Domestic Abuse Bill

Lord Polak Excerpts

Wednesday 21st April 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Fookes) (Con)]

I have received requests to speak from the noble Lord, Lord Polak, and the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson of Welton. I call first the noble Lord, Lord Polak.

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Russell, who I have had the pleasure of working with on different areas of the Bill. He is very wise.

Let me congratulate the Government on reaching this important moment, as the Bill will soon finally become law. I pay tribute to so many people who have made this happen, in particular my noble friend Lady Williams, who as the Minister has dealt with such sensitive and important issues in a sensitive and caring manner. In fact, she seems to have been surgically attached to the Dispatch Box for months. I will always be grateful to my noble friend for her help and advice on the specific areas that are of concern to me in relation to children and the importance of the provision for community-based services. Let me also pay tribute to Claire Stewart of Barnardo’s for her help and professionalism.

As we have been told, we are in the middle of National Stalking Awareness Week and I was pleased to see the video message from the right honourable Robert Buckland, the Lord Chancellor, which has been mentioned. He said in that video:

“Our job is to raise awareness of this wicked crime, to increase support for victims”


and address the perpetrators. As the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said, he ended by saying:

“We need to call it out. We need to stamp it out. We need to do all we can to deal with the menace of stalking in our society.”


The Lord Chancellor is right and the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, the noble Lord, Lord Russell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, make strong arguments that I will not repeat.

I have had discussions with my noble friend Lady Newlove, who is unable to be in the Chamber. She asked me to convey the following message: “Sadly, the Government voted for Amendment 42 to be quashed out of the Bill. I am ashamed. Why? Because, despite many conversations through the usual channels, MAPPA category 3 will still have so many gaps it resembles a string vest. The response from the Government of proposing more guidance is not worth the paper it is written on. Treating those families whose loved ones have been needlessly taken with lack of respect and dignity—the Government is proposing more guidance—has not worked over the years. What is it going to take in order for Government to stop this pattern of behaviour in order to protect innocent lives taken by the hands of offenders of coercive controlling and stalking? Government rhetoric serves only to shamefully value human life after the horse has bolted and to protect those accountable by these two insensitive words ‘lessons learned’, instead of saying ‘enough is enough’.”

We can all understand my noble friend’s frustration. While it is clear that Nicole Jacobs supports the principle of this amendment, she also understands that ViSOR and MAPPA are overloaded systems. I seek the Minister’s help. We are all on the same side and we all know where we want to reach. As the Lord Chancellor said about stalking, we all want to call it out and we all want to stamp it out.

I noted the welcome announcement in the Minister’s speech about the upgrading of ViSOR and MAPPA. On the one hand we are told that putting stalkers on to a register is problematic but, on the other, we are told that putting them on to a register can save lives. Can the Minister persuade me why I should not vote for this amendment?

[Baroness Sanderson of Welton (Con)]

My Lords, I understand the strength of feeling on this issue. I completely agree on the need to do more to stop serial offenders. Too often in the worst cases we discover that the perpetrator has had a long and shocking history of previous abuse. I am not clear about how a register or, effectively, a new category under MAPPA would improve the situation.

Members in this House and in the other place have said that new guidance is not enough to deal with the problem. I can understand why there might be some scepticism on that front. The truth is that this comes down to better guidance, proper training and more effective information sharing about the worst offenders.

Throughout the passage of the Bill, we have heard distressing details of what some of those offenders have done. But the fact remains that the vast majority were already covered by current MAPPA categories. Merely shifting their names into a new category or on to a new register will not change matters. If anything, it could make the situation even more difficult, for this is not straightforward. Working through the finer details of this so-called super-database as to exactly who will be on it and for how long they will remain there will take time, which we have all agreed we do not have. How do we avoid ending up with something so unwieldy that it inhibits the process of tracking and managing these people?

While I understand why a new category or database might seem appealing, I genuinely believe that in practice it will not deliver what we want. Surely it is better to focus our energies on improving the system that we have. We all agree that it is not working as it should, but the Government are investing in improvements to the ViSOR database that will enable better risk assessment and information sharing. I really believe that this, together with the new guidance and frameworks which have already been promised, will be more effective in dealing with the very real problem before us.