Victims and Prisoners Bill (First sitting)

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th June 2023 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

You have three minutes left.

Nicole Jacobs: Sorry. This is my job—I could talk about it all day. I think there is real scope to better define what good looks like for that, and that will impact the victims code and compliance with it. It impacts the multi-agency working at the local level. That would be a huge step forward.

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

Q I have some very quick questions, with hopefully very quick answers. On that particular point, is it more important to describe the skills or the job title?

Nicole Jacobs: The skills.

[Sarah Champion]

Q Thank you. Under duty to collaborate, you spoke about a joint strategic needs assessment. I like that a lot. Who would the responsibility for that sit with? Would it be your role or the Secretary of State’s?

Nicole Jacobs: No, I see that a lot more as a role at the local level.

[Sarah Champion]

Q But who has oversight at a national level? Who enforces the gaps?

Nicole Jacobs: I would have thought the Secretary of State, but I don’t know. You will be the best people to decide those kinds of things.

[Sarah Champion]

Q You said that 70% of the services are led by the voluntary sector. How do you compel them to fill the gaps?

Nicole Jacobs: Of the services that domestic abuse victims access, 70% are community-based services. Having worked at them, I can say that you do not need to compel them to fill the gaps. They exist only to provide those services, and they desperately want to provide more. They will engage with absolutely any process that would help fill gaps for the people they are working with.

[Sarah Champion]

Q So if there is a dearth in Redditch, you would expect an organisation from, say, Peterborough to go and fill that gap?

Nicole Jacobs: I would expect there to be a meaningful assessment at the local level—a joint strategic needs assessment—where the potential funders come together alongside service providers and experts in their area and think very critically about what opportunities they have. That will not be totally precise, because some of it would depend on bidding, so they would have to decide together.

[Sarah Champion]

Q How could the Bill support migrant victims and survivors better?

Nicole Jacobs: The Bill could open recourse to public funds to all survivors. It could also create a firewall between the police and immigration enforcement so that people who are desperately needing protection would not fear calling or talking to services because of negative repercussions. They would just know that they would be made safe. They would have safety before status.

[Sarah Champion]

Thank you.

[The Chair]

I am afraid that that brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions. I thank the witness, on behalf of the Committee, for giving evidence this morning.

Examination of Witnesses

Jayne Butler, Ellen Miller and Dr Hannana Siddiqui gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Elliot Colburn]

In the interest of time, I will cede the floor to my colleague.

[Sarah Champion]

Q Thank you. I have a couple of questions and the first is for Jayne. The Government have come forward with some guidelines on counselling records. Do you think they go far enough? What do you think could be in the Bill to strengthen the use of—or lack of use of—counselling records in such cases?

Jayne Butler: The announcement made in the Bill does not specifically mention counselling material. In our opinion, it does not bring about any new protections, but just effectively reinforces what already exists in law around the Data Protection Act.

[Sarah Champion]

Q What would you like to see?

Jayne Butler: What we would like to see is a model that changes the legal threshold for access to survivors’ counselling records. This is not a blanket ban. What we are asking for is a test of substantive probative value. Again, we have seen this be successful in other jurisdictions. It would mean that CJS agencies have to make applications for access to a judge. There would be judicial scrutiny at two stages: a first one at the stage of access to the police, and a second one if it gets to the stage of being disclosed to the defence. It really protects that without, we believe, compromising any right to a fair trial or any rights that a defendant might hold in that circumstance. We have put a detailed written submission in to the Committee about this.

[Sarah Champion]

Q Dr Siddiqui, you contradicted yourself a little when you talked about ISVAs and IDVAs, because you started saying that there should be a statutory definition, and then you said that there should not be. Could you clarify that?

Dr Siddiqui: There should not be a statutory definition, because under the current meaning of ISVAs and IDVAs, they tend to be criminal justice-focused and only deal with high-risk cases. They do not deal with the wider forms of advocacy services we provide, which tend to be on the whole more holistic and do not just focus on the criminal justice system; they look at the family court, the health and welfare system and provide services over a long period of time to women. It also does intersectional advocacy, which is about looking at a whole range of different issues, but it also looks at equalities.

Not all of them fit into the current definitions, and I think that if you define it, it will narrow what the definition is of an ISVA or IDVA. That means that the local commissioning bodies may not fund those services. The current services, of which a lot are run as “by and for” services that do not fit the current definitions, will not get funding. Historically, they are underfunded anyway, so they could disappear as a result.

[Sarah Champion]

Q I look to the Minister at this point; I spent five years of my life trying to change positions of trust, because the definition of the people who came under it was accurate, but specifics about the type of people were not future-proofed and were too narrow. Would you rather see a definition that is future-proofed about the services that are delivered?

Dr Siddiqui: Yes, I think that a range of services—holistic services—are what the IDVAs should be dealing with. That is not just for high-risk cases. I would include medium and standard-risk cases, because risk changes rapidly. The models that exist for the community that are provided by the “by and for” sector include a whole range of things, including support services, outreach services, helpline advice and advocates. They do not fit the current models. The current model has always been restricted, and we have said so. Defining it in law means we could lose the funding we currently have for the range of services we offer.

[Sarah Champion]

Q I have a broad question, Dr Siddiqui. We heard from the Domestic Abuse Commissioner about the map she has done for services. Historically, support for black and minority victims has been very low. What could the Bill practically include that would address that, so that we have a more equal service for access to justice as well as support services?

Dr Siddiqui: We would like a ringfenced fund that provides sustainable, multi-year funding to the “by and for” sector from central Government. There should be a duty to fund those services. I think the DA Commissioner estimates that there is about £300 million you need to give for the by and for sector. Imkaan, which is a voluntary umbrella organisation, estimates that £97 million is needed just for the “by and for” sector in black and minority communities. There needs to be sufficient funding that is long-term and provides holistic services that victims need in the community.

[Sarah Champion]

Q The victims code is good. We love it, and people need to know about it. What about in different languages and different formats? Is it accessible to everyone as it stands?

Dr Siddiqui: No, most of the women we help do not actually know about the victims code. There needs to be far greater awareness, and it needs to be more inclusive in terms of language. It needs to be very explicit about protected characteristics and around migrant victims in order for it to reach and include everyone.

[Rob Butler]

Q Dr Siddiqui, you just mentioned a total of £397 million specifically on the “by and for” sector. Do you have an estimate of the funding that would be required to achieve all the aims that you have described this morning and the places where you have said there needs to be additional funding?

Dr Siddiqui: I wish I had the time to do that. I do not have an estimate, but I know that others have done those calculations. The Domestic Abuse Commissioner has done a calculation, which is about £300 million. Women’s Aid, Rape Crisis and Imkaan are all organisations that have done an analysis of what is needed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Siobhan Baillie]

Q How do you think removing the interaction with the Home Office would work if the victim has also committed a crime? We all know that there are a lot of chaotic lives and that there have been lots of problems—victims can be criminals, too. How do you see that working?

Dr Siddiqui: If the migrant victims have done a crime, the police do their normal duties to investigate crime. It depends what that crime is. If they are seen as immigration offenders first and foremost, rather than victims first and foremost, they will not get any of the help and support they need. They do not even have a chance to get legal advice on their immigration status before they are reported. They do not have a chance to go to a “by and for” organisation to get any support or advocacy, so it is essential that they have the chance to do that before there are any kinds of communication with the Home Office. Usually, that communication should be done through their legal representatives, rather than by the police.

A lot of police officers say to us that they do not agree with the fact that there is no firewall. A lot do not even realise that there could be negative consequences if they report migrants. There is some international work, and even some in the UK, on having good guidance or a firewall. For example, there has been work in Amsterdam and in Quebec showing that a firewall works. The potential for abuse is minimised. In Northumbria and Surrey, the police are all looking at ways for how to improve responses to migrant victims without reporting them to the Home Office as their first response.

[Sarah Champion]

Q May I push a little more on the siloing? You are not saying it is either/or: so if they were criminal, a criminal case could be going on for this person, but when looking at their domestic abuse, that would be protected. You could have the two things happening at the same time.

Dr Siddiqui: If they have committed a crime, of course they need to be investigated like anyone else.

[Sarah Champion]

Q But you are saying that if they came as a victim of crime, they would not necessarily share that with the Home Office.

Dr Siddiqui: Yes; there is no automatic sharing of data.

[Sarah Champion]

Q The Domestic Abuse Commissioner spoke very highly about specialist services and their outcomes. We are also talking about a proper geographical spread of services. Are there enough specialist services to fill the geographical need, and what would happen once we have identified gaps? Who would fill those gaps?

Dr Siddiqui: No, I think there is a postcode lottery. “By and for” services, in particular, are very thin on the ground. Even in areas where there is a high black and minority population, “by and for” services are not necessarily commissioned locally. That is why I am saying that the duty to collaborate is not enough. You have got to have a duty to fund and you have got to have ringfenced funding, particularly for “by and for” services and specialist services, for that to work. At the moment, the system does not work and I do not think that this will necessarily improve it enough.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Edward Argar)]

Q I have a very brief question. I return to the point about funding, which you have both alluded to in different ways. Notwithstanding the very large funding increase—a quadrupling since 2010—you have both highlighted a gap between demand and supply, essentially, in this space. Although, funding and spending commitments should clearly not be made in individual Bills—that should be done in a public spending process in the round, because funding is finite and has to be set against other demands on the public purse—and without prejudice to your position on that, given that context do you see a potential value in the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s point about a joint strategic needs assessment improving the efficacy of the existing funding spend and it being used in a less duplicative way, to plug gaps? Notwithstanding your position that you would like to see more funding, do you see a value in what the Domestic Abuse Commissioner is advocating—to better spend the money that is already allocated?

Dr Siddiqui: A joint SNA is important if you are going to have collaboration at a local level and it will help to highlight which gaps could be filled by which agency, but at the moment some of that work is being done locally and some of the gaps are still not being filled. For those with no recourse to public funds, there are hardly any services on the ground. For those from black and minority communities, or “by and for” services, there is hardly any funding in the local area—so even where a gap may have been identified, there is not the funding to fill it.

Jayne Butler: There has been a little bit of work done on this, in terms of the recommissioning of the rape support fund and thinking about how to share that geographically. The result, when you have the same pot overall, is that you end up reducing services in some areas. If we start to look at where the gaps are, but we do not put any more funding in, and we are just revisiting what is already there, the result will be that some services that are funded now, which have high demands, will be reduced. There is nobody sitting there who is seeing people within a week, or sometimes even a month or six months.

--- Later in debate ---

[Elliot Colburn]

Q Briefly, you said in relation to the duty to collaborate that there should also be a duty of accountability. Following on from my colleague Rob’s line of questioning about the distinct nature of youth justice and youth crime, who should be responsible for overseeing that duty of accountability? We heard from the Domestic Abuse Commissioner that it should be the Ministry of Justice, but in the case of children do you think that should be your office or another body, or should it be the MOJ?

Dame Rachel de Souza: We heard a lot from the people before me about how services really are not set up for children, and we have started to talk about how they can be set up to deliver for children. Ultimately, of course, Government and Government Departments have a responsibility, but I think it is about ensuring accountability at local level as well. It is always going to have to be multi-agency, because there are different strands of support for children, but we need to find a way, and with children it is probably in relation to the victims code. There is some value in focusing on youth justice holding that, but we need to try to go for the holy grail, which is to make multi-agency support work. I do not want to sound like a broken record, but I think that looking at how the Lighthouse has done it in Camden, where it has drawn together the different strands of health, social care, policing and youth justice, and actually made that work, can give us a blueprint for how to go forward.

[Sarah Champion]

Q Children of paedophiles really suffer adversely. Should they be regarded as victims in terms of the definition in the Bill, so that they can get the information and support services they need?

Dame Rachel de Souza: Yes. I was so delighted during the passage of the Bill that Daisy’s law was taken seriously; we worked with Daisy. I think that is a really important step forward, and I feel similarly about children of paedophiles, because it will be the same argument.

[Siobhan Baillie]

Q I did some work on reducing parental conflict programmes. We know that even when there is simmering resentment and low-level arguing around children, it is problematic. What does the Bill do to improve services and checking in with children even when there is no direct harm? The child may not have been in the room when a parent was harmed, but we know it will still have an impact on them. How does the Bill improve those services—checking in, going through and making sure schools are involved?

Dame Rachel de Souza: We have good intentions, but what will be important is that that is in the VCOP and that we operationalise it properly, because I absolutely agree with you that when these situations arise, the earliest possible intervention to deal with parental conflict is what needs to happen.

I think we have—