Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Yvette Cooper

Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Home Department (Victoria Atkins)]

It is a genuine pleasure to be in the Chamber today to discuss this important issue ahead of International Women’s Day.

We can start with some areas of agreement, because that is how we are going to change things. We can all agree that we have had enough. We are half the population and we should not have to put up with some of the behaviours and crimes that are captured by the phrase violence against women and girls. The range of behaviours and crimes caught by that phase is truly shocking—the many ways in which our sex is used against us and we are made victims of the sorts of crimes that everyone in this Chamber finds absolutely abhorrent. That is why last year we published our tackling violence against women and girls strategy, because we wanted an holistic and societal response to these crimes.

The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) rightly urges us to do more and go faster, and there is will and determination in this Government to do exactly that. That is why we worked together last year to pass the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, for example—truly groundbreaking legislation that will help more than 2 million adult victims and the children who live in abusive households with this most invidious and hidden of crimes. We have to acknowledge, however, that this will take time. I wish solving the problem were as easy as pulling a lever in one part of the criminal justice system, but it is not. Fundamentally, we know that some of the behaviours and crimes that we will hear about this afternoon have arisen as a result of behaviours, societal attitudes and so on that we must tackle. Not only do we know that intellectually and academically, because we have asked researchers and worked with charities and campaigners, but we know it from the responses of women and girls, and men, to our call for evidence last year when we were drafting the tackling violence against women and girls strategy. More than 180,000 responses were received. That is an unprecedented response rate. It caught that moment, which I am sure we all remember, when there was a very urgent national conversation about how women and girls are suffering these behaviours and crimes.

The responses share the sorts of experiences that every woman and every girl will know. Holding our keys in our knuckles as we walk home, texting friends to say we have got home safely, batting away and avoiding eye contact in a bar if somebody is approaching us and is not taking no for an answer—those are all behaviours that we know and experience. The responses and the national conversation at the time said, “Enough”. That is why we want the strategy to be seen as the start of a decade of change—that is what I said when we launched it.

It will take us time to make sure that boys and girls learn from primary school about what healthy relationships look like, and it will take time to get the communications right. Part of that longer-term societal change is about drawing a line as to what is healthy and acceptable behaviour in relationships, because for all sorts of reasons that we know about—including, we all suspect, the influence of internet pornography—there seems to be some disconnect between what we know to be healthy and what our girls and our young women are facing. We are committed to helping to draw that line, so in our response to the women and girls who responded to the call for evidence—but also, importantly, to charities and campaigners—we committed in the strategy to a public communications campaign to begin that discussion.

I am delighted that this week we launched the campaign, “Enough”. Please google it and look at it—I urge every single hon. Member, regardless of party politics, to share the campaign, which was very well received by charities and campaigners when it was launched this week. The multi-year campaign will begin that vital work to make it clear to perpetrators that their crimes will not be tolerated. It will drive societal rejection of those crimes and help to give victims the confidence they need to seek help if they feel able to do so.

[Yvette Cooper]

I know that the Minister takes the matter very seriously. I urge her not to just accept that it will take time. I do not think we should accept that; I think we should be much more ambitious about the changes that should happen immediately and the changes that should happen within the next few months, rather than starting from the position that it will take time.

I press the Minister for her diagnosis of why things have got so disastrously worse since 2016, with the massive drop in the prosecution rate and the pushing of the system to breaking point. I have a diagnosis around the scale of the cuts to policing and to the criminal justice system, not just the digital changes that have taken place. If the Government do not understand and recognise how things have got so much worse on their watch, people will not have confidence—women and girls will not have confidence—that things will be turned around.

[Victoria Atkins]

If I may, I will develop that point in my speech. As the right hon. Lady knows, an enormous amount of work is going on, particularly in the rape review, and I want to take the House through it in detail. She is absolutely right that there is action now, this day, to tackle these crimes and behaviours, but we must acknowledge—as, in fairness, colleagues across the House have acknowledged throughout our domestic abuse debates and so on—that there are real, fundamental problems that we have to tackle at a societal level so that women and girls know we agree that this behaviour is not their fault, is not their responsibility and must be tackled.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

I genuinely thank the hon. Lady for bringing to the fore the vital role that police and crime commissioners play in their local areas to do exactly the sort of the work that she describes. We are giving police and crime commissioners the funding and flexibility to commission plans and work in their own local areas, but we are now supporting that, as I say, with the national strategic policing priority so that there is a focus not just at local level but at national level. We have invested an unprecedented amount—some £35 million—specifically in tackling the perpetrators of domestic abuse. This is very significant work, and I am sure that we will begin to see the benefits of it very soon.

We also want to build an evidence base on perpetrators. In the strategy, we committed to creating a “what works” fund to see what is working, with risk assessment and changing behaviours, and to looking at some frankly under-researched areas such as abuse within adolescent relationships. I see the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) opposite me; we discussed this in the Domestic Abuse Bill Committee. We know that, as part of our wider societal work, we need to focus on what is happening in teenage relationships before the age of 16, when the Act kicks in, so that both adolescents and those over 16 are being looked after in their relationships.

As I hope I have already set out, we are going to be able to deliver this change by ensuring that each of the agencies and parts of the system that are responsible for tackling these crimes plays its part and that they play them together. The policing world and the Government have accepted all the recommendations made in previous HMICFRS inspections. We have already supported the introduction of a national policing lead for violence against women and girls, DCC Maggie Blyth, who is co-ordinating the policing response. She is playing a really important role in policing at the national level, which of course informs local policing on the ground, a point that I know has been emphasised and that I will develop in a moment. That means we have a national policing lead fully dedicated to looking at the police response to these crimes. DCC Blyth has already published a national framework so that police forces have clear and consistent direction.

We have also taken the opportunity in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill to ensure that it is clear that domestic abuse and sexual offences are included in the definition of serious violence when local areas are determining how to fulfil their duty under the new serious violence duty in that Bill. This is a significant step forward at local level. I know that there have been grave concerns, particularly in recent weeks, about incidents of police attitudes and behaviour. The Home Secretary has commissioned a two-phase independent inquiry chaired by Dame Elish Angiolini QC to investigate the issues raised by events last year and also to scrutinise the robustness of vetting practices, professional standards, discipline and workplace behaviour. That is important work that needs to be done to help to restore public trust.

The hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) intervened on the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford to ask about the pressure on courts. I think the Opposition acknowledge the impact that the pandemic has had on the criminal justice system and on our ability to run courts. We kept the criminal justice system and the family courts operating for the most vulnerable cases through the pandemic. I must correct him on one point. I am told that court backlogs were 19% higher in the last year of the Labour Government than under the Conservative Government in February 2020, just before the pandemic. However, I understand the spirit in which he raised that point. I am pleased—although not complacent—that the pandemic backlog in magistrates courts is well on the way to being resolved, and significant changes are being made in the Crown courts as well.

I turn now to the motion’s emphasis on rape cases and investigations. The reason I want to focus specifically on this is that it is such an important part of the Government’s overall work to tackle violence against women and girls. For reasons that have been debated previously, there are significant issues at every stage of the criminal justice process, and we are determined to tackle them. We have a highly focused programme of work looking specifically at the investigation and prosecution of allegations of rape. It is called the end-to-end rape review report and action plan. We took a hard and honest look at how the criminal justice system deals with rape, and we are clear that into many instances it is simply not good enough.

I have been asked about oversight of the system as a whole. Just to help explain, the rape review action plan is precisely about that oversight and grip of the national systems. Everyone in the Chamber will understand that the police have their role to play and that the Crown Prosecution Service has its role to play, and of course we respect the independence of the judiciary and of juries, but there must be, and there is now, oversight of the system as a whole. This is why the publication of the first six-monthly progress report and quarterly scorecard on adult rape cases is so important. If anyone wants to look at the scorecards, they are on the gov.uk website. In them, we are shining a light on every stage of the criminal justice process, not just for those who work in the justice system but for charities, for campaigners and, importantly, for the public to examine. We have a theme of non-defensive transparency running through the scorecards because we want to share what is going well—there are areas where we are beginning to see small improvements—as well as the areas where the system needs to do much, much better.

I am pleased to confirm that in the coming months we will also publish what we are calling local scorecards, because we understand that local areas will want to know what is happening in their area. As part of that, we are also rolling out Operation Soteria, which has already been mentioned today. This is a significant programme of work for policing and for the CPS. The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford has called for rape and serious sexual offence—RASSO—units in forces, but Operation Soteria is even more ambitious than that. It is about transforming the approach that the whole of policing takes to investigating crime. We are taking the focus away from the victim and putting it firmly on the suspect.

[Yvette Cooper]

Why, then, is the Minister not rolling out Operation Soteria to every single force straight away, and why not require RASSO units in the meantime? I would love her to go further, but surely we should be requiring RASSOs within three months.

[Victoria Atkins]

We will be, but this is such a fundamental review of policing and CPS practice. The area where we have piloted it already—Avon and Somerset—is beginning to roll out lessons to other police forces, but we need to be clear as to what is working and what is not working. None of us wants unintended consequences in any of this work. It will be rolled out nationally, but we are just making sure that the academics uncover everything. We have a team of academics who go into a police force area, dive into the files and look at everything. From that, they come up not just with data but, importantly, with recommendations on what went wrong and what worked. This is an incredibly intensive programme, and it will take a bit of time before we roll it out nationally, but we are already on schedule with rolling it out to the five pilot areas and the next tranche of forces. That is what we are determined to do.

I hope that the right hon. Lady also supports the fact that as part of our efforts to improve rape convictions, referrals and investigations, we have listened again to victims. One of the areas that they are understandably most concerned about is the idea that their mobile phones will be taken away from them without good cause. The right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) has raised this with me on a number of occasions. We hear that and we get it, and that is why in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill we have included new criteria that the police must abide by in the decision-making process as to whether they should take a victim’s phone. What is more, we have piloted a phone swap-out scheme if a phone has to be taken for more than 24 hours. We are seeing whether having a swap-out will help to inform a national scheme. In addition, we are rolling out digital technology across forces so that it is much quicker for them to deal with these phones—[Interruption.] I very much hear your discreet coughing, Madam Deputy Speaker—in a non-covid way—but if I may, I will just deal with the national roll-out of section 28.

Those in the Chamber will know what section 28 is. It involves the ability of victims of sexual violence and modern slavery to give pre-recorded evidence, so that, rather than waiting a long time for a trial to come to court, they give evidence as quickly as possible after the event and it is then used at the trial. This is exciting work, and we have committed to rolling this out nationally as quickly as we can. There will be more news on this in the coming months. There is much more I can say, but I am going to take your hint, Madam Deputy Speaker.

There are many areas of agreement on this. It is absolutely right of Her Majesty’s Opposition to hold us to account and scrutinise what we are doing, but there is genuinely an enormous amount of good will in Government and across the House to tackle these invidious crimes. Please, the message must go out from the Chamber that enough is enough. We—half the population—will not put up with this behaviour any more, and by working together we really can make this the decade of change.

Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Yvette Cooper

Thursday 6th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for her statement today and advance sight of it.

It is now five months since the devastating scenes at Kabul airport and the shambolic withdrawal of UK, US and other troops, leaving the Taliban in charge and putting those who had worked for our armed forces and on our Government projects, and who had stood up to the Taliban, in danger and at risk of retribution and persecution. I welcome Operation Pitting and pay tribute to the armed forces who ran it to get so many people out at the last minute, but all of us in this Parliament know that the operation between Government Departments was chaotic, lacked proper senior support and should have been planned many months previously, and all of us know many more lives have been put at risk because of those Government failings.

The Prime Minister and the Home Secretary rightly promised that we would both help those to whom we owed direct obligations—British citizens, their families, those who worked for us and on our projects—and do our bit alongside other countries to resettle others whose lives were at risk through the Afghan resettlement scheme, and they reassured us many times that the resettlement scheme would cover 20,000 people in addition to those to whom we owed direct obligations. They also rightly promised:

“The UK Government will always stand by those in the world in their hour of need when fleeing persecution or oppression.”

Five months and thousands of hours passed until the resettlement scheme has now opened. Since then we have seen a truly dire humanitarian crisis escalate in Afghanistan, with those we promised to help still in peril. British nationals, British Council staff and others are still in hiding, family members have been executed, and non-governmental organisations with staff who worked on UK contracts say that 95% of those staff not only did not get out but still have not even had replies from the British Government to their ARAP applications. That is shameful. So does the Minister accept that the delays in setting up the resettlement scheme and the complete failure to respond to so many of those ARAP relocation applications from people who worked on UK projects have broken some of those important promises and put lives at risk?

On the resettlement scheme, at the heart of the Minister’s statement appears to be the announcement that the first to be helped will be people who are already here, and she appeared to suggest that that would include the Afghan families of British nationals and British nationals themselves. Will she clarify: clearly British nationals and their families should get support, but why are they being counted in the resettlement scheme? Can she reassure us that those Afghan family members and British citizens are not being counted in the number of resettlement places the Government have promised?

Can the Minister also tell us how many of the places now counted as part of the resettlement scheme are going to people who were previously counted in the relocation scheme? She will know that there is huge concern about rumours that Government Departments have been trading people and trying to shunt people around in order to reduce the numbers who would be supported, and she will understand how deeply shameful that would be if true. Can she please clarify that?

Can the Minister also give us a clear fact: how many people will additionally be arriving in the UK as part of the resettlement scheme between now and September? She must have a figure for that further number to be helped this year.

Can the Minister also tell us about the detail of the scheme? Why are the UNHCR referrals not starting until the spring, and how many will there be? The third pathway, which refers to the British Council and Chevening scholars, is very welcome, but what about the other NGOs and contractors that had staff working on UK contracts: is she saying they will not get any reply or help until next year? What are people currently in hiding supposed to do until then?

The Minister has also not included an additional family route within the resettlement scheme; she will know I have been pressing her on that—for those who have family here in the UK to be able to apply to be included in the resettlement scheme if their lives are at risk because they have family in the UK, and who could indeed care for them. I say to her that I am really worried that those at risk now from the Taliban who have connections to the UK are at risk of exploitation by people traffickers and smugglers as they get desperate.

We have already heard of increasing numbers of Afghans arriving in Calais. We have had a report of an Afghan soldier who arrived here with his family in a flimsy boat, having been exploited by traffickers and criminal gangs. Those who helped our armed forces should not end up in a flimsy boat, in peril from the cold sea of the English channel. Does the Minister accept that the Government need to urgently sort out the resettlement places, the relocation of those we have no obligation to, and support and routes for family members? Otherwise, more people will be exploited by the criminal gangs and more people will be at risk. Finally, what are the Government doing to show international leadership, in partnership, to ease the terrible humanitarian crisis that is escalating in Afghanistan? Without such action, we will see not just the humanitarian crisis but the refugee crisis get worse.

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her questions. I take issue with her description of the evacuation of 15,000 human beings from Afghanistan in the incredibly dangerous circumstances that we all saw on our television screens in August as “shambolic”. That is not a word that I would have used to the brave soldiers and armed forces personnel who arrived in this House only a month ago, and whom we all thanked for their very significant and brave efforts.

Flights started in June and the ARAP scheme started in April last year. To give an idea of the scale of it, we have received more than 99,000 applications to the scheme since April. We are working at pace to assess them on a case-by-case basis. As this House has heard before, we have to be very careful about the security situation. There are sadly some who claim to be eligible for the schemes who are not. I remember particularly an intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), in a previous statement, setting out the circumstances of an individual who was claiming to be someone they were not. We therefore need to ensure that security checks are conducted and that the right people, accurately identified as having been eligible under ARAP, are brought over and helped. We have a dedicated team working seven days a week to process and bring eligible Afghans to the UK. We completely reject the accusation that the ARAP programme has been ineffective. The work of the Ministry of Defence and others continues to identify those who are eligible under ARAP.

I am very happy to clarify the situation for British nationals and their families. British nationals are still being supported. Ordinarily, British nationals arriving in the United Kingdom would not receive the level of support that they receive at the moment, but we have been realistic. We have understood that their needs are such that, if they have been assisted by the Government to come to the United Kingdom before the launch of the scheme, they should be treated in parity with those who flew next to them in planes across from Kabul and so on. Non-British families—Afghan families—are being included in the ACRS, because the scheme is about helping those who are at risk. People have been evacuated because they are at risk, and we want to give them that support. Helping their families, as well as British nationals, is a very generous offer to residents. That is why we were able to exceed our initial, very ambitious, intention to rehome 5,000 people in the first year.

There were comments about trading people. I do not think that that is appropriate phrasing for officials who are working very hard across Government to try to bring to this country human beings whose safety we understand is at very grave risk. As I have said throughout, this is very difficult. We will have to make some very difficult decisions. There is a population of approximately 40 million people in Afghanistan, and very many of them are very scared. We must apply the principles, and do so knowing that there will be some people whom we cannot help, very sadly.

In terms of the UNHCR, we are hoping that we can begin to bring people forward from the spring. We have been working with the UNHCR and other international organisations throughout the process to stand the scheme up.

We agree with the right hon. Lady’s very understandable concerns about illegal migration—the flimsy boats across the channel, people in desperate need of help, the plight of those who are in the hands of people traffickers. That is why we introduced the Nationality and Borders Bill and would love the Labour party to accept it.

Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Yvette Cooper

Monday 25th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. If he would not mind contacting me afterwards regarding the accommodation point, I am very happy to take that up.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

There are family members of UK citizens and residents whose lives are at risk from the Taliban in Afghanistan but who have no legal route to safety because the Government have not put in place any interim biometrics provision, even though I have raised with the Home Office several ways they could do so. I have also been told that Home Office caseworkers are not deciding any family visa cases because they are still waiting for updated country-specific guidance. There is also no suggestion that there will be provision for them in the resettlement scheme. May I ask the Minister urgently to look into sorting out biometric routes and the updated guidance, and providing for a family route within the resettlement scheme? Those are the families most at risk of being exploited by the criminal gangs if there is no legal route in place.

[Victoria Atkins]

Given the range of issues that the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee has understandably raised, may I invite the right hon. Lady to meet me to discuss some of them? There are matters that it would not be right to talk about on the Floor of the House, but I am very happy to meet her to discuss them further.

Afghanistan Policy

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Yvette Cooper

Monday 13th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank my hon. Friend for his absolute commitment to this issue. He has knowledge and expertise in respect of the region that I think it is fair to say few in the House possess: we are genuinely better informed when my hon. Friend stands to speak on Afghanistan and the implications in the region.

On my hon. Friend’s thanks to the Home Secretary, I join him in making that point about both the Home Secretary and, if I may say so, the Immigration Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster), who has done extraordinary amounts of work behind the scenes. He never asks for credit or kudos but I am determined to give him credit in Hansard for everything he has done.

This weekend, I had the pleasure of trying to help some Opposition colleagues with their queries. This is a genuine team effort and we desperately want to help the people we can help. As part of that, we of course must include—and I am determined to do so—Afghan civil society in this country. I have already met many groups that have had helpful and constructive ideas about how we can all reach out and help people to integrate, and I am extremely grateful to them. This is an ongoing process and I very much look forward to working with such groups to ensure that we offer the warm welcome that the Prime Minister has promised.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I welcome the Minister’s personal commitment and the intervention of the Home Secretary and other Ministers in trying to solve individual cases, but she will be aware that many MPs across the House have been struggling to get similar help for their constituents, or for families of constituents, and are not getting the same response. May I press her on the situation of those whose lives are still at risk in Afghanistan because they worked with or for the UK Government, but were not directly employed by the UK Government? They have had no response from the ARAP scheme, or have been told that they are not eligible because they were not direct employees. Can she tell me whether they are now eligible for the resettlement scheme, or do they have to apply again from scratch? Can their applications be automatically considered by the resettlement scheme urgently, or be looked at again by the ARAP scheme? I have been made aware of too many cases where someone is either in hospital or whose mother has been killed who are in that situation now as a result of Taliban persecution.

[Victoria Atkins]

Again, I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Lady for her question. The nub of the problem with people who are still in-country is that we are in the situation that we are in. We have to deal with the reality as it is at the moment. We understand that there are 311 people left in-country in Afghanistan, but the Ministry of Defence, the FCDO and the Home Office have received emails, which we are logging in terms of the wider scheme. Not all the cases referred to us would be eligible under ARAP, but they are being logged and we are considering how best to use them in the future, mindful, of course, that organisations such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees have their own internationally mandated processes. We very much want to reach the right people—the vulnerable people who have stood up for western or British values—and to help them as we can within this scheme. I hope that she will appreciate that, as things becomes clear overseas, we will be able to provide more detail. I know that this is a snapshot in time, but I am trying to keep the House as updated as I can. I very much hope that “Dear Colleague” letters will be published this afternoon. That will help our staff, who have done incredible amounts of work over the past few weeks and whom we really must thank for all the pressures that they been under as well.

Strategy for Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Yvette Cooper

Wednesday 21st July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

As I hope is clear in the strategy, we are looking very thoroughly at the issue of street harassment. We very much hear the concerns of Members on both sides of the House about whether current legislation meets every instance of street sexual harassment that we see in the survey, that we see as constituency MPs and, indeed, that we have perhaps experienced ourselves. That work will be ongoing, and I am sure I will appear at some point before the Women and Equalities Committee, which my right hon. Friend chairs, to provide an update.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I welcome the measures that the Minister has announced, and I welcome her personal commitment. The challenge is whether these measures match the scale of the problem and the scale of the huge response that she has had from women across the country. I, for one, do not want to wait 10 years for major changes to take place. Much of this feels very incremental—just limited pilots and evidence gathering.

In the most awful cases of violence against women, we know that too often the perpetrator has committed previous offences of stalking or domestic abuse, or previous sexual offences. What will the Minister do to make sure that all police forces take much stronger action to identify those repeat perpetrators and intervene early so that lives can be saved?

[Victoria Atkins]

The right hon. Lady is right to highlight the issue of escalating behaviours. On waiting 10 years, this is the beginning of the journey. If one reads the strategy—I appreciate it only came out today—I hope one will see the immediate-term, medium-term and long-term aspirations. As Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, she will know better than anyone that some of the education work and cultural attitudes work will take time.

We cannot pretend that attitudes will change in a matter of months, but we have immediate-term work. The public communications campaign will be launched later this year. We will begin the appointment process for the national policing lead as soon as possible. The online tool pilot is being launched next month. The what works fund is being set up, and it is an interesting fund because I am trying to mirror the excellent work of the youth endowment fund in tackling serious violence. We want to do the same for violence against women and girls and build the evidence base.

I accept the right hon. Lady’s point that we cannot wait 10 years, but there is a lot of work before that 10-year period ends. I very much want colleagues on both sides of the House to see this as the beginning of the journey.

Racist Abuse on Social Media

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Yvette Cooper

Wednesday 14th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Let us now go to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, Yvette Cooper.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab) [V]]

On the Instagram profiles of England heroes this lunch time, there are still racist posts, including blatantly racist words and emojis, that have been up for more than 24 hours. I have challenged Instagram on this from the Home Affairs Committee repeatedly over the last few days. It told me this morning that using some of those emojis as racist slurs is against its rules, yet inexplicably, they are still up, and it is still taking Instagram days to remove these posts. Speed matters.

Can the Minister tell me what the Online Safety Bill is actually going to do to take action on this speed issue and to penalise companies for not moving fast enough? At the moment it looks as though that action will not happen. That is unacceptable. Keyboard cowards are being given a megaphone by these social media companies, and it has to stop.

[Victoria Atkins]

I completely agree with the right hon. Lady, the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee. I do not think these tech companies quite understand the anger and frustration of everyone involved in trying to scrutinise and hold them to account when they come back at us with, “It doesn’t meet our community rules.” Words such as the words I suspect she is thinking about, the emojis, the language—that is unacceptable in any civilised society, and that includes online fora as well as offline. The Bill is a real opportunity for the Government to lay the law down but also, as I say, for parliamentarians across the House to make their views known. I have long urged the companies to listen carefully to Members of Parliament, and I would urge them again to do so, because if they do not listen, we will act.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Court Bill

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Yvette Cooper

Report stage
Monday 5th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The Home Affairs Committee has considered many different aspects of this Bill and these amendments at different times and in different ways, but given the time I will focus on just a small number of areas.

I particularly want to address new clause 69, in my name. Its purpose is to get justice for victims of domestic abuse who are being timed out and take action against perpetrators who are being let off the hook. Many domestic abuse cases are prosecuted as common assault in a magistrates court where police and prosecutors may say that the threshold for the Crown court is not met. In these cases, there is a time limit on justice—most victims are not aware of this—of six months from the offence, even though in domestic abuse cases it may take many months, for good reason, for victims to feel able to go to the police. They may still be in an abusive relationship. They may be afraid. They may not be safe. They may have children and be worried about how to leave or where they will go. It may take them time to get the support that they feel they need to be able to talk to the police. There are so many reasons that are, in themselves, the essence of continuing crimes of domestic abuse. That is why the new clause increases the time limit so that there can be six months for the police to deal with the case from the point of reporting, rather than from the point of the offence itself.

Somebody I have talked to told me her story. She was assaulted while she was pregnant. She went to A&E but did not, at that stage, want to talk about what had happened. However, when the abuse continued after the baby was born, she left and gathered her courage to talk to the police, who started an investigation but before long told her that she had passed a time limit she never even knew existed and her ex would not be charged. There are many more such victims of domestic abuse who, for serious and obvious reasons, do not report it immediately, and the perpetrators go on to be free to commit more crimes.

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank the right hon. Lady for having raised her constituent’s case with me in previous meetings. We take this issue very seriously, and I can assure the House that we will return with a proposal at a later stage. I certainly do not rule out an amendment, if appropriate, in the Lords. This must be looked into and I am extremely grateful to her for raising it.

[Yvette Cooper]

I welcome the Minister’s statement. I am keen to pursue this and to work with her on it, as we have cross-party support. I really do want to see progress and I hope we can achieve that in the House of Lords.

This is, once again, about the blind spot where the legal system does not recognise the reality of violence against women and girls. There may be many reasons why a six-month time limit is appropriate for summary offences about altercations between acquaintances in the pub or tussles in the street, but it is not appropriate for domestic abuse—for the experience of violence against women and girls that is, too often, being missed out in the criminal justice system, where thousands of cases a year may be affected in this way. We have support for changes in this area from the domestic abuse commissioner of Refuge, Women’s Aid, the Centre for Women’s Justice, and West Yorkshire police.

On new clause 31, the Select Committee has conducted a detailed inquiry into violent abuse against shop workers. We have recommended a stand-alone offence because we need to strengthen the focus on this escalating offence and to have the police take it much more seriously. It is simply unacceptable that shop workers should face this escalating abuse over very many years. The new offence of assault against emergency workers has made a difference and increased prosecutions, and we need to increase prosecutions in other areas as well.

Daniel Morgan: Independent Panel Report

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Yvette Cooper

Ways and Means resolution & Programme motion
Monday 24th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

Sadly, the hon. Gentleman asks me to speculate about a document that the Home Office has not yet received. We cannot publish the report until it has been received. If I may, I wish to correct one point that the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) also made in his contribution. The panel may well have conducted its own checks, and quite rightly so—it is bound to do so—but the Home Secretary, of course, has her own responsibilities that she cannot transfer to anyone else. That applies to every Home Secretary.

In relation to national security concerns, I hope Members will understand that the Home Secretary has access to information that very few people in this country have access to. She must discharge her duties in accordance with her wider responsibilities as Home Secretary. I underline again the fact that the Home Secretary, the Home Office and the Government want this report to be published. We want the review’s findings to be in the open so that some of the questions that have been posed over the years are answered. We hope there will be some sense of justice for those most closely related to Mr Morgan.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab) [V]]

The failure ever to prosecute anyone for the terrible murder of Daniel Morgan and the continued allegations in respect of police corruption and media collusion make this an immensely important report. I do not know whether the Minister understands that the way she is talking about the report—reviews by the Home Secretary and the Home Secretary having access to additional information she has to review the report against—serves only to increase distrust and unease in what is already, clearly, a distrustful process that should never have become so. To restore trust for the panel and, crucially, for the family, will the Minister commit that the report will be published before Parliament rises for the Whitsun recess, if the Home Office receives the report this week?

[Victoria Atkins]

The right hon. Lady sets out the seriousness of the situation, and I do appreciate that, as I hope was apparent from my earlier comments, but I make the point again that I cannot commit to a publication date if the Home Office has not yet received the report. Please, give us the report and we can then publish it.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Yvette Cooper

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 26th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

Will the Minister clarify what she just said? At the moment, repeat domestic abuse cases and stalkers will often not be included in categories 1 or 2 because the offences are not treated as serious enough in the way those categories are listed. Category 3 currently involves a tiny number of people. Will the Minister include all repeat domestic abusers and high-harm stalkers—all of them—under MAPPA in future?

[Victoria Atkins]

As the right hon. Lady will know, category 1 perpetrators have to have committed a specified sexual offence under the legislation, and for category 2 they have to have been convicted of a violent offence and received a sentence of imprisonment for at least 12 months. If they are domestic abuse perpetrators, they will be included in the threshold guidance. This is very much about drawing out in the guidance the factors that local agencies should be concentrating on.

Although domestic abuse is already mentioned in section 6 of the guidance, we have listened to concerns that at local level the preponderance and patterns of behaviour are not necessarily being picked up in offenders in categories 1 and 2, as well as category 3. That is why, in discussions with Baroness Royall, we have been clear that we want to better capture those people under the existing framework. We will consult MAPPA responsible authorities on the draft revised guidance by the summer recess, and we will inform Parliament when the updated guidance is promulgated. Today, Baroness Williams of Trafford has written to Baroness Royall to confirm that past patterns of behaviours will be explicitly referred to in the guidance.

[Yvette Cooper]

There are countless serious repeat domestic abuse cases that are not sexual offences. There are also countless very serious repeat domestic abuse offences that do not pass the 12-month threshold. All the Minister is saying is that she is going to try to include little bits of lines about domestic abuse in categories 1 and 2, which we know will not include huge numbers of repeat domestic cases, so she has actually gone backwards on some of the things that Baroness Williams was saying.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

I do not accept that. The point is that category 3, as we have always said, is the flexible category. It is meant precisely to fit those cases that the hon. Lady has described. These offenders do not fit in category 1 or 2, but because they are considered to be dangerous offenders—they may, for example, have received a sentence of imprisonment of less than 12 months—they are in category 3. We want to join up that understanding in the guidance across all three categories.

We will consult with MAPPA authorities and will also invite views from across the House, but we have been working closely with Baroness Royall to try to address some of the issues that were rightly raised in the other place about past patterns of behaviour and so on. We give that undertaking today: we will look at that phrasing within the statutory guidance that is being drafted to help address some of the concerns in both Houses.

[Yvette Cooper]

Will the Minister give way?

[Victoria Atkins]

One more time, then I have to make progress.

[Yvette Cooper]

I am very grateful to the Minister, who is being very generous with her time. May I specifically ask about category 3? There are only around 300 offenders in that category, compared with the thousands or nearly tens of thousands of people that we are talking about. Will she undertake to include all convicted serial domestic abusers in category 3?

[Victoria Atkins]

The flexibility of category 3 means that that is already possible, if there has been a conviction. I gave the example on 15 April of criminal damage, such as if somebody kicks down a door. On the face of it, a criminal damage offence would not fit into category 1 or category 2. That is where the professional curiosity of professionals on the ground—police, probation and prison officers and so on—comes in. If someone has been convicted of that offence, he or she may not be in category 1 or category 2, but if those professionals believe that it is part of a pattern of past behaviour, on which Baroness Royall has rightly focused, that is how they will be put on to the system under MAPPA. We very much want the concerns that have been raised to be reflected in the guidance as well as the national framework.

I have already announced that we need to be sure that action is taken when there are indicators of escalating harm for those who are managed under the least intensive level of MAPPA—so, level 1. To that end, Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service will issue a new policy framework setting out clear expectations for the management of all cases at MAPPA level 1 by the National Probation Service. This includes domestic abuse perpetrators. That will further help improve the quality of information sharing, the consistency and regularity of reviews, and the identification of cases where risk is increasing and additional risk management activity is required.

Thirdly, as I announced on 15 April, we are bringing in the new multi-agency public protection system, or MAPPS, which will be piloted from next year. All category 3 offenders will be on MAPPS, which will have much greater functionality than the violent offender and sex offender register, or ViSOR, which is the existing database. That will enable criminal justice agencies to share information in real time and improve their risk assessments and the management of MAPPA nominals, including domestic abuse perpetrators.

Fourthly, we are legislating in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill to clarify the information sharing powers under MAPPA. For example, GPs and domestic abuse charities can very much be part of that data sharing. That is the intention of the clauses in the Bill, and I hope we will be able to persuade Opposition Members to support us on that.

Fifthly, we are committed to bringing forward a new statutory domestic abuse perpetrator strategy as part of our holistic domestic abuse strategy to be published later this year. Our revised amendment makes it clear that the strategy will address the risks associated with stalking. We will also include a perpetrator strand in our complementary violence against women and girls strategy, which will cover stalking that does not take place in a domestic abuse context.

Sixthly, we are investing new resources, with an additional £25 million committed this year, to tackle perpetrators’ behaviour and to stop the cycle of abuse. Finally, more broadly, I can assure right hon. and hon. Members that this Government are committed to supporting vulnerable victims. Having published a new victims code to guarantee victims’ rights and the level of support they can expect, we will consult over the summer on the victims’ law, which will enshrine those rights in law.

The other place has asked the Government to consider again these four issues. We will do so in the next hour. We have listened carefully to their lordships’ concerns and responded with a substantial new package of commitments, both to strengthen this groundbreaking Bill and to further our wider programme to protect and support victims of domestic abuse and their children and bring perpetrators to justice. It is time for the Bill to be enacted and implemented, for the sake of the 2.3 million adults and their children who are victims of domestic abuse each year. Let us agree to the Government amendments in lieu, let us pass this Bill, and let us help victims.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank hon. and right hon. Members across the House for the constructive tone they have maintained not just tonight but throughout. I am particularly moved by the comments the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) has just made. He speaks of the constituents he meets in his office. He knows they are sitting next to their perpetrators and he tries to distract them. I am sure many of us can understand and sympathise with that. It is precisely those people we are trying to help with the Bill.

I will try to deal with some of the issues raised but I am very conscious of time, so forgive me if I am not able to. My noble Friend in the other place will have more time tomorrow and will try to deal with some of the points that will no doubt be raised then.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) asked questions about the code in respect of the firewall review. We are very much in listening mode. We have not yet drafted the code and will consider the consequences she raised. I draw her attention to the fact that in the new clause we have said we will consult the Domestic Abuse Commissioner and the Information Commissioner’s Office. I very much hope that the fact that we have thought about the point she makes about accountability and so on, and included it in the new clause, gives her some comfort.

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) for raising Clare’s law. We have not talked about it in the context of recent debates. The right to ask and the right to know is an incredibly important tool for victims and the police. We can spread the message across our constituencies that if someone is worried about a new relationship they can ask the police whether there is something they should know about their new relationship, or if the police are worried about a serial perpetrator and want to warn the new partner, then this facility exists. Again, this is why it is so important that the Bill is passed.

The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) rightly and understandably raised questions about our approach to the point on MAPPA. I know this is an issue to which she has given a great deal of attention and consideration during the passage of the Bill and previously. If I may, I just want to clarify something. I do not know whether there has been a misunderstanding in translation, but I am aware of my duties at the Dispatch Box. I think she said that I had said that category 3 will include all serial perpetrators in future. I hope I have not misquoted her. To clarify, categories 1 and 2 will include domestic abuse perpetrators by definition of the qualifying offences under categories 1 and 2.

We very much hope and expect that the updated guidance we are issuing as a result of the discussions on the Bill and the improvements we will make to data sharing, not just in terms of guidance and framework but also, importantly, through the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, will see an increase in category 3 offenders. We want local agencies to be applying the system in the improved way we all want. Of course, domestic abuse protection orders will also include notification requirements. I just wanted to clarify that. Perhaps there has been a misunderstanding in translation, as it were, or in debate.

[Yvette Cooper]

I think the confusion is that I was asking whether it would be possible to include all repeat domestic abusers and high-harm stalkers in category 3. That is what we were trying to achieve. Can the Minister include all of them through the change to guidance to include them on category 3?

[Victoria Atkins]

I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Lady for clarifying that. This is the nub of it: through the framework that already exists—improved guidance, the national framework that I described, and the wording in guidance and so on that has been discussed recently—we want those offenders whom local agencies judge to pose a risk to be assessed as such. They will either already have been automatically included in category 1 or 2, or assessed under category 3. That is the point of this—it is the professional curiosity that I talked about. We want this framework to work better, in addition to the work in MAPPS, which is being piloted next year.

I know that this is incredibly technical. I have spent the past three years trying to de-jargon—if that is a word—some of this very technical language so that we may all communicate with the victims whom we are desperately trying to help in our constituencies. This is one of those instances that is very technical. I have tried to de-jargon it as much as I can, but it is incredibly technical. We have to look to local agencies and professionals using their best endeavours to protect our constituents across the country.

The hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) asked the question—which I might have just answered—how we reassure women in her constituency that we are, first, acting with the best of intentions and, secondly, being held to account. I make this point, not just to us but to Members of another place: this is not the end of the road for our work on domestic abuse. We have been very clear that the Bill is a landmark one, but it is setting up a whole programme of work, locally through things such as our specialist services for people in safe accommodation, the Domestic Abuse Commissioner and all the measures we have put into local family courts.

This programme of work will, I hope, outlast many of us and our time in this place. By virtue of that, I point the hon. Lady to things such as our announcement that we want to publish a VAWG—violence against women and girls—strategy later this summer, looking at some of the behaviours that we have discussed during the passage of the Bill. Later this year, we will publish a domestic abuse dedicated specialist national strategy to tackle abuse. The momentum that the Bill has created will be continued through both those strategies. This is very much the start of the journey as far as I and this Government are concerned. We very much look forward to listening to ideas and suggestions from across the House as we take through those strategies and other pieces of legislation.

To return to the people to whom the hon. Member for Strangford referred, those constituents whom he faces in his office to help—as we all do—I have talked before about my commitment to helping victims of domestic abuse. This is not just about those victims whom we are trying to help today, or in the future; for me, this is about the women, the victims, I could not help when I was working in the criminal courts at the very beginning of my career. In that day and age, it was all too inevitable that the victim would hand in her withdrawal statement, because the abuser had got to her before she had been able to give her evidence and to put her case forward. It is for those victims, as well as victims now and in the future, that this Bill is so critical. I very much hope that the Lords will help us to pass this piece of legislation as quickly as possible this week, so that we can start to help those victims as soon as possible.

Question put, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 9B.

Domestic Abuse and Hidden Harms during Lockdown

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Yvette Cooper

Thursday 14th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise the needs of people living with autism and other such conditions, as she always does when the opportunity presents itself. I hope that she welcomes the mental health reforms that the Government have announced this week, which will be a real step forward in us all understanding the differences between autism and Asperger’s, and the ways in which they are wrongly treated at this point in time under the historic legislation. I also hope that she is aware of the national strategy for disabled people, which the Prime Minister is absolutely committed to publishing. Only yesterday or the day before, in fact, I attended a meeting chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), to work out across Government how we can help people with disabilities, including those who live with autism.

As to the specific points on data, sadly, there is much room for improvement when it comes to the collection of data in respect of victims. I will take away my right hon. Friend’s specific question, because I am very clear in my mind as to how those health conditions can make a person more vulnerable to exploitation and abuse, and ensuring that disabled victims of domestic abuse are better looked after will be part of our work. I will draw upon her advice and wisdom in this respect, because we want to be clear that no matter what health conditions and disabilities people are living with, they should not be victims of these terrible crimes.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab) [V]]

Abusers exploit lockdowns to increase their control, so I welcome the “Ask for ANI” scheme, which the Home Affairs Committee called for.

On the vital issue of funding for services, can the Minister explain whether the £11 million that she announced is the same £11 million announced for the second lockdown, or is there any additional funding for this difficult third lockdown? The domestic abuse commissioner called for funding to be extended beyond March. Can she tell us whether that is happening?

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank the right hon. Lady and her Committee for the work that they do to scrutinise, rightly, the work of Government in this regard. I hope that I was clear that the £11 million was the £11 million announced in November, and that was very much directed towards helping organisations for the rest of the financial year.

We are working very closely with domestic abuse services to understand the strains that they are facing. I know from speaking to chief execs of the charities that, like a lot of frontline services, frontline workers are just feeling exhausted by having to work in these conditions and with the extra pressures that they have faced over recent months. This money is taking us up to the end of this financial year.

On domestic abuse services beyond the end of this financial year, the right hon. Lady will know that we have just had the spending review process. We are in the middle of working out allocations, but I hope that she draws some comfort, as I said to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) earlier, that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has already committed £6 million to helping tier 1 local authorities prepare for that really important duty, set out in the Bill, to help victims in safe accommodation.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Yvette Cooper

Report stage & 3rd reading & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 6th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I welcome the points that the Minister has made on other topics, but on this one, if she wants to do further research and investigation why not just lift the provisions and requirements on no recourse to public funds in the meantime, until the research is completed and she has more information about what she wants to do next?

[Victoria Atkins]

The right hon. Lady makes a point that I know would, at first blush, be attractive, but the problem is that we do not have that bedrock of evidence. We are coming to the Dispatch Box with an open heart, and I hope that it is acknowledged across the House that that has been our approach throughout the Bill proceedings. I do not know whether she has had a chance to read the report that we published last week into the work that the Home Office has done. There has been some very good work by charities, through the tampon tax funding and so on, but we are unable to put in the figures that we need to in order to undertake the sort of reform that she is urging upon us. We must have the data to ensure that anything that we are putting forward in the longer term best meets the needs of victims and is sustainable.

A person who comes to this country on, for example, a six-month visitor visa falls under one of the categories that one of the witnesses gave evidence to the Joint Committee on, in the evidence that was given to us as part of this review—the Southall Black Sisters. The right hon. Lady will know that people on visitor visas, who may be here for six months, will have made representations to the Home Office specifically on their financial circumstances, and we want to ensure that we can treat such people fairly and give them access to the help that they need. It is why we are very keen to focus on support rather than to follow the urgings of others that we deal with immigration status before we look at support. We want to help these victims to access help first and foremost as victims.

The pilot programme is to determine how we ensure that victims can obtain immediate access to support, and that any future strategy meets the immediate needs of victims and is fit for purpose. Support for migrant victims is a very important issue for all of us. We recognise that, which is why we are committed to launching the pilot project as quickly as possible. We are currently reviewing the options for implementing the pilot and expect to make further announcements in the summer, ahead of its launch in the autumn. We must resist the urge to act before we have the evidence on which to base comprehensive proposals, to ensure that measures are appropriate.

As I say, I want to give plenty of time to Members to debate the Bill at this important stage of its scrutiny. Before I do, I thank hon. Members—I hope I do not speak too soon—for the very constructive, collegiate approach we have taken, all of us, on this Bill. I know some very different viewpoints may be held on particular issues that will be debated in this Chamber this afternoon, but I know that the House will keep at the forefront of its mind that we are debating this Bill because we all want to help victims of domestic abuse and we all want the abuse to stop.