Domestic Abuse Bill

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 5th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I too welcome this Bill and congratulate my noble friend on her excellent introduction. I know how much she cares about this important issue, and, like others, I believe this legislation is urgently needed, especially as ongoing lockdowns have aggravated domestic violence and abuse. I welcome the many measures focusing on protecting women, who are the majority of reported victims.

This is a good Bill as it stands, and it could be improved further. I welcome the inclusion of children as victims of domestic abuse in the Bill and respect my noble friend’s plea not to make the best the enemy of the good. But I will mention two important issues in my short time today, which could be addressed now, rather than having to wait for future opportunities.

First, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, I call on the Government to ensure that the abuse of people over the age of 75 is taken more seriously. The ONS still fails even to collect relevant data, despite clear research evidence that abuse affects many over-75s. As more older people live either alone or in frailty, the opportunity for unrecorded abuse increases. They need protection, and including carers in the Bill as connected persons is important.

The second issue relates to divorce rather than cohabitation. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, says, there are major risks in post-separation abuse, with one partner applying pressure on the other during emotionally charged divorce proceedings. Many colleagues have mentioned women needing to be protected against economic abuse or coercive control; this is right. However, I wish to highlight the prevalent problem of parental alienation, which entails psychological or emotional abuse impacting on many fathers and their children. This Bill fails to explicitly recognise parental alienation, which inflicts long-term damage on children, who are frequently innocent bystanders witnessing or being part of parental conflict.

Meaningful relationships with both parents are widely recognised as in the best interests of children, but parental contact can be overridden by false accusations used to punish the other parent. Unfortunately, I have personal experience of this, in one case with a cousin and in another with a friend whose spouse raised false allegations during divorce. There is no penalty or legal recourse against such unfounded allegations, which were deliberately designed to sever the children’s paternal relationship. This psychological manipulation damaged the father’s health and the children internalised the impact, which manifested later as self-harm, eating disorders, academic decline and depression.

Parental alienation is defined by CAFCASS; Dr Adrienne Barnett from its research advisory committee states that such alienation should be called out for what it is: domestic abuse. However, it is not yet explicitly recognised in law, so we have an opportunity to address it in this Bill. Recognising parental alienation in law as an improper act can help with prevention and redress, and reduce the instances of this kind of abuse by proxy in which children are weaponised against one of their parents. I recognise it as a sensitive and difficult area, and of course we must protect children against violent or criminal behaviour with a dangerous parent, but psychological experts in parental alienation can help identify and differentiate between unfounded allegations and unsafe contact, moving the debate into the field of medical expertise rather than that of the courts. I wonder whether my noble friend would be willing to meet with me and other interested colleagues to discuss this and see whether we may specifically include parental alienation in this Bill.