Charlotte Nichols MP: speeches

Speeches

• 16 Jun 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report · Hansard source

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  At Manchester Minshull Street Crown court last week, seven men were convicted for sickening crimes as part of a grooming gang. One of their victims, girl A, who was abused by in excess of 50 men, was advised by the police to make a claim for criminal injuries compensation, for which she would have received just £22,000. She did not make a claim, but that did not stop the defence from arguing that she made up accusations to bolster a claim for compensation. The Government will be aware that I have raised on many occasions the inadequacies of the criminal injuries compensation framework for victims of sexual violence and exploitation, and they will be aware of recommendations from the IICSA review and the Victims’ Commissioner on this matter. While no amount of money could be adequate to compensate victims such as girl A, we owe it to them to ensure that they have the financial support required to rebuild their lives and do not have to choose between that and justice. How much longer will we all be waiting for this?

• 22 May 2025 · Independent Sentencing Review · Hansard source

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  With the National Police Chiefs’ Council having declared violence against women and girls a national emergency, it is right that we explore radical methods to bring down the scale of offending in our communities. We know that most sexual offending is not about sex at all, but about power. However, for the subset of convicts whose offending is driven by sexual compulsion, chemical castration could be an option. Is there estimate data on how many future offences that could prevent? By definition, it would only be for those who have already offended. As I am not aware of a method of permanent chemical castration, is there capacity in the Probation Service to monitor ongoing compliance with treatment?

• 29 Apr 2025 · Criminal Injuries Compensation · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his summing up. I want to pick up on that point. When the White Paper on changes to the scheme came out in 1993, more than two Governments back, the then Government said that the changes they wanted to make to the scheme were driven by a desire to “provide a better service” to claimants, although they admitted that the main aim was to cut costs. It is clear from today’s debate that it is important to ensure that change is driven by providing a better service, rather than by cost-saving measures. Does my hon. Friend agree that that needs to be the core focus, above any other consideration from the Treasury?

• 29 Apr 2025 · Criminal Injuries Compensation · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield (Laurence Turner)—I am proud to say that he truly is a friend—laid out perfectly the historical context in which the criminal injuries compensation scheme was devised and the economic, moral and financial case for change, given that it has failed to meet its objectives. I am one of the co-sponsors of this debate, and I want to support my hon. Friend’s core argument and lay out an aspect of the scheme that cannot be understood by those for whom it is an abstract point of law or procedure. Rape and sexual assault have a conviction rate of a pathetic 1.5% or so, so vanishingly few victims ever get justice through the courts. Of course we need to use every lever of Government to bring down the number of offences and drive up the number of perpetrators convicted, but to focus entirely on the criminal justice element is to miss the point when it comes to supporting victims. CICA provides a twofold civil remedy. First, it provides a level of financial restitution for the experience. Secondly, and most importantly, it is state recognition of the person’s experience as a blameless victim of violent crime. That vindication is an important part of the process of closure for people who have been victims of the most hideous crimes, including where a perpetrator has not been apprehended or where a conviction cannot be secured. A constituent who was a victim of rape told me: “I’ll probably never know why the jury decided not to convict in my case. The compensation awarded wouldn’t actually cover the cost of a copy of the trial transcript. The process of closure for me began with that letter from CICA, that seeking justice hadn’t been in vain despite the enormous personal cost. Beyond the nightmares I still have replaying that night, replaying the trial, the court room, replaying every indignity meted out upon me over a truly miserable three year period; it is there. In black and white. On the record. This happened to you. He is a rapist. We believe you. That’s what that piece of paper meant.” Every victim deserves vindication, but among the largest barriers is the time limit. The Victims’ Commissioner —the indomitable Baroness Newlove, who is incidentally a constituent of mine—recommended to the Government back in 2019 that it be amended in her landmark report “Compensation without re-traumatisation”. We are still waiting. The time limit pressures victims into choosing between pursuing justice in the courts and a civil remedy—lest the defence infers a financial motive for coming forward—leaving them with a high statistical likelihood of ending up with neither. However, if the expectation is that victims should pursue both at the same time, or even in close succession, that is wildly unrealistic given just how much the criminal justice system retraumatises a person and puts far too much onus on the victim all at once. That is not a reasonable expectation for us in this place to have of the dozens of constituents I have signposted and supported through this process. It is a huge thing to do, and we can never fully appreciate just how much it grinds a person down unless they have been through it. The fact that many of those who apply will be turned away because of arbitrary time limits, or that many will be dissuaded from applying at all for the support that they are entitled to in the expectation that that will happen, leaves victims without the ability to get closure. It leaves them frozen. In Warrington, 349 victims have already made a successful CICA claim in the past five years; from the crime statistics for our area alone, I know that there is massive under-claiming. Then there are all the cases that will not show up in those statistics, including those dealt with in the family courts. Currently, no agency is responsible under the victims code for informing victims about the scheme; the expectation is that that falls to the police or local support services. I know that the Treasury has anxiety about this, but if we get anywhere near our target of halving violence against women and girls, the scheme will pay for itself. Until such time, victims cannot continue to pay the price. While there is no amount that would ever make being a victim of violent crime worth it, surely the least that they deserve is the amount that was intended back in 2012—not a fraction of that, as its value is eroded further each year by inflation. For all the things that successive Governments have seen fit to spend money on, it breaks my heart that none have thought this scheme worth consideration. While we work to improve victim support services generally, there will always be a role for CICA. Unfortunately, CICA is compensation for state failure to keep people safe and, too often, to deliver justice. That compensation should be significantly uplifted at the comprehensive spending review to ensure that its value is a fairer reflection of the debt that society owes to those victims that it has let down. Awards must be index-linked to inflation, so we do not end up having the same debate in 15 years’ time. The time limit should be amended in line with the recommendations of the Victims’ Commissioner, and we should ensure that the framework aligns with the rest of our system, including with our increased understanding of the harms of non-contact sexual offences. I hope that all hon. Members will support the ten-minute rule Bill tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield next week, so that we can start this vital reform. I look forward to the Minister’s response today.

• 29 Apr 2025 · Criminal Injuries Compensation · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend refers to low-paid workers; we know that retail staff are among the victims who experience a really shocking amount of violent crime within the workplace. Will he join me in paying tribute to the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers for the work it is doing to ensure that its members who are victims of violent crime in the workplace can access the CICA scheme?

• 29 Apr 2025 · Criminal Injuries Compensation · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for his speech and particularly for his reference to ISVAs and victim support. In the Warrington area, there is no support available through either the NHS or third sector organisations for people under the age of 18 who have been victims of violence. That is why the CICA scheme is so important: it gives victims the ability to get specialist therapy outside the NHS and the charitable sector. Does he agree that ISVA services need to be far better funded, so that they can offer much more bespoke support to victims throughout the UK, including child victims?

• 23 Apr 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q2. The criminal injuries compensation scheme has not been uprated with inflation since 2012, which means that in real terms, compensation for victims of violent crime, including rape and child abuse, is worth less than half of what it was then. The consultation response published before Easter said that there was not the money to look at changing the scope, tariffs or time limits, despite expert advice and the recommendations of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. Will the Prime Minister commit to properly funding the Ministry of Justice to do this vital reform work, so that victims and their needs can become a priority, instead of an afterthought?

• 22 Apr 2025 · “For Women Scotland” Supreme Court Ruling · Hansard source

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  Far from clarity, the verdict raises as many questions as it answers. Indeed, it has been referred to by the civil servant Melanie Field, who oversaw the Equality Act’s drafting and passage, as having significantly reinterpreted Parliament’s intentions. These questions are primarily about the purpose now of the gender recognition certificate and whether exclusion from single-sex spaces is merely lawful or required. But in protecting women’s spaces such as toilets from predatory men pretending to be trans women, what exactly stops those same men from now accessing them by pretending to be trans men?

• 27 Mar 2025 · Prevention of Drug Deaths · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing this crucial debate. The statistics are harrowing, as other Members have said, but how have we got here? A decade-long disinvestment in drug treatment services, approaches more fit for scoring political points than actually solving a problem, a complete disregard for the expert guidance provided by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, and an utter lack of expediency. Given those factors, it is little wonder that we have ended up in this position. My work as the unremunerated chair of the Centre for Evidence Based Drug Policy has shown me that there are practical measures that can make a real difference. Diamorphine-assisted therapy, or DAT, has a robust evidence base for helping people who have not responded to other treatment modalities reduce their illicit drug use. A DAT clinic in Middlesbrough demonstrated extraordinary outcomes: a 97% attendance rate, an 80% reduction in street heroin use, and a drastic drop in criminal activity—from 541 offences before treatment to just three in the same period following treatment. Those outcomes translated into an estimated £2.1 million saving across the health and criminal justice sectors, in addition to the lives saved. Tragically, the clinic was closed due to fragmented, unsustainable funding—yet another example of short-term thinking undermining long-term gains. The enhanced drug treatment service in Glasgow, which offers a similar model, has estimated that its services have resulted in a 50% to 70% reduction in health service costs. We are not alone in calling for these changes. A 2023 report by the Home Affairs Committee made it clear that harm reduction must play a far greater role in UK drugs policy. Its recommendations offer a pragmatic road map, and the Government must act on them if they are serious about reducing drug-related deaths. Most of the interventions require only minor amendments to the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, which, after more than 50 years, appears increasingly unfit for purpose. Currently, the 1971 Act blocks the establishment of safer drug consumption facilities and overdose prevention centres, and the distribution of vital harm-reduction paraphernalia by qualified drug treatment services. That includes safer inhalation pipes, which remain illegal under section 9A, even though corner shops can legally sell dangerous, poor-quality pipes with no health oversight, under the guise of ornaments. A pilot is currently taking place in parts of England, with police support, and shows promising early results, including reductions in high-risk practices and increased awareness of the harms associated with drugs and how to reduce them. There are a number of services in my constituency that I am very proud of, but, to save the House’s time, I will not detail them. One of those is Change Grow Live, and I give massive credit to its work. When stigma shapes policy, we see punitive laws, fragmented services and inevitably soaring mortality rates. When compassion and evidence shape policy, we see reduced deaths, safer communities, diminished profits for criminal organisations and better returns on public investment. This is not just a moral imperative, but a public health necessity.

• 9 Jan 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  I am glad that we are discussing this most important issue today. The National Police Chiefs’ Council rightly stated last year: “Violence against women and girls is a national emergency.” Action must be taken against our societal epidemic of violence, including sexual violence, against women and girls, and I am glad that the Government are committed to halving it in a decade. I will do my part to ensure that promise is delivered. We rightly talk a lot—although not nearly enough—in this place about victims. They must be at the heart of our work. Society has reached a place where most of us can accept the fact that we will all know victims of domestic or sexual violence. How could we not, with the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s statistics showing that approximately one in 12 women will be a victim in any given year, and as many as one in three over the course of a lifetime? Violence against women and girls is endemic in our country. It happens all around us and is committed by people—mainly men—whom we all know, and often trust and love. Societally, that is the aspect with which we have failed to grapple. Even though we accept that we know victims, far fewer people can accept that they know perpetrators. Instead, the 3,000 offences that happen each day, which leave behind psychological wreckage, seem to be rhetorically and conceptually driven by some sort of mysterious, passive, abstract force. It may be tempting to imagine that predators and perpetrators are unusual and could be identified if only we ditched our politically correct attitudes. However, that ignores the majority of abuse that takes place. Worse, it leads to a complacency that makes women and girls more vulnerable. It is easier, psychologically and societally, to hold to the idea that sexual violence is a rare thing, perpetrated by monsters that we can spot a mile off. Finding any excuse to delegitimise those who come forward—for example, by victim blaming, or by having preconceived ideas about how a “real” victim would behave—is key to upholding that. We see excuses made constantly for such behaviour, including in this place, and often by people who claim to be feminist or Christian, but who do not demonstrate any of the values that they claim to hold when it comes to having to confront the behaviour of someone in their circle. It is easier to immediately accept the abuser’s wholesale narrative and deflect, minimise, deny, defend or rubbish the victim’s credibility than to accept that someone we know is not only capable of that type of violence, but has perpetrated it. That tendency is at its most egregious when there is an institutional failure of reckoning, but all institutions are made up of individuals who share in and perpetuate that culpability. Even in the vanishingly rare cases in which someone is successfully convicted for domestic or sexual violence, we need only look at the comments online about how they had been “hard done by” or were “such a nice neighbour” and “couldn’t possibly have done it”. We all know that the vast majority of cases will never even make it that far, so what then? Let us be clear. According to the National Police Chiefs’ Council, “1 in 20 people are estimated to be perpetrators of VAWG per year”. Many of those will be repeat perpetrators. We will all know at least one of them. They hide in plain sight. They may very well be the last person we expect to be a perpetrator, and they know exactly what they are doing. Failure to acknowledge that means forcing victims to carry the shame that belongs to their abusers. We cannot say that we support victims coming forward if we cannot reconcile the fact that everyone here and everyone watching will know perpetrators of that form of violence. If we are to turn the tide, we need better education. We need more honest discussions of women’s safety and men’s roles. We need cultural change to identify and call out abusive behaviour. We need structures that believe women and girls and take misconduct seriously. We need investment in mental health and victim support services far above that currently on offer, including in the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, and support from independent sexual violence advisers and independent domestic violence advisers. We also need a justice system that works, that can deliver timely justice and in which women can have faith that they will not be further traumatised, as happens all too often, when seeking justice. Fundamentally, we all—in this place and right across society—need the courage to be more honest with ourselves about what we collectively look away from because it is too difficult. If we are ever going to hold perpetrators accountable and create and sustain a culture where women’s and girls’ safety is the norm, not the exception, that is where we need to begin.

• 16 Dec 2024 · Victims of Sexual Violence: Court Delays · Hansard source

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  The Minister is making a very important point about victim attrition, but one thing that concerns me is the fact that court delays also mean that when cases are heard, the testimony of victims—including victim-survivors in these cases—will be of much poorer quality given the length of time that has passed, and more cases will end with a not guilty verdict for people who should very much be behind bars. Is the Department looking into that, and are there statistics for what the backlog has meant for the conviction rate?

• 16 Dec 2024 · Victims of Sexual Violence: Court Delays · Hansard source

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  The Minister just made a point about victims being able to watch proceedings from another room, which is often not the case in rape trials, where the victim is considered a witness rather than a participant in the case. I know that the Department is looking at things like transcripts. Will they become more readily available, so that victims who, for whatever reason, do not feel like they can participate while the trial is taking place can read what happened after the trial as part of the process of closure?

• 16 Dec 2024 · Victims of Sexual Violence: Court Delays · Hansard source

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  Just for clarification, will transcripts be available only for victim-survivors who have secured a successful conviction? Given what we are talking about, it is important that people who were not able to secure a conviction can still access transcripts as part of the important process of closure.

• 10 Dec 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T6. The criminal injuries compensation scheme is a vitally important part of the justice system but among the gaps in the framework we inherited is interim support for victims of crime under 18 before they can access their award. This is profoundly affecting three of my young constituents who were victims of rape, and their families, in dealing with the consequences. Will the Secretary of State meet me to discuss how we can do more for child victims of the most serious offending and ensure the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority is fit for purpose?

• 12 Nov 2024 · Tackling Image-based Abuse · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for giving way a second time—she is being very generous. Just to clarify, non-contact offences, including intimate image abuse, are not currently covered in the criminal injuries compensation framework. Could conversations be had with her ministerial colleagues about providing financial support for victims to access things such as therapy, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton North East (Kirith Entwistle) brought up as a really important feature of the debate?

• 12 Nov 2024 · Tackling Image-based Abuse · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for her work on this policy so far, which is among the most meaningful things that has happened since we came into office, particularly the removal of the intent provisions. We have seen too many women unable to get justice because of a technicality, including a horrific case in my constituency that the Minister is well aware of. We are talking a lot about the online space today, so can she clarify that, where intimate image abuse is part of the commission of an offline offence of voyeurism or rape, for example, that will factor into the work that she is doing?

• 22 Oct 2024 · Sentencing Review and Prison Capacity · Hansard source

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  I thank the Lord Chancellor for her statement, and for the leadership she has shown in trying to turn around a Department that, by any metric, was failing. I thank her for the transparent and considered approach that she has taken in reaching some of the difficult decisions she has had to make since taking office. While I accept the inevitability of the early release scheme, what conversations has she had with ministerial colleagues on improving victim support for those who have seen perpetrators return to the community earlier than they were perhaps mentally prepared for, so as to reduce harm as far as possible?

• 24 Jul 2024 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  In a week when the National Police Chiefs’ Council declared violence against women and girls a national emergency, Sky News has today published appalling accounts of sexual harassment and violence against women paramedics. Can the Prime Minister please update the House on progress towards the mission board to finally tackle this scourge in our society?