Jess Brown-Fuller
MP for Chichester · Liberal Democrat · United Kingdom
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Alec. Time and again, everybody in this debate has come back to the word “community”, and I believe that coastal communities do it like nobody else.”
“When I think of Selsey, I think of the Selsey Care Shop, the Selsey Venture Club, the Selsey Beach Litter Ninjas and the Selsey Sea Bathing Society. All those charitable organisations and communities come together to support each other in tackling poverty in the area, as well as the isolation and loneliness.”
“We have worked alongside them to ensure that no stone has been left unturned in seeking to secure the best possible outcomes in this legislation. Our amendments are all aimed at tightening the gaps that we can see in the legislation.”
“A statutory duty of candour in the NHS has existed since 2014, yet we know that there remains a culture of retiring or firing staff who dare to speak up. Our new clause 2 would create an offence for anyone who wilfully destroys relevant records after a major incident that could lead to an inquest or inquiry.”
“Amendments 1 and 2 would ensure that the legislation is fully up to date with modern investigations by making it clear that digital messages must be provided as evidence to investigations. The Bill includes provisions for the inclusion of subcontractors under the duty of candour, but we do not believe that they go far enough.”
“I know from her contributions in debates, her willingness and openness to meet me and Liberal Democrat colleagues to hear our concerns, and her engagement with campaign organisations and families, that she has fought to deliver the Hillsborough law as it was intended by those involved in the campaign.”
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“It is deeply shocking that the perpetrator was referred three times yet no further action was taken. We understand that was because he did not possess a specific ideology—well, there should be no clearer sign of a system unable to address modern threats. Will the Home Secretary today commit to a full overhaul of Prevent within this Parliament so that future warning signs are not missed? Will she also commit to bringing forward the legislation recommended by Jonathan Hall KC in the next King’s Speech?”
“Will the Home Secretary confirm how soon she plans to report back on whether the Government will accept all 67 recommendations? Will she commit to providing Parliament with an update on progress every six months? Today’s report exposes serious oversights by online giants that allowed the perpetrator to collect an arsenal of weapons without effective age verification checks. Will the Home Secretary confirm whether the recently published knife crime strategy will address the ease with which knives are available for purchase online? Will it crack down on big tech companies, like Amazon, that are putting profit above protocol when it comes to the sale of dangerous items? Finally, the Liberal Democrats have long argued that Prevent is not fit for purpose.”
“I thank the Home Secretary for advance sight of her statement. It is truly heartbreaking to know that there were so many missed opportunities to stop the Southport attack. My thoughts today are with the bereaved families whose young daughters were so cruelly taken from them and with the many other victims who suffered unimaginable trauma that day. We owe it to them to make every attempt to prevent a senseless attack like this from ever happening again. The report lays bare that agency after agency failed to step up and take ownership of the risks that the perpetrator posed. There are monumental failures across a number of authorities, from the police, Prevent and NHS mental health services to children’s social care, youth offending services and the perpetrator’s parents. That is simply not acceptable.”
“My hon. Friend mentions under-resourcing. At West Sussex county council, the department just put an answerphone message on its system saying, “We are overwhelmed. We cannot take any calls today.” Does he agree that the parents who are navigating the system and often describe it as a “fight” do not have the opportunity just to put their answerphone on or not show up for their kids that day because they are overwhelmed, and that we need to do far more for them?”
“Does the hon. Lady agree that there is so much untapped potential in the parents who are currently trapped at home trying to support their children who are not being supported into schools? When I hosted a recent roundtable with parents in my constituency, I met ex-teachers, teaching assistants and educational psychologists, and none of them are at work because they are not being supported.”
“The make-up of cases going to the Crown court has changed over the last 10 years, so what might have been a good idea 10 or 15 years ago when there were fewer such cases does not cut it now. There are just too many cases, and that is why I did not recommend a specialist rape court.”
“Q Hello, Sir Brian. My name is Jess Brown-Fuller. I am the MP for Chichester and the justice spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats. I will rattle through a couple of questions so that other Members get a chance to ask theirs. As part of your review, did you look at the concept of rape and serious sexual offences courts? If you did, why did they not form a basis of your recommendations? Sir Brian Leveson: That is easily answered: there are just too many of them. My view is that nobody should be a circuit judge unless they are capable of trying serious sexual crime—nobody. The empathy required to deal with victims is not just restricted to rape and serious sexual crimes.”
“If you were going to look at legislative change, it was important that you all had the chance to consider that as soon as possible, so I was perfectly content to deal with policy first and efficiency afterwards, on the basis that by the time you got around to dealing with it, you would have both reports anyway and you could look at everything together; I hope you have.”
“Q Do you believe that the two parts of the review were commissioned in the right order? Sir Brian Leveson: That is an interesting question. I have long since believed that there needed to be radical change. The fact is that the backlog went up in the 12 months since I was appointed in December 2024—sorry, this will be a longish answer. You would have thought that everybody would be working like mad to demonstrate that efficiency could bring the backlog down over the year following my appointment. Not only did the backlog not go down, but it went up higher than the highest projection that the Ministry had. I have always been of the view that efficiency alone would not do it, and you were going to have to look at legislative change.”
“We have to improve and get reassurance around judicial training, including training on cultural competency, on understanding bias and prejudice and on the dynamics of abuse. We still see issues around coercive control, post-separation abuse and stalking. I need to be reassured that judges are being trained to the level that will give assurances to victims and to myself that they understand what is coming in front of them. We need reassurance from Government on that. I would suggest more investment in judicial training. We saw, over years—Vera will remember more than me when it happened—that the training on rape went down from three days to two days for judges. That was meant to be a temporary measure; I do not think it has gone back up. We need to make sure that we have good, robust training for judiciary and magistrates.”
“Q Thank you to the panel for coming. Sorry to use your words, Claire, but I am going to quote from the letter that you sent to the Prime Minister. You said that victims “also stress important safeguards: tackling the lack of diversity on the bench, and ensuring judges are robustly trained in the dynamics of abuse and trauma.” You know that over many years many different parliamentarians have tried to legislate to ensure that everyone in the judiciary has mandatory training on those important safeguards. You also know that we are always told that, because the judiciary is independent, we cannot legislate to mandate that training. What would you like to see in the Bill to ensure the important safeguards that victims have reflected to you? Claire Waxman: I have made that point for years, regardless of these reforms.”
“I think Sir Brian said it—looking at structural reform came first because we know that the efficiency measures are not going to bring the backlog down quickly enough. We need to do everything together as a package of measures and we need to move ahead.”
“Q Thank you. How do the victims that you speak to and represent feel about the fact that these legislative reforms will not necessarily move the dial until potentially 2035, when we could see the backlog down to pre-covid levels? Claire Waxman: People in the criminal justice system need to move ahead with the efficiency measures. We need to move ahead with that so that we can start to see some of the adjournments not happening, better listing and so on. Of course, it is a desperate state. Just yesterday I spoke to a male victim of child sex abuse. He has been in the system since 2021 and in the court system for two years. He thought that he was giving evidence in the coming weeks. That has been adjourned and he has been asked his availability for 2027, 2028 and 2029. He is going to withdraw.”
“Q In the previous panel, Sir Brian asked how we could model something that had never been trialled. As a panel, would you support a pilot of what the Government are suggesting, so we can take the qualitative data and see whether it makes a fundamental difference, or we should go now and not, for example, put a sunset clause in?”
“It is a concept that is not evidenced and is not recognised in psychiatric or medical practice, but it is often invoked as a concept to defend against claims of domestic abuse. What needs to happen is a child’s safety being put at the heart of the decision by a regulated expert, by a trained judge. If you get that right, you immediately improve the experience for survivors and children, and you improve the safeguarding around survivors and children. Those three things are absolutely critical to changing the culture and the experience and to ensuring safety.”
“Some of it is quite basic, but it is really important to improving the survivor experience. Another thing is the regulation of experts. We often have unregulated experts coming into the family courts to provide expertise and advice to the judge on what is happening in a relationship. You would not have unregulated experts in any safeguarding context; it is absolutely wild that you would have that. One thing we really want to see is regulated experts: psychiatrists and psychologists who are regulated by the appropriate body, rather than, seemingly, people who are just not. The last thing that I want to focus on is the concept of parental alienation, which is often invoked in family courts.”
“The staff are not trauma-informed and there is no understanding of what a victim is going through. The courts are weaponised and survivors are brought back to the courts repeatedly. It is an appalling process. No policy area that you work on at Women’s Aid is a picnic, but this is the worst. People describe the trauma that they go through in the family courts as worse than the trauma that they endured through the abuse that they experienced. One thing is for the court system to understand domestic abuse, understand sexual violence, understand coercive control and be trauma-informed. That means having processes in which a survivor knows what is happening, understands what the next steps are and is supported through the system, and having separate places where a survivor can be.”
“Q Thank you all for being here; I am very grateful to you for coming to give evidence to the Committee. Farah, you mentioned the presumption against parental responsibility. I agree that that is a really important step that the Labour Government are taking, but the rest of the family court process is currently out of this Bill’s scope. Could anything fundamental be introduced into this Bill to make the experience better for victims, who often go down a twin-track approach through the criminal courts and family courts? Farah Nazeer: Thank you for the question. There are a few things around presumption that could make a big difference. One is training for the entirety of the court staff, because the stories that we hear and the experiences that we support women and children through are frankly appalling.”
“I am a not guilty verdict case, so I would not get my sentencing remarks either. It is about being able to understand. If we take that further, I believe the whole case should be available free, as it is in many other countries, or for a couple of pounds in administration costs. If we are taking it a bit at a time, the next bit would be, as you say, bail conditions and the route to verdict, to understand how someone got to that decision. That is all to aid people to understand what happened and process it a little better.”
“Do you agree that sentencing remarks are only part of the journey that we need to be on, and that we need to be quite ambitious in ensuring victims have all the evidence in their own case, so they can start to move on and process? Charlotte Meijer: Yes, absolutely. My campaign for all transcripts to be made available very quickly was shut down, so I have gone for little bits at a time. Sentencing remarks are an amazing change. At first, that was just for rape victims; now it is for all victims, which is great. However, if we look at RASSO cases, only 2% get a guilty verdict, so only 2% will get the free sentencing remarks. There needs to be something for the 98%. The next thing that I have been campaigning for is the judge’s summing up, now the route to verdict, which is incredibly important.”
“Q I appreciate that—thank you. It was a question for you, Charlotte, about the shock that you experienced when you tried to request the sentencing remarks. Is that correct? You were quoted £20,000 and you found that people trying to get their court transcripts generally were being quoted incredibly high prices. As you mentioned, the Government have moved on that, so sentencing remarks will be available from spring next year. We are continuing to try to push that further: we do not think that sentencing remarks often tell the entire story. There is an amendment that is going to the House of Commons today that is specifically about bail decisions and the route to verdict that juries are presented with before they go away to deliberate.”
“Q My question is to Morwenna, although the rest of the panel might be able to feed in. Morwenna, you spoke about the impact of the adjournment of your case. I do not underestimate how re-traumatising that is: you build yourself up to the day when you think you will be in court, only to be told that that will not happen. I think you mentioned that that happened twice. Morwenna Loughman: Yes.”
“The most important thing is what victims such as yourselves would like to see from that process to understand that your cases could get adjourned, were they listed as floating cases. Morwenna Loughman: I was never told that that was a possibility. Again, that fundamental lack of understanding points to a system weighted against the victim and against the complainant. You are hermetically sealed off from a system that has been designed to dismiss and re-silence you because there is this sense that you need help, or might seek help, and to be told what to say on the stand. I would not have been there for any reason other than that I had been raped, but there was this sense that I needed to be kept at arm’s length from the system.”
“You also spoke about the concept of floating cases. Were you told beforehand that your case had been listed as a floating case? The reason I ask is that the legislation does not address how many adjournments we have. There is no mechanism in the legislation—I am happy to be corrected by the Minister—to address how often cases are adjourned. Listing officers will continue to list floating cases because they know that so many victims drop out of the process, or the CPS comes back and says that it does not have enough evidence to convict, and so on. Did you have an ISVA supporting you through the process? Were you communicated with well enough? Did you know that your case could fall at that final hurdle?”
“The persuasion that lands is, “You will have the advocacy with the jury trial.” If they do not have that advocacy, my fear is that we will lose our junior practitioners, who are very important, or we could end up with very junior practitioners whose first jury trial may have a level of seriousness beyond their ability, which again impacts on the quality of justice, and there could be a potential increase in miscarriages of justice.”
“As I have said, we have the retention back on our junior Bar, which is very positive after the investment in legal aid, but we need the legal aid promise to come through quickly to keep that retention, and hopefully attract back the KCs. However, if jury trials are removed for those cases where juniors are currently very much cutting their teeth—they are doing those trials in their early years of practice before a jury—it may well be a disincentive to doing criminal law. From my own experience of coming from a mixed, publicly funded chambers—we do not do private cases, but legal aid cases across all the jurisdictions—there is always that persuasion with our young barristers as to what area of law they will go into.”
“Q Thank you both very much for being here—we really appreciate your time. What effect could the Bill’s proposed changes to jury trials have on newly qualified legal professionals, who quite often cut their teeth on jury trials with lesser sentences? Also, at the other end of the profession, have you done any polling or modelling to see whether this could impact the number of legal professionals staying in the profession? Kirsty Brimelow: We have heard—and I agree with this—that we already have the data, and I believe some more data is coming over the next weeks. We already have the data to show that a quarter of King’s counsel have now left working in publicly funded work.”
“Also, we very much support the idea that there is a lawyer advising complainants, which is another proposal that has been put forward by the Government. We support that because complainants often get wrong information from NGOs or the police—doing their best—about what might be happening, and what might happen to them in court. That, in itself, can cause them to be anxious about what might happen, and it can contribute to the attrition rate. We have always had an issue with an attrition rate in sexual offences cases, and each time we need to look at why that is, so we welcome any proposals. I will hand over to Riel.”
“Q Thank you. The victims in the previous session spoke about a necessary change in culture in the criminal system, which I think is a shared view across all the parties represented today. Can either of you see anything in the legislation before us that will provide that change in culture? Kirsty Brimelow: I am going to hand over to Riel on this. We support much of the reform from clause 8 onwards, on which I will hand over to her. We are all absolutely there to make improvements; no system is perfect, and the criminal justice system absolutely is not. We are there ready to support the reforms, and we are very experienced in bringing in reforms. Some of the issues I heard spoken of this morning included clearly terrible communication issues, where people were not informed as to what was going on, and they should be fairly easy to sort out.”
“Q Thank you all for being here today and providing evidence to the Committee. Can any of you outline the reasons why Crown court hearing time has dropped to an average of 3.2 hours per sitting day? Is that drop anything to do with jury trials? Claire Davies: I think we would all agree that it is nothing to do with jury trials. What is happening is that, due to a lack of sitting days, judges are having to deal with more administrative matters and other hearings before they begin a trial, if of course any of those are in custody. If there is a delay—they are not always delayed, of course—that pushes matters back. A trial will take longer, and they do not have the whole day available to them. They do not have 10 am till 4.30 pm, which is a court sitting day; they get only part of that day.”
“One of the big complaints that we have been hearing about today—it is a terrible complaint, when one thinks about it—is about the time it takes from investigation stage through to Crown court and the final determination with a jury. All those things could be addressed with efficiencies, which do not mean that you have to remove the right to a jury trial. Let us focus on those. Let me make it clear that it is very commendable that this large investment has been put in, but it brings us back to where we ought to have been after the last 10 years, in which we have suffered significant cuts. There is a will from the judiciary and practitioners; we just have to be able to make it work. You have experienced judges telling you, “I need blitz courts. I need more courts,” so let us open them, staff them, resource them and make them work.”
“Q Thank you. At some point, I would love to talk you through my amendments, which suggest fundamental reforms but not by curtailing the right to a jury trial. This is probably quite a simple question, which will mean that we can move on, but do you believe that the Crown court backlog could be fixed without reforms to jury trials? Caroline Goodwin: Yes, I do. As I have pointed out, you have to allow us the opportunity to put in place very key and significant changes. Frankly, senior judges have already identified that they would enable us to get through this backlog. In addition, the investigative stage needs to be got hold of and have a coach and horses driven through it.”
“There should be special measures in family courts to help see the child, like in the Pathfinder courts, but it is not just about seeing the child; it is about hearing them, believing them, supporting them, and letting perpetrators of abuse know that it will not be accepted and that we are going to take action, protect that child and always presume the unthinkable.”
“Why do we have to go into a court, when we have committed no crime, and stand up and be humiliated in order to fight for our children? Why do we have to do that alone? With any other crime, the onus is on the police to prove that a crime has been committed and by whom, and then sentencing is carried out accordingly, but in a family court, the person who has had the crime committed against them time and again has to prove that that has happened. We are not believed automatically, and we are not supported automatically.”
“What we do not understand is the emotional abuse and the scars that we carry. We must always look from the position of actually seeing a child, hearing a child, believing a child, protecting a child, and we must go from this basis. We must use the legislation that we have in the Domestic Abuse Act. We know that it is not being used in courts. We must see children as victims in their own right of this crime. We must accept children as victims in their own right of this crime, and we must take away the fact that we are always trying to prove the crime that has been committed against us. Domestic abuse is a crime, so why is it that when we go into family courts we are ripped apart by barristers? Why is it that a crime has been committed against us, but we are always the ones who have to prove it has been committed, and by whom?”
“Q Thank you, Claire. Can I just acknowledge that children who are yet to go through the family courts are safer because of you and your tireless campaigning over many years? I hope you can hold that close as you go on. I believe that all campaigners like you, who never fight for themselves, are fighting for the next generation—the job is never done. My question to you is: what is the next step? What would you like to see in legislation going forward, especially in our family courts, to protect more children from harm? Claire Throssell: What I would like to see moving forward is an understanding of what it looks like without presumption of contact; what good practice looks like; understanding trauma; understanding what coercive control is; understanding emotional abuse. We all understand physical abuse—it is there; we see it.”
“Q Thank you, Mr Downey, for your time today. I profess my ignorance of the Canadian justice system—it will stay with me forever that I do not know exactly how it works. Is the lay element in your criminal courts just 5% of all criminal cases? Doug Downey: Are you talking about the non-lawyers who are hearing—”
“Yes. Doug Downey: We have in the Ontario Court of Justice what we call a lay bench—the justices of the peace. They do a lot of the bail hearings and a lot of the provincial offences—traffic and that sort of thing. That is where the lay bench resides, but the trials are not done by the justices of the peace when it comes to criminal matters; they are done by judges who are appointed, with a minimum of 10 years’ experience and quite often more than that.”
“Q That is helpful. What sentence can a judge sitting alone give, and are there particular cases that will be heard with a jury? Doug Downey: It is a great range. Let me answer that in reverse, if I may. The most significant matters, such as murder and treason, will default to a jury, but if the Crown agrees with the accused, they can move it to judge-alone. That generally is not the case—it generally stays where it is—but they can. For the balance of matters, such as serious sexual assaults, it is not directly based on what the consequence might be; it is a class of cases that we call hybrid and I think you call either-way cases, where an individual can make an election to move into the superior court and, by consequence, get a jury, but generally they do not do that.”
“Q I have a quick follow-up question, based on your earlier comments. Do you believe that a large part of the confidence in the Canadian model is the right to elect? Doug Downey: I think so. The right to elect is a feature, but I do not think there would be any less confidence if they were not given that right, simply because the default would probably be with jury, but that would become very inefficient for us.”
“My witness care units then have to pick up the conversations with those victims and witnesses to prepare them, hoping to keep them on board and confident enough in the criminal justice system to give evidence at a future date.”
“Q Thank you for being here. Your police officers are at the coalface. They often experience these adjournments and see victims let down at the final hurdle when they are about to have their day in court. What is your assessment of why cases are so often adjourned in our Crown courts? Chief Constable Hatchett: I think there are multiple reasons. There are people who are far better qualified to give you evidence on that; undoubtedly you will have spoken to defence lawyers and the Crown Prosecution Service, who can probably give you some really good evidence. There are a whole host of reasons why cases are adjourned. Sometimes it is evidence, sometimes it is witnesses and victims, sometimes it is disclosure, sometimes it is court time—the reasons are multiple, but ultimately victims and witnesses are suffering as a consequence.”
“There really is a limit to what you can do if you are running a two-judge court, but in the larger courts I believe that there is far more room for efficiency than is perhaps readily assumed.”
“Q Thank you all for being here. Mr Goldstone, Liverpool is often held as a bastion of good practice in the criminal justice system, but Sir Brian Leveson said this morning that we should not necessarily use it as an example because of the very unique set-up there. Do you agree with Sir Brian’s assessment that Liverpool’s set-up cannot be emulated in other places across the country? Clement Goldstone: I think that many of the efficiencies that Liverpool has created can be replicated across the country, because many efficiencies stem from positive leadership and proactive engagement. In a way, it is much more difficult to achieve those efficiencies with a larger court centre than with a centre where there are only two judges.”
“Sir Brian’s work is phenomenal—if anyone apart from Lord Burnett has read every word of it, they have done extremely well—but it would conceivably create more communications and more work, and it would not necessarily achieve a great deal, as I think that only 2% of cases are appealed. While it is a very interesting dilemma, I have not given it a huge amount of thought myself.”
“Q Thank you; that is helpful. This is a question for all of you: what risks do you perceive arising from the proposed removal of the automatic right to appeal from the magistrates to the Crown? Do you believe that this right of appeal is currently being abused? Sir Richard Henriques: I see no evidence at all that it is being abused. Sir Brian thinks that there should be an application for leave to appeal, as there is between the Crown court and the Court of Appeal. It is finely balanced, in my view. With respect to the perfectly good question, I think we need to look at the bigger picture here.”
“Also, you must bear in mind that if there is an appeal based on a wish to call fresh evidence, particularly perhaps bearing in mind that a defendant in the magistrates court was not represented, that is something that would have to be carefully considered, so I would not reject it as a good idea, because it could result in time savings, but it is something that has to be counselled with caution.”
“Forgive me if I have misunderstood, but I had not understood that it was expected that this could be put into place immediately. It is more a tidying-up measure, as I see it, that accompanies issues that are really much more important. Clement Goldstone: In principle, I am in favour of controlling the right of appeal to the Crown court. When I was in Liverpool—it is not that long ago—we were sitting one or sometimes two judges on Thursdays and Fridays on appeals. For some unknown reason, there seemed to be a lot dangerous dogs in Liverpool, so there were a lot of dangerous dog appeals. More seriously, I do not think the right is abused, because it is there to be utilised, but I do believe that there is an argument for weeding out a lot of hopeless appeals.”
“Lord Burnett, would you say the same? Lord Burnett of Maldon: I was going to make the observation that Sir Richard just made about the very low level of appeals from the magistrates court to the Crown court, which is something of a tribute to our magistracy. It really is a very low level, so I do not personally see this as a big problem. You asked about risk; one of the reasons why the current system exists is that the magistrates court is not a court of record and transcripts of what has gone on in the magistrates court are not readily available. If there were to be an appeal of the sort that is contemplated in this legislation, my understanding is that there needs to be quite a lot of work to put the nuts and bolts in place in the magistrates court.”
“From what we know, either about the legislation or the policy that sits around it, I simply don’t know who will inform these people about how they will put grounds of appeal together, what grounds of appeal even are, how you formulate those, what key points you need to make in them to persuade a Crown court judge sitting alone in a room with just some evidence papers and how to put your best case forward. There are a number of ramifications of legal aid being an issue in the magistrates court, or of there not being enough legal aid.”