Domestic Abuse Bill

Baroness Primarolo Excerpts

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

[Baroness Primarolo (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I welcome this Bill. I congratulate the Minister on her excellent introduction and my noble friend Lord Rosser on the very clear way in which he laid out the important changes that we need to find for this Bill.

I say clearly at the beginning that I will support an amendment to bring in a new offence of non-fatal strangulation, as I will also support an amendment to create an offence of sharing or threatening to share the release of intimate images. However, I turn to the question of older women.

In the early 1990s, a woman in her late 60s came to see me for advice. She wanted to know whether I could help her to leave her husband. Throughout her married life she had been subjected to domestic abuse, both physical and psychological. It was shocking as a young woman MP to hear an older woman explain to me the terrible experiences that typified her decades-long marriage. She did not have anywhere safe to go where her husband would not find her. She had little money, because her husband controlled all the finances—and, of course, when she left she had nothing; she could not take any of her possessions with her.

She was reluctant to go to a women’s refuge, which she believed was for women and younger children. She felt that was not the place for her. She thought that she was less of a priority because of her age. Finding the strength to leave her husband after decades was incredibly difficult; at her age, she found starting a fresh life a daunting prospect. None the less, we were able to find somewhere for her to live, to access emergency social grants for essentials and to make sure that she got income through the social security system. Alas, I fear that that would not be the case under the current universal credit rules. As my noble friend Lady Sherlock eloquently explained, the Minister will need to look urgently at either amendments to this Bill or social security legislation to ensure that survivors of domestic abuse, including migrant women, have immediate access to public funds.

My constituent was a brave woman, but she may not have found the new life, free of domestic abuse, that she so desperately sought. She stopped contacting my office and her sister told me that, unfortunately, after she left her husband, her son—her only child—cut off all contact with her, preventing her seeing her grandchildren. He was convinced by his father’s explanation for why she had left him. Faced with such a terrible situation of isolation and loneliness, she decided to go back to her husband. She felt that it was a price she had to pay. She did not want to tell me because she thought that I would disapprove or think badly of her. Nothing could be further from the truth; I was saddened that I could not do more to help her. What was not available to her, to my constituent, was the emotional support, advice and guidance that she could have received had there been independent domestic violence and abuse advisers.

The Crime Survey for England and Wales shows that 180,000 women between the ages of 60 and 74 were victims of domestic abuse in 2019. The Minister needs urgently to consider extending the duty of care to community services, and the commissioning of such services, to sit alongside the duty to provide refuges through local authorities and ensure that a network of independent domestic violence and abuse advisers are able to support all victims and survivors.