A bill to put the rights of victims of crime into law has “no teeth”, according to the government’s adviser on the issue.
The Victims and Prisoners Bill will return to parliament this week, aiming to “fundamentally transform victims’ experience of the criminal justice system”, ministers have said.
The government has promised to put a code of practice into law to support victims, as well as giving the Ministry of Justice the power to inspect agencies failing them, and to create better oversight of all those involved with their treatment.
But Baroness Newlove, who has held the job of victims’ commissioner since October, has told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge the legislation is “not strong enough”.
Image: Pic: iStock
Speaking to the Politics Hub, the Tory peer – who has campaigned on victims rights since her husband Gary was murdered in 2007 – said the code of practice for supporting victims should be “on the face of the bill” to ensure those involved “have access to services, they get communicated properly, [that victims] do understand what support systems are out there”.
She added: “As it stands now, the code is just seen as persuasive guidance. So unless you have legal rights in a legal system, none of the professionals will stand up and do anything for it if you don’t make it by law.”
Politics Hub with Sophy Ridge
Sky News Monday to Thursday at 7pm.
Watch live on Sky channel 501, Freeview 233, Virgin 602, the Sky News website and app or YouTube.
Baroness Newlove also said the victims’ commissioner needed to be given oversight of whether the code is being adhered to “instead of the agencies and Ministry of Justice and the police marking their own homework”.
More on Conservatives
Related Topics:
Describing the bill as it stands, she added: “It has no teeth. It’s very weak. It came in that thin in the House of Lords.
“We’ve got to make sure that we give as much support and understanding and treat victims with dignity and respect.
Advertisement
“And as victims’ commissioner, I will keep on championing that and make sure we get some teeth in that bill, because otherwise it’s not worth the paper it’s written.”
A Ministry of Justice Spokesperson said: “This government is doing more than any other to improve the experiences of victims – including quadrupling funding for support services and improving training for staff who work with survivors.
“Our Victims and Prisoners Bill will place the foundations of the Victims’ Code on a statutory footing. This means that victims will be entitled to challenge decisions to not charge or continue a prosecution, receive information on how their case is progressing, and be signposted to relevant support services.
“However, we recognise that there is more to do, which is why alongside this landmark bill, we will be working with criminal justice bodies on a Victims’ Code campaign to better inform victims about their rights under the Code and to ensure their needs are met.”
Paradigm’s chief legal officer and general counsel said if Roman Storm is found guilty, it could slow future software development in the crypto and fintech industries.
Flawed data has been used repeatedly to dismiss claims about “Asian grooming gangs”, Baroness Louise Casey has said in a new report, as she called for a new national inquiry.
The government has accepted her recommendations to introduce compulsory collection of ethnicity and nationality data for all suspects in grooming cases, and for a review of police records to launch new criminal investigations into historical child sexual exploitation cases.
Image: Baroness Louise Casey carried out the review. Pic: PA
The crossbench peer has produced an audit of sexual abuse carried out by grooming gangs in England and Wales, after she was asked by the prime minister to review new and existing data, including the ethnicity and demographics of these gangs.
In her report, she has warned authorities that children need to be seen “as children” and called for a tightening of the laws around the age of consent so that any penetrative sexual activity with a child under 16 is classified as rape. This is “to reduce uncertainty which adults can exploit to avoid or reduce the punishments that should be imposed for their crimes”, she added.
Baroness Casey said: “Despite the age of consent being 16, we have found too many examples of child sexual exploitation criminal cases being dropped or downgraded from rape to lesser charges where a 13 to 15-year-old had been ‘in love with’ or ‘had consented to’ sex with the perpetrator.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
3:18
Grooming gangs victim speaks out
The peer has called for a nationwide probe into the exploitation of children by gangs of men.
She has not recommended another over-arching inquiry of the kind conducted by Professor Alexis Jay, and suggests the national probe should be time-limited.
The national inquiry will direct local investigations and hold institutions to account for past failures.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the inquiry’s “purpose is to challenge what the audit describes as continued denial, resistance and legal wrangling among local agencies”.
On the issue of ethnicity, Baroness Casey said police data was not sufficient to draw conclusions as it had been “shied away from”, and is still not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators.
‘Flawed data’
However, having examined local data in three police force areas, she found “disproportionate numbers of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds amongst suspects for group-based child sexual exploitation, as well as in the significant number of perpetrators of Asian ethnicity identified in local reviews and high-profile child sexual exploitation prosecutions across the country, to at least warrant further examination”.
She added: “Despite reviews, reports and inquiries raising questions about men from Asian or Pakistani backgrounds grooming and sexually exploiting young white girls, the system has consistently failed to fully acknowledge this or collect accurate data so it can be examined effectively.
“Instead, flawed data is used repeatedly to dismiss claims about ‘Asian grooming gangs’ as sensationalised, biased or untrue.
“This does a disservice to victims and indeed all law-abiding people in Asian communities and plays into the hands of those who want to exploit it to sow division.”
Spreaker
This content is provided by Spreaker, which may be using cookies and other technologies.
To show you this content, we need your permission to use cookies.
You can use the buttons below to amend your preferences to enable Spreaker cookies or to allow those cookies just once.
You can change your settings at any time via the Privacy Options.
Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to Spreaker cookies.
To view this content you can use the button below to allow Spreaker cookies for this session only.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
3:07
From January: Grooming gangs: What happened?
The baroness hit out at the failure of policing data and intelligence for having multiple systems which do not communicate with each other.
She also criticised “an ambivalent attitude to adolescent girls both in society and in the culture of many organisations”, too often judging them as adults.
‘Deep-rooted failure’
Responding to Baroness Casey’s review, Ms Yvette Cooper told the House of Commons: “The findings of her audit are damning.
“At its heart, she identifies a deep-rooted failure to treat children as children. A continued failure to protect children and teenage girls from rape, from exploitation, and serious violence.
She added: “Baroness Casey found ‘blindness, ignorance, prejudice, defensiveness and even good but misdirected intentions’ all played a part in this collective failure.”
Ms Cooper said she will take immediate action on all 12 recommendations from the report, adding: “We cannot afford more wasted years repeating the same mistakes or shouting at each other across this House rather than delivering real change.”
Image: Home Secretary Yvette Cooper responded to the report. Pic: PA
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said: “After months of pressure, the prime minister has finally accepted our calls for a full statutory national inquiry into the grooming gangs.
“We must remember that this is not a victory for politicians, especially the ones like the home secretary, who had to be dragged to this position, or the prime minister. This is a victory for the survivors who have been calling for this for years.”
Ms Badenoch added: “The prime minister’s handling of this scandal is an extraordinary failure of leadership. His judgement has once again been found wanting.
“Since he became prime minister, he and the home secretary dismissed calls for an inquiry because they did not want to cause a stir.
“They accused those of us demanding justice for the victims of this scandal as, and I quote, ‘jumping on a far right bandwagon’, a claim the prime minister’s official spokesman restated this weekend – shameful.”
The government has promised new laws to protect children and support victims so they “stop being blamed for the crimes committed against them”.
The crypto community is missing the opportunity to reimagine rather than transpose rulemaking for financial services. More technologists must join the regulatory conversation.