Victims and Prisoners Bill

Lord Roborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 26th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I am really grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, for raising this issue and laying this amendment. I declare my interest as the vice-chair of the All-Party Fire Safety and Rescue Group so his comments about the Lakanal House and Grenfell Tower fires really chime with me. From these Benches, my noble friends Lady Pinnock and Lord Stunell have both raised these issues repeatedly.

It is really important to remember that one of the big lessons that I hope we will now begin to learn from Grenfell Tower and the many other fires before it rests in Dame Judith Hackitt’s report on the construction industry and Grenfell Tower. She talked about the importance of the “golden thread” through every part of the construction. The same is true when things go wrong and it seems to me that a national oversight mechanism is exactly the golden thread that we need to ensure that we do not have to time and again relearn the lessons of disasters after they have happened. From these Benches, we support the amendment.

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, for this amendment and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for speaking in support. The amendment would require the Secretary of State to conduct a review into whether to establish an independent national oversight mechanism to collate, analyse and address recommendations from investigations, inquests, public inquiries and official reviews following deaths after a major incident.

In 2014, the House of Lords Select Committee published a post legislative scrutiny report on the Inquiries Act 2005. In their response, the Government agreed with the principle that bodies should set out their plans for implementing recommendations directed at them. When an inquiry’s recommendations are directed at the Government, it is the responsibility of the lead department to determine how best to progress and implement the recommendations. An official review would follow the same principles.

Parliament has a crucial role in scrutinising the activities of government departments. Select Committees, in particular, hold individual departments to account, including in their response to recommendations made by statutory and non-statutory inquiries and reviews. The Government remain of the view that Parliament already has the ability to hold government departments to account on their response to and implementation of recommendations and that Parliament is best placed to carry out this function.

Noble Lords will also be aware of the Statutory Inquiries Committee that was set up by the Lords Select Committee very recently. It has been appointed to consider the efficacy of the law and practice relating to statutory inquiries under the Inquiries Act 2005. It may be well placed to consider the merits of an independent national oversight mechanism for statutory inquiries.

Turning to inquests, a coroner has a statutory duty to make a report to prevent future deaths if action should be taken to prevent or reduce the risk of future deaths. Recipients of PFD reports must respond to the coroner within 56 days of receipt, setting out what actions will be taken, or explaining any not taken. The Government in their response to the Justice Committee’s 2021 report committed to consider the merits of a recommendation to establish a national mechanism to ensure that actions highlighted in PFD reports which could contribute to public safety and prevent future deaths are implemented. The Justice Committee is currently undertaking a follow-up inquiry into the coroners service and will revisit this issue; the Government are due to give evidence shortly.

In response to some of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, and backed up by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, recipients of PFD reports, as I say, must respond to the coroner within 56 days. However, it is not the coroner’s role to review whether—and if so what—actions should be taken in response to a report. This would be inconsistent with their status as independent judicial officers.

The Government in their response to the Justice Committee’s 2021 report committed to consider the recommendation to establish a mechanism to ensure that actions in PFD reports which could contribute to public safety and prevent future deaths are implemented. The Justice Committee’s follow-up inquiry into the coroners service will revisit issues around PFD reports on preventing death and improving public safety.

While I understand the intent to ensure that the merits of setting a national oversight mechanism are considered, it is likely this would duplicate ongoing parliamentary inquiries into these matters. I therefore ask the noble Lord to withdraw this amendment.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this very brief debate. I want to pick up a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, about the golden thread of establishing a mechanism to ensure that any findings which come out of either public inquiries or coroners’ reports are tracked through and implemented.

I quoted a civil servant as saying that the established mechanisms have not worked, and the example I gave was of the cladding on Grenfell Tower. The Minister spoke about considering whether to establish a mechanism for reviewing PFD reports and coroners’ reports. When will that review be complete and does the noble Lord believe that that review will adequately establish some sort of overall mechanism for dealing with coroners’ recommendations?

To circle back a bit to the public inquiries point, the Minister said that Parliament is best placed to carry out the functions of public inquiries and look at recommendations. I have to say that I really cannot think of Parliament looking at cladding issues. There needs to be a more systematic way of dealing with these matters to ensure that there is that golden thread that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, talked about, so we have some comfort that these processes are being properly reviewed and implemented. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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[Baroness Newlove (Con)]

My Lords, I support these amendments, and I am so glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, is back where she belongs, speaking on a topic that she is so passionate about.

Laura Richards has been mentioned by many speakers, and social media has a good way of reacting: I have her on Instagram as we are speaking, to give me some pointers, even though she is in California. Laura Richards is the expert on all this, and her patience to fight for victims over the years is commendable. She said she knows there is going to be change and she keeps doing it for victims—I admire this lady.

In the year ending March 2022, only 1.4% of reports to police about stalking ended with the stalker being convicted. That says a lot about how seriously stalking is taken by the very agencies that are supposed to protect victims. Most stalkers never see the inside of a prison cell; instead, they receive fines or community or suspended sentences, as has previously been spoken about. Really, for me, it is about listening to the human side of all these cases, and that is what we must never forget. It is not just about lessons learned or guidance. These are not items we pick up from supermarket shelves; these are human lives—people who have been brutally murdered, after several years of absolute hell, by someone who has done it on more than one occasion.

I really want to understand why the Government will not look at this register seriously. I spoke in the Domestic Abuse Bill when that came through. This has to be the end of it all. Instead of guidance, we must have proper risk management of stalkers and domestic abusers because, at the moment, it is virtually non-existent for convicted, or unconvicted, men who pose such a huge risk to women and children—now more than ever, we need to make sure that they feel safe and listened to. These are psychopathic people who do horrendous crimes to humans, and families have to pick up the pieces.

I am concerned about Zoe Dronfield, and I have picked up on certain things that my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, has mentioned. I will take that offline, because I sympathise with not having any control. As somebody who is still going through the criminal justice and parole system, I am very interested in the next stage of the Bill, which is about parole, and what it does and does not do. The victim has no control, or right to know what the offender is doing. We cannot find out what is going on, but the offender knows exactly where the victim is, because of exclusion zones and everything else. I do not speak for anyone else but as a victim who is watching out, for my three daughters, for offenders who are going to be released. When we are talking about stalking laws, this is important, because having no control more or less means that the victim has to shape their life around safety, whereas the system should protect victims more than ever.

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for her amendment relating to Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements, and all noble Lords who have contributed to this heartfelt debate. These are horrific offences, taken with the utmost gravity by the Government.

Amendment 148A seeks to include relevant domestic abuse and stalking perpetrators on licence within the remit of management under Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements—MAPPA. That would create a legal requirement on the police and the Prison and Probation Service to assess and manage the risks posed by individuals whose offending has taken place in the context of domestic abuse or stalking, and who either have more than one conviction of this nature or are assessed as posing a high risk of serious harm.

Amendment 148B seeks to make amendments to the Sexual Offences Act 2003, imposing on domestic abuse and stalking offenders the same requirements that apply to registered sex offenders. This would require the offender to report personal information to the police, including where they are living, their bank account details and passport details.

The Government agree that robust management of perpetrators of domestic abuse and stalking is crucial to help keep the public safe. We completely agree with the spirit of these amendments; however, we believe the objectives can already be met through current provision and policy.

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[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

Why does the Minister think we tabled these amendments?

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

I think I understand the point of the amendments, which is the belief that stalking and domestic abuse deserve to be treated the same way as terror and murder offences. I hope the explanation I have given shows that these offences, on a discretionary basis, can be treated with the same seriousness under MAPPA 2 and MAPPA 3. The Government have described an ongoing process of trying to improve the implementation of it.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for the detail he has gone into. I am not making fun of him; I am genuinely wondering if he thinks it is all going in the right direction and fast enough. If so, we would not have needed to put the amendments down. We have tabled them because things are not moving fast enough.

Most of the examples my noble friend Lady Royall gave were not current, though some of them were. It is, therefore, perfectly all right to discuss them because they are a long time past and they show the failures of our systems to deal with and recognise stalking and the problems it poses. The reason we have tabled the amendments is because the systems we have at the moment are clearly not working and are very patchy. As my noble friend Lady Royall said, guidance does not always serve, and it does not serve in these circumstances.

I thank everyone who has spoken in the debate. It was very well informed. I think the Minister may have underestimated our determination on the matter. We may return to it at a later stage in the Bill. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

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[Baroness Newlove (Con)]

My Lords, this amendment is important. As someone who knows first-hand what it is like to gather information and then find out that the Home Office wants to gather information about red flags, I have to say it is amazing that all that information is shared for the Home Secretary to look at on a murder case.

I agree with the passionate assertion by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, that data sharing is important. In a domestic homicide review, the families already know the information and have complained about it, but the Government have to wait for this review to come out with “lessons learned”. That is further insulting to the victims’ families and indeed to the victims, and it beggars belief that we have not moved on.

I want to tell my noble friend about data sharing. I attended a MARAC a few years ago as Victims’ Commissioner—not every MARAC is fantastic, I have to say—and what concerned me was that when a police officer gave evidence that the prisoner had been released, his offender manager, who was at that same table, was concerned because the last thing she knew was that he was still meant to be in prison. She had to leave the room to double-check, because he should not have been released. Unfortunately, I did not manage to find out the result, but the police and offender management had to try to establish whether the prisoner had even been released. That shows how important it is for data to be shared for the protection of victims. People need to understand what can be shared so they can find out whether a prisoner is even in their cell.

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, for his amendment regarding the Multi Agency Public Protection System, MAPPS. I understand that the debate has not really been very much to do with MAPPS, but I will first address the amendment, which does address it. Amendment 148C would place a duty on the Secretary of State to publish a report on progress of the development of MAPPS for prisoners subject to notification requirements and licence conditions under the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024, within 12 months of Royal Assent.

It may be helpful if I provide some explanation of MAPPS. This will answer some of those questions, but I have better answers at the end. MAPPS is a Home Office IT project, currently jointly funded with the Ministry of Justice, to enable the improved management of dangerous offenders, including violent and sex offenders, under Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements, or MAPPA. It is intended to replace the current case management system, the ViSOR database, which has been the main IT tool used by the police, probation and prison services since 2005.

The current database, ViSOR, while stable, is now almost 20 years old. The Home Office and the Ministry of Justice began work on MAPPS in 2020 to enable criminal justice agencies to share information in real time and improve their risk assessments and the management of all MAPPA nominals. That can include domestic abuse perpetrators and stalkers, as referenced in Amendments 148A and 148B.

I am sure we all agree that it is essential that police and other MAPPA agencies have the tools they need to manage the risk posed by serious offenders, and MAPPS will do just that. The new functionality will include greater capacity; a more intuitive system with push notifications; and increased mobility. MAPPS, as a new and modern system, will be more responsive to agency needs, and adaptable to any new notification requirements.

As noble Lords would expect for a project so important to public safety, we are being diligent in our approach to MAPPS development. MAPPS is a custom product, being built to meet the bespoke needs of police, prison and probation officers as well as other MAPPA authorities. While third-party contractors are used, given other discussions on the Bill, I am sure that noble Lords will want to note that Fujitsu is not involved in MAPPS development and never has been.

We welcome the interest in the MAPPS programme and, while the work is ongoing, the Government will of course further update Parliament on its development and implementation. Given that MAPPS is already being designed specifically to meet the needs of those agencies involved in the management of all MAPPA offenders, in conjunction with those very agencies, I do not consider that the proposed report would say anything more than has already been mentioned, and it is therefore unnecessary.

I turn to the debate that we have had in Committee. MAPPA deals only with convicted offenders under four categories, but much of the debate has been about information sharing in a way that is not consistent with that use of it. In answer to numerous noble Lords—the noble Lords, Lord Coaker, Lord Ponsonby and Lord Russell of Liverpool, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Newlove and Lady Brinton—on data sharing, the PCSC Act put beyond doubt the authority of agencies to share relevant information for the purposes of assessing and managing an offender’s risk, and to enable agencies and individuals who do not have a duty to co-operate to share information where they can contribute to the assessment and management of an offender’s risk. These measures clarified existing arrangements and will ensure that agencies understand how any sharing of information for the purposes of MAPPA management interacts with the obligations contained in the data protection legislation.

In answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, we are bringing coercive individuals under the management of MAPPA but it is potentially under the lower categories 2 and 3, as I mentioned in the previous debate. There have been numerous questions. I am sure I have not answered them all and I will write to noble Lords.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

The amendment in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Ponsonby and Lord Russell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, gives the Minister of the Crown the opportunity to jolt the system to tell people dealing with prisoners under licence or with potential domestic homicide incidents—within these multi-agency arrangements, whatever they are called or are going to be called—“You can share information in a way that you don’t believe you currently can”. If the Minister does that, it will save lives.

As I said, I am sick of reading domestic homicide reviews where people are killed and then, time after time, it turns out that it might have been avoided if information had been shared, but the people involved did not think they could do so. Why does the Minister not say to them in some way—in writing or from the Dispatch Box, using his powers as a Minister—that they can? That would make an immediate difference.

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[Lord Roborough (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his comments, and for his comments earlier. Everyone in this Committee has the same interests at heart. We are all trying to achieve the same thing. I think I have read out a form of words that explains how data sharing is possible at the moment, but I take the point that there is the possibility of acting considerably more vigorously on this. I will take that back to the department. His words have not gone unnoticed.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, that is a very helpful comment from the Minister—I apologise for not having intervened previously in the Bill—but, in other things that I have done over the last few years, there have been three separate areas of activity where the belief of professionals is that they cannot share the data despite the clear legislation, and despite the fact that a threat to life trumps most data protection legislation. It needs a bit more than the Minister saying, “I hear what has been said and we take it very seriously”. There has to be action to make those legal rights and that legal possibility absolutely clear.

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

The noble Lord makes a good point. Hardly a piece of legislation goes through this House where there is not a data protection aspect. That creates confusion and it is up to the Government to bring clarity, particularly in this area. I thank him for that interjection.

I encourage the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been a useful debate because it has been focused on the effectiveness of MAPPA, soon to be MAPPS.

As the Minister said, MAPPS deals only with convicted offenders. However, in the previous group he spoke at length about domestic abuse protection orders and stalking protection orders. Those are not criminal convictions so the people involved would not get on to the system in the first place.

From my own experience as a magistrate, from the experience of the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, as someone who is currently involved with the criminal justice system, and from the experience of my noble friend Lord Coaker, who is on the Nottingham Community Safety Partnership, we are all looking at the same problem from different perspectives, but it is about one thing: data sharing and being able to monitor that data.

The Minister is addressing the Committee as a Minister of the Crown. He has authority and can follow this through. The same message has come from everyone who has spoken in this short debate: it is about data sharing. I look forward to the Minister using his authority to make sure that that message is rammed home to those people who sit on those committees. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.