Victims and Prisoners Bill

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 18th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. Unfortunately, the House will hear two Sheffield accents within a short time, so I apologise that we always end our sentences on a down note. I will do my best.

I support this Bill. It is time that victims receive statutory support for their rights in a way that suspects have for quite a long time. To get a balancing Bill is a good thing. Despite that, I still have some questions, mainly because I wonder whether all that the Bill intends to achieve will be achieved by some of the remedies that are suggested. I am not sure that they are all entirely effective, and they may, at times, have a counterproductive effect.

First, it seems to me that providing some rights for the victim within the criminal justice system is a good idea, because it is often run for the benefit of the suspect. This is done for good reason: obviously anyone who is charged with an offence might reasonably expect that their defence is provided as a priority. However, at times it seems to result in the victim and the witnesses having to wait two to three years for a case to come to trial so that the defence can prepare their case. That is not a fair balance. There seems to be some balancing weight within the criminal justice system that says that the victim and the witnesses can expect to get to court reasonably quickly, and two to three years—which is not entirely down to the pandemic but is down to a backlog—is surely a condemnation of what the system should be doing.

The second benefit described in the Bill is that there will be cross-inspectorate inspections. This is a good thing. They already happen, to some extent, but this time they will be done from the perspective of the victim, not that of all the people who populate the system. My concern is that inspections take a long time. Reports are published a long time after the event and the victim is still waiting for their issue to be resolved—which I am afraid that the inspectorate reports do not do. The inspectorate publishes recommendations which, if you are lucky, might make a difference in two to three years. They are essential in a way, but I am afraid they do not always achieve what this Bill intends to achieve.

The criminal justice departments in our police services are well populated. There are probably around 10,000 people whose role is to make sure that, from charge through to court, the system goes smoothly. However, what the system actually does is ensure an exchange of documents between the prosecution and the defence. The victims and the witnesses are kept informed, but often not well enough, and often their needs are not considered. It is not about resources but about what priority is given. Again, where is the remedy? As the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, said, how do you get something to change within the police service, the CPS and the courts when you have a complaint? I am not sure that the remedies are in place.

In its conclusion, the Bill talks about the costs that might be included in implementing this as an Act. I think it is a gross undercount of what might be needed. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, mentioned earlier that we will need to invest in this area. However, the numbers involved are very small—£2.5 million for the tribunal process beyond probation, and less than £1 million for each element of the policing, CPS and court settlements. That is quite a big underestimate. If you put this Bill into each of those services, it will be deprioritised. Asking people to do more with the same resources is always a difficult task.

I had hoped that the Bill would say more about what some people have referred to as simplifying sentencing. I still think it is a great dishonesty in sentencing that, when the court announces that someone will spend five years in prison, what they mean is that they will spend three years in prison unless they misbehave or the Parole Board finds that they will misbehave when they leave. Why can we not just say that they will spend three years in prison unless they misbehave? That way, we are not being dishonest with the victim. They do not understand the criminal justice system, and why should they? Some of them will be professionals who understand it well, but it is far better to be open and transparent that this is the process, and then people will not be disappointed. We set their expectations. I am surprised that this Bill has not done something about that. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, said, even the judges struggle to understand the complexity of the sentences that are passed down and the rules that surround them. Surely the public deserve a better or simpler system.

I support the higher test for top-tier offenders being considered by the Minister of State and then a referral to the Upper Tribunal. There have been cases where we have been surprised by the release of people who appeared to be dangerous. It is probably best that at least those cases are reviewed. I take this to be the case; it is applying the same test but by a different set of people. That seems a wise thing.

There is one part of the Bill I wonder about, in its breadth. The description of a victim includes those who are harmed or who have

“seen, heard, or otherwise directly experienced the crime”

in live time. Harm is defined quite extensively in the Bill—so I will not read it out—and does not have to be verified by a third party. I wonder about cases such as bombings and those involving roving terrorist gunmen. Should the Bill leave such a wide scope? The Government may want to consider some kind of conditionality being placed upon that, when you have mass events where there are large numbers of victims. My point is not that victims should not be helped but that, to ensure that you can help them, it is critical that you have defined them in a proper way. I think this is drawn rather widely.

I fully support the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, about interpreters. The police have made some progress in this area but, again, it is an area of cost. Particularly in cities such as London, where over 40% of the population often speak a second language and sometimes a first language that is not English, either victims or suspects—usually about 38% are foreign national offenders—will, on arrest, require some kind of translation. This is either by phone or in person, but it is expensive. Those costs have grown over time—for good reason, because the quality of interpreting has improved, but it imposes more costs on the system and I am not sure that has been considered, either in the Act or in general.

I said that I thought the Bill, well intended as it is—and I think it will make some good progress—might have to answer some acid tests from the public at the end. One or two people have mentioned things they think the system does not currently help with. These are my four or five things that I do not think the system does. Will the Bill make a difference?

Will the victim have a right for the police to attend the scene of a crime when the police say, “We’re not coming”? A shoplifter, for example, or a car theft, or all the other things we keep hearing about where the police do not seem to want to go to the scene of the crime. I find that confusing, and the victim certainly does. Whether you are a vulnerable victim or not, you ought to be able to expect the police to at least come, talk to you about it, have a look at the scene and see whether there is a chance of investigating it. On the telephone is convenient for the police, but I would argue it is not convenient for the victim.

The second area is about economic crime, for which most people seem to have no chance of having any investigation at all. Is this going to make a change in that area? I disagree with the present CPS rule which means there must be a 51% chance of success before it will take a case to court. The victim gets confused by that as well. Why can it not just be a prima facie case? That is one of the biggest disappointments they have. Another area is the time it takes to get to court.

Finally, we still have a very low success rate in terms of sexual offenders. When 70% of victims are vulnerable either through age, infirmity, alcohol, drugs or some other reason, they make not ideal witnesses for a system that demands perfection—they are not always consistent. How do we allow the law to support those victims, when the system itself does not seem very fair to them or their families?