Victims and Courts Bill

Debate between Nusrat Ghani and Robert Jenrick

2nd reading
Tuesday 20th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I agree with the point that my hon. Friend has made. Given that the threshold of “grossly disproportionate” is an available and established concept in law, why not apply it in these circumstances, so that we can equip the criminal justice system with the standard it needs to ensure that in all bar the most exceptional circumstances, these individuals are brought to court if it is the wish of the victims of crime?

Secondly, Ministers say that clause 3 protects children from predatory parents, but the devil is in the detail. Only abuse of an offender’s own child counts—a point understandably made by the Labour party when it was in opposition. If a man rapes a neighbour’s child, he keeps full rights over his own infant daughter. The BBC this morning highlighted the case of Bethan, who was forced to spend £30,000 in the family court to strip her ex-husband, jailed for the gravest of offences, of parental responsibility. Bethan’s family call the Bill very disappointing, because it would not protect them.

Additionally, offenders jailed for three years and 11 months, which is still a grave sentence, retain their rights. Where is the logic behind four years? Thus far, that is unexplained. Where is the child’s best interest? Conversely, the Bill states that the order

“does not cease to have effect if…the offender is acquitted”

on appeal, so an exonerated parent may still be barred for life unless they marshal funds to return to court. That is neither proportionate nor principled. I appreciate the Secretary of State’s view that that may well be a starting point, but let us get this clause right. This is the opportunity, and it may well be the only one for some time.

I turn to clause 11. The unduly lenient sentence scheme is the last safety valve for victims when a judge gets it badly wrong, and I know how important that is. Just last week, a case that I referred to the Attorney General alongside my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) was heard in the Court of Appeal, and three defendants had their sentences increased. Today, a victim has only 28 days from the date of sentence to request that the Attorney General make a referral. That clock starts even while they are still waiting for the official transcript to land.

Everyone in this House has met families who discovered the scheme after the deadline, who will forever wonder whether justice slipped through their fingers because they Google-searched the rules a week too late or did not reach out to their lawyers or friends in the system who were more knowledgeable. I have been very struck recently when speaking to victims—even victims of some of the most prominent and heinous crimes of modern times, who one might have thought would have been equipped with the very best legal advice and support—who simply did not know that the scheme even existed, let alone that it had such a short time limit attached to it.

Clause 11 gives only the Attorney General, not the victim, an extra 14 days when the paperwork arrives on day 28. Officials get six weeks; the mother of a murdered child still gets only four. Ministers claim that this is levelling the playing field, but it is nothing of the sort. Victims’ groups, from rape and sexual abuse centres to the Centre for Women’s Justice, have pleaded for a straightforward fix: double the victim application window to 56 days, and require the Crown Prosecution Service to notify every complainant in writing of the existence of the scheme and of that deadline on the day of the sentence. Those groups asked for time; on this occasion, the Government have delivered bureaucracy. That is clause 11 in a nutshell—a lifeline for Whitehall and the Attorney General’s staff, but not for the people we are sent to Parliament to defend.

Let me now turn to what the Bill does not try to do. The court backlog is spiralling, and the Ministry of Justice cannot yet provide a date by which it will start to come down. Going before the Justice Select Committee, its permanent secretary could not answer that most basic question for an official charged with leading the service. When is this going to start getting better? Cases are being listed today for as far away as 2029; meanwhile, victims are in limbo with their lives left on hold. Justice delayed is justice denied. Today, 74 courtrooms across the country are sitting empty because the Justice Secretary still has not taken the Lady Chief Justice up on her offer of extra sitting days. There is barely anything in this Bill that will put a dent in the court backlog—nothing that maximises court sitting days. Not one clause addresses listings, disclosure or digital evidence.

For many people, our justice system is opaque and secretive. I am a firm believer that sunlight is the best disinfectant—that greater transparency drives change and enhances confidence—but there is nothing in this Bill that enhances transparency on the court backlog, such as publishing the number of courtrooms that are not sitting each day and why they are not sitting. It falls to start-ups producing websites and apps to provide that information, not the Ministry of Justice itself. Nothing in this Bill increases access to court transcripts, so that victims, the press and the public can see justice dispensed. That issue was recently given further prominence by the public’s shock and anger when they heard or read fragments of the transcripts of grooming gang trials. As technology transforms the ability of the courts to provide reliable transcripts using artificial intelligence, we should provide a better and more transparent service to the public and the media. That is possible, so why not use this Bill to establish basic standards in law for the benefit of every victim across our country?

There is also nothing in the Bill that mandates the publication of data on offenders’ visa status or asylum status, so that we know where offenders are coming from. We need that information in order to design a criminal justice system and, above all, an immigration system that protects the British public. The London Victims’ Commissioner has said that the £1 billion of unpaid court fines is “truly astounding”, and that the failure of the Courts and Tribunals Service to recoup outstanding offenders’ fines must come under greater scrutiny. Again, the Bill is silent on that—it contains no extra powers to recoup that money. At a time when the Ministry of Justice’s budget is unquestionably under strain, why not do everything to recoup unpaid court fines, beginning with those? Victims are suffering as a result.

We welcome legislation in the name of victims, but it must be worthy of that title. Victims have asked for justice that is swift and certain; in many respects, this Bill is slow and tentative. I urge the Government to amend it—to strengthen it—so that it really does put victims first, in practice and not just in prose. Where it does, the Secretary of State and the Government will have our support, for justice and for the victims.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Chair of the Justice Committee.

Daesh: Genocide of Minorities

Debate between Nusrat Ghani and Robert Jenrick

Wednesday 20th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

That was a very moving speech by the hon. Member for Glasgow East (Natalie McGarry).

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on securing the debate.

“We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women. If we do not reach that time, then our children and grandchildren will reach it, and they will sell your sons as slaves at the slave market.”

That is Daesh. For the members of this death cult, the destruction of a way of life, an ideology and a set of beliefs that is not theirs is both their ultimate and sole aim. Daesh is self-defining as a committer of genocide. To achieve that, its members rape, enslave, and decapitate. Their victims are Muslims, Kurds, Yazidis and Christians.

The Syrian Centre for Policy Research estimates that in Syria, approximately 470,000 people have been killed either directly or indirectly as a result of the five years of civil war. What is most shocking is that the United Nations has given up estimating the number, because the numbers are so vast that it cannot provide verifiable statistics. Whatever the number of those killed, millions more have been displaced and lost. Each cowardly act of death and destruction is just that—a cowardly act—but put together, these acts make up a reign of terror, targeted at a specific group of people. This is the systematic murder—genocide—of the people who form these communities, the cultural heritage that has tied them together for generations and the values and beliefs that define them.

I heard first hand what Daesh do. I was lucky—or unlucky—enough to meet a young, brave Yazidi woman called Nadia Murad, in a meeting co-ordinated by my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), for which I give him credit. She had been taken by Daesh as a sex slave. Her race was justification enough for the horrific way in which she, her family and her community were mistreated and destroyed.

We failed to prevent genocide in Bosnia. In Germany, the Nazis were appeased while they targeted Jews. The death cult of misfits that we face now cannot be allowed to get away with this any longer. In Iraq and Syria, Daesh’s statements have taken credit for the mass murder and persecution of Christians and have shown its clear intent to purge Christian communities from the area it claims as its own. As a country, we show a weakness by failing to acknowledge the extent of the persecution against Yazidis, Christians and other ethnic and religious minorities. We are failing the victims of deliberate and targeted persecution, where race, faith and gender are all the excuse that Daesh needs to find new and innocent targets for mass murder. If we do not recognise these acts as genocide, we effectively declare that we are not willing to take all action necessary to bring it to an end and to bring the perpetrators to justice, as they deserve.

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

A week after the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) brought Nadia Murad to the House of Commons, I was fortunate enough to bring her to the Public Gallery here. In fact, she went up there with my wife who, incidentally, is the daughter of holocaust survivors. Afterwards, as I am sure the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber will agree, Nadia was so grateful. I could not understand why she was so grateful to us, but I think it was because she had faith in this House. She genuinely believed that we would act to help her and her people. She was not one of our jaded constituents. She thought that this House meant something, and that we would do something to help her and her people.

[Nusrat Ghani]

My hon. Friend is right. As the oldest democracy in the world, we have a responsibility to Nadia Murad also.

We would be complicit in overlooking the scale of criminality that is ongoing and largely unpunished. That is not a position that a country steadfast in its commitment to fairness, freedom and justice should be relaxed about. The UN Security Council’s declaring these acts to be genocide is key to preventing the spread of terrorism and radicalisation, and it allows an international criminal tribunal to be set up to try the terrorists who are committing these heinous acts and to bring them to true justice. That is why I support the motion.

On 12 April, when the Minister was challenged on the issue, he said:

“I too believe that acts of genocide have taken place”.—[Official Report, 12 April 2016; Vol. 608, c. 165.]

I hope we can move on from that statement today.