Protecting the Public and Justice for Victims

Richard Graham Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

It absolutely cannot say that it is tough on crime when victims of crime face watching their cases collapse. I recognise that this has been a very pressured time—it is a pandemic—and the Secretary of State has had to deal with a range of issues in our prisons, in our probation, in our police and in relation to our judiciary. I recognise that, but in the end, the justice system has to serve victims of crime, and palpably and honestly, on any objective measure, things have got worse for victims of crime in our courts, and we need to do something about it.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

First, the right hon. Gentleman might be interested to know that I spoke to our Crown court judge in Gloucester earlier this afternoon, who confirmed that the backlog has been lower month by month over the last six months, and it is lower than it was before the pandemic. One key reason for that is that it uses the court resolution process very effectively.

Secondly, although the right hon. Gentleman is making a strong pitch for why he wants to look after the victims of justice, where were he and his colleagues when policemen were getting injured in Bristol and police vans were being set on fire? Where was he when the windows of retail shops and banks were being smashed and people were clambering over the tops of railway trains, endangering life?

[Mr Lammy]

In 2010, 152,791 Crown court cases took, on average, 391 days to complete. In 2019, 107,913 cases took an average of 511 days, meaning that 30% fewer cases took over 75% longer to complete. The hon. Gentleman can add up—that is a poor record, on any analysis. He asks where I was. All I can say is that I am the shadow Secretary of State for Justice; I condemn the violence, but I do not think anybody expected me to be part of the policing.



Under the Conservatives, rapists, thieves, arsonists and those who commit fraud have never had it so good. Convictions for rape, robbery, theft, criminal damage, arson, drug offences and fraud have fallen to a 10-year low. The total number of convictions has collapsed from 570,000 in 2010 when Labour left office to 338,000 in 2020 after a decade of Conservative rule.

It is important that we look back to learn the lessons of this Government’s mistakes, but we must also look forward if we are going to fix this, and the solutions are pretty straightforward. We need more sitting days and more court space. Labour has called for a guarantee of at least 33,000 more sitting days. We are glad that the Government seem to have listened to our campaigning on this, but we also need to see the creation of more Nightingale courts if we are to end the delays. Will the Secretary of State promise, when he gets to his feet, to keep Nightingale courts open for longer, as well as to open more of them, to reverse the delays?

To address the crisis that victims are facing, the Government’s priority must be to introduce measures to reverse the backlog and to tackle violence against women and girls, but we must do more than that to protect the public and keep victims of crime safe. More than a quarter of all crimes are not being prosecuted because victims are dropping out of the process entirely. One million victims every year are being failed by the very system that is supposed to protect them. On top of denying justice through delays, this Government have so far failed in the simple task of enshrining victims’ legally enforceable rights. The Conservatives have promised a victims Bill in almost every Queen’s Speech since 2016 and in their past three manifestos, but five years on, their Bill has still not appeared in Parliament. The latest farce is that the Government are promising to publish a draft. It is getting draughty here with all the hot wind!

Labour has its full victims Bill published, brought to Parliament and ready to go. This would put key victims’ rights on a statutory footing, including the right for victims to read their rights at the point of reporting; the right to regular information; the right for victims to make a personal statement to be read out at court; and the right of access to special measures, including video links at court. Similarly, Labour’s Bill would include a number of new protections for victims. Victims of persistent unresolved antisocial behaviour would be given support for the first time. We would introduce new sanctions for non-compliance with victims’ rights. We would introduce victim strategies with mandatory equality impact assessments. We would enhance the role of the Victims’ Commissioner. We would guarantee the equal treatment of victims with insecure immigration status. We would put a statutory protection on agencies to report concerns on child sexual and criminal exploitation.

These are not partisan issues, and any Member of Parliament who recognises that this is the right way forward should vote with us tonight. No more hot wind. No more getting up and talking about time served or defending a record. We know it has been tough—we are in a pandemic—but victims cannot wait, and we cannot have a situation in which the Justice Department in the Government is letting down that important relationship with the Home Office. I think that might be what is happening at the moment.

The mistakes of this Justice Secretary and his Conservative predecessors were closing courts, cutting police, cutting the prosecution service and the de-prioritisation of crime. This has led to a backlog that is unprecedented, delays that are forcing victims of crime to drop out, and inefficiencies that are letting dangerous criminals get away with murder. But the present Justice Secretary’s failures are more of inaction than of the wrong actions: a failure to address violence against women and girls even when we offer him the measures to help him to tackle it, a failure to protect victims’ rights even when we offer him a Bill that is published and ready to go, a failure to reverse the backlog in the Crown courts even when it is obvious that he just needs to encourage and create sufficient space.

Inaction can be just as costly as the wrong actions. Inaction is standing by whistling to yourself while the world around you burns. Inaction is ignoring the desperate pleas of victims denied justice. Inaction is complicity. The result is a justice system that has become Kafkaesque for victims, as well as for the wrongly accused. Arrests are slow, if they happen at all. If they are lucky, victims are given court dates that are many months or even years later. Trials are then delayed. New court dates are rescheduled, then delayed, then rescheduled, then delayed, then rescheduled, then delayed.

I ask the Justice Secretary and Members of Parliament from all parties across the House to end the inaction and vote with the Opposition today. Now is the time when we all need to step up, put aside any partisan differences and act.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Buckland]

Having met and talked, in a professional and now a political capacity, to many of the victims that the hon. Lady describes, I say this: an apology is due, and I give that, but action is due as well, and that is happening.

The hon. Lady talks about independent sexual violence advisers. From day one of taking office, I made the case consistently that the expansion of their important role was a vital part of my policy, and we have done that. In 2019, I put an extra £5 million into investing in ISVAs. We have now expanded that; the total that we are investing in increasing ISVAs as we speak is £27 million. That means hundreds more ISVAs who will be available to support victims of crime from the get-go. She is right: the evidence is clear that, where an ISVA is involved, the rate of dropped cases falls dramatically—by about 50%, in fact.

I take up the hon. Lady’s challenge and exhortation, and I say that this is work in progress but we are getting on with it—yet another example of the action that I and this Government are taking to deal with the heart of the matter. Of course, that is going to be followed up very soon by the important end-to-end rape review, which we will publish. That piece of work has, quite properly I think, considered and reflected on a very important judicial review launched against the Crown Prosecution Service that was dealt with earlier this year, and indeed on the representations of many groups in the sector, reflecting the important views of thousands of victims of the most heinous crime of rape. That review will be published imminently, and I can assure her that it will be a full and proper reflection not only of the problems that we have encountered but of what can be done and what will be done to help to remedy the situation.

I am not going to hedge or qualify; I am going to be absolutely frank about the fact that the current rates and numbers of cases being brought to court are inadequate. They do not reflect the reality of what has been happening to thousands of women and girls in our country, and we are determined to do everything we can to change that. That involves a change from end to end—police, prosecution and the court system itself. That is what we need to encapsulate and get right, and I can assure the hon. Lady that, when that document is published, it will be the fullest proper reflection of the important points that she is properly so passionate about.

[Richard Graham]

My understanding from the judge of our Crown court is that there are ways to speed up the handling of the rape cases to which the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) so correctly referred. One of them, for example, is making the Crown court available for certain sittings at certain times as a magistrates court, so that a case can be heard in the magistrates court and immediately moved into the Crown court. That is a way of speeding up the whole process. Does my right hon. and learned Friend, who knows far more about these things than I do, agree that there are practical ways in which courts can work with the Crown Prosecution Service to speed things up so that these cases get heard faster?

[Robert Buckland]

I have the happy advantage of having spoken, I think, to that very same judge myself last week when I visited our Nightingale court at Cirencester. Indeed, my hon. Friend is right in several respects to highlight the important work being done in the western region to deal with the heavy case load. The proactive work that is being done by dedicated judges, prosecutors, defence lawyers and all court staff to come together to resolve cases that are capable of proper resolution and to identify and list those cases that absolutely need a trial has been a shining example of how to do it. Similar success has been achieved in Wales in eliminating and dealing with the so-called backlog, and we see that in other parts of the country too.

That is no reproach to those parts of the country that are facing a particular challenge. There is no doubt—the right hon. Member for Tottenham knows this from his constituency experience—that there is a particular pressure in London and the south-east, where there are still a great number of cases yet to be resolved. However, it is right to say that, in the good work that is being done, supported by investment from Government, we are seeing the sorts of results that my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) talked about. He mentioned potential ways in which—