Alun
Michael: I shall focus primarily on new clause
18, which contains the essence of my proposals, which would assist
Ministers in making a reality of the concept of the commissioner for
victims and witnesses in a way that would command widespread
support.
I have been
involved in witness issues for many years. Indeed, I was involved in
setting up a very early victim support group in Cardiff, along with
Jonathan Evans, who went on to become a Conservative MP some years
later, and is now a Member of the European Parliament, but who was then
responsible for defending people in Cardiff within the court system. So
I have followed these issues for many years.
During my time
as the deputy Home Secretary, and during my many years in opposition, I
worked closely with Victim Support, which I found to be a constructive
organisation concerned with practical issues that would be of real
benefit to victims, rather than with representative or
headline-catching issues. I was therefore very concerned to read its
evidence to the Committee about the amendments to the commissioner
idea. It had originally supported the concept of having such a
commissioner when the idea was proposed five years ago, but it said in
its comments on the
Bill: “Since
then, the Victims Code Of Practice has brought about many of the basic
improvements in the system that would have fallen to the Commissioner,
so the rationale for the role is now much weaker. Further improvements
could be better delivered through proper monitoring of the Code and
regular increases in its service
standards.” It
went on to
say: “In
addition, the real voice for victims lies with organisations such as
Victim Support and others in the voluntary sector who help victims of
crime. The Commissioner will duplicate that role and waste valuable
resources.” Should
that be the case, there would be some sense in the conclusion that
Victim Support reached. It
stated: “We
are therefore calling on the Government to set out a clear argument for
why it thinks the Commissioner is still needed after
five years have passed and, unless it is able to do
so, to repeal the Commissioner provisions and redirect its funding
towards front line services instead.”
It
has clearly given the Government the opportunity to say, “No,
there is a focused piece of work that the commissioner could
undertake.”
Evidence that
has been heard by this Committee and by the Select Committee on Justice
has raised the concerns of victims and others about making complaints
about and getting redress within the criminal justice system. We heard
that there are 10 different agencies and organisations. The list that
shows how complaints are dealt with, in relation to different aspects
of the criminal justice system, shows that the methods are varied and
inconsistent. They might be suitable for the work of the relevant
agencies, but they certainly do not hang together if anyone has a
complaint about what the criminal justice system as a whole has done.
Hon. Members might share my experience that when one is trying to get
redress for a constituent, when something has gone wrong, it is often
difficult to know whether it went wrong because of the police, the
Crown Prosecution Service or the courts’ administration. Until
one can answer that, one cannot get into those separate silos of
complaint. We
could take away the burden currently on the victim, if they have a
complaint, of knowing where to address it and of having to understand
the criminal justice system in order to make a complaint. I therefore
suggest that the commissioner should be given a clear but very simple
and inexpensive responsibility, which is to be the point of
co-ordination. Victims and witnesses would make their complaint to the
commissioner, who would then ensure that the right silo of complaint
examination dealt with it, or, if the issue was clearly not for one
agency rather than another, that agencies co-ordinated their activities
to ensure that the focus was on giving the right answer to the victim
and dealing with the complaint, rather than playing games across the
silos, going right down the practical depths of individual
organisations. Mr.
Tim Boswell (Daventry) (Con): The right hon. Gentleman is
describing a one-stop shop, is he not?
Alun
Michael: It is a one-stop shop, but the shop does not have
to have all the goods for sale within it. The point is not to take away
the responsibility for existing agencies and existing complaints
systems to deal with complaints. The new clause would take away the
burden on the victim to understand the criminal justice system to be
able to make a complaint
effectively. I
suspect that the new clause would also be a great help to Members of
Parliament, who currently have to try to understand the criminal
justice system. I believe that even those of us who have been involved
in it for many years would agree that that is not the simplest thing to
do. My
proposal in new clause 18 is that we insert a clause to allow the
commissioner to “receive
complaints from victims and witnesses about the workings of the
criminal justice
system”. The
responsibility then would be either
to “indicate the appropriate body
to deal with the complaint or co-ordinate consideration of two or more
bodies where there is shared responsibility or a lack of clarity about
who is responsible for the issues about which the complaint is
made.” There
are two other elements of the new clause. One is that the
commissioner “shall be
supplied with a copy of the response of any such body or bodies and may
request that the findings be re-considered.”
In other words, the
activity of the cost remains with those organisations, but the
commissioner is able to act in the interests of the
victims. Finally,
the Lord Chancellor “may
issue guidance to the relevant bodies in the Criminal Justice System
setting out how they should co-operate with the Commission and with
each other in order to provide an appropriate response to victims and
witnesses.” I
am certain that any Lord Chancellor would see that as an opportunity to
tidy up some of the operations of the
system. Giving
the commissioner this role in respect of complaints would enable him to
change the culture of the criminal justice system without increasing
costs. The costs to the commission would be minimal, and the benefits
would be standard-setting rather than having to intervene directly. It
would be a major and positive
development. Mr.
David Kidney (Stafford) (Lab): For clarification, a couple
of constituents recently told me that false allegations made against
them were investigated by the criminal justice system and disposed of
without any prosecution. There is no stain on their character, but the
investigation has been disclosed to employers in enhanced Criminal
Records Bureau checks. Would the system that my right hon. Friend
describes extend to those people as
victims?
Alun
Michael: Very simply, if as victims they were complaining
about how they had been dealt with in the system, they would currently
be able to use one of 10 different complaint systems. My
proposal would enable the commissioner to help them to address their
complaint to the right organisation, or to ensure that there was
co-operation across boundaries. It might not deal with some of the more
complex areas of false accusation—some of them would fall
outwith the nature of the complaint system—but it would assist
somebody who had a complaint such as that against the
system. I
shall now explain the three amendments, including the one that I moved,
amendment 156, which would omit line 35. I do not understand why the
Government want to stop the commissioner being able in law to carry out
research. Whether the commissioner is able to carry out research or not
would depend on what resources are provided by the Lord Chancellor, so
the Government would control any expansion in research activity. It
seems unwise to remove from the Bill something that might never be used
but that might need to be used in the
future.
6.30
pm Amendment
163 is about the Government’s attempt to omit subsection (3)(b)
which is about the laying of reports before Parliament. The Government
have proposed a new system of reporting in which reports would be made
to the Secretary of State for Justice, the Attorney-General and the
Home Secretary. I am perfectly happy for them to receive reports, but
it seems rather odd that a report should not be laid before Parliament.
In that regard, I have made a further suggestion, which is that the
Government would be supported in deleting the existing provision if the
three Ministers who receive the report have the responsibility of
laying it before Parliament.
It seems that the report of the commissioner should
end up before Parliament, but the way in which the clause is worded
suggests that that would not be the case. These are
fairly simple points aimed at assisting the Government in addressing
the concerns raised by Victim Support and enabling them with very
little pain or cost to do something really useful. I hope, therefore,
that the proposals in new clause 18 will be accepted by my hon.
Friend.
Mr.
Garnier: The principles behind new clause 18 are something
that we broadly share. The right hon. Gentleman can correct me if I am
wrong, but I suspect that they are drawn from the Victim Support
manifesto from earlier in this
decade.
Alun
Michael: They arise from looking at the concerns that have
been expressed by Victim Support, which I quoted, and from the evidence
about how difficult it is to find one’s way through the
complaints system. It is as simple as
that.
Mr.
Garnier: It is a coincidental invention, but none the
worse for all that. In the Victim Support manifesto 2001, it stated
that the role of the victims commissioner should be to ensure that
agencies implement changes to their policies or procedures where these
have proved not to have taken full account of the interests and needs
of victims; advise victims on how to seek redress, giving assistance in
important test cases and initiating proceedings in the
Commissioner’s own name; deal with individual complaints where
resolution at an earlier stage has not been successful; scrutinise
proposed legislation which will affect victims of crime; conduct
inquiries into issues of public concern that would not be resolved
through the outcome of individual cases; and seek to reduce secondary
victimisation. Those are all reasonable aims to try to
achieve.
The one thing
that puzzles me about the Government’s approach is how slow they
have been. Six years ago—probably longer—they heralded
the establishment of the victims commissioner. In 2002, the post was
proposed in their document “Justice for All”. It was
legislated for in the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004.
The post was advertised, but they never appointed anyone to fill the
job. Then the Prime Minister announced it yet again in his speech to
the Labour party conference last year. Now under this clause, we get
provision to pay for his salary and pension and allowances and
gratuity. The whole process has taken far too long.
The Government
have appointed an interim victims champion, and at last we are seeing
the Government moving toward doing something practical about making it
possible for the victims commissioner to carry out his functions. None
the less, it has taken seven years, and the Government must explain why
they have taken so long to achieve what must not be a party political
or a controversial matter, but something that so many of us think is
appropriate.
Jenny
Willott: I am glad that the right hon. Member for Cardiff,
South and Penarth has tabled these amendments. I share his views about
the value of Victim Support and the job that it does. I declare an
interest as a former employee of Victim Support in the area in which
the right hon. Gentleman worked. The right hon. Gentleman makes a
valuable point.
I share the
concerns of the hon. and learned Member for Harborough about the delay
in implementing the victims commissioner. Given that it has been such a
long time since the measure was originally proposed, a bit of a
stocktake as to how the situation has changed and what powers are
needed seems sensible. With the implementation of the victims code of
practice, things have improved. There is a feeling from organisations
such as Victim Support that things have got better in a number of ways,
so it makes sense to re-evaluate the powers of the victims
commissioner. However, the concern about the clause, which would be put
right by the amendments tabled by the right hon. Gentleman, is that the
Bill as drafted waters down massively the powers of the victims
commissioner without giving it any real role. The role is not one that
has been put in place before, so to take away pretty much all its teeth
before it has had a chance seems completely
daft. For
me, the key issues are around transparency and reporting to Parliament,
which I find difficult to understand—I shall be grateful if the
Minister will clarify why that has been removed and why the
commissioner is only reporting to Ministers. The role of Parliament in
such issues is important. It is also important that the commissioner
has the ability to do something. The proposals in new clause 18 are a
sensible way forward, but I have real concerns about the powers being
removed by the clause. I fully support the amendments tabled by the
right hon. Gentleman to reinstate some of the powers and
responsibilities of the commissioner, so that when we finally see a
full-blown victims commissioner, they are in a position to do
something. It is a crucial role and removing the ability of the
commissioner to do anything is just kicking their legs out from
underneath them before they even start, so I wholeheartedly support the
right hon. Gentleman’s amendments.
Maria
Eagle: I shall try to deal with the points raised. We are
making changes to the legal framework, which as the hon. and learned
Member for Harborough said was in the Domestic Violence, Crime and
Victims Act 2004, for a number of reasons. One is that, as
he said, we were unable to get the right level of applications to
appoint. As the hon. Member for Cardiff, Central was saying, things
have changed and improved a lot in the interim. While not having been
able to appoint at the time of the first advert, for the post as
originally envisaged, we carried on and now fund Victim Support with a
core grant of £30 million a year, plus an additional
£12.5 million since 2007-08, to provide a national
network of support and engagement with victims and witnesses. So,
Victim Support is now a national organisation, with a central policy
function. We do not now believe that there is good value in
establishing a separate office for the commissioner with roles that are
effectively carried out by Victim Support as a national
organisation. We
have, as the hon. Lady mentioned, introduced the code of practice for
victims of crime, which sets out standards of service that victims can
accept. We have developed witness care units, to provide information
and support for witnesses to attend court and give their best evidence.
I have already mentioned the development in Victim Support, which
included a lot of financial support from the Government, and the 42
local criminal justice boards, which bring together criminal justice
agencies at a local level to work in partnership, with a
primary responsibility of supporting victims and witnesses. There is
also much more availability of special measures to help vulnerable and
intimidated witnesses. In fact, the landscape has been transformed and
it is for that reason that we want to change the functions that the
victims commissioner should undertake, to take account of that changed
circumstance. That is why we are bringing forward our suggested changes
in the Bill. I hope that the Committee will accept
that. We
do not believe that there is a necessity for an elaborate statutory
support structure for the commissioner. It would distract the focus of
the commissioner’s work, which should primarily be about
understanding the needs of victims and witnesses and promoting their
interests. The commissioner can effectively be supported by a core
office of civil servants or other seconded professionals from criminal
justice agencies and take advice, and work with other important experts
such as Victim Support. That is why we no longer consider it
appropriate for the commissioner to have the power to undertake
research.
I assure my
right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth that we
remain fully committed to research. For example, last year the
Department published research papers exploring victims’ and
witnesses’ experiences of the criminal justice system and an
evaluation of the victims advocate scheme. We want such valuable
research to continue. We want the commissioner to have access to it,
but we do not believe that it is necessary for him or her to have their
own research capability. In planning our own research programmes, we
would expect to enter into discussions with the commissioner about
priorities and to take his or her views into
account. Amendments
157 and 163 relate to reports by the commissioner. Amendment 163 would
retain the duty on the Justice Secretary to lay before Parliament a
copy of any ad hoc report issued by the commissioner, while amendment
157 would require the Justice Secretary to lay the
commissioner’s annual report before Parliament. I completely
understand the reasons for the amendments, but we are not seeking to
downgrade the importance of the reports issued by the commissioner.
There is great value in laying reports by statutory bodies and office
holders before
Parliament. In
future, the commissioner will chair the victims advisory panel. Section
55 of the 2004 Act requires the panel to produce an annual report for
any year in which it has been asked to provide advice by the
Justice Secretary. Under section 55, the Justice Secretary is required
to publish those reports and lay them before Parliament and it is in
that way and to avoid duplication that the commissioner’s work
will be laid before Parliament.
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