Victims and Courts Bill

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 20th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

In recent months, I have sat with Jeremy and Susan Everard, whose daughter, Sarah, was murdered in the most horrific circumstances; with Paula Hudgell, whose little boy, Tony, lost both legs through brutality and who asks why his abusers will one day walk free; with Katie Brett, whose sister, Sasha, was stabbed to death at 16; and with Ayse Hussein, cousin of Jan Mustafa, whose body was found in a freezer after a catalogue of official failings. Their stories are harrowing and their bravery and resilience is incredibly inspiring. They, and the relatives of countless other victims, have formed the Justice for Victims campaign group, because serious criminals are “escaping proper punishment.” Their demand is clear: make the system value the lives of those who were damaged or even taken.

We welcome legislation in the name of victims, but it must be worthy of that title. A Bill that carries the word “victims” should put victims first in practice and not just in prose. I appreciate, as the Secretary of State has rightly said, that some measures in the Bill are stronger than those in the predecessor Bill, but some measures are less strong, or at least different, to those in the prior Bill. Parliamentary time is precious. I know from my own period in government that one cannot always return to the same issues time and again, however worthy the topic, so we must not waste the opportunity afforded by the Bill to enact the most radical and serious changes to rebalance the criminal justice system in favour of victims. I will explain why and make what I hope will be seen as constructive proposals to the Secretary of State.

First, victims rightly want offenders to face them at sentence and to confront their crimes. All too often, cowardly criminals squirm away from the consequences of their actions, so I welcome the intent behind clause 1, which proposes to correct that. I question how the Minister will deliver recalcitrant offenders to court, when our own prison officers are already fighting for their lives with bare hands and little serious protection. That is not a new problem, but it is one that we all have to confront together. With no kit, there can be no confidence. In the wake of the HMP Frankland attack, the Minister’s idea of a limited taser trial sometime this summer in a handful of prisons, for specifically trained staff only, seems inadequate. We still do not issue every single officer with a stab-proof vest; body armour is “under review”.

Clause 1, for understandable and right reasons, piles fresh duties on staff, who tell me that they are already one assault away from leaving the service. Until Ministers issue full body armour and staff our escort units properly, this duty will be a burden to them. Officers will not feel safe to force violent offenders out of their cells, not least because the Bill affords them only the use of “reasonable force”, not the ability to use force as long as it is not grossly disproportionate, which should surely be the threshold in law. Judges making such orders need only to take into consideration the “reasonable excuse” of an offender to override the concern and the will of victims. What is the reasonable excuse to dodge justice? Surely that should be tightened to the most exceptional circumstances.

Where in this Bill is the right for victims’ views to be heard and recorded in court? Some victims will want the offender to come before the court, even in the knowledge that they will be highly disruptive, challenge the solemnity of the court and, frankly, behave in a way that many would consider to be deeply shocking and even scarring. Surely that should be broadly the victim’s choice; they should at least be properly consulted by the judge. This legislation is ultimately for the victims, even if the judge might have reservations or it leads to challenging situations or confrontations that we are not accustomed to in our courts.

[Sir Ashley Fox]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that using the test of reasonable force, as the Lord Chancellor proposes, raises the unpleasant prospect that prisoners so forced might bring claims for damages against the Lord Chancellor, which would be a further insult to victims? I firmly support my right hon. Friend’s view that “grossly disproportionate” is the correct legal test to use.

[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.