Dame Rachel de Souza gave evidence.

Could I ask you to introduce yourself for the Committee, Rachel?

Dame Rachel de Souza:

I am Rachel de Souza, Children’s Commissioner for England. I am very grateful to be here.

We are very pleased you can be.

Q Rachel, do you believe that the duty to collaborate should include child victims of crime?

Dame Rachel de Souza:

Absolutely. I have been a big supporter of the Bill. I have to say that the ministerial team’s civil servants have worked incredibly well with us throughout the Bill’s passage. One of the things we have been pressing them on is making sure that children’s voices and experiences as victims are at the centre of the Bill. That is obviously why I am here today. I am happy to see the duty to collaborate there, but I would like a bit more accountability around it, which goes the last person’s comments. I am really pleased that they are there, but if we are going to put children as victims in the Bill, we have to make sure that we recognise that they experience crime and being victims differently. What we need to put around them to make sure they are supported, and can process things and get justice, is different. I would almost like a duty of accountability as much as a duty to collaborate.

Q We have seen part 3 come into the Bill at a late stage, so it includes victims and prisoners. In your view, does this detract from the main elements? Can you comment on what the prisoners element adds?

Dame Rachel de Souza:

I had intended to reserve my comments to children as victims, because that is what I am here to talk about. I do not want to let perfection be the enemy of good. I want a victims Bill that has children at the centre and understands children’s unique experiences. From what I saw yesterday, there is a lot of work to do. There is a lot of work to do in terms of defining children as victims, looking at the support they need and making sure that the victims code of practice is in the right place for children. That is what I want to focus on.

Q Tell me about child criminal exploitation. Do you think that should be on statute?

Dame Rachel de Souza:

Yes, absolutely. I was going to bring that up with the definition of children as victims. When I go around the country and talk to children, wherever they are—whether that is being held in police cells or children who are involved in drugs or whatever—I realise just how complex the situations are. You realise that these children are as much victim as perpetrator. Children tell me all the time that their experiences with the police make them feel like they are not victims but criminals. That is what we need to sort out.

Q Do you think the services there are adequate for children?

Dame Rachel de Souza:

I have seen some very diverse and excellent services. I would first point out The Lighthouse, which I am sure you are all familiar with and which is a superb example of services coalescing around children’s needs and understanding where children are. Some of the sexual assault referral centres for peer-on-peer sexual abuse are also fantastic, but we do not have a national network so that every child gets the same experience. Every child should get the best support, and it is just not there.

Q Let us look at a specific type of abuse, fatal domestic abuse, and its impact on children. Fatal domestic abuse often follows coercive or violent abuse, and where there are children, it can result in the father retaining parental responsibility. Do you agree with that? The father was the perpetrator—I should clarify that. The father killed the mother.

Dame Rachel de Souza:

I have made an initial examination of what has been proposed around Jade’s law. We have to protect children. Obviously we need to ensure that there are not unintended consequences and we need to look in detail, but I would say, on the face of it, that the protection of children must have primacy, so I support it.

Q Great. When men kill the mothers of their children, what in your view is their motivation for exercising parental responsibility after that?

Dame Rachel de Souza:

That is a deeply complex question, but I would be deeply concerned. Children in those situations are often the victims of abuse themselves, and we must protect them. I would not say that I can read the mind of any particular father, but we find time and again that everyone in the household has had that experience.

We have less than eight minutes left and five Members are indicating that they wish to come in, so please keep questions brief.

Q We have a distinct youth justice system. It has a different overarching aim from the adult system, a different police approach and different courts. Especially in the courts, there is a real focus on explanation in a way that young people can understand. Do you think that the victims code is suitably child friendly, both in its range and in its language?

Dame Rachel de Souza:

I was pleased to see the victims code published yesterday. There is more work to do on it, particularly in relation to having a clear definition of children and ensuring that it is child friendly all the way through. We have been working with the team to try to do that, and there is a lot more work to do.

Q Is there potentially a role for the Youth Justice Board and/or youth offending services in helping children who are victims?

Dame Rachel de Souza:

I think there is, but it is wider than that. We also need to look at children with special educational needs and ensure that we take into account and make use of the expertise around working properly for those children.

Q Is there anything obvious that we are missing in the way we look after children who are victims?

Dame Rachel de Souza:

Yes. When you talk to children who are victims you very quickly discover that they do not necessarily understand or report their experience in the same way as adults. Often, there is often quite a lot of delay in their coming forward, and the kind of support they need is far more complex, which is why I am so keen on an approach like that of the Lighthouse, where the services really see the child as an individual and coalesce around them. Children talk to me a lot about having to tell their story lots of times. They experience the courts completely differently. I have pages and pages of testimony of young people who have had dreadful experiences in the courts, because the courts just do not understand that they are children.

Some of us tried.

Dame Rachel de Souza:

Yes, but kids say, “I gave them my texts, I gave them my statements, but look—they’re not taking it forward.” We need the advice around the child to recognise what it is to be a child; they do not necessarily have that step-back view.

We need to do more. I was pleased to see the mention of advocacy; we could develop that a lot more, rather than just say, “This public service needs to deal with it, or that one.” It is about the individual child advocate and the services coming together around the child. It does not necessarily have to be introduced at vast new expense. I think there is a question about how we can regroup services to work in a way that works.

Okay. I am going to interrupt you, if you do not mind, because I know that so many colleagues want to pick up. But thank you very much.

Q You said that experience with the police can make children feel like they are criminals. What needs to be changed or amended in the Bill, or added to it, to address that?

Dame Rachel de Souza:

First off, and it is the point I made before, it is about recognising in the definition of victims children who have been criminally exploited; that comes up time and again. If I had more time, I could give you pages of quotes from children who, because of their experiences—whether it was being strip-searched or something else—have spent years feeling that they were in the wrong when they were actually the victims. That definition would be protective in itself, to start.

However, we also need to recognise that children get very worried if they have not come forward to the police to say they have been victims. We need to make sure that they are recognised in the victims code as well. I think that would help and I have some definitional changes and some word changes that I can write to the Committee about, which I think could help there. Often, it is about just two or three words, but it could make that work.

Q Briefly, you said in relation to the duty to collaborate that there should also be a duty of accountability. Following on from my colleague Rob’s line of questioning about the distinct nature of youth justice and youth crime, who should be responsible for overseeing that duty of accountability? We heard from the Domestic Abuse Commissioner that it should be the Ministry of Justice, but in the case of children do you think that should be your office or another body, or should it be the MOJ?

Dame Rachel de Souza:

We heard a lot from the people before me about how services really are not set up for children, and we have started to talk about how they can be set up to deliver for children. Ultimately, of course, Government and Government Departments have a responsibility, but I think it is about ensuring accountability at local level as well. It is always going to have to be multi-agency, because there are different strands of support for children, but we need to find a way, and with children it is probably in relation to the victims code. There is some value in focusing on youth justice holding that, but we need to try to go for the holy grail, which is to make multi-agency support work. I do not want to sound like a broken record, but I think that looking at how the Lighthouse has done it in Camden, where it has drawn together the different strands of health, social care, policing and youth justice, and actually made that work, can give us a blueprint for how to go forward.

Q Children of paedophiles really suffer adversely. Should they be regarded as victims in terms of the definition in the Bill, so that they can get the information and support services they need?

Dame Rachel de Souza:

Yes. I was so delighted during the passage of the Bill that Daisy’s law was taken seriously; we worked with Daisy. I think that is a really important step forward, and I feel similarly about children of paedophiles, because it will be the same argument.

Q I did some work on reducing parental conflict programmes. We know that even when there is simmering resentment and low-level arguing around children, it is problematic. What does the Bill do to improve services and checking in with children even when there is no direct harm? The child may not have been in the room when a parent was harmed, but we know it will still have an impact on them. How does the Bill improve those services—checking in, going through and making sure schools are involved?

Dame Rachel de Souza:

We have good intentions, but what will be important is that that is in the VCOP and that we operationalise it properly, because I absolutely agree with you that when these situations arise, the earliest possible Intervention to deal with parental conflict is what needs to happen.

I think we have—

Order. I am afraid that brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions. On behalf of the Committee, I thank Rachel de Souza for her evidence this morning.