Baroness Levitt (Lab)

My Lords, the Government firmly believe that the Victims’ Commissioner—I have known the current occupant of the role for many years and have the utmost regard for her—has a crucial strategic role in representing the interests of victims and the witnesses of crime and anti-social behaviour. Amendment 58 would significantly widen the commissioner’s remit by requiring her to support and protect individuals who assist victims. Of course, we agree that the work of those who dedicate their efforts to supporting victims is crucial, but the proposed widening of the Victims’ Commissioner’s statutory functions would, in the Government’s view, dilute the fundamental purpose of the Victims’ Commissioner; that is, to promote the interests of victims and witnesses themselves. In fact, the commissioner’s statutory function of promoting the interests of victims and witnesses already allows her to work with and support those who themselves support victims, and she does not need an explicit statutory function to continue with that. Since the definition of “those assisting victims” could be interpreted broadly, this amendment also risks heavily extending the casework burden that would be imposed by the two other amendments, to which I now turn. The Government have already brought forward Clause 8, which proposes to amend the existing statutory limitation on the exercise of the commissioner’s functions in relation to individual cases to allow her to exercise her functions in relation to cases that indicate a wider systemic issue. But Amendments 59 and 60 would go further—either entirely removing or narrowing the existing limitation. We understand the amendments to be creating an alternative. We do not believe that this is the right approach and consider that our carefully designed Clause 8 achieves the right balance. The Victims’ Commissioner is not a complaints body, and it is important to maintain this distinction. Her role is to advocate for victims as a group and to address system-wide issues—that is what Clause 8 does. It is up to her to decide which cases she believes create those system-wide issues. Individual victims already have a clear escalation route through the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman if they are dissatisfied with their experience of the criminal justice system. Expanding the commissioner’s involvement in individual casework to this extent would shift his or her role towards handling complaints rather than overseeing the system as a whole. It is also vital that decisions of the judiciary and other independent public bodies that support victims of crime remain free from external influence. The current legislative bar, and the amendment to it that we have proposed through Clause 8, safeguards that independence and avoids any uncertainty about the commissioner’s role in such processes. We do not believe that Amendments 59 or 60 achieve that. The point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, which she has raised and discussed with me before on the many occasions on which we have now met—obviously, I look forward to many more—is a good point and one that we need to keep under review. Perhaps the noble Baroness and I can discuss it further the next time we meet. As I say, I very much look forward to that. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, agrees that preserving the Victims’ Commissioner’s strategic function is essential to holding the system to account effectively, and I invite him to withdraw his amendment.