Crime: Domestic Violence
(10 years, 6 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Thornton
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to criminalise a pattern of behaviour, psychological abuse and coercive control in domestic violence cases.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
My Lords, I am pleased to be able to bring forward this debate for the Grand Committee. The essence of the Question is whether here in the UK we have a legal framework that fully and adequately captures the nature and harm that is domestic violence, and I am genuinely asking whether a more comprehensive criminal law is required to close the gap between the current response and the long-term oppression and suffering of victimised women and children. I thank all those who have put down their names to speak in the debate.
Too many women have already lost their lives and more will continue to do so if we fail to understand coercive control as the dangerous behaviour that it is and to recognise the serious emotional harm that is caused to the victims of domestic violence. I would like to start by asking the Minister some questions about the current state of affairs. Since coercive control and psychological abuse were included in the March 2013 domestic violence definition, which of course I welcome, how many prosecutions have made use of this definition? How many convictions have there been for coercive control and psychological abuse since coercive control was included in the definition? How many prosecutions have there been under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 for causing alarm and distress in domestic violence cases where the victim and perpetrator are still in an ongoing relationship? The important question that needs to be answered here is whether the Minister thinks that the law is working as well as it should. That is because we need to know if the existing framework, and indeed the support that needs to be wrapped around it, is working effectively, and thus whether the law on domestic abuse needs to be further strengthened.
We know that domestic abuse is very complex and involves many forms of behaviour. Some victims say that the psychological abuse and control they suffer at the hands of their partner is “the worst part”. What are the Minister’s thoughts on this and the possibility that the current legislative framework fails to recognise it? The experts in this field, Women’s Aid and the Paladin National Stalking Advocacy Service, both say that there is a criminalisation gap which ensures that the pattern of domestic violence and control remains outside the reach of the existing criminal law, which prohibits only discrete incidents of physical injury. This is an appropriate debate because the office of the Nottinghamshire Police and Crime Commissioner is today hosting a conference with criminal justice partners to discuss what is and what is not working in this area. There have been workshops with victims of domestic violence and the discussion of issues such as early intervention.
In March 2013, the Government changed the definition of domestic violence to include coercively controlling behaviour, which is very welcome. However, non-physical abuse, although integral to the ongoing exercise of violent control, seems to be disregarded and thus tacitly condoned. Put simply, the law does not conceive of many women in abusive intimate relationships as being the victims of ongoing abuse. By criminalising this form of violence and having specialist legislation, similar to the stalking law introduced in 2012, would this send a message that abusive and coercively controlling behaviour within a relationship is as unacceptable as physical violence and that it will not be tolerated?
Paladin has formed a partnership with Women’s Aid and the Sara Charlton Charitable Foundation. They have carried out research, which has brought them to the conclusion that this criminalisation gap should be closed. They feel that the laws used to prosecute domestic violence—which include assault, burglary, property, breach of a restraining order, rape, kidnapping and murder—do not describe its essence. Patterns of power and control are missed. It misses the fact that domestic violence is about fear, coercive control and continuing acts. The totality of the behaviour and the non-physical manifestations of power and control that define an abusive relationship do real harm to victims and are not recognised in criminal law.
Interestingly, it is only after separation that the very same behaviour which was exerted in the relationship—control—is then criminalised: we call it stalking. Therefore the moment after a break-up becomes legally meaningful, separation, can be the most dangerous time for women. Of course, this is also very expensive. As far as I can tell, the figures from 2009 suggest that domestic violence costs the Government over £16 billion per year.
The question this debate raises is whether the law needs to be modernised. If we are to challenge the behaviour of perpetrators appropriately, do we need an offence that reflects the reality of domestic abuse in all its guises? According to Home Office statistics, domestic violence is more likely to result in repeat victimisation and injury than any other type of crime. However, the Crown Prosecution Service only prosecutes for a single incident and tends to focus on the injury level, while failing to take into account the course of conduct, the pattern of coercive controlling behaviour, and fear as a measure of harm. As a direct result, the seriousness of the pattern of abuse is not identified or understood, women become entrapped, abuse and rape become normalised, and no one goes to prison without injuries being present.
As we know, many women do not report until behaviour has escalated and there may be injuries, and for many that comes too late. Research by Women’s Aid indicates that the majority of women only report violence to the police after it has been going on for between six months and five years. When they do report it, each episode is treated as an isolated incident and, therefore, often as a low-level misdemeanour. That results in very few perpetrators being held to account for the totality of their behaviour. Therefore, is it surprising that victims struggle to understand why the full impact of their experiences cannot be taken into account by police and prosecutors? We have to ask: does the absence of such a crime undermine the victims of abuse and collude with perpetrators, as many of their acts go unseen and unchallenged?
The research I mentioned already, the Victim’s Voice survey, which was published in March, showed that 98% of victims were subjected to controlling, domineering or demeaning behaviours in their relationship. I will mention just a few of those behaviours: isolation from friends, family and colleagues; removal of all communications devices; food being withheld as well as use of the toilet; control of what the victim should wear, how they should style their hair and where they can work; stalking by means of tracking and following; deliberate sleep deprivation; threats of sexual abuse or rape; and threats to harm or kill children and/or pets. I could go on.
When asked if those behaviours had been taken into account by the police, 88% said that they had not. Clearly, we have an issue here. One of the issues is of course whether the police are dealing with the framework that already exists, and how that works. Certainly on this side of the Room, Labour would establish an independent commissioner for domestic and sexual violence to champion victims’ voices and drive improvements, starting with national standards for the delivery of services and training as recommended by ACPO.
However, is it true that the police are often big on words and developing policy which is then not delivered as regards either action or a true understanding of the issue? Do we think that there is a problem there? Too many times the woman who is murdered or badly hurt has been begging the police to provide protection and deal with her abuser. Too often the same victims are calling for protection from the same perpetrators, and time and again opportunities to intervene and protect families are missed.
Lord Paddick (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for securing this debate. I will speak briefly from two perspectives: first, as people might expect, as a former police officer; and secondly, as people might not expect, as a victim of domestic violence in the past.
Despite the negative media attention surrounding the recent Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary report Everyone’s Business: Improving the Police Response to Domestic Abuse, it did highlight some good work carried out by, for example, the Metropolitan Police, an organisation of which I have 30 years’ experience—some of it not good. When I was a constable in the 1970s, we were told that domestic violence was the last thing that we should get involved with, as victims of domestic violence, once they had been patched up in casualty, invariably wanted to go back to their abusive partners and declined to assist the police with any prosecution.
I could not fully understand the mentality of these victims until I became a victim of domestic violence myself. My relationship started normally and lovingly but, imperceptibly, the coercive control and emotional abuse gradually took over. Sometimes something told you that things were not right: my partner’s tearing up of a birthday card from a friend which he thought was from a secret lover, for example; overly and unreasonably jealous behaviour, such as searching the contacts on my mobile phone and refusing to believe that “Bruno” was actually my boss’s official driver and not someone I was having an affair with; allowing me to go out for the night only for me to find that he was following me; and, almost inevitably, eventually a violent attack in the street. Even then, it was only when I was on a residential training course and began to talk to a female colleague that I realised that, however much I loved this individual, it was an abusive and dysfunctional relationship. Luckily for me, the violence was not serious. For too many others, mainly women, it can be fatal.
A decade or so ago, work was done in the Metropolitan Police to identify patterns of behaviour that led to domestic murder. It showed that a pattern of behaviour was established, starting with verbal abuse and coercive control, emotional abuse and then physical violence, tragically culminating in such murders. Officers were then instructed that, when attending domestic violence incidents, they should look out for such patterns in order to identify where victims were particularly vulnerable. This work was developed into a risk assessment tool by Laura Richards, initially in the Metropolitan Police, and then by the Association of Chief Police Officers, and is now widely used and known as DASH. I say “widely used”, but Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary found that it was inconsistently applied and that the police had to be consistent in their approach to domestic violence.
Interestingly, similar patterns of escalating behaviour were identified by the probation service in its report on working with racist offenders published in 1998, where the title of the report encapsulates this sort of progression: From Murmur to Murder. The report highlighted what could happen if racist behaviour was left unchallenged. There are direct parallels here, where unacceptable behaviour in a domestic setting can and tragically does escalate to violence and, all too frequently, to murder. Despite the research, the experience and the good work by some police forces, because such non-physical abuse, coercive control and emotional abuse are not considered by most police forces to be criminal offences, there is little the police or other agencies actually do until, tragically, in many cases, it is too late to prevent serious assaults or even deaths.
My understanding of the law as it stands is that if a stranger carried out the sort of non-physical abuse I suffered, he could be guilty of the criminal offences of harassment and stalking; but if I was in a relationship with that individual, he would be not be considered guilty of any criminal offence. That cannot be right. If my former partner had known that such behaviour did amount to a criminal offence, he might have thought twice about it. If I had known that such behaviour was a criminal offence, that might have helped me to redress the power imbalance in that relationship and helped me prevent the behaviour escalating into violence.
Although I have talked today about my own experience of same-sex domestic violence, the biggest issue is violence against women by men. I believe that the Government may be bringing forward legislation in the Queen’s Speech to extend the definition of child abuse to include psychological as well as physical harm. Legislation to criminalise patterns of behaviour that amount to psychological abuse and coercive control in domestic violence cases would not only help prevent further violent attacks but help save the lives of some of the more than 100 women a year in this country who die at the hands of men who they are or have been in a relationship with.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)
My Lords, I valued the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton. Her comments about the present situation were clear and detailed, and I strongly support her case that there should be a detailed consideration of criminalising this issue.
My reason for speaking is that I was involved with these issues quite a long time ago when I was the UK representative to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. At that time, when I had to make a speech for the UK, of course I had to seek permission but I said, “I would like to admit that we have domestic violence in the UK”. It was agreed that I could make that statement, and it had a dramatic effect because we were the first nation ever to make a statement in the UN admitting to having domestic violence. All the tiny countries that had suffered from similar things for years and years suddenly felt unafraid to speak out on the issue. That was really quite important and brought it out into the open.
Things have moved on a long way but everything takes a long time to move on, whatever field you are in. What the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, said was very interesting. The one category that neither he nor the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, mentioned was the men who are attacked by women. That is the one missing group, and they do exist. Over tea in your Lordships’ House, someone said to me, “Be sure not to forget the number of men who are attacked by women”. This should not be overlooked. This same criminal law should apply to anyone. There should not be violence.
I was asked to go to Brazil, where they were rewriting the constitution and were writing a section on women. Bella Abzug, the very famous American Congresswoman—the first woman to stand up and demand that Nixon be impeached—was there. She is famous for that; she is also famous for creating the Ms title instead of Miss or Mrs. She said, “Why do I have to define what I am when the other side does not have to?”. She told me that the American constitution had just two lines that covered everything for women, making life and opportunities equal and everything else, whereas as the meeting went on the Brazilians became more and more determined to make it wider and wider. Lots of people were there representing Brazil, rather than the one or two who represented other countries. I made my speech and said, “Listening to this, I get the impression we want to abolish men entirely. That is not what I believe”. Over lunch, the interpreter said to me, “We thanked heaven when you made that statement”, because it was getting to the point where it had become quite unrealistic.
Turning to the more realistic side in Brazil, we were taken to see the São Paulo police facilities; we did not see the prison but just heard about it. They told us that they had special care and special treatment for women who had suffered domestic violence. This was in the early 1980s, long before any such thing was thought of here. Indeed, people came from all over the world to see how effective the Brazilian system was. Fortunately, we have seen a lot of this change now and people are treated better. Particularly after rape cases they were very helpful, and it is a terrible time for anyone.
Those were the days when Erin Pizzey was running a refuge and Sandra Horley was very involved in helping women. Of course, domestic violence did not affect just the women themselves because they often had children who needed refuge as well. The women had to face the problem of finding new school places for their children and it could be very difficult. However, at least there were people to help them.
I turn now to coercive behaviour, which is much better known about today. I think that it is every bit as bad as physical abuse. People live in fear of what will happen. They do not feel that they possess the right to do what they want to do in life because they are controlled by others. That is not good because fear can destroy people’s lives. We have to deal with this issue. I know that in March 2013 the Home Office changed the definition of coercive behaviour, but the law has not been changed to match it. That is what is being asked for in this Question, and I am very much in favour of it.
In many ways these issues have been in the public domain for longer than I had realised. Dickens wrote about how abusive Bill Sikes was to Nancy in Oliver Twist, so these things are on the record, even though they were not really topics for public discussion. I have heard that a major Home Office conference is to be held on 22 July that will cover female genital mutilation, forced early marriage and domestic violence. It is to the credit of Theresa May that she is bringing forward such a conference, which I think will be welcomed by everyone.
I end by saying that there is a time lag between awareness and action. We are all aware of these things, and now it is time to take action.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill (LD)
My Lords, as is so often the case, I share the aims of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, but I do not agree with her means. The problem I have with the Question she has raised for debate is that it presupposes that the important way of tackling what is referred to as,
“a pattern of behaviour, psychological abuse and coercive control in domestic violence cases”
is through the introduction of more criminal law. Apart from minor exceptions, I do not agree with that. We have plenty of criminal law to cover these issues, and we have plenty of civil law, including the Protection From Harassment Act 1997, covering both civil and criminal litigation, and what we put into the Equality Act 2010 in the form of civil law on sexual harassment. There is a great mass of law.
The problem with relying on the criminal law is illustrated by what has happened with FGM. The practice was criminalised many years ago, but until very recently no prosecutions had been brought. Why is that? It is because, first, the victims are inhibited from coming forward. There is the whole business of not dishonouring the family. Secondly, the police are hardly the best people to rely upon to take up these extremely complicated and difficult family issues. Thirdly, the burden of proof is criminal. Fourthly, the mode of trial is criminal and it is normally held in public. There are all kinds of reasons why the use of criminal law can be ineffective.
I learnt all this when I was dealing with forced marriage. The Labour Government had quite rightly rejected the notion of criminalising forced marriage, so I decided to plug the gap by inventing a civil protection that would use the family courts to deal with the victims. It has worked extremely well. Many cases have been brought in which alleged forced marriages or attempted forced marriages have been prevented by the family courts. Article 37 of the Istanbul convention, which I hope the Minister will indicate the Government intend promptly to ratify, says of forced marriage that:
“Parties shall take the necessary legislative or other measures to ensure that the intentional conduct of forcing an adult or a child to enter into a marriage is criminalised”.
I was hesitant when I saw that. It is one thing to use the criminal law when there is a breach of a court order—a forced marriage protection order, for example—but it is quite another matter to create a free-standing crime. That is problematic because it may deter very young children—boys and girls—women and men from coming forward with their complaints of gross malpractice, for fear of dishonouring their families. Although this is not really for this debate, I hope that, after the Government have ratified the Istanbul convention, and after we have thought about the legislation to do that, we will ensure that the criminal process is only used when the civil process cannot give an effective remedy.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I am a member, has heard a great deal of evidence from the fundamental rights agency about its massive survey of all the EU member states. It has produced a huge report, and it looked in particular at the UK. In no part of that report has the agency suggested there is any need for more criminal law. I agree with that. Instead, the evidence I have heard so far indicates the importance of a wide range of other measures. If she will forgive me, I wish the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, had said “tackle” instead of using the word “criminalise”. If she had asked what plans the Government have to tackle this pattern, one could have looked beyond the criminal law—for example, at the role of the health service in identifying and supporting victims of violence against women and children. One could have looked at training doctors and healthcare providers to look for physical and psychological signs of domestic violence, such as signs of controlling behaviour. That is important, because women come into contact with doctors and other healthcare providers more regularly than they would with the police or specialised services.
So far as the UK is concerned, the fundamental rights agency has recommended the need in this country to increase awareness of violence against women and children, to provide training for perpetrators, and the importance of focusing on bullying and harassment in schools. We need workable legislation; we broadly have that. We need to ratify the Istanbul convention. We need a comprehensive action programme, because one in three women is affected by domestic violence. That is a comprehensive problem, needing a comprehensive solution. We need to deal with new technologies that enable cyberstalking and harassment, misogynistic hate mail and so on. However, we should not focus just on reporting to the police, but on reporting to doctors and healthcare workers, on dealing with violence in childhood and on the impact experienced in adulthood resulting from that.
I agree with the aim, but as I say, I do not agree with the means. I hope the Minister, in his reply, will be able to say that the Government have no plans to further criminalise in this field, except in very exceptional areas where a real gap can be found. To do so would hamper the means of dealing with domestic violence, rather than promoting them.
Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for raising this important issue. I thank the Home Secretary for prioritising it, for commissioning the HMIC review that looked into the police response to domestic violence, and indeed for acting on it by chairing the new national oversight group.
Domestic violence is a real concern. It affects so many of us. On average, the police are contacted every 30 seconds for assistance with related incidents. In my home county of Essex, for example, I am proud that our PCC, Nick Alston, has identified domestic abuse as a top priority in the Essex police and crime plan, after figures showed that more than 3,600 offences were recorded between April and September last year, including three women killed in their own homes. This equates to 20 such crimes reported in Essex each and every day.
As Mr Alston has said:
“Too often the front line is the front room. We surely can’t accept this level of harm. I want to work across communities to create an environment where domestic abuse is not tolerated and where our children and young people grow up to recognise the value of healthy relationships”.
Essex residents have welcomed the newly constituted Essex Domestic Abuse Strategy Board, chaired by the PCC, which has representation from across all the agencies that have a role to play in tackling domestic abuse, including the police, councils, probation, prosecution authorities and health. This new board is overseeing an ambitious programme of work in supporting victims, tackling perpetrators and, most importantly, working to prevent domestic abuse happening in the first place. I congratulate Mr Alston on this initiative and urge other PCCs to follow the example.
The reality is that the crime is embedded within the perpetrator’s need to exert power and control over their victim. As such, the abuser will often use a combination of psychological abuse, coercive control as well as physical abuse to create real fear in order to contain their victims—as we have heard already in this debate. However, as we have also heard, psychological abuse, coercive control and a pattern of abuse are not criminalised, sometimes allowing perpetrators to evade the law. This puts real pressure on the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and other agencies when tackling the issue, as they do not always appear to have the right tools to do so.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, pointed out, in March last year the Home Office changed the definition of domestic violence to include,
“any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive … behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are, or have been, intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality”.
I thank the Home Secretary and welcome the change as it depicts the fundamental nature of the crime. Currently, the state cannot effectively intervene, nor translate and consequently penalise the crime before the abuse has escalated, leading to current or former partners killing two women every week.
Statistics show that women experience between 30 and 40 incidents before they have the courage to pick up the phone and dial 999. I do not know whether it is declaring an interest, but as corroboration of this statistic, I can tell your Lordships that I have a close relation who was physically and psychologically abused by her husband for nearly 30 years, without any of us being aware, before it was finally brought to the attention of the police and he was prosecuted. According to research, 53% of men whose cases are reported to police in the UK have been reported for at least three other assaults against their partner. However, even if a victim does report, unless there is physical evidence of assault there is little that can be done. As a victim of abuse explained in a Victim’s Voice survey conducted by the Sara Charlton Charitable Foundation:
“Currently it’s too easy for abusers to get away with it because they know that if there is insufficient physical evidence of assault they will not be convicted. In my case, my abuser didn’t feel the need to physically hurt me very often because the emotional and psychological abuse kept me ‘under control’. It transpired that the police knew exactly what he was like, (I was by no means his first victim), but there was mostly no official crime he could be charged with. Consequently, he was pretty much free to behave exactly as he pleased, safe in the knowledge that unless he left visible marks on any of his victims, there was nothing anyone could do”.
We—or should I say the taxpayer?—currently spend £15.7 billion a year on the symptoms of domestic violence, but we should also focus further on its eradication. We need to be able to target perpetrators effectively through our legal system, ensuring that government spending is focused on where it is lacking and creating an effective cross-agency response to this epidemic.
The courts are bound by current laws, which can prosecute only for single incidents of violence. Without being able to see the true pattern of violence and without an offence that is fit for purpose, the courts are unable to ascertain the real threat that the perpetrator’s course of conduct poses to a victim and consequently are unable to impose the appropriate sentences. As another victim in the Victim’s Voice survey wrote:
“Why should we have to suffer in silence? The only way I could finally get away was to arrange everything in secret and be absolutely petrified that he was going to find out before I had everything in place to be able to leave safely. I then had to go into hiding for a while so that there was no risk of backlash. If the law had been there to protect me I would have felt a lot safer and stronger to have been able to leave sooner”.
Thanks to the welcome stalking law reform brought in by the Government, a course of conduct that constitutes psychological abuse and control has been criminalised. However, the law protects those who experience these behaviours only once they have left the relationship. Should this protection now be extended to those who suffer such abuse within the relationship?
Like the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, I am grateful to the domestic violence law reform campaign team, the Sara Charlton Charitable Foundation, Women’s Aid and Paladin for their briefing for this debate and for their continued campaigning for this change. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s comments and hope that he and the Home Secretary will consider the points made in today’s debate.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, Refuge has been mentioned, so perhaps I should declare an interest as a past chair. I learnt a great deal from Sandra Horley.
Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will for ever haunt me, perhaps break my spirit and even my mind. The impact of non-physical behaviour is often less evident to other people. “How did you get that bruise?” “Oh, silly me, I walked into a door that I didn’t see was open”—not “I didn’t understand and escape the dynamics of a dysfunctional relationship”. Both are manifestations of controlling behaviour, as other noble Lords have said, and have a great deal in common, including the ever present fear of when it will break out, reducing the victim’s capacity to cope with it, being demeaned and diminished.
It is not just words, though. The briefing which we have received from the organisations just mentioned by my noble friend Lady Jenkin of Kennington listed relevant behaviours. Reading that list, I thought, “Where have I seen some of these before?”, such as sleep deprivation and the use of extreme stressors such as rape. There are a number of behaviours in this list which, if they were undertaken by someone in an official capacity, could well be regarded as torture under international law.
Domestic violence has risen up the public consciousness but, as the HMIC report said, the overall police response is not good enough. It talked about it being a priority on paper but, in the majority of forces, not in practice. One of the factors identified was officers lacking skills and knowledge. It is easy to understand how much more straightforward it is to identify a single act of physical brutality than insidious and brutal courses of conduct, still less when this is not immediately evident with a physical outcome. I do not underestimate the problems of evidence, and I agree with quite a lot—not everything—that my noble friend Lord Lester said, particularly about the use of the existing law. Let us use what we have got unless it is clearly inadequate. The work on stalking the year before last indicated that there was an inadequacy, and led to a change in law. However, if it is not inadequate then I for one am not enthusiastic about some sort of duplication. However, having conduct identified and tagged as criminal is very important, as my noble friend Lord Paddick has said.
One of the recommendations of the HMIC report was about the views of victims as an essential element in monitoring police effectiveness. The report said that the Home Office should ensure that the views of victims of domestic abuse are incorporated routinely and consistently into national monitoring arrangements. I ask my noble friend the Minister—if he cannot answer it today perhaps he could write; one has picked this up in thinking about it and he may well not have a briefing on it—how are the views of victims to be included in the monitoring process if they do not report? How do you find the victims? How do you get at their views?
One of the things that have helped raise awareness over a period of perhaps 20 years is when victims’ experiences are made real in fiction through popular culture. Those of us whose soap of choice is “The Archers” are witnessing one character’s charm turning into control at the moment. I congratulate those who work in the media and who bravely—because this is not always welcome—include such storylines. However, all this is important, not just for raising general public awareness but because it gives victims the confidence to identify, recognise and articulate that what they are suffering is not normal; it is abuse, and it is a crime.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Taylor of Holbeach) (Con)
My Lords, I conclude this very useful debate by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for the clarity with which she has presented the debate to us today, and for giving us the chance to consider a matter in which all of us here are interested. I think we all agree that domestic abuse is an unacceptable crime that shatters lives, and one that the Government are committed to tackling. That has been widely shared by all speakers. I am determined to see a society where violence against women and girls is not tolerated, and where domestic violence generally is not tolerated. As my noble friend Lord Paddick very courageously pointed out, this is not confined to conventional heterosexual relationships but can occur within any relationship, and it is wrong wherever it happens.
I want to be absolutely clear: abusive behaviour in the home is the worst violation of the trust that those in close relationships place in one another. Such behaviour is already criminal. The fact that it takes place behind closed doors does not make it any less serious—quite the reverse. This Government have expanded the non-statutory definition of “domestic abuse” to include coercive and controlling behaviour. The definition complements a wide range of statutory offences that encompass domestic violence and abuse. The Government have also introduced stalking legislation, which, alongside harassment offences, can apply equally to those in relationships by criminalising a course of conduct. Therefore, a course of conduct can reinforce particular cases presented. Behaviours captured by this framework include the type of subversive abuse that has been highlighted today, such as deploying threats, damaging property, controlling someone’s manner of dress or preventing them seeking medical assistance. In a way, I agree with my noble friends Lord Lester and Lady Hamwee that the legal framework is sufficient. However, I will go on to explain how there are deficiencies in the way that it is used.
The framework is enhanced by sentencing guidelines that make it clear that an offence committed in a domestic setting should be seen as more serious. Among the aggravating factors highlighted by the guidelines are abuse of trust, abuse of power and a proven history of violence or threats in a domestic setting by the perpetrator. The cumulative impact of these guidelines is that courts are entitled to impose stiffer penalties on perpetrators of domestic abuse than on others who commit equivalent crimes where a domestic relationship is not involved. It is critical that the police and prosecutors build cases that incorporate those factors to ensure that sentences are commensurate with the offending behaviour. That is what Parliament has willed, through its legislation in this area and through the debates we have had. I will return to that point when we talk about Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary.
The Government are committed to ensuring that the existing legal tools are used to provide access to justice for victims of domestic abuse. This is demonstrated by our announcements that we will roll out two new legal remedies for the police: domestic violence protection orders and the domestic violence disclosure scheme, which is commonly known as Clare’s law. That is why we have continued the specialist domestic violence courts—SDVC—programme, which is an essential combined-agency approach. All noble Lords would understand that this is frequently a combined-agency area, and a combined-agency approach to tackling domestic violence is important.
On my noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes’s point, it is absolutely right that we also consider male victims of domestic abuse. All our policy initiatives are gender-neutral in recognising what domestic abuse means. We have also listened to those campaigners who have been clear that new laws and processes are not sufficient in themselves and that the way in which the police respond to abuse more widely needs to be addressed. The Government agree that it is critical that front-line agencies respond to domestic abuse using the full extent of the law. In September last year, the Home Secretary commissioned HMIC to review the police response to domestic abuse because she was concerned that it was not as good as it should be. HMIC reported its findings on 27 March, and I am sure that the Grand Committee will agree with me that the report made for very worrying reading. We agree that transparency is important, and that is why the Home Secretary commissioned HMIC to review the police response, and is now chairing a national oversight group which will issue quarterly reports, so we can expect progress reports on a regular basis.
Every 30 seconds, a victim of domestic abuse summons up the courage to call the police. What was the figure—that it takes 40 incidents before somebody reaches that point? This is the measure of what we are dealing with. When a victim reaches out for help it is vital that the police are equipped to respond effectively and end a cycle of abuse that in many cases will have been going on for years. Quite simply, the police response to domestic abuse at the moment is not good enough.
On the day that HMIC published its report, the Home Secretary wrote to chief constables and police force leads on domestic abuse, making clear her expectation that, in line with HMIC’s recommendations, each force will have a plan in place by September to improve its response to domestic violence and abuse. The Home Secretary has also committed to chairing the national oversight group I have mentioned to lead immediate improvement. The group has a clear and specific mandate to monitor delivery against each of the HMIC recommendations. The Home Secretary will issue quarterly reports, as I have said. The Government will ensure that these important recommendations do not become yesterday’s news. This is a live issue.
In considering the case for new laws to criminalise patterns of abuse and control, it is critical that we look closely at HMIC’s findings. I would like to take this opportunity to draw out a few key points from the report. HMIC have found that the following factors are contributing to the poor police response: a lack of visible leadership and clear direction set by senior officers; alarming and unacceptable weaknesses in some core policing activity, in particular the collection of evidence by officers at the scene of domestic abuse incidents; poor management and supervision that fails to reinforce the right behaviours, attitudes and actions of officers; failure to prioritise action that will tackle domestic abuse when setting the priorities for the day-to-day activity of front-line officers and assigning their work; officers lacking the skills and knowledge necessary to engage confidently and competently with victims of domestic abuse; and extremely limited systematic feedback from victims about their experience of the police response.
I respect my noble friend Lord Paddick’s experience as a police officer and I fully understand the demands that all of us are placing on the police at this time, but his speech was a graphic illustration of the sort of abuse that leads to violence. We need to encourage the police to take those early signs seriously before violence occurs.
These failings are not about shortcomings in the law, nor is the finding that in a review of 600 actual bodily harm police files, photographs of injuries were taken in only half the cases. We do not rule out the possibility that in developing a better police response to domestic abuse, we will expose evidence that supports the need for a change in the law. But our immediate focus must be on delivering the operational change that will have an immediate impact on victims’ experience and their confidence in reporting what is happening to them.
I will deal with a few of the points that have been raised—there have been a lot of very good points, I have to say. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, that the Protection from Harassment Act does allow for patterns of behaviour to be taken into account. She asked me about the statistics. I cannot give her up-to-date statistics. I will write to her—in fact, I will write to all noble Lords and cover points that I would have liked to have been able to address. I am being passed notes but I am running out of time. In 2012, 58.9% of acts of harassment without violence—4,270—were flagged as domestic violence; with violence, 55.4% were flagged as domestic violence. I will give these figures in a letter because that is easier than reading them out here today.
I was asked about the Istanbul convention. The Istanbul convention goes a little bit further. We have indeed signed it. It needs ratifying. We are looking to the Joint Committee on Human Rights to provide that for us. I am grateful for the way in which my noble friends Lady Jenkin and Lady Gardner of Parkes congratulated the Home Secretary on her determination in this matter. I also thank my noble friend Lady Jenkin for her comments on Nick Alston, who I happen to know and who I think is doing a great job in Essex with Be Safer Essex and Essex Change—all these groups in which the police are playing a role. Having the PCCs’ confidence could be very important to this.
What faces us is no small challenge. It is a challenge for us in politics; it is a challenge for the police themselves. I am determined that we will encourage more victims to come forward, meaning that more perpetrators will be brought to justice and more cycles of abuse will be disrupted, as we take a step closer to a society in which domestic abuse is a thing of the past.
My noble friend Lady Hamwee asked me the impossible question—she often does. I do not have the answer to how we get victims to report things to the police but she raised a very important question and I hope that I will be able to address it in my letter. With that, I must sit down.