Domestic Abuse Bill

Debate between Baroness Watkins of Tavistock and Lord Bishop of Gloucester

Committee stage & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 3rd February 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Watkins of Tavistock) (CB)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has withdrawn, so I call the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester.

[The Lord Bishop of Gloucester [V]]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 139 and 140, to which I have added my name. I draw attention to my interests set out in the register. It is an immense privilege to support the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy; I am grateful for her immense wisdom, knowledge and experience. I am also grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for her excellent and candid laying out of the issues. It is a privilege to follow her.

In my role as Anglican bishop for women’s prisons and my recent appointment as Anglican bishop for the whole prison estate in England and Wales, I have made prison visits and spoken with prisoners, volunteers and staff, including governors and chaplains. As president of the Nelson Trust, I have heard first-hand the positive impact of trauma-informed practice in its excellent work with women serving their sentences in the community and women leaving prison.

Over the past few years, I have spoken with charities, organisations and community workers. In all those conversations, common themes emerge. One is the so-called revolving door of short custodial sentences, leading to catastrophic consequences for a woman and her family and often exacerbating a downward spiral into more serious offences and an inability to secure employment. A second theme is the number of women coming into contact with the criminal justice system who have experienced domestic abuse and previous trauma, and how this becomes a driver for their offending—in some circumstances, defending themselves against their abuser, as we have heard.

Women become trapped in a vicious cycle of victimisation and criminal activity. Their situation is often worsened by poverty, substance dependency or poor mental health; almost 60% of women supervised in the community or in custody who have an assessment have experienced domestic abuse. The true figure is probably much higher.

The Nelson Trust recently shared with me a painful example of this complex issue and how important it is to have a trauma-based approach. During the first lockdown, the Nelson Trust was called on a point-of-arrest referral scheme; if a woman is arrested and identified as vulnerable, she can be referred to organisations such as the Nelson Trust for support. A woman had been arrested as a perpetrator of domestic abuse and was very distressed. At the women’s centre, they found she was covered in bruises; she had experienced horrific sexual and physical violence during lockdown. She had taken to alcohol to cope with the abuse, and then retaliated against her abuser and ended up in custody. In this case, the Nelson Trust was able to help the woman access a refuge and enabled her to leave her abusive partner.

Another story I heard was of a woman serving a sentence for murder after retaliating against her abusive partner who had assaulted her for many years, including when she was pregnant with their child. Recently, the Nelson Trust advocated for a vulnerable woman who had retaliated against her partner after years of psychological abuse. She was acquitted, but many like her are not.

These amendments provide an opportunity to extend much better legal protection to the victims of domestic abuse whose experiences lead them to offend. At the moment, there is very little legal protection within the system to allow those victims to be diverted away from the criminal justice system to vital support. There is much overlap in the criminal justice system between the victims of crime and those who are the perpetrators.

Last year, a report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Women in the Penal System, of which I am an officer, uncovered cases of women contacting the police to report domestic incidents, only to end up being arrested themselves. The Howard League for Penal Reform asked one police force to analyse its data on arrests of women and girls over a two-year period. It turned out that almost three-quarters of the women who had been arrested had previously come to the attention of the police as victims of violence or sexual violence. More than half of them had been victims of domestic abuse. Obviously, much more needs to be done with police forces and diversion work, as well as changing the law.

I am not a lawyer, but I am a passionate supporter of trauma-informed interventions and doing all we can to recognise the root causes and drivers of criminal behaviour. As a Christian and as a Lord Spiritual, I am committed to a legal framework that emphasises restorative and reparative justice. I wholeheartedly support these amendments and I look forward to hearing the rest of the debate.