Criminal Justice Bill (Eighth sitting)

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th January 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Chris Philp]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very reasonable point. In fact, I was going to come on to it later, but I will address it now. As for the current deployments of live facial recognition in places such as Wales, Croydon, Southend, Chelmsford, Soho and elsewhere, a framework was set out by the case of Bridges v. South Wales Police. There is authorised professional practice from the College, but that framework is there. The hon. Gentleman is, however, making the valid point that it would be useful to set out—outside of this Committee, as he said—a broader strategy, framework or explanation of how the technology can be used. That is not just the case for live facial recognition, but also for the retrospective recognition, which I will come on to in a minute. It is all set out, and we could perhaps debate and discuss it in the round.

The hon. Gentleman is making a reasonable point about something that I had in mind to do in the relatively near future. That is something that I am working on in the Home Office, and his suggestion has spurred me on to expedite that. We want to have this set out transparently and comprehensively so that everybody can look at it and know where they stand. It has actually been done in relation to live facial recognition, but it would be helpful to set it out in a broader context.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

The point that my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) made is far more eloquent than mine. The Minister is clearly very enthusiastic and learned about this issue. When he was talking about how live facial recognition does not rely on DVLA data or any photographic data at all, the Minister said that we just need a list. What does that rely on, then? It must rely on some sort of photographic data.

My second point—I will try to be slightly more eloquent and not sound like I am asking my kids to turn the telly on for me because I do not understand it—is about my kids. I do not mind my DVLA data being used; I will tick the box or whatever. It strikes me, however, that my son has a driving licence, and I feel slightly anxious about the way that large groups of young boys get treated like they are a rabble. There are all the brilliant examples of this, such as finding missing people or catching rapists—“Great. Wahey! Let’s lock them all up”—but I feel slightly less comfortable about my son’s photo being used, funnily enough, in what might be a broad-brush police and crime approach.

[Chris Philp]

I thank the hon. Lady. On the first question, which was about how live facial recognition works, we first of all need a watchlist—the list of wanted people—and then the photographs. Maybe there will be someone who is wanted for rape, and we have that person’s photograph. Maybe it is someone the police have encountered before, but they just cannot find them. Maybe the police have gone to what they think is the person’s home address, and the person is not there, but they have their photograph. They have that data. Then, in the case of the Croydon deployment in early December, there were 12,000 photographs of people who were wanted for different offences—the police had those photographs.

Then, the faces of people walking down the road are scanned. Each time someone walks past, their face is scanned to see whether it matches. For the vast majority, there is no match, and the scan is instantaneously, immediately and automatically deleted. There is no need for any manual intervention; it gets deleted straight away, like this—although I am not sure how my clicking my fingers will be rendered in Hansard. If the hon. Lady or I had walked past, we would be scanned and, one hopes, there would not be a match. Then there would be instant, automatic deletion. If someone is scanned and their photograph is one of the 12,000 on the list, however, there is a flash—that was a double click, for the benefit of Hansard—and an alert is sounded. The officer will then go over and say, “Excuse me, sir”—all of the 17 who were stopped were men, by the way.

[Jess Phillips]

You shock me!

[Chris Philp]

The officer will go over and say, “Excuse me, sir, what is your name?” When he has established that the match is accurate and that they are who the system thinks they are, it is a case of, “You are under arrest for X, Y or Z”.

That is how the live system works. There is no need to access any standing database such as that of DVLA; we just need the pictures of the 12,000 wanted persons. Depending on the deployment, we can choose who goes on that list. In the South Wales deployment, they were particularly concerned about terrorists who might try to cause an explosion in the arena or paedophiles who might seek to prey on the young girls going to the Beyoncé concert. The list can be varied depending on the location. I would hope, though, that any watchlist would always include people who are wanted for offences.

I will now come on to retrospective facial recognition. I repeat that we are not authorising this today by passing this clause; we are simply creating a power to make regulations in the future to do so. I just thought I would be clear about that. We are not creating this power; we are simply creating a legislative framework through which future regulations might be brought forward.

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There was another example of someone who had committed a sexual assault while they were on a bus and the only piece of evidence—obviously, the victim gave a description, but it is quite hard to go off a description—came from the CCTV on the bus. There was video footage of the person committing the sexual offence, or sexual assault, while they were on the bus. It was run through the database and there was a match; the police found out who it was, went in and arrested them, and they are now in prison.

[Jess Phillips]

On a technical point, could this technology also be used to find witnesses on the bus, for example? I do not expect the Minister to know the answer to that question, but just to add a bit more enthusiasm to his love of this technology, I can see that there might be such uses for it.

[Chris Philp]

That is a really good question and I do not know the answer to it. However, I can certainly find out and come back to the Committee. I know that this technology can be used to find missing persons. If someone has gone missing, the police can do a search and see if they pop up somewhere.

As for finding witnesses, of course the witness has not committed a crime, so one would have to be a little bit careful about infringing on their rights. However, I will take that question away and get an answer, and I will write to the hon. Lady and the shadow Minister, and indeed the rest of the Committee, because it is a very good question. I am afraid that, as I stand here today, I do not know the answer, but that could help to find witnesses.

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[Chris Philp]

It could be; that is certainly a possibility that I have in mind. If those regulations were brought forward, and maybe there would be some further clarifying codes of practice and so on that will be needed as well, it would in theory be possible to bring forward regulations such that, if the person or the suspect—it might be the murderer in that Coventry nightclub, or the sex offender on that bus. Imagine if their image was not on the custody database; imagine that they had never been arrested, or convicted, or anything. The police did not have their picture; they would not have found them. It would obviously be useful, particularly for more serious offences, to be able automatically to search other facial image databases besides the custody one, in order to catch the rapist, the serious sex offender and so on.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley asked a question about her son. There is a question of proportionality here. For example, regarding this database, in these regulations one could—this is not for the Committee today, but I am just saying it—specify a threshold, and say that this would only be used for crimes over a certain level of seriousness. Obviously, rape and murder would meet that. GBH, drug supply, firearms, knives and so on, might also be specified, but a parking ticket would probably not be. In these regulations—this is one of the reasons why the wording is flexible—one could specify that threshold, and we would obviously then debate where that balance should lie. One does have to be cognisant of proportionality and privacy considerations, as indeed data protection law in any case requires us to do.

I hope I have given the Committee a bit of a flavour of how these regulation powers—

[Jess Phillips]

An education, Minister!

[Chris Philp]

It is not often that someone says that after I have been speaking. I hope I have given a bit of a flavour of how this could help catch serious criminals who might otherwise not be caught. We would debate the specifics when the time came. There would, of course, be a code of practice and everything else to set out those guard rails. I have already indicated in response to, I think, the hon. Member for Bootle, that there is a case for a wider policy statement setting out the strategy in this area, which we can discuss and debate.

I appreciate that we have strayed a little beyond the strict confines of this clause, Ms Bardell, but the Opposition raised some reasonable questions that I really wanted to try hard to answer. I will finish by saying that I spoke to my local police commanders, Superintendent Mitch Carr and Chief Superintendent Andy Brittain, encouraging the deployment of live facial recognition in Croydon. I know 17 people got arrested. We have heard how it was done in Essex: in Southend and in Chelmsford. I encourage members of this Committee to talk to their local police and say, “Try it out in your area,” and see who gets caught. At the moment, South Wales police and the Met have the necessary vans, but they will lend them. I think South Wales police lent the vans to Essex. If anyone wants to suggest it, they could ask their chief constable to borrow the van from South Wales police or the Met, try out in their constituency, and see who gets caught.

Amendment 33 agreed to.

Amendments made: 34, in clause 21, page 18, line 19, leave out “police force listed in subsection (4)” and insert “body”.

This amendment and amendment 35 specify in more detail the relevant chief officers of bodies to which the provisions will apply.

Amendment 35, in clause 21, page 18, line 20, at end insert—

“(aa) in relation to a police force listed in subsection (4)(b) to (d), the chief constable of that police force;

(ab) in relation to a service police force listed in subsection (4)(p) to (r), the Provost Marshal of that service police force;

(ac) in relation to the tri-service serious crime unit, the Provost Marshal for serious crime;

(ad) in relation to the Service Police Complaints Commissioner, the Service Police Complaints Commissioner;”—(Chris Philp.)

See the statement for amendment 34.

Clause 21, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 22

Powers to compel attendance at sentencing hearing

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

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[Laura Farris]

Let me give the hon. Gentleman a practical illustration. Lucy Letby was not compelled to attend her sentencing hearing. She was a young woman in her early 30s and not obviously a massive danger to the victims’ families or somebody who was going to be disruptive, yet the judge did not compel her attendance. We think that the provisions in the Bill alter that and make it far more likely that somebody would be required to attend their hearing.

[Jess Phillips]

With regard to that particular case, the Minister is absolutely right. It would seem that somebody could use reasonable force to get Lucy Letby there. The fact that she is a woman and the vast majority of the security staff in the court would be men would, I imagine, make them pause with concern as employers. My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East just pointed out to me that these court security officers earn around £18,000 a year. If this piece of law is saying that it is still up to the judge, where is the compulsion? Currently, it is up to the judge. In Lucy Letby’s case, it was up to the judge. The measure still says that it is up to the judge. So why does it make a difference?

[Laura Farris]

The difference it makes is that now we will not necessarily even see a judge consider exercising that discretion. By putting it into primary legislation—I appreciate the word “may” is used, and I am not going to pretend otherwise—you are essentially saying to the judge, “The time has come for you to exercise your discretion. Considering this defendant, in these circumstances in this case, are you going to compel attendance in the circumstances that are set out in the Bill?” There are other examples of where we put things on the statute book that existed somewhat loosely as a practice or in common law and were not been evenly applied, and it has ended up with a much more linear application of something that we think is socially desirable. That is the effect.

I want to make one other point. The hon. Member for Stockton North made some good points about people in riot gear, but I think one of the things he would perhaps gently concede, looking back particularly over the last two to three years of some of the most high-profile cases, is that it has developed into something of a trend. In some high-profile cases, people are aware that they have got away with not going. People say to their lawyer, “Do I have to go?” and the answer is no. The clause changes that. Actually, if you get back into a pattern where the defendant is in the dock for sentencing, you will see much less resistance. I am afraid to say that there has been a bit of contagion around this particularly pernicious conduct, and the clause is aiming to right that wrong. By embedding a practice where effectively they do have to go, or at least they will be video linked up, there will be no way in which the court will not be able to see their face as the remarks are read out to them. In some way or another, I hope that alters this ugly pattern of behaviour.

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[Laura Farris]

I thank the Chair, and remember her direction to direct my own remarks towards her, which I will try to do on this occasion.

I am pleased to speak to the provisions contained in clause 23. In recent years, there have been a number of high-profile cases involving so-called grooming gangs—groups of offenders involved in child sexual exploitation—in Rochdale, Rotherham, Telford, Newcastle, Oxford and Reading, and those are just the ones we know about. The discovery of the network of those grooming gangs was a significant factor in this Government’s setting up the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, chaired by Professor Jay, who did the initial report into Rotherham. The Government believe that grooming gang members should face sentences that reflect the seriousness of their offending, which is why, last April, the Prime Minister made a commitment to introduce a new statutory aggravating factor to target grooming behaviour.

This new measure, introduced by clause 23, creates a statutory obligation to consider grooming an aggravating factor when sentencing specified child sex offences, including rape and sexual assault. In plain English, that means they will get a longer sentence. It will capture offenders whose offending is facilitated by, or involves, the grooming of a person under 18. The grooming itself need not be sexual.

It is already the case that both grooming behaviour against the victim and acting together with others to commit an offence are high-culpability sentencing guidelines for a number of sexual offences. However, this measure goes further by creating an obligation to aggravate the sentence in instances where the offence has been facilitated by grooming undertaken by a defendant who is a participant in a grooming gang, even if they did not personally groom the victim. That means the aggravating factor will, for the first time, capture models of exploitation not currently directly addressed elsewhere: for example, where an offender assaults a victim who has been previously groomed by another member of the same grooming gang.

The measure requires the courts to consider grooming an aggravating factor when sentencing in relation to any of the listed child sex offences. It will remain within the court’s discretion to consider grooming an aggravating factor irrespective of the offence being sentenced where it is deemed to be relevant to the offending.

[Jess Phillips]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship once again, Ms Bardell. I am pleased that the Minister leaned on it being a year on from the child abuse inquiry—not one of whose recommendations, I think it is fair to say, has yet come to fruition. Well, hope springs eternal for this year! There are plenty of recommendations for the Government to crack on with in this regard, and I look forward to seeing some sort of timeline from the Home Office of any progress in that particular area.

New clause 25, which I tabled, seeks to try to include adult grooming victims on the same footing as children. The grooming of adults is widely and wildly misunderstood, despite there being considerable overlaps of perpetrators and, in fact, perpetrator behaviours and tactics of those seen in cases of child sexual grooming.

At the moment, sexual grooming is a crime only when the victim is a child, but grooming can and does happen to adults as well. It is a technique used by perpetrators to ensure compliance on the part of the victim and to avoid detection, as the victim’s actions are more likely to appear consensual when they are being groomed. Grooming is a deliberate process of limiting the freedoms of a person by gaining control over them and creating a dependency.

New clause 25 would make an aggravating factor of grooming in certain adult cases, including around domestic and sexual abuse. That would both challenge the misconception that adults cannot be groomed and send a message to perpetrators of domestic and sexual abuse that the grooming of adults is being taken seriously and will not be tolerated.

The 2018 Spicer report acknowledged for the first time that not only children but women over 18 are being groomed and sexually exploited. Since 2019, STAGE, the partnership against adult sexual exploitation—I make a declaration that I am the chair—has supported over 700 adult women who have experienced grooming just in the north-east and Yorkshire. The issue is widespread and prevalent in every part of the UK, but is under-represented in UK legislation.

STAGE’s work has confirmed that grooming is a common technique used to manipulate people for sexual exploitation. It has a negative impact on people’s ability to consent and to make capacitated decisions. However, for adults who have experienced grooming, this is often reduced to making “poor life choices”, because of the belief that grooming can only happen to children.

Everything that we heard yesterday about what was said to the girls in Rochdale is being said today to somebody over the age of 18, or even to somebody of the age of 18. Adult victims of grooming are repeatedly asked victim-blaming questions such as “Why did you get back in the car?”, “Why did you stay with them?” and “Why didn’t you leave?” by professionals and services that are meant to be protecting them. This ignores the immense impact of grooming. Because of this, many victims and survivors feel unable to leave their perpetrator, or may not even recognise the abuse that they are experiencing. Until the grooming of adults is recognised in legislation, it will continue to be misunderstood by law enforcement and the criminal justice system, and victims will not be adequately protected. That is why I have tabled new clause 25.

Yesterday, in the light of the Rochdale report, I thought of a woman I had supported. I wanted to make sure, because of the media, that she was okay, because when these sorts of things happen it is pretty traumatic for women who have been exploited in childhood and adulthood. She is 27 years old, so the legislation we are debating would not include her. I needed to search through my email to find her phone number. I found among my emails a letter that I had forgotten, which she had written to the now ex-Home Secretary, the right hon. and learned Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman). I will read it now:

“Following on from your statement on the 2nd of April 2023, I am writing this letter as a victim who has been let down by countless professionals and services, but worryingly the Home Office itself.

I will begin by providing a summary of my experiences. I was groomed at the age of 13 and this then led on to me experiencing sexual and criminal exploitation for over a decade, whereby I was trafficked all-round the country and sold from one gang to another. There were countless times where I was gang-raped, injected with heroin and left black and blue. I was exposed to serious and organised crime and my perpetrators would laugh at how they continued getting away with what they were doing to me and so many other girls. I did not see any of my family for years and my childhood and early adulthood was stolen away from me.

Whilst I acknowledge your statement that you vow to stamp out child grooming gangs, that is a very easy statement to make. Victims of this crime all around the country have heard it all before. Although you’ve announced new measures to tackle the issue, it makes me question how is this achievable when there are so many flaws in the systems already in place, such as The National Referral Mechanism (NRM).

The police did not refer me into the NRM, despite them full well knowing I had been trafficked. I have spoken with several police officers over the years who do not know what the NRM is, let alone know that they are first responders. It took 562 days for me to get my conclusive grounds decision and for most of that time I continued to be exploited. Nearly a year ago, I was sitting in a hotel paid for by the police, after I’d been physically and sexually assaulted. My accommodation was not safe, and I had requested a safe house. After a lot of back and forth, I was eventually told by…the Home Office’s contractor for NRM services, that a safe house was not an option as I was a British national and that there were no other appropriate housing options. I had to return to unsafe accommodation to then be raped and physically assaulted again.

As you have overseen a system that has routinely let vulnerable people down, I would like to know what action has or is going to be taken to improve this?

I spent days and days in police interviews going into as much detail as I possibly could, with the hope that I would get justice and the men who had tortured me would end up behind bars. The reality is so many victims like me must drop out of investigations because we are not safeguarded, resulting in thousands of perpetrators on the streets continuing to exploit and intimidate vulnerable children and adults. If possible, imagine you are at a police station as a victim of this crime and a stream of text messages come through your phone from your perpetrators saying that they know where you are and that if you do not leave, they will kill you and your family. That is just one example of a threat I have received.

This is not going to stop until appropriate measures are put in place to protect us. In the meantime, the trauma victims experience at the hands of their exploiters is exacerbated when we are routinely let down by the so-called systems in place to protect us. I haven’t even covered in this letter, the battles we face accessing support for our mental health and the legal challenges.

I do hope that you read this letter and that it provides you with an opportunity to reflect on an example of someone who has experienced failures from the Home Office.”

I just ask that we do not fail her again and that we recognise the abuses that she suffered. For women who have been sexually exploited in adulthood—by the way, the sexual exploitation of adults is not defined in law; it has no legislation around it, but believe you me, there are some new clauses coming down the line later—I ask that we recognise that the people who groom children go on to groom the same women as they turn into adults, when they do not have the same protections. I completely agree with everything that the Minister has said; I just want it for her as well. That is all that new clause 25 seeks.

[Alex Cunningham]

As the Minister outlined, clause 23 creates a new aggravating factor to apply when a court is sentencing an adult for a specified child sex offence and that offence was facilitated by or involved the grooming of a children—that is, a person under 18. The court is required to treat the grooming as an aggravating factor, but that does not apply where the person who committed the offence was a child under 18 at the time of the offence.

Clause 23 requires the judge to state in open court that the offence had been aggravated by grooming. It could be undertaken by the offender, or a third party, and committed against the victim of the underlying offence, or a third party. Where the grooming is undertaken or facilitated by that third party, the offence will be considered to be aggravated if the offender knew or could be reasonably expected to have known about the grooming when the offence took place. The person groomed need not be the victim of the offence.

I understand from the Government’s explanatory notes that this is to allow for a case, for example, where child A is groomed to recruit child B and an offence is then committed against child B. Clause 23 also does not require that the grooming be undertaken as part of a gang.

We must not lose the context in which this clause operates, which is horrific cases of offenders preying on the most vulnerable. In recent years, there have been a number of high-profile prosecutions of grooming gangs, including in Rotherham, Telford, Newcastle, Rochdale and Oxford. In 2014, the independent inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013 identified that at least 1,400 children and young people in Rotherham had been sexually abused or exploited. Who knows how many children there are across the country if one area had as many as that?

Just yesterday, the report on child sexual exploitation in Rochdale was published, again illustrating and demonstrating the extent of the crime. I am sure everyone on the Committee will share my sadness in hearing my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) speaking in the media over the last 24 hours about how things have not got any better. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley also talked about how none of the recommendations has yet been implemented.

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[Laura Farris]

Let me start with the shadow Minister’s comments. He asked about the definition of grooming, the nature of the prosecution and the scope of a grooming gang. There is no definition of grooming because of the broad range of behaviour that it can encompass. Identifying a grooming gang is a task for the police working in conjunction with the CPS. One force told me recently about a grooming gang prosecution in which they had to identify the number of defendants. They were talking about tens of defendants and tens of victims, and some of the defendants in the grooming gang had never met each other and had no idea who the other people were. It was quite a difficult exercise for the CPS to judge how best to get a prosecution and a conviction. In that case, they succeeded, but that is why the definition is not set out in law. It is dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

The shadow Minister challenges me to explain what this provision adds, when grooming is already an aggravating factor and is often considered in child sex offences and taken seriously. I hope I have explained, but I will clarify again if he did not understand. We are simply adding that a member of a grooming gang, as defined within the parameters of that case, can be subject to the aggravation provision at sentencing, irrespective of the fact that they did not directly groom the victim of that child sexual offence. They could be a tangential member of the gang—perhaps one of the people who has never met one of the other defendants, such as in the case I just outlined—yet they could still be subject to the aggravation.

The shadow Minister asked about cost. That is a fair question, and I will have to come back to him in writing on that. We will add it to the list.

[Jess Phillips]

I feel I know what grooming is, but, on the Minister’s earlier point about the Court of Appeal reducing the sentence, without a proper definition of grooming or at least a working definition in secondary legislation or regulation, are we not at risk of appeal? I do not know whether she or any of us has sat through a lot of court cases like this, but the idea that there is heavy knowledge in police forces, the CPS and the judges of our country about exactly what grooming or coercive control are, I have to say, is for the birds. I am a bit worried about the risk of appeal on a loosey-goosey case that could be grooming. Why would someone not just take it to appeal immediately, if their sentence was aggravated?

[Laura Farris]

I will come back to that. For the purposes of this afternoon’s Public Bill Committee, the issue is not whether the courts have an adequate understanding of grooming.

I will give my experience. I was appointed as counsel to the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. I worked on that inquiry from 2016 to 2017, and it is on my Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I was also instructed by a Telford victim in a public law challenge—not a criminal law challenge in the High Court—against the local authority in relation to its breaches of various duties to her. So I have direct familiarity with cases of this nature.

There are many, many issues with this kind of offence. I think that the courts understand child sexual exploitation and grooming gangs and that it is left deliberately loose in law so that a range of behaviours can be encompassed. The one that the public are most familiar with is sexual exploitation, but there are other forms of grooming that go much wider and where there is no sexual element. It is right that that flexibility exists so that somebody is not outside the possibility of being a victim of a grooming offence.

[Laura Farris]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and I promise that I will give some thought to that, but I just wanted to come back to the new clause tabled by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley. This is not about creating a new offence. The treatment that the victim the hon. Lady described was subjected to is already covered by criminal law. This amendment is simply about an aggravating element going into statute in relation to grooming.

As the hon. Lady is well aware, the difference is that we are confining our amendment to the grooming of children for sexual purposes. That is our amendment. We have focused our amendment on that because child sexual exploitation by grooming gangs has been so problematic and so serious.

I will go back to some of the examples that the hon. Lady gave, although it is very difficult to respond to an individual’s case in the context of a Public Bill Committee, because I do not know all the details. I think that the hon. Lady said that the person was 27 and had been groomed since the age of 13. The vast part of what she suffered in the early days would be captured by this provision, because she was a child. I appreciate what the hon. Lady said about the continuing grooming—I think she said that that person is still being groomed today.

[Jess Phillips]

Continuously, yes.

[Laura Farris]

But, in a case of this nature, the judge would still have the discretion to consider that treatment as an aggravating circumstance, so there is nothing precluding a judge—they would have to get to the end of the trial, get the conviction and get the offence—from treating it as aggravating. I have not been given an example, in the context of this particular clause, of somebody going to court about a case of this nature, getting the conviction and then getting a sentence that was not sufficiently serious.

[Jess Phillips]

You would be lucky.

[Laura Farris]

Well, grooming cases are brought to court, and convictions come from those cases.

One thing that I would gently say, since the example of Rochdale has come up a lot, is that the report that was published yesterday relates to the period between 2004 and 2013. When we worked on IICSA, Rochdale and Rotherham directly informed why IICSA was set up and why Alexis Jay was appointed chair of that inquiry. IICSA was informed by all the cases we were looking at, whether it was Dolphin Square, residential schools, the Catholic Church or the Australian migrant scheme. Even though Andy Burnham commissioned that review, it related to a time period that goes quite a long way back, starting from 20 years ago, rather than what is happening in your—[Interruption.]

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[The Chair]

Order. I remind Members how important their contributions are and to please intervene and put comments on the record, so that we can capture them.

[Jess Phillips]

I will intervene.

[Laura Farris]

What came out of yesterday's report was shocking, but it was also known. As I said, it informed IICSA. We looked at Rotherham extensively throughout. I did not read the report and say, “I’ve never heard any of this before.” I knew about it, and I had spent time on stuff like this. I am simply saying about the case that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley described—a horrific case—is that the clause would, first, cover a perpetrator being brought to justice who had abused her as a child. Secondly, if her case got to court and she got a conviction on the multiple offences that she seems to be describing, there is nothing to stop the judge from treating it as aggravating and enhancing the sentence.

[Jess Phillips]

If there is nothing to stop a judge in a case where an adult has been sexually exploited as an adult because of multiple perpetrators over many years—different faces changing, some just in adulthood, some from childhood, but basically a pattern is set when someone abuses a child and that carries on for a lot of their life—is the Minister saying that as we can already aggravate on the basis of grooming an adult, what do we need this piece of legislation for children? Also, to push back heavily, I cited in my speech the 700 cases of adult sexual exploitation found in Yorkshire and Newcastle alone, so if her idea is that adult sexual exploitation is not a big issue in our country, on the same scale if not greater than child exploitation, I suggest that she has not been out to the country.

[Laura Farris]

I will keep my remarks concise. Let us look at adult sexual exploitation—I accept, by the way, the breadth of the problem without reservation. First, the adult, simply by virtue of being an adult, has more ability to vocalise their experience than a child does. Secondly, there are more forms of exploitation—for example, forced labour or human trafficking, both of which overlapped with what the hon. Lady described. The case of children who are victims of grooming gangs is specific, and it is also a direct thing that we dealt with. The clause is directed just at children.

[Laura Farris]

I have to take this back to what it is. It is not about creating an offence. It is not about saying, “If you sexually exploit a child, you’ve committed a criminal offence, but if you sexually exploit an adult woman, you haven’t.” That is not what this is about, and I do not want to get lost in that. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley described a series of offences that, if they achieved convictions, would be category A offences. They are unbelievably serious offences. We are not denying that.

The clause, however, is directed at grooming gangs as they relate to children. The purpose of the clause is to capture the wider membership of the grooming gangs so that even if people did not directly groom the victim, they are on the hook for the same aggravation. It is to bring in the entirety of the grooming gang. As I said, that is usually defined by the CPS in terms of how it will choose to prosecute a case. That can be very wide indeed. It can bring hundreds to court, or certainly tens, but that is a decision for the CPS. The clause potentially brings all gang members within the scope of the aggravation, simply because they have been identified as part of the gang, if one of those victims has been groomed. That is the purpose of the clause.

[Jess Phillips]

I did not for one second think that I was asking for a new offence. If I had been, I would have tried to write it into the clause. The Minister is suggesting that there are not wide-scale gangs grooming adults in our country that need targeting. It is exactly the same. There are grooming gangs. Perhaps we could all spend a bit of time at the National Crime Agency or watch any drama about organised crime, which always includes drugs, sexual exploitation and prostitution. There are grooming gangs grooming adults, both men and women. Especially when we are talking about men, it is very silenced. There is a trade in drug addict, down-and-out men in our country that would make people’s toes curl. I have rarely met a young heroin addict who was not traded for sex by powerful men.

I cannot believe the categorisation of it. I do not believe it, because I know the Minister well. For children it is, “grooming matters more”. For adults, we might as well say, from what I have heard today, “Why did you get back in the car?” I have to say, it is not characteristic and not what I was expecting. I find it very disappointing. There is no crime of adult sexual exploitation. It does not exist. It is as if we just do not care that adults get sexually exploited. It is as if we tolerate it in society.

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making an excellent point. There is a rise in cuckooing in particular, which is the exploitation of adults. It used to be for drug dealers and so on, but now it is being used for prostitution as well. I just want to add that to the hon. Lady’s excellent comments.

[Jess Phillips]

I absolutely agree. There is undoubtedly a pattern with cuckooing. Funnily enough, one of the other things we do not define in law, which I am hoping goes through in the Victims and Prisoners Bill, is child criminal exploitation. Apparently the really important grooming gangs in those cases we do not consider important enough to define in law. Let us hope that that changes as these many Bills that all cross over each other pass through. I absolutely hope to see cuckooing in this Bill before the end of its passage.

I want to stand here and make a statement on this idea that it is any different. When adults are sexually exploited, for instance an 18-year-old being sold, raped, beaten, held at gunpoint and frightened, the idea that they could come and speak—it is just unrecognisable to me.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 23, as amended, accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 24

Murder: end of relationship aggravating factor

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

New clause 27—Aggravating factor relevant to offence of murder: honour-based violence and abuse—

“(1) Schedule 21 to the Sentencing Code (determination of minimum term in relation to mandatory life sentence for murder etc) is amended as follows.

(2) After paragraph 9(g) insert—

‘(h) the fact that the offender inflicted honour-based violence or abuse on the victim.’”

A new clause to instate honour-based abuse as an aggravating factor in murder cases.

New clause 28—Aggravating factor relevant to offence of murder: strangulation—

“(1) Schedule 21 to the Sentencing Code (determination of minimum term in relation to mandatory life sentence for murder etc) is amended as follows.

(2) After paragraph 9(g) insert—

‘(h) the fact that the offender strangled the victim as part of the homicide.’”

A new clause to instate strangulation as an aggravating factor in murder cases.

New clause 29—Infidelity of victim not to be used as part of a defence to murder—

“When considering a charge of murder, the court may not take into account as part of the defendant’s defence an allegation that the victim was at any time or in any way, physical or verbal, sexually unfaithful to the defendant.”

This new clause would ensure sexual infidelity can never be used as a defence to murder.

[Laura Farris]

Clause 24 sets out the new statutory aggravating factor for murders that are connected with the end of a relationship. This provision is one of four that the Government are taking forward in response to the independent review of sentencing in cases of domestic homicide that was undertaken by Clare Wade KC. Together they will ensure that the seriousness of murder committed in a domestic context is reflected in our sentencing framework. Around a quarter of all homicides in England and Wales are classed as domestic. In other words, the perpetrator is a partner or former partner of the victim.[Official Report, 1 March 2024, Vol. 746, c. 6MC.] (Correction) The vast majority of these homicides are committed by men against women and usually follow a pattern of years of abuse prior to the homicide.

The legal framework for murder sentencing is contained in schedule 21 to the Sentencing Act 2020, a piece of legislation that was first introduced in the Criminal Justice Act 2003, 20 years ago. While every case of murder carries a mandatory life sentence, this framework sets out the principles to guide the court in determining the minimum custodial term. It is a non-exhaustive list. It is always open to judges to consider aggravating and mitigating factors not contained in schedule 21.

Until now, schedule 21 has contained no express recognition of the seriousness of domestic murders, but over the past 20 years—I would argue particularly in the past five—our understanding of offending committed in a domestic context has improved. As Clare Wade highlighted in her review, our sentencing framework needs to be updated to reflect that. On the overall measures, last year, a statutory instrument was laid before Parliament to introduce both a statutory aggravating factor and a statutory mitigating factor for murder in relation to controlling or coercive behaviour, in line with the recommendations. Where an abusive partner has killed their victim, in recognition of the seriousness of the preceding abuse of coercive control and the experience of the victim before death, the coercive control will constitute an aggravating factor for the purposes of sentencing.

A new mitigating factor will apply in cases where the victim of an abusive partner or family member has killed their abuser, in recognition of their experience as a victim of abuse preceding the killing, which is exactly what happened in the Sally Challen case. This is consistent with the conclusion of the Court of Appeal—it is essentially taking the court’s conclusion and making it a statutory mitigating factor.[Official Report, 1 March 2024, Vol. 746, c. 7MC.] (Correction)

We have also introduced new statutory aggravating factor for murders involving gratuitous and excessive force, sometimes referred to as overkill. That is something that Clare Wade found to be strikingly prevalent in not only domestic murders,[Official Report, 1 March 2024, Vol. 746, c. 7MC.] (Correction) but all the cases she assessed. The perpetrator in cases of overkill—to use that shorthand—was male in all but one case.

Clause 24 introduces the fourth legislative measure that the Government committed to take forward in response to Clare Wade’s recommendations. This provision will make murders connected to the end of a relationship, or the victim’s stated intention to end a relationship, a statutory aggravating factor. In 40% of the murder cases analysed by Clare Wade as part of her review, the murder occurred at the end, or perceived end—an important qualification—of the relationship. The perpetrator was male in all those cases, and, in over two thirds of them, a history of coercive or controlling behaviour was also identified.

Killing in those circumstances is often the final controlling act of an abusive partner. As Clare Wade put it in her report, when the perpetrator learns he no longer has control over his partner because she is going to leave, the final act is homicide—the last way he can control her. The old shorthand used in court is: “If I can’t have you, no one will.” It is striking how often it twins with overkill—the use of gratuitous and excessive violence—at that moment. They often occur at the same time.

While it is for the judge to determine the appropriate weight given to the aggravating factors in each case, we expect that this change, along with the other statutory aggravating factors we have introduced in response to Clare Wade’s recommendations, will have a significant impact on the minimum custodial terms. It will also get the court to consider the nature and context of domestic homicides specifically, which has never happened before. These changes mark a step change in the way our sentencing framework responds to and understands cases of domestic murder. For the first time, the nature of these murders and the unique harms underpinning them will be recognised expressly in our sentencing framework. The perpetrators must serve sentences that truly reflect the severity of their crimes.

[Jess Phillips]

I will speak to new clauses 27 to 29. I do not disagree on the issue. I worked very closely with the families to get Clare Wade’s review up and running under the then Lord Chancellor, the right hon. and learned Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland)—who I believe was just speaking in the Chamber, making a nuisance of himself today as well. While we are making these changes, I think that Clare Wade has herself said, as have many of the families involved, that making these limited and piecemeal changes is not good enough. I will place some of my own thoughts on record for the sake of showing the many ways in which the aggravating factors for cases of domestic homicide need to be updated.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Cunningham]

It can be arranged.

[Jess Phillips]

A girl can dream! I will speak to a number of changes because, if we are going to make a point about the end of a relationship, we have to also think about some of the other aggravating factors to try and level the playing field regarding sentencing. I have a list of case studies here of murderers and how long they went away for: 15 years, twelve and a half years—brutally murdering women—16 years, 15 years for a man who then went on to murder somebody else on his release. So, the level of time that we give for this particular crime is woeful.

New clause 27 would make honour-based abuse an aggravating factor in murder cases. Banaz Mahmod was killed in a so-called honour killing in 2006 by her father—not somebody she was ending a relationship with—her uncle, and five other men. She was murdered for leaving her abusive husband, for desiring a divorce and for meeting a new boyfriend who those men disapproved of. She was murdered because she was accused of bringing dishonour and shame on her family and the community.

The men that killed Banaz had boasted and joked about the murder, and were supported by other members of the extended family, who made investigations and prosecution as difficult as possible. The police estimated that there were about 50 men involved in her murder and related crimes.

Before her death, Banaz suffered greatly, reporting rape and violence, threats to kill and an attempt on her life. She went to the police five times. She named the suspects who would eventually kill her. The police did not hear; they did not act. In 2008, a commissioner for the then Independent Police Complaints Commission found serious failings in the police handling of the case.

For many years, Banaz’s sister Bekhal, who I consider a friend, has campaigned alongside Southall Black Sisters for a law that recognises the horror of honour-based killing explicitly in sentencing. New clause 27 would do that. It would introduce honour-based abuse as an aggravating factor in murder cases.

Such a new clause will increase confidence in the criminal justice system, sending a strong message that this violence can never be accepted, excused or ignored. As the Women and Equalities Committee stated, an explicit reference “would strengthen the understanding that honour-based abuse is taken seriously by the criminal justice system and only ever as an aggravating factor.” That would have an impact upstream, too, ensuring that agencies do not misunderstand, ignore or turn a blind eye to honour-based abuse due to ignorance or to fear of being seen as culturally insensitive or racist.

Those women must be protected. We must reach them before it is too late. That is particularly important, as honour-based abuse is a high-risk crime that involves multiple perpetrators and colluders and sometimes multiple victims, because of shared codes of honour. Too many victims are at risk for us not to act.

New clause 28 argues that strangulation should be classified as an aggravating factor in sentencing murders. From previous times that I have worked on this issue with the Minister present, I know that she cares deeply about strangulation, and the arguments for the new clause seem unquestionable. First, the nature of the violence: strangulation is a gendered form of killing. That is how men brutally and callously kill women. The 10-year femicide census showed that strangulation was the second most common method for men who kill women, and Clare Wade’s review demonstrated its prevalence.

It is hard to find words to reflect the horror of killing someone by strangulation—the vulnerability of the victim, the intimacy of being eye to eye, the length of time that it would take to kill someone in that way, and the fear that the victim must experience in their final moments. Many bereaved families I work with speak to me about how that haunts them. That must be reflected in the sentencing framework.

Furthermore, new clause 28 follows new laws on non-fatal strangulation—the Minister may remember them her time on the Back Benches—which were introduced under the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. How we understand the role of strangulation in domestic abuse is changing. It is now understood as a form of coercive control and an accurate red-flag predicter of homicide. If someone is strangled, they are much more likely to go on to be murdered. We must change how it is considered in sentencing.

A judge can recognise strangulation as serious or sadistic under schedule 21—I say again that that needs review—but strangulation is not being recognised. It is simply not being recognised for the horror that it is. In 59% of the strangulation cases looked at by Clare Wade’s review, the method of killing was not seen as an aggravating factor. Significantly, in 73% of the remaining cases where the offence was said to be aggravated by the nature of the killing, the strangulation was accompanied by either an assault or an attack with a weapon. That suggests that the seriousness of the violence denoted by strangulation in and of itself is not being acknowledged.

In law, we place a lot of emphasis on weapons, but as we see in many gendered murders, many male perpetrators do not need a weapon. Such a perpetrator carries his weapon everywhere he goes, and that is his strength, his arms, his physical power. He does not need a weapon, so his culpability should not be decreased because he did not use one; he did use one. That is not a point in law that has gone unrecognised in other crimes; our bodily differences are recognised. For example, for the crime of rape, the Sexual Offences Act 2003 explicitly states that it can be done only with a penis. That recognises that a man’s body can be a weapon. I am not asking for anything beyond what exists in current law.

A three-year study of 204 adult cases of non-fatal strangulation showed that one in six had been strangled to the point where the victim lost consciousness. Symptoms of such violence include strokes, depression, memory loss, seizures, motor and speech disorders, and paralysis. Studies have shown that victims of non-fatal strangulation are seven times more likely to be murdered by their partner. The true nature of strangulation must be understood, as must its relationship with misogyny. Strangulation is about silencing. It is about exerting power, fear and control. As the member of a focus group who attended for Clare Wade’s review explained:

“It is almost always about the perpetrators wanting the last word but if you work with the perpetrators, you hear this over and over again—like I wanted her to shut up I wanted her to be quiet but I wanted to win you have to have the last word. That is what the whole kind of attacking the throat and putting the hands over the mouth—it is all about silencing.”

I very much hope that the understanding of an aggravation in the use of strangulation in a killing can be considered.

On a slightly different note, new clause 29 would ensure that infidelity can never be used as a defence to murder. The Minister said earlier when commenting on perpetrators attending court that common law practice sometimes needs writing into primary legislation. I very much agree with her, which is why I am seeking for this amendment to be made. While it is still written in our legislation that someone can use infidelity as a defence for murder, it is not used in common law.

Currently, infidelity cannot be used as a defence or mitigation. However, the latter is common-law principle rather than in statute. Section 55(6)(c) of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 provides that sexual infidelity cannot be relied upon in a defence of a loss of control. That was passed following the wrath about “crime of passion” defences going through the criminal justice system in response to domestic murders, and it revoked previous laws on provocation. The legislative change was brought about due to the incredible work of domestic abuse campaigners.

However, the legislation did not concurrently prevent sexual infidelity being a mitigating factor in sentencing in schedule 21 to the Sentencing Act 2020—I feel like I am really attacking schedule 21 today, but I am not keen on it if I am honest—thereby creating an inconsistency in the law. The law on provocation changed, but the sentencing principle that surrounded it did not. Common-law principles on the whole prevent this inconsistency from playing out. I will spend the entirety of the Committee stage saying, “In real life, that does not really happen.” Well, in real life this does not happen. It is not something that I am mortally frightened of. It no longer happens that someone is allowed to say that because their wife cheated on them it is fine that they killed her. A million other defences are made, but not that one anymore.

The defence still exists in law; however, it is not used, on the basis that precedent allows for factual scenarios to be disregarded in mitigation where they run contrary to the policy behind existing legislation, even where there may not be a statutory bar. Despite that, it is important to regularise common-law principles in statute for the avoidance of confusion and to fill lacunas in the law. New clause 29 ensures that no judge could ever stray and use it as a mitigating factor.

New clauses 27, 28 and 29 speak to the larger issue of how we see and respond to the killing of women. How we sentence crimes reflects how seriously we take them. At the heart of these debates is how seriously we take the violent deaths of women and the stealing of their lives. I am afraid to say that at the moment, and we do not take it as seriously as we take other crimes. Several years ago, two mothers walked into my office, Carole Gould and Julie Devey. Their relentless campaigning, at personal cost, has hugely elevated the issue of how we should hold the people who kill women to account. Their daughters were both murdered in brutal, violent attacks by their ex-partners. Ellie was 17 and Poppy was 24. They had their futures stolen from them by two men who had decided, as Julie once described, that

“if they couldn’t have them no one else could either”.

Their mothers began campaigning to challenge the discrepancy in the sentences given in cases where the victim, often a woman, is killed in the home and in other homicides where the victim is killed in public spaces. The distinction commonly turns on the fact that if a perpetrator brought a weapon to the scene of a crime, the starting point for sentencing is 25 years. If, however, the weapon is not brought but found, as with a kitchen knife—my kitchen knife comes back into play from earlier—the starting point is only 15 years. That is 10 years’ difference.

The example that is repeatedly given to demonstrate that inequality is that if someone brings a knife with them and kills their victim with a single stab, they will receive a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years; but if the victim is suffocated, strangled, beaten, or stabbed hundreds of times to the point of mutilation with a knife found at the scene, the starting point is 15 years. With the discretion of the judge and the mitigating and aggravating factors, Clare Wade’s research suggested that on average that resulted in a six-and-a-half-year difference between the two sorts of crimes. That cannot be right.

--- Later in debate ---

[Laura Farris]

I thank the shadow Minister for his intervention. We are thinking hard on that point.

I want to check that I have not missed anything from section 55, where anything

“done or said amounted to sexual infidelity is to be disregarded.”

That is still good law. I suggest that the issue of some defendants claiming as a defence that they had killed a victim because she had been unfaithful to them has now been resolved and it is excluded as a qualifying trigger for the loss of control defence.

Clare Wade recommended that sexual infidelity should also be prohibited from being considered as a mitigating factor when it came to sentencing. We published our response to her review in July last year, setting out why we will not take that forward. The domestic abuse sentencing guideline already expressly states that provocation is no mitigation to an offence in a domestic context, except in rare circumstances. No evidence was provided in the review that sexual infidelity was ever being taken into account inappropriately as mitigation. I am therefore satisfied—it is the only point on which I really disagree with the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley—that the law already has sufficient protection in place. I urge the hon. Member not to move the new clauses.

[Jess Phillips]

I do not actually move them yet, as we do not do that for new clauses until the end. I was saying to myself, “I don’t think I have to do anything.”

I have, of course, already taken part in the consultation alongside the Killed Women network, which I work with incredibly closely. To the Minister’s final point, I started my remarks by saying that I do not agree with myself, having to do a piecemeal job. Schedule 21 needs an overhaul, but we will all start tinkering with it until it ends up in the place it already is, with bolt-ons and batons hanging off it, when something much more fundamental, in a modern world, needs doing.

On the final point about the defences, it may surprise the Minister to hear that that definitely came to me from some pretty eminent lawyers who work in the field—maybe even Clare Wade. I will take that back and speak to them about what exactly was concerning them with regard to that particular issue. I will bring it back to the Committee when we discuss new clauses at the end, of which there will be loads.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 24 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Scott Mann.)