among people who are caught up in non-criminal incidents because what is available to them is insufficient. That is thrown into clarity when looked at against the victims’ code. The legislation needs something like the amendment and clarity on the part of everyone who is operating as to what applies. Points were made throughout many of the previous debate about the need for signposting, and I see that very much in the context which the noble Baronesses have referred to.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I support both amendments. I shall refer to a different group; the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, mentioned several incidents that would cause the amendments to kick in. However, there is another category, and that is victims of state wrongdoing. For example, the “spy cops” scandal shows what goes wrong when a police unit goes rogue and the state compounds the abuse of power by doing all it can to minimise and cover up. Those cover-ups leave victims powerless and alone and are the reason we need this victims’ code to apply to them as well.

There are famous cases such as Hillsborough and the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes. There is also a long history of Met police officers—those of us who were on the London Assembly or the London police authorities saw this many times—being accused of crimes and allowed quietly to retire early.

There is the emerging scandal of sexual and domestic abuse being systematically ignored within the police service when the accusations are directed at police officers by women who are their partners or even fellow officers. We heard this week of examples in Devon, with officers accused but still promoted to units specialising in domestic violence. These are not one-offs or rotten apples; this is a systemic failure to protect women and ensure that they get justice. The victims’ code would help to redress that.

Many such victims have to crowdfund if they are to have any hope of engaging with the legal process to find justice. I have worked with many victims seeking justice through inquests and public inquiries, and it is a very disorienting process for them. I very much hope that these two amendments will encompass that group: those who are victims of state wrongdoing.

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[Lord Roborough (Con)]

I am of course happy to commit to meeting to discuss this matter, but we are not leaving the victims defenceless in this situation: they will have an independent public advocate, who will help to guide them through all these processes. But I completely agree that we should meet and consult further on this matter.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, during the debate on the victims’ code, we discussed the problem that victims are often advised not to undergo any counselling or therapy because that might damage how their evidence is characterised by the defendant’s counsel. I have no idea whether this issue has arisen in connection with major, possibly non-criminal incidents, but I can see that this could become something that makes its way into people’s thinking: “Don’t go for therapy because you might have to give evidence to a public inquiry, and how would that be perceived?” I just throw that in as another consideration. There may be similar points, not about what victims should do but about things they should not.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for throwing that in. The Minister will know that this is a discursive process and this is a probing amendment. Although we will press him on all the different things, I am grateful for the commitment to talk and to continue the dialogue about how we deal with this particular group in the code. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

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[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I support the amendments that call for proper support for this new role. It should not need to be spelled out that the IPA will need a budget. I happen to think that he or she should have a budget and discretion as to how best to spend it. I am a little alarmed by Clause 31, which provides that the Secretary of State “may pay” reasonable costs and, quite separately, “may make provision” for secretarial or other support. Should the latter be distinguished from reasonable costs incurred in connection with the exercise of their functions? I think not.

I am particularly prompted to mention this because I learned the other day that the newly appointed—after a period of 22 months—independent anti-slavery commissioner is having her budget reduced on a yearly basis throughout the term of her appointment, by 5% a year over the three years. I know that the two jobs are different positions, but that indicates strongly—and it is very much accepted by people in the sector, including the new commissioner—that the Government are downgrading that role. Do the Government agree on the importance of creating champions, if I may call them that, just to give them a collective noun? They have to make the job possible.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Wills, has explained, of the amendments in this group, Amendments 123A to 123D, 124B, 126A and 126B would perform a number of functions. They would inject urgency into the appointment of the standing advocate; they would give a Select Committee of the House of Commons a prominent role in the selection and appointment of the standing advocate; they would clarify the standing advocate’s role if other advocates were appointed as well; and they would provide that the appointment of additional advocates was to cover for unavailability or to provide additional assistance to the standing advocate. All those amendments would strengthen the statutory requirements and give the standing advocate role more significance and the standing advocate more personal responsibility for the performance of that role.

On Amendment 124A, I fully agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wills, on the need for urgency in establishing inquiries, and agree with all the observations he—and, indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson—made about the delays inherent in the present system. The difficulty I see with the amendment as drafted—I would appreciate some clarity on this from the Minister—is the following:

“The standing advocate may request from the Secretary of State all the relevant powers to establish a fact-finding inquiry, including those to see and report on all relevant documentation.”


That would give the standing advocate the power to establish a fact-finding inquiry. My concern is that I am not convinced that establishing a fact-finding inquiry is the role of the standing advocate as envisaged by the Bill. I invite the Minister to explain how he sees the role of the advocate in inquiries and to consider, certainly between now and Report, how the role of arbiter or inquiry establisher is compatible with the role of representing and supporting victims. Is there another route—the noble Lord, Lord Wills, might also be keen to be involved in this discussion—to establishing an independent, quicker, more effective way of producing inquiries that does not involve the standing advocate, but that also does not involve the length and delay of a full-blown public inquiry in every case?

I also invite clarity from the Minister on how he sees the standing advocate’s role of providing support at inquiries. That is plainly envisaged by Clause 33, but Clause 33(5) permits advocates to support victims’ representatives; it does not deal with acting as victims’ representatives. Clause 33(7) would prevent a person representing victims if the person concerned was under 18—that is perhaps uncontroversial—or if, in so doing, they would be carrying out a legal activity. A legal activity is as defined in Section 12(3) of the Legal Services Act 2007.

It is unclear that representing a victim at an inquiry is a legal activity. Paraphrasing, or at least truncating, the meaning of Section 12(3) of the Legal Services Act 2007, a legal activity is exercising the right of audience, which is not a phrase normally used in representation at an inquiry; the conduct of litigation, which plainly an inquiry is not; offering advice, assistance or representation in connection with the application of the law; or legal dispute resolution. I do not regard any of those activities as equivalent to representing a victim or more than one victim at a public inquiry. I would be interested to know, therefore, how the Government see that role.

I turn now to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson, about the right to see all relevant documents. It seems to me that, whatever the role of the standing advocate, the right to see all relevant documents is central, as is the right to insist on calling for particular witnesses to be cross-examined.

It follows that, with the amendments as phrased, there is a right to make a request to the Secretary of State and the right to a reasoned and timely response to that request, when it concerns seeing documents and calling witnesses. This is a modest, probably overmodest, approach. It seems to me that the standing advocate ought to have an absolutely clear right to call witnesses or to have them called by the inquiry if it is independent, as I suggest it probably should be, so that they can be cross-examined by or on behalf of all parties.

Amendment 133ZA would require a review of the operation of the standing advocate scheme and the appointment of additional advocates six months after passing the Act. I quite agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson, that such a review is important because this is a complex and new mechanism. I suggest that six months after passing the Act may be too soon, because it is unclear how many major incidents would be declared in the first six months, and it is certainly unclear how long it would take to see how the system was working in practice. I think we would be looking at a period of at least two years or thereabouts before we have an effective review. However, I agree that a review of what is, in essence, a new system should be incorporated into the statutory scheme.

Finally, Amendment 128A, to which I have added my name, is the amendment on which my noble friend Lady Hamwee spoke. It seeks proper secretarial support and other resourcing for the standing advocate. The first point is that appropriate support is essential to enable the advocate’s role to be performed effectively. An advocate without a proper budget quite simply cannot do the job, but there is a further, very important point about independence. It is crucial that this advocate scheme acts independently. Without statutorily guaranteed resourcing, an appointed advocate would be dependent on the Secretary of State for the resources needed to carry out the job which they are charged to perform. That is entirely unsuitable.

There are amendments about the termination of advocates’ appointments, and the spirit of independence being threatened by the present drafting of the Bill, which we will come to in a later group, whereby the Secretary of State can remove an advocate for reasons that seem appropriate to him or her. We are all for the independence of advocates, but their role needs clarification and a review would be helpful.