Victims and Prisoners Bill

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Friday 24th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Brinton will respond to most of these items. I cannot resist wondering whether she will comment on whether it is inappropriate to rush towards the duty of candour given the history of the item, but I want to speak particularly to Motion E regarding data sharing for immigration purposes. This amendment has an unhappy history: we have never succeeded before, and I know we will not succeed today—as I say that, I look at the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, in whose name the amendment was tabled to this Bill.

The threat comes from abusers, often domestic abusers, but other abusers as well. In saying to someone who has immigration status that they are illegal, it is irrelevant that that is inaccurate: the abuser provokes fear, and this trumps everything in the mind of the person who is affected. Sadly, for some people, this amendment would be highly “appropriate”, picking up the words in the Commons reason, and the circumstances are immigration control. But for the Home Office, immigration control, even if this amendment is not really about immigration control, trumps everything. The Home Office has previously resisted attempts to control data sharing, so this is no surprise, but we will not pursue it today.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, it seems only 24 hours ago that we were discussing these amendments. Indeed, we were. There has been some progress made, for which we thank the Government from these Benches. It may not meet everything that we were seeking, but there has been some clarity on some of the issues.

On Amendment 33—the training support and the alternative offer from the Government—the reason that those of us who supported it really wanted to see it is the lack of consistency in training between police forces and other parts of the criminal justice system. Although the Minister says that is expensive, it is also very expensive when mistakes are made because the training has not been adequate. We put on notice that this is yet another of the items that will, I suspect, appear as amendments in the future.

I completely support everything my noble friend Lady Hamwee has said on the immigration firewall, and I will not add any more to that. The review of the duty of candour for major incidents is welcome, given that the Government would not agree to Labour’s amendment on it. I hope the review will look at not just major incidents but the duty of candour widely in the public sector, because I am not sure, for example, that the infected blood scandal would have appeared as a major incident for perhaps a decade, or two decades, or even longer. I hope those involved with that committee will look at that, but we welcome the review.

On the MAPPA points, I think that is a helpful amendment, and I can understand why it has been laid. From these Benches, we would like to see it in operation to make sure that it works.

The final point I want to come to is on the Government’s own amendment to the eligibility for home detention curfews. I am very pleased that the Minister specifically mentioned that those convicted of stalking, even with sentences of under four years, will not be able to access home detention curfew. We spent some considerable time during the passage of the Bill also discussing why it is often the case that the CPS charges people with things other than stalking. Those people who are known to be stalkers, but are convicted of a lesser crime, still pose the same risk, particularly when they have been multiple offenders. We urge the Government from these Benches to make sure that the CPS looks at charging stalking and a lesser offence because we believe that that is a problem for many of the things that have been progressed during the passage of the Bill.

I will say very briefly that I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, for her help as the Victims’ Commissioner, and to the Domestic Abuse Commissioner and the London Victims’ Commissioner —who is in the Gallery today—and all their teams. They have briefed your Lordships’ House to help the progress of this Bill. The London Victims’ Commissioner and I were remembering that it was 14 years ago that the stalking inquiry report was published, and much but not all of that has been enacted. I hope that future Governments will make sure that we can better resolve stalking cases in the future.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (Legal Aid: Domestic Abuse) (Amendment) Order 2024

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Tuesday 7th May 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, for those comments. I think that I can reply briefly. I recall that on 23 January 2023—because I reminded myself of the passage in Hansard—the noble Lord raised the example of the teacher, and I am interested that there has been a follow-up, that the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, has advised on this and that it is complicated. The point that the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, is making is that, the more we make these orders, and the more we create these procedures, the more complex it becomes. That is a fair point, and it is one that I hope the Government take account of as we go along, because there are unintended consequences to some of these things.

The underlying thought is that the existing procedures, such as they are, in the magistrates’ court and with the non-molestation orders in the family courts, needed a more overall approach. The family courts needed additional powers to order tagging and various other powers that, for the moment, are reserved to the criminal courts—so we have a comprehensive scheme, but exactly how it works is still to be worked through. In that connection, my understanding is that there will be a more detailed pilot, which apparently includes Croydon, Greater Manchester and the London Boroughs of Sutton and Bromley, as well as—for some reason—the British Transport Police, to work through some of those issues and the best way to deliver the legal support that is so important in these areas.

I entirely welcome and support the noble Lord’s comment that legal advice for all parties here is very important. I am not completely sure that the teacher in the example given would have qualified for legal aid, but at least there is now a structure there that should enable people to have legal advice on a wider scale than has hitherto been the case, now that we have plugged that gap.

That is probably as far as I can take it at the moment—save again to say that, as we create all these different procedures, processes and possibilities, up to a point we risk bogging the system down in all kinds of other complexities. That is, I am afraid, the cost of proceeding down this road.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

I had expected to be able to continue doing what I was doing while the debate on this order took place but I was fascinated by the example that the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, gave. I would just make the rather obvious point about the importance of wide consultation when arrangements are being brought in, in order to avoid the unintended consequences to which the noble and learned Lord referred. Nobody can have enough imagination to anticipate all the intended consequences or consequences that might be less desirable than others but I have noticed recently that, for a number of SIs, the Explanatory Memorandum has said that there has not been any consultation because it has not been necessary.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

I am sure that the noble Baroness’s point is well taken. I very much hope that the pilots I mentioned will sort out the unintended consequences, or at least minimise them.

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 23rd April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, this is quite a large group and I will speak briefly on the amendments I have my name to or on which I have something to say.

The first amendment in the group, from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is on free transcripts. What I would ask the Government—I think the answer will be yes—is whether they agree in principle that this is and should be a right of victims: a proportionate right, without exorbitant costs and without needing pages and pages of transcripts. Do they agree that it is a fundamental right for victims to have the essence of what is said in a trial that involves them or their perpetrator, to understand the deliberations and the verdict that the judge and jury have come to, in a form and manner that is helpful to them and that they can use? In the same way that prisoners or perpetrators who have been found guilty go to appeal, the right that they have to access transcripts—quite rightly—is completely disproportionate when compared with the current right of victims to get almost any proceedings from the trials that concern them.

I think we are looking and hoping for an acceptance by the Government that the principle is right, understandable and correct; we are trying to find a practical way of achieving a form for that right to be exercised in a proportionate way for victims. While the RASSO model is a good start, it is clearly quite limited in extent. I will listen very carefully to what the Minister says in reply, and, of course, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, will come to her own conclusions about what she decides to do.

Amendment 57, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, is about the duty to collaborate. The Minister may recall that, last week, we spoke about the fact that, if there is not a duty to collaborate, certain agencies will take it upon themselves to interpret statutory guidance in a way that is convenient to them, rather than in a way that is aligned to the requirements of the relevant commissioner.

In particular, I mention the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, Nicole Jacobs. I was able to catch up with Nicole yesterday afternoon—I suspect it was not very long after she ran into the Minister—and we had a discussion. The content of the discussion was that, even if you have statutory guidance that says one should be collaborating, the fact is that some agencies will take that on board in the spirit it is intended and will collaborate, while others will say that they understand in theory that it is very important and should be done but will decide that they have other things that are more important, or that they do not have the time, money or resources to respond. That makes the role of a commissioner extraordinarily difficult.

Data is king. Knowing what is going on is fundamental to interpreting what is and is not working. If you do not have systematic, reliable data from every part of the country, it is very difficult to do one’s job and give sensible advice to the Government. It is hard, frankly, to look victims in the face and say, “We are doing everything we can for you”. Despite the fact that statutory guidance is written down, some agencies are deciding for themselves whether or not to comply. This is clearly unsatisfactory.

I asked the Domestic Abuse Commissioner what she would change, with the benefit of hindsight, about the way in which this was encapsulated in the Domestic Abuse Act and the guidance. She said that it is ultimately about accountability in so many areas; it is about who is ultimately responsible and who will be held to account if something which should be happening is not. At the moment, that is quite unclear. Having 43 different police forces, with police and crime commissioners on top, makes it rather difficult. The commissioner’s instinct was that perhaps one should hold police and crime commissioners’ feet to the fire and make them primarily responsible for ensuring that all the agencies in their jurisdiction take the statutory guidance seriously and comply. If they did not comply, some very awkward questions should then be asked of the police and crime commissioner to find out why.

Another thing that would be helpful is something that we have started to do in the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. We have a table which lists each department and ranks them by the egregiousness and inadequacies of their Explanatory Memoranda and the idiocy of their impact assessments. We are hoping that this will concentrate minds because, once again, data is king. It is extraordinarily important that one is able to measure what is going on.

I will listen carefully to what the Minister says on this and to the response of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton. From the well-intended evidence about what we hoped and thought was going to happen in the Domestic Abuse Act, we have a chance to learn from what we thought was going to work well and which is not working so well and to try to do it better this time.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I will say a couple of words on—

[Baroness Humphreys (LD)]

I do not think the noble Lord has finished.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

I am so sorry; I thought that the noble Lord had finished.

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[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak on this group but, having heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, I want to add my 100% support for what she has just said. As a family judge for something like 35 years, I tried cases of sexual abuse against children. I also happened to do a report on the diocese of Chichester, and I met adult members of that group who had suffered serious sexual abuse. It lasts a lifetime, as the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, said. I particularly realised it when I met these young men who had suffered abuse from clergy, I am sad to say—one of whom went to prison and one of whom died before. It lasted years and years. Everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, said, is entirely right, and I support it tremendously.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Russell. I was surprised when there seemed to be a hiatus—I had not allowed for his need to draw a breath. He mentioned his conversation this morning with the Domestic Abuse Commissioner. I am not surprised to hear what she said. I recall that, before the Bill even arrived in this House, she was making her views about a duty to collaborate very clear and well known.

I simply wanted to support my noble friend in her amendment on transcripts. I have to say that sitting through most of the Committee and Second Reading of this Bill has really made me reflect on how victims can be treated as almost peripheral to a trial, because inevitably there is a focus on the defendant. It is inevitable because the court is determining guilt or—I was going to say innocence—not guilt. It would never have occurred to me that the availability of a transcript might depend on whether it has to be available to the defendant.

As the noble Lord, Lord Meston, said, this is quite a narrow amendment. The Minister was very clear about the constraints and difficulties. As well as being narrow, this amendment would reduce costs, which we were talking about at the previous stage. It is important that we pursue this.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendment 61, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, and Amendments 62 and 71, in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Polak and Lord Russell of Liverpool, and the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin. In this, as ever, I must declare my interest as a state secondary school teacher.

The great thing about following the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, is that it is like somebody doing your homework for you. All the way through this stage of the Bill, we have talked about children as being separate victims, and we got the “Uncle Tom Cobley and all” reason back—in that, if you have to mention one, you have to mention all in this. I think we have to be specific. The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, and I went to the Lighthouse child house and saw its model. We saw how, when victims are treated specifically, we can get higher levels of prosecution, better health for them in future and save money in the outcome. Why would you not do that?

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[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I offer some brief words in support of Amendment 96. Like the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, I was very disappointed with the response in Committee, which simply rehashed old arguments that I had already challenged. I have two practical questions. First, the noble Earl, Lord Howe, promised the long-awaited code of practice for parliamentary scrutiny by the spring. It may not feel very spring-like, but spring is passing and there is still no sight of it. Surely it should have been made available in time to inform our debate today. The Minister said it would hopefully be this spring, but he did not sound very sure. Can he give us a firm assurance that it will be made available this spring?

Secondly, whereas I had been told in a Written Answer that the also long-awaited protocol would be published in early 2024, all that the noble Earl, Lord Howe, could say in Committee was that it would be launched “later this year”. How much later? Why the delay?

Finally, I never received an answer to my much more fundamental question: how do the Government square their intransigent position on the firewall supported by the DAC, various parliamentary committees and all organisations on the ground with repeated ministerial assurances that domestic abuse victims/survivors must be treated as victims first and foremost, regardless of immigration status? As it stands, it is a case not of safety before status, as called for by the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, but of status before safety.

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My noble friend Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames wanted to speak to these two amendments but is unable to be here today, for which he apologises.

In Committee, the Government’s position, which was entirely sympathetic in principle—the noble Earl is rarely unsympathetic—was that the Law Commission is going to consider this in any event, so we should wait for it to do so before pressing the matter further. However, my noble friend says that that is not good enough. There is no reason for a further report before proceeding with the provision of free legal representation and advice for rape victims. If we wait for the Law Commission then there will have to be a further consultation, but that is not necessary—Liberal Democrats do not say that consultations are not necessary lightly—and then there has to be the process of producing a report and then, finally, a Bill. All in all, that is a long delay on an issue on which the principle is uncomplicated and, in any event, conceded. We support these two amendments.

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, and, in her absence, the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for Amendments 77 and 78, which, as we have heard, seek to require the development of proposals for schemes to give victims of rape access to free independent legal advice and representation.

I agree that it is extremely important that victims are aware of their rights and confident in those rights, particularly when preparing for trial and when requests for their personal information are made. While it would be novel to provide access to free legal advice and representation for just one type of crime, we recognise that, if there is one category of people who are especially vulnerable, it is victims of rape and sexual offences. We also recognise that victims of these crimes are more likely to receive requests for sensitive personal information as part of an investigation, and that there are calls for independent legal advice to help victims with that situation as well.

That is why the Bill tackles the problem in a different way, by introducing measures designed to minimise requests for information, as my noble and learned friend Lord Bellamy explained in the previous group of amendments. Through the Bill we are placing a new statutory duty on the police to request third-party material relating to victims only when necessary, proportionate and relevant to a reasonable line of inquiry. Following the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lady Bertin, which the Government have accepted, there will also be a requirement that the Requests for Victim Information code of practice must state that the police and other law enforcement agencies should start an investigation with the presumption that requests for counselling notes are not necessary or proportionate.

My noble friend’s amendments also mandate that counselling notes can be requested by police only if they are likely to have “substantial probative value” to a reasonable line of inquiry. This higher threshold will ensure that police are not routinely requesting counselling notes and that the privacy of these victims is respected.

As I have said, we do not want to create a hierarchy of support by granting government-funded legal advice to victims of just one type of crime. Alongside that, there are some complex and sensitive considerations regarding the introduction of independent legal advice for such victims. In particular, we have to be mindful of the role of the victim as a witness in proceedings and avoid anything that might have an unintended impact on the defendant’s right to a fair trial. This concern emerged very explicitly from the pilot scheme run in the north of England. I direct that point particularly to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and, in his absence, the noble Lord, Lord Marks; we need to take account of the findings from that pilot, which expressed those concerns. A subsidiary but still important point is to consider the potential impact on timeliness as a result of another process being inserted into the system. That was another concern that arose in the pilot.

These are all far-reaching considerations which, I suggest, require expert input before any statutory measures are considered. The Law Commission’s review will consider all these factors, including—the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, may like to note—the impact of existing schemes in other jurisdictions. When it publishes its report later this year, its findings and recommendations on independent legal advice will provide us with the robust evidence base that we will need should we wish to go forward and develop the sort of policy proposals that the amendment points us towards. Therefore, it is right for us to wait for those findings.

There is a further point of principle which I ought to flag: it really is not appropriate to place a duty on the Secretary of State in primary legislation to develop policy, especially without any specification of what such proposals should entail and who is responsible for implementing them once they have been developed. Once again, it is much better that we await the Law Commission’s recommendations.

I know how important this issue is to noble Lords opposite, but I hope that I have given the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, sufficient pause as regards his original intention to divide the House. There are some good reasons why the amendments should not be pressed, which I hope I have been able persuade him of. I therefore very much hope that he will withdraw Amendment 77 and not move Amendment 78.

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 16th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

I am quite happy to accept the noble Lord’s invitation to have a conversation with the Domestic Abuse Commissioner to explore her experience and see whether it is transferable to what we are discussing here.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I hesitated to intervene in this debate, but with the leave of the House I will add a thought for the Minister. Keeping training up to date is important because the understanding of the issues is developing quite dramatically. Nobody would have identified the acronym VAWG not that long ago and our understanding of what comprises violence against women and girls, for instance, is developing very fast.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, as always, made a very pertinent point: we must have up-to-date training. Both learning and knowledge in this area are developing very quickly. That is quite a challenge for the authorities, but we should meet it— I fully accept that. Of course, under the compliance framework, there are powers to issue non-compliance notices and to understand why agencies are falling down. Almost certainly, a lack of training will be an explanatory factor in underperformance, so that will be overseen by Ministers, the criminal justice agencies and the Victims’ Commissioner.

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 12th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it was a real privilege to witness that exchange and I think we are getting to the heart of why we are all here and are so passionate about this. I have a couple of short clarifications, because at this point by the time I get to my amendment on re-sentencing there really will be nothing else to say; I am rewriting my speech rapidly every time everyone speaks.

When I first heard about the indefinite sentences that were associated with IPPs—when they first came out in that arms race to prove how tough we could be on law on order—I was horrified. I was delighted when the noble Lord, Lord Clarke, abolished them; I thought that was it, because I was not in Parliament and not following. I went into prisons as part of work I was doing with an educational project called Debating Matters Beyond Bars which encouraged prisoners to debate and could not believe it when I discovered that, despite the sentences being abolished, there were still IPP prisoners.

In fact, I told the prisoners in my own characteristic way that they were wrong and that IPPs had been abolished and could not still exist. So I was determined once I got in here to at least discover what on earth had gone wrong. I cannot bear it, now we are tackling the issue, that, even though the sentences have been abolished, they will still exist when we have finished dealing with this Bill. It seems abhorrent.

I wanted particularly to back up the mentoring proposals from the noble Baroness, Lady Blower. If you talk to any families of IPP prisoners, or IPP prisoners themselves, they know that they have been destroyed and damaged by this sentencing regime. They are not gung-ho about it. They do not just say, “Release us, we’ll be fine”. What they would really gain from is mentoring. It is the kind of creative solution that would help us support the re-sentencing amendments. This is the kind of support that people will need.

It was hard not to shed a tear at the very moving speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, who said that many of the people whose mental health was suffering had been destroyed by IPPs. But we should also note that it could well be that their mental health is not permanently damaged by the ongoing psychological uncertainty, anxiety, torture and so on. We need a combination of the mentoring scheme and a recognition of the fact that the sentencing is, to be crude, literally driving people mad—and the sanest person would go mad. You do not necessarily need medication; you need compassionate, grown-up intervention and support. In that sense, I support all the amendments in this group and all the others, but I really think that, for want of a better phrase, we have to be the grown-ups in the room now and try and sort this out.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I particularly support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, although I support all of them. I also thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, for remembering Lord Lloyd of Berwick in this debate. I recall him very well, indefatigably picking up this baton.

Many of us were alarmed when prisoners were added to victims in this Bill, but this amendment is absolutely with the grain of the first part of the Bill. We talked about ISVAs, IDVAs, child trafficking and guardians, and I recently heard about victim navigators who work as supporters and mentors to victims of modern slavery and human trafficking. We are all accepting the notion that, in slightly different ways, the criminal justice system does not do well by its victims—as has been said, IPP prisoners are victims—and that this needs addressing with a range of support measures. It is very much the direction of travel and I hope that this notion can be pursued.

[The Lord Bishop of Leicester]

My Lords, I support this group of amendments and it is a pleasure to follow noble Lords and benefit from their considerable wisdom—I am in awe of the learning and wisdom on display this evening. I do not want to repeat a lot of what has been said, so I will keep my speech very short.

I have one or two reflections on Amendments 165 and 166, to which my right reverend friend the Bishop of Gloucester has added her name. She is a regular visitor to prisons across the country and supports the network of chaplains in our prisons who have direct evidence in relation to the mental health of prisoners.

As others have said, we know that many IPP prisoners are stuck in the system and that appropriate psychiatric care in the community is not in place to manage their high-support needs. IPP prisoners suffer greater mental distress and disorders than the wider prison population and, in many cases, it can be said that the sentence itself is the cause of the distress. It disrupts relationships and inspires hopelessness, anxiety, despair and alienation.

I welcome the changes proposed through this Bill, but, for the sake of the prisoners in question and the wider community, we need to ensure that they are getting the appropriate aftercare that they are entitled to and that it is extended in the way proposed in Amendment 166.

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I too echo the words that have been spoken. Rather than repeating all this or speaking to this in the next group, I will talk about those issues in this group because they are very relevant to these amendments.

I have a series of practical questions. For example, stating which Parole Board members should be involved in a particular case is definitely an interference in the independence of the board. If the reply to that is, “Well we need to make sure that the right people are hearing the right cases”, surely all you have to do is to make sure you appoint to the panels more people who have those experiences available to them. The Government, of course, have gone on the issue of those with enforcement experience. You simply recruit more enforcement-experienced people to the panels.

I agree with what has just been said. These parts of the clauses are analogous to the Government deciding who will be the judge in a particular case. Whether the chair should be involved in individual cases is a matter for the board; it should not be the subject of statutory prescription, as is before us now.

There is concern about the broad powers given to the Secretary of State to remove the chair on the grounds of public confidence. The outgoing chair of the Parole Board, Caroline Corby, said in her evidence to the Justice Committee that the power to remove the chair could see them dismissed if the board made an “unpopular decision”. Unpopular with whom? With the Secretary of State, perhaps. As the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, just said, she argued that

“the chair of the Parole Board needs more protection than pretty much any other chair of any arm’s length body”.

There is already a termination clause which means that the chair of the Parole Board, or any other member, can be removed. It is therefore not clear why a statutory power is needed. Perhaps the Minister can explain to us why he needs a statutory power rather than relying on the contractual power he already has.

Who is going to judge that public confidence has been breached and when? What is the need for this confidence test? Does the existing contract not provide for appropriate removal? What is going to be the threshold for the new test of breached public confidence? Will it be an opinion poll? Will it be an assessment of the latest newspaper cuttings? What will be the criteria? How will that threshold be applied? As many of us suspect, will it rest merely with the subjective view of the Secretary of State, which is the reason why it appears in the Bill at this point?

Public opinion should not form the basis for ministerial interference in an independent body making quasi-judicial decisions. I say “quasi-judicial” because that is what the Government say they are called. Most people would just call them “judicial”. Last year the High Court noted that:

“It is … well established that, when exercising powers in relation to the Board, the Secretary of State must not to do anything that undermines or would be perceived as undermining the independence of the Board or that encroaches upon or interferes with the exercise by the Board of its judicial responsibilities”.


There is no explanation anywhere why engagement in individual applications is needed. Currently, the chair holds these quasi-judicial judgments in his or her hands. Paragraph 14B of the board’s current rules, which were put before this House in 2022, states that:

“The Board chair may determine an appeal by—(a) upholding the decision made by the panel chair or duty member … or (b) substituting their own decision, which may contain any direction that the panel chair or duty member could have made under paragraph (5)”


of the rules.

Pages 67 and 68 of the root and branch review made no such recommendation to neuter the chair. Instead, the review supported a strategic oversight group and a rules committee to recommend procedural changes to the Secretary of State. The impact assessment for this Bill states that the chair will be appointed for a three-year term, renewable. However, the job pack, a copy of which I have with me, issued by the Ministry of Justice with a closure date of just last month, states that the appointment is to be made for five years. So applications closed in February and people have applied for a job where the tenure of the job—whether it is three or five years—is not known. I hope that the Minister can tell us how that circle is to be squared.

Can the Minister confirm the delegated authority that the Secretary of State has given to Ministers for appointment of the role of board chair? Does it remain as it was when Liz Truss was the Secretary of State, because, on delegation to Ministers, the review said that Ministers

“should be involved at every stage of a competition, including: agreeing the advertising and the advisory assessment panel membership; suggesting potential candidates; being consulted on closing a competition; being invited to give views on candidates; being provided with a choice of appointable … candidates; and having the opportunity to meet candidates”.

If that is still the case, Ministers have an incredible influence over the person to be appointed, and one might reasonably wonder why they might want to sack them.

So those are a lot of practical questions, some of which are contained within the Bill and within the job pack for the new person taking over the role, which need to be clarified. I hope that the Minister in replying will be able to answer them.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise to the Committee for missing the opening part of this debate. I was with representatives of the Bar Council discussing these very issues.

Having chaired a committee that questioned Dominic Raab about his ambitions for the Executive to take over functions which I do not think that any of us regarded as appropriate for takeover, this seems to me to be Members of the House of Lords doing what we do so well. We are trying to help find a way through and answer the questions. We should just be rubbing the whole thing out because of that Executive takeover, which is anathema to probably everybody who is sitting in the Chamber at the moment.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, this group is actually more limited than the debate that we have had. It was very succinctly set out by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, when he gave his three short points in introducing his amendments. Very amusingly, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, said that the shadow of Dominic Raab should not remain across this Bill. A good way of removing the shadow is with these three amendments here.

The debate has strayed into the next group, but I will not address any comments on that group. As far as the specific proposals in the amendments tabled by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, of course we agree with them on this side of the Chamber. I noted the point that the noble and learned Lord made about the reason why the chair of the Parole Board would not have a judicial function. It would mean that he or she could be sacked.

I also noted the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, and other noble Lords, that it is absolutely normal and to be expected that in any number of judicial and quasi-judicial roles, the heads of those particular functions also sit as judges. That is standard practice and it adds confidence to the various institutions that the people who head them are also practising and sitting tribunal chairs or judges.

I look forward to the Minister’s response, but there is a very strong array of speakers against the Government’s proposals, including the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, who is a former chair of the Parole Board. We have two former Lord Chief Justices, a former Solicitor-General and my noble friend, a former shadow Attorney-General. It sounds like a pretty convincing line-up against the Minister.

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 31st January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, very briefly, I can only entirely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove. If something like this does not happen, what we are all asking ourselves is: will anything really change? The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, contrasted the last part of the Bill, which has more substantive legislative power that will go on to its face, with the part of the Bill we are talking about at the moment, which is largely advisory and selective. It tells people what they should do. However, it does not tell people what they must do.

Most importantly, it does not even give the Victims’ Commissioner, himself or herself, the authority to insist. Unfortunately, the noble Baroness’s predecessor did not have her tenure extended because, I gather, she was felt by certain members of the current Government to be somewhat unhelpful in her attitude and demeanour; thus her tenure was not renewed. Until the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, was put in on an interim basis, the role of Victims’ Commissioner was vacant for a significant period. That is not good or acceptable. It speaks volumes to some people about the level of real intent of His Majesty’s Government to put their legislative money where their mouth is.

I do not think I need to say any more than that. The onus is on the Government to demonstrate that this law will have real teeth and that the code, wherever it is, needs to be complied with and understood. The track record of the past few years has resulted in these amendments being put forward. There is a loss of faith in His Majesty’s Government’s true intent to put muscle and weight behind the provisions in the code, so the onus is on them to explain, on Report if the House so chooses, why we should not insist on amendments such as these.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, to answer the noble Lord’s rhetorical question, or perhaps pre-empting it, the Justice Committee in the House of Commons said that this was

“not … strong enough to drive the necessary cultural change”.

At the heart of the Second Reading debate was the importance of compliance with the code. If the code is not statutory, compliance is that much harder to achieve. We heard from the Minister at Second Reading, and in his letter following it—for which I was grateful—about guidance proposed by the Government for where non-compliance is severe and persistent, and how the ministerial taskforce may issue a public non-compliance notification. That is much too convoluted. One can see that it would take very serious non-compliance—something very dramatic—for such a non-compliance notification to be issued. I am sure it would be regarded as a very extreme step. We should not have to get to that point. It should be the norm and understood by the affected stakeholders—I hate that word—that they must comply.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

If I may say so, sometimes one is in the middle of the flow of one’s argument and people jump up and down when one has not quite finished explaining the overall framework. The essential problem here is not the code itself, as the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, kindly said—it is not a bad document, I venture to suggest—but a lack of awareness, police not doing their job and nobody knowing quite what should be done if that were to happen. The idea behind the basic framework of this legislation is to force the relevant bodies to take steps to comply with the code. That is why Clause 6 says:

“Each criminal justice body which provides services … must … take … steps”


and “must … keep under review”. Clause 7 provides that they must provide various activities, et cetera, and must collect information, that a local policing body must do this, that and the other and that the various constabularies referred to later must do these things. The idea is that we have a code and a framework, and we must make sure that the bodies responsible for enabling victims’ rights do so.

In the Government’s view, you do not materially increase the likelihood of them doing so by putting the code into a schedule, any more than you increase that likelihood—to deal with another point—by converting a “should” into a “must”. That is another bit of fine tuning. The principles of the code are set out in Clause 2; for example, that you “should provide information”. You could say that you “must provide information”, but that does not really change the enforceability unless you have a whole statutory framework for what the information should be, who should provide it and how it is to be done. That is all in the code at the moment, where it should be.

I do not want to refer again to angels dancing on pins, but I think we are slightly at cross-purposes as to what we mean by things “in law”, “legal enforceability”, or “statutory codes”. That is the Government’s basic position on this.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

I do not want to stop the Minister when he is in full flow. I understand how difficult it must be when people leap up because he has a comma in the middle of a sentence.

It seems to me the Minister has already conceded the next group of amendments, which are about compliance and data monitoring. Can he remind us why in Clause 2 it is “should”, not “must”, since he has just cited and relied on other clauses which use “must”? I do not know whether I have elevated myself to the status of an angel with that.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

I think the short answer is that the purposes of those later clauses is to impose a statutory duty on the relevant bodies. The purpose of Clause 2(3) is to set out the principles. In terms of these, the Government’s view is that “should” is a more appropriate word than “must”, because the principles are very broadly expressed. Noble Lords might argue that “should” and “must” are almost interchangeable. I think we are again drawing really fine distinctions.

Perhaps I could just deal with two or three other points that arise on this part of the Bill. One is the question of the affirmative procedure as against the negative procedure. If I may say so, at the moment the code is subject to the negative procedure. Noble Lords can pray a resolution against it—of course there is going to be a debate in Parliament. I would respectfully suggest that it is more flexible than our somewhat—on some occasions at least—torrid debates in the Moses Room on affirmative resolutions. Noble Lords cannot change anything, it is very formalistic, and I respectfully suggest that making it an affirmative resolution is not a material improvement.

To keep the whole structure flexible and adaptable—I have used various words beginning with “a”, and I think I could add “adaptable” to this cohort—the Government suggest that it is not a useful move to put the code without the accompanying description in the statute itself; that in itself has no material effect on the Government’s view.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I will amplify what the noble Baroness just said by actually quoting from the Government’s own description of the Bill and what is in it. A paragraph headed

“What happens if victims do not receive their entitlements?”


says:

“We think that all the measures set out will strengthen the service victims receive. As the Code is a statutory code of practice, all relevant bodies should already comply with it”.


We know they are not, so the status quo we are starting from is, to a very large degree, that the bodies which are meant to be complying with the statutory code of practice are not doing so. The paragraph continues:

“However, if things go wrong, victims can make a complaint”.


It is up to victims themselves, who may or may not be aware of what their rights are under the statutory code, to identify that they are not receiving their rights, and then it is up to them to make a complaint. What is the Victims’ Commissioner for if not to act as the obvious channel and filter for all such complaints so they can go directly through her or him to His Majesty’s Government?

What the Government have described here is a complete, accurate illustration of the problem we have. It is not working at the moment. What the Government have said will improve it, on the basis of the evidence we have, but, frankly, the arguments we have heard so far do not really give us any room for optimism, so I suspect I speak for everybody in the Committee when I say that, rather like my school reports, I think the Government “should do better”.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I have my name to Amendment 49 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, on the duty to co-operate—which seems to me not something that should have to be said, but clearly does. It is another aspect of compliance. As ever, it is important to have the data on which to make recommendations and directions, give advice, or whatever. That is what Amendment 49 is about. It is about providing the tools for the independent Victims’ Commissioner to be effective. The amendment is based on the importance of monitoring compliance with the code, and one would think that the commissioner will be expected to be on top of the data. That needs co-operation. I think that is probably enough said. I am very much on the same page and the same paragraph as other speakers.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

From these Benches, I will be extremely brief, because I agree with everything that has been said. I signed Amendments 27 and 29 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and I absolutely support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, which my noble friend Lady Hamwee has also signed. We cannot have commissioners who are commissioners in name only. They need clear roles, responsibilities and powers, and clear limits to those powers. The problem at the moment is that they do not, so we support the amendments.

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.

--- Later in debate ---

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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, my name is on the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, although it was not meant to be—there was some confusion between “Sally” and “Sal”—but I am glad that it has remained there. I also commend the noble Baroness for that neat handover of the chair.

The noble Baroness introduced the amendment thoroughly, but, reading the briefing from the Victims’ Commissioner, I remembered one experience of a friend. It was nothing as extreme as a homicide, but her husband died unexpectedly on a business visit to the United States. It was hugely emotionally difficult for her, as well as practically difficult: different language is experienced even in the United States, and certainly there are different procedures and cultures. One needs signposting to the right people, who can deal with the procedures as well as support. I remember her talking about the difficulty in bringing him home.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I welcome this discussion and having a sense of clarification about who a “victim” is in a Bill at least half of which is about victims. I especially support Amendments 2 and 8, but I have some questions for those who tabled the other amendments. Although having too narrow a definition can be a problem, it strikes me that we could cause real problems for victims if we had too broad a definition. I am obviously thinking about resources and overstretching support. So many people can be victims of crime if you start broadening it so much.

As hinted at by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, in her interesting Amendment 3, it is a tragedy for the families of perpetrators too. They can also be victims, and whole ranges of people—friends, acquaintances and other people who have genuinely suffered—could say that they are victims, but are we seriously trying to put them all in scope? I want to know how we can ensure that, even if we are acting in generosity to try to broaden the definition, we do not water down a focus on the actual victims of crime that the Bill is designed to help. In other words: where do we draw the line?

In that context, I am slightly concerned about a broadening of what now constitute victims of crime. In Amendment 4, as the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, explained, it then becomes anti-social behaviour. He gave a moving account of what it feels like to be a victim of anti-social behaviour, but we could probably all stand up and give moving accounts of being victims of something—bullying and all sorts of other behaviour that makes people suffer. I am slightly concerned that we might end up relativising the experience of victims of crime in an attempt at broadening this too much. Whether we like it or not, culturally, we live in a society in which victimhood is valorised. I do not want the Bill to contribute to that relativising experience, because there is a danger that, if we make it too broad, we could trivialise the real victims of crime. But then you could rightly ask me: who do I mean by “real victims”? I do not want it to go so far so that we lose all sense of its meaning.

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[Baroness Newlove (Con)]

I have worked with the Foreign Office on this as well, and every time I have gone there, its first point of call is “We don’t have many resources; there’s not much money; we make the money from passports; it is only a small number of families that come through”. If we keep putting it to the Foreign Office, it will keep batting it the other way. Not only are we talking about families dealing with countries with different languages which are trying to get financial gain and who also have jobs to hold down but we have a Foreign Office that really does not do much for them and they feel lost. I appreciate what the is Minister saying, but I think it is about resource. I am not asking for lots of resources, but I want them to work collaboratively to help those families resolve the issues.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I of course understand the point that the Minister is making—procedures in other countries and what is available in other countries by way of support are different—but should that stop us requiring part of the Government, the organisation in this country which has immediate, close responsibility, to take on a role of proper signposting, which may be to equivalent services? Partly, it is interpreting, but it is obvious that there is a lacuna here.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

If there has been a homicide abroad and those families are living here, there is a real danger that the message will be that the Government think that that homicide does not matter as much as a homicide that happened here. The Government might say that they do not have the resources. I pointed out that it is about 80 homicides per year—the numbers are not huge—but those people who are so severely traumatised, retraumatised and carry on being further damaged by the experience often become enormous consumers of resources because of mental health services, because they are unable to work and so on, and eventually they may need benefits. There are all kinds of things that they may need. It is a false economy to look at it in terms of resources to the FCDO. I hope that the Minister will meet me and others to discuss ways that the victims’ code could be asterisked where there are things that may not be as appropriate if the homicide occurred here, but it would say that the lives of British citizens are of equal value wherever they are in the world and that whether it was a terrorist attack, a homicide here or a homicide overseas, those lives are of equal value.

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[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I open by reiterating my noble friend’s point about acknowledging the way in which the noble and learned Lord wound up the previous group of amendments and about working consensually across the Committee as we progress through the Bill. My second point is simple, but I think it worth making. As noble Lords will know, I sit as a magistrate in London in family, youth and adult jurisdictions, and I rarely see victims. I see victims only in trials—they sometimes turn up to trials to give evidence—and I hear from victims only when I sentence and the victim’s impact statement is read out. Through all the rest of the processes which I routinely go through sitting in a magistrates’ court, I do not hear from victims, and I do not see them. It is a simple point, but I thought it was worth making.

The Minister also had his four As, which the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, has just referred to—awareness, accessibility, accountability and affordability. We agree with those as far as they go, of course, but of course many of the elements in Committee will concern whether accountability should be enforceability. That will be the crux of a number of our debates in Committee.

This group deals with child victims. Amendment 5 in my name clarifies that the definition of “victim” should include a child who is a victim of abuse and exploitation that constitutes criminal conduct. I will go through the amendments in the group and then comment more widely. Amendment 6, and Amendment 10 in my name, extend the definition of “victim” to a child who is

“a victim of child criminal exploitation”.

Other noble Lords will speak to that as well. Amendments 7 and 11 seek to ensure that the explicit definition of a victim includes those who are subject to modern slavery—another aspect that we will debate within this group. Amendment 9, tabled by my noble friend Lord Hunt, is specifically about verbal abuse of children.

While the Bill makes important reference to the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 and to children as victims of domestic abuse, the same organisations that fought for that Act are now asking for the same ambition to be applied to children who have experienced abuse and exploitation. Last week, I and other noble Lords now present in the Chamber went to a survivors’ presentation organised by a coalition of charities led by the NSPCC, where we heard first-hand about survivors’ experiences and how the support organisations and criminal justice system responded to their trauma.

What was particularly telling about those survivor experiences was that, although the abuse itself was, of course, wholly negative, we did hear from one or two survivors who had had a relatively good experience of the criminal justice system—although there were other experiences that were much more negative. That contrast made those testimonies even more powerful. This morning, I, the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson, visited the Lighthouse project in Camden. This provides a one-stop shop for child victims of sexual abuse. It is a model of how these services should be provided.

It is in that context that this group is being debated. I want to set out the scale of abuse and exploitation of children. Children—that means people under 18—make up about 20% of the population. The Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse has found that children are the victims of about 40% of all sexual offences. One in 10 children in England and Wales is sexually abused before the age of 16 and that number means that there are an estimated half a million child victims every year.

Children abused by parents or carers are almost three times more likely to experience other forms of domestic abuse as well, and it was found that 42% of childhood abuse survivors suffered more than one type of abuse. The Bill explicitly recognises children as victims only of domestic abuse and as a result fails to acknowledge the multiple forms of abuse and exploitation that children can experience. They can be subjected to multiple forms of abuse and exploitation during their lifetime. To avoid failing these children, the definition of a victim must cover all forms of abuse and exploitation, in addition to domestic abuse.

The victims’ code of practice recognises that those under 18 are vulnerable and affords them enhanced rights. The children’s coalition, a coalition of charities that are informing what I am saying now—and has no doubt briefed all noble Lords here in Committee as well—has argued that there should be consistency across all legislation, recognising as distinct victims all children, not just those who are affected by domestic abuse. The coalition urges government to ensure that the Bill reflects the code by ensuring that children who experience abuse and exploitation, in addition to those who experience domestic abuse, are in the Bill so that the entirety of the harm they experience is explicit within primary legislation.

If the definition is not amended, the children’s coalition foresees that this will have unintended consequences for the relevant authorities and those in charge of delivering victim support services. Resources will be directed to focus on the needs of children who are victims of domestic abuse above other forms of harm. The coalition is concerned that there is the potential for a hierarchy of abuse that would leave thousands of children affected by other forms of abuse and exploitation without recognition and, ultimately, without support. By not explicitly recognising children as victims in their own right, the Bill could have significant implications for the level and quality of support available.

I am told that evidence already shows that a lack of support for children following abuse and exploitation exists and that ensuring that children and the full scale of the harm they experience are explicitly in scope will act as a cornerstone for responsible agencies commissioning services to make sure that they reflect the needs of children in full. So this is a specific example where legislation will make a difference.

It is impossible to design an effective justice system response to childhood victims without understanding the scale of what we are talking about, which I set out earlier. This cannot be done without recognising all forms of abuse, but this is a specific example where the black letter of the law will have an impact on the services that are delivered to childhood victims of abuse that falls outside the scope of domestic abuse. It is in that spirit that I beg to move Amendment 5.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I have Amendments 7 and 11 in this group and I want to be clear that I agree very much with the views that are behind all these amendments.

I hope that my first question—a technical question—will not be regarded as negative. Is a child a person within Clause 1(1)? That will affect amendments and how they are framed. My second question is probably a bit indelicate. It has only occurred to me this evening, while listening to the examples that your Lordships have given. It is a direct question to the Minister. Is the MoJ aware of examples of possible candidates—that is probably not a very happy term—who have been exploited or subjected to criminal or marginally criminal behaviour, which have not made their way to us? It may be possible. I possibly should not put the Minister on the spot now, but maybe we can talk about what the MoJ has considered and discarded. Amendments 7 and 11 have been brought to us by Hestia, which supports victims of modern slavery. It is concerned with ensuring that those who are born to victims of modern slavery are covered.

I know that we have Clause 1(2)(b), which refers to circumstances

“where the person’s birth was the direct result of criminal conduct”,

but it would be very unfortunate if we were to run into the weeds of whether someone is a victim of rape—in other words, what is the relationship between the mother and the offender?—or if there is a doubt as to who is the father because the woman has been subjected to forced prostitution and the object of multiple rapes, because that kind of issue detracts from the support that is needed by the children of victims of modern slavery or human trafficking, whose experience in itself requires support.

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I regret to say that I cannot comment this evening on the question about child spies from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. I will revert to her in due course, if I may. I hope that I have set out, at least in outline, the Government’s position.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I did not quite catch what the Minister said when referring to Clause 1(2)(a). Was he saying that a child who is the child of a victim of modern slavery will fall within

“seen, heard, or otherwise directly experienced”?

I am not sure what “directly experienced” extends to. Is his argument that the child of a victim of this particular crime would fall under Clause 1(2)(a)? I am sorry; the Minister talked about it but I did not quite hear.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, I think that is the Government’s position. In most cases the child will experience the effect of criminal conduct, that being the effect on the mother. That is a sufficiently direct nexus, as it were, to bring it within the scope of the clause.

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[Baroness Newlove (Con)]

My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group. I want to say a few words about restorative justice but, before I do, I give my support to the noble Baroness, Lady Gohir, on what she has just said. I am happy to help and assist in whatever way I can.

I acknowledge that this does not apply to all victims, but for some victims, restorative justice can be a transformative tool that can empower victims to move forward. Over the years, I have met many victims who have given me their true thoughts on restorative justice. In my last term as Victims’ Commissioner, I published two reports on restorative justice and was satisfied from my findings that the majority of victims that I spoke to who had participated in it had found it to be a positive experience. However, the ONS crime survey for England and Wales in 2019-20 found that just 5.5% of victims were given the opportunity to meet the offender. Between 2010 and 2020, this percentage has not increased above 8.7%, while 26% said that they would have accepted an offer to meet the offender if it had been made.

Funding for RJ is no longer ring-fenced by the MoJ. Police and crime commissioners make the decisions on how much they spend on RJ from their victims budgets. This has led to a wide variation across England and Wales in the provision of services, as we have heard. In 2023, the Why me? charity published a report showing that the lowest reported spending by a PCC on such services was £6,250, while the highest was £397,412. The type of crime where RJ is available varies, as do the conditions of service provision.

Data collection on the provision of RJ is poor, preventing effective monitoring of what is happening on the ground if national criminal justice agencies are unsure as to what they are required to do. For example, the HMPPS guidance issued last year states:

“When a victim … requests information about restorative justice services, the VLO must provide it within ten working days”.


This is not in line with the victims’ code of practice, which includes the right to receive information about RJ and how to access RJ services. It does not depend on whether the victim has requested it. In short, access to restorative justice has become a postcode lottery.

I hope, therefore, that these amendments and the debates that we have heard across the Chamber will prompt the Minister to give this House reassurance that such concerns about the provision of RJ are, and must be, seriously addressed. Lots of money has been spent, and it would be so sad not to carry on when victims would like to have that option.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I also support the importance of providing for restorative justice. I had a look at the current code of practice to see what it has to say. I was a bit surprised that a paragraph referring to RJ, which is obviously deliberately separated from the right to access support services generally, starts:

“If you report a crime to the police, you have the Right to be referred to a service that supports victims, including Restorative Justice services”.


I do not know whether this is a real point or a non-point, since the offender has to be involved by definition and, by definition, the offender would have been reported to the police, but it seems to me to be inconsistent with Clause 1(5) and the whole ethos of the Bill. I was not clear either whether paragraph 4.5 in the code is dependent on being entitled to receive enhanced rights—ER—for victims who are considered vulnerable or intimidated, the victims of most serious crime or persistently targeted.

The debate is, to an extent, that crime has been defined at different levels: it has been for serious crime, but I argue that it is not only the most serious crimes for which RJ is appropriate. I was glad that the noble and right reverend Lord mentioned reducing reoffending because, looking at the whole picture, that is a very serious and important aspect. My name is to his amendment, and the noble Baroness’s amendments appeared without giving me time to do that.

In this group, I have Amendment 17, to provide for a single point of contact—a “victim care hub” was the term used by the London victims’ commissioner, who was particularly keen that we should address this, as you would expect from her own experience.

On the usual issue of timely and effective communication, there are other amendments dealing with another aspect of this, which is that justice agencies are struggling to deliver victim care with awareness and in compliance with the victims’ code, which the London victims’ commissioner said was at seriously low levels.

In the 2019 review into the code, the Victims’ Commissioner for London recommended a victim hub model. We have had reference this evening to the Lighthouse in Camden, and she also refers to the lighthouse model in Avon and Somerset—a single point of contact to help a victim throughout the process. Such a model would secure more effective compliance with the code, which was discussed by many noble Lords at Second Reading.

In June 2022, the office of the Victims’ Commissioner launched a victims’ survey. The noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, is nodding. This dealt with experiences as a victim of crime, ran for eight weeks and gathered 489 responses from self-selecting individuals. All this bears out what we have been referring to: a lot of dissatisfaction, and a lack of confidence in the system. I understand that less than a third of respondents were aware of the victims’ code. In London, a user satisfaction survey for one quarter in 2022-23 showed only 25% of victims being made aware of the code.

What would a hub do? Such a service would provide a single point of contact, key updates on case progression, information and advice; answer questions; refer on to specialist support—signposting by another name, although perhaps referring is more than just signposting—and ensure and monitor that entitlements under the code are being delivered. This would not replace existing support services but would be a navigator; perhaps that is close to signposting. It would also provide information on what to expect and clarity, and simplify the whole thing.

I am conscious of the time, so I will not go through all the case studies in the briefing, other than to make a few quick references. The commissioner refers to good practice in Quebec, where I understand there is a similar model: the support worker—I do not know if that is the right term—is embedded in police stations and courts, which gives them access to computer systems and, hence, to victim records. I found the case studies quite shocking. I should not have, because from what noble Lords have said, we should all be expecting to hear shocking stories, but that is why we have the Bill. To me, to have a victim care hub seems blindingly obvious.

Debate on Amendment 13 adjourned.

Non-custodial Sentences: Public Confidence

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Monday 22nd January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, on behalf of the Government, I entirely accept the value of the various outcomes that the noble Lord just mentioned. We should celebrate success stories, particularly in relation to female offenders—mentioned by the right reverend Prelate a moment ago—and youth offenders. As the noble Lord just indicated, there are far more options for community sentences available now than there used to be. There is tagging, alcohol tagging, alcohol treatment and drug treatment. Quite a range of possibilities are therefore open to the court, combined with the national drug strategy being run by the Department of Health to get people off drugs. I cannot promise to ensure increased capacity, but the Government are certainly working to that end.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, speaking not just from these Benches but as chair of the Justice and Home Affairs Select Committee, we found it persuasive that community sentences are followed by much lower rates of reoffending than custody. We know that prisons are “universities of crime”. Should this not be a message that the Government promulgate?

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, the actual message is, in essence, for the Sentencing Council to transmit. The Government and Parliament set the framework, the Sentencing Council sets the guidelines, and our independent judges impose the sentences. The Sentencing Council’s present guidelines emphasise that community orders can be highly positive, last longer than short custodial sentences and involve important restrictions on day-to-day liberty; and that breaching them can result in significant adverse consequences. We must entirely combat the idea that community sentences are a soft option, and that is the Government’s position.