Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): I welcome Maura Campbell, deputy director of the criminal justice development division, and Veronica Holland and Maurice Campbell from the same division in the Department. As usual, the meeting will be recorded by Hansard, and a transcript will be published in due course. Maura, I hand over to you.

Ms Maura Campbell (Department of Justice): Thank you very much, Chairman. We have completed our consultation on the draft victim charter and a summary version of it. We have provided you with a paper that gives an overview of the feedback we have received and the Department's response to it.

The feedback was generally very positive, and we have taken on board most of the suggestions that were made. Many were about clarification or additional information, rather than the content itself. For example, we were asked to explain more about how restorative practices are used and to make it clear that the entitlements would apply regardless of an individual's nationality.

We were also asked to change the title to "victim of crime charter". We indicated in the papers that we were minded to accept that, though I should highlight that we have since confirmed with our legal adviser that we should use the title given in the primary legislation, which is "victim charter", so we may instead add a strapline under the title to make it clear that the charter is in respect of victims of crime, as opposed to changing it.

Throughout the consultation, a key theme was the need to highlight the support that is available for victims of particular crime types, such as bereaved families and victims of domestic or sexual abuse, hate crime or trafficking. The revised version of the charter contains more information on those specialist services.

A useful point was put forward about the operation of victim personal statements, and we amended the charter to allow the person who is making the statement, whether it is the direct victim or a member of a bereaved family, to set out the impact of the crime on other members of the family as well.

There were a couple of drafting suggestions that we did not take on board, since we were keen to reflect as closely as possible the text of the EU directive on the rights, support and protection of victims of crime, given that the charter will be used as our principal mechanism for transposing the directive.

A few points were raised that we felt were outside the scope of the charter, such as points about support for defence witnesses, defendants or children of defendants and crimes that were committed outside this jurisdiction that would not be investigated or prosecuted here.

Now that we are hopefully close to finalising the charter, subject to your views, we have been looking at ways to ensure that we make it as accessible as possible, and we gleaned some very useful ideas on that from the consultees. First, we intend to have the summary version translated into the six other languages that are most commonly used at police stations and at court, and we have indicated in the charter that other formats can be made available on request. A new victim of crime leaflet is also being produced and that will be available in other languages as well.

We have shared with you an easy-read version and a young person's guide that were produced during the consultation process. The easy-read version was produced by a company called Making it Clear, and the young person's guide was written by a group of young people with the assistance of the NSPCC. What we think is best about those versions is that neither looks as though it was written by a civil servant, and we are very grateful to all those who were involved in their creation. We have shared those versions with a number of voluntary sector bodies that may have a particular interest, and we will consider any comments that we receive from them.

We have asked the agencies to ensure that the charter is available on their websites and, most importantly, to make sure that staff are aware that it exists and make good use of it. We have also started work on a dedicated victim charter web page and a poster to advertise the charter in public places. As part of our next action plan, we hope to create an online walk-through of the criminal justice process and a DVD.

We would welcome your views on the revised charter. Subject to your views, we hope to publish the charter by the end of December and to launch it formally in January. As always, we are happy to take questions.

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): OK, Maura. Thank you very much. Obviously, I welcome the fact that we have got to this point. Considerable work has been done by the Department and the Committee on the charter, and I think that it is a good example of how a Committee and a Department can work together to come up with a document that, I suspect, will now be wholeheartedly supported by people.

The document is very good on paper, but the reality is about how it is implemented across the organisations. You touched on that at the end of your presentation. First of all, how do we make victims aware of the types of services that they should expect and of their rights? Hopefully, the legislation will place those on a statutory footing and that will help, but they will need to be aware, so that they can demand their rights. It also needs to be very much ingrained in the culture of the organisations. You will know from our inquiry that there was damning criticism, particularly of the Public Prosecution Service (PPS), from victims about how they were treated and how it handled that issue. How will the charter permeate throughout the different agencies to effect the culture that needs to be there to make the strategy work?

Ms Maura Campbell: We will be trying to do that in a number of ways. For instance, we have discussed it with the victims' champions that have been appointed at a senior level across all the agencies and have underscored for them the importance of making this a key document in ensuring that victims' services are provided. We have looked to their commitment to ensure that it is delivered. At a time of reduced resources, we want to make sure that it continues to get a high priority, and we are being assured by the champions that they will take that on board.

At a working level, through the victim and witness steering group, we have been having a lot of discussion with agency representatives, policy leads and the voluntary sector organisations that we work with — Victim Support and the NSPCC — about ways of promulgating the charter to staff, factoring it into their training plans and making good use of the various bits of documentation that we are providing. Those include the summary and the victim of crime leaflet that will be handed out by the police to all victims of crime and will be available in other fora.

You are right: getting to this point is good, but the charter will only be as good as the services that are provided and the information that is given to victims. Ensuring that it is communicated effectively to victims is an area that we will want to focus on for the rest of this action plan and in our next action plan under the strategy.

Mr Lynch: Thanks, Maura. As the Chair said, we welcome the finalised or near-enough finalised document. I want you to clarify something. You mentioned complaints to an independent body. What shape does that take? Who is the independent body?

Ms Veronica Holland (Department of Justice): It would be largely through the Assembly Ombudsman for Northern Ireland. There are obviously a number of other independent ombudsmen, such as the Police Ombudsman. There is also an independent body in relation to PPS. However, complaints about the vast majority of organisations would be through the Assembly Ombudsman. For the voluntary sector support bodies, such as Victim Support and NSPCC, if the complaints were not resolved successfully or to a victim's satisfaction in the first instance with those organisations, the complainant would be able to come to the Department, as a funder of those bodies, and raise their concerns with us.

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): I will not prolong it, because we have been up and down this over a number of years.

Mr Dickson: I just wanted to say, "Well done in getting it to this point". I particularly welcome the simple guide and the young person's guide. Central to most people will be their court case and the crime that has brought them to this point. For many people, in the first instance, this will be just another piece of paper to read, and, if having a simple version gets over to them the nature of what is available to them, that is very important.

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): OK. Thank you very much. It is right that we put it on the record that we are getting to the point where the launch of this is imminent. My thanks go to the officials, especially you, and to the Minister, because you were ready to go with the draft strategy and we asked you to wait to allow us to conduct our inquiry. I appreciated that, and hopefully, working together, you have appreciated our contribution. We have come up with a strategy that, I think, the Department and the Committee can be rightly proud of as something that we will look back on and say, "That was worthwhile. We achieved something". Thank you very much, and I appreciate your efforts.