Domestic Abuse Bill

Lord Bishop of Manchester Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard
Monday 8th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Bates) (Con)]

I have received one request to speak after the Minister and ask a short question of elucidation. I call the Lord Bishop of Manchester.

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester [V]]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response to this group of amendments, in particular to Amendments 72 and 102, to which I have added my name. I also thank her for her reassurance that local authorities will be given clear encouragement to prioritise the needs of domestic abuse victims, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, requested. Can she ensure that national statistics on the number of such cases accepted and rejected in each year will be counted and made public? Visible success for the Government’s preferred approach may serve as encouragement to those facing the unenviable decision of whether they can afford to flee their abuser’s home.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

Yes, I can certainly request that on behalf of the right reverend Prelate.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Lord Bishop of Manchester Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 27th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meacher (CB) [V]]

My Lords I rise to support Amendments 34, 150 and 153, to which I have added my name, and the other amendments in this group—although, of course, they will ultimately have to be dealt with by the DWP. I applaud the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for tabling these important measures to raise the issues in question, and for her incredibly thorough presentation of the arguments, which enables me to be brief, people will be glad to know.

In particular, I hope the relevant Ministers will be sympathetic to Amendment 150, which would exempt domestic abuse survivors from having to repay benefit advances that had been made to mitigate the effects of waiting at least five weeks for the claimants’ first payments. We know that, for very many claimants, the repayment of advances through deductions from benefits renders them unable to cover their most basic costs, driving them into debt and dependency on food banks just to put some food on the table for their children.

It is appalling to imagine the implications of this extra financial squeeze for a parent with young children who is trying to create an independent life following domestic abuse. Of course, we can only focus on domestic abuse victims, but the profound problem for them arises because of a fundamental injustice in the universal credit system: the requirement for new claimants to wait for five weeks before they receive their first payment. We know that this period often extends to two months or even longer, for a variety of reasons; this is completely inhuman, in my view. This injustice leads to the essential advances, and to the need for this amendment—or, certainly, changes to the system and exemptions for people suffering domestic abuse.

I agree with Amendment 34 from the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. I do not think the designers of universal credit thought of the victims of domestic abuse when they decided that benefits should be paid in a single household payment. What an opportunity for a controlling perpetrator to use their control over the household’s money to bully their partner to do just about anything they bid them to do. Surely it is right that the consequences of these payments for domestic abuse victims must be reviewed within one year of the passing of the Act. My only regret is that people are going to have to wait for a whole year before the Government even consider what, how and when they should do something about it.

Amendment 153 makes a lot of sense. The Department for Work and Pensions or its successor should, of course, consider the implications for domestic abuse victims of any social security reforms. Finally, Amendment 152 requires the benefit cap to be disapplied for 12 months for a person making a new universal credit claim in their own name when they have separated from a partner due to domestic abuse. Again, the main problem is the crudeness of the benefit cap. It takes no account of people’s circumstances. To top-slice a family’s benefits above an arbitrary level causes incredible hardship in all sorts of cases. However, when a parent with young children is trying to establish a new home, the one-off or short-term costs can be considerable, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, made very clear. I hope the Secretary of State for the DWP and our own Minister will take these amendments and the issues behind them seriously.

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester [V]]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for proposing Amendment 152, which it is my privilege to co-sponsor, and, indeed, for her excellent speech in opening the debate on this group of amendments. I also look forward to the speech from the noble Lord, Lord Best, who knows more about housing matters than anyone it has ever been my pleasure to work with.

This amendment concerns the application of universal credit, so perhaps I need to say at the outset that the notion of a unified benefits system is one that I and, I suspect, my right reverend and most reverend friends on these Benches will heartily endorse. The mix and mess of the separate systems that it replaced was well overdue for retirement. There are, of course, proper questions about the level of such benefits and what caps, if any, should generally apply if we are to maintain a proper incentive to find work. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, indicated, those are for another day.

The amendment is simply about how far rules designed for the general context can safely be applied to the very specific circumstances of victims of domestic abuse and their dependants without those rules themselves becoming abusive. As a priest and, for two decades, a bishop in the established Church and as chair of numerous housing associations and housing charities over many years, I have seen all too often the enormous obstacles that lie ahead for anyone, especially a woman with children, fleeing domestic abuse. Too many too often give up and return to a place of damage and danger. Too many who escape face long periods in temporary and unsuitable accommodation, often beyond the point when they need the particular support services offered there. Sadly, too many die at the hands of their abuser.

The overriding purpose of the benefits system and of universal credit as its linchpin must be to help victims to make the transition for themselves and their children from the place of abuse via such short-term specialist accommodation as they require and into a settled home where they can begin to regain some normality in their lives. Only then can children be settled into schools with some hope of permanence, and a mother know what pattern of work will be practicable alongside her parenting responsibilities.

Capping as a feature of the benefits system was introduced primarily to encourage the take-up of employment. While some abuse victims have somehow managed to continue a successful work career—admirably so, even while being grossly mistreated at home—as we have heard in numerous speeches in this debate, it is all too common for a controlling partner to restrict or prevent their victim from accessing finance and the job market.

UK benefit rules already recognise that a woman fleeing abuse may not be in a position to seek work immediately. We cannot logically combine that proper yet modest degree of latitude with the blunt imposition of a benefit cap. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said, the principle that different levels of benefit should apply is already accepted when it comes to specialist accommodation.

What this amendment seeks to do is extremely modest. It would allow a breathing period, while a new household was being formed, during which more lenient rules would be applied. I know that the plight of women fleeing abuse is dear to the heart of the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, and I am grateful to her for steering this Bill through your Lordships’ House. I would be even more grateful were she able to offer some assurances that Her Majesty’s Government will look again at how the benefits system interfaces with our efforts to prevent domestic abuse and then propose specific amendments to that end.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I must begin, as others have, by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, both for tabling these amendments and for her excellent and comprehensive introduction to them. I shall speak to Amendment 34, in her name and signed also by the noble Baronesses, Lady Meacher and Lady Sherlock. I also offer the Green Party’s strong support for Amendments 150, 152, 153 and 190. It is a pity that the systems of your Lordships’ House do not allow more than four signatures and so a chance to show the full breadth of political support for all amendments, particularly these very important ones.

I shall treat the amendments as a group because they very much fit together. I want to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for her reference, in relation to Amendment 153, to the bedroom tax. It is worth highlighting again, in the age of Covid-19, the pernicious effects of forcing siblings into sharing rooms, with the impossibility of self-isolating should that be needed. Where households are fleeing domestic abuse, we should think about the impact that being forced to share rooms might have.

The noble Baroness said that the Government had a moral duty not to facilitate abuse, which she indicated was acknowledged. Even if we look at this issue simply on a financial scale, as some might want to do, we need to consider that the costs of keeping victims of domestic abuse and children in those families in situations of domestic abuse are enormous.

Amendments 150 and 152, which propose that the advance need not be repaid and that the benefit cap be not applied, relate to policies which are hugely damaging to everybody affected by them. Let us think about the domestic abuse situation. Others have focused on the negative impacts; I would invite the Committee to consider the positive impacts of the amendment. If the Government were to give way and this amendment were to be adopted, just think of the relief and the improvement in lives created for victims fleeing domestic abuse by being able to get that modest sum of money, not as an advance but as a payment that could meet essential needs in those five weeks before universal credit kicked in, with no debt burden applied afterwards as a result. If we were to think about simple measures that could be taken at very modest cost, that would be a great case study.

The benefit cap is a hideous, populist, nonsensical measure that plays to the worst of the tabloids. It is often suggested that people would not have children if the benefit cap were applied, but for those fleeing domestic abuse, in almost all cases, when they chose to bear those children, this would not have been at the forefront of their mind.

On Amendment 34, to which I have attached my name, there is a matter that I particularly want to address. In some ways, it could be argued that calling for a report on the impact of universal credit should be unnecessary, but it becomes obvious when thinking about the underlying assumption of universal credit being paid as a household payment. The assumption is that couples work in unison and unity, but that may well not be the case, and not only where domestic abuse happens. It is not reasonable to assume that all money that goes into a household is equally available, or available according to need, to all members of that household. Any kind of power imbalance—it does not need to go to the lengths of domestic abuse—means that there is unequal access to household resources. That is one reason why I very strongly believe in a universal basic income. It would give people agency and control over their lives.

Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill

Lord Bishop of Manchester Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 21st September 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester (Maiden Speech) [V]]

My Lords, I begin by expressing my thanks to the parliamentary staff and fellow Members of this House, who have both welcomed me and helped me understand something of the workings of this place. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, on his excellent and entertaining maiden speech reminding us of the importance of rehabilitation—not only for sacked government Ministers. I declare my interest as chair of the Greater Manchester police’s Ethics Committee, which is recorded in the register.

I believe I may be unique among the Lords Spiritual in serving as Bishop of the diocese in which I was born, brought up and educated: I am a Bishop from Manchester as well as Bishop of Manchester. My education at the Manchester Grammar School taught me the proud history that Manchester and its surrounding towns have in women’s suffrage, the trade union movement and the extension of parliamentary democracy as well as this region’s place at the innovative heart of the industrial revolution.

In Manchester, I learned my love of numbers, going on to read and research mathematics at King’s College, Cambridge, before the blossoming of my Christian faith took me to Birmingham to study theology and, hence, into church ministry. I may be the only Member of your Lordships’ House able to tackle that medieval conundrum—“How many angels can dance on a pinhead?” —from two distinct academic disciplines.

The culture of Manchester is best represented by the city’s iconic image of the worker bee. However, bees are not only hard-working—they work together. Self-interest is subservient to the well-being of the hive. Manchester drew hard on that culture following the Manchester Arena terrorist attack of May 2017, to which noble Lords have already referred in this debate. It was my privilege to help lead my city in its response, and it is why I feel particularly called to speak in today’s debate. When the authors of terrorism sought to divide us, we came closer together, linking arms across the diversity of our city and region, which is among our principal strengths. I am fiercely proud of how Manchester held its head up high in the aftermath of an attack not only on innocent concert-goers but aimed at our very way of life.

I support the aspirations of this Bill and many of the measures included in it. Our first response to the threat of terrorism must be to improve the ways we prevent terrorist atrocities being planned and executed. Reducing the risk to the public from particular known individuals, especially those who already have convictions for offences linked to terrorism, has a vital role in preventing would-be terrorists from forming and carrying out their plans.

However, we will not defy terrorism through legislation that provides a recruiting sergeant for those who wish us harm. Long prison sentences, such as that properly handed out in the recent trial for the Manchester Arena attack, send a strong signal about our commitment to public protection. However, we must remember that they extend the isolation of prisoners from their families and the moderating influence of the wider community while keeping them for longer in close proximity with those who might seek to increase or reinforce radicalisation. This is particularly a concern for the youngest offenders.

Secondly, reducing the level of proof required for some sanctions, such as TPIMs, to well below the balance of probability may give rise to a sense of injustice, one that stretches far beyond the individual to whom the sanction applies, undermining the support from across the community, which is our strongest weapon in the fight against radicalisation. I urge Ministers to provide this House, during the various stages through which this Bill will pass, with clear evidence that the positive impacts of the proposals will outweigh the unintended negative ones.

In this House, we have a responsibility to ensure that the Bills we pass into law unite our society rather than divide it. If we apply a legal sanction that protects us from one individual—but at the price of radicalising three others—we will not control the threat. Terrorist ideology has its own replication number, every bit as deadly as coronavirus. Our challenge is to pass legislation that brings together the diverse voices of our land and carries confidence across the broad range of political, religious and other communities with whom we share a common life.

I hope that we will listen to those voices, both from within and beyond this Chamber as we debate this Bill, and will make improvements to it that will win the trust of those who we will need as allies in what is our common cause to protect the people of our nation and the values upon which Britain is built. I look forward to continuing to be a voice in this House for the diverse communities that make up Manchester and, especially, for those who are not so often heard.