Justice: MPs support recommendations on data to support victims

On 30 September, the Justice Select Committee published its pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Victims Bill.

We were pleased to see that their recommendations included several recommendations from in our written evidence about how the Bill’s data provisions can support victims.

About the Victims Bill

As a reminder, the Government has drafted a Victims Bill to deliver on its manifesto commitment to pass and implement a Victims Law.

Bills aren’t always published in draft form - the Government usually does this when it wants to get plenty of feedback on its proposals, and integrate those into a final Bill.

To help inform that, we interviewed victims' organisations about the data that would help them, and sent written evidence to the Justice Committee.

The Committee’s recommendations

The Committee makes two key recommendations on data, both of which are excellent, and related to our evidence.

Firstly, the Committee acknowledges that data has a big role in giving victims a voice:

• A lack of data has been a key barrier to the effective monitoring of the implementation of the Code, particularly with respect to minority groups. Meaningful data collected and published regularly can help amplify victims voices and hold underperforming agencies to account.

It recommends that there should be a duty for victims’ representatives to be consulted on published data - our leading recommendation:

• We recommend that clause 5 includes a duty for the Victims’ Commissioner and local victims’ groups to be consulted on the data required to hold agencies to account on their performance in delivering the Code.

And it recommends that publishing data should be compulsory, not optional, another of our recommendations:

• That data should be standardised to allow comparison across police areas. The duty should also require the PCCs to publish that data, in a form that can be disaggregated by crime type and protected characteristic.

It’s also great to see a Committee getting into the weeds of data standards and disaggregation. These technical details are often neglected by policymakers, but are so crucial for making data actually useful.

What happens now?

The ball is now in the Government’s court to redraft the Bill - we hope that they’ll take these recommendations into account and help ensure that data supports victims of crime.