UK: Violence Against Women and Girls

Baroness Helic Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Helic (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the speech of the noble Baroness, but how depressing to hear that this is the world in which girls and boys are being brought up. I really hope that we can do more and better to address these issues. I would like to focus on two areas: the situation of migrant victims of domestic abuse and the experience of survivors of domestic abuse in family courts.

We know that migration status is weaponised by abusers. Eleven years after signing and ratifying the Istanbul convention on preventing violence against women, we are still waiting for the Government to sign up to Article 59 of that convention—they have refused—which grants protection to survivors of domestic abuse or forced marriage whose residency status is dependent on their abuser.

Last year, in response to a Written Question, my noble friend Lady Williams, then a Home Office Minister, wrote that the reservation on Article 59 was

“pending the results and evaluation of the Support for Migrant Victims”

pilot scheme, and that the Government would decide what to do about supporting these very vulnerable survivors of abuse, and about the reservation, “as soon as possible” once it was concluded. The scheme, which was offered by the Government as the answer to all our concerns about support for migrant women while we debated the Domestic Abuse Bill, was originally due to be concluded last summer but has now been extended. Can my noble friend the Minister update us on when the Government intend to publish the evaluation of the first year of the scheme, and tell us what the timetable is for moving beyond that pilot to comprehensive support for migrant victims of domestic abuse and ratifying Article 59?

Turning to family courts, I thank my noble and learned friend Lord Bellamy, who wrote to me last month with an update on the implementation of the Ministry of Justice’s 2020 expert panel report, Assessing Risk of Harm to Children and Parents in Private Law Children Cases. He highlighted the success of the integrated domestic abuse court pilot scheme, which shows that a more humane and efficient court system is possible. I urge the Government to roll this model out across the country. When that happens, it will be important to ensure that it receives the funding and institutional backing necessary, so that it can continue to be a success.

In the meantime, anecdotal evidence suggests that women continue to have their children taken away from them on the basis of so-called expert opinion, given by unregulated witnesses who would not be allowed to make formal diagnoses in any other setting. It would be helpful if the Government could publish data on how many children are removed from parental care by the family courts in private law proceedings and in how many of these cases domestic abuse has been experienced by a parent and parental alienation has been alleged by the abusive parent.

Greater transparency over judicial training on domestic abuse is crucial. Without clear information on what training is provided and who is providing it, we are not able to scrutinise the basis on which judges are making decisions. During the passage of the Domestic Abuse Act the then Minister, my noble friend Lord Wolfson, assured me that he would continue to raise this in his meetings with the senior judiciary. Can the Minister tell the House today if judiciary training on domestic abuse remains on the agenda for ministerial meetings with the senior judiciary? I respect the impartiality principle of the judiciary’s independence, but perhaps Ministers could encourage the Judicial College to be more open about what training is being provided.

Finally, I am concerned about a Ministry of Justice consultation on making mediation mandatory in domestic abuse cases. This gives the abuser a platform from which to continue their abuse. I strongly urge the Government to preserve the existing exemption from mandatory mediation for survivors of domestic abuse.

There are many who are stepping up to deal with—

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

Can the noble Baroness wind up her speech, please?

[Baroness Helic (Con)]

Given the organisations which are stepping up to address this issue, would it not be better if we could resolve it at the source and protect survivors, while preventing inappropriate child removals?