Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Lords Hansard - part one & Committee stage
Monday 25th October 2021 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Brinton]

22: Clause 7, page 8, line 16, at end insert—
“(1A) In exercising the duty under subsection (1), no information may be shared by a specified authority, or an individual within a specified organisation, which breaches doctor/patient confidentiality as set out in the General Medical Council Ethical Guidance on confidentiality.”

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I beg to move Amendment 22 and will speak to Amendments 48, 54, 61, 64, 68 and 71, which all cover doctor-patient confidentiality in Clauses 7 to 17 in Part 2, Chapter 1 of the Bill.

I particularly thank the General Medical Council, the British Medical Association, the British Psychological Society and the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy for their briefings. I also thank the noble Lords, Lord Patel and Lord Ribeiro, who have added their names to these amendments. Their knowledge of and expertise in the regulatory and practical reality of doctor-patient confidentiality is especially welcome. Bluntly, the requirement for a specified authority to hand over data to police and other bodies, as set out in the Bill, is in conflict with the requirement of doctors and those working with patient data to maintain doctor-patient confidentiality.

It is particularly disappointing that the issues I will raise, which I also raised at Second Reading, were covered in the GMC response to the government consultation on a public health response to serious violence in 2019. Unfortunately, not one of the serious issues the GMC raised has been dealt with since then, which makes me wonder if this is deliberate. I hope the Minister will be able to demonstrate that that is not the case.

Our amendments seek to protect a patient’s data as confidential to them and the healthcare professionals who look after them. Amendment 22 adds to Clause 7 to make it clear that, regardless of any other data from other public bodies, patient medical data is protected by rules of confidentiality. Amendment 48 adds the same provisions to Clause 8, Amendments 61 and 64 add these to Clause 15 and Amendment 68 adds them to Clause 16. Amendment 54 deletes CCGs and health boards in Wales from the list of specified authorities, thus removing entirely the duty on them to be part of the regulations in this Bill. Finally, Amendment 71 reiterates these exclusions from the powers that Clause 17 gives the Secretary of State on the direction of CCGs and health boards in Wales.

It is quite extraordinary that this Bill proposes that any Home Secretary can, at will, demand that doctors and other healthcare professionals must breach patient confidentiality, over and above their responsibilities of confidentiality to their patients and their commitments to their regulatory body. Part 2, Chapter 1 of the Bill, on functions relating to serious violence, would introduce a new legal duty for the relevant agencies

“to collaborate, where possible through existing partnership structures, to prevent and reduce serious violence”.

If enacted in its current form, the Bill, particularly Clause 16(5), may mean that health services are no longer confidential. I hope this is unintended.

The Bill explicitly sets aside the common law duty of confidentiality owed to all patients by all regulated health professionals. This will undoubtedly raise questions and concerns in the minds of doctors, who understand their responsibilities around patient confidentiality as a fundamental, ethical duty which is crucial to upholding the trust that lies at the heart of doctor-patient relationships.

Elsewhere, in countries where healthcare services are not seen as confidential, and where there is a resulting lack of trust in healthcare professionals appropriately protecting as well as sharing information, there are real consequences for the health of individuals, communities and wider society. The public health implications of individuals and communities not interacting with healthcare services and professionals are particularly urgent and concerning in the context of the ongoing global Covid-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, as drafted the Bill carries these risks.

This is not just a concern for doctors. If you stopped anyone in the street and asked them if the personal medical information they discuss with their doctor at their GP surgery or at a hospital could be passed on to any other public body, including the police, they would be astonished. The one thing they know, they say, is that doctors—which is shorthand for healthcare service professionals and their staff—absolutely have to keep their personal medical data confidential. The problem is that it is not clear in the Bill whether sensitive health information is properly protected from inappropriate disclosure to policing bodies. This is worrying on two levels. First, the data is still subject to the requirements of data protection law. Also, any decision to disclose personal medical data must take account of the common law duty of confidentiality owed to patients by their health professionals, however that information is held.

Healthcare professionals, including doctors, also have to respond to the ethical standards set by their regulatory body. As drafted, policing authorities can request patient information, including identifiable information, which clinical commissioning groups and health boards in Wales must provide to them. Whatever the merits of this requirement, CCGs and Welsh health boards can share identifiable patient information only if that information has, in turn, been actively shared with them by the health professional who holds that patient data.

Professional standards, as regulated by the General Medical Council and the Nursing and Midwifery Council, among others, mean that doctors and other healthcare professionals are able to release confidential patient information, in this case to a CCG or health board, where one of the following conditions is met: the patient gives their consent; the doctor judges that it is in the best interests of the patient to do so; the law requires them to disclose, which would not be the case here; or they judge that the common-law test for disclosure without consent would be met. The GMC guidance to doctors, Confidentiality: Good Practice in Handling Patient Information, is very helpful in setting out where these boundaries lie, but makes it clear that it must be the decision of the individual doctor because, rightly, the natural assumption must be that personal patient data must be kept confidential.

The Minister may argue that the organisational duty to share information with a police authority or individual police officer would not impose a duty on an individual health professional to make a disclosure to the CCG or to health boards in Wales. That is a fallacy. I have a word of warning for the Government: imposing the duty on CCGs and health boards will not make it easier for identifiable patient information to be readily obtained by a policing body. That is because all staff in CCGs, health boards and GP surgeries, as part of their admin, and hospital staff who are not regulated but are part of a healthcare team are also subject to confidentiality duties as part of their employment contracts. They access patient records as part of their role and, in so doing, they will have to comply with the Data Protection Act and those contractual obligations about ethical confidentiality. This means that even if the common-law duty to protect confidentiality is not part of their contract, because they are not regulated, the relevant staff member, at whatever level in the organisation, would still have a duty to comply with the request from a policing body. If the Bill were to pass unamended and, say, CCGs and health boards decided to abide by the law under the Bill, could they put pressure on staff to release those records that they have accessed by virtue of their role that breaches GDPR?

I have some questions for the Minister, to better understand how the Bill will not destroy the confidentiality of patient data. Will its provisions mean that authorities such as CCGs and health boards in Wales—and integrated care boards, following the passage of the Health and Care Bill next year—will no longer owe a common-law duty of confidentiality to their patients, clients and service users? Will this mean that health services are no longer confidential services? If a duty to provide identifiable information to policing bodies is introduced, what provisions will be made for possible recourse for a patient or service user who finds out that their confidential information was shared with the police and considers that they suffered some unfair or unjustifiable detriment as a result? Will this be dependent on them being able to make a claim that GDPR obligations had not been met by the data controller? Most importantly, what independent safeguards, such as court orders or use of the court, are available to stop or limit the sharing or use of personal information?

Will the Government remove provisions that state that disclosures of information to the police would not breach that duty of confidentiality owed by doctors and others to patients, clients and service users? Will the Government instead work with the professional regulation, with the profession, with patient groups and others to create statutory guidance to support any new duty to collaborate? If the Government seek to retain provisions which require specified persons to share information, would anonymised information be sufficient? Will the Government commit to amending the Bill to provide that policing bodies can only request anonymous information?

I appreciate that the Minister might not have all the information in front of her to answer these questions, so will she write to me with the answers and have a meeting with me and the noble Lords, Lord Patel and Lord Ribeiro, who have added their names to these amendments? I know that the noble Lord, Lord Ribeiro, apologises for not being able to be in his place this afternoon. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

The detection and prevention of serious violence would be the relevant part, which also reads across to the Care Act 2014. There would have to be a public interest assessment and as I said, there is no mandation. But the body or doctor in question would, as the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, said, have to balance the importance of the prevention, detection, and reduction of serious violence with the disclosure of that information.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken on these amendments, especially those who are doctors—the noble Lords, Lord Patel and Lord Kakkar—and those who are lawyers. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, rightly pointed out the balance of decision-making that every doctor must strike. I too made that point in referring to the excellent GMC guidance on confidentiality and good practice in handling patient information. I apologise if my point was not clear. It is not that doctors do not have to navigate the boundaries of confidentiality, because they do and I am quite sure there are times when they can be improved, as I said. As my noble friend Lord Paddick and others have said, this Bill contains powers that appear to override these responsibilities, demanding that CCGs and health boards in Wales pass on personal medical information; however, the doctor who logged that data is unable to take part in any decision about it being passed on.

The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, explained the concerns of those of us who have signed these amendments about these duties, which clearly override a doctor’s choice in making such a decision. The noble Lord, Lord Patel, said that circumstances are vital, since under this Bill he, as a doctor, would not necessarily be consulted by the CCG in question before it passed on any sensitive data to the policing body. I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, for Amendment 48, the wording of which I will look at before any amendment is brought back.

The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and others talked about where the boundaries lie. We have heard repeatedly about the boundaries, but I want to pick up on my noble friend Lord Paddick’s question to the Minister. He asked her to point out to us exactly where in the Bill it sets the parameters for the GMC guidance and everything else we have discussed. I cannot find it, and nor can the GMC, the BMA and others who have briefed us. That is why we have tabled these amendments. We want this to be made clear. In a perfect world the data would be pseudonymised or anonymised, but we recognise that for some of these clauses that is inappropriate. Therefore, the doctor who has taken that medical information must be involved in any decisions.

I thank the Minister for the offer of a meeting and absolutely appreciate that this will happen. We understand that information will need to be shared between bodies—that is not the object of our amendment. We agree that the major issue is whether that information is identifiable and whether the doctor who made the original decision to record it is part of any decision about its being passed on. I completely understand the Minister’s concerns about Amendment 54. However, the question of the balance of the information being passed on—in this case, personal, confidential and identifiable medical data—clearly must be worked out more explicitly to give the registration bodies, doctors and nurses confidence that their use of the data will not be abused by others who may not have the full information required to address those difficult boundary issues. The doctor must have a say in any data being passed on.

I look forward to getting answers to my many questions in due course, so that we can all gauge who is making the decisions about the data being passed on and what level of information can remain confidential. I thank the Minister for her answers. I expect to return to this issue on Report and look forward to action in the meantime, such as meetings at which we can find those answers. For now, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 22 withdrawn.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 14th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, following his maiden speech. I propose to speak briefly about three different areas in the Bill: the requirement for doctors to disclose confidential medical information about their patients; serious domestic violence, stalking and coercive control; and, finally, the proposals that will affect the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community.

Part 2 Chapter 1 of the Bill requires disclosures of information that will breach health professionals’ obligations of confidence. Clinical commissioning groups in England, and health boards in Wales, as well as other bodies, will be required to share information requested by the police, and refusals to comply can be overridden by the Secretary of State. Even worse, there are no independent safeguards, such as court orders or use of the courts to stop and limit the sharing or use of such personal information.

The General Medical Council rightly points out that this undermines the trust that lies at the heart of the doctor-patient relationship. If patients believe their information could be more routinely shared with policing, youth, education and prison bodies, as is proposed, it could impact on their decision on whether to access healthcare services, and undermine the trust that is fundamental to health relationships.

Other countries, including America, Australia and New Zealand, and the rest of Europe continue to strongly defend the principle of a confidential health service and confidential clinician-patient relationships as a cornerstone of ethical practice. It is just plain wrong that the Government are proposing this, and I will return with amendments in Committee.

I turn now to the issues of domestic violence, stalking and coercive control, on which a number of us brought forward amendments during the passage of the Domestic Abuse Bill. The noble Baroness, Lady Williams, told us during the passage of the Bill that the guidance to MAPPA would be extended to specifically include stalking. I thank the Minister for writing to those of us who were involved with a draft of the guidance but, as she knows, there are other issues that we believe are still outstanding. In particular, we still believe that there is a need for a stalking register.

Since the passage of the Domestic Abuse Bill, more women have been murdered by their stalkers, and cases have emerged involving histories of stalking, coercive control and/or domestic violence which were not managed even when police and other bodies knew about them.

In May, a domestic homicide review found that the response to Natalie Saunders’ concerns about her boyfriend meant that the authorities did not properly protect her. The approach of the police and other services to escalating risks lacked urgency and co-ordination. In the four months before her murder, seven instances of domestic violence were reported. Despite court orders relating to other women, information was not shared or acted on. The result: he murdered her.

In June, young model Gracie Spinks was murdered by an obsessed colleague. She had reported him to the police, but they did nothing. The result: he murdered her.

Finally, in May, Theodore Johnson was convicted of strangling Angela Best. He already had two manslaughter convictions relating to former partners, yet the system did not pick this up and monitor him. The result: he killed his third partner.

So I join the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, the noble Lords, Lord Russell and Lord Polak, and many others in backing the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s recommendations for stronger definitions of domestic homicide and a recognition that the escalation of domestic violence into serious violence must be dealt with by all the agencies involved—and, as I have said before, we need a stalking register too.

Turning now to Part 4 of the Bill, I wish to join the many others who have spoken on the parts that will essentially criminalise our Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community. The noble Baronesses, Lady Whitaker, Lady Chakrabarti and Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, and many others have all set out the case eloquently. The proposals in the Bill are nothing less than dog whistles of the worst kind, which deliberately misrepresent an already severely marginalised community.

Liberty’s excellent briefing sets out how the wording in the Bill is too loose and woolly and will give people in authority powers to push GRT people away, or worse. I want to focus on just one claim by the Government, which is that this is not discriminatory. Gypsies and Travellers have for centuries had a right to a nomadic life. Some 20 years ago there was a requirement on local authorities to provide authorised encampments. Most did not—a failure of planning responsibilities, as the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, has pointed out. Others have closed those that were available, such as when the Conservatives took control of Somerset, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, pointed out. The Conservatives are now proposing powers that are disproportionate, discriminatory and frankly unjustified. Allowing police to impound a person’s home is astonishing and criminalises their way of life. I will join many others in bringing amendments to the Bill in Committee.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 27th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I too wish to start by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, for her helpful speech from the Dispatch Box this afternoon and for the repeated emails and meetings with some of us to try to progress matters. We recognise that some of the things we would like to see in this Bill are better placed in statutory guidance and I thank the Minister for her reassurance and the offer of showing us that draft statutory guidance to bring these perpetrators to justice. It was also encouraging to hear details about the thresholding document.

Herein lies the problem, which the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, referred to in part. We need to substantially change the culture and practice inside the criminal justice system to tackle these particular perpetrators. We have said repeatedly that the consequence is that these fixated, obsessive, serial and high-risk perpetrators escalate their behaviour—far too often resulting in serious violence and murder. That is why we welcome the changes to the current arrangements for a perpetrator to be considered for MAPPA category 3. The assessment of past patterns of behaviour is vital—something we asked for in the stalking law reforms of 2012—including convictions at a lesser level. I thank the Minister for her words on that.

One of the consequences of an effective risk assessment for these serial and high-risk perpetrators is that MAPPA teams need more resources than they currently receive. It should not be possible for these cases to be disregarded because of resources. I echo the question that the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, asked about how much of the extra perpetrator funding the Minister outlined during the passage of the Bill will be dedicated resource for local MAPPA areas to manage a larger numbers of offenders. This is one of those few times when it will be good to see numbers going up, because it will provide reassurance that these perpetrators are being managed properly. This Bill and these arrangements will fail without those resources—and this Bill must not fail.

The noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, cannot be in her place today, but she specifically asked me to make the following points to your Lordships’ House on her behalf. She joins those of us who signed the amendment on Report in expressing concern that serial and serious high-risk perpetrators of domestic abuse and stalking must be included and therefore on the database.

Can the Minister give the House some assurance that domestic abuse and stalking experts and agencies will be included as a matter of course in the MAPP meetings? Their expertise at a local level will be vital; risk assessments of patterns of past fixated behaviour will not be effective without their input. It is the early identification of these patterns of behaviour that can change the experience of the victim and, with appropriate support, can help the perpetrator too.

The noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, also asks whether the domestic abuse commissioner and the Victims’ Commissioner will have access to MAPPA data— especially, but not only, that relating to those serial and high-risk stalking and domestic abuse perpetrators. It is vital for them to be able to hold those making decisions inside the criminal justice system to account. She makes the point that this is particularly important because, until the victims law the Government have promised comes into force, it will provide powers for the Victims’ Commissioner. Until then, there will be no powers for the Victims’ Commissioner to perform that role. It is vital that both the domestic abuse commissioner and the Victims’ Commissioner have similar powers to hold the Government and agencies to account.

I will end by looking both backwards and towards the future. This month marks the 16th anniversary of the start of the harassment and stalking campaign of which I was the principal target. It took three years before the perpetrator was caught and my many discussions with the police mirrored far too many of the cases we have heard of elsewhere. I swore to myself that no one should have to repeatedly explain incident after incident to the police as if each one were the first—but that is still the case far too often.

During the passage of this Bill we have all spoken of the tragic deaths of far too many women at the hands of stalkers and abusers—currently between two and five per week. This morning on Radio 4’s “Today” programme Zoe Dronfield spoke movingly of her own experience. She discovered, after escaping a violent attack with her life, that her previous partner had stalked and attacked a dozen women before her. This Bill and the arrangements for the statutory guidance the Minister outlined have the capacity to start to change the experience of victims such as Zoe, but only if every single part of the criminal justice system engages with these changes to make them work. That is why the expertise that exists in pockets of good practice in the police and probation needs to be mainstreamed into MAPPA—and the work before MAPPA in call centres, front-line policing and the court system—with effective training throughout to watch for the red signals and pick up on this type of behaviour.

I want Parliament to hear of reductions in attacks and murders, of an increase in the number of offenders successfully managed by MAPPA, and a world where victims can start to live their lives no longer in fear—knowing that they can turn to the police and others for help. This Bill is the start of a very long journey to be continued in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill and the domestic violence and violence against women and girls strategies. We will watch with interest and, in fulfilling our duty, we will return to challenge and scrutinise how these important changes are being effected. At the end of the day, lives depend on the Government and everyone in the police and criminal justice system getting it right.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, at the last stage of the Bill I started by saying it felt dangerously like

“déjà vu all over again”.—[Official Report, 21/4/21; col. 1935.]

I am very pleased to announce this afternoon that it does not feel like déjà vu any longer. I think we are in mortal danger of actually moving forward—for which I thank the Minister very warmly.

It is perhaps no coincidence that this group of amendments, which in many ways is at the heart of the Bill, is coming right at the very end of it. The reason for that is that it is probably the most difficult part of the Bill to deal with. Almost all the excellent work done in both Houses up until this point has been dealing with some of the effects and after-effects of domestic abuse. What we are talking about in this group is trying to identify the causes and early signs of domestic abuse: in other words, trying to stop it happening rather more efficiently and effectively than we have done in the past.

To the Government’s credit—and this is not easy to admit—they have admitted that the current system is not working well. You just have to look at the weekly litany of deaths and some of the stories behind them to realise that it is not working. But it still takes a certain amount of courage to admit that one has not got it right and that one needs to change—so I am very grateful for that.

Although I have played an insignificant part, I am also extremely grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Royall and Lady Brinton, the latter of whom is an expert on stalking, for putting forward such compelling arguments for stalking to be included that the Government have acceded to the strength of their arguments. I am extremely grateful for that.

I am also grateful that new statutory guidance will be forthcoming. But at this point I want to issue a very strong health warning. I apologise to the Minister, who heard me go on a bit about this earlier this morning. For any new guidance to be effective, it must be created and then applied in a fundamentally different way from the way it has been done in the past. Part of that is that it needs different voices and experiences around the table. The individuals responsible for MAPPA at a national level and in the 42 different MAPPA areas all around the country—effectively, each police force—are largely the same group of people from the same organisations that have been responsible for trying to make the MAPPA system work over all these years.

However, part of the Government’s recognition of the complexity behind the causes of domestic abuse—in particular the addition of stalking—means that there is a compelling need to bring these new experiences and knowledge to the table. They have to become an integral part of MAPPA. They must have the same power of voice and vote around the table. Part of what needs to happen is for MAPPA to evolve and develop a different way of looking at all this. It needs to develop a new language, and new forms of assessment and forecasting, and to do so in a dynamic way, not looking at things every six months or every two years. It has admitted that part of the reason why the statutory guidance is now online rather than printed is that it has probably already been out of date by the time it has been printed. Putting it online means that it can be updated constantly; I genuinely welcome that.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, said, I managed, by googling away, to find the job description for the new head of MAPPA, who Her Majesty’s Government are currently seeking. Some of your Lordships may have seen a slip of paper in the past couple of weeks, before the election of the Lord Speaker, where, after 30 or so years of being a head-hunter, I put pen to paper—actually finger to iPad—and wrote a brief description of some of the attributes I thought were important in the role, as well as, very importantly, some of the deliverables. The glaring omission in the job specification for the head of MAPPA is any definition of relevant experience. There is nothing whatever to indicate what type of prior experience and knowledge would qualify the candidates to be on that shortlist. I put it to the Minister that whoever becomes the next head of MAPPA must have a breadth of knowledge, an openness of mind, and an ability to manage and argue compellingly for change of a different order of magnitude from what has been required before. That will be absolutely fundamental.

I finish my rant by again thanking the Minister very much indeed. We have made considerable progress. I look forward to not forgetting about the rear-view mirror —as a dedicated cyclist I know that would be extremely dangerous; indeed I have rear-view mirrors on both of my bicycles. I congratulate the Government on the progress they have made, but I ask them to take what I have said seriously to heart and to try to make sure that we get it right this time. The test will be when the awful metronomic death toll of the work done week in, week out by the Counting Dead Women initiative starts going down, and the number of people on the MAPPA system starts going up with the right sort of people. At that point we can feel that we are actually doing something that all these victims and their families have been looking for, for so many years; that will be really good news.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 15th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 73, to which my name is added. I also support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Strasburger. I too extend my deepest sympathies to the family and friends of Sarah Everard, but also to all the families and friends of those murdered since the beginning of this year. That there have been 30 murders of women since your Lordships’ House had its Second Reading of this Domestic Abuse Bill in January this year is deeply shocking. I suspect, as many of their cases come to court, that we will hear details time and again of how women sought help but were not able to get it from the people they should have been able to trust: the police and other parts of our judicial system.

I will briefly focus on three women murdered in the last five years, because what went wrong for them is still going wrong on a regular basis for this most heinous crime. They are Shana Grice, Pearl Black and Janet Scott.

Michael Lane stalked and murdered Shana in 2016. He had abused 13 girls before Shana and they had reported him for stalking. Shana herself reported him multiple times to Sussex Police. Despite this, there was no focus on Lane’s behaviour or his history, only on Shana’s. Outrageously, she was issued with a fixed penalty notice for wasting police time. She was polite and terrified, and went to the police for help. Shana did everything right, but there was no proactive investigation of Lane. In fact, he was interviewed by the police for just 12 minutes. There was no intelligence or information sharing, or referral to MAPPA.

Simon Mellors murdered two women, Pearl Black and Janet Scott. He murdered Pearl in 1999 when she split up with him. When he came out of prison, he began a relationship with Janet Scott. He coercively controlled her, threatened her and tried to kill her, which she reported to Nottinghamshire police and probation. At this point, Mellors should have been recalled on licence but no action was taken, despite her repeated reports. She was brutally murdered in 2018. The probation officer had told Janet that he doubted Mellors would reoffend, yet, when he did, police and probation took no action, saying that they just did not identify stalking behaviour. So why is it that a man who has killed his previous partner is not seen as a risk when Janet is terrified and reporting him for threatening to kill her? Janet did everything she could, and, despite the fact that Mellors had killed before, nothing was done to manage the risks and to stop him doing it again.

That is why Amendment 73 is necessary. I also heard yesterday that the Government are now considering consulting on a register for stalkers and serious and serial domestic abusers. That is not good enough. The need for a register is now and, as important, arrangements for MAPPA and ViSOR need to be strengthened. There is some very good practice, but it is not consistent, because the agencies are not being forced to work together and the impact that it is having on victims is appalling, as evidenced by the 30 murders we have seen this year alone.

My own experience was when a campaign of harassment, intimidation and then stalking started against me when I was the general election candidate in Watford. The perpetrator was my Conservative candidate opponent, a man called Ian Oakley. One of his particularly unpleasant traits was to harass and intimidate members of my local team to get to me, including poison-pen letters delivered to many houses in my area about our councillors, alleging that one of them had not supported his child in a previous marriage, and then later that he was a child sex abuser. None of this was true. He also perpetrated increasing levels of criminal damage to properties of people who supported me at election time. He sent obscene hand-drawn cartoons showing me in graphically sexual acts to our constituency office on postcards so that Royal Mail staff would see them too.

But for me, as his main target, on top of all these things happening day after day, week after week, there was more. He sent false letters about me to the weekly newspaper, the Watford Observer, making allegations about my family circumstances, trying to have us investigated by children’s services, as we were guardians and carers to two bereaved children. He reported me to Special Branch for falsifying my nomination papers; I had not. He dropped letters through my letterbox just so I knew that he knew where I lived. He phoned me very late at night and then did not talk. He sent me the most disgusting pornographic magazines in envelopes, but without stamps on, so I had to go to the Royal Mail collection office and pay for an envelope without knowing that it was yet another form of abuse. His messages would let me know that he had been following me at night when out canvassing. It was utterly relentless for three years.

Initially, I coped by cataloguing, reporting and helping others to report incidents to the police; I had a comprehensive Excel spreadsheet that grew. For the first 18 months, each reported incident was dismissed as “not serious”. Then the incidents grew and became more serious. Once we were at over 130 incidents on my spreadsheet, two detectives suddenly got it—they joined up the dots. By this time, we knew who it was, but there was no proof. We were issued with an operation name and mobile numbers for the detectives.

Publicly, I was very angry and determined that he would be caught, but privately, I felt constantly sick and nervous most of the time. I became tearful and anxious about having to go out campaigning in the evening in winter months; always watching, anywhere I went. I also felt personally responsible for the incidents targeted at my friends, colleagues and supporters, and I know that other victims of stalkers feel the same when their families and friends are targeted too.

Even when we had the evidence, after my husband bought and installed 10 CCTV cameras at the sites repeatedly targeted by Oakley, two things happened that still shock me today. The first was that a very senior police officer warned the detectives that they would be unlikely to prosecute a case like this, seen as political. That changed when Oakley started on my noble friend Lady Thornhill, who was then the elected Mayor of Watford, and an arrest was made very swiftly, thank goodness. The second thing was that not one of the more serious charges—to which Oakley had pleaded not guilty—was taken any further. This included incidents using 10-inch knives to slash car tyres, defamatory poison-pen letters distributed to large numbers of people, and the sending of pornographic images. For all of this, he received an 18-week suspended sentence—for a three-year campaign—and a year’s community order.

I relate my experience because the nature of the progression of the stalking is of utter relentlessness, and the police reaction is still not unusual. In 2016, eight years after my case, only 37 stalking offenders and 93 harassment offenders received a sentence of 12 months’ imprisonment or more and were therefore automatically eligible to be managed under the MAPPA process as category 2 offenders. However, we do not know how many of these offenders were either referred to or subsequently managed under MAPPA, but as the number of automatically eligible offences is low, and the number of prosecutions for serious harassment and stalking is considerably higher, we can infer that a substantial number of potentially dangerous individuals were not managed under recognised offender management processes.

The Violence Against Women and Girls report shows that in 2017-18 80% of stalkers did not face a charge. Out of over 10,000 only 1,800 were charged, 212 were convicted and only 48 went to prison. Furthermore, most cases were recorded as harassment or something lesser, as in my case, and in 2018-19 there was a further 10% decrease in stalking prosecutions. It is probable that the new stalking protection order will make sure that this continues to decrease as it is an easy alternative. In many domestic violence and stalking case prosecutions—where it is rare that convictions occur—unduly lenient sentences resulted for stalking, domestic violence and coercive control: namely, weeks, months or suspended sentences, which in no way reflects the severity of the crimes.

Stalkers have specific and complex needs to address due to their fixated and obsessive behaviour. For some, this behaviour becomes more serious as time goes on. There is a lack of suitable programmes for stalkers that will reduce the likelihood of reoffending and protect members of the public. It is vital that police, prosecutors, probation, judges and magistrates are trained to understand stalking, including the risks and dangers of stalkers, as well as the stalking legislation which was introduced in 2012 following the stalking law reform inquiry, which I worked on with Robert Buckland. This assumes even more significance if there is to be a stalkers’ and serial perpetrators’ register database, which we are calling for in this amendment. We believe it is urgently needed—now. We urgently need the elements to ensure that people such as stalkers are included in MAPPA.

[Baroness Bertin (Con)]

My goodness me, I am almost left speechless by the account of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, of what happened to her; I am so sorry that she had to endure that, and it is hard to disagree with a word that she said. Having taken the now enacted Stalking Protection Bill through this House, I understand the very serious nature of this issue. I would also like to say that the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, has spoken passionately to her amendment.

One note of caution is that MAPPA adviser arrangements are far from perfect as they stand. Only one thing that could be worse than not monitoring serial offenders and stalkers in this way is to say that we are keeping track of them, but in fact the opposite turns out to be true, due either to poor resourcing or a systems failure. So, if my noble friend the Minister is minded to reconsider this amendment, we must make sure the systems have the resource and the capacity—but it is hard to disagree after hearing the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, make that speech.

I will now speak to Amendment 81. Sometimes events happen that make society stand up and say, “No more”. The tragic murder of Sarah Everard has done exactly that. As we know, she is the 118th woman to be killed over the past year. Their names may be less familiar, but each and every one of them must be remembered. I praise the honourable Member for Birmingham Yardley for doing just that in the other place, and also the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, who just now read out the 30 women who have been killed since the Bill was brought to this House.

I hope noble Lords will forgive me if I mention my own cousin once again. Her name was Christine Bertin. At the age of 18 she had her whole life in front of her. Instead, she was murdered by a complete stranger. He had been harassing local girls in her neighbourhood in a suburb in Paris and she, also, had caught his eye. Unbeknown to her and my family he stalked her movements over a period of time, and when he knew she was alone in the house he forced himself in and he strangled her.

My heart therefore goes out to all those families who have lost loved ones at the hands of a killer. The journey they are now on is a long and lonely one, with no real end in sight. My cousin died many years ago now, but the sorrow we still feel is as acute as on the day she was murdered. No family should ever feel this. Sympathy and anger can and will spill over, but the only real thing we can do for them and their dead daughters, sisters and mothers is to ensure that they have not died in vain. We have to match heartfelt words with the far harder task of making changes that will actually drive down this death toll for good. I believe there is a lot in this Bill that will work towards that.

Stranger attacks and domestic abuse are inextricably linked. The media will alight on the former, and the latter, quite unacceptably, often just gets a shrug, as though it is some kind of inevitability. But the reality is that abuse and misogyny in the home flows freely into the street; they are the same crime. I often reflect that, if the police at the time of my cousin’s murder had taken that man’s harassment of young girls more seriously, if his behaviour had been called out as grossly unacceptable by his peers, or if he had been put on a perpetrator scheme such as the ones we now know work, my cousin just might still be alive today. His behaviour, and that of so many potential murderers and serial abusers, was simply allowed to carry on unchecked and unstopped. This must end.

However, the debate should not be about men versus women. If a boy is seeing only abuse and violence at home, compounding it with violence and abuse online, without the right support and guidance there is a chance that he will carry on that cycle. Early intervention and recognition of this are essential. I am grateful to my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Strasburger, for relaying this amendment. It was in my name in Committee and I support it wholeheartedly.

In the interests of time, I will not repeat what I said in Committee, but it feels more urgent than ever to focus attention on the perpetrator—the person actually committing the abuse. We will never see any real change in behaviours and attitudes if we carry on putting this as an afterthought. The new funding for perpetrators announced in the Budget was very welcome; more will be needed if we are to ensure a quality response everywhere, but it is certainly a really important move to building up a quality-assured national capacity to respond to perpetrators. We know that fewer than 1% of perpetrators receive any kind of intervention; that is a shocking statistic.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

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

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, the amendments in this group seek once again to put parental alienation both in capitals and in the Bill. The noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, has again outlined her reasons for this. However, I do not hear any difference in objective from the amendments tabled in Committee. Those of us who oppose the amendments believe that adding parental alienation to the Bill is redundant because the alienating behaviours that she referred to are already caught in the definitions of coercive control. Further, the Government have agreed to add a phrase about alienating behaviours to the statutory guidance, which will sit alongside some of the other patterns of behaviour in domestic abuse.

As was mentioned in Committee, there are already problems in our family courts with one parent—often but absolutely not always the father of the child or children—alleging such behaviour. Unfortunately, as outlined in the Ministry of Justice’s harm panel report, fear of false allegations of parental alienation means that survivors and children of abusive and coercive relationships are suppressing evidence for fear that the charge of alienation will be made against them. Indeed, it is becoming such a worry in the family courts that even their solicitors are advising them against such evidence. There can be a history of abusive behaviour, especially coercive control, that is not presented formally to the family courts. This can include violence, restraining orders, criminal convictions and long-term patterns of such behaviour. Perpetrators of such fixated behaviour can often sound convincing and their ex-partners are often terrified of their behaviour, even in a court hearing.

In Committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, and I went through some of the history of the development of parental alienation syndrome, which I will not repeat today, since we are now on Report, other than to say that there is evidence from the family courts of some abuse of a parental alienation defence. There are also some questions to be asked about the role of so-called experts in this area. Practice direction 25B, on the duties of an expert, the expert’s report and arrangements for an expert to attend court, is very clear on the requirements, including registration with a UK statutory body or having appropriate academic qualifications. The expert must also have completed the training. There are concerns from contested cases that some experts in this area might not have met this high bar, so I ask the Minister what checks there are to ensure that all expert witnesses meet practice direction 25B.

That is also why the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, and my noble friend Lord Marks have tabled Amendment 44. We need to ensure that the courts are aware of the implications of a whole range of behaviours, especially in some of these egregious cases where there might have been some controlling, abusive, coercive and even alienating behaviour. The definition of coercive control—after many years of campaigning by organisations such as Women’s Aid and others, it is thankfully now a crime—is

“an act or a pattern of acts of assault, threats, humiliation and intimidation or other abuse that is used to harm, punish, or frighten”

the victim. That seems to fit very well the definition that the noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, has been seeking. I hope that, on this basis, she will withdraw her amendment.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Henig) (Lab)]

I call the next speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Winston. No? We shall move on, then, to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, and to support her in her wish to include carers within the scope of the Bill. As she said, this set of amendments would bring the relationship between a disabled person and their carer, whether paid or unpaid, within the definition of “personally connected”.

As the noble Baroness has said, the Joint Committee on the Bill recommended that carers should be included, after receiving significant evidence from the charity Stay Safe about the level of abuse within these highly personal and close relationships. I remain puzzled as to why the Government are not agreeing to do this. As the noble Baroness said, part of the reason is that the Government believe the group covered by these amendments is fully protected by existing legislation, primarily within social care Act safeguarding measures. However, I challenge that. As Stay Safe East has said, disabled women are three times as likely to experience domestic abuse, and four times as likely to report abuse from multiple perpetrators, as non-disabled women. It does not look as though the safeguarding measures are preventing that. Disabled women are also up to three times as likely to experience domestic abuse at the hands of family members, some of whom will also be their carers. We also know that disabled people also experience abuse from paid and unpaid carers or personal assistants.

The noble Baroness has also referred to the opinion from Bindmans LLP. The summary of their opinion is very clear:

“a. The relationship between disabled people and their carers is analogous to the other relationships which fall within the definition of ‘personally connected’ for the purposes of clause 2(1) of the DA Bill.


b. None of the existing legislation identified by Government provides equivalent protection against domestic abuse for disabled people so as to make it unnecessary for the relationship between disabled people and their carers to be brought within the scope of clause 2(1), and thereby the substantive provisions of the DA Bill.


c. Failing to bring the relationship between disabled people and their carers within the scope of clause 2(1), and thereby the substantive provisions of the DA Bill, is likely to result in unlawful discrimination against disabled people contrary to Article 14 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)”.


If the Minister is relying on existing legislation and safeguarding measures, I am afraid that the evidence is that this is not sufficient. That is the reason why the noble Baroness has argued so persuasively for this amendment, and I very much hope that she presses it to a Division.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, for tabling these amendments, and am grateful for the earlier work done by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson.

I will start by commenting on the relationship between a disabled person and their carer. It is difficult for someone who is not disabled to understand the intimate nature of that care which has to be given, and the relationship which inevitably builds up, whether the carer is paid or unpaid. The language talks about a “lived experience”, which trots glibly off the tongue, but it is not easy. At best, it is a relationship of trust, where the carer supports and enables the person being cared for to live the life that the disabled person wants to live themselves. But there are some cases where the behaviours of the carer are not beneficial, but are controlling, coercive or physically abuse, yet they fall outside the domestic abuse definition. That is why it is so important that the definition of “personally connected” is recognised. It is such a neat solution, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, has pointed out, it is vital that the definition is similar to the definition in the Serious Crime Act. She is right: they are complementary and will provide consistency and coherence between the Bill and the 2015 Act.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, in his excellent speech just now, referred to the excellent work of Stay Safe East. One of the women helped by Stay Safe East said:

“They think just because I’ve got a learning disability, I don’t know it’s wrong to treat me like that. I just want to be safe and live my life.”


Mencap points out that people with learning disabilities can be abused by any type of personal carer, not just in establishments such as Winterbourne View. The problem with private care at home is that often it is not visible at all. That is why these amendments are so important. The Bill needs to understand that the relationship between disabled people and their personal carers is akin to the familial and relationship definitions used elsewhere in domestic abuse legislation.

I hope the Minister will take on board the views of the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, and the large number of disabled Peers speaking to her amendments, and the wider community of disabled people who need this protection.

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. As International Women’s Day draws to a close, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, for introducing what is surely a practical, common sense set of amendments. She has identified a significant gap in protections for victims of domestic abuse. To her credit, through these amendments, she has also identified an expert and eminently sensible solution. I suggest that we are in her debt for her wisdom, her fortitude and her foresight.

I say that because this is as much about us here today in your Lordships’ House, and those noble Lords watching this debate and contributing to it virtually, as it is about anyone. One has only to consider the average age of noble Lords—well over 50% are aged 70 and above—to realise that we are in fact among those who most urgently need this reform. Lest we are inclined to tell ourselves that this is about “them”, “the other”, “over there”, those whom non-disabled people so often describe as “the disabled”, we should consider these simple facts. According to the World Health Organization, 15 million people have strokes each year worldwide. Of these, 5 million die and another 5 million are permanently disabled. According to the Stroke Association, here in the UK 100,000 people have strokes each year. Stroke strikes every five minutes. In other words, acquiring a severe, incapacitating disability can happen to any of us.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interests as outlined in the register. I am pleased to follow other noble Lords who have made such cogent cases for both amendments in this group. They are designed to ensure that children who move home, away from their current school and health service area because of domestic abuse are not disadvantaged in access to relevant schooling close to their new residence and, as far as is practicable, receive NHS treatment no later than they would have done had they remained at their previous address. This is not about queue jumping, it is about staying at the same level in the queue when you move.

It is intended that there will be a new health and social care Act this year. Is it feasible not only to enshrine Amendment 13 in this Bill but to reflect the principle in the revised health and social care Act? This would enable the Secretary of State for Health to request that all NHS providers aim to meet standards of fair access for children who move home if they have suffered abuse.

With regard to schooling, it is very hard for children to move out of the area to a new school, losing their previous friends, as a result of abuse. If they then have to travel long distances from their new home to a new school, it makes it very difficult to attend after-school clubs and make local friends if their neighbours are attending more local schools. I have seen this happen all over the country.

For this reason, I support Amendment 76 unreservedly. It is essential that children make new friends and study locally to their home to promote social interaction with other local children and access to clubs and out-of-hours activities associated with schools. These networks are essential to promote children’s mental health, particularly those who have suffered abuse.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Burt and the noble Baronesses, Lady Newlove, Lady Meacher and Lady Watkins, for their careful and thoughtful introduction to, and support for, both the amendments. I also thank the Minister for his comments at the end of Committee on the Bill, but, as others have said, it is certainly easier for the Government to work with Amendment 13, because the responsibility falls on the commissioner to work with the NHS—whether it is CCGs or hospital trusts.

The key point for me is that there is already the ability to choose your hospital, which we do through NHS e-referral services. For these children, fleeing domestic abuse and probably being moved on at extremely short notice, the real crisis is that they will plummet to the bottom of a long waiting list at exactly the crisis moment when they will need support.

I urge the Minister to consider that particular problem. I appreciate all the arrangements that the Government have made. We shall see what is in the NHS Bill, as and when this is published, but this very small, particular group of children need very particular support. This is absolutely the case for children applying to child and adolescent mental health services, where we know that there is already an extreme shortage of access to these services. The one thing that is true about children fleeing domestic abuse is that they are likely to be traumatised. Delaying their treatment further will give them very serious problems.

On the schools issue, I think it is an excellent notion to use the same duties as for looked-after children. I also want to make the point that I made about NHS services in Committee. Military children should also be prioritised for school places when they move. This should apply also to children fleeing domestic abuse.

In certain areas where schools are full, a six to eight-month gap to find a school place is not uncommon. This exacerbates the problem of the children not getting any part of their lives back to normal. I appreciate that processes and protocols take time, but there must be some interim measures to help these children. There is no doubt that this Government understand the importance of getting children back into school. As the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has said, the impact of Covid and the pressure on schools to reopen as quickly as is safe is completely understandable. These children’s lives are being traumatised by the pandemic—although perhaps not as severely as those of elderly adults. They need a transformation. They need access to school and medical services.

So I urge the Minister to agree to these amendments and ensure that the processes which need to be set up behind the scenes between the commissioner, NHS services and the DfE can happen.

[Lord Rosser (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, Amendment 13, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Burt of Solihull, would require NHS bodies to co-operate to allow children who have had to move due to domestic abuse to receive any NHS treatment for which they had been referred no later than if they had not moved. Amendment 76 would extend the duty on local authorities to provide school places for looked-after children to children who are forced to change schools as a result of domestic abuse.

In Committee, the Government’s response to Amendment 13 was the same as it had been in the Commons: namely, that access to the NHS is based on clinical priority and that a child’s need to access and receive health services is assessed and services provided according to clinical need. The response overlooked the point that, in the case of children forced to relocate because of domestic abuse, if the forced move is from an area where the wait following referral could be 18 months to two years to another area where the wait is for a similar period, a clinician might not see that vulnerable child for a lengthy period—literally years—and that any decisions would not be being made by clinicians.

Nor was there any response to another point made in the debate in Committee: namely, that, since the Armed Forces covenant protects service people’s waiting list position if they are redeployed and the family moves home to a new area, why could a similar principle not be applied to children who have to move home to another area due to domestic abuse?

In Committee in this House the Government said:

“When patients move home and change hospitals, the NHS should take previous waiting time into account and ensure, wherever possible, that these patients are not put at a disadvantage as a result … Where the systems or processes of the NHS are an impediment to equitable treatment for this group, it will be important for the NHS to work to ensure that such impediments are removed, and we will support and encourage that.”—[Official Report, 27/1/21; cols. 1727-28.]


In Committee, the Government made no attempt to say whether they either agreed or disagreed that there was a problem of extended delays in waiting times, or whether vulnerable children who had to be relocated due to domestic abuse do or do not receive NHS treatment for which they have been referred no later than if they had not moved.

Could the Minister, in his response today, give us the figures setting out the extent to which children having to relocate due to domestic abuse do or do not receive NHS treatment for which they have been referred no later than if they had not moved? Presumably the Government would not have rejected this amendment in Committee without knowing what the figures were, and thus the extent of the problem and its consequences for the vulnerable children concerned.

Likewise, on the issue of the provision of school places for children who are forced to move location and change their school as a result of domestic abuse, can the Government, if they are not prepared to act on this amendment, provide figures showing the extent to which they consider that there is or is not a problem in respect of the provision of school place for these vulnerable children who need all the support they can get? Like other noble Lords who have spoken in this debate, I look forward to the Government’s response and hope that it will be a positive one.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 10th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I echo the thanks of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, to the many organisations and people who have briefed us and who constantly fight for safety and justice for victims of serious domestic abuse and stalking. I have added my name to Amendment 164.

Ten years ago, I was a member of the Independent Parliamentary Inquiry into Stalking Law Reform, supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall. It has been a pleasure to work with her over the succeeding years. I was asked to join the inquiry because I had been the victim of harassment and stalking by a political opponent, who over nearly three years waged a war of anonymous hate, criminal damage and increasingly serious threats of violence against myself and my team in Watford.

We could not get the police to take seriously what was happening to us. Only when I gave them my spreadsheet linking more than 100 escalating incidents did the police realise that this was not a political spat. But it took their expert profiler to warn them of how serious this behaviour was and how violent it was likely to become before they arrested the perpetrator. He pleaded guilty to 67 separate incidents and, in common with many other obsessed perpetrators, was found to have had mental health problems.

We know that this category of serious domestic abuse and stalking perpetrators exhibit FOUR traits—an acronym for fixated, obsessive, unwanted and repeated. Their entire behaviour and its escalation must be understood rather than each single incident being looked at separately.

The College of Policing guidance and flow charts published since the stalking protection orders came into effect last year are excellent. This is exactly the type of documentation that needs to be understood by all front-line staff and officers in the police, courts, probation and health. A decade on, there are some pockets of excellent practice, but it is not consistent. The result of that lack of consistency is that victims of such perpetrators—usually but not always women—are ignored. Too many times, this has resulted in serious violence and murder.

I shall give just one example. In 2014, Cherylee Shennan was stabbed to death by convicted killer Paul O’Hara in front of police officers called to investigate reports of domestic abuse. He had already served a life sentence for murdering Janine Waterworth in 1998. Coroner James Newman published a prevention of death report, raising alarms over lack of inter-agency communication between probation services and police. He said that, following O’Hara’s release,

“there were no local MAPPA meetings, no inter-agency meetings and no significant inter-agency communications regarding the perpetrator; no detailing of his licensing conditions and no information regarding either his nature or the trigger factors of his offending”.

Cherylee was failed at every step of the way when she tried to get help. She was even held hostage at knife point at least twice. Had that information been shared, O’Hara would have met the category 4 criteria and could have been risk-managed by MAPPA-plus.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

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

However, like the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, I want this principle to stretch across the whole of the UK and to be taken from one hospital waiting list to another, irrespective of where it is in the UK. This is a small practicality, and I am sure we could get the wording right by looking at it before Report. It will be beneficial for children who have experienced domestic abuse, will not increase NHS costs and will ensure that there are proper handovers from one clinical service to another.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, about four years ago, I was among a group of parliamentarians taking evidence from a number of survivors of domestic abuse and coercive control. One particularly haunting case has stayed with me: we heard from a woman who had to flee repeatedly, with her primary-aged young son, from repeated physical and mental abuse by her former partner. They were living in a small flat when her ex-partner broke down the door. He attacked and then raped her in front of her young son, who, when he tried to stop the attack, was thrown across the room and badly concussed.

The mother and son had to flee again to yet another local authority area to avoid being followed. I remember this extraordinary woman describing how, each time they moved, they had to find yet another GP and get fresh referrals to new and safe hospitals for treatment for them both. Each time, they had to explain the horrors they had faced and often went to the bottom of lists for new referrals to specialists, even though they had been receiving urgent services elsewhere. This young boy needed consistent long-term physical and mental health services as a matter of real urgency—not to have to relive the horror in each new town.

This is why I support my noble friend Lady Burt on Amendment 52, which seeks to protect waiting-list positions for children who are victims of domestic abuse. It is to the credit of this Government that the Bill recognises these children as victims in their own right. One in seven children and young people under 18 will have lived with domestic violence at some point in their childhood. The mental damage inflicted on them can be as serious as physical abuse and often much longer lasting.

We know that many survivors of domestic abuse and their children need to leave their local authority in order to be safe, and government guidance is clear that local connection rules should not apply when allocating housing in these cases. However, in health, children who move to a new area and are awaiting healthcare treatment can be required to rejoin waiting lists with a new CCG. This means that vulnerable children with complex physical and mental health needs can wait longer as a result of fleeing an abusive home. Parent victims of domestic abuse may also find themselves torn between staying in an area to ensure that their children can access treatment and fleeing violence, a choice which no parent should ever have to make.

There is a number of academic articles on the long-term consequences for children growing up in homes where there is domestic abuse, and these make chilling reading. In addition to the perhaps more obvious physical and mental health issues, many also develop long-term conditions, such as irritable bowel syndrome. In 2006, UNICEF published its report, Behind Closed Doors: The Impact of Domestic Abuse on Children. It says:

“The particular impact of domestic violence on children must be taken into account by all government agencies responding to violence in the home … Governments must specifically allocate resources to support children who are exposed to violence in the home”.


The excellent briefing from Hestia talks about the inconsistent, even haphazard, way clinical commissioning groups deal with their waiting lists. There is no guidance for them on how to handle those fleeing domestic abuse, stalking and coercive control, but there is NHS guidance for CCGs on how to help members of the Armed Forces and their families. The Armed Forces covenant ensures “fair access to treatment” and protects servicepeople’s waiting list position if they are redeployed and the family moves home to a new area. There is also guidance for schools in picking up any special educational needs of forces children, without the need to reassess them from the start. To the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, I say that this does not just work elsewhere in the United Kingdom, it works when families are moved abroad as well.

A similar principle could be applied to these children, recognising that domestic violence is not the same as simply moving home. The Bill recognises that these children are themselves victims of domestic abuse, and I ask the Minister to consider what action, such as the current NHS guidance used under the Armed Forces covenant, can be taken to ensure that change happens swiftly and that these children get the help they need wherever and whenever they are forced to move home.

[Lord Rosser (Lab) [V]]

Amendment 52, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Burt of Solihull, would provide that NHS trusts must co-operate and work with the domestic abuse commissioner to ensure that when a child has to relocate due to being affected by domestic abuse, they can still

“receive any NHS treatment they had been referred for no later than if they had not moved.”

This issue was raised in an amendment by the shadow Minister in the Commons debates on the Bill, and we agree with its objectives. Children who are forced to relocate because of domestic abuse ought to be prioritised to the extent set out in this amendment because, as the evidence shows, they are vulnerable victims in need of urgent support.

However, in order to receive support from health professionals, children need a diagnosis, and the reality is that, at the moment, people can wait for considerable periods of time—up to 18 months or more—between referral and the start of an assessment. If a child is forced to move to a different NHS trust or clinical commissioning group, they may have to repeat that wait all over again. The cost of the long-term effects of exposure to severe domestic abuse is estimated at between £500 million and £1.4 billion per year, including on education and health services. Providing resources to children in the way and in the circumstances proposed in this amendment could help to reduce that figure.

The Government’s response in the Commons was that access to the NHS is based on clinical priority and that a child’s need to access and receive health services will be assessed and services provided according to clinical need. However, the difficulty is that, in the case of children forced to relocate because of domestic abuse, if the forced move is from one area where the wait following referral can be 18 months to two years to another area where the wait following referral is for a similar period, a clinician might not see that child for a lengthy period of time, literally years, and any decisions made are not being made by clinicians. There should be a way to prioritise the needs of a child who has been relocated because of domestic abuse and has already been on a waiting list somewhere, and that is what this amendment seeks to do.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

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

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I must apologise to your Lordships’ House for not being able to speak at Second Reading. In the 10 years that I have had the privilege of being a Member of your Lordships’ House, I have from the start focused on the despicable behaviour of those who harass, stalk, and coercively control their current or former partners. This Bill recognises so many of the agonies that victims of domestic abuse have faced, whether male or female, including by at last recognising that children themselves can also be victims of domestic abuse and coercive control.

Over those years, we have succeeded in getting much of this behaviour recognised in the criminal system through reforms of the stalking laws and clear definitions of coercive control, but there remain problems in both the family and private courts. I was pleased to hear the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, mention again the need for judicial training on this, as what I am going to say reflects the fact that far too few judges have had the training they need to understand these difficult and complex issues. That is why, I am afraid, I am going to disagree with Amendments 2 and 4, despite the moving speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, and the fact that child abduction can never, ever be right.

Your Lordships’ House has a special role in scrutinising legislation, a duty that it carries out with due care. I am sure that the movers of this amendment are sincere in their belief that such a definition would be helpful, but I and others think that it would not be, principally because parental alienation remains a controversial subject, as previous speakers have mentioned. There is no commonly accepted definition, no reliable data on its prevalence, and a lack of peer-reviewed and robust academic studies to give confidence in any such definition.

It is worth noting that these moves are unanimously opposed by all of the victims’ and domestic abuse commissioners, as well as domestic abuse charities, and I thank them all for their briefings. They tell us that there is worrying evidence that the concept of parental alienation has gained a significant foothold in the UK family courts and is already being used in judgments relating to child safety. Worse, there is also alarming evidence that the fears of false allegations of parental alienation are becoming a barrier to victims of abuse telling the courts about their experience. The Ministry of Justice report, Assessing Risk of Harm to Children and Parents in Private Law Children Cases, published in June 2020, makes that plain.

The report received deeply concerning evidence that fears of parental alienation are directly supressing allegations of domestic abuse. The review received several submissions which highlighted how

“victims were advised by professionals, including their own lawyers, not to raise domestic abuse because the courts would take a negative view of this and it may be used against them as evidence of parental alienation or hostility to co-parenting.”

The strength and dominance of allegations of parental alienation are, I am afraid, now beginning to shape the legal advice being given to survivors of domestic abuse and coercive control.

Among its recommendations, the Ministry of Justice report says that

“the Child Arrangements Programme should incorporate a procedure for identifying abusive applications and managing them swiftly to a summary conclusion.”

and that:

“Fears of false allegations of parental alienation are clearly a barrier to victims of abuse telling the courts about their experiences.”


Inexplicably, the phrase “parental alienation” has been included in draft statutory guidance for the Bill as a form of coercive control, despite not appearing anywhere in coercive control legislation. Will the Minister ensure that this reference to parental alienation is also removed from the draft statutory guidance?

Why are there such concerns about parental alienation on the part of those who are experts in domestic abuse? They are seeing a direct relationship between allegations of parental alienation and potentially unsafe child contact or residence arrangements. Some parental alienation experts recommend dramatic measures to treat this alienation, including a 90-day deprogramming window in which the child is placed with the allegedly alienated parent and is allowed no contact the with alleged alienator. In reality, this means that many children are placed with parents they are afraid of—whether that is rational or not—who are alleged abusers and whom the children often directly state opposition to living with. This is a deeply distressing intervention for the child and the parent who may have lost custody, who is given no knowledge of their child’s welfare during this time.

There are experts whose views I trust, and whom I hope the House will hear. Nicole Jacobs, the designate domestic abuse commissioner, has said:

“I am increasingly concerned about the potential for the idea of ‘parental alienation’ to be weaponised by perpetrators of domestic abuse to silence their victims within the Family Court. So much more must be done to improve the understanding of domestic abuse within the Family Court, which is the single most common issue that victims and survivors contact me about. I have heard of some terrible examples where the Family Court fails victims and survivors of domestic abuse, and addressing these will be a top priority for me and my Office.”


Dame Vera Baird, the Victims’ Commissioner, says:

“The government has now recognised that children are victims of domestic abuse not bystanders and that they too suffer harm from the abusing parent. That cannot now be ignored and their future entrusted to a parent who has already harmed them. Any courts who entertain this notion”


of parental alienation

“will do huge damage to justice and damage to large numbers of children who are already suffering from their abuser’s behaviour. This Bill must not recognise any validity in this groundless notion. In every case about the welfare of children the evidence is what matters. The courts must guard against the well-known phenomenon that they are used as a further tool of abuse by manipulative domestic abuse perpetrators”.

The Women’s Aid Federation of England says:

“Parental alienation is increasingly used in the family courts, but there is a dearth of robust evidence to back up the concept or reliable data on its prevalence. The ‘pro-contact’ culture in the family courts means that parents are expected to facilitate contact, even if they have concerns about safety. It also means that allegations of parental alienation—where one parent is accused of encouraging their child to resist contact with the other parent—can be taken more seriously than allegations of domestic abuse and other forms of harm. Theories of parental alienation should never be accepted without analysis of the impact they have on survivors of domestic abuse and their children.”


It is also worthy of note that, having adopted a definition of parental alienation, the World Health Organization has now agreed to remove any reference to it.

I agree with the concerns expressed in the Ministry of Justice report, by the various commissioners working with victims of domestic abuse and coercive control, and by the organisations supporting victims. I hope that the Minister will also agree that there is no place in this Bill or its statutory guidance for a concept without a robust evidential basis, or one that can be used by perpetrators to continue their abuse of their former partner and children.

[The Earl of Lytton (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I added my name to these amendments because I feel strongly that we are not picking up domestic abuse early enough in the process. Part of that is a failure to identify and become aware of the forms of abusive behaviour for what they are. One of the most important aspects of the break-up of a relationship is the effect on children, as they can be terribly damaged through that process. The noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, has given us a moving description of her experiences, and I pay tribute to all those who have written to me for and against these amendments. I respect what they say.

My strong feeling is that by the time domestic abuse cases get to the courts, views are already polarised, resentments are deep-seated and entrenched, and an intensely adversarial legal system is in play. Anything not proscribed by law seems to be fair game, and the outcomes are all too often a matter of sweeping up the broken fragments of family relationships as tidily as possible.

We know that one of the problems is parental alienation. I accept what the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, has said; her experience is far and away ahead of mine. One of the reasons it is not picked up at an early enough stage is the absence of an identity that would trigger intervention and appropriate support long before matters came to the formal attention of the police or the jurisdiction of the courts. We know that this is one of the reasons why certain domestic abuse instances are not recorded at all. I acknowledge that the spectrum of such abusive behaviour is enormous, labyrinthine and often a matter of controversy among experts, but signposting this for earlier intervention seems an unassailable point.

I have seen, read and listened to objections to the term “parental alienation”, but lack of definition or labelling—or, for that matter, the awareness that goes with that—does not make the problem cease to exist. It is quite clear that it does. As I just said, I see as one of the problems the nature of the judicial and adversarial process that must be dealt with. I make no criticism of the judiciary, which has to pick its way through enormously complex issues and try to find the best way forward for the parents and particularly the children. It concerns me that, if we do not have a definition, the abuses that have been described and the excuses, particularly of male partners against female partners that the female is indulging in parental alienation of children, will not go away or in some way become less likely.

The noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, suggests that parental alienation is readily identifiable. I cannot speak to that but, from my own observations, I agree. From what I have seen from many who have written to me, it is an identifiable condition. I appreciate that it is complex and multifaceted, but I think we all know, on a results basis, what it means in practice.

This is not just a definition for lawyers and the courts of when things have got to that terrible stage of events when everybody has dug themselves into their positions and every sort of lever and form of manipulation is being used in the cause by one side or the other, but a definition for everybody—particularly upstream of those situations where, as the Domestic Homicide Review has identified, available signs indicated that there were problems which could and should have been picked up. That keeps cropping up. I believe the same is true for parental alienation, as a component in what is quite clearly a larger pattern of abuse.

That is why I support these amendments—primarily because children are caught in the middle here. They are being used as part of the process of leveraging some sort of advantage by one partner against the other. That must stop. It must be identified as offensive, save in circumstances where it is demonstrated that it is being done with the best interests of the child unequivocally in mind—for instance, where there is clear evidence of physical or other sorts of abuse of that nature and something must be done. That is why I support these amendments and have put my name to them.