Domestic Abuse Bill

Baroness Bertin Excerpts

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

[Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)]

This suite of amendments is designed to extend the list of public authorities that have a duty to co-operate with the commissioner to bodies that may well be able to give additional and, arguably, deeper insight into the victims and perpetrators of domestic abuse: the Independent Office for Police Conduct, the Prison Service and National Probation Service and their ombudsman, and the Chief Coroner. These bodies all throw a light on how and why things go wrong.

Amendment 54 would enable the commissioner to get information on any reviews and investigations regarding deaths where domestic abuse had been a factor. Those public authorities must notify the commissioner and the Home Office within 28 days of the outcome of the investigations. The commissioner can advise on good policy and practice only when she has all the information —all the reports, reviews, findings and investigations at her disposal—to be able to piece together what has gone wrong, why it went wrong and how it can be put right.

Proposed new subsection (5) would give additional powers to the Secretary of State. The amendment also gives the Secretary of State the power to add or remove additional public authorities as he or she sees fit, but only authorities added under this clause, not under Clause 15(3), which we discussed under Amendment 51. Furthermore, in Amendment 189, all amendments subsequently covered by the amended Clause 15 could not be removed without the affirmative procedure. In summary, the Secretary of State could add and take away public bodies that they themselves had added but not the ones prescribed in the Bill. They could also issue guidance for circumstances where domestic abuse had been shown to be a contributing factor, which of course that public authority would have to have regard to.

We could have a productive working relationship here, where the commissioner makes recommendations and the Secretary of State, if they chose, makes the guidance. This guidance could be changed by the Secretary of State from time to time, but not without consulting the commissioner.

Lastly, Amendment 189 would ensure that any public authority included in the amended—I hope—Clause 15 could not be removed without an affirmative resolution, at the behest not of the Secretary of State but of Parliament. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bertin (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, on her speech. She set out the case for the amendments very eloquently. I will speak to Amendments 51 and 54 to which my name is attached. If the horror of losing someone you love is not bad enough, many families, in particular in cases of domestic abuse homicide and suicide, have to put up with the reality that their loved ones may have been saved had earlier interventions been made. This is why I am supporting the amendments put forward by the designate domestic abuse commissioner to establish an oversight mechanism on investigations into domestic abuse related homicides and suicides. She is someone who knows what needs to be done and we should support her with what seem like reasonable and sensible asks.

The number of women being killed by men has not budged at all over the past decade. Clearly, much more work has to be done to identify the changes needed to prevent future deaths. I believe that Amendments 51 and 54 in particular would be an important step on that journey. An oversight mechanism is absolutely critical. There is a great deal of learning coming from domestic homicide reviews, which were introduced in 2011, and from bereaved families’ selfless contributions, but the lack of oversight and of publication of findings at a national level means that this learning is often being lost or limited to local areas. DHRs, for instance, can be desperately hard to find, buried on community safety partnership websites, which means that wider learning can become next to impossible.

It is also too often the case that recommendations are not implemented effectively or are implemented in the short term, but actions drift over time. A clear oversight and accountability mechanism, led by the commissioner working with the Home Office, would help to drive effective implementation and share lessons nationally in the long term as well as the short term. As a police officer put it to me this week, one recommendation that is good for one force will probably be good for forces all over the country. The same mistakes will be happening again and again, and that simply cannot carry on when we have a death toll as high as we do.

Beyond domestic homicide reviews, there is a range of other investigations into the circumstances surrounding an individual’s death which contain recommendations relating to the response of public authorities, as the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, set out. There is currently, however, no systematic way of identifying these investigations for the purpose of ensuring that recommendations are followed up and that key themes across investigations are examined and acted on in order to prevent future deaths. I believe that Amendments 51 and 54 would help address this.

I will finish by talking briefly about suicide. Mental health has been talked about in previous groupings, and I thought my noble friend the Minister gave some very thorough and thoughtful answers. Sadly, not enough data and shared learning are being collected on suicides as a result of domestic abuse. The correlation is undoubtedly high, but we really do not have a clear picture of the true scale of the problem. One report published by the University of Bristol suggested that nearly 200 victims a year went on to kill themselves on the same day they visited A&E with a domestic abuse related injury. If these figures are accurate, the scale of missed interventions is simply unacceptable. Amendments 51 and 54 would surely complement the endeavour to join up multi-agency thinking and accountability, especially regarding health care providers who we know have such a big role to play. I therefore urge noble Lords to back these amendments.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am speaking in support of Amendment 51, which would extend the list of public authorities that have a duty to co-operate with the domestic abuse commissioner, to include the Independent Office for Police Conduct, Her Majesty’s Prison Service, the National Probation Service, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, and the Chief Coroner. I am speaking also in support of Amendment 54, which would place a new duty on public authorities to carry out reviews and investigations into deaths where domestic abuse has been identified as a contributory factor, to notify the Secretary of State for the Home Office and the office of the domestic abuse commissioner on completion, and to provide them with a copy of their findings.

Thus, the domestic abuse commissioner is proposing to establish an oversight mechanism on investigations into domestic abuse related homicides and suicides. They are intended to ensure that a more systematic collection of investigations into suicides and homicides, in which domestic abuse is identified as a contributory factor, is made together with a robust accountability framework. This is to ensure that individual recommendations are acted upon, and that key themes across investigations are identified, to help target key policy changes needed to prevent future deaths.

The pandemic has created so many problems for our society, notwithstanding the area of domestic abuse. A number of domestic abuse charities and campaigners have reported a surge in calls to helplines and online services since the lockdown conditions were imposed. It is a sobering insight into the levels of abuse that people live with all the time. Coronavirus may exacerbate triggers, and lockdown may restrict access to support or escape. It may even curtail the measures some people take to keep their own violence under control.