Labour backs recommendations of Victims’ Taskforce Report – and plans new Victims’ Law

Today the long-awaited Victim’s Taskforce Report is being published – and Labour have backed the key recommendations, including plans for a new Victims’ Law.

The report calls for “an end-to-end transformation” in the way the police, prosecution services and courts deal with victims and witnesses, and sets out plans for a new law to change the Criminal Justice System into a Criminal Justice Service.

Recommendations in the final report include:

• A Right to Report, so crimes can be reported in a safe way and not necessarily in a police station.
• A Right to Record, so that victims always have their crime recorded;
• A Right to Review, so that a case can still be reviewed if charges are not brought.
• A Right to Information, so that information can be accessed online about a case at every stage of the process, keeping victims up to date.
• A Right to Decency, so that judges are required to control the cross-examination in court of vulnerable victims and witnesses.
• Making the existing Victims’ Code legally enforceable, backed by an effective and accessible enforcement body.

The report also calls for a statutory and mandatory duty on those working with children in regulated activities to report suspected abuse, backed up with criminal sanctions.

The Taskforce was established in December 2013 by Ed Miliband and Shadow Justice Secretary Sadiq Khan, and includes former Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Keir Starmer QC (now Labour’s candidate for Holborn and St Pancras), Labour peer Doreen Lawrence, and Peter Neyroud (former Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police and a criminologist at Cambridge University).