Victims and Courts Bill

Lord Hacking Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 16th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I will say a few words in the gap; I have notified the clerk. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, because I spoke in the gap very recently just before he was about to speak. I ask for his tolerance.

I did not put my name down for this debate, because I thought other speakers would cover all the essential features. The Minister did a marvellous job to cover all the major issues in the Bill in her opening speech, so I was right about that. Led by the Minister, this House has done very well to cover all the major points of the Bill. However, while I sat and listened to this debate, my attention was drawn to Clause 3, in which the Crown Court is under a duty to make a prohibited steps order where a serious sexual offence has been committed. Effectively, that means that contact is prohibited between the offender and the damaged child or their family. When one contemplates it—for example, when a father commits a vile sexual offence on a son or daughter—one can see exactly why the introduction of this offence in Clause 3 is to be greatly welcomed.

However, my concern is the stipulation that the offender must have had a life sentence or a term of imprisonment or detention of four years or more. Surely this clause should be drafted differently; it should be when a sexual offence has taken place and the offender has been convicted for that. There is a loosening up in new subsection (5), which states that the prohibited steps order can still be made when

“the offender is acquitted of the offence on appeal, or … the sentence is reduced, on appeal, so that it is no longer a life sentence or a term of imprisonment … of 4 years or more”.

There is a loosening up. It seems that the straightforward principle is that, when an offender has been convicted of a serious sexual crime, it should be sufficient to trigger the right of the Crown Court to introduce prohibited steps.

I end by saying that this is a very difficult area. I am heavily involved in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, in which there is a provision preventing a parent, under certain circumstances, having contact with the child. In that case, the party who approached me explained that the father is the offender but he has not yet been convicted because the DPP’s decision has not yet been made to make that conviction. There is always a difficulty of proof when a young child has been molested. I wonder whether this provision should not be further extended when there has not been a conviction.