Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Anna Soubry Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

When the Lord Chancellor introduced the statement to the House which preceded this Bill, I asked him about the provisions in relation to domestic violence. He thought that I would be pleased with the answer, because the Government had recognised that domestic violence was, to some degree, a special case. I was not pleased with the answer, because at that point the definition of “domestic violence” was unique to this Bill, it did not cover all cases and it was, in my view, fundamentally flawed. So the first thing I wish to say is how glad I am that the Government have now decided to use the Association of Chief Police Officers definition of “domestic violence”.

I need to push one point further, however. The failure of the Government to understand the reality of the lives of victims of domestic violence is reflected in how they have constructed this Bill. I will never forget the moment when I talked to two local police officers in my constituency who dealt regularly with victims of domestic violence and who told me about a case that they had just dealt with of a woman who had been beaten up by her husband 12 years earlier but did not report it until he started biting pieces out of her body. That case, although it made me tremble with horror, is shockingly not that exceptional. We should not forget that, in this country, two women are murdered every week following a history of domestic violence. We should not forget how few women ever report it. Why do they not report it? Overwhelmingly, the victims of domestic violence think, “It was my fault.” That is how they feel, so they do not go to the police or to social workers. They conceal it, as they think it is caused by something that they did.

Such women often report because of someone else. When women are pregnant, they will report their victimisation by their partner because they want to protect the child in their womb. The problem with the distance travelled by the Government is that they have not yet gone far enough. I hope to be able to persuade the Minister to take that last step and to accept wider forms of evidence. We know that women do not necessarily go to a refuge; they go to a place of refuge. They might go to their sister, to their school friend or to their mum, and they are the people who women will tell first about their experience of victimisation.

Some very perturbing evidence from Welsh Women’s Aid suggests that the average time—the average, not the extreme—that a victim might take before reporting a domestic violence incident and getting to the stage of resolving the private family law issues is five and a half years. That average time would be excluded by the route that the Minister is pursuing. I beg him to recognise that the House of Lords got this one right and to say that he will take the last step and ensure that the other victims are properly protected. That is important because by allowing these women to use private family law to protect themselves and their families, we will prevent future domestic violence homicides. The Minister could do that by changing his position on the amendments.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) and I pay tribute to the work done by her and other Opposition Members when they were in Government. They undoubtedly made huge advances in the prosecution of people who had committed offences of domestic violence and put protection in place to enable victims of domestic violence to come forward in both the criminal jurisdiction and the family and civil jurisdiction. That protected not only those women but their children. We part company, however, on this matter as I believe that the Government have gone as far as they should in their acceptance of the definition of domestic violence and what should support any allegation of domestic violence.

I do not think that it is fair simply to criticise those on the Front Bench for not understanding domestic violence, especially if it were suggested that they did not do so by virtue of the sex of the ministerial team or the Secretary of State. I am not suggesting that the hon. Member for Slough said that herself, but others have. It was interesting that in her speech she told us that the peculiarity and horror of domestic violence, which is demonstrated in the fact that women will often suffer for year after year without making any formal complaint or any complaint at all and that they suffer in silence, came as a surprise and a shock to her when she first learned of it in a conversation with two police officers.

Many Members on both sides of the House have experience by virtue of their work in the health service, the criminal justice system or—I am thinking in particular of my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant)—as a solicitor in the family division. Unless one has had that first-hand experience, some of the appalling stories one hears beggar belief. It is difficult to accept the fact that appalling abuse can go on, year after year, unreported.

It has been generally accepted across the House that we still have a long way to go. Members of this House conducted an admirable investigation into the inadequacy of our stalking laws, notwithstanding the efforts made by the previous Administration. We know that more legislation is needed to protect from stalking which is, in my opinion, not only an offence of abuse but, in effect, an offence of violence because of the psychological damage it causes. Recent events in Nottingham, which my Broxtowe constituency touches on, show that we still have police officers who, when it comes to domestic violence, simply do not get it. A woman was murdered who had repeatedly complained to the police.