Victims and Prisoners Bill

Lord Hogan-Howe Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 31st January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

I shall not be attempting to answer the email that has not yet come through until it does, but my general answer to the noble Baroness is that the whole thrust of the Bill is that each criminal justice body must take reasonable steps to promote awareness of the victims’ code among users of those services and other members of the public, et cetera. I cannot conceive how you could discharge that duty of raising awareness without informing people how to access or go to whatever services they need, so it is implicit in the operation that that sort of information will have to be provided. The way in which it is provided and the detail of it is not for the Bill but for the code and the guidance.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I am sorry to delay things, but there is one thing I am not clear about. Restorative justice at the moment is available for the suspect as an alternate to going to court, with the agreement of the victim. If the right is to be given to the victim to insist on restorative justice, is that an addition to a potential court appearance or an alternate? If the Crown Prosecution Service has decided that there will be a prosecution but the victim insists on their right to restorative justice, does that change that decision? I am not quite clear from the amendments, nor the Minister’s response, how that dilemma is resolved. It may be that I have just misunderstood, in which case I apologise, but I do not quite understand how that gets resolved.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, I may be as underinformed as anyone but my understanding is that the classic case of restorative justice is that once there has been a prosecution and a conviction, there is a process for some kind of reconciliatory interaction between the victim and the offender—for example, of the kind that my noble friend Lord Hodgson so eloquently described—in a way which enables both parties to process and come to terms with what has happened. It is not typically an alternative to having a prosecution in the first place, as I understand it, although that might arise.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Newlove (Con)]

My Lords, I support of all four of the amendments and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, for a thorough explanation. We are talking about victims in the criminal justice system understanding their rights and entitlements in so many languages. We are talking about understanding the legality of words in the English language, and it is no wonder we find these barriers as we go through the system.

The first right under the victims’ code is:

“To be able to understand and to be understood”.


That seems fairly basic, but for many it is not their experience. I have met many victims of other nationalities who have said the same. I am grateful to the VAWG sector communication barriers working group for its guidance, and in particular to the late Ruth Bashall, who was the CEO of Stay Safe East and a tireless advocate for deaf and disabled survivors. They have consistently raised how disabled victims and other victims of crime—for example, those with English as a second language—are severely disadvantaged in accessing justice by the lack of accessible information, communication support and physical access to buildings or facilities. In this context, disabled victims and other victims have fewer rights than suspects, who have some basic rights under PACE—for example, the right to an interpreter.

Though some adjustments, such as the right to an intermediary, are contained in the victims’ code, they are rarely used. I am disappointed that, six years on from my report looking at the availability of intermediaries, A Voice for the Voiceless, I am still hearing that there are far too few intermediaries to meet the demand, and that this is causing significant delays, with the victim sometimes simply withdrawing.

I often hear that information provided to victims is inaccessible. Both my predecessor, Dame Vera Baird, and I have directly asked the criminal justice agencies to provide victim information in clear, accessible language, as well as in Easyread, BSL and other language versions. All too often, communication with victims is lacking, and there is still a great deal of work to be done by agencies to ensure that victims understand and are understood. It is vital that the criminal justice system is accessible to all victims of crime and that they receive the communication support they need. As a first step, the code itself must be accessible. Although, commendably, the Government took steps to make most recent iteration of the code easier to understand, as well as publishing Easyread, translated and children’s versions, it is still not accessible for a large number of victims. The Government must ensure that the code is accessible to all victims of crime.

I want to end on a personal story from a victim who was raped and trafficked from Albania. She was disabled. In Albania, if you are born disabled, your body parts are very valuable, so a baby tends to be hidden if he or she is disabled. She reported the rape when she was in this country and rehoused. She went to a police station. The police looked for an interpreter. They found one who had the same dialect but who was actually from the trafficking gang. She was mortified. She simply could not believe that she had gone to the police station and that that interpreter was taking over her complaint. She withdrew it.

It is not simply about producing someone who can speak a language; it is about understanding a dialect. We need professional people who can help victims through our criminal justice system.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, particularly on the collection of evidence in criminal cases. She is arguing for precision, accuracy and consistency. At the moment, the system suffers in respect of all those three criteria.

The establishing of truth relies on the establishing of accurate evidence. It usually looks for accuracy, precision and consistency, but if we have any doubt about interpretation of another language, all those three things suffer. There is a concern that where the standard of interpreters is not established to a high and consistent level, there is a risk that the obtaining of evidence is damaged. This matters particularly for the police in the initial obtaining of evidence—which is usually an oral account. Eventually, the oral accounts have to be reduced to writing and the written evidence then fed back to the witness or victim to establish whether it relates to what they have told the police officer. If there is a difference in how those are interpreted, the person may not have a proper, accurate account of how they described their experience.

A secondary issue is that if there is not a consistent standard, different interpreters may help the police and the victim during different parts of the process. They may help the victim with the initial account; then there may be a written statement. After an interview with the suspect, the evidence may be checked. It is important that the interpreter is the same person or, if not, that there is a common standard of interpretation. Otherwise, there is a risk that the truth is not established.

Precision matters in obtaining the victim’s or witness’s account. It also matters in interviews to establish the suspect’s account. It matters generally in evidence collection because the person who holds the evidence may not be the person who is going to give it. You need to establish whether the CCTV and all the other digital evidence that is available now is what you want, and to make sure that it is accurate.

Finally, precision matters for juries. They will not only want to hear what is said in court; they will want to compare it with the first account as well. If there is inconsistency, they will want to understand it. If we are not careful, they may judge the victim or the witnesses harshly. In turn, that may impact on the suspect. It is vital that consistency and precision are there. As the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, said, it matters also for the care of victims and witnesses. If we do not understand how people are living, the challenges they face and the nature of their lives, it is very hard to do what this Bill is trying to establish, which is consistency in care for victims in a way which supports them beyond the event and beyond any criminal prosecution.

The noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, brought out well that this is not only about the interpretation of language—that is, what happened, who said what or who did what—it is also about the legal process. An interpreter may be well qualified to interpret language but may not always understand the legal process. Of course, the victim relies on them to understand both. They need good advice to understand how the process will affect them and its impact; for example, in a court case. The evidence may be challenged in a court case to establish its accuracy, but the victim may take this as an attack. In particular, somebody who has a second language may have an experience of another criminal justice system which may not be like ours. It may be more adversarial—sorry, it could not be any more adversarial than ours, could it? It may search for the truth in a different way. They certainly need to understand how our system works if they happen not to have experienced it before.

For all those reasons to do with evidence collection, precision and accuracy, I support the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins. She has been pushing this point for a while. It has not been established; it is time it should be, and this is a great opportunity to do it.

[Lord Meston (CB)]

My Lords, I also support Amendment 18, which would require the code to provide for interpreting and translation services and, more importantly, for the standards to be expected of the professionals supplying those services.

Good and reliable interpreting and translation is an increasingly necessary part of the justice system in all areas. It is also an expensive part of the system, for which value for money should be important. Most interpreters are good and efficient, but others, regrettably, are less so. A long time ago when in practice, I recall a particularly impatient interpreter helping me and my client who pulled me aside and urged me to get my client to plead guilty, which I politely declined to do. That completely undermined the confidence that either of us could have in that particular interpreter.

At present, as I understand it, court interpreting services are obtained through agencies used by the Courts & Tribunals Service. If this amendment or something like it is enacted, I would assume that the same agencies would be used. In any event, I would hope that care is taken to stipulate, ensure and review the efficiency of the agencies used and the quality of the work they do.

Finally, I would also hope and expect that this amendment, if approved, would be understood to be wide enough to help those requiring sign language and lip-reading assistance. If not, will those requirements be expressly covered by the code?