Victims and Courts Bill

Committee (1st Day) (Continued)

Amendment 38

38: After Clause 7, insert the following new Clause— “Duty to commission support services for caregivers of victims of abuse and exploitation(1) This section applies in respect of victims of offences relating to—(a) domestic abuse,(b) sexual violence, or(c) child criminal exploitation, where the victim—(i) at the time of the offence, was under the age of 18, or(ii) is an adult at risk of harm.(2) It is the duty of relevant authorities to commission sufficient and specific services for the parent, guardian or person who has responsibility for the victim under subsection (1) for the purpose of securing the rights of the victim under the Victims Code of Practice for England and Wales.(3) Victim is defined as outlined in Section 1 of the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024.(4) The services commissioned and provided under subsection (2) must be—(a) appropriate to the needs of the caregiver in supporting the victim,(b) trauma-informed and culturally competent, and(c) accessible without unreasonable delay or procedural burden. (5) In exercising their duty under this section, relevant authorities must have regard to guidance issued by the Secretary of State.(6) The Secretary of State must publish such guidance within six months of the passing of this Act, following consultation with relevant stakeholders including—(a) victim support organisations,(b) organisations representing children and vulnerable adults, and(c) persons with the lived-experience of the effects of sexual or violent offences.(7) In this section—“child criminal exploitation” has the meaning given in the Crime and Policing Act 2026;“adult at risk of harm” means a person aged 18 or over who—(a) has needs for care and support,(b) is experiencing, or is at risk of, abuse or neglect, and(c) as a result of those needs is unable to protect themselves against the abuse or neglect or the risk of it;“relevant authorities” has the meaning given in section 13 of the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024.”Member’s explanatory statement This amendment places a duty on relevant authorities to provide specific services to the parent, guardian or person who has responsibility for a victim of domestic abuse, sexual violence or child criminal exploitation for the purposes of securing the rights of the victim under the Victims Code.

My Lords, I laid Amendment 38, which proposes a duty to commission support services for caregivers of victims of abuse and exploitation. I am grateful to Restitute for its briefing, not just for this Bill but over the years. Cath Pickles from Restitute and her colleagues do an amazing job working with the caregivers—mainly parents, but also siblings—of victims of very serious abuse who have to pick up the pieces after the abuse, witnessing lives lived in trauma. Of course, it is obvious that, over time, many of these caregivers are traumatised, too.

Cath said in an interview with the Daily Express that the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse had findings showing that non-offending parents, particularly mothers, of survivors can experience psychological effects similar to those of the victims. A recent independent report by the University of Suffolk showed that Restitute has built a model of support for victims’ families from literally nothing. However, despite the sea change across the country, Cath knows from her bitter personal experience of the guilt, shame, stigmatisation and isolation that the work that Restitute can do is far from enough and more is needed. That is why Amendment 38 is so important.

It is important to recognise that support does not confer victim status for sentencing, compensation or criminal proceedings, but it can last for the mother—as it is in most cases—who often has to accept a child back into her home who has been an adult elsewhere and has been raped or badly sexually assaulted and may not be able to work or live independently for a very long time. That will of course affect the very close family caregivers. The Child Sexual Abuse Centre is due to publish national guidance in April. It is thought that it will explicitly recognise that parents and carers should be treated as victims in their own right, reflecting the harm that they experience as a consequence of child sexual abuse and the criminal justice response.

I will speak to Amendment 45, in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. I apologise to the Minister for being unable to come to her briefing. It was at the same time as my Committee of the House, so I was pulled deeply. We may be able to discuss these issues at another time, but I thank her for the opportunity.

The amendment would ensure that police forces across England and Wales have access to victim navigators to support modern slavery victims. This would fulfil the recommendations of the Home Affairs Select Committee and the House of Lords Modern Slavery Act 2015 Committee, which stated:

“Victim navigators should be rolled out nationally. The objective must be that they are available in all cases”.

The provision of victim navigators will be essential to achieving the Safeguarding Minister’s pledge to drive up the prosecutions of modern slavery predators. It will help to fulfil the Government’s mission of safer streets, including tackling violence against women and girls, and achieve their election promise to deliver a justice system that puts the needs of victims first by enabling more successful prosecutions and convictions of traffickers who prey on the most vulnerable.

An independent economic impact assessment concluded in 2025 that a single victim navigator benefitted the country by £150,000. This came through saving police costs, reducing victims’ needs and thus the cost of support, and increasing convictions ensuring that predators are dealt with and victims give evidence. This is vital. It also saves the exploitation of further victims.

The chief executive of the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority described the benefit of victims having a victim navigator:

“That means they’re better able to get help, and it also helps us when we’re taking people to court, because they understand the process better, they understand how to engage, and they feel supported. It has made a real difference to us”.

I support this amendment. It is rare that we have an amendment that goes way back on good practice.

After the riots in 1990, Northumbria Police introduced a way of monitoring and mentoring witnesses going to court. At that stage, that part of the country had the highest crime rate in Europe in relation to car crime and the like. As a result of the monitoring and mentoring—where an officer was paired up with witnesses to go to court—there was an increase of five in the convictions in that area, and it is well documented that crime in that part of the country went down by record levels, still not beaten.

Navigators are surely an expansion of the scheme and will probably deal with more difficult cases than we were dealing with in Northumbria. We know that, in trafficking and slave trafficking, it is extremely difficult to get people to come forward and give evidence, and that when they do, with the justice system as it stands at the moment, taking four to five years to get to the Crown Court, there needs to be an extra delivery to the witnesses. It is the victims who will achieve something in relation to the benefits of this.

The argument from certain quarters, I guess, will be that this is going to cost more money. That is not the case. As the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, said, there are massive savings in this. If it is £150,000 for each case, you only have to combine that with multiples to make the sum extraordinary.

I go back to what I said at the beginning. This is a scheme, in a different way, that worked and was created as best practice by the Prime Minister of the time, John Major. It is an old scheme that is practical and works. So, from my point of view and that of my colleagues I have talked to—you have already heard quoted a detective sergeant, but there are others higher up the tree, and constables—we would welcome this as a positive step forward.

My Lords, I have signed all three of my noble friend Baroness Brinton’s amendments. I will not speak to them at any length. Amendment 38 prompts me to declare an interest, having been chair of the organisation Refuge for very many years. In connection with Amendments 43 and 44, it strikes me that there is quite a read-across between these and those we debated earlier on the response of a victim and how they are affected, and how an offender is prompted, under the amendments on appearance in court, to address what has happened. But it is not that read-across that I want to spend time on.

I was a member of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 Committee and the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, has picked up one of its recommendations. Her amendment is a good deal more ambitious than the recommendation in our report, which just talked about the objective being to have victim navigators available in all cases. She is calling for rollout within six months, which strikes me as ambitious. Ambition is good.

The report was headed “evidence gathering”, and the evidence we heard was about assisting the police and getting best evidence. Through a friend who has been involved in assisting the police in a number of slavery cases, I realise how difficult this is. I will mention a couple of them. On one occasion a big police operation was set up to rescue people who were block-paving. It was almost impossible to hold any of the people who were the subject of this. They managed to keep one, despite all the preparation and all the common-sense, humane ideas, such as: do not just pull them into a room and start questioning them, but sit them down and say, “Would you like a glass of juice?” It sounds obvious, but apparently it was not entirely obvious. On another occasion, throughout the police interview a woman who was being prostituted was in touch with her “boyfriend”, who was telling her what she should be saying. How that could have got through, I do not know.

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords for their valuable contributions to this debate and to the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Goudie, for bringing forward the amendments.

Amendment 38 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, proposes a new clause that seeks to place a duty on relevant authorities to commission support services for caregivers of victims of domestic abuse, sexual violence or exploitation. The amendment would ensure that those with responsibility for the victims are not overlooked by the system and have access to the appropriate support. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response as to how the amendment could be delivered and might function in practice.

Amendments 43 and 44 would introduce new clauses concerning restorative justice. These build on the provisions in the Bill, better to enable victims to explain the impact of a crime to the offender and to participate meaningfully in the justice process. Some victims engage with restorative justice services, but such engagement must be voluntary. Victims should not be placed under any pressure to engage further with the offender. None the less, there are findings showing that these services reduce the likelihood of offenders reoffending and can result in other social benefits, including delivering value for money. We on this side are interested to hear from the Minister how the Government will ensure that services such as these are used where it is thought they are likely to be beneficial.

Amendment 45 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, seeks to implement the recommendation of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 Committee that victim navigators be rolled out nationally so that they are available in all cases. In response to that recommendation, the Government stated in December 2024 that they want to build on the research of the previous Government on how best to support victims. In addition, the Government said they had met the NGOs delivering the victim navigator programme to understand its impact and to explore options for expansion. We have also heard an authoritative and persuasive speech from the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, who obviously has real hands-on experience in this area. We should listen carefully to what he has to say, and I hope the Minister will speak to him and engage with him.

I shall speak first to Amendment 38 in the name of the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Hamwee. While entirely understanding the motivation for the amendment, the Government believe that it would be neither necessary nor helpful to place a statutory obligation on certain authorities to commission certain support services for this cohort. In a world of finite resources, that would prioritise provision to third parties.

I reassure the noble Baronesses that the parents and carers of victims of abuse and exploitation can already access support services. The funding that the Ministry of Justice provides to the Rape and Sexual Abuse Support Fund and to police and crime commissioners can be, and is, used to commission specific support services for parents and carers.

Parents and carers will often access services that the victim themselves is accessing, particularly where the victim is a child. Parents and carers of victims of crime can also seek mental health support or other support through local services and the NHS. Having said this, I recognise that more can be done to support this cohort. As part of the violence against women and girls strategy, this Government has committed up to £50 million to transform support for victims of child sexual abuse through expanding the use of child houses. These are incredible places, as anybody who has had a chance to visit the one in London can tell you. They offer vital wraparound support to non-abusing parents and carers in one physical location. In addition, the Ministry of Justice has founded the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse to develop an online directory of support services for those affected by child sexual abuse. This can be easily navigated to identify services for parents and carers and other affected adults.

I turn now to Amendments 43 and 44 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton, Lady Jones and Lady Hamwee. This Government recognise the positive impact that restorative justice can have in appropriate cases and are very grateful to the restorative justice providers who continue to offer this important service. We agree that when delivered in the right circumstances restorative justice can improve victim satisfaction, reduce reoffending and bring benefits to victims, offenders and their communities. Under the current victims’ code, victims must be told about restorative justice services when reporting a crime, but we have been told that this may be too early—we are listening— and that is why under the new code consultation launched last week we are retaining this but have proposed an additional entitlement for the victim to be told about restorative justice again after an offender has been convicted. We look forward to engaging stakeholders during the code consultation.

My Lords, I thank all the speakers in this debate. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, for his support and curiosity on how the Minister would respond. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, my noble friend Lady Hamwee and the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, for speaking so powerfully on the issue of navigators for victims of modern slavery as well.

I thank the Minister for her response, too. She will not be surprised to hear that I do not quite agree with everything that she said. On Amendment 38 and the support for caregivers, she said it was not necessary for this cohort because they can already access support. It is not necessarily clear to that particular cohort that it is available, because they present as trying to fight for the support for their child. That is part of the problem and, as a result, the personal trauma and damage that they live with is often quite repressed. One reason for the amendment was to find a mechanism where people actually say, “And how are you? What can we do to support you?”. I asked the Minister earlier if it would be possible to have a meeting. It would be good, perhaps, to assess this. It is also financial—perhaps the Chancellor of the Exchequer should hear—because often these parents give up work to look after their children. Their lifestyles change, so it is a very big deal, but I thank the Minister for what she said on that point.

I am glad the Government agree that restorative justice can work. I am sorry to be a bit of a pain, but we were clear in our Amendment 43, in subsection (3) of its proposed new clause, that

“a victim must at all times give informed consent, and participation in any restorative justice process shall be voluntary”.

That is the core, because it would not work if not. The Minister said that it might be a problem for victims of stalking, for example, because they might not want to do it, but that is easy, as they can say, “No, I’m not interested in meeting my stalker”—I personally never want to meet my stalker; absolutely no, sorry—but that crime is of a different nature and there are plenty of other crimes, particularly some of the slightly lower-level ones, where if it really reduces reoffending that much, the Government have to look at it. On that basis, I really hope that the Government will seriously look at expanding it beyond its very small nature at the moment, where it seems to be a few people who might be interested rather than recognising that it will transform the court system and the justice system overall. I beg to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 38 withdrawn.

Amendment 39

39: After Clause 7, insert the following new Clause— “Victim personal statements(1) The Secretary of State must, within six months of the passing of this Act, issue revised guidance on the content of victim personal statements.(2) The revised guidance issued under subsection (1) must stipulate that when making a victim personal statement, a victim must be able to say anything they wish about the defendant, provided it is not contrary to any statutory limitations on free speech, makes allegations of untried criminal conduct or is disorderly language.(3) The court must disregard any prejudicial comments made during a victim personal statement.”Member's explanatory statement This new clause would require the Secretary of State to review how to make victim personal statements less restrictive and clarify what can be included.