Victims and Prisoners Bill

Baroness Newlove Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 5th February 2024 Lords Chamber

Debate on Amendment 30 resumed.

[Baroness Newlove (Con)]

My Lords, I add my support to Amendments 30, 31, 37 to 46, and 53. Compliance with the victims’ code goes straight to the heart of what the Bill is about. This year, the code will have been on the statute book for 20 years. Its creation was based on good intentions, and the many entitlements, if properly implemented, would deliver the support and treatment deserved. On that we all agreed.

As discussed in the previous debate, the same piece of legislation sought to underpin the code by setting up the role of an independent Victims’ Commissioner, whose role is to

“review the operation of the code”.

Twenty years later, I think we all agree that the expectations created by that piece of legislation have never been fully met. Victim Support has found that as many as six in 10 victims do not receive their rights under the victims’ code, two in 10 are not referred to support services, and six in 10 are not referred to a needs assessment. In my most recent victim survey, fewer than three in 10 respondents were aware of the existence of the code. Only 29% recalled being told about the entitlement to make a victim personal statement.

In December, we had the report of the joint inspection on how well the police, the CPS and probation supported victims, which also found that the focus on complying with rights under the victims’ code has led to an emphasis on process rather than quality of service. The police, the CPS and the Probation Service did not always consider the needs of victims. As for police sharing information with victims, the report found that this was often a box-ticking exercise, with no evidence of quality. We love tick boxes, but we are missing the whole point of issuing this information and supporting victims. As the recent case in Nottingham has shown so powerfully, the quality and timeliness of communications with victims are crucial.

After 20 years, it is disappointing that we need to have this debate yet again. During that time, there have been many well-intentioned attempts to drive up performance: a tweak here, a nudge there, and yet another revision of the code. This Bill must not be allowed to become another nudge and another tweak.

There is much in the Bill to commend it. It will set up a structure whereby data is collected locally, with the Secretary of State issuing guidance on the data required. There will be an internal process to oversee monitoring of compliance, a programme board, and a ministerial task force. If an agency fails to deliver, it will eventually be issued with a notice of non-compliance. These are all positive developments.

Yes, I do have some concerns—for example, about whether the police and crime commissioners will be resourced to undertake the required data collection and analysis, and about the influence they will be able to assert over national criminal justice agencies at a local level—but let us not focus on those for now. The question we must ask ourselves is: will regional directors of, say, the CPS or the Probation Service lie awake at night worrying about an MoJ notice? I very much doubt it. Where are the transparency, the public accountability, the independent scrutiny and the challenge? By itself, will this worthy framework deliver the culture change we have all been talking about?

As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said last week—I know we have had a weekend in between—we might ask: does it have teeth? I fear that it does not. I support the amendments in this group not because I want to undermine or devalue the work that has been done in government, but because I want to give the Government the tools to make it succeed.

Amendment 30 sets out a framework for the Government to hold the criminal justice agencies to account should they fail to deliver a minimum level of compliance with victims’ rights. This proposal is not a straitjacket; it is a framework. The Government set the threshold, and the timeframe is two successive years. A failure to meet the Government’s set thresholds will result in an inspection, which in turn will result in a published report highlighting shortcomings and making recommendations for the change. This holds agencies fully to account and provides much-needed transparency. To put it bluntly, it has much more clout than an MoJ non-compliance notification.

For the same reason, I support Amendment 31, which gives holders of my role the opportunity to issue non-compliance notices where there is evidence of persistent non- compliance.

I turn to Amendments 44 to 46, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool. The systematic collection of compliance data offers an opportunity for proper scrutiny and accountability. The publication of the data will be a significant development, but the Government propose to give themselves the responsibility for delivering the assessment of the data. Therefore, they decide on the data to be collected. They fund the PCCs, victim activity and data collection. They also publish their own internal assessment of the data. As the noble Lord, Lord Russell, says, this smacks of the Government marking their own homework.

This framework lacks independent scrutiny and challenge. We can do better than this. This assessment needs to be undertaken by the person who has statutory responsibility for reviewing the operation of the code—in other words, the Victims’ Commissioner: someone who has the freedom to report without fear or favour, and who is able to challenge both the Government and the criminal justice agencies. As a person independent of government, his or her findings would be viewed as credible by victims, the public and the media. I add that my term expires in October, so this responsibility would fall to the future commissioners.

A former CEO of the office of a police and crime commissioner watched the debate last Wednesday, and she emailed me to say that the concerns from speakers about the approach of the criminal justice agencies to the code resonated with her. She said:

“On the additional ‘A’ being added by Lord Bellamy of ‘adaptable’, I understand the point he was making, but I would suggest the agencies sat around the Local Criminal Justice table have made full use of the adaptable nature of the code to date and the lack of governance around it which is why we are in the position we find ourselves with only a third of victims having awareness of the code”.


This needs to change. From the outset, I have constantly said that the credibility of the Bill rests on delivering code compliance and ending the culture within our agencies of adapting themselves around it. This is something on which we are all agreed, and I hope the Minister and the Government will, at long last, listen and act upon our concerns.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendments 30 and 44 to 46 in this group, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool. Others have spoken at length and much better than I can about these, so I really just want to echo the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, here. These amendments are about compliance, accountability and the Victims’ Commissioner. The noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, talked about tweaks and nudges, which we do not want—just give the Victims’ Commissioner teeth, because independence and rigorous scrutiny are vital if the Bill is to have the confidence of victims.

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[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, as it happens, I did read the article in the Financial Times, and pressed the little button to save it, because I thought what an interesting idea it expressed, particularly as this Bill was sailing on its way into Committee.

Victims in our system, depending on where they are in the system, are often invisible. I spoke earlier about the case of Gracie Spinks, and the number of times she complained to the police, yet none of it was joined up. Eleven years ago, there was a lady called Helen Pearson, who was repeatedly stabbed in a churchyard after she had been given a new and different reference number for each of the 125 previous reports she had made against her stalker. The failure to link these reports meant that the police had missed vital opportunities to understand the pattern that was building up and the degree of danger that she was potentially under. That is a graphic example: there were 125 different reference numbers for the same person, in each case complaining about the same person. That is not good practice, and it is not acceptable.

We do not have an answer today, but I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Bach, for raising the issue at this stage, to give us a chance to look at it carefully. I know that His Majesty’s Government, and many other institutions, do not have a brilliant track record in implementing new data and information systems, and many careers have suffered as a result. But that is not a good reason for not looking into this and seeing whether we can use modern technology to try to make victims’ experience better, and above all to help the bodies that are charged with trying to identify what those victims are suffering to do something about it. Having a tool such as that suggested by the noble Lord seems a bit of a no-brainer, and it would be an excellent topic for further discussion between now and Report.

[Baroness Newlove (Con)]

I too support the amendment. I am grateful that we have put people into the Bill, because that is what this legislation is about: it is about people. I do not think that victims want to be at the centre of the criminal justice system, but they do want a level playing field; that narrative has been overused, although I mean no disrespect to the noble Lord, whom I met as police and crime commissioner—I loved travelling round the country on trains for two and a half years, meeting everyone, when I was previously Victims’ Commissioner. I agree that the Bill is about people. We hear many times that the police servers do not talk to one another, and all these servers do not seem to interact with all the other agencies or all feed into the Ministry of Justice.

I am delighted that this issue is being raised. This morning we talked about it in the context of the National Health Service. A Times Health Commission report out today looks at a similar thing. Even GPs cannot talk to hospitals, and even consultants within the same hospital cannot talk and get the information out. Again, that is about patients. It is important that we are talking about it at this stage. I would welcome further discussions. Victims are given different messages, different police officers and different everything. It does not mount up. How many recordings and crime reference numbers do we need? It should be one. There is one portal for every police force that a victim can feed into. Therefore, it should be the other way around. A victim should have one record and be able to put the narrative together so that they feel safe in our communities. I welcome the amendment.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I too welcome this amendment. Although I am speaking from the Liberal Democrat Benches, first, I will speak personally, as I have had a number of amendments in other Bills relating to the use of very personal data, whether it is medical data or data with other identifiers.

There is a very strong argument for this. I noted that the briefing which we were sent earlier today talked about the independent review of children’s social care, recommending the re-use of the NHS number for the consistent child identifier. One of my concerns is that a lot of different departments of government or agencies are trying to create their own individual number, which suddenly means that you must remember or have access to your NI number, your DVLA number, your NHS number, your school number or whatever it is. For things such as this, provided that there are the appropriate data safeguards, it is sensible to use a number that is already there. My personal view is that it would be interesting to hear the arguments about whether it should be a separate number or the NHS number, because, after all, everybody has an NHS number.

The briefing also talked about the savings to the criminal justice system from having such an approach. One of the big scandals that we have at the moment is that, because the system is failing, victims often withdraw from any criminal justice system. They do not want to appear as witnesses or they find it very difficult to do so. If we really believe that this number is going to help support victims and to help them to stay through the course and get the justice that they deserve, it will also provide many millions of pounds of cost saving over the years to offset any very minor costs and administrative irritations from adding the NHS number or the victim’s journey number to every form.

From these Benches, we welcome anything that we can debate with the Government between Committee and Report to strengthen the role of a victim and ensure that they get the right support.

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[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendments in this group specifically on domestic abuse services. The Justice Committee, in its pre-legislative scrutiny report, observed:

“Additional funding is required to enable services to meet demand and allow the Victims Bill”—


as it then was—

“to live up to its ambitions”.

As the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, pointed out, a mapping exercise by the domestic abuse commissioner revealed just how patchy is the support available to domestic abuse victims and survivors from community-based services because of funding difficulties. Funding, such as it is, is often short-term and insecure, which reduces services’ capacity and ability to plan, with implications for effective service provision and the recruitment and retention of staff.

The mapping exercise also underlined the importance of community-based services, which was what most victims and survivors wanted. This chimes with the experience of organisations such as Refuge and Women’s Aid. The domestic abuse commissioner found that the weaknesses due to funding difficulties were

“compounded for victims and survivors from minoritised communities who face the greatest barriers to support, with specialist ‘by and for’ organisations increasingly defunded despite being best placed to meet their needs”.

In an earlier briefing on the Bill, she pointed out that such organisations

“are particularly ill served by local commissioning, where commissioners can favour fewer larger contracts to cover their whole population, or where there is not the critical mass of individuals from a particular community in a given geographical area for commissioners to commission a bespoke service”.

She emphasises that her mapping exercise shows that by-and-for services are

“by any measure, the most effective services for victims”,—[Official Report, Commons, Victims and Prisoners Bill Committee, 20/06/23; col. 7.]

especially those from minoritised communities.

Women’s Aid makes an important point that the distinction between specialist and generic VAWG services is recognised in Article 2 of the Istanbul convention and should be reflected in the Bill. Women’s Aid also argued that, on the basis of economic analysis conducted for it by ResPublica, the funding of specialist domestic abuse services can be seen as spending to save, given the savings it would generate elsewhere, as the right reverend Prelate underlined.

I return now to a point I raised at Second Reading on the significance of economic abuse. To the Government’s credit, this is now recognised in law. Community-based services need to be able to help victims and survivors of economic abuse, the impact of which can be devastating—even more so given the financial pressures so many families are facing. A Women’s Aid survey last year found that the cost of living crisis has hurt both specialist domestic abuse services, leaving many on their knees, and of course victims and survivors themselves. Of the women surveyed, 73% told them the charity it had either prevented them leaving or made it harder for them to flee. Some two-thirds said that abusers are now using the increase in the cost of living and concerns about financial hardship as a tool for coercive control, including to justify further restricting their access to money.

This underlines the importance of economic advocacy, both for those who have suffered economic abuse and more generally for domestic abuse victims and survivors. Surviving Economic Abuse has done so much to put the issue on the political map. It has made the case for including economic advocacy in the provision of community-based services, including by-and-for specialist services. It sees this as

“key to victim-survivors’ immediate safety as well as long-term economic independence”.

The charity warns:

“Post-separation economic abuse is the primary reason women return to an abusive partner”.


Economic instability affects the ability to access the criminal justice system and pursue a prosecution. Economic abuse, including post separation, makes rebuilding an independent life extremely challenging. The charity therefore recommends

“that the standard support offer in all domestic abuse services should include economic advocacy in partnership with money, debt, and benefits advice as well as financial services, to help victim-survivors establish … economic safety”.

Existing examples of such support show how it can help victim-survivors establish their economic safety and rebuild their financial independence.

As I have said, economic advocacy is important not just for those subject to economic abuse. The DAC’s mapping exercise found that half of victim-survivors wanting support for domestic abuse during the previous three years mentioned the need for help with money problems or debt. Of those, only 27% were able to get such support, which is almost the largest category of unmet need that the survey found. This suggests that higher priority must be given to funding economic advocacy generally; otherwise, there is a real danger that some victim-survivors will end up returning to an abusive partner because of the dire economic circumstances they face trying to establish an independent life free of abuse.

[Baroness Newlove (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to speak in support of Amendments 59, 60, 62, 64 and 65. When you become a victim of crime, your life is thrown into disarray in a moment, as I know only too well from bitter personal experience. Indeed, I had to become the main breadwinner as well as supporting my daughters through the most horrendous acts they had ever seen in their lives. What people need at this time is help and support so that they can attempt to pull their lives back together and to recover. The victims’ code gives all victims of crime the right to refer to support services. However, I am often told how difficult it can be to get access to these services. In fact, people do not even know they exist half the time.

In my victims’ survey, only 46% of people—less than half of the people who responded—said they were referred to victims’ services. Even if they are referred, getting that service does not prove easy, with only 43% of respondents agreeing with the statement, “It was easy to get access to victims’ services”. One victim told me that

“it took a really long time to get the support I needed at that time, as I was going through a very traumatic time and this was really impacting my mental health in such a negative way”.

I appreciate that there are, and will always be, constraints on funding, but the way victims’ services are funded contributes to the problems faced by many of these organisations. Victims’ support services are currently delivered via a complex network of statutory and non-statutory agencies, which compete with other providers for funding. There are huge regional inequalities for victims trying to access support services. Access to counselling—the most sought-after type of support—showed the biggest disparity, with 58% of victims in the north-east of England able to access counselling, compared with 37% in Wales. Demand is increasing for these services, but this increase is not being met by additional funding or capacity being allocated by the local authority.

We need long-term, sustainable funding for victims’ services. Importantly, these contracts should be for no less than three years. I feel that I am on a carousel, because I have been arguing for that since day one as Victims’ Commissioner. This would give these organisations the stability they need to be able to recruit, train, and, most importantly, maintain staff. Staff are given notices three months before this funding is even being put into accounts. Nobody in any job can absolutely go through that, when they have mortgages, children to feed and everything else. It is not acceptable.

In the victims’ funding strategy, the Ministry of Justice is committed to the principle of multiyear funding for core victim support services, and I welcome this. However, the short-term nature of contracts and the competitive tendering process really do have a damaging impact on organisations’ ability to deliver services—especially the smaller organisations, many of whom deliver by-and-for services. By-and-for services are extremely valuable in the support landscape, because these are organisations that are run and staffed by the marginalised communities they support. It is vital that victims feel supported and, more importantly, build relationships to feel they are being understood by getting support in an environment that is comfortable to them. For many, this means being supported by people who understand their culture or have similar life experiences. Again, in my recent survey, only 29% of victims told me they were able to easily find suitable services for their specific issues.

The commissioning processes fail these specialist by-and-for organisations, because the way in which they are structured favours bidders who can provide support at lower costs and have a larger reach in terms of numbers—not necessarily the best practice for victims. They can also force providers into partnerships and consortium arrangements in which by-and-for organisations are underresourced, silenced, marginalised or squeezed out. It is vital that these organisations can continue the vital work they do, and not be continually disadvantaged by short-term funding rounds. That is why I am in favour of ring-fenced funding. I know that the Government do not like ring-fencing—but a ring-fencing pot is essential for specialist by-and-for support services.

I also want the statutory guidance on the duty to collaborate to include direction to commissioners on the importance of commissioning practices that do not discriminate against smaller specialist services but encourage them to fund a range of services suitable for all victims.

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[Baroness Newlove (Con)]

My Lords, I support all the amendments. Listening to stories of stalking, we realise that it is just one simple word but it has a huge impact, including, sadly, loss of life. Before we start talking more about it, it is important to say that, as legislators in the House of Lords, we have done enough talking; we need now to put in legislation support to protect families who have lost loved ones through such horrendous acts.

I welcome government Amendment 74. Since my appointment as Victims’ Commissioner, my feet have not touched the ground. I have met over 20 different victim organisations to discuss this Bill. Many raised concerns about placing advocates, or advisers—whichever the Government want to choose—in the Bill. I know that the judiciary gets a bit twitchy when we mention advocates; for me, it is all about what the victim gets from this person who helps them tremendously. These concerns were set out very clearly by the VAWG sector in particular. I hope that Amendment 74 will alleviate concerns when the Government come to explain it. It provides the flexibility to include as many or as few advocates as they see fit, working, I hope, in close collaboration with the relevant stakeholders in the victims sector. However, I would welcome an assurance from the Minister that the Government will consult extensively with all stakeholder groups before finalising the guidance.

I have also received a briefing from the Suzy Lamplugh Trust. I feel that we are on a carousel now—none more so than the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, who has worked tirelessly, having been a victim of stalking herself.

I agree about the collaboration in Clause 12, because it is extremely important to ensure that we have multi-agency working. I also agree on mandatory training for police; that goes without saying. I work with trainee police students to ensure that they understand the victim’s journey, but, again, it is about breaking down the culture.

I have lots of briefing here, and I would like to thank many of the organisations. Laura Richards, who I work closely with, has given me tons of briefing, because she has worked in this area for so long. She must feel like a parrot, but she does it so elegantly. I will pull out bits from the briefing that people really need to understand.

Stalkers do not play by the rules. Restraining orders and other pieces of paper do not protect the victims. There is still no stalkers register, which would mean the perpetrator’s history would have to be checked. Sadly, though we still hear about Clare’s law, it has not been put into practice. Yesterday, I heard a victim who was desperate for Clare’s law, but the police did nothing. Even as we speak, I am still helping and supporting somebody.

My friend the noble Lord, Lord Russell—not the Earl—emphasised how tragic the murder of Gracie Spinks was. Similarly, when I was working on the Domestic Abuse Bill, I had the honour of talking about Georgia’s story. She was 14 years old, and watched her mother being murdered. I will never forget that.

For me, the solution is amendments to prevent and protect, saving lives and saving money. The same tactics must be applied to serial and dangerous domestic violence perpetrators and stalkers as to organised criminals and sex offenders. That would cut off opportunities for them to cause harm, and ensure that they faced the consequences of their actions. As we discussed in the context of anti-social behaviour, more and more the police report such actions as individual crimes. They do not join the dots, or “flag and tag” serial high-risk perpetrators. Instead, they focus on the victims. The victims do not know what happens on any other crime, so they feel that they are constantly going back and back.

Stalking is not like having a broken leg, where people can see it; it is like having a chronic invisible illness. Because people cannot see anything they think everything is okay—again and again, it is all down to the victim.

I finish with a recommendation from Laura Richards, who recommends a consistent national and collaborative multi-agency approach, led by statutory agencies, with specialist domestic abuse and stalking professionals round problem-solving tables. That would save lives and money. It would not be a talking shop; they would know what they are doing and would be professional, and they would make better policies.

In this Chamber, we are all so passionate about this, but we really have to do something to protect victims of stalking. We cannot keep doing the talking and then reading in the media about these horrific offenders. Even this weekend, we have more victims, because the police and the agencies are not joining the dots. I am sick and tired of inquiries and “lessons learned”. This is about lessons learned now, to protect the victims of stalking and give them the advocates that they rightly deserve and must have in the future.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I signed Amendments 67 and 69, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton. She was right to talk about a strategic perspective over the whole of the legislation coming through from both the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office. Once again, the debate we are having about stalking advisers is because other parts of the system are not working.

I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy, for laying Amendment 74. However, it is not specific to stalking, and talks about the importance of having a range of advisers. I do not disagree with that at all, but, for reasons I shall go into when I say more about why stalking advisers need to be visible in the Bill, there are very particular issues relating to stalking that mean that we must ensure that people get the best support they can.

I also thank the Suzy Lamplugh Trust and Laura Richards, not just for their briefing but for the phenomenal work they do every single day. It is extraordinarily difficult work and, as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Russell, it is only a drop in the ocean given the number of victims of stalking now. In an age when people can use mobile phones and apps, stalking is becoming all the more prevalent.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, cited the benefits of an independent stalking adviser. From my perspective, most victims of stalking arrive at the beginning of a journey through the criminal justice system knowing nothing about it, let alone about any stalking experience other than theirs at that point—which may not be the last point of the crime of stalking against them. We need training for police officers, community officers, call centre staff and those in the education system to be able to recognise it and know when they need to get help.

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When we talk about manipulative behaviour, people who are listening to this for the first time may think that is extreme. It is not. We do not hear about most of the cases that go on, with the really sad perpetrators who cannot let go of the idea of the person they are targeting. Increasingly we are seeing more about personalities. I worry greatly for well-known personalities who have to make enormous security provisions, but it also happens to private individuals. We need stalking advisers to help guide them through the process, from the first day that they think something is happening, when they first go to the police, and as they then go through the police system, because they might see two or three different teams of people. What happens when they get to the courts? What happens if their stalker is jailed? What happens after they are released? What do you do if it starts all over again? That is a specialist training.

[Baroness Newlove (Con)]

There is an important point about parole. I know that parole is in the Bill later, but I cannot wait. What people do not understand is that if there are exclusion zones, the offender knows where you are yet the victim does not know where they are because the victim is not allowed. We need to protect victims even more when the stalker comes out because they will carry on, and the exclusion zone gives them an idea, even though it is there to protect the victim.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for that very helpful intervention.

At the end of the debate on the previous group, I asked the Minister how we can get into the culture, focusing on the things that need to be looked at in stalking cases. Stalking advisers would be key to that. They would not just support the victim but know and understand the local people in their system and the criminal justice system; they would talk to them and ask them to look out for things. I hope the Minister can give a positive response. From our Benches, we support these amendments.