Victims of Crime and Anti-social Behaviour, Etc (Rights, Entitlements and Related Matters)

I have never met anybody working in any part of the criminal justice system who does not care about victims. From first responders to High Court judges, people have empathy for victims of crime—they care—but individual empathy all too often fails to translate into organisational recognition of victim needs. People are not the problem; the system is, and perverse incentives run through it like letters in a stick of rock.

By giving powers that matter to victims, modernising our justice system to reflect the value and needs of victims and inserting consequence for failure into the system, this Bill makes victims unignorable. Right now, under this Government, victims and their needs are routinely ignored. A code of rights exists, but what happens if it is ignored? Nothing. If we did what the Government aspire to do, which is to simply put the code into statute, what will happen if the code is ignored? Still, nothing. Laws only matter if there is a consequence for breaking them, and the same must be true for a victims law.

That is why clause 5 of part 3 of the Bill will create a register, held by the Victims’ Commissioner, on to which all individuals named as responsible for a breach of the victims code must be placed. Any part of the criminal justice system seeking to make an appointment in the top decile of salaries must consult the register to see whether any applicants have previously failed to uphold victims’ rights. We do not bar recruitment, but doubtless it will be taken into account. The message is clear: for the first time, there will be consequences for those who ignore victims. For the first time, failing victims will have a career-limiting impact.

For rights to have meaning, people need to know that they exist. Today, all too often, that simply is not the case. Some 80% of people who suffer crime make their way through the criminal justice system totally unaware that there is a code of rights. There is no fixed point in time when a victim is informed of their rights—there should be, but when? Alleged perpetrators are read their essential rights at the point of arrest, but the victim is not informed of their rights at the point of becoming a victim. That imbalance needs addressing. The Bill introduces a requirement that victims must be informed of their essential rights at the “earliest possible opportunity”. The clear expectation of the Bill is that the moment of first response is usually the appropriate time to inform victims that they have the right to information and support and a comprehensive set of legally enforceable rights to support them as victims. Those who think that this is too soon must answer the following question: if the moment of becoming a victim is not the right time for someone to discover that they have legally enforceable rights—that they have power—then when is? After a week, a month or, as it is now for most victims, never?

A powerful code of rights needs a powerful commissioner to hold the system to account. In Dame Vera Baird we have a fearless commissioner, and the Bill seeks to boost further the commissioner’s power and authority. The Labour party does not fear statutory bodies with independence; we believe that they strengthen our democracy. That is why the Bill shifts reporting from Ministers to Parliament, gives the Justice Committee the power of veto over future commissioner appointments and grants extended freedoms to investigate the criminal justice system to ensure code compliance.

The Bill also gives power directly to victims. For them, things will be different. No longer will they need an MP to authorise a victim’s complaint to the parliamentary ombudsman, an inexcusable barrier that partly explains why fewer than 20 victims have lodged complaints over the past three years. That is an insulting number, given the scale of code violations. Persistent victims of antisocial behaviour will for the first time be embraced by the code, which will empower people to stand up against those who play havoc with the civility everyone has the right to expect from their neighbours and from within their community.

Right now, only a minority of victims understand their rights and only a fraction will ever exert them. The system ignores infraction, so over time it has become normalised. With this Bill we modernise our system of justice to take into account the rights and the need of victims. Not only will the measures in this Bill lessen the impact of crime on victims, but they will help improve the quality of justice itself, by delivering victims in their role as witnesses into courtrooms empowered with knowledge, rights and support. It is not radical—we do not tear down old liberties—but it marks the only significant step forward for almost two decades. We insert career-limiting consequences into a system that currently ignores victims with impunity. We empower victims with the knowledge of their rights from the moment they become victims. We make it easier for those rights to be understood and asserted, and more straightforward to appeal should the need arise. We give victims an enforcer with teeth in the shape of a commissioner with the independence, power, and resources to hold our criminal justice system to account on a victim’s behalf. And we provide a criminal justice system that better reflects the aspirations of our society for a justice system that offers dignity and support to those who suffer at the hands of criminals and not one that, as is too often the case today, prolongs the agony.

That Peter Kyle, Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner, Mr David Lammy, Nick Thomas-Symonds, Rachel Reeves, Valerie Vaz, Mr Nicholas Brown, Jess Phillips, Holly Lynch, Wes Streeting and Yvette Cooper present the Bill.

Peter Kyle accordingly presented the Bill.