Victims and Courts Bill: motion to disagree with Lords Amendment 1

What happened

On 25 March 2026, the House of Commons voted by 291 to 158 to reject Lords Amendment 1 to the Victims and Courts Bill. The amendment concerned access to free court transcripts for victims, and had been inserted by the House of Lords before the bill returned to the Commons. The government moved to disagree with the Lords on this point, and its position prevailed comfortably.

Why it matters

Lords Amendment 1 would have created a legal right for victims to receive free transcripts of court proceedings. At present, victims who want written records of hearings, including sentencing remarks, can face costs running into thousands of pounds, a barrier that many victims and campaigners have highlighted as preventing them from properly processing and recovering from their experiences. By rejecting the amendment, the government kept the bill in a form that does not include a statutory entitlement to free transcripts, though Ministers indicated in debate that they intend to introduce further measures on this subject. A petition on the issue attracted over 200,000 signatures and was debated in Westminster Hall earlier that same week.

The politics

The vote divided almost entirely along party lines. All 291 Ayes came from Labour and Labour and Co-operative MPs, while the 158 Noes were drawn from Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Reform UK, the Greens, Plaid Cymru, the Democratic Unionist Party and several independents. There were no Labour rebels. The government's position attracted criticism not only from opposition parties but from some of its own backbenchers, who pressed Ministers for firmer commitments on timescale. This division was the first in a sequence of six votes on the same day in which the Commons rejected every Lords amendment to the bill, asserting the government's preferred text across the board.