Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)

The noble Baroness hits on one of the really difficult issues around this. That is why so many of the categories of people who would previously have been under early release will not be receiving early release. Whenever somebody is released, even if it is at the end of their sentence, it is important that the surviving victim understands the protection that is available to them. Whereas previously we had exclusion orders, in future there will be restricted areas. We are also putting additional money into the Probation Service for additional probation officers. This will be the biggest change we have seen in how victims are protected from offenders. There will also be a far more aggressive tagging regime; more people will be tagged. So a number of measures will come together. When the Prime Minister and Alex Norris, the Justice Secretary, were looking at this issue, at the forefront of their minds was how this will impact on those who have survived attacks and abuse. Most of us will know people who have been through that ordeal: people who have sometimes had to give evidence in court and go through all that, and sometimes have not even got to court. This is absolutely crucial. The noble Baroness will be aware of some of those measures, but there may be new measures coming forward of which she is not aware. I will keep her informed on how we can progress this.