My Lords, I will amplify what the noble Baroness just said by actually quoting from the Government’s own description of the Bill and what is in it. A paragraph headed
“What happens if victims do not receive their entitlements?”
says:
“We think that all the measures set out will strengthen the service victims receive. As the Code is a statutory code of practice, all relevant bodies should already comply with it”.
We know they are not, so the status quo we are starting from is, to a very large degree, that the bodies which are meant to be complying with the statutory code of practice are not doing so. The paragraph continues:
“However, if things go wrong, victims can make a complaint”.
It is up to victims themselves, who may or may not be aware of what their rights are under the statutory code, to identify that they are not receiving their rights, and then it is up to them to make a complaint. What is the Victims’ Commissioner for if not to act as the obvious channel and filter for all such complaints so they can go directly through her or him to His Majesty’s Government?
What the Government have described here is a complete, accurate illustration of the problem we have. It is not working at the moment. What the Government have said will improve it, on the basis of the evidence we have, but, frankly, the arguments we have heard so far do not really give us any room for optimism, so I suspect I speak for everybody in the Committee when I say that, rather like my school reports, I think the Government “should do better”.