My Lords, I am delighted to take part in this Committee, both as Helen Newlove and as Victims’ Commissioner. I thank all the victims
I have spoken to over the years. We are bringing their voices to this Committee, right through to the end, because we cannot be grateful enough for their bravery and their having come forward.
I have a list, but I will try to get through it. Amendment 2 is welcome and rightly looks to put bereaved victims of homicide abroad into the code. As has been said, to lose a loved one to murder is horrific and devastating—I can personally say that—no matter where the crime takes place. However, the families I have met whose loved ones have been murdered abroad have to get through significant additional financial, legal and logistical burdens in a different language and a different system—it is not as simple as we put on this script for Hansard today, believe you me.
To have to repatriate the body of a loved one is not simple, because families have to look to the coroner so that they do not harm evidence. That has to be co-ordinated with a foreign criminal justice system, where some families have sat in police stations with photographs of their loved ones, waiting for someone to pick up on that in their language. That image has never left me to this day. To feel alien in a country, knowing how you have lost a loved one, must be horrendous. It is bad enough in the system in this country, but to have that in a foreign country is very demeaning to a hurt family.
As has been said, there are only 60 to 80 such families a year, but that is enough. It is important that this small group of families has the same entitlements as those of bereaved families in this country. There really needs to be change. They are not entitled to criminal injuries compensation unless the death occurred as a result of a terror attack, as we have heard. This is particularly unjust when you bear in mind that they will have the same additional financial burdens as a victim of terrorism abroad. We all live on mobile phones; to have to pay a mobile phone bill just to get family help, when you do not have the finances, must be horrendous. We need to look at how we can balance this.
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Over the years, I have met many victims and families; I have seen their frustration and hurt but, more importantly, their dignity, which is amazing. To have to translate documents, find the correct interpreters and, as we have heard, the correct legal people is unbelievable. I want these families to have the same access to interpreters and translation services as is on offer to victims and defendants in the UK for whom English is not their first language. I also want to be sure that agencies, including the Foreign Office, with which I have had many meetings, the national homicide service and the police are working together holistically to provide timely information and help more sensitively. We must support these families. The entitlements for these victims need to be in the Code of Practice for Victims of Crime so that they can have the same legal force as entitlements for bereaved victims of murders in the UK, and so that agencies can be held to account. The time has come to put these families into the victims’ code, which is where they deserve to be.
I also support Amendment 4. As many noble Lords will be aware, anti-social behaviour is my subject, most personally because my girls and I witnessed the most
horrific case of anti-social behaviour when we lost my late husband, Garry, to 14 kicks to the head and 40 internal injuries. Having had to turn his life support machine off after these horrendous acts, it beggars belief that we are still discussing anti-social behaviour as we do today.
Persistent anti-social behaviour targeted at an individual or group of individuals has a devastating impact on the victims’ lives, health and relationships and on their ability to hold down paid employment and to feel valued and that their life has worth. I have met hundreds of such people over the years, and I still have an inbox full of anti-social behaviour incidents. The acts that are happening are horrendous. It is not just young people, but an older generation who have the utmost disrespect for other people and their homes. I have met young victims who were sofa surfing while paying rent on a flat they were too afraid to live in, and elderly victims too frightened to leave their homes. All too often, victims have been compelled to move home because it is the only way they feel safe. That is not the way to stop anti-social behaviour.
Depressingly, the stories are all the same. Their plight was not recognised by the authorities, particularly the police, with each incident being treated in isolation and no one attempting to understand the wider pattern of behaviour and the extremely high level of harm being caused. All too often, the police declined to treat the behaviour as criminal but instead as a neighbour dispute or a misdemeanour. Yet in many cases it was very apparent that the criminal threshold had been met.
Why do the police not record it as a crime? I believe that it is because there is a prevailing culture that all anti-social behaviour is, as the police put it, “low level”. I have said to every police force for 14 years that they must stop calling it that—it is their phrase, nobody else’s. In terms of its seriousness and harm, it is certainly not low level. As a result, victims are not referred to local victim support services, where they might be able to get the support they so often need, and, sadly, are simply left to struggle alone.
Police and crime commissioners provide funding to local victim services, but it applies only to those victims who fall within the victims’ code. The group of people I am talking about are all too often victims of crime, albeit not officially recognised as such. Some PCCs use discretionary funding to support these victims. I thank them for recognising that there is a strong need—sadly, many others do not. This amendment would make it explicit that victims who meet the statutory threshold for anti-social behaviour case review come within the ambit of the code and, as such, qualify for much-needed help and support.
I also support Amendments 8, 12 and 19, and thank everyone who has come forward. I feel passionately about this issue. We have to recognise these families, because the criminal justice system does not. Six years ago, I launched the report Entitlements and Experiences of Victims of Mentally Disordered Offenders, in which I highlighted the poor treatment of victims of perpetrators detained under the Mental Health Act.
I met a family whose children had been burned in a car, but they could still not get recognition for the harm and trauma. The child was hiding under her bed
because her parent, who was in a mental health institution, had every right to see the daughter whom she had tried to burn alive, along with her son, who could not be recognised and, sadly, lost his life. Their being put to one side by professionals who said, “We’re not telling you anything”, has never left me to this day. They are a small group, and when I decided to speak up for them, they could not thank me enough. I am just like them. That shows you how badly this system needs to change in order to include them. Many have been subjected to the most horrific violent crimes and lost so many loved ones.
The law rightly distinguishes between offenders who were of sound mind when committing their crimes and those whose judgment was impaired by mental illness. That is not disputed, but the trauma and distress inflicted on the victim by these crimes nevertheless remains the same, regardless of whether the perpetrator is in prison or a hospital facility. Despite this, victims of those detained under the Mental Health Act do not have the same entitlements under the victims’ code. In 2018, several such victims told me that they feel isolated in a system that pays little regard to their needs or support.
Six years later, there have been improvements and progress. In particular, victims of unrestricted patients have the same entitlement to a victim liaison officer as any other victim. Yet, while there has been real progress in recent years in involving victims in the parole process, this has not been extended to the victims of mentally disordered offenders. They have been overlooked and left behind again. It pains me that these victims are still not entitled to submit a victim personal statement when the offender’s ongoing detention is reviewed by the tribunal, nor do they have an entitlement to attend the tribunal hearing and present their statement in person. A victim can submit a victim personal statement to a magistrates’ court, the Crown Court, the Court of Appeal or the Parole Board. The tribunals in England and Wales are the only bodies not to invite or accept a statement.
As we have heard, in Scotland the mental health tribunals allow representations from victims. The Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003 provides a statutory right for any party that has any interest to make representations to the tribunal either orally or in writing. The victim makes representations to that panel considering the case. It takes place at a separate oral hearing where the patient is not present, although it is attended by their legal representative. The Scottish tribunal says that
“this has not proved to be in any way problematic. Having heard the victim’s representations, the Tribunal has been able to have regard to them in deciding, for example, whether to attach any condition to a patient’s conditional discharge”.
If listening to a victim is lawful in Scotland, there is no reason why it cannot be lawful in England and Wales. These victims and families have suffered the most appalling crimes. The father I met, whose child had been burned and who had lost a son the same way, felt so guilty that he could not protect his daughter. They have waited far too long to be heard. I ask the Minister to look again; the time has come to act.