Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 11th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Alex Davies-Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for his important question, and my thoughts are with his constituent as she navigates this difficulty. The Government will consider carefully the 2024 report on financial provision on divorce, in which the Law Commission looked into the specific issue of domestic abuse as a factor. Later this year the Government will consult on the delivery of our manifesto commitment to strengthen the rights and protections of cohabiting couples, because all abuse is abuse, financial or otherwise.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

When someone enters this country illegally from another country to which we are not allowed to deport them, and when they have previously expressed support for terrorism and terrorist organisations, but not in this jurisdiction, is the Secretary of State content that the Government have enough powers to protect the community from such a person walking free in our society?

[Shabana Mahmood]

The right hon. Gentleman raises an incredibly important point. I am discussing with the Home Secretary the full range of powers that we need to have at our disposal, and she has already made it clear that we will not hesitate to act further if we need to. However, it is important that we are able to deport offenders who pose a risk to our country.

Courts and Tribunals: Sitting Days

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

I can absolutely give my hon. Friend that reassurance. This Government will deliver 13,000 extra neighbourhood police officers, because we are absolutely clear that we need neighbourhood policing and bobbies back on the beat in this country. He is right to note that the size of the backlog and the structural problem with the backlog mean that many defendants are gaming the system. They know that they can take their chance, wait it out and hope that the victim gives up or that, for some other reason, the case simply never gets to court. That is why, in addition to the record funding, we have to consider once-in-a-generation reform of our Crown courts.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Does the Lord Chancellor accept that part of the reason for the loss of public confidence lies with the sort of cases that are clogging up tribunal and court time? As explained by Jawad Iqbal in his column in The Times today, these involve dubious decisions about not being able to deport convicted criminals, such as an Iraqi cocaine dealer who cannot be sent back to his homeland because he is considered to be “too westernised”. Quite apart from the perversity of the result, is it not an insult to the genuine victims of crimes who are held up in getting the judgments that they deserve?

[Shabana Mahmood]

The right hon. Member will know that it would be inappropriate for the Lord Chancellor to comment on individual judgments. On some of the decisions in the immigration chamber, which have been the subject of some public discussion, he will know that the Prime Minister has been very clear that where a policy or a legal change is required, it is for the Government to bring forward those changes and ultimately for the House to vote on them. In that respect, the Home Secretary is considering further changes to the law. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned deportations, and let me remind him that, under this Government, deportations of foreign national offenders from our prisons are up by 23%.

Drones: High-security Prisons

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Nicholas Dakin]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We inherited a prison estate that was 99.7% full. The police and the courts were in danger of not being able to lock people up. That was an abrogation of duty by the Conservative party. We have rolled up our sleeves and tackled that, and we will tackle this problem as well.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for a very positive recent meeting on an unrelated subject. Is the main problem here the detection of the incoming drones, or the ability to impede the deliveries once they have been detected?

[Sir Nicholas Dakin]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the positive meeting I had recently with him, officials and the local business. The answer to his question is that both those things are issues.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Julian Lewis Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 29th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

In the past I have voted against this type of measure, and for one overriding reason: namely, the impracticability of effective safeguards. Even if practical safeguards could be erected against external coercion, I have always felt that there was no prospect whatsoever of having effective safeguards against internal pressures on someone to request assisted dying or even euthanasia.

For example, as we have heard, an elderly person in a care home, knowing that the legacy they could bequeath to their children was being reduced by tens of thousands of pounds every few weeks, would be highly likely to feel obliged to ask to die. I cannot conceive of any safeguard against self-sacrifice of that sort, whether for financial reasons or in order no longer to be a burden on one’s nearest and dearest relatives and friends.

However, there is an additional point that I wish to inject into the debate. In my opinion, the key to this dreadfully difficult conundrum—about end of life care, pain and the possibility of assisted dying—lies, or should lie, in the ability of medical personnel to administer effective pain relief even if it shortens the patient’s remaining time. In my view, there should be no bar on the use of painkilling medication, if that is the only way to ease human suffering, even if it leads to a speedier death—hence the frequent references to putting dying people “on an appropriate pathway.”

It was therefore most alarming to me to read a very important paragraph in a letter sent to me in favour of changing the law and voting for the Bill by my constituent, the distinguished broadcaster Dame Esther Rantzen, in which she explains that doctors no longer feel able to follow this humane course of action since the atrocious Harold Shipman case, which was briefly alluded to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis). If there has been such a change in regulations, as Dame Esther believes, it is imperative that that should be reversed. That is something positive that could come out of the imminent debate.

Another issue that has been touched on more than once is the uncertainty and the postcode lottery surrounding effective palliative care. Dame Esther’s view is that there are some people, who have some conditions, for whom palliative care never can be effective. Other people expressed the view that there is always a way in which painkilling medication can be used in order to prevent suffering. I suspect the answer to that riddle lies in the fact that that painkilling care, in some cases, might lead to a shortening of life.

Therefore, I conclude that there are three issues that should be in our minds. Can safeguards be effective? My answer to that, I am sorry to say, is still no. Can pain be alleviated sufficiently by palliative care? The balance of the argument is in favour of saying “probably yes”, but it is too uneven across the country and would certainly need the sort of investment that would be necessary to set up system that would work for assisted dying. Above all, have doctors the freedom to administer pain relief that may shorten life? We need to know the answer to that question, because if, since Shipman, they have been prevented from taking such merciful measures, that is a classic example of hard cases making bad law. Doctors need to be able to humanely ease people on their last journey, and the country needs to know where the medical profession stands on that central matter to this debate.

Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

In an ideal world, there would be a limitless supply of lawyers who would provide their services to victims and defendants alike, free of charge. Then, the issue of SLAPPs could never arise. We are not talking here about trying to restrict the right of individuals to seek the protection of a court and clear their name of defamatory claims about them.

If that was what we were seeking, I would be something of a hypocrite, because 30 years ago, I had to pursue such a libel action against an impecunious magazine that thought it could get away with saying anything about public figures, no matter how baseless, because it had no assets, so if someone pursued a libel action against it and won, they could never recover the tens of thousands of pounds in costs. That is when the boot is on the other foot: a person who has no assets therefore uses the costs of lawyers against the person they wish to defame.

However, what has happened in more recent times, particularly since the demise of that magazine, because there were other ways of dealing with it, is precisely what the hon. Member for South Dorset (Lloyd Hatton) said in his excellent introduction was an abuse of the legal process—and in particular of the huge costs that apply to hiring lawyers to defend oneself—by what I believe he described as a very small number of very rich people. The solution to this type of problem is therefore for the courts to be able to deal with it at such an early stage that, even though some costs will be unavoidable, the huge threat of unbearable costs will be removed, because a worthless libel claim against an investigative reporter whose story is well founded will be thrown out beforethe vast bulk of the expense can be incurred.

Some hon. Members who were here in the previous Parliament may remember that we had a brief debate on 20 January 2022 dealing with the question of lawfare. I made a couple of interventions on behalf of a former Member of the House, Charlotte Leslie, who faced what was certainly a SLAPP as a result of her not even having published anything, but having privately contacted a number of people, including me, given my then position as the Chair of a Committee that she regarded as relevant to her concerns. She wrote to us to try to do due diligence on an individual who proposed getting involved and investing money in an organisation by which she was employed. Fortunately, in the end, the case failed utterly in court, but only after she had been put through a nightmarish ordeal. I pay tribute to her resilience in coming through that ordeal.

We are of course particularly concerned about vulnerable individuals, but sometimes even large organisations can be subject to the SLAPP technique. If hon. Members look on the internet, they will see that on 12 January this year—on the BBC website, no less—a story headed, “Post Office lied and threatened BBC over Horizon whistleblower” begins:

“The BBC can reveal that in the period leading up to the broadcast of Trouble at the Post Office, the 2015 Panorama programme featuring the whistleblower testimony:

Experts interviewed by the BBC were sent intimidating letters by Post Office lawyers about their participation in the programme

Senior Post Office managers briefed the BBC that neither their staff nor Fujitsu—the company which built and maintained the Horizon system—could remotely access sub-postmasters’ accounts, even though Post Office directors had been warned four years earlier that such remote access was possible

Lawyers for the Post Office sent letters threatening to sue Panorama and the company's public relations boss Mark Davies escalated complaints to ever more senior BBC managers”.

The article also states:

“The Post Office’s false claims did not stop the programme, but they did cause the BBC to delay the broadcast by several weeks.”

As we all know, the BBC had the resources to resist a major legal action had one ensued.

Only three days earlier than that article on the scandal, there was an article on 9 January 2024 on the website of the Press Gazette, which is the industry-representative body. It commented on the way in which the ITV drama about the Post Office scandal had brought to a wider audience the shocking story of the hundreds of postmasters who were wrongly prosecuted and, indeed, the four who committed suicide as a result.

The article is headed, “Attention to Post Office Horizon IT scandal follows 14 years of dogged journalism”. It rightly pays tribute to the freelance reporter Nick Wallis, who wrote the famous book “The Great Post Office Scandal”, and to two other reporters, Rebecca Thomson and Karl Flinders, who both wrote numerous articles for a much smaller enterprise, a journal called Computer Weekly. In fact, it can be said that the first investigation into Horizon, which was published in 2009, was carried out by Computer Weekly after a year-long investigation by Rebecca Thomson. The investigations editor of Computer Weekly, Bill Goodwin, is quoted as saying that the magazine persisted despite “bullying letters” from the Post Office demanding to know its sources. He said:

“We ignored them. Reaction was muted when the story first appeared but it initiated a slow-burn chain of events that lead to the uncovering of a scandal of enormous proportions.”

I am very grateful to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which has already been mentioned in this debate, for providing a little more detail on what Computer Weekly faced. It has supplied me with some further embellishment, as it were, of what I have already recounted. It tells me that the general counsel for the Post Office sent threatening legal letters to Computer Weekly and that the trade magazine’s brave campaign, which continued regardless of the threats, often left it as a lone voice, with other outlets seemingly very reluctant to pick up on the important reporting with which it persisted. One legal letter from 2015 shared with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism threatened Computer Weekly over an article that said the Post Office closed a working group responsible for looking into claims against the Horizon software. The general counsel claimed that the article included a “significant number of inaccuracies” and “damaging errors” and argued that the reporters had acted improperly, stating:

“We are most concerned that Computer Weekly chose to publish this highly damaging article without taking the proper steps to verify the information.”

The letter acknowledged that Computer Weekly had amended its article to include Post Office comments, yet it persisted with the threats:

“You should not underestimate the seriousness with which the Post Office views the publication of such damaging and inaccurate allegations. The steps taken by you in response to this letter may well influence Post Office’s decision as to any further steps it may take to protect its reputation.”

It has now emerged that the Post Office took multiple aggressive actions to shut down the story about its failures over prosecutions that were sparked by the faulty Horizon software. The scandal only really spread into the mainstream press after the breakthrough moment in 2019 when Alan Bates and 554 litigants took a civil case against the Post Office to the High Court, which they won a couple of years later. Even then, as was said earlier, the full story was not widely known until the 2024 ITV drama was broadcast.

In response to what the Bureau of Investigative Journalism stated, the Post Office now sings a welcome different tune. It says that the organisation is committed to supporting the ongoing public inquiry and that it is fair and right for the Post Office to be held to account by journalists. It says:

“The approach of the Post Office today regarding communications is based on the knowledge that we must apologise sincerely, learn from the past, be transparent with stakeholders, and support justice and redress for those who have been impacted.”

It also says that it is actively exploring additional ways to strengthen transparency.

That is all well and good, after the Post Office fought so hard to cover up what had happened and close down the story of the scandal, but I will close as I began by saying that any SLAPP legislation is not meant to give anybody carte blanche to say anything they like on the basis of no evidence—to smear, belittle or denigrate people simply because they wish to target them for whatever reason. The purpose of such legislation is to stop people who know perfectly well that the accusations against them are well founded, as the Post Office knew, but who nevertheless persist in abusing the legal system because of the horrendous threat of costs that will drive people to bankruptcy or to surrendering in the face of possible bankruptcy before the issue ever gets resolved in court. Central to any SLAPP legislation must be a simplification process that ensures that a worthless case—a case with no evidence; a case that is truly a SLAPP—is thrown out at the earliest possible opportunity before unbearable costs are incurred.

Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

My hon. Friend will know that in our safer streets mission, improving confidence in the criminal justice system is one of the key outcomes we are focused on. He is right to make the point that the whole criminal justice system requires stabilisation. It all needs to be put on a better trajectory than the one we inherited from the previous Government. We are talking in detail about prisons, but it is difficult to divorce what is happening in our prison system from what is going on in probation and the courts. I reassure him that I conceive of this as a whole-system approach. I am aware of the challenges in other bits of the system; they are things that this Government will ultimately sort out.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

The Lord Chancellor speaks with great clarity and determination on this issue, and I am sure that she will remember last week promising me a ministerial meeting involving my constituent, Andrew Duncan, and a specialist team. They are working on a new concept of community detention that I believe is tailor-made for the vision that the Lord Chancellor has outlined to us today. Can she confirm that the meeting will go ahead, notwithstanding the extra opportunity to give evidence to the Gauke review in due course?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I knew immediately that the right hon. Gentleman was going to ask about the meeting he referenced last week, when I made my other statement. I assure him that I will follow that up. I am interested in the work of the group that he mentions, and I am sure that the sentencing review panel will also be interested in it.

Criminal Justice System: Capacity

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

I am very sorry to hear about the experience of my hon. Friend’s constituent. I have many such instances of unacceptable delays for hearing cases in my own constituency caseload. I hope that the measures that I have announced today will begin to ease some of that pressure, because making this change will free up around 2,000 sitting days in the Crown court. This Government have funded an additional 500 beyond the concordat process agreement that was reached by the previous Government in June. I am determined to make more progress in dealing with the Crown court backlog so that constituents such as my hon. Friend’s do not have to wait so many years for their cases to be heard and, ultimately, for justice to be done.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

May I reach out across the party divide to say that I warmly welcome what the Justice Secretary said about punishment and rehabilitation? By coincidence, I have just written to her—she will not have seen the letter yet—about the work of my constituent, the publisher Andrew Duncan, in co-ordination with a panel of experts that includes a psychology professor, a former governor of Pentonville, a Probation Service specialist in reducing reoffending and a central London magistrate, on a new concept of community detention. My request is that either she or the Minister she thinks most appropriate will agree to have a meeting with my constituent, a few members of his team and me. As a right-of-centre politician, I am sometimes sceptical of alternatives to prison. This one sounds really interesting, and I think it would not be a waste of her time.

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank the right hon. Member for the spirit in which he made his remarks. I hope that where consensus is possible on a cross-party basis across this House, we are able to work together, because this is a national problem that will require us all to come together to solve it. I will track down his letter and ensure that he gets a full response and a meeting.

Violence Reduction, Policing and Criminal Justice

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

I have been very grateful to the right hon. Lady for the care and attention that she has given to this sensitive area over many months and years. We will continue to work with her so that this can be the best possible advocate. It is important to note, however, that whatever we provide will be a massive step forward. We do of course want to get it right, and I commit myself to working closely with the right hon. Lady in order to do so.

Finally, the Parole Board will be required to include members with a background in law enforcement in order to help parole panels make better decisions when assessing risk.

The legislation laid out in the Gracious Speech is an ambitious, long-term vision for our country. It builds on our record over the last 13 years to make our country safer than ever. It is a programme rooted in evidence; a programme that responds to the anger and distress that we all feel about crime, and that does so with measures that actually drive it down. We will ensure that the most dangerous offenders spend longer in prison to protect the British people from harm, and to protect women and girls in particular. We will equip the police with powers to fight the latest criminal trends that blight our communities, and we will ensure that law enforcement has the confidence of the public while pulling every lever to reduce offending, because that is what keeps the British people safe.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

rose—

[Alex Chalk]

At the death, I will give way.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I detected that my right hon. and learned Friend had reached the closing part of his peroration, so I wanted to ask him to address one concern that I have about the policing of demonstrations. As it happens, I think the police made the right call about 11 November, given the law as it stands. What concerns me is that three weeks earlier, on 21 October, a planned demonstration in Golders Green to pray for Israel and the Jewish people was called off after the police advised that it would be subject to intimidation or violence from people who were representing it as a threat against Muslims holding a demonstration for Palestine seven miles away. Does it not concern my right hon. and learned Friend that a peaceful demonstration should be called off in the face of intimidation, and is it not a matter of concern that the people who made the online threats that led the police to give that advice have not, as far as I have learned, been in any way questioned, sought or prosecuted?

[Alex Chalk]

As always, my right hon. Friend has made an extremely powerful point. On the basis of what he has said, that does seem troubling. I do not know all the details, of course, but the fundamental point is that anyone in our community, whether they are Jewish or otherwise, should be able to practise their faith without let or hindrance. I am grateful to him for raising that. If there are measures that need to be followed up to protect our vulnerable communities, they should be.

The Criminal Justice Bill focuses on the evidence—the evidence of what works and the evidence of what keeps the British people safe. Sometimes that will mean people being locked up for longer, and we make no apology for that. Sometimes it will mean ensuring that those who are capable of being redeemed are being redeemed. That is how we drive down reoffending, and that is how we protect the British people. I commend the Government’s programme to the House.

Prison Capacity

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

The hon. Gentleman made some fair points, and I will get back to him.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

The Lord Chancellor is clearly well on top of this subject, so may I bowl him a couple of googlies? What safeguards will there be to prevent deported foreign criminals from coming back here if they are not imprisoned overseas? Will he be very careful before going down the road of plea bargaining, as in the States, whereby there is a perverse incentive for the innocent to plead guilty because of the huge disparity in the sentences they may receive?

[Alex Chalk]

To take the second point first, I am so pleased to hear my right hon. Friend say that. There are certain things that really are important in our jurisdiction: first, we do not do plea bargaining; secondly, we do not have political appointment of judges; and, thirdly, we have a jury system. These are incredibly important things. We do not talk about them enough in this Chamber, but they are immensely important to our basic freedom. I was delighted to hear that and, yes, he can be sure that we are not going down the road of plea bargaining.

On the point my right hon. Friend makes about ensuring people cannot come back, that is precisely the point. It is not just and it is not sensible to have people costing the taxpayer a huge amount of money in British prisons if, when they are out, they are never coming back anyway. That is central to our plan to ensure that, as we expand the ERS window, we put in place every necessary measure—in compliance or in consultation with our international counterparts—to ensure that once people are out, they are never coming back.

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Julian Lewis Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 15th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

I will make a bit of progress and then I will of course come to the right hon. Gentleman.

As I indicated, the Bill takes steps to strengthen the system further. First, it will make public protection the pre-eminent factor in deciding which prisoners are safe for release, by introducing a codified release test in law. Secondly, it will impose a new safeguard— a new check and balance—in respect of the top tier of the most serious offenders, drawn from murderers, rapists, child killers and terrorists. In those cases where there is a Parole Board recommendation to release a prisoner, the Bill will allow the Secretary of State to intervene on behalf of the public to stay that release and enable Ministers to take a second look. That oversight will act as a further safeguard in the most serious cases that particularly affect public confidence. Plainly, of course, to preserve fairness in the system that ministerial intervention must be amenable to independent review, and the Bill properly safeguards that right.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend on his well-deserved promotion. I have recently been contacted by a constituent who discovered the murdered bodies of her sister and baby niece. She is a volunteer with a national charity called Support after Murder and Manslaughter. It has given me a list of concerns, which I would like to give to the Minister separately. However, the charity states that the Secretary of State will be able to make this parole decision, which will then be subject to appeal, but the victims will not have a voice at either stage—they will not be able to do impact presentations. Will the Minister look at this point again, because the victims feel that they are being excluded?

[Alex Chalk]

I thank my right hon. Friend for raising that important matter on behalf of his constituents. The interests and rights of victims are absolutely at the heart of this proposal, because—this shone out from a conversation I had only today— some victims who are concerned about whether a prisoner gets released are of course concerned about what has happened to their family, but they are also worried about what might happen to others. That is why having public confidence in the safety consideration is so important. I will be happy to discuss my right hon. Friend’s points with him, but I emphasise that the rights of victims and the protection of the public are at the heart of this important measure.

--- Later in debate ---

[Edward Argar]

I will make a little progress, as I want to speak for roughly the same amount of time as the shadow Minister, to be fair to her.

The hon. Members for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum), for Rotherham, for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) and for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), and my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Kate Kniveton), all spoke movingly, powerfully and personally about their interactions with the criminal justice system.

My hon. Friend the Member for Burton spoke movingly about her experience of domestic abuse, and the whole House will admire the courage shown by all Members who spoke in such very personal terms. The hon. Member for Canterbury, in particular, demonstrated a huge amount of courage in giving a powerful and emotional speech, and she spoke for many who perhaps do not have the ability to speak for themselves in conveying what she did. She touched on third-party material, as did a number of hon. and right hon. Members, and that is one reason why I welcome the additional step we have announced today.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken), who was my ward colleague on Westminster City Council for a while, invited me to meet Charlie Webster. I know Charlie from my previous incarnation in the Department, when we visited a number of services together. I am always happy to meet Charlie, and my office may already be trying to arrange a meeting. My hon. Friend also touched on her support for the IPA, which I very much welcome.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher) and the hon. Member for Rotherham touched on the recent debate, and my hon. Friend’s ten-minute rule Bill, on prisoners changing their name. I hope to be able to meet my hon. Friend very soon to discuss the matter, and if the hon. Lady wishes to attend that meeting, I am always happy to see her, as I was when last we worked together.

Like the hon. Member for Rotherham, I pay tribute to Claire Waxman, with whom I have worked very closely in both my previous and my current role in the Department. The hon. Lady also mentioned Sammy Woodhouse, and I believe I engaged with her on the issues raised by Sammy last time I was in the Department and, like her, I am pleased to see the progress we have made in this space.

The right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) was typically thoughtful, but I gently say to her that we have engaged throughout with the Welsh Government on the victim provisions. Indeed, back in early December, I believe my right hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton received a letter from Mark Drakeford thanking him for the close engagement with the Welsh Government on this Bill, and we will continue to engage on the newer provisions, such as the IPA. As with the Health and Care Act 2022, I am happy to engage with Welsh Government Ministers.

Finally, the hon. Member for Walthamstow asked for clarification on the definition of a victim. I hope I have given her some reassurance that, whether or not a crime is reported, an individual can still come into the orbit of the victims code. One thing she uniquely mentioned, which I will look at with her if she wishes, is the overseas angle. I am always happy to engage with her, and this time it is not about the private finance initiative in hospitals.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

Among the long list of points the Minister addressed, I did not hear the one about murderers who refuse to appear in person in court to face their accusers and their sentencing. Does he think that that would be within the scope of this Bill?

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that. My understanding is that that would probably not be within the scope of this legislation, but he will have seen that the previous and current Lord Chancellors have been clear in their determination to explore legislative options to address exactly that issue.

I very much look forward to engaging across the Committee Room with the shadow Minister and indeed with all those on the Committee, because genuinely important views have been expressed today, from particularly personal perspectives and with particular angles on elements of this legislation. That has been underpinned by a determination on both sides of this Chamber to make this work and a commitment to making the Bill an effective piece of legislation. I approach it in that spirit, as I hope the Opposition will.

As I bring the debate to a close, I say again that victims are not bystanders. Their views and experience matter greatly. They deserve to be treated with respect, compassion and dignity at every turn in the criminal justice system. It is only with their engagement and immense bravery in coming forward that we can bring criminals to justice and make our streets safer. That is why we have acted. That is why the Bill will put victims at the heart of the criminal justice system, where they belong, so that every victim’s voice is heard, every victim gets the support they need and every victim is empowered to seek the justice they deserve. This is about giving victims, and the British public, confidence that the parole system will keep them safe. We will ensure that they are listened to. We will ensure that justice is done. We will work to ensure that more criminals are caught and brought to justice, which is why we are delivering today on our manifesto promises to bring this legislation before the House. I commend the Bill to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

VICTIMS AND PRISONERS BILL: PROGRAMME

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),

That the following provisions shall apply to the Victims and Prisoners Bill:

Committal

1, The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.

Proceedings in Public Bill Committee

2. Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Thursday 13 July 2023.

3. The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.

Consideration and Third Reading

4. Proceedings on Consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.

5. Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.

6. Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading.

Other proceedings

7. Any other proceedings on the Bill may be programmed.—(Jacob Young.)

Question agreed to.

Victims and Prisoners Bill: Money

King’s recommendation signified.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)),

That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Victims and Prisoners Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of—

(a) any expenditure incurred under or by virtue of the Act by the Secretary of State, and

(b) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable under any other Act out of money so provided.—(Jacob Young.)

Question agreed to.

Victims and Prisoners Bill: Carry Over

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 80A(1)(a)),

That if, at the conclusion of this Session of Parliament, proceedings on the Victims and Prisoners Bill have not been completed, they shall be resumed in the next Session.—(Jacob Young.)

Question agreed to.