Domestic Abuse: Victims and Survivors

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I too pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Chisholm, and to Her Majesty the Queen; I saw the documentary and thought her unforced, natural empathy had huge power.

I applaud the Government for their commitment and focus to reduce violence against women and girls, and I commend them particularly for the appointments of Jess Phillips and Alex Davies-Jones. As a head-hunter for 31 years, I could never understand why previous Conservative Governments did not immediately put the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, into a position to deal with domestic abuse, on the basis that she was far better qualified than anybody else in that Administration. However, the Conservative Government did many things that I did not fully understand.

I pay tribute to the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, Nicole Jacobs, and her team for all they do. What a legacy this Government have inherited. Nicole Jacobs’s six priorities for the Government encompass: domestic abuse service provision and funding; the policing and criminal justice system; children and young people, and the trauma that domestic abuse can create; family courts; migrant survivors; and domestic homicide and suicide.

Turning briefly to domestic abuse services and funding, her submission to the Autumn Budget and spending review has some significant requests in it, including £303.8 million for community-based DA support, of which £187.8 million should be ring-fenced to ensure that it delivers what is planned.

I am particularly concerned about how we tackle the policing and criminal justice challenges, with only 6% of domestic abuse crimes reported to police resulting in a charge and even fewer resulting in a conviction. Multiagency and cross-geography co-ordination and co-operation are simply not working. With 43 police forces and police and crime commissioners, it is “Let a thousand flowers bloom” and priorities are all over the place. The police force data quality is inconsistent and our ability to measure the effectiveness of measures to reduce domestic abuse is severely handicapped by systemic shortcomings—a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Gale.

The Minister may remember the interchanges we had last week about the new initiatives on stalking and independent stalking advocates. Can he commit to ensuring that this strategy is truly cross-governmental? It needs to bring in health, education, welfare, communities and local government. Can he use his best efforts to ensure that we have far more effective and focused metrics to measure success and, equally helpfully, to measure failure?