A promise made: Inside Cheryl Korbel's meeting with the prime minister

Almost exactly a year since the day her daughter was murdered, Cheryl Korbel walked into Downing Street.

Her determination to secure Olivia’s legacy had brought her to the prime minister’s door. 

Olivia’s killer, Thomas Cashman, was convicted earlier this year following a trial at Manchester Crown Court.

But on the day of his sentencing he refused to appear in the dock, to listen to the judge, or hear the impact statements that her mother and sister, Chloe, had written. 

Since then, Cheryl and Olivia’s aunt, Antonia, have been campaigning to get the law changed so that criminals are forced to face their victim’s families in court - and during a 30 minute meeting in his Downing Street office, the prime minister finally promised to give them one. 

'I just hope she's proud of what we've done': Cheryl Korbel in tears over law change

They were nervous and excited as we went through the security checks and walked up Downing Street in the morning sunshine.

I was the only journalist to travel with them to No 10 and to sit inside that meeting.

Sitting together on a sofa in his study, Cheryl told Rishi Sunak that Cashman not coming to court that day was like "a punch in the stomach", and that she didn’t want any other family to have go through what hers has.

He looked her in the eye and told her: "It won’t be possible any longer for people like him to take the cowards way out."

He assured them that he’ll give judges new powers to order offenders into the dock, and prison officers more guidance on whether and when they can force them. 

Afterwards, I asked Cheryl if she believed him. "I'm very hopeful it'll be changed. It's touched them.

"But what we want to see is actions rather than words… I'll believe it when it happens."

We were joined in the Downing Street rose garden by the Justice Secretary, Alex Chalk.

He told Cheryl that if, despite the new measures, offenders still refuse to come into the dock, they could face an extra two years in prison. 

For Cheryl, that’s not enough.

"In some cases I don't think it's going to make a difference, because if they're going to get a lengthy sentence - two years is nothing."

Later, we sat in Sir Keir Starmer’s office, and asked him if he would do anything differently.

"I would have acted a lot more quickly. We called for this in April of last year," the Labour leader told us.

During the half hour he spent speaking to them, Sir Keir promised Cheryl and Antonia that Labour would support the bill on a cross party basis.

"There's a frustration that it’s taken this long to get to where we are today, but this change needs to happen," he said.

No one agrees more with that than Olivia’s mum. 

Earlier, as we sat in the sunshine in the Downing Street garden, I asked her what Olivia would have made of all this. 

"I hope she’s proud of what we’ve done, because at the end of the day it’s in her name," Cheryl said.

"It’s why we’ve done it," she told me through tears.

"And not only her name - it's for every other family who’ve gone through it.

"We just hope it gets changed so no one else has to go through it."

Cheryl also told me, just as she told the prime minister, that if and when this bill gets passed, she would like it to be known as Olivia’s law.

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