Victims and Prisoners Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 5th February 2024 Lords Chamber

I hope this gives your Lordships at least some reassurance that we are committed to ensuring that there is a framework in place to achieve clear awareness, accountability, accessibility and affordability, and appropriate training. I therefore urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, first, I pay tribute to the Minister, who for 25 minutes has responded to this group when he quite clearly would rather be in another place; I do not mean down the Corridor. We all wish him a speedy recovery, but we would also be well advised to keep a fairly safe distance from him for the immediate future.

The Minister said at the beginning that the key to making the victims part of the Bill work is culture change. To mix metaphors, there was culture change with teeth—which sounds like a strange creature for well-paid Harley Street specialists to dream up new procedures for.

Before I continue with that, it would be nice if we could try to stop in its tracks the growing confusion which has come since the arrival in your Lordships’ House of a brace of Russells. I point out that I am a lowly Baron—the bottom of the heap, Lord Russell of Liverpool—and not the much more elevated noble Earl, Lord Russell, who is in his place. To back up my point, I will quote the letter that the noble Earl’s grandfather and my grandfather wrote jointly to the Times in 1959, which I think makes the point rather clear:

“Sir—In order to discourage confusions which have been constantly occurring, we beg herewith to state that neither of us is the other”.


I hope that puts that particular care to rest.

When talking about what the Government are proposing in the victims part of the Bill, the Minister asked the rhetorical question of whether it is a credible structure. Do we need, as the Government are saying, a strengthening and reinforcing of the current structure or—and this is not rhetorical—is the structure itself part of the problem? The structure has been in place in a slightly weakened form for many years and it is clearly not working. The Government have recognised that, and put a commitment in the 2019 manifesto to try to put that right and produce a victims Bill.

In reflecting on how best to respond to the manifest failings in the current structure—although there are some good points—I suggest to the Government that the best solution is not to try to reinforce the current structure by putting sticking plasters and various forms of glue into various parts of it.

I also point out that, while best practice certainly exists—we know it is exists; there are examples all over the country—we also know a great deal about human nature. Human nature is perhaps best exemplified by something known to anybody now in your Lordships’ Chamber who was once a Minister—a political Minister, not of the Church—in any shape or form: hell hath no fury like different government departments trying to ignore one another, and, above all, like a department doing everything it can desperately to avoid taking on any good practice from another department, which might be seen to imply that its own practice was not as good. We have all known about that; “Yes Minister” was a very successful programme for many years, partly on that premise. That is human nature; it is the same with departments of state, police and crime commissioners and the 43 separate police forces in England and Wales—all the different bodies dealing with this.

I come back to what I mentioned last week: the paean for a past age identified by the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, when you could essentially rely on people and parts of the state doing what is expected of them—the “good chaps” theory of government and administration, if you like. There is so much evidence to indicate that, for all sorts of reasons that we will not go into today, that is not happening. We would be doing ourselves, and in particular the Government, a favour if we looked in the mirror and recognised that it is not working.

The Victims’ Commissioner has to be the most obvious channel for dealing with an awful lot of these issues. In particular, the current interim commissioner, who was largely responsible for the role being created in the first place, has direct experience of being a victim at great cost and has, for the last 15 years or more, dedicated her life to helping other victims and to talking to a variety of individuals and organisations to work out how better to understand what victims are going through and to do something to help them. She knows what she is taking about—she really does. When she talks to the Government and suggests, in her usual very polite way, that things are not quite as they may seem and that things may not turn out quite as the Government hope they will, it behoves the entire House to listen to her very carefully.

An unfortunate fact in recent history is that because the noble Baroness’s predecessor as Victims’ Commissioner was not invited to return for a second term of office, there was a significant period when there was no Victims’ Commissioner and no proper voice for victims. That took place at a critical time when the Bill was going through its birth pangs and was being put together. It would be good for the Government to acknowledge the insights and information that the noble Baroness could have given to the inception, crafting and architecture of the Bill—particularly its structure, which we will come back to. The Bill would have been infinitely improved if it had had the benefit of more input from her and the team around her. It is never too late, and I hope that we can use the time between now and Report to have some intensive meetings and discussions in a completely non-combative way. I and others said at the beginning of the Bill that our role is to drain any politics from the Bill to the extent that we can. It is not about politics; it is about people and victims. The Victims’ Commissioner is the obvious driver of culture change; she is better placed to do that than anybody else, and it behoves the Government to acknowledge that and to listen to her.

As for the minimum threshold, I hear what the Minister said about having a range of indicators rather than minimum thresholds. The sceptic in me would point out that if you are asking a range of institutions—which are themselves being asked to work out whether they are meeting those thresholds—to come up with their own preferred indicators, you may possibly not come up with some of the more challenging and awkward indicators. You may well come up with a preferred list of indicators that are rather more easy to accede to. Philosophically, there is at least a question mark over that approach, and we would like to discuss that further.

I say a big thank you to the Government for acknowledging that an annual statement of the state of affairs is very welcome. I think I can see the noble Baroness nodding. We are grateful for that and regard it as a good step forward.

To come back to the role of the Victims’ Commissioner, whoever is in this role should be front and centre in making the Bill as effective as possible, and then being accountable for holding the Government and the different agencies to account for delivering on it. It is not a satisfactory course to expect the Government to hold themselves to account. In theory, the Government have held themselves to account in this area for the last 20 years, and the report card is perhaps not as stellar as the Government would like it to be. I am grateful that the joint criminal boards are acknowledged as an important part of the process; that is a good move.

As far as training is concerned, I am grateful in particular that the Government are looking at the super-complaint that the Suzy Lamplugh Trust put forward on the basis of some dreadful stories. Stalking is incredibly complex. We need to sit down and try to make sure that people understand just how large scale, complex and insidious it is. To expect any public servant—or even victim—to understand what they are dealing with without effective, precise training will not give a good result, as I learned from talking to Richard Spinks, the father of Gracie Spinks, two weeks ago. He was not bitter, but he was desperately disappointed that Gracie had complained to the Derbyshire police more than 40 times about the way she was being threatened and the concerns she had about what might happen—and it did happen. It happened in plain sight, and the Derbyshire police in effect chose to be blindfolded and mute. To their credit, they have acknowledged after the event that they failed egregiously. What was needed was proper training in place, a proper understanding of dealing with this and, above all, proper leadership. If you want real culture change, you need really good leadership. I put it to noble Lords that having the leadership of a really effective Victims’ Commissioner is probably the most effective way to drive this forward.

We all welcome the Minister’s invitation to have further meetings to, as he put it so elegantly, reflect further—hopefully when his sinuses permit. On that basis, I withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 30 withdrawn.

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I beg to move.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, as it happens, I did read the article in the Financial Times, and pressed the little button to save it, because I thought what an interesting idea it expressed, particularly as this Bill was sailing on its way into Committee.

Victims in our system, depending on where they are in the system, are often invisible. I spoke earlier about the case of Gracie Spinks, and the number of times she complained to the police, yet none of it was joined up. Eleven years ago, there was a lady called Helen Pearson, who was repeatedly stabbed in a churchyard after she had been given a new and different reference number for each of the 125 previous reports she had made against her stalker. The failure to link these reports meant that the police had missed vital opportunities to understand the pattern that was building up and the degree of danger that she was potentially under. That is a graphic example: there were 125 different reference numbers for the same person, in each case complaining about the same person. That is not good practice, and it is not acceptable.

We do not have an answer today, but I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Bach, for raising the issue at this stage, to give us a chance to look at it carefully. I know that His Majesty’s Government, and many other institutions, do not have a brilliant track record in implementing new data and information systems, and many careers have suffered as a result. But that is not a good reason for not looking into this and seeing whether we can use modern technology to try to make victims’ experience better, and above all to help the bodies that are charged with trying to identify what those victims are suffering to do something about it. Having a tool such as that suggested by the noble Lord seems a bit of a no-brainer, and it would be an excellent topic for further discussion between now and Report.

[Baroness Newlove (Con)]

I too support the amendment. I am grateful that we have put people into the Bill, because that is what this legislation is about: it is about people. I do not think that victims want to be at the centre of the criminal justice system, but they do want a level playing field; that narrative has been overused, although I mean no disrespect to the noble Lord, whom I met as police and crime commissioner—I loved travelling round the country on trains for two and a half years, meeting everyone, when I was previously Victims’ Commissioner. I agree that the Bill is about people. We hear many times that the police servers do not talk to one another, and all these servers do not seem to interact with all the other agencies or all feed into the Ministry of Justice.

I am delighted that this issue is being raised. This morning we talked about it in the context of the National Health Service. A Times Health Commission report out today looks at a similar thing. Even GPs cannot talk to hospitals, and even consultants within the same hospital cannot talk and get the information out. Again, that is about patients. It is important that we are talking about it at this stage. I would welcome further discussions. Victims are given different messages, different police officers and different everything. It does not mount up. How many recordings and crime reference numbers do we need? It should be one. There is one portal for every police force that a victim can feed into. Therefore, it should be the other way around. A victim should have one record and be able to put the narrative together so that they feel safe in our communities. I welcome the amendment.

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[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to my Amendment 53, which would insert the concept:

“Collaboration may include the co-location of services in accordance with the Child House model”.


We have heard much talk about the child house model pilot project at the Lighthouse in Camden. It is a multiagency model for children and young people who have experienced any form of sexual abuse. I urge noble Lords to visit this place; it is a shining example. It is an extraordinarily light, welcoming and unthreatening place where children and young people can go to receive medical help and counselling, but also where they can tell their story. As we have said, children tend to tell their story only once, so if we want justice from these places, this is the place to do it. It is a pilot scheme that needs to be rolled out.

At the moment the Bill seems to be in either/or mode when it talks about local authorities. The amendment would clarify that a multiagency, multiborough or multi-council format could be used as best practice for child victims when, as must happen, this model is rolled out across the country. With that, I beg to move.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak to a variety of amendments. I support the amendment just moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, but I will leave it to the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, to talk about it when he winds up. I will speak to my Amendments 54 and 81. I support Amendments 56 and 59 in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester. I will then speak to my Amendments 58, 60, 62 and 64.

Amendments 54 and 81 return to the subject of stalking. There were 1.6 million victims of stalking in the year ending 2023, so it seems strange that there is relatively little mention of stalking and stalking victims in the Bill. That is something we hope to persuade His Majesty’s Government to consider. Part of that is the importance of independent stalking advocates, which we will come to in a later group. We particularly welcome the Government’s new measures to expand Clause 15 to include guidance about a number of specialist support roles, including, we hope, independent stalking advocates. But I stress that, although what they propose is extremely welcome, it is obviously a very good idea to think about this and develop the list in close co-operation with some of the organisations and bodies closest to the front line in dealing with victims and experiences.

Stalking should certainly be included within the scope of the duty to collaborate in Clause 12. The Minister said in considering the previous group that the Government are looking carefully at the super-complaint made by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust about stalking not being dealt with effectively, but again, we know that it is being dealt with extraordinarily well in some parts of the country. So we know that there are ways of tackling it, but unfortunately that is being done in only a handful of parts of the country. If you are unfortunate enough not to live in those parts, you will have a pretty ghastly experience, like Gracie Spinks and so many other people. That is probably enough on stalking; I think the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, can be relied on to talk about that in more detail, and, very importantly, from direct personal experience, which has its own power.

The two amendments put forward by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester try to ensure that funding for victims and witness support services is sufficient to meet the needs across the country, particularly the demand for specialist domestic abuse services. While the idea of a duty to collaborate is a wonderful one, to be truly effective we judge that it would be helpful if there was a requirement on the Secretary of State to support duty-holders to meet the needs identified by providing adequate and sustainable funding. The figures are not insignificant. Women’s Aid estimates that it would cost at least £238 million per year to meet the need for community-based services across the country. We feel that the Bill is an opportunity to put in some safeguards to provide a legal framework through which sustainable community-based services and funding could be provided.

Turning to Amendment 59, some “93% of frontline workers” surveyed for Refuge’s Local Lifelines report said that

“their service was being impacted by staff shortages”,

and

“64% said their service was impacted by short-term contracts”.

Therefore, the principle of multiyear funding to try to enable these services to be set up to a sustainable and effective level is extremely important. I am sure that the right reverend Prelate will expand on that in a minute.

I come to the last set of amendments—Amendments 58, 60, 62 and 64—which come from working closely with Nicole Jacobs, the domestic abuse commissioner, and her team. There is a patchwork of provision for victims, survivors and their children when trying to access services. Community-based specialist domestic abuse services are literally life-saving and life-changing for many of these victims. Despite this, there is no duty to fund these community-based services, and in the current economic environment, you can imagine that they are not necessarily at the top of every cash-strapped local authority’s “must do” list of services to which to try to apportion diminishing funds.

Without making too much of it, this is a crisis, and in the Bill we have an opportunity to ameliorate that. We must really try to focus our minds on what is required to deliver sustainable, entrenched, well-run, effective services across the country. This Bill is a chance to try to do it right, so I hope we will take that opportunity.

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 56 and 59 in my name; I also support the other amendments in this group. These amendments would all help to firm up the very good intentions set out in Clauses 12 and 13.

In an earlier group, I tabled an amendment to ensure that victim support services were properly signposted; it is no use a service existing if the people it is meant to serve are not able to access it. But now we come to, if anything, a more fundamental point: how do we ensure that the right services exist for victims, and in each and every part of the country?

The Bill as drafted gets much right: it requires policing bodies, integrated care boards and local authorities to collaborate in assessing the needs of victims, producing a published strategy and, indeed, revising that strategy as occasion requires—so far, so good. But, as things stand, and as the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, has indicated, that assessment and strategy could be little more than a combination of the unaffordable and the non-existent—a bit like an overambitious child’s Christmas wish list.

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[Earl Howe (Con)]

That is clearly a concern, and we must listen to the domestic abuse commissioner very carefully. I have tried to set out how we have responded within existing powers and structures to improve funding across the piece. If one is not careful, there will be too much micromanagement from the centre. I always resist that, and we know that it can lead to perverse results in all sorts of contexts. I would be very happy to talk further to the noble Baroness about the domestic abuse commissioner’s concerns in this context after we finish the debate, as I am sure my noble and learned friend Lord Bellamy would also be glad to do.

Moreover, as part of the joint needs assessment in the duty, commissioners will be required to have regard to the particular needs of victims with protected characteristics. This could result in the commissioning of by-and-for services.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, for submitting Amendment 64, which would introduce a statutory requirement for certain commissioners and sector stakeholders to be consulted before issuing statutory guidance on the duty to collaborate. The Bill already requires the Secretary of State to consult such persons as they consider appropriate before issuing the guidance, without specifying particular bodies or roles. This is because of the wide-ranging nature of the duty and the key stakeholders involved—a list of relevant consultees could be extensive and change over time. Naturally, the department would continue to engage thoroughly with the various key stakeholders as the guidance develops. Therefore, we do not need a legislative requirement specifying who exactly that should be to enable them to do so.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

I thank the Minister very much for what he said. Does he accept that the officeholder, who is perhaps in the best position of all to guide His Majesty’s Government towards the most effective organisations with which they should be co-operating and talking, is the Victims’ Commissioner himself or herself? The Victims’ Commissioner is at the centre of an information web and, frankly, is likely to be better informed than His Majesty’s Government.

I understand the virtues of police and crime commissioners and, in principle, would agree with the Minister that micromanagement can be a very bad thing. However, if I were a victim, I would be in favour of slightly more micromanagement to make sure that, wherever I lived in England and Wales, the type of service I got was more uniform, consistent and joined up. In evidence, I cite a glossy 2022 document from the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners celebrating

“10 years of PCCs Making a Difference”.

It lays out no fewer than 39 different schemes across England and Wales that different PCCs have put in place for

“advocating for victims; developing innovative services for victims; and using multi-year funding to fund quality services”.

While that is a wonderful idea—let a thousand flowers bloom—what the system is currently sorely lacking is any comprehensive follow-up and measurement to see how effectively all those initiatives work. Do any of them still exist? Have they been developed any further? If some of them are working particularly well, is there an effective mechanism to ensure that other police and crime commissioners are taking on those best practices and applying them in their areas?

[Earl Howe (Con)]

First, I take the noble Lord’s point about the Victims’ Commissioner; I am happy to feed that into the department. Secondly, I come back to the point I made earlier about building transparency into the process. The local strategies will be published and then scrutinised by the oversight forum, which will be ministerially led, so there will be a way for the commissioning practices to be exposed to daylight at the local level. I suggest that that could reveal the kind of disparities that the noble Lord referred to; that would be very helpful, not only as regards funding but for sharing best practice. He raised a very important point, but I like to believe that we have thought about it and are addressing it.

I turn to the issue of stalking. I do not think that any of us could fail to be impressed by the horrific examples given by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. I listened also with care to the noble Lords, Lord Russell of Liverpool and Lord Ponsonby, on this issue. Amendment 54 seeks the inclusion of support services for victims of stalking under the duty to collaborate. Stalking—which I am the first to agree is a tremendously important and emotive issue—can already be covered by the duty. The accompanying statutory guidance will make it clear that stalking is one of a number of crime types that sits across the scope of domestic abuse, serious violence and sexual abuse, and needs should be assessed accordingly. I fully appreciate the concerns raised by stakeholders that, all too often, stalking is considered only as a form of domestic abuse, and support is provided largely on that basis. The definition of serious violence under this duty is deliberately broad to allow commissioners to determine what constitutes serious violence in their local area, which can include stalking as well, including where it is not perpetrated by an intimate partner.

It is important to retain legislative flexibility in this area so that the duty can evolve, if it needs to, just as the overarching offences of serious violence, sexual abuse and domestic abuse evolve. A prescriptive approach, as proposed by the amendment, would restrict our ability to be flexible, but we will continue to engage with commissioners and stakeholders on the guidance as it develops, and with noble Lords who are willing to lend their expertise. I am sure that my noble and learned friend Lord Bellamy would be glad to do that. I can commit him in his absence to meet the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and the noble Lord, Lord Russell, if they would find that helpful.

[Earl Howe (Con)]

Indeed. We come back to the earlier amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, on how one should best join up individual reports of crime, abuse or whatever else so that the police and others can obtain a rounded picture of what is going on. I fully take the point about changing practice. This is perhaps a subject for a longer discussion than today’s debate. I do not pretend to be expert on operational practices at the local level, so it would be wrong of me to chance my arm. The point is well made, and I am very happy to ensure that we have a separate discussion about it before Report.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

Can I make one additional point? The Minister just referred to allowing police and crime commissioners—and, I assume, chief constables—to decide what type of criminality should be regarded as serious or violent. One of the issues with the complexity of stalking is that, in many cases, stalking does not start from a violent position. Stalking, in many cases, can evolve, sometimes over a period of years, in a series of interactions by the predator, in such a way that, unless you know what you are dealing with, it is very hard to understand that there is a pattern developing or what type of stalking it is. We will come to the issue of training and advocates in the next group, but all the evidence produced by using the police force in Cheshire as a test case—to drive through the organisation clear understanding, training, lines of communication and technology to put this all together—has been transformative for the victims.

This is a victims’ Bill. Often, when I hear the Front Bench talking about the response to some amendments, I hear the voice of—understandably—the Government looking down on the victims. I very rarely get a sense of the Government articulating and espousing the rights of the victims themselves as they look up into the system, which they feel is failing them at the moment.

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I realise that in his amendment the Minister will be changing the clause that we would amend here. However, that does not undermine the case for what these two amendments seek to do. I beg to move.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for speaking to these amendments.

We return to stalking; stalking is stalking us yet again, as I am afraid it will continue to do through time immemorial, and until and unless we really grab hold of this. The case for independent stalking advocates is fairly undeniable. One can scarcely imagine what it must feel like when you do not know where to turn, you do not really understand what is going on, and the people that you are turning to for help clearly do not really understand what is going on either. It must be a pretty horrendous state to be in, and the independent stalking advocate can and does make an enormous difference. They can undertake risk assessments and work with the different authorities to ensure that safety plans are put in place to protect victims—and, importantly, where children are involved, those around them—from further harm.

The research that has been done by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust indicates that: 77% of stalking victims are not able to access an independent stalking advocate; 69% could find no advocacy support of any kind whatever; only 4% access support from a non-specialist service; and only 15% of victims were referred to an independent stalking advocate by the police. So even the police themselves, in 85% of cases, failed to point the potential stalking victim in the direction of help.

The demand for such stalking advocates far exceeds current capacity. National stalking services supported a combined total of just under 12,500 stalking victims in 2021, and there were 1.5 million stalking victims in total. Noble Lords can do the maths; that is not a highly impressive percentage. In some parts of the country, there are effectively no local specialist supporting services whatever.

I mentioned earlier that I had the privilege of speaking with Gracie Spinks’s father, Richard Spinks, a couple of weeks ago. One of the extreme examples of the more than 40 reports that Gracie made to the police over an extensive period was a case when, after she had pointed out that she was again being threatened, the police undertook a search in the vicinity of where she lived, and they found a bag of weapons—knives, hammers and so on. What did they conclude from having found that cache of weapons? They told Gracie that they were probably theatre props. Clearly, the officers involved had undergone extensive training, but probably in how to supervise playgroups, rather than in helping victims of crime. That shows the gulf between the sort of support, help and advice that one might expect as a victim of stalking and what actually happens.

As we mentioned on earlier groupings, at the end of 2022 the Suzy Lamplugh Trust submitted a super-complaint against the police, outlining systemic issues such as those that we have talked about in previous groups. One of the recommendations was that the College of Policing

“mandate that all officers that deal with cases of stalking complete training by a specialist stalking training provider, in order to adequately identify, investigate and—

this is very important—

“risk assess cases of stalking”.

We referred earlier to the pilot that the Suzy Lamplugh Trust ran in Cheshire. I conclude by giving some quotes from the senior police officers involved in the study and what they observed happening through the results of this programme. One front-line officer said:

“It’s an injustice that in nearly half of all stalking cases unrelated to prior intimate relationships, victims must rely on luck for access to specialised, local advocacy—something that should be a non-negotiable right. Including Independent Stalking Advocates … in the Victims and Prisoners Bill isn’t just an option; it’s an imperative step towards rectifying this imbalance.”


Finally, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Cheshire said:

“Cheshire’s example shows that multi-agency working delivers results for victims and it benefits all agencies involved. The impact of ISAs”—


independent stalking advocates—

“here is clear to see, and I believe it would hugely enhance our collective ability to deliver justice for victims of stalking if they were to be included in the Bill”.