Secure Tenancies (Victims of Domestic Abuse) Bill [HL]

Lord Farmer Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 9th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, without wishing to trivialise in any way the important issues dealt with in the Bill, it has occurred to me that the question of continuing access to secure lifetime tenancies is probably close to the hearts of many people in this House. We and any future new Peers may find ourselves on a fixed-term secure tenancy and possibly even physically evicted from this House if parliamentary refurbishment requires it. So it is somewhat ironic that the Bill not only begins its passage at this end of the Corridor but also that Lords’ amendments to the Housing and Planning Bill led to its necessity. Indeed, it is a necessary piece of legislation and I do not disagree with the intent behind its provisions.

However, these provisions are very narrow and, in the absence of the forthcoming domestic violence and abuse Bill, it might appear that we are still, as a society and a Government, stuck on the question, “Why doesn’t she or he leave?”, when someone is the victim of abuse, rather than taking a more preventive approach and asking, with regard to the perpetrator, “Why doesn’t he or she stop?”.

Furthermore, while councils should not, of course, put any barriers in the way of victims being able to flee domestic abuse, the sad truth is that being able to leave one abusive partner all too often does not lead to freedom from a life of abusive relationships. Research has concluded that a high proportion of victims leaving abusive relationships are at risk of returning to their abusive partner—although I would expect the Bill to reduce the likelihood of that happening, hence my support for it—or of becoming romantically involved with another abusive person.

Extensive evidence such as that from Alexander, Kemp et al, Woffordt et al and Coolidge and Anderson, has shown that between 40% and 56% of women experiencing domestic abuse have had a previously abusive relationship. In one study of refuge residents, Griffing et al found that 66% had previously left and returned to their abusive partner, and 97% of these women had done so several times. Victims stay with or return to an abusive partner for a wide range of reasons, including practical problems such as a lack of financial resources, social support and alternative housing options—again, hence the welcome provisions in the Bill, although it does not require councils to rehouse, it just requires that any future tenancy will be on a like-for-like basis.

However, they also stay because they fear that ongoing separation could trigger worse abuse. They may have feelings of love for the perpetrator and a sense of dependency towards him or her. This may be due to the insecurity and low self-worth that can mushroom in toxic and dysfunctional relationships. They may nurse an expectation that they can rescue or reform their abusive partner. This, paradoxically, can ratchet up their commitment the worse the treatment becomes.

Stating these complex psychological processes which make a victim vulnerable to further abuse is not at all the same thing as holding them responsible for that abuse. On the contrary, a nuanced understanding of them is vital for rejecting decisively the blame that can be ascribed to victims for staying in or embarking on new abusive relationships. However, their ongoing vulnerability, which accumulates with each new abusive relationship, has to be acknowledged if victims themselves are to be able to understand and address it. Many will need support to grapple with these deeper psychological forces.

So, it is not simply about housing, as I am sure the Government realise. I have taken the opportunity that the Second Reading of the Bill provides to urge my noble friend the Minister, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, in her Oral Question in this House last November, to give much needed prominence to preventive approaches. This has been lacking in the past.

Our Prime Minister has made it a key personal priority to transform the way we think about tackling domestic violence. Diana Barran, the founder and former CEO of SafeLives, a national charity dedicated to ending domestic abuse, gives us an important starting point by asking the question: what would you want for your best friend? You would want her to be safe in her own home, with her things around her, rather than being forced to move or living in secrecy in a refuge, possibly at the other end of the country. This must be the goal wherever possible which will, without in any way deprioritising safety, require a paradigm shift towards early intervention, prevention and a family-based emphasis for domestic abuse. Again, to quote SafeLives: “We need to understand the whole picture for an individual and family to give an effective response”.

Previously in your Lordships’ House, I have described the work of the organisation Atal Y Fro, Welsh for “safety in the vale”, formerly the Vale of Glamorgan Women’s Aid. I explained that the name change reflects its broader base of working because, over years of practice, the organisation became convinced that if it works only with the mother and children, this just patches up the problem. It partners with a range of organisations in a one-stop shop to help families with medium to low-risk abuse to reshape and restore their lives. Current evidence suggests that two-thirds of families have been enabled to stay together safely through education, prevention and intervention in the community—the EPIC strategy. This involves different evidence-based perpetrator programmes for men and women, a healthy relationships programme in every school, and couples work.

I have not seen a more recent cost-benefit analysis but its annual cost in 2015 was around £83,000, with a conservative estimate of cost savings of around £1.4 million. It now works across Wales and has added extra elements such as programmes to tackle adolescent violence against parents—a very disturbing sequela of children witnessing domestic abuse.

In conclusion, I do not want to be hard on the Bill, as I said at the outset, because it addresses an important, albeit narrow, need. However, preventing violence within relationships has to become a mainstream preoccupation of policy and practice. I note that in his letter on the Bill to colleagues in this House, my noble friend promised a fundamental review of the commissioning and funding of domestic abuse services that will conclude this summer. He also explained that his department will work with the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice to make a robust and positive contribution to the non-legislative package that will accompany the forthcoming Bill on domestic violence and abuse to which I have referred.

Can my noble friend confirm that this non-legislative package will do justice to the need for prevention, early intervention and whole-family approaches? Without a policy shift in this direction, we stand zero chance of stamping out the scourge of domestic abuse, especially given the intergenerational transmission of violence that I described earlier. We will keep on picking up the pieces and incurring scandalously high costs, not just to the public purse but in terms of the wasted lives and squandered potential of victims and their children who inhabit the shadowlands of misery and unresolved trauma.

This is a necessary Bill but it must be a precursor to the much needed paradigm shift I have sketched out here, for which many domestic violence charities are also calling. The media will struggle to understand its nuances but that should not deter. Lives will be saved, children will be better protected and society will benefit when prevention and early intervention, instead of being seen as a luxury we cannot afford, are instead accepted as the policy of first resort.