Secure Tenancies (Victims of Domestic Abuse) Bill [HL]

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 9th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, this is a short but significant Bill, and from these Benches we welcome it. I thank both the Minister for his introduction and the noble Baroness, who is a redoubtable campaigner—the combination of energy and intellectual rigour cannot be beaten.

The term “secure” in the Title applies more widely than in the technical sense of the type of tenancy. The emotional security of one’s home plays a very big part in most of our lives. When I first became involved in the work of the domestic violence charity Refuge, I was quite shaken by two thoughts: first, what it must be like to distrust the person whom one should most be able to trust and, secondly, what it must be like not to feel safe in one’s own home? As the Minister has said, children as well as partners are affected by insecurity and instability.

It is a pity that we use the term “victims”. It should not imply, although it often does, some sort of passivity in the face of ill-treatment. That is certainly not the case in this context. We must not underestimate the strength needed to leave an abuser and to talk about a situation. This is not done lightly or quickly, so I welcome this legislative response to one housing situation.

I have some questions, which to a considerable extent reflect some of those already asked by the noble Baroness, and one fundamental observation: that this Bill is about the person abused and often her children—“her”, as the noble Baroness said—having to move, and not the abuser having to move. I understand that there will probably be considerable difficulties regarding rights to the tenancy of the abuser and evidence, but I am unhappy about the imbalance that we are recognising here.

I know that my noble friend Lord Shipley will ask why the obligation is on local housing authorities and not on housing associations. I therefore ask the Minister whether the obligation can be satisfied by a local housing authority procuring that a housing association grants an assured tenancy. How does the local housing association fulfil the obligation if it has no stock of its own? Do the Government envisage reciprocal arrangements between authorities—for instance, authority A making some provision for a person from authority B in return for an old-style secure tenancy for someone coming from authority A? I cannot really see how this could work, because, by definition, there will be a problem with housing stock, which is the elephant in the Chamber today.

Are the Government satisfied that the scheme can work if, for reasons of safety, the abused person needs to be in a different location from the abuser—indeed, to be somewhere unknown to the abuser? The noble Baroness raised a particular lacuna. I would ask as well whether the Bill applies if the victim is not a joint tenant of the original housing. I am a little unclear about whether someone leaving a home needs to be in the private sector to escape abuse. I assume not, because under new subsection (2A), one does not leave square one unless the local housing authority is required to grant a secure tenancy.

Can the Minister explain the eligibility a little more fully? As I understand it, not all victims of domestic abuse who do not have children are considered as being in priority need for housing, so does the woman—again, I will assume that it is a woman for the purposes of the debate—have to satisfy priority need for the provisions to apply? Will a victim have to accept whatever housing is offered, however unsatisfactory she considers it?

There is also the question of identifying domestic abuse for the purposes of the legislation. What evidence will be required? The Bill rightly extends to all forms of abuse—I note that the list of types of abuse is not exhaustive—but what level of proof will be required?

Local authority social workers, who have enough on their plates already, will not be unfamiliar with identifying abuse; for our part, we are familiar with training not always being adequate. In our debate last July, introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, my noble friend Lady Brinton and the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, referred, I think to the Minister’s surprise, to the training of police officers in identifying stalking being satisfied by a 25-minute desk exercise. I see possible comparisons here. Is the Minister considering guidance in this connection for housing officers?

I looked back at a report, referred to in that previous debate, into the No Woman Turned Away project, which looked at the position of 404 women with 533 children in the period January 2016 to January 2017. I shall quote from that report, by Women’s Aid:

“Many women, supported by the NWTA caseworkers, faced structural barriers to accessing safety due to inadequate responses from statutory agencies … Social services failed to meet their duty of care towards 37 of the 115 survivors they supported … Several women who were refused help by social services were told that they were not experiencing domestic abuse or that they did not meet the risk threshold for intervention. Local housing teams prevented 78 … survivors from making a valid homeless application. 14 women were told to call the NDVH instead of making a homeless application and 11 cases did not consider the domestic abuse to be a significant risk factor to merit a domestic abuse application, with eight women being told to return to the perpetrator and three women told to come back when the situation got worse ... reasons given for preventing a survivor from making a homeless application”,


included being told to call the helpline, as I have mentioned,

“that the Local Housing Authority did not have the duty to her or her children … being explicitly told that domestic abuse was not the responsibility of the LHA …, or refusing an application and giving no reason at all”.

A number of survivors were told,

“that they needed a local connection in order to apply … or were told to make an application in another borough … Local housing teams prevented 78 … survivors from making an application. Often their understanding of domestic abuse is limited to physical abuse with only partial knowledge of other aspects of abuse or coercive control”.

These are two major areas of concern. What does the Local Government Association have to say about these and other concerns? We might be about to hear the answer from the next speaker: I hope so.

I appreciate that this is one piece in the jigsaw of supporting adults and children who are subjected to domestic abuse. I, too, will not venture into the complicated field of benefits or no benefits—today, at any rate. That will be unavoidable when we get to the wider legislation.

The Minister mentioned regulations. Will those be regulations under the 2016 Act? This Bill seems to provide for regulations only in regard to commencement.

The Bill is not a silver bullet, but it addresses one unintended consequence of the 2016 Act, so my final small but important question is: when is this legislation likely to be brought into effect?

Secure Tenancies (Victims of Domestic Abuse) Bill [HL]

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 24th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for bringing forward this issue, which he raised at Second Reading. I also thank other noble Lords who participated in the discussion on this amendment.

I agree that charging a fee to a victim of abuse who is seeking evidence of their abuse to access services is, let us say, far from an ideal situation. The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, set out the issue very fairly. Although the amendment is drawn more widely, and does not mention doctors, the point is valid in relation to doctors, for example: as has been the case under Governments of all persuasions, doctors may charge for anything outside the contract relating to NHS services. That is why we are in this position, and obviously policy responsibility rests with the Department of Health and Social Care.

However, I think I have some good news for noble Lords who participated in this debate and who are rightly concerned about this, as others will be too. As data subjects, which we all are under the Data Protection Act, individuals can lawfully ask to be provided with their medical records, without charge, thus obviating the need for a letter altogether. I appreciate we need to get that message out there so people are aware of it, but on that basis, I do not think that this would represent a problem.

I will ensure that I get an update on this issue for noble Lords. Because the amendment was tabled only last night—so it was not late as such; it was within the time limit—we have not had long to investigate the issue and had to seek assistance overnight. We are investigating further with the department, but it appears that this issue should not be a concern; if it is, then it is for the Department of Health and Social Care to discuss further. But I agree that in this sort of situation it would be quite wrong—morally wrong, if not legally wrong—to charge victims in this regard.

I also spoke privately to the noble Lord before today’s sitting, and with that assurance, I hope he feels able to withdraw this amendment.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise to the Committee for arriving so late after amendments to which I had my name, as I was at the Joint Committee on Human Rights. I will not ask the Minister to respond to this, but just put it into the pot. I think he is saying that a person who has been the subject of abuse needs to go and consult a doctor, perhaps, and so get it into the records that advice and assistance has been sought, and then after that ask for the records to be released. I say that because other people involved in this work will look at what has been said and might have comments on it as well as the noble Lord and the Department of Health and Social Care.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I thank the noble Lord for his response. I am sorry I tabled the amendment fairly late, and will bring the issue back much earlier on Report. I hear what he says about the use of a subject access request to get medical records, and I am sure he is right. But imagine you are a victim of a crime, distressed and being told you need some evidence. Asking for your medical records may not be the quickest way to get it. Then what do you do? Do you take a big file down to the housing office? I see the point he is making but we need to find a simpler way.

I agree with the noble Lord that it is morally wrong that a victim goes to a doctor and is then charged £50, £75 or £100 to have a letter written. That is just wrong. I am pleased with what he said, but we need to go a bit further with this, as it is not right. I will certainly bring the issue back on Report. The noble Lord is right that there are other professions that do something similar, but it is a particular problem with GPs. People have the right to have a note written and not be charged for it. I thank the noble Lord for what he said, and I will happily withdraw the amendment at this stage, but I will raise the issue again on Report.

Secure Tenancies (Victims of Domestic Abuse) Bill [HL]

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 6th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to be able to support these amendments. I shall speak briefly to Amendment 4 but will say a bit more about it when we come to the next group of amendments. The key issue here is to remove the notion of risk. Talking to Women’s Aid, it is clear that, in practice, having to prove risk creates unnecessary hurdles, and I can do no better than quote what it says in the briefing that it has provided for us:

“Women’s Aid has reported widely on the issues with a ‘risk-based’ approach to domestic abuse; static risk assessments fail to capture the changing risk and harm in these cases, and a risk based approach fails to provide appropriate support or meet the needs of victims assessed as ‘low’ or ‘medium’ risk”.


It makes the point that it places an even greater premium on good specialised training to be able to adequately assess risk in these circumstances. Therefore, I am delighted that the Minister was willing to make that change. As well as creating equivalence with the next amendment, I think that it improves the Bill overall.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, my name is added to these amendments. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and thank the Minister for all the work that they have done.

I have just written a short piece on scrutiny and have written mostly about the need to engage with stakeholders and practitioners—people who know what they are talking about. Although I take great delight in asking whether “and” should be “or” and so on, that is not really the purpose of scrutiny. However, this seems to be a very good example of those who have experience of real situations working together to anticipate where there might be problems if the legislation is not changed, as it has been. Therefore, I congratulate them and feel rather privileged to have been able to tack my name on to these amendments.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, as this is my first contribution to the proceedings on the Bill today, I draw the attention of the House to my interests listed in the register—in particular, the fact that I am a councillor in the London Borough of Lewisham and a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

Amendments 1 to 4, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, and supported by my noble friend Lady Lister of Burtersett and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, have my full support. The amendments in themselves might look quite small but they provide a clarity that is needed following examination of the Bill by noble Lords. A number of conversations have been held outside the Chamber to get the wording right.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, for the clarification at the start of his contribution and for the information that he has provided to the House today. Generally, his remarks are very welcome and I thank him for them. I also thank him for his personal support in getting the Bill on to the statute book to correct an error in the Housing and Planning Act 2016. As I have said before, it is not a good piece of legislation—I think it is an example of “act in haste and repent at leisure”. There have been one or two other problems with that legislation, as the noble Lord knows. I am very happy to support these amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, Amendment 6 raises the issue of victims of domestic violence being charged a fee to provide evidence by way of a letter or some other acceptable form of confirmation to the authorities that they are a victim of domestic violence. That fee can range from £75 to £100 or even more. I think that it is completely wrong.

Certainly some GPs charge this fee. I accept that it is a minority of GPs, but it is wrong for any GP to charge it. I raised the issue both at Second Reading and in Committee, and I do so again today.

When the amendment was discussed in Committee, I had support from noble Lords around the House, and I am grateful to all noble Lords who spoke in that debate. I read again yesterday the response of the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, to the debate in Committee. He agreed with me that charging a fee to a victim of abuse who is seeking evidence of their abuse to access a service is,

“far from an ideal situation”.—[Official Report, 24/1/18; col. 1058.]

I would go further than that and say that, in 2018, when domestic violence is centre stage—no longer an issue not talked about but out in the open, with perpetrators rightly condemned and brought to justice for the disgusting crime that it is—to charge victims a fee to provide evidence to prove that they are a victim so that they can get help is unacceptable.

The good news that the Minister gave the House the last time he spoke on the issue just does not go far enough. I note that the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, has tabled a Question on domestic violence that will be answered in the next day or two. I will raise the issue again if I can get in at that Question Time.

If you have been a victim of a crime and been beaten, distressed or frightened, it is not good enough to say that you can get around the issue of a fee by putting in a subject access request for your medical records. I have no idea what you would do with your medical records: I assume that you get a big pile of papers giving all your medical history and stuff. So for me it would be my blood pressure, and I am a diabetic so there would be issues about my feet, but I am not sure that medical records would say that you had been beaten, that you have a cut or that you have been bruised. Would they actually say that you had been a victim of domestic violence? If not, we are again in the situation where you might hand your medical records to the authority who might say, “Yes, it says you have a bruise to the head; it does not say that you have been a victim of domestic violence. You might have fallen over”. So there are some issues even with using the records. Will they actually deliver what the noble Lord says?

I think we should be very clear that no victim should ever be charged for a letter or any other form of evidence to say that they are a victim of domestic violence. We need to ensure that that happens. I accept that it is about the doctors’ contract and I am pleased that that is going to be reviewed in April, because it is certainly an issue. I accept that it is the Department of Health, not the noble Lord’s department, but this is an issue that we cannot let go: it is totally wrong that anyone is charged a fee to prove that they are a victim of a crime.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, the Minister spoke at the outset of this afternoon’s proceedings about the Data Protection Bill—the Act as it will soon be—and data subjects’ rights of access to information. I share the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, about the extent of notes that doctors may keep. I have no expertise in this area but I know that I can sit in a doctor’s surgery and witter on for seven or eight minutes and it comes out, perhaps, as a reference to a consultant in two lines. I assume that the two lines are much closer to what is kept in the notes than my seven minutes of semi-articulate complaints.

I am also concerned about whether doctors, GPs particularly, will feel able to keep notes about their assessment, which might be just a guess, as to the reason for the injuries which they are considering. Some may, some may not, and some may be concerned about the implications for them if they get it wrong. Again, it is not something that I have come across, but in other walks of life, such as universities, where teachers may keep notes about students’ attainments or otherwise, I understand that there are concerns not to say anything that might come back to bite the writer of those notes. I certainly do not think it is something we can assume will be covered by the data protection provisions that will shortly be coming into effect.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for bringing this amendment forward and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for her contribution on Amendment 6, which deals with the subject of GP letters. In fact, noble Lords will appreciate that the amendment is drawn much more widely—it refers, I think, to other professionals as well. I am sure that the noble Lord did this quite deliberately; it would apply, for example, to solicitors’ letters and accountants’ letters as well, where there are obviously rather different considerations, because we have a more direct route in relation to GPs’ contracts.

As I said previously and I am very happy to repeat, the noble Lord is quite right to say that the wording is far from ideal; that is absolutely right. I accept the point that the noble Baroness has just made, and was made by the noble Lord as well, about the data. It is hard to know without seeing doctors’ notes: sometimes it may cover the case very well, sometimes it may not. I also take the noble Baroness’s point that doctors may be reluctant to commit to writing something relating to domestic abuse, but I suppose that that could also apply in relation to the letter itself. It is certainly a consideration, I accept that. The early sounding I had when I raised this matter with the Department of Health was that it has the same view that we do. It considers that this issue needs looking at. I have not yet had a detailed response to the points I made but I am very happy to share the general thrust of that as soon as I do, because this is a very reasonable point and one that I am sure the vast majority of GPs would go along with.

On the basis that I undertake to update the House on the discussions that we are having with the Department of Health—recognising, as the noble Lord indicated, that it is the lead department on this—I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.