Domestic Abuse Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 5th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, regrettably, the Bill is symptomatic of some of the more distressing features that we face in our rather challenging times. Although domestic abuse has existed for as long as sexual and familial relationships have been formed, certain aspects of modern life seem to act as an abuse accelerator, the most current and depressing accelerator being the pandemic lockdown.

The Bill is to be warmly welcomed and I am grateful to the Government for the many improvements that they made in another place, but because a series of events has conspired to delay its passage through Parliament, and because of the pressure-cooker atmosphere of lockdown, those of us who have received a wide range of briefing papers are presented with a wish list longer than all the arms in the Chamber at the moment put together.

I will briefly mention those issues where I intend to join forces with others in Committee and on Report. They are focused on attempts to try to prevent or mitigate domestic abuse as early as possible.

The first is the status of migrant women and children. What a painful dilemma is presented by unwittingly allowing an abuser to use a victim’s insecure status as a means of coercion and control. We do not know how many victims are suffering because, in part, many of them are unwilling to approach the authorities or even refuges.

Secondly, as the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, expressed so movingly, we will ask the Government to look seriously and carefully at the case for creating a specific offence of non-fatal strangulation. As the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has just indicated, there is compelling international evidence that this could be an incisive and powerful means of enhancing the prevention of life-threatening domestic abuse behaviour.

Thirdly I will strongly support the case—articulated so clearly by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, and others, including the domestic abuse commissioner-in-waiting—for criminalising threats to share intimate images. It is an insidious form of coercive control and a distressing symptom of our online parallel universe.

Fourthly, I will support the case for making misogyny a hate crime. I have had the privilege of working with this cause’s principal proponent in another place, Stella Creasy, as a colleague in the Council of Europe, and I agree with her that we should call out misogyny for what it is—a trigger for violence, coercion and a total lack of empathy for its victims. It is encouraging that seven police forces have already started recording offences which are explicitly motivated by misogyny. This recognises the motivation behind the crime and the very high incidence of repeat offending. In particular, I draw your Lordships’ attention to the article in the Times on Monday of this week describing how a woman called Kellie Sutton hanged herself after five months in an abusive relationship, leaving three children under the age of 15. Her abuser had been reported to police by three previous partners. I rest my case.

Lastly, I will support the case for giving the domestic abuse commissioner an extension of her powers to create an oversight mechanism to collate reviews into domestic homicides and suicides. The Minister and I have previously spoken and agreed about the importance of accurate and timely data in order to understand complex situations better. This data would be a powerful additional tool in aiding more effective prevention of domestic abuse.

Finally, the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said that this debate is extremely gloomy and that the UK is not the worst offender. I think that that will be rather cold comfort to the victims of domestic abuse, whom we are all representing here today.