Domestic Abuse Bill

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 10th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, I was pleased to table my amendment in Committee. I welcomed the debate and the overwhelming support from around the House. In particular, I acknowledge the support of the noble Lords, Lord Russell of Liverpool and Lord Rosser, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby.

I am, perhaps, even more pleased that I have not tabled it again on Report. I am grateful to my noble friend and her ministerial colleagues for giving so much of their time to meet and discuss this; for the amendments tabled in the name of my noble friend; and for confirming the Government’s commitment to address issues around community-based services in a letter to me last Thursday.

We all agree that community-based services are vital in supporting the majority of domestic abuse victims who remain at home. Government amendments to ensure that local authorities monitor and report on the impact of their duties under Part 4 on other service provision, are most welcome, as is the Government’s commitment to consult on the provision of community-based domestic abuse services in the upcoming victims law consultation this summer. These have been welcomed not just by me but in a press release, published under the leadership of Barnardo’s, by the domestic abuse commissioner, the Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales, domestic abuse campaigner Charlie Webster, Imran Hussain at Action for Children, the End Violence Against Women coalition, the NSPCC and SafeLives. I congratulate my noble friend the Minister on uniting these groups and organisations in welcoming the Government’s commitments. This is an incredibly important step forward in understanding and addressing the provision of community-based domestic abuse services, so that all victims, especially children, will be able to access support, regardless of where they live.

I hope the consultation will take a holistic approach to tackling domestic abuse, carefully considering what is needed to support children and adults, as well as programmes to tackle the behaviour of perpetrators and break the cycle of domestic abuse. I am certain that my noble friend the Minister and her colleagues, working with the professional and deeply impressive domestic abuse commissioner—who I thank for her advice—will place community-based services on the same statutory footing as accommodation-based services. I appeal for her office to be properly and adequately funded.

Again, I thank my noble friend the Minister for her time and for the helpful letter she sent me. I am pleased to support the amendments in her name. I look forward to continuing to work with her and with all noble Lords as this important Bill becomes law.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I shall be extremely brief, not least because of the happy coincidence that the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Polak, have largely said what I was going to say. I thank them. I can now go and have a late lunch.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Polak, I was impressed by the Barnardo’s press release last Thursday, with all the different voices speaking in unison. My own experience of dealing with voluntary organisations over many years is that hell hath no fury like different voluntary organisations in pursuit of similar goals and, in particular, similar pools of funding. Peace seems rather dangerously to have broken out in this case. I hope it will continue.

I thank the Government for listening. It was a bit of a no-brainer with a Bill in which 25% of the accommodation-based services for domestic abuse victims were dealt with but 75% were not. That was an open goal waiting to be filled. I am grateful that the Government have acknowledged this and acted on it.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, I took note of the National Audit Office investigation and report into the state of local authority funding. I have observed a variety of individuals in this House—some of whom I have worked in co-operation with—who, for the best of reasons, ceaselessly plead with the Government to put more and more statutory duties on local authorities in a whole variety of different areas. In a sense, this is dangerous because, in a situation where local authorities are under the strains and stresses that they are, piling even more statutory duties or guidance on them runs the risk of mission failure and initiative fatigue. I am very conscious of this. It requires a joined-up approach from the different parts of Her Majesty’s Government.

The Home Office is doing its bit. The Ministry of Justice is going to do what may not come easily to it and talk more openly with the communities department —and vice versa. It was not terribly helpful that the Secretary of State, while acknowledging the councils’ problems, could not resist the political dig of accusing them of poor management. This is a bit rich coming from a national Administration who have spent the amount of money they have on initiatives such as test and trace, or who have presided over the highest number of deaths per million in the world during the current pandemic. Before one starts throwing political missiles at one’s opponents, it does one a lot of good to look in the mirror and have a degree of humility. None of us gets it right all the time.

When the domestic abuse commissioner comes back with her recommendations, I would plead with the various parts of national government and the local authorities to talk to one another, agree, buy into whatever is recommended, and put in place properly thought-through, long-term plans to deliver on this strategy and to fund it properly.

[Lord Rosser (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, government Amendment 17 requires the domestic abuse commissioner to prepare and publish a report on

“the need for domestic abuse services in England, and … the provision of such services.”

The report must be published no later than 12 months after this new clause comes into force.

Other government amendments require local authorities to keep under review the impact of the duty to provide accommodation-based services on their provision of other domestic abuse services in the community.

Amendment 30, in the name of my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, makes it clear that the public authority may not prioritise accommodation-based support services for persons with a protected characteristic over other support services for the same person, except in so far as those persons have a greater need for accommodation-based services than for other support services.

Amendment 31 would give the Secretary of State power through regulations to extend the duty in Part 4 to include community services, instead of just accommodation-based services. I agree with the points made and the concerns raised by my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath in his powerful contribution.

Amendments 85 and 86 in my name are the community service amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Polak, re-tabled. We tabled them pending sight of the Government’s specific commitments and amendments. I will not move them. Like others in the House and outside, we welcome the Government’s amendments and commitment to consult on community-based services as part of the consultation on the victims law. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Polak, and to other noble Lords, as well as to all the organisations which have worked on this issue. I also pay tribute to the shadow Minister in the Commons, Jess Phillips, who pursued the proper provision for community-based services with some vigour and determination during the Bill’s passage through the other House.

We now need to see the Government’s words and commitments translated into real progress and meaningful action. The key to achieving this is for services, victims and perpetrators to be looked at holistically; to see what needs to be done in the round to prevent abuse, and to support victims who experience it. This also means providing services for children who are victims, for older victims and for perpetrators, as well as ensuring that there are specialist services for black and ethnic minority victims. Healthcare services are also vital.

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I will be brief because others have already made the arguments, but I thank all the Ministers and their teams for being willing to listen and move on this important point. I hugely welcome the Government’s support of these new provisions and their willingness to use the Domestic Abuse Bill to make these changes.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, like everybody else who has spoken, I say that this is extremely welcome. We thank the Minister for listening to so many voices. It is great that the Government have listened, although, if I were being uncharitable, I would say they have listened somewhat belatedly. I am very pleased that the Law Commission review is now under way. I reflect that it took the influence of a very influential and effective recent Cabinet Minister to persuade her own party to listen, when so many voices have been trying to get the Government to listen over quite a long period. However, thanks are due, and thanks are given.

I am concerned that we often seem to be behind the curve when it comes to so many aspects of online harm and harassment-type behaviour in general. In today’s newspaper there was mention of a YouGov survey which has just been done. Of 1,000 women, 96% of them do not and would not report incidents of harassment to the authorities. One of them pointed out that the police can act if somebody drops litter on the street but are unable to act if somebody is harassed on the street, and that does seem wrong. I think 46% of the 1,000 ladies said, when asked why they did not report harassment, that it was because they had no belief whatever that it would change anything. That is a reflection on the various authorities and organisations that are meant to help victims of harassment. If they feel like that, there is clearly something wrong.

The noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, mentioned the extraordinary small market town somewhere in the United Kingdom where no fewer than 70 women have had intimate images shared on an online forum where somebody commented that they are “traded like Pokémon cards”. What must it feel like, as a woman or a man— as a human being—to have intimate images of yourself traded like Pokémon cards? On this online forum if you have an interest in a particular town you can message people on the forum who circulate these images and ask: “Do you have anybody from this particular town or who went to this particular school?” That is really shameful; the fact it is going on shames us all.

I am pleased that we are, belatedly, in catch-up mode. But I find it excruciatingly embarrassing and unacceptable that victims are suffering in many different ways, while Her Majesty’s Government and Parliament occasionally appear to be dithering over regulation and legislating. In doing that we are letting ourselves down, but far more importantly, we are letting the victims down.

[Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lords who have spoken, and I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, and, of course, the Government, for accepting these necessary amendments.

At the outset, I also record my thanks to Dr Ann Olivarius of McAllister Olivarius, a very eminent lawyer who, about a decade ago, began her campaign against so-called revenge porn. Her outstanding work, both here and in the US, has definitely made a very significant contribution to the fact that we have had legislation for the last five years and it is a criminal offence to share sexual images without consent.

I welcome this amendment to extend the offence of disclosing

“private sexual photographs and films with intent to cause distress”

to an individual who appears in the photograph or film— known as a “revenge porn” offence—so as to include “threats to disclose”. One in 14 adults has experienced threats to share intimate images or films of themselves. Young women aged 18-34 are disproportionately impacted by this form of abuse, with one in seven reporting that she has experienced such threats.

Like other noble Lords, I commend Refuge’s The Naked Threat research, which found that the vast majority—72%—of threats experienced by women were made by partners or ex-partners, making it a clear domestic abuse or domestic violence issue. Therefore, the Domestic Abuse Bill is not only the right legislative vehicle for what is clearly a crime related to domestic violence or abuse but a piece of legislation that would allow the Government to make these required changes imminently. As such, I am very grateful for that.

Some 83% of women threatened by their current or former partners experience other forms of abuse alongside these threats. One in 10 women threatened by a current or former partner felt suicidal as a result of the threats, and 83% said that the threats damaged their mental health or emotional well-being. More than one in seven of these women felt a continuous risk of physical violence because of these threats. Only one in three women felt empowered to report this behaviour to the police, and, of those women, less than 14% said that they had received a good response. I am also deeply concerned about the lack of reports coming from black and other minority women.

As I have said previously in this Chamber, perpetrators of domestic abuse are increasingly using technology and the internet to control and abuse their partners and ex-partners. Threats to share images are used to control, coerce and abuse when they are in a relationship, and, after they have separated, this form of abuse is disproportionately perpetrated against younger women. Survivors of this form of abuse lack the vital legal protection that they need, with the police often telling survivors—or making them believe—that they cannot take any action until the abuser has shared the images, leaving survivors in fear and enabling perpetrators to use these threats to control them.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, I thank Refuge, the Equality and Human Rights Commission and Barnardo’s, among others, which recommend making threats to share intimate images a crime, and extending the offence of controlling and coercive behaviour in an intimate family relationship to remove the cohabitation requirement. This is most welcome; it would therefore cover post-separation abuse, which would protect 4.4 million adults who have experienced this form of abuse.

Young people are the group most likely to be in an abusive relationship. A survey of 13 to 17 year-olds found that 25% of girls and 18% of boys reported having experienced some form of physical violence from an intimate partner. However, the Children’s Society found that 77%—a majority—of local authorities that responded to its FoI request do not have a policy or protocol in place for responding to under-16s who experience teenage relationship abuse, with just 39% of local authorities providing specialist support services for under-16s and 26% of local authorities providing no specialist support for this age group. Tragically, 500 children—mostly teenagers, but some as young as eight years old—were victims of image-based abuse.

The UK Safer Internet Centre is a partnership of three leading charities, including the Internet Watch Foundation. It reported an increase in the number of young people trying to view sexual abuse materials online, and that in just one month of lockdown its analysts blocked 8.8 million attempts by UK users to access such images and videos. We continue to see a rise in the number of children being groomed online into producing self-generated indecent images. I shudder to think of the underreporting, particularly among young people from black and minority-ethnic communities.

Can the noble Lord say what action the Government are considering to influence, inform and educate children and, more widely, the general population? What research, if any, have the Government undertaken into the impact of online abuse of women and intersectional online abuse of women from black and minority communities?