Domestic Abuse Bill

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

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

[Baroness Crawley (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I welcome the work of the Minister in campaigning against domestic violence. While it is understandable that the Government have been distracted this last year, it is unfortunate that the Bill, with its transformative potential and which is welcomed across the House, has been delayed so badly.

If ever there was a time when abuse victims needed strengthened statutory protection, it is in this unprecedented year of Covid. Lockdowns have been a green light to perpetrators to torment and manipulate those close to them. The National Domestic Abuse Helpline saw a 66% increase in calls and online requests for help from March to May 2020. We are now in another lockdown.

The Bill comes to us strengthened from the Commons, in government clauses relating to the effect on children, special measures in family and civil proceedings, cross- examining a witness in person and many other issues. The new role of domestic abuse commissioner for Nicole Jacobs must also be warmly welcomed, and the work of the Joint Committee in 2019 welcomed and acknowledged. However, as noble Lords have said, now is our opportunity to play our part in the Bill, and there are many areas where it needs further fortification.

Having listened to victims themselves and many charities working with victims and perpetrators, outstanding issues for the Bill include the urgent protection of victims who have no access to public funds under our immigration law. Could the Minister update us on the support for migrant victims pilot scheme and its conclusions?

Action is also needed for a new duty on public bodies to deliver community-based support and for public authorities to provide training to support victims. I will support the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, in that amendment.

There are also questions of economic and post-separation abuse, the present structure of universal credit access, workplace protection and the Government’s workplace review, as well as the gendered nature of domestic abuse. Charities are calling for an end to the threat of sharing intimate images, as we have heard so strongly from noble Lords. For the creation of a stand-alone offence of non-fatal strangulation or suffocation, I will be supporting the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove. Specialist funding needs to be substantially increased and the all-important prevention work with perpetrators needs to be acknowledged in the Bill.

This Bill, defining domestic abuse in law for the first time as it does, is a demonstrably great step forward for abused women and children. We have the opportunity and means, in this House, to turn that step into a deterministic leap forward. My noble friend Lord Rosser is right: there has been a whiff of the 19th century and a make-do-and-mend culture around our official response to domestic abuse, so we must make our response financially cutting edge and 21st century-compliant to defeat it.