My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Kennedy of Cradley and Lady Newlove, not just for their contributions today but for the discussions that my noble friend Lord German and I have had with them about this amendment since the previous stage of the Bill and for their valuable assistance in refining the proposals today, which are somewhat different from those that I put before the House in Committee. In particular, I thank them for enabling us to come up with an opt-out, rather than an opt-in system, in which we have set down a clear definition of victims and relevant persons.
I want to deal with the question raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, which was alluded by the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, concerning why we have the proposal in the Bill and do not leave it to the more general workings of the Victim Contact Scheme. In one sense, they are right. We should have a Victim Contact Scheme which works for all victims in every case, but we do not. We should have a special measure in the Bill because these are victims of a particularly horrible situation. It is not just that they have been victims of a crime; they continue to be victims of the failure of a convicted prisoner to make a disclosure about a particular matter. That is of a sufficiently different order from other crimes for the Government to have brought forward this Bill, which applies solely in those circumstances.
As other noble Lords have said—the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, said it perhaps more clearly than anybody else—parole hearings in these cases carry a weight even greater than those of other crimes, so it is even more important that the administrative processes, which our criminal justice system quite frequently gets wrong, should not revictimise these people. We are not asking for very much, we are just asking that there be a database, that they be on it and that they have an automatic right to information at all times.
I do not want to repeat the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, about the position in which victims’ families find themselves, as I think she said it all. However, having talked to Marie McCourt, I think that we are talking about 100 cases at most. For these cases, which the Government have decided are sufficiently special for us to have a separate law, we should have this system as outlined, and if it works well, there is no reason why it should not be applied more widely either under other legislation or in the often-mentioned general review of the Parole Board.
I hope that the Minister will appreciate that we listened to what he said at earlier stages of the Bill and that we have brought forward an amended proposal which is modest but of immense importance to a very small number of people.