The importance of Criminal Justice Bill

AS a justice minister, I have been taking the Criminal Justice Bill through Parliament, and next week it returns to the House for its final stages.

It is a bill that puts public protection at its core, and I am particularly proud of some recent amendments that better protect children and young people.

First, we are clamping down on the ability of registered sex offenders to change their name – something we know they do to avoid detection and commit further crimes. Second, we are automatically removing parental responsibility from any parent (almost always the father) who is convicted of the rape of a child.

To be clear, the law previously permitted the mother to make an application of this nature to the family court following conviction.

However, we have listened carefully to mothers who have described the stress and cost of having to go through that process and are taking it out of their hands.

Third, we are making it mandatory for anyone who works in a regulated role with children, to report child sexual abuse.

Obviously this is something that teachers already do.

But we are extending this to informal settings that would include Saturday sport coaches, Brownie leaders and others.

This was the number one recommendation of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, which they identified as key to preventing a repeat of the serious historic failings that became notorious in the church, in boarding schools and in towns like Rochdale. We are also developing the law to counter developing threats which particularly affect young people, principally women.

We are creating a new offence of ‘spiking’ (where an intoxicating substance is put into a drink or injected without a victim’s knowledge or consent) and comprehensive new laws to deal with intimate image abuse, something we know is particularly directed at children and young people through their phones. Following on from the Online Safety Act 2023, we are creating a new offence of creating a sexually-explicit pseudo image or ‘deepfake’. In the days since this measure was announced, two of the world’s biggest deepfake sites have blocked access to UK users, showing that we can get on top of this insidious form of abuse.

Although overall rates of violent crime and burglary have fallen by around 50 per cent since we took office, there are persistent issues with shoplifting.

This bill creates a new standalone offence of assault on a retail worker (which often occurs in conjunction with shoplifting) and tougher penalties and electronictagging requirements for shoplifters so that they can be tracked to prevent further offending.

The bill is wide in scope – cracking down on nefarious methods used by serious organised criminals, increasing sentences for grooming gangs and domestic abusers, and making it easier for chief constables to sack officers for misconduct.

But at its heart, it is about protecting the public, putting victims at the front and centre of the justice system, and future-proofing the criminal law to choke-off developing threats.

At its heart, it is about protecting the public, putting victims at the front and centre of the justice system