Baroness Brinton (LD)

My Lords, I thank all the speakers in this debate. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, for his support and curiosity on how the Minister would respond. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, my noble friend Lady Hamwee and the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, for speaking so powerfully on the issue of navigators for victims of modern slavery as well. I thank the Minister for her response, too. She will not be surprised to hear that I do not quite agree with everything that she said. On Amendment 38 and the support for caregivers, she said it was not necessary for this cohort because they can already access support. It is not necessarily clear to that particular cohort that it is available, because they present as trying to fight for the support for their child. That is part of the problem and, as a result, the personal trauma and damage that they live with is often quite repressed. One reason for the amendment was to find a mechanism where people actually say, “And how are you? What can we do to support you?”. I asked the Minister earlier if it would be possible to have a meeting. It would be good, perhaps, to assess this. It is also financial—perhaps the Chancellor of the Exchequer should hear—because often these parents give up work to look after their children. Their lifestyles change, so it is a very big deal, but I thank the Minister for what she said on that point. I am glad the Government agree that restorative justice can work. I am sorry to be a bit of a pain, but we were clear in our Amendment 43, in subsection (3) of its proposed new clause, that “a victim must at all times give informed consent, and participation in any restorative justice process shall be voluntary”. That is the core, because it would not work if not. The Minister said that it might be a problem for victims of stalking, for example, because they might not want to do it, but that is easy, as they can say, “No, I’m not interested in meeting my stalker”—I personally never want to meet my stalker; absolutely no, sorry—but that crime is of a different nature and there are plenty of other crimes, particularly some of the slightly lower-level ones, where if it really reduces reoffending that much, the Government have to look at it. On that basis, I really hope that the Government will seriously look at expanding it beyond its very small nature at the moment, where it seems to be a few people who might be interested rather than recognising that it will transform the court system and the justice system overall. I beg to withdraw my amendment.