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

On 25 March 2026, MPs voted by 291 to 158 to reject Lords Amendment 1 to the Victims and Courts Bill. The amendment, inserted by the House of Lords, would have given all crime victims a statutory right to receive free transcripts of route-to-verdict decisions and bail decisions within 14 days of requesting them. The government's motion to disagree with the Lords passed comfortably. The vote blocks, for now, a new legal entitlement that would have required courts to produce and supply those transcripts to victims at no cost. The government's position, set out by Minister Alex Davies-Jones, was that the duty was not operationally deliverable in that form: courts do not currently have the capacity to fulfil such a guarantee safely or consistently. Davies-Jones argued that existing rights under the Victims' Code already require bail outcomes and release conditions to be communicated to victims within five working days, a shorter timeframe than the 14 days proposed in the amendment. The government said its immediate priority was delivering free sentencing remarks for all victims and that it would consider further steps on transcripts thereafter. Labour voted unanimously in favour of rejecting the amendment, with 290 Labour and Labour Co-operative MPs voting aye and none voting against. Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Reform UK, Green, Plaid Cymru and Democratic Unionist Party MPs all voted no, reflecting a broad cross-party opposition to the government's position. Three independents voted with the government and three against. The vote was one of six divisions on the same day rejecting Lords amendments to the Bill, all of which passed on similar margins, with the government holding its majority consistently across each.