Domestic Abuse Bill

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Excerpts

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

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, indeed, victims and survivors are not alone. I also welcome this Bill, which has enormous power to better protect the survivors of domestic abuse and their children—and the potential to prevent perpetrators committing further offences and endangering the lives of more women. I pay tribute to all the organisations and individuals working with survivors and to the vast amount of work that has already been done on the Bill. I thank the Minister for all that she has done and will do—and for dedicating the Bill to victims and survivors. It will be no surprise to her that I wish to focus on a stalking-related issue, but, before doing so, I will mention five of the many issues on which I hope there will be further movement.

First, there is a need for a duty on public authorities to ensure that front-line public services staff make trained inquiries into domestic abuse and respond appropriately with pathways for support. Secondly, a non-discrimination principle should be introduced in the Bill on equal protection and support for migrant survivors. Thirdly, it must be ensured that all domestic abuse cases can access the appropriate legal help by making non-means-tested legal aid available for all domestic abuse cases. Fourthly, near-fatal strangulation should be made an offence. Fifthly, I agree with the points made by my noble friend Lady Donaghy in relation to domestic violence and survivors in the workplace.

I note that 2 January marked the 40th anniversary of Peter Sutcliffe’s arrest. He attacked and murdered at least 23 women across the 1960s and 1970s; however, since then, too little has changed in relation to preventing abuse by serial offenders. Too often, professionals overlook the most dangerous men, including stalkers. The violent histories of abusive men must be proactively joined up, and the women who report them must be listened to and taken seriously if we are to prevent future murders.

Domestic and stalking-related murders are both preventable and predictable; they do not happen in a vacuum. These are murders in slow motion: the “drip, drip, drip” happens over time on an escalating continuum. The incident-led approach to patterned crimes such as domestic abuse and stalking is very costly: on average, one murder costs £2 million to investigate. More importantly, women are paying with their lives and perpetrators are offending with impunity.

Many predatory stalkers, sex offenders and serial killers abuse their partners and commit other crimes, yet there is no systematic sharing of information across police services and partner agencies. For too long the approach has been to focus on repeat victims and to identify and track them. There is rarely any multiagency problem solving and risk management regarding the perpetrator.

The 2014 HMIC report Everyone’s Business: Improving the Police Response to Domestic Abuse highlighted that police forces were not systematically flagging and targeting serial and serious perpetrators, and little has changed since then. There are now pockets of good practice to be welcomed in Essex, Hampshire, North Yorkshire and Northumbria, where a multiagency approach is taken, but co-ordination and consistency are desperately needed throughout the country. Perpetrators travel, but information about them is static.

The Bill presents a real opportunity to make abusive and violent men visible and accountable and better protect women and children. It is time these dangerous domestic terrorists and stalkers were registered and monitored in the same way as sex offenders and that victims’ right to safety and to live free of fear is realised and prioritised over an abuser’s right to freedom. More than 206,000 people, including survivors and the relatives of victims, have signed a petition in support of extending the Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements to ensure that police, prison and probation services proactively identify, track, monitor and manage serial perpetrators. I will therefore be tabling an amendment, as tabled in the Commons, seeking to bring about the change.

In the Commons an amendment requested that the Government commission a report on the monitoring of serial and serious harm, domestic abuse and stalking perpetrators under MAPPA. I wonder whether such a report has already been commissioned. When might we be informed of its contents if it has been?