Domestic Abuse Bill

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

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

[Baroness Hollins (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I know from my personal family and professional experience of people with learning disabilities that domestic violence can involve both paid and informal carers, including family members. I will not repeat the excellent points made by the noble Lord, Lord Curry. I am very pleased to support my noble friend Lady Campbell and to follow such powerful speeches.

The weakness in the Government’s position is that it underestimates the important similarities between carer relationships and those already in the Bill. It perhaps assumes that local authorities or the CQC will have sight of all carer arrangements, particularly for informal care, but this is just not true. I quote the January Stay Safe East report on discrimination, which says:

“The current definition of domestic abuse has a discriminatory impact on disabled victims of domestic abuse by non-family carers, who have no access to an Independent Domestic Violence Adviser, refuges or other domestic abuse services or to the network of therapeutic and other services open to other domestic abuse victims.”


The exclusion of carers from the definition of “personally connected” not only is blind to the reality of the closeness and complexity of carer relationships but would be discriminatory to disabled people on the receiving end of domestic abuse from carers, because they would be excluded from services. The exclusion fails to recognise that the significant relationships of disabled people may be different from those of non-disabled people. This also applies to people with learning disabilities.

My remaining point has already been made, so I will not take up time with it.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow all the speeches already given, because these important amendments close a loophole in our current framework. They do not criminalise carers; let us be clear about that. They simply recognise the reality that, when a person is living in their own home with others coming in to assist with activities of daily living, including the most intimate of care, that person is potentially vulnerable to exploitation. People also need help with indirect activities for daily living as, without this assistance, the person’s environment would rapidly deteriorate. Carers can be closer to and have more power over a person than a person’s family.

The Care Act 2014 Section 10(3) states:

“‘Carer’ means an adult who provides or intends to provide care for another adult (an ‘adult needing care’); but see subsections (9) and (10).”


Then subsection (9) states:

“An adult is not to be regarded as a carer if the adult provides or intends to provide care … (a) under or by virtue of a contract, or … (b) as voluntary work.”


The issue is that those employed, under direct payments or privately, or who exploit a vulnerable person with offers of help and support, are not known to the local authority and it has no authority over them. Even if the local authority becomes aware, Section 42 of the Care Act did not create any new powers to act to protect disabled people from abuse and neglect, merely a duty to make inquiries and to consider exercising existing powers.

This amendment recognises the power differential between the person who is vulnerable and the person coming into their home, on whom they depend and by whom they are being emotionally, psychologically or physically harmed. The person may be frightened and intimidated, not knowing who to turn to, and frightened by threats of all kinds. This is not just mild bullying or cajoling. This is serious, and there needs to be a way to ensure that those who have close and intimate access to the person cannot continue their exploits of mal-intent without serious consequences in law. There is no reason to discriminate against those who are disabled and cannot escape their situation, enduring abuse in their own homes, by leaving them without the adequate protection that this important landmark Bill aims to provide.

As I said, these amendments do not criminalise carers; they criminalise behaviours of mal-intent that cause serious harm—behaviours which are completely unjustified. They are behaviours of abuse behind closed doors in a person’s home by someone on whom they are dependent and personally connected and who has access to the most personal and often intimate aspects of their body and life. Without these amendments, we leave a loophole in protecting those with disability, as so clearly laid out by the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, and others. I hope the Government will simply accept these amendments as they are, but otherwise I will support a Division.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, for leading on this important aspect of domestic abuse, clearly laying out the high incidence of abuse when a woman is pregnant and the many harms associated with it. I declare that I chair the Commission on Alcohol Harm. Some 25% to 50% of domestic abuse offences are fuelled by alcohol. The Good Childhood Report in 2017 found that 39% of children living with a parent or carer with problematic alcohol use were also living in households where there had been domestic violence in the past five years. That is almost three times the comparable rate in the rest of the sample.

Foetal alcohol spectrum disorder—FASD—describes the permanent impact on the brains and bodies of individuals prenatally exposed to alcohol. This can result in physical, emotional, behavioural and neurological characteristics that are all related to prenatal—interuterine—exposure to alcohol. At least 7,000 babies are born every year in the UK with FASD, although recent research suggests that the true incidence may be sixfold to 17-fold higher. Misdiagnosis as attachment disorders or autism is frequent.

Alcohol is a teratogen which can cause any type of physical malformation and learning and behavioural challenges. These children often need support with motor skills, physical health, learning, memory, attention, emotional regulation and social skills as well as the management of any congenital abnormalities. More than 70% of children with FASD are known to care services, often raised by foster or adoptive parents or kinship carers. The true cost of abuse is paid by the child lifelong and by society, not by the abuser.

This condition is preventable only when there is no prenatal alcohol exposure. That is why, in 2016, the Chief Medical Officer recommended that no alcohol be consumed in pregnancy and when planning one. After birth, the abuse of alcohol is associated with parental neglect and ongoing abuse in the home. When I was a GP, I worked with Strathclyde on the medical screening of children at the time of admission to care. Many of these children had been damaged before their lives had started and were further damaged from day one.

We know that, during the pandemic, domestic abuse has increased and domestic alcohol consumption has increased. Are we sitting on another epidemic that is about to emerge—that of FASD in a generation who are soon to be born? We cannot protect from FASD those who have already been born, but we can lessen the chance of further damage and protect those who come after them. That is the aim of these amendments.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Haskel) (Lab)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Lord, Lord McColl.