Domestic Abuse Bill

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 10th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, one is always left stunned and moved when listening to my noble friend Lady Newlove. I rise to support Amendment 167 in the name of my noble friend Lady Bertin and others. I congratulate her on her clear and persuasive introduction.

As I said last week when moving Amendment 176 in my own name, to truly tackle domestic abuse we must be bold. We need to take a holistic, whole-family approach, with targeted interventions to support adult victims to rebuild their lives, to support children experiencing domestic abuse and to ensure that perpetrators have access to quality programmes to prevent offending and reoffending. It is the quality programmes for perpetrators that Amendment 167 is addressing.

We know from MARAC data that there are at least 53,000 high-harm perpetrators in England and Wales at any given time. We know too that the Drive project which noble Lords have spoken about, set up by Respect, SafeLives and Social Finance, is probably the best-funded perpetrator intervention programme. It has suggested that it is working with just over 2,000 of the highest-harm perpetrators who pose a risk of murder or serious physical harm. It is important, it is praiseworthy and it is life-saving work, but 2,000 out of 53,000 is not even scratching the surface. As my noble friend Lady Newlove explained, so many are in danger now.

This timely and vitally important Bill is very welcome and has so much support, but this amendment is crucial. It is crucial that efforts are made to improve and enhance current perpetrator programmes, but it is also crucial to dramatically increase the number of programmes. I look to my noble friend the Minister to find a way to welcome this amendment, as it will enhance this vital legislation. As my noble friend Lady Bertin rightly said, it has support not only across this House but from countless organisations on the front line, from children’s organisations to the police, LEAs and—perhaps most tellingly—survivors themselves.

[Lord Farmer (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am also pleased to speak in support of Amendment 167 in the name of my noble friend Lady Bertin. I am pleased to follow my noble friend Lord Polak in his encouragements for this amendment to be made law, particularly because of the emphasis on prevention as well as perpetrators in the strategy. It is essential to focus adequately on perpetrators, but this is late intervention. It needs to be properly matched with a root-and-branch approach to early intervention, preventing, where possible, the precursors to violence and abuse from developing into full-blown perpetration.

There is very little mention of prevention in the Bill as it currently stands, yet adopting a prevention paradigm is indispensable for reducing the staggeringly high levels of domestic abuse reported in this country over the long term. This requires acknowledging that in this area of policy, as in so many others, people cannot be treated as individuals, because their identity, health and well-being fundamentally depend on their relationships. As well as being a crime, domestic abuse is a problem with a relationship or set of relationships, and if we are ever to get ahead of its dreadful curve, a cross-government approach to strengthening families before, during and after abuse occurs is utterly foundational.

I could substantiate this in very many ways. The noble Baroness, Lady Casey, when she led the Government’s troubled families programme, highlighted the ubiquity of domestic violence in the families being helped. Evidence suggests that the most powerful contributors to domestic abuse in our society are rooted in the relationships people have and are witnesses to when they are young. This needs to be addressed in a prevention paradigm. Childhood exposure to domestic violence and child physical abuse are two of the most powerful predictors of both perpetrating and receiving domestic abuse as an adult. Domestic violence between parents increases the likelihood of violence in their children’s later relationships by 189%. The public understand this. Polling carried out by the Centre for Social Justice, albeit in 2011, found that most of the population—73% of adults—think that if we want to tackle domestic abuse, we have to recognise that many perpetrators have themselves been victims of abuse.

Childhood neglect can mean that individuals enter adult life unable to regulate their emotions and communicate with others. They often have intrusive memories of violence, think badly about themselves or others and are at risk of struggling profoundly when they become partners and parents. Obviously, there are other cultural influences, such as misogyny and enduring beliefs that it is okay, under certain circumstances, to resolve arguments with violence. These can be tackled also with social marketing. In Hull, they put up posters with slogans such as “Real Men Don’t Hit Women”.

Low income is consistently associated with, and indeed worsened by, domestic abuse. Victims’ ability to work is hampered by psychological and physical effects, and restricting their access to work is a form of abuse of economic control. Money worries make conflict about finances more likely to trigger aggression. It can also threaten men’s identity where lack of money is associated with lack of male power. Men denied power through social status can seek it in violence, social control and subjugation of women.

Alcohol and drugs are also massive drivers. In almost two-fifths of domestic violence incidents, the perpetrator is under the influence of alcohol; in one-fifth of cases, under the influence of drugs; and sometimes, both. Substances hamper social and problem-solving skills and the ability to control emotions and they lower inhibitions, but the link between alcohol and violence is socially learned. This and the other factors cited above, including adversity in childhood, are never excuses; they simply help to explain. Many men and women with the most desperate back stories never resort to abuse. They may even determine to alchemise adversity into kindness towards themselves and others.

Finally, if we are to prevent revictimisation, we have to recognise that victims are often unable to break free of the psychological drivers embedded in their past experiences. These can contribute to them becoming enmeshed in an abusive relationship in the first place, and help explain why they feel so ambivalent towards the perpetrator and end up in other abusive relationships. Between 40% and 56% of women experiencing domestic abuse have had a previously abusive relationship. In one study, 66% of refuge residents had previously left and returned to their abusive partner; 97% of these women had done so on multiple occasions. These are sobering statistics because the impact of abusive relationships is cumulative; so much of the harm associated with domestic abuse is due to multiple victimisation.

I hope that I have given the Government a steer as to what a prevention strategy would look like. It would acknowledge the effects of low income, substance misuse and culture, but primarily focus on early intervention in families and be explicit about the relational character of domestic abuse. It would highlight the role of family hubs as places people can go to get help in this area, including when early signs of violence are seen in children and young people. In summary, families and family relationships can no longer be neglected in solutions to this most heinous of social problems.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (The Earl of Kinnoull) (Non-Afl)]

The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, is having connection problems and so I call the noble Lord, Lord Farmer.

[Lord Farmer (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I shall speak on Amendment 183 in my name. As I said in my explanatory statement, my amendment,

“would require the Government to provide information on the evidence-based differences between the motivational drivers of different types of abuse.”

Clause 73(2)(a) covers the range of behaviours that amount to abuse. We have, thankfully, moved a long way from thinking purely in terms of physical violence and there is welcome recognition that non-violent abusive strategies inflict profound psychological harms. These include but are by no means limited to: imposing isolation; stalking; subjecting partners to public and private humiliations; taking over all control of finances, social life and family matters; and often forcing compliance with those and other abuses by threatening, if not actually perpetrating, violence. I would expect those issues and many others to be covered in the guidance under subsection (2)(a).

However, what also needs to be included—hence my proposed new paragraph (c)—are distinctions between the different types of violence, which are essential for planning nuanced and effective interventions. Indeed, many social scientists consider that it is no longer scientifically or ethically acceptable to refer to domestic violence without making the type of partner violence clear.

Four types of relationship violence have been extensively recognised in research: coercive controlling violence—also known, more evocatively, as intimate terrorism; violent resistance; situational couple violence; and separation-instigated violence. While every form of abuse is completely unacceptable and the responsibility always lies with the perpetrator, it is essential to hold a relationship-based understanding of domestic-abuse intention along with the fact that abuse is a criminal act. We need to recognise the drivers of abuse as well as ensuring that the police and courts have all the powers they need to hold perpetrators to account.

A relationship-based understanding challenges the notion that abuse always stems from a power dynamic within couples, which typically means the male partner is seeking to control the female. In other jurisdictions such as the United States, policymakers have taken on board research from, for instance, Professor Michael Johnson, Professor Nicola Graham-Kevan and Professor Nicky Stanley, which has exposed the diversity of underlying motives. They emphasise that while male domination and coercive control are important elements of intimate terrorism, which occurs in 2% to 4% of heterosexual couples, and in what Stanley refers to as a sizeable minority of same-sex relationships, situational violence is the far more prevalent form, occurring in 12% to 14% of heterosexual couples and termed “common” by Stanley in same-sex relationships.

In situational couple violence, the violence is situationally provoked as the tensions or emotions of the circumstances that a couple find themselves in lead one or both of the partners to resort to violence. Conflict leads to arguments, which escalate to verbal aggression and ultimately to physical violence. It can also be perpetrated, say, after a bad football result and a lengthy drinking session. Johnson argues that the perpetration of situational couple violence is roughly gender-symmetric, and as likely to occur in same-sex as in heterosexual relationships. Typically, rather than a power imbalance, it occurs when one or both partners are struggling to control their emotions. However, even when violence is mutual, women often fare worse because they are physically weaker. It is terrifying to be a child in the middle of a physical fight between their parents. Through its threats to the child’s caregivers, all violence and abuse between parents profoundly threatens a child’s sense of safety.

A typology of violence does not downplay any one form of violence—it all has to stop—but understanding what is driving it will help that to happen. However, treating all violence as the same freezes out the possibility that some partners, where there has been situational violence, can safely stay together with specialist relationship and other support. The viability of providing specialist relationship support for couples where there is situational violence has been thoroughly researched by trusted providers such as Tavistock Relationships. Again, without victim-blaming or perpetrator-absolving, it points out:

“It is extremely rare for services to identify and respond to the dynamic processes within the couple relationship and other important contributory factors that influence the prevalence of inter-personal violence.”


There is UK evidence that the relationship-focused parenting intervention Parents as Partners reduces violent problem-solving. This and other approaches, such as Sandra Stith’s joint couples therapy in the US, give couples the opportunity to work together on their difficulties and help them to establish better ways of dealing with stressors in their relationships. This is never about forcing victims to stay with violent partners; blame lies solely with the perpetrator.