Sky/21st Century Fox: Proposed Merger

Debate between Karen Bradley and Alan Brown

Monday 6th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley]

I do not wish to detain the House, so perhaps it would be helpful if I wrote to the hon. Lady to set out the precise details of the law, as set out in the Enterprise Act, and the various stages that apply to media mergers.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement. With regard to media plurality, she might be aware that 18 academics from across the UK have written to The Guardian today to express their concern about what the merger would mean. We know that Fox News has given rise to fake news and feeds the ramblings of a madman across the Atlantic, so we certainly do not want to go down that road. I welcome her comments about News International’s governance and James Murdoch’s past behaviour. I look forward to her coming back in 10 days’ time to say that she will intervene and refer the merger to Ofcom. Hopefully she will remain robust when it comes to any representations she might receive.

[Karen Bradley]

I note the hon. Gentleman’s comments. I, too, look forward to coming back to the House with the final decision.

Historical Sexual Abuse (Football)

Debate between Karen Bradley and Alan Brown

Tuesday 29th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley]

I can reassure the hon. Lady that the police are making inquiries and that the DBS checks would ensure that those with criminal convictions would not be given disclosure certificates allowing them to work with children. They would also probably be barred from working with children.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

Football, by its very nature, is a transient sport. Children move from club to club, and, obviously, professional football players move from club to club and even from country to country. Can the Secretary of State confirm that enough resources will be made available to ensure that victims are positively identified, rather than our relying on self-referral to the helpline? We need to understand how many victims there are if we are to assess the scale of the problem and offer support where it is needed.

[Karen Bradley]

It is important to look at patterns of behaviour to establish whether players may have been exposed to perpetrators, as would happen in any other investigation of this nature, regardless of what the background of the contact between the perpetrator and the victim might have been. It is also important for victims to come forward. While I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point about the need to go out and actively seek those victims, we will not find any unless some are prepared to come forward. Once again, I pay tribute to the bravery of the victims and survivors who have come forward and told their stories in such an honest way, allowing the police to obtain the evidence that they need, so that we can bring the perpetrators to justice.

Preventing Violence Against Women: Role of Men

Debate between Karen Bradley and Alan Brown

Thursday 4th February 2016 Westminster Hall

[Karen Bradley]

My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole is a teacher with great experience of such things.

We do need there to be education. The Government have made it clear in the introduction to the framework for the national curriculum that all schools should teach PSHE, and we are committed to working with schools and other experts to ensure that young people receive age-appropriate information that allows them to make informed choices and stay safe, but the point is that it must be good-quality PSHE across the board and not, as my hon. Friend said, the add-on that no teacher wants to do.

It is probably worth mentioning the tools that we have introduced for prevention and protection, which, as I have said, apply to all relationships—LGBT, men to women and women to men. Domestic violence protection orders and the domestic violence disclosure scheme were rolled out across England and Wales from March 2014, and those tools put the responsibility for violence and abuse squarely with the perpetrator.

DVPOs can prevent the perpetrator from returning to a residence and from having contact with the victim for up to 28 days. Latest figures show that magistrates have granted more than 2,500 DVPOs. The domestic violence disclosure scheme, also known as Clare’s law, which a number of hon. Members have referred to, enables the police to disclose to the public information about previous violent offending by a new or existing partner where that may help to protect them from further violent offending. The latest figures show that more than 1,300 disclosures have been made. The Government will build on those achievements by evaluating Clare’s law and DVPOs to identify how we can strengthen those important tools.

We have also strengthened significantly the law on female genital mutilation, including through FGM protection orders, and last year we introduced two new measures—the sexual harm prevention order and the sexual risk order—to make it easier for the police and courts further to restrict and monitor the activities of individuals who pose a risk, including when they have not been convicted of a previous offence.

I want to touch on the issue of stalking. Being stalked by a stranger can have terrifying consequences, so we are consulting on the introduction of a stalking protection order. That will explore whether positive requirements can be placed on perpetrators at an early stage, to help to stop their behaviour. By that we mean a perpetrator being forced, for example, to attend mental health sessions so that we can try to stop the behaviour before it becomes criminal. We are ensuring that new measures include a focus on the perpetrator—disrupting their activity, removing them from the home where necessary and ensuring that they engage with appropriate interventions to help to stop their offending before it escalates.

Hon. Members have made a number of points about the right approach to take. The question is, what is justice for a victim of domestic abuse? What will help that person to get control of their own life, and what is the right outcome for that individual? There are many different ways to tackle the problem, and it is clear that one size does not fit all.

Refuge provision has been discussed at length. The Government are committed to refuge provision. We have announced £40 million between 2016 and 2020 for domestic abuse services including refuges, and a £2 million grant to Women’s Aid and SafeLives to support early intervention, but refuge is not the answer for every victim. The hon. Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) talked about victims being turned away from refuges. I have spent time with refuge providers, who have told me that often a victim has such complex needs and so many difficulties that the refuge they go to is not the right place for them, and they may need different provisions and support.

I am committed to ensuring that refuges provide the appropriate safety net for people. However, for some families a better outcome might be achieved if a woman can stay in her home with her family, and if the perpetrator is removed from that home and is not just allowed to move in with the next partner to start the cycle of abuse all over again. I do not pretend that that will always be possible, but it is a better outcome for some victims. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley knows better than anybody that there are many different needs, and I have enjoyed our conversations on the matter. We need to think about how we can tackle the problem and break the cycle, and that means dealing with perpetrators.

[Alan Brown]

The Minister is saying that refuges are not the only answer, but they are important and required just now. Given that the local housing allowance cap is a threat to refuges, does she support protecting them from it?

[Karen Bradley]

As I said, the Government have committed £40 million to provisions, including refuges. I want to ensure that refuges are available to victims for whom they are the right answer. Organisations have told me that victims sometimes do not feel that they can come forward because they do not think the services are there. We want victims to have the confidence to come forward, and we need to tell them that they will be supported and looked after so they can get the support they need and we can break the cycle.

Preventing abuse depends on changing the attitudes and behaviours of perpetrators. Addressing the root causes of violent offending forms an integral part of our refreshed strategy. There is evidence that experiencing adversity, including violence and abuse, can have serious consequences. We need only consider that 41% of the prison population have witnessed or experienced domestic abuse to understand the wider social harms such crimes cause. We are working with agencies and in local areas to ensure the availability of appropriate perpetrator programmes, prison and probation rehabilitation approaches and, where needed, mental health interventions that may lead to a reduction in offending and sustainable behaviour change.

National organisations SafeLives and Respect have formed a partnership to create a new type of intervention for perpetrators of domestic abuse. The model, referred to as the Drive project, will involve working with perpetrators of domestic abuse on a one-to-one basis to reduce their offending, using support and disruption where appropriate, and ensuring that victim and family safety is embedded within the response.

The troubled families programme that we ran in the previous Parliament worked with 120,000 families. We found that a high proportion of families in the programme had experienced domestic abuse, even though that was not a reason for families enter the programme. Domestic violence is therefore now a specific criterion for identifying families for support in the next stage of the programme. For families who suffer domestic violence, it is seldom the only problem affecting them. The “Understanding Troubled Families” report showed that 39% of families who experienced domestic violence included a young offender, 37% had drug or alcohol dependencies, 62% had a truanting child, and 60% included an adult with a mental health problem, compared with 40% in families where there was no domestic violence.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Karen Bradley and Alan Brown

Monday 16th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley]

I commend the work of Merseyside police, and police across the country. Hate crime has been coming down, and there has been increased reporting of it, which means that more victims are prepared to come forward. That is due to the excellent work of the police and the criminal justice system, and we should all congratulate them on that.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

Building on earlier comments, and noting that prevention is better than cure, may I ask the Government what extra measures they are taking to prevent hate crime, rather than tackle it once it has occurred? Also, I offer a reminder: Ministers should always be temperate in their language.