Victims and Prisoners Bill (Eleventh sitting)

Oliver Heald Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 6th July 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Maria Eagle]

Amendment 67 and 68 are probing amendments, which are intended to explore who the Government intend to be the recipient of help from the public advocate that they are establishing under the Bill.

Clause 24(7)(a) defines the victims who are to benefit from the service of the public advocate, once appointed, as

“individuals who have been harmed by the incident (whether or not that harm is serious harm)”.

That seems to mean survivors, who are certainly one group that the public advocate should aim to help, but subsection (7)(b) says that victims also include

“close family members or close friends of individuals who have died or suffered serious harm as a result of the incident.”

The paragraph does not define “close family members”; nor does it define “close friends”, which is a much more uncertain and ambiguous term than “close family members”, although there is uncertainty in both.

Suppose that I am a second cousin. Is that “close family”? What about an aunt who is particularly close to a niece who has unfortunately died. Is that close enough? Or does it depend on the specific relationship in each case? If so, is the close family member supposed to prove that a family relationship that looks, on the face of it, to be a little distant is in fact close? What about a close friend? That could be anyone.

[Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

I well remember being in Manchester on the day of the Arena bombing. I was not at the Arena, but the sense of shock in the city was palpable. One of the news items that day was about the sad loss of Nell Jones, a 14-year-old girl from Cheshire. Her teacher said of the class:

“They’ve lost a sister not a classmate”,

and explained that they had been together since reception class. I think there is a bit of scope for a close friend to be included.

[Maria Eagle]

I do not disagree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman about trying to cope with all situations, but it is quite hard—as a lawyer, he knows this—to get the definitions right. Through the probing amendments I am seeking to get the Government to be clear. Like most lawyers, I work on the assumption that uncertainty is undesirable—although it can be lucrative. In this context, wrangles over who might be allowed to get support are certainly not desirable.

The amendments are about trying to get the Government to set out a little more clearly than they do in the Bill precisely what they mean by these unusual phrases. I cannot think of another piece of legislation that refers to “close friends”. Perhaps the Minister will have an example that will show that I have not looked far enough—no doubt he will. That is the point of the probing amendments: simply to get to the bottom of precisely what the Minister is seeking to achieve.

--- Later in debate ---

[Maria Eagle]

Before I say a few things about clause 24 stand part, I would like to speak to my new clause 15.

At the beginning of our consideration of part 2 of the Bill, I said that my own Public Advocate Bill and the Government’s Bill envisage the role of a public advocate somewhat differently, although there are points of similarity. New clause 15 sets out roles and functions that are closer to what I would like to see in the Bill. It would require the Secretary to State to appoint an individual to act as a public advocate for victims of major incidents, and to ensure an efficient and effective means of support, with appropriate remuneration and reasonable costs, to carry out the functions assigned to the post. It would be a standing appointment, rather than an ad-hoc appointment on a case-by-case basis.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

I have been closely following the right hon. Lady’s points about consulting victims, but a standing appointment may not be suitable for each set of circumstances or each set of victims. How does she square that circle?

[Maria Eagle]

My own view is that these kinds of public disaster occur infrequently. My main worry is whether a single standing appointment would be able to cope if more than one disaster occurred at the same time. As I envisage it, the independence of the role and the fact that it is a standing appointment would enable that person to act swiftly. It would have to be somebody who is a people person and is able to relate to individuals in trauma. The appointment itself would have to take into account the kind of qualities that the person would need, but I believe a proper person could be found who would be suitable in most circumstances.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

Under the Bill’s approach, the Minister appointing a public advocate would be looking at the geography, the communities and the skills necessary for a particular major incident. With a standing appointment, we might end up with somebody who would be good for one incident but not another.

[Maria Eagle]

I acknowledge that there are pros and cons to both approaches. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is pointing out what he sees as the downside of a standing appointment. One could envisage circumstances in which a standing appointment may have downsides, but there are also upsides. In the end, to get their legislation through, the Government must judge which approach they prefer. I simply seek to persuade the Minister and the Government that a standing appointment may have more pros than cons—and more pros than an ad hoc appointment, which has downsides too. My approach has always been that there should be a standing appointment rather than an ad hoc one.

There was extensive support for that approach in this Committee’s evidence sessions. Bishop James Jones said:

“I do not think that that independence is sufficiently guaranteed by the Bill as it stands; I think it can be guaranteed only if it is a standing appointment.”—[Official Report, Victims and Prisoners Public Bill Committee, 22 June 2023, col. 87, Q168.]

He made the point that independence is tremendously important, and that that requires a standing appointment. He also said:

“Contrary to the Government’s proposal, I believe that there should be a standing independent public advocate. Why? Because in the immediate aftermath of a public tragedy, people are grief-stricken and traumatised. They are unprepared and disorientated, and they no longer feel in control of their life. It is in that immediate moment that they need an advocate—somebody who will represent them to Government and signpost them to the agencies that are available to support them in that moment of trauma.”—[Official Report, Victims and Prisoners Public Bill Committee, 22 June 2023, col. 86, Q166.]

Lord Wills, too, believes that there should be a standing appointment. That is perhaps not surprising, because the Bill he introduced in the Lords, which has just had its Second Reading, includes a standing appointment. He said:

“I believe it should be a standing appointment, for the reasons that the bishop set out extremely well. In the turmoil of the aftermath of a big public disaster, it is important that someone is on the ground immediately to support the families. I do believe that, and I think it is a perfectly achievable position to have. A secretariat could be drawn together at short notice—a standing secretariat, as it were. It would be doing work within the civil service, but when a public disaster happened it could be brought to bear to act as a secretariat for the independent public advocate.

I hate to think of what might happen. If you imagine a big terrorist incident, for example, the Government would be in turmoil anyway, and then they would have to find the time and space to go through all the selection processes, find out people’s availability and negotiate terms of reference. In the meantime, the poor families are left without anyone to support them, as they always have been up until now. It rather defeats the object of this whole exercise. So I am in favour of having a standing appointment.”—[Official Report, Victims and Prisoners Public Bill Committee, 22 June 2023, col. 93, Q179.]

We can see that there are pros and cons, whichever way one decides to do that. I just happen to have come down on the side of a standing appointment being preferable on balance. That is the approach that Michael Wills and I took when drafting our own version, which has the advantage of the postholder being able to go into action immediately with no delay required.

My new clause envisages two scenarios in which the advocate is called into action. The first is where the Secretary of State invites him to get involved; I hope the Minister will be pleased to see that I am not entirely excluding action by the Secretary of State. The second is if the advocate thinks a major incident has occurred that meets the requirement under new clause 15(6) and the advocate has been asked to undertake the function by a majority of representatives of the deceased and injured survivors of the incident.

That part of the clause puts into legislation my idea, and Lord Wills’s idea, that there should be agency for the families, that they must have a role in deciding whether the advocate gets involved and that the advocate himself should decide whether the definition of major incident or public disaster is met. Subsection (6) defines a major incident as one

“that has caused the death of, or serious harm to, a significant number of individuals and involved—

(a) serious health and safety issues,

(b) a failure in regulation, or

(c) other events of serious concern.”

The key difference from the Bill as drafted by the Government is that the affected families and survivors can get the advocate—who will already be in post—involved, should a majority of them wish to do so, even if the Secretary of State has not asked the advocate to get involved. The advocate can make it clear that he thinks that an incident meets the threshold for his involvement—if, indeed, he thinks that—on the basis of precedent. Obviously there will have to be a few involvements before precedent can come into it.

That would deliver one of the key requirements for a public advocate to succeed, in my view, which is to ensure that the affected families have some agency about whether his services should be called upon in respect of a particular incident. Those families must feel that they can call the advocate in to help them navigate the aftermath and get to the truth.

The trust and confidence of the families of the deceased and survivors is a crucial requirement for the post of public advocate to be introduced successfully. Enabling them to have a meaningful say in whether the advocate should be involved is an important way to establish that trust from an early stage. It also emphasises the independence of the advocate at a very early stage of his involvement: if the families ask him to get involved, and if he can decide that a particular incident falls within the definition of “serious incident” and triggers his possible involvement, it is quite clear that he is independent and is not being told what to do by the Government of the day, about whom there may be some suspicion among those who have been caught up in the incident.

The independence of the advocate from the Government is another vital way in which families and survivors can have trust and confidence, which can be gained at an early stage and reinforced thereafter during the processes that follow a public disaster. That was emphasised in our evidence session, particularly by Jenni Hicks, who is one of the Hillsborough mums. She said that

“as it stands at the moment, the Government’s suggestions for an independent public advocate just would not work. It would just not be independent, because it is too dependent on the Minister. It seems that the supposedly independent public advocate will be answerable to the Secretary of State, which does not sound like independence to me.”––[Official Report, Victims and Prisoners Public Bill Committee, 22 June 2023; c. 112, Q212.]

Jenni said that she thought it was

“vitally important that we have this facility, but that we have it correctly”––[Official Report, Victims and Prisoners Public Bill Committee, 22 June 2023; c. 114, Q220.]

She said that independence is a key part. She also said:

“When you are caught up in disasters, particularly if there is propaganda surrounding it, you need to be able to trust—you would need trust in a public advocate in a team. By having to report to a Minister, you are thinking, ‘Well, who is in charge of this? Is it the public advocate or is it the Minister?’ I do not think that would go down very well.”—[Official Report, Victims and Prisoners Public Bill Committee, 22 June 2023; c. 115, Q220.]

Jenni speaks with decades of cynicism about what has happened to her in her quest to get to the truth, so one might take the view that she is jaded, but there is nobody more experienced than a Hillsborough mum in understanding what the state does to people after a public disaster. We would do well to listen to her experience and what she has to say.

Lord Wills said:

“In some way, families have to be given effective agency, and that must mean some fettering of the powers on the Secretary of State. I am agnostic about the way to do that, and I have always accepted that my private Member’s Bill was not perfect.”––[Official Report, Victims and Prisoners Public Bill Committee, 22 June 2023; c. 95, Q183.]

He, too, is willing to change arrangements, and ensuring that the Secretary of State has regard to the wishes of the bereaved and surviving victims would be a good start at making a way forward.

When we come to later amendments, especially those related to the functions of the public advocate, I will talk a bit more about how the Bill is different from what I envisaged. However, I turn now to clause 24. I share one very large perspective with the Minister—that having a public advocate available to help victims in the aftermath of a disaster is entirely desirable—so I welcome the Government’s intention for this part of the Bill, even if I keep saying that I would do things differently. I hope he will not be too offended. My support for the clause arises from my long-standing experience.

For the families of the 97 who died at Hillsborough and the thousands of traumatised survivors who had to fight for a lifetime to be properly acknowledged by our society and to get the correct inquest verdicts of unlawful killing, it was 23 years until they got the truth fully acknowledged and had an apology from the Prime Minister of the day, David Cameron, for what they had to go through. That is despite the fact that the original public inquiry by Lord Justice Taylor laid the blame for the disaster squarely at the door of the South Yorkshire police and admonished them for their lies, within four months of the disaster occurring. They just carried on seeking to deflect the blame elsewhere. This part of the Bill should seek to remedy the problem of public authorities such as the South Yorkshire police using their entire budget, resources and effort over decades to try to avoid being blamed for what they have done wrong.

Decades of litigation resulted in deep trauma for the Hillsborough families and survivors. The lies, slurs and abuse that have been directed at families, victims and survivors over 34 years mean that no one has been held accountable for the unlawful killing—that is what it was—of 97 innocent children, women and men. It was only the Hillsborough Independent Panel, a non-legal process of getting to the truth through transparency and publishing documentation, that led to the full truth being reiterated to a shocked public 23 years after the event. That led to David Cameron’s apology to the families as Prime Minister at the Dispatch Box, not only for what had happened to them, but for the lies and slurs that had followed, all perpetrated by public authorities using taxpayers’ money to pay for it. That is how they did it—they did not raise the money themselves, as the families defending the reputations of their loved ones had to.