Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims (Amendment) Bill

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Friday 27th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I add my thanks and congratulations to the Convenor, my noble friend Lord Laming. As others have said, there is no one in your Lordships’ House or outside with greater knowledge and experience of this whole issue and no one more suitable to take the Bill forward.

When I first became a juvenile court magistrate in the 1960s, domestic violence was not even seen in most areas as a law-enforcement matter. It was something to be settled within the family. Even in the 1970s, at the beginning of my 20-year chairmanship of the Inner London Juvenile Court, dealing with domestic violence only gradually became recognised as an important part of UK law enforcement. Today, dealing with such violence is increasingly seen and recognised as a law enforcement priority.

I warmly welcome this Bill, which extends the 2004 Act to bring justice not only to those whose actions result in the death of a child or vulnerable adult but also where serious injury to the victim has occurred. I hope that this will go some way to increasing support for greater powers to deal with other forms of family violence. Barnardo’s tells us that the number of sexually exploited children it works with has grown by 8.4 per cent to 1,190 over the past year. The Bill will also raise awareness of what has sadly become an increasing problem; that is, the abuse and trafficking of women and children into this country for sexual and other forms of exploitation.

Considerably more people today are able to travel and trade in different parts of the world but groups of countries, such as the EU, make it far easier for citizens of member countries to cross borders. With mobile phones and the internet, there are increasingly effective ways of setting up and operating evil trades as well as perfectly legitimate businesses. That is exactly what has been happening in the UK. The numbers trafficked into the UK for sexual or domestic purposes have grown alarmingly and we need far more effective ways of dealing with this situation.

I want to mention two associated areas of violence which need to be taken more seriously. First, trafficking is taking place not only from other countries into the UK but within the UK. The internet is increasingly used by groups of UK traffickers for grooming vulnerable youngsters and then moving them round the country for sexual exploitation. We need far better communication between individual police forces as well as changes in the law to deal with this issue.

Secondly, there is a growing concern about the crime of stalking and especially cyber, or internet, stalking where the stalker uses the internet to hound—and I mean hound—his victim. A group of parliamentarians, of which I am one, has been taking evidence on this issue and will publish a detailed report early next month calling for new and far more effective legislation to deal with the situation. The stories of deaths and injuries that we have heard from victims of stalking—the majority of whom, but not all, have been women—are horrifying. Often, whole families have had their lives literally destroyed as they move from place to place trying to escape a stalker’s obsession. All that points to a clear need for far tougher legal action to deal with the situation, which I hope will follow from this Bill. Other noble Lords have mentioned areas such as female genital mutilation, which absolutely is part of the same theme.

In the mean time, I congratulate all those who brought forward this Bill. I add my congratulations to the Government, who have played a major part in speeding up the process. I will not delay any longer its swift progress through the Lords.