King’s Speech

Baroness Newlove Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Newlove (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Lords, Lord Hanson and Lord Timpson. It was a great maiden speech from the noble Lord, Lord Timpson. The noble Lord, Lord Hanson, has yet to make his maiden speech but, coming from the other place, I know he will be a true professional.

This debate comes at a critical time for our criminal justice system. There is no hiding from the fact that there is a prison population crisis. I recognise that when our prisons are full there are serious consequences for the whole criminal justice system, especially the police and our courts. As Victims Commissioner, my focus is on the impact that this crisis will have on victims.

My concerns are twofold. Victim safety must never be compromised, and this crisis must not be allowed to further erode the victim’s confidence in our criminal justice system. Victim attrition from the justice process is already at a record high. I am reassured that changes to the release point in the standard determinate sentence will not apply to offenders convicted for a sexual offence, stalking, controlling and coercive behaviours, non-fatal strangulation or those who have received a sentence of more than four years for a violent crime.

However, these exclusions, as welcome as they are, have limitations: they cannot address every potential risk once released. This is why it is so important that no early release takes place before appropriate release plans have been put in place. That will enable the Probation Service to manage these offenders effectively and with confidence while they serve their sentence in the community. Before release, a conversation with the victim should take place, not only to tell them about the change in release date but to give them an opportunity to request protective licence conditions such as exclusion zones, no-contact conditions and the safeguard of electronic tagging, where it is needed.

I now turn to the King’s Speech. I was encouraged that victims were mentioned. Colleagues in this House worked tirelessly on the Victims and Prisoners Bill, now an Act. I believe that this piece of legislation can achieve a great deal, but it left me and other noble Lords with a sense of unfinished business, although I stayed here until the very end to make sure that it never fell off a cliff edge. I hope that the Government’s programme will have the scope to enable us to complete the work we have begun.

I now turn to victims of antisocial behaviour. I am pleased to see that in their manifesto the Government specifically pledged more support for this group of victims. During the passage of the Victims and Prisoners Bill, I called for the victims of persistent antisocial behaviour to be recognised as victims of crime and provided with their Victims’ Code rights. Many of these victims are not treated as victims of crime, because the agencies—from the police to the housing providers— choose to treat the matter as “low level” or as a neighbour dispute, so it is not pursued further. Victims are not informed of their statutory entitlements, such as to be referred to victim support services. However, we failed to convince. The new Government’s legislative programme gives me a chance to have another go. I remain resolute.

I move on to the Government’s commitment to reduce by half the level of violence against women and girls. As a mother of three daughters, it saddened me to listen to the news this week, but I will focus on one important issue. For far too long, many of these victims have faced intrusive scrutiny of their behaviour and personal history, and they become so disillusioned with the justice system that they walk away.

In the Victims and Prisoners Act we established legal safeguards that ensured police can access therapy records only in the most exceptional circumstances. I hope that the Government will move quickly to commence this important provision. However, we need to go further. Police routinely access other sensitive information—medical notes, social service records and education files—held by individuals or institutions other than the victim. These records can span decades and often contain not just facts but professional opinions potentially coloured by their biases about the victim. Victims are unaware that these records exist, let alone of their content and the potential impact on an investigation. Is it justice or their right to privacy that has to change?

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 includes safeguards against excessive requests for victim’s personal digital data. Since its implementation, practitioners have reported a significant decrease in these requests, demonstrating their effectiveness. We must have similar protections for third-party materials, and free legal advice.

In 19 days, it will be 17 years since I had to turn off my husband’s life-support machine. Gary is not a statistic, nor are the victims and survivors I have met over the years. Every statistic has a human face and represents a tragedy. As legislators, we owe it to them to try to rebalance our justice system.