Domestic Abuse Bill

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

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

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity for the House to consider this Bill, which we now know is even more important than we thought before. We know that it has long-lasting impact, not only on the women who are the principal victims but on their children. The rise in domestic abuse during the pandemic is, quite honestly, frightening, and goes alongside the significant rise in sexual exploitation and abuse of women more widely. This pandemic has been a crisis in more ways than one for too many women and girls.

I welcome the Minister saying that there will be future legislative opportunities, but I do hope that we can make some improvements to this Bill while we have it, because the more improvements we can make, the more women we will be able to protect. I hope that, having now learned some of the difficult lessons of escalation of abuse during the lockdowns, the Government will be open to amendments. As the Minister said, I had the privilege of being a member of the pre-legislative scrutiny Joint Committee, which made recommendations that I thank the Government for accepting—but there were some that they did not include, and I hope that they will now, for example, see the importance of strengthening the powers and accountability of the domestic abuse commissioner.

I have been involved in tackling domestic abuse for much of my working life—far too long—having helped to establish one of the very first refuges in the country in the late 1970s in Sunderland. Refuges for women are an important way of helping women who have no option but to flee from home, and I welcome the Government agreeing specifically to support them through the duty on local authorities. However, it is not sufficient. If government support through this additional duty remains the only remedy, it may end up being a perverse incentive. Changing Lives offers supported housing across the north-east of England for those who are unable to access refuges. They may be women with older children, people with substance misuse problems or offending histories, men or transgender people. Ironically, the problem is not one of finding them individual accommodation in the north-east—it is in getting money for support and the capacity to provide that support. I can tell the Minister that the demand is huge and frightening again.

There is also the challenge of supporting women who are at risk of losing custody of their children, where the main need is identified as domestic abuse. The report of the commission that I chaired, Breaking Down the Barriers, looked at the experiences of women who had suffered violence and abuse. The women whom we worked with identified this as one of the main barriers to people looking for help. Changing Lives runs a project in Newcastle that offers supported accommodation for women and their children, and it is primarily for women with substance misuse problems which mean that their children are subject to child protection plans. For most of those women, their addiction started after domestic abuse. Some 60% of the families leave Ridley Villas together, having been taken off the child protection register, to live their lives free from addiction and abuse. Trevi House in Plymouth is another good example. So there are examples of the Government recognising that there needs to be significant support for community interventions, not just refuges—but we need to work on that in the Bill.

The other thing that I want to raise is an issue that I shall follow up with an amendment. The women we worked with—

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

Sorry, the noble Baroness has already taken four minutes.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab) [V]]

I am really sorry. Basically, if we can make sure that everyone is trained who sees a woman with domestic abuse in a service, we will do a lot to make sure that they are helped.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 25th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Gloucester]

Following the informative speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, on these amendments I will be very brief. I simply would like an assurance from the Minister that all age groups will be included in this legislation, and that it will provide support and provision not only for pregnant women and the unborn child but for children of all ages whose trauma began in utero.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, for her introduction to the amendment and reaffirm that there is no intention to set the unborn child ahead of the rights of the mother or of women. If anyone takes the wrong intention, I assure your Lordships that we will address this in any future amendment so that no confusion is possible.

The amendment essentially arises from programmes from which we have learned a great deal about intervention at the earliest stages to ensure that children have every opportunity to grow normally and prosper physically and emotionally, and that families are effectively supported to do just that. We know of several things that should lead us to want to ensure that this is addressed in the Bill. Around 30% of domestic abuse begins during pregnancy. Some 40% to 60% of women experiencing domestic abuse are abused during pregnancy. The single best predictor of children becoming either perpetrators or victims of domestic abuse later in life is whether they grow up in a home where there is domestic violence. That data comes from UNICEF.

When I was Minister at the Cabinet Office in 2006-07 I introduced an evidence-based programme from America called the Nurse-Family Partnership, which we renamed the Family Nurse Partnership Programme. We used health visitors in this country to work intensively with newly pregnant first-time mothers during their pregnancy, and then for the first two years of the child’s life. The nurse would visit the family at home, and early in the programme would show the young woman she was working with a picture of a brain of a normal child aged two and one of a child the same age who lacked stimulation and had been neglected. At that same age, the brains are profoundly different in shape and size. This graphically illustrated, and allowed the nurse to talk with the young woman about, the fact that the pregnancy and early months have such a profound effect on the baby’s development, growth and, of course, emotional development.

Mothers need support to offer what is necessary. The outcomes for this programme, which was been trialled for 20 years in the US, show that when the child is six years old they are remarkably better in a whole range of ways for the child, mother and—if there is a father—the father too. We know that real programmes like this work and there is very good research evidence backing this up.

The programme that the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, mentioned, For Baby’s Sake, also works with families who are vulnerable and tackles issues at the very earliest opportunity. The research from its work shows that almost all fathers who are involved in the programme and are part of such vulnerable families have been subject to domestic abuse in childhood. The intervention uses trauma-informed work to better support parents in those early days and months and during pregnancy. The birth of a new baby is, as the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, said, the time of greatest optimism from parents about the future of the child. It is therefore the optimum period for intervention. Evidence shows that without appropriate support and intervention at this stage, that optimism disappears after three to four months. Effective intervention works, and it is the best way of breaking that cycle of violence. Surely, that is what our ambition ought to be.

In the commission that I chaired, in the report Breaking Down the Barriers, we were able to show that a key reason for women not looking for help when they and their children experience domestic abuse was the fear of losing their children. This early intervention would open up the promise of support, rather than separation from the children. It would very much be welcomed by women who are fearful. We have the chance here to make a real difference, to intervene in a way that gives potential perpetrators a better way of coping with family life and makes sure that babies are not subject to domestic violence and all that we know follows from that.

This amendment will not be sufficient on its own, but it will be a significant step on the way to transforming this country’s experience of domestic abuse. It will transform the opportunities of families to break from violence being seen as the answer to their problems. I hope the Government will take this opportunity to work with us to show their real determination and ours to make that difference.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 27th January 2021 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top]

53: After Clause 16, insert the following new Clause—
“Duties of public authorities in relation to training
(1) Subject to subsection (3), all public authorities specified in section 15(3) must, in consultation with the Commissioner—(a) train those staff who provide a service to people who suffer or may suffer domestic abuse to make enquiries about domestic abuse,(b) ensure that such enquiries are made, and(c) report to the Commissioner such statistics on enquiries or training as the Commissioner deems necessary.(2) If the Commissioner has published guidance on training or reporting under section 7(2)(d), the training or reporting provided by public authorities to their staff must meet standards specified in such guidance, so far as such standards apply to the public authority.(3) The Commissioner must produce an annual report, in accordance with section 14(2)(b).(4) Nothing in this section prevents the Commissioner from specifying that the staff of any public authority should receive additional training or make enhanced or targeted enquiries.”

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, Amendment 53 seeks to amend the Bill to put a statutory duty on public services to ensure front-line staff in those services are making inquiries about domestic abuse. It looks to further support this duty with appropriate training and funding so that staff are equipped to ask the question, and to ensure services are available and ready to support survivors when they do disclose. The amendment also seeks to accompany the duty with robust data collection and good training standards. The campaign to include this in the Bill has been led by Agenda and supported by over 20 other charities, trade unions, practitioners and leading experts. I thank them for their work and their commitment.

The impact of abuse on survivors means that they are likely to come into contact with a whole range of public services. While four out of five victims never call the police, many visit their GP because of the abuse they are suffering. Some turn up at the housing department, some at DWP. For some it is the police; for others it will be the health service. Wherever it is, it is important that the abuse and its consequences are recognised and that appropriate support is offered.

Unfortunately, research by Agenda and the National Commission on Domestic Abuse and Multiple Disadvantage in the report Breaking Down the Barriers found that too often public services fail to pick up domestic abuse and therefore fail to respond appropriately. Routine inquiry, whereby practitioners routinely ask patients about experiences of abuse, is already recommended by NICE guidelines in services including mental health, drug and alcohol treatment, and maternity services—but it often does not happen.

I say to your Lordships, ask friends who are pregnant about their experience. I did, and got a variety of answers. Some had not been asked at all; one was asked in front of her partner; and others were asked in what they described as a tick-box exercise, where it was clear that the person asking was embarrassed and did not want a difficult answer. A third of mental health trusts that responded to a freedom of information request from Agenda did not even have a policy on routine inquiry, despite the NICE guidelines. When they had a policy, it was often applied inconsistently, with one trust saying that it asked only 3% of patients about experience of domestic abuse.

The Joint Committee on the Bill urged the Government to consider how to ensure greater consistency of approach and training for front-line staff. The Government’s response was that routine inquiry was already taking place in maternity and mental health services. However, as we now know, tragically, it is not. Some 38% of women with mental health problems have experienced domestic abuse. Many of them have not had that taken into account in the response that they get in treatment. We need to go further than health services. All our public services, from jobcentres to GPs, should be asking about abuse, so that they can then offer appropriate support.

There are examples of good practice, which show that the approach suggested in the amendment would work. The IRIS programme in primary care, a training and support programme to improve service-level response to disclosure of abuse, found in its research that the number of referrals to domestic violence agencies made by clinicians in practices where IRIS was in place was six times higher than in those not involved in the programme. It has also been evaluated that there are social costings of £37 per woman registered in a GP practice. So we know that there is training that works and makes a real difference. We know that too from the SafeLives training programme that is delivered to police forces, because it produces much better practice and outcomes in those forces that take up the training.

I have not put in the amendment the precise nature of the training, which is probably a matter for guidance. However, most people agree that it should be some form of trauma-informed practice. I have talked to organisations such as Changing Lives and Fulfilling Lives, which ensure that all their staff have trauma-informed training. There are two main consequences of this. They know how to deal with people who come before them, mainly women, who have experienced the trauma of domestic abuse. They know how to give them the feeling of a safe space, how to help them disclose, and so on.

They also deliver training to other organisations, so Fulfilling Lives, with some of their experts by experience who have been through the training, then offer it to the DWP in Newcastle. DWP managers have told me just how valuable this is. We know that this sort of training works, and the Government have recognised it in making sure that it is offered to veterans who suffer from PTSD. It needs to be recognised in those who have experienced domestic abuse. Appropriate training also helps front-line workers deal with the trauma of colleagues who have their own experience of domestic abuse or deal with those experiencing trauma. We have learned a lot about that during the pandemic.

This amendment would give public services a real opportunity to rethink training and development for their workforce, and offer meaningful support to the victims of domestic abuse. I think it is really necessary, and I sure that the Government know this, but are worried about it being overburdensome. I do not believe it would be. It would be enormously helpful to public services and front-line workers, because they would be much more confident about how they are dealing with people. I hope that the Government see how to adopt this, and I beg to move.

[Baroness Crawley (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the wisdom and experience of my noble friend Lady Armstrong and to be in the company of my noble friend Lord Hunt in adding my name and support to this amendment. What brings us together is the need for this most welcome Domestic Abuse Bill to place a statutory duty on public authorities to ensure that front-line staff make trained inquiries into domestic abuse, backed, as my noble friend said, by sufficient funding to make it a reality.

The Government said that routine inquiry is already in place in maternity and mental health services, and that all staff working in the NHS must undertake at least level 1 safeguarding training, which includes domestic abuse. While I acknowledge that much guidance is out there and that many levels of training and training commissioning exist, the problem is that there is no trained, routine and consistent inquiry into domestic abuse for front-line workers across public authorities.

Since best-value performance indicators were dropped several years ago, local authorities—often the local trainers and commissioners—have no way of measuring their performance in training and commissioning compared with other local authorities. Often, the first contact in a trauma is the most important. Their interaction with an abused person decides the trust and confidence that that person has in that service, be it the police, housing, mental health, the NHS or social care. I know that local authority trainers, in particular, would welcome greater consistency, accountability and scrutiny.

The alliance organisation Agenda has worked tirelessly on this aspect of help for victims of abuse. It has found that, despite NICE guidance, trained practitioners are not routinely asking patients about domestic abuse. One mental health trust asked only 3% of patients, when it was meant to be asking everyone. The Government are aware of these continuing inconsistencies, as is seen in the shift in their wording in the draft statutory guidance published in July 2020—from routine inquiry on domestic abuse “already takes place” to “should be taking place”.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

My Lords, I have received no requests to speak after the Minister, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, to conclude the debate on her amendment.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am really grateful to everyone who has contributed and been so positive about the importance of really good trained inquiry from whichever front-line worker a woman or victim is likely to turn up in front of. I will not mention everyone individually, but I need to answer a couple of things.

My noble friend Lord Hunt spoke very eloquently about the importance of employing people with lived experience in many of the services that work directly with those who have been abused—this is very important. I work with organisations that do this. However, he is also right that, if you are going to do it, you have an additional responsibility to make sure that they are well trained and supported. This amendment would help to make sure that that happened.

I was delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, contributed to the debate. When I was doing the commission, I met a number of women from the black, Asian and minority-ethnic communities and, of course, women with disabilities as well as some of the organisations that worked with them specifically. Too often, they met people who simply did not have the specialism or capacity to support them.

It is really important to understand the distinct and often disproportionate ways in which some minoritised women experience abuse, as well as knowing the right referral pathways. Training must involve the expertise of service providers, run by and for minoritised communities. These are really important things that I encourage the Government to think and talk to a wide group about. I certainly look forward to working with the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, on this agenda.

My noble friend Lord Rooker raised the issue of costs. Agenda has estimated that this would cost about £3.6 million. The Minister also mentioned the duty being a burden, and, as a previous Local Government Minister, I know all about that and want to address it. I would like to work with her officials to go through what some organisations have been doing to deliver this training in a way that enhances their organisation as well as ensuring really good support for the women and other victims who come in front of their front-line workers. I believe that there is merit for the public service rather than it being a burden in relation to doing things in the way that we have talked about this evening.

I hear what the Minister says, and I would love to work with her and her officials to find a way forward because I am afraid that, at the moment, there is plenty of guidance but no means of making sure that it is always translated into action. This is where we need to understand how we make sure that this happens for every victim of abuse who presents to a public authority. As such, there is work to be done, and, in the light of that, I am happy to withdraw my amendment today, with the idea that we will do some more work and perhaps come back later with another amendment on Report.

Amendment 53 withdrawn.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 8th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am pleased to support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Young, and Amendment 147. Both deal with being clear about what the Government have sought to do in Clause 71 to extend to survivors or victims of domestic abuse the priority need for homelessness. It is very clear that women who are leaving or seeking to leave an abusive relationship need to be seen as a priority. I am delighted that the Government acknowledge that.

I am concerned that, with both these amendments, the Government are undoing some of their good intent by not making sure that those who live in a multigenerational household are not able to ask someone else to be their advocate in front of the housing department or homelessness unit. Someone is fleeing the locality that they live and are well known in to escape their abuser, but they are not automatically seen as being in priority need when using either of those routes.

I understand that the Government are reluctant to keep opening the category of priority need, because there is not enough housing and because waiting lists for social housing are getting longer, not shorter. But I think that they need to be clear in their will to support women who have experienced domestic abuse in both Amendments 146A and 147. I know that they will want to move words and so on, but I feel that they need a general acceptance that women who experience domestic abuse should be treated by the local authority homelessness unit as being in priority need. They need to make sure that that happens in the two cases that these amendments deal with.

It is very straightforward to accept this sort of amendment. I just hope that the Government recognise what the APPG is saying and what the Welsh Government have achieved in their legislation. We need that acknowledgement in our legislation in England. The sooner they do this, the more it will reassure people that they are going to get the sort of priority need that they are looking for, if they have been abused. The trauma of being abused is one that most of us can only imagine. I have met many of these women and this issue has been raised with me, on numerous occasions. I hope that the Government find a way to meet the aspirations of these women, so that they get the independent housing that they require of their local authority.

[Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)]

My Lords, these are two good rounding-out amendments, well argued for by all speakers, and I fully support them both. Like the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, I would have signed Amendment 146A too, if I could have.

Clause 71(5) deals with priority need for victims, as we have heard. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, introduced Amendment 146A, which seeks to extend the application of priority need for housing for homeless victims of domestic abuse to those who live with, or might be expected to live with, the victim. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, explained that this already works perfectly well in Wales. I am sure that the Government have looked at that and seen it for themselves.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bull, described the lengths to which an abuser will go to find out where the victim has gone, which is why it may not be possible for the application to be made in person. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, reinforced the need of so many victims to get right away. As my noble friend Lady Hamwee said, there is a great shortage of housing, which causes a lot of consternation. It is much better on every level for the perpetrator to move. I am just trailing my amendment that tries to achieve this, which is Amendment 163, coming on Wednesday.

Amendment 147, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, tackles the local connection issue for a victim fleeing an area. It would ensure that, even if the victim were not from that area, this would not count against them for housing priority, hence them being designated with a local connection. It stops local authorities from refusing survivors on the grounds of no legal connection. The example from the noble Lord, Lord Randall, shows exactly why this is needed. Both these amendments make a great deal of sense, and I hope that your Lordships’ House is minded to support them.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard
Monday 8th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I strongly support Amendments 7, 8, 9, 78 and 90. We have heard the very informed opinions of my brethren, including the ladies, about the dangers that exist at the beginning of life, including the time that a child is in utero, from the effects of domestic abuse surrounding them.

It is very important to remember that the idea of putting something in guidance depends on whether it is already included in the statute. Guidance cannot extend the scope of the statute and I think that these amendments are really concerned with the legal necessity of having these beginning-of-life children in the statute. Therefore, I support them very strongly because I think it is generally assumed that they need to be looked after and that looking after them involves a degree of involvement that is essential for success.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am going to be very disciplined in this Bill—some people may say that that is a bit unusual for me—and speak only to those things that are not part of the criminal justice system. I am concerned that overall the Bill has been dominated by the criminal justice system, and most of the women I have worked with for many years want problems to be sorted before it is necessary to go to court, because things really have failed once it gets that far. That is why I was really pleased to support the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, in these amendments, because they are about early intervention and, in terms of domestic abuse, about how we prevent it and how we break that cycle.

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Moved by

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top]

15: After Clause 16, insert the following new Clause—
“Duties of public authorities in relation to training
(1) Subject to subsection (3), all public authorities specified in section 15(3) must report to the Commissioner such statistics on enquiries or training as the Commissioner deems necessary.(2) If the Commissioner has published guidance on training or reporting under section 7(2)(d), the training or reporting provided by public authorities to their staff must meet standards specified in such guidance, so far as such standards apply to the public authority.(3) The Commissioner must produce an annual report, in accordance with section 14(2)(b).”

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, it is my pleasure to move this amendment which relates to the training of all front-line workers. We took away the comments and ideas from the Minister in Committee and have brought back a much more modest amendment. It removes the public duty but does lay out a process whereby the commissioner is involved in assessing the training, according to the guidance the Government have published and will, I hope, improve. It also establishes that the commissioner should produce a report each year.

--- Later in debate ---

In conclusion, I strongly support the aims of both these amendments, but, for the reasons I have set out, it would not be appropriate to include them in the Bill. As I have explained, Amendment 44 undermines the constitutional separation of powers between the Executive and the judiciary, while Amendment 15 significantly overlaps with, and therefore adds little to, the provisions already made elsewhere in Part 2 and Clause 73 of the Bill. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, will be happy to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am grateful to everyone who has taken part and, given the hour, I will be very brief indeed. Therefore, I will not go through each speech.

I thank the Minister for the work that she has done and her recognition of the importance of training and supporting front-line staff. Of course, I would have liked to have seen this more prominently on the face of the Bill, but I accept that she is committed to this, and I will hold her to continuing to pursue the issue through guidance and through support for the commissioner. My noble friend Lord Hunt and I both emphasised the issue of resource for the commissioner to do that effectively.

The only other issue was that raised by my noble friend Lord Hunt: the basic importance of supporting and training staff. That is one of the most important aspects of how we deal with domestic abuse. As Members across the House and, indeed, the Minister said, our knowledge and understanding of this, given the pandemic and what we have learned from that, should be even greater now. We know that those staff themselves need support and training to deal with the real trauma that they go through when dealing with people who are exhibiting these sorts of problems in front of them.

I will not push the amendment further tonight, but I will keep an eye on it once the Bill is through. I will continue to discuss it with the commissioner and continue to bring it back to the House to make sure that the House and the Government have delivered on the commitments that have been given to train and support front-line workers to ask the right questions, so that they then know the right way to guide and direct people who really need that support.

Amendment 15 withdrawn.