Victims and Prisoners Bill

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 4th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

I will speak to new clause 43, but first I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), who has fought tirelessly for that change and for so many more on behalf of victims.

My constituents Chloe Ann Rutherford and Liam Thomas Allen Curry were murdered in the Manchester Arena attack. In 2022, after sitting through the public inquiry and listening to every agonising detail of what their children went through, Chloe and Liam’s parents were told that they would be denied the right to register their children’s deaths due to outdated legislation that states that, where deaths require an inquest or inquiry, death registration is to be done solely by the registrar. All those devoted parents wanted to do was to be part of that final official act for their precious children.

After meeting with the then Minister, we had assurances that he would look urgently at whether and how those changes could be made. With each change of Minister, the promises continued, yet nothing has changed. In February this year, the bereaved families attended another meeting with Ministers. In that meeting they were treated with contempt, patronised and insulted. It became clear that they had been misled by the Government for nearly a year, because despite it being entirely possible to change that law, the Government just did not want to do so.

The current Minister suggested in Committee that I strengthen my amendment, so I did, but just last week he said that it was no longer possible due to the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, which will digitalise death registration. It feels like yet another excuse, because new clause 43 would give the Secretary of State the power to modify any provisions, which would enable the clause to be shifted to a digital state in future.

Lisa, Chloe’s mam, has spoken to me about how they were told at the outset that their beloved children did not belong to them but belonged to the state. She said that, despite the rhetoric that we always hear about families coming first, they simply do not. Caroline, Liam’s mam, explained that registering Liam’s death would have allowed her to begin grieving, and that if she could not do that for him, she would feel like she had failed him. She did not fail him; it was the state that failed him.

In June this year, Chloe and Liam’s parents, after six agonising years, watched as their children’s deaths were registered by a stranger. Chloe’s dad, Mark, said that

“it wasn’t the way we wanted this to be, because of our ridiculous government who only change laws to benefit themselves. We had to watch a random person sign it and not her Mam & Dad”.

They do not want anyone else to have to go through what they have gone through. Just last week, Caroline reminded me that because she was removed from the process, Liam’s name and date of birth were originally recorded wrongly.

The Minister knows that I think he is a fairly decent bloke, and he knows that Chloe and Liam’s families deserved better than that, and that families in the future will deserve better too. There is no moral or legal reason to keep on blocking the new clause, or this change. I am hopeful that he will continue to work with me on this, but I am sure that he understands how deeply disappointed I am, and how let down my constituents feel.

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

I have a bit of a poorly chest, so if my voice goes, that is the reason. I thank the Minister for the tone in which he introduced the debate and the changes that he has tabled around domestic homicide reviews regardless of the reason why somebody died, whether that be suicide, sudden accidental falling or substance misuse and overdose. Those are things that we see all the time that could be put down to domestic abuse. I pay tribute to Jhiselle from the Killed Women network, who has fought tirelessly for some justice for her sister Bianca, who fell from a tower block in Birmingham. Nobody has ever paid the price for what happened to her. Certainly she has not been, to date, allowed a domestic homicide review; we hope that that will change.

Obviously I am pleased to see the changes on Jade’s law. My right hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) has worked so hard, as has my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), who tabled the amendment on the need to carve out parental responsibility from those who are convicted of child abuse. All children in this country are protected from being near a child abuser—a paedophile—apart from the abuser’s own children. The other parent has to go through the family court process in order to keep their children safe.

While I agree with both amendments, and fought very hard for Jade’s law, the reality is that we cannot keep carving out little bits where parental responsibility is gifted. It is not just gifted, actually; currently the family courts in our country collude with perpetrators of violence and abuse to a degree that is frightening to anyone who has sat in on those proceedings, as I do regularly.

The Government have had the outcome of the harms review for three years, and have been working towards another review. The presumption of contact for violent parents should not be on our statute book any more. We should not call for victims to fight again and again to keep their children and themselves safe, yet we do.

I am afraid that I will point to another delay that the Minister has referred to: the delay on non-disclosure agreements. I know that he has to sit there and say that the Department for Business and Trade is working on it. Well, I am sorry to say, “Read it and weep,” because that is the answer we have been given for five years. For five years, since the recommendation to end the use of non-disclosure agreements in cases of sexual harassment, the Government have repeatedly said, “We’re looking at it.” Have they lost it? Where are they looking? Look harder!

I want to make it clear that, while I welcome the Bill, there are gaps in it around adult sexual exploitation. If you are a child who is sexually exploited—you might have been repeatedly raped from the age of 10—from the day you turn 18, suddenly the Government have no definition of you and no policy to do anything about you. That is problematic.

This week, the Home Office has announced that it will bring forward emergency legislation on the Rwanda situation. Where is our emergency legislation for the things that we have waited years for, the things that people have died waiting for—including those in the infected blood inquiry? If only we were the emergency.

[Sarah Champion]

I start by thanking the Minister. He has worked cross party, particularly with me, to turn what was a good, well-intended Bill into something much better, although there is still a lot further to go. I am delighted that the Government have accepted my argument that a victim does not have to report a crime to access support through the victims code, and therefore I will not press amendment 8.

There are victims who are not explicitly listed, but who need recognition. That would be provided through my amendments 5, 6, 157 and 158. When the definition of child sexual exploitation was introduced in 2009, it genuinely transformed services and people’s understanding. We now need the same for both adult sexual exploitation and child criminal exploitation. It is bizarre to me that, as soon as someone turns 18, sexual exploitation is seen as their making poor lifestyle choices, rather than as grooming, coercion and abuse. Likewise, child criminal exploitation is often unrecognised and the child is seen as a perpetrator. At the very least, I hope the Minister will ensure that there are statutory definitions of those crimes in guidance.

Amendment 7 relates to children whose parents are paedophiles. We need to ensure that those children are treated as secondary victims, in the same way that children born of rape will be once the Bill passes. I urge the Minister to consider rolling out a specialist type of IDVA, as Lincolnshire police are doing so brilliantly. Amendments 19 to 23 would ensure that there is also guidance for all specialist community-based services.

Elder abuse is often under-reported. Hourglass states that the elderly require specialist support due to the nature of the abuse, which often targets their finances, and because they are often digitally excluded. My new clause 6 would require the Government to carry out an assessment of specialist support services across the country to end the postcode lottery.

Amendments 4, 17 and 18 would include stalking in the Bill. Given that there were 1.5 million stalking victims in 2021, it is imperative that they have advocates. The Suzy Lamplugh Trust has shown that victims not supported by advocates have a one in 1,000 chance of their perpetrator being convicted, compared with one in four if they have a stalking advocate.