Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps the Government has taken to transpose the EU Directive on Victims' Rights into UK law.

The Ministry of Justice fully transposed the EU Victims’ Directive 2012/29/EU (the Victims’ Directive) on 16 November 2015. In conjunction with existing legislation, the Code of Practice for Victims of Crime (Victims' Code) is the main mechanism used to transpose the Victims’ Directive into the law of England and Wales.

The UK government is responsible for transposing the Directive in England and Wales. The Devolved Administrations are also required to implement the Directive under their devolved powers and we have been working closely with them to do so.

The transposition table which sets out how we have implemented the Victims’ Directive through the Victims’ Code can be found at:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2015/1817/pdfs/uksitn_20151817_en.pdf

In the Queen’s Speech we made a commitment to bring forward measures to increase the rights of victims of crime. Further detail on our plans will be published in due course.