Domestic Abuse Bill
Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Lord Ramsbotham
Lord Ramsbotham (CB) [V]
Amendment 77, in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Finlay of Llandaff, is an amalgam of the two amendments I tabled in Committee. It is also an amalgam of the amendments tabled in the other place by Chris Bryant MP, chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Acquired Brain Injury, in which I should declare an interest as a vice-chairman. I should also declare an interest as chairman of the Criminal Justice and Acquired Brain Injury Interest Group, which consists of a number of practitioners in the field and officials from the Department of Health and the Ministry of Justice.
In Committee, I outlined just why it was so important that all victims of domestic abuse should be screened and assessed for any acquired brain injury as quickly as possible after the event, and was very happy that the draft guidance to be issued by the Home Office to the police contains just such an instruction. I am keen that such an instruction should also be issued to the Prison and Probation Service, I hope statutorily, based on evidence produced by one of the members of the interest group the Disabilities Trust at HMP Drake Hall, a women’s prison in Staffordshire.
After Committee, I wrote to Ministers appealing to them to adopt my amendment as a government one, and I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, for seeing me to discuss that. I am still hopeful and will not decide whether to divide the House until I have heard what he says in response.
Noble Lords often raise matters that they think should be in legislation during the detailed scrutiny that all Bills receive in this House, which Bill teams almost invariably brief their Ministers to turn down, but there is often method behind the apparent madness of the mover of a particular amendment, because officials simply cannot be expected to know as much detail as professionals in the field, and their successors may one day be grateful that they included a particular reminder or nuance.
I admit that I had not realised the importance of domestic abuse victims being screened for an acquired brain injury before I was educated, any more than did some of the victims screened at Drake Hall. Some of them realised that an injury had been inflicted during the abuse only when the reason for some of their symptoms was explained.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)
My Lords, I am not getting any messages through on my iPad or my phone, so if there is anything I need to know I hope the Whip will let me know. I call the noble Lord, Lord Naseby. The noble Lord has scratched, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff.