Domestic Abuse Bill

Baroness Williams of Trafford Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 15th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rosser (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I seek to be relatively brief. Amendment 70, moved so compellingly by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester, would extend the destitution domestic violence concession to all migrant victims of abuse, providing them with

“temporary leave to remain and access to public funds, for a period of no less than six months … while they flee abuse and apply to resolve their immigration status.”

Amendment 87, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, spoke so powerfully, would ensure that

“all victims of domestic abuse are protected, regardless of their status, in line with Article 4(3) of the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence.”

Amendment 70 addresses a major gap in the Bill—namely, the lack of provision for migrant women in particular. They are probably one of the most vulnerable groups suffering domestic abuse. Despite that, they do not get the same level of support as other domestic abuse survivors, with the suspicion being that migrant women in this position are all too often regarded as immigration cases rather than victims of domestic abuse—making it even more likely that abuse of migrant women will take place and simply continue.

This is because the reality is that migrant women who do not have established immigration status find it difficult, if not impossible, to access refuges and other essential support services to escape abuse. Also, their abusers know that they do not have funds of their own—their abusers make sure of that—and have no recourse to the public funds necessary to access that support because of their lack of status. As the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, reminded us, less than 6% of refuge beds are available to women without recourse to public funds because refuges cannot carry out their vital work without income.

I await the Government’s response, particularly to see whether it still seeks to put off making any meaningful specific commitment to address the plight of migrant women suffering domestic abuse, and whether the response also suggests that, at heart, the Government still regard migrant women without established immigration status who suffer domestic abuse as primarily an immigration issue rather than a domestic one.

In Committee, the Government spoke about a pilot exercise. Again, the right reverend Prelate highlighted the inadequacy of that exercise and the fact that it does not actually commit the Government to doing anything.

The domestic abuse commissioner-designate supports this amendment, and the evidence in support of it is already there in the public domain. The terms of this Domestic Abuse Bill have been debated and discussed for a number of years, going back to when Theresa May was Home Secretary. No doubt as a result of that discussion and consideration, the Bill marks real progress in a number of areas.

However, the fact that the Government still say that they do not know enough about the plight of migrant women faced with domestic abuse to agree to this amendment says a great deal about their attitude to, and the priority they give to, this particular highly vulnerable group. The time to act is now. Action should not be delayed or kicked into the long grass any longer.

We support Amendment 70. We will also support Amendment 87, which seeks to ensure that

“all victims of domestic abuse are protected, regardless of their status”,

if it is taken to a vote.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester and my noble friend Lady Helic for their continued commitment to providing support for migrant victims of domestic abuse. I want to take this opportunity also to thank the International Agreements Committee, which is represented so well this afternoon.

As I highlighted in Committee, I know that we all share the view that anyone who has suffered domestic abuse, regardless of their immigration status, should be treated first and foremost as a victim. Although the Government appreciate the sentiment behind these amendments, we still do not think that they are an appropriate way forward.

Amendment 70 seeks to provide at least six months’ leave and access to public funds to all migrant victims of domestic abuse, as well as providing them with a route to apply for leave to remain. Amendment 87 seeks equally effective protection and support for all victims of domestic abuse, irrespective of their status, while also referring to Article 4(3) of the Istanbul convention.

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[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab) [V]]

I thank the Minister for her very full reply. She said, rightly, that I had pressed her and that there was no intention to park the issue, but what I really pressed her on was an assurance that there is no intention to enter a reservation to the Istanbul convention on the question of migrant women.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, I can state quite honestly from my point of view that I know of no intention to enter a reservation.

[The Lord Bishop of Gloucester [V]]

My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. Again, I thank the Minister for her very full response and for her real passion about providing support for all victims and survivors of domestic abuse.

I do not want to repeat everything I said in my opening speech, because I think we are at risk of going round in circles. But the Minister herself said that this is not a homogenous group and that it was about treating each person as an individual. That is why we are asking for this temporary leave to remain and access to public funds, so that each person can be treated as an individual and the right action can be taken.

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I will leave my comments there. I am clear that if either amendment is moved to a vote, these Benches will support it.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, I join others in sending our thoughts and prayers to the family of Sarah Everard. We do not know the history of her murderer, but we do know that she is just another murdered woman. As the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said, there have been 30 such women since Second Reading. I heard the story of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, as a horror story; it is something you would never wish on anybody. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, paid tribute to Jane Clough and her wonderful parents. I have met Jane Clough’s father, and I pay tribute to her parents, who have campaigned so tirelessly so that what happened to their daughter will not happen to somebody else. The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, mentioned some of the horrendous things parliamentarians have to put up with. I am so sorry for the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for the abuse she has suffered in the last week or so, and I am sure I speak on behalf of every other noble Lord in the House. And the story of my noble friend Lady Bertin was awfully sad and horrific.

To pick up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, this set of amendments is not about political digs. I totally agree with him. We all seek the same end, so it might seem odd that the words I am going to say disagree with noble Lords’ amendments. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and I have campaigned and worked together for years, trying to fix the gaps that we find in the provision.

Amendment 73 seeks to amend the Criminal Justice Act 2003, so that individuals assessed as high risk and high harm, as well as those convicted of more than one domestic abuse or stalking offence, should automatically be subject to management under Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements, commonly referred to as MAPPA. Management under MAPPA may result in these individuals being recorded on VISOR, which is the dangerous persons database. The amendment would also place a duty on the Government to review these changes to the Criminal Justice Act and issue a report 12 months after Royal Assent. It specifies that the report would need to include a comprehensive prevention and perpetrator strategy for domestic abusers and stalkers. This links to Amendment 81, which also calls on the Secretary of State to issue a perpetrator strategy.

Noble Lords have spoken passionately about this issue and it is impossible not to be moved. I am simply horrified by some of the stories raised, not only today but in Committee. I indicated then and say again that I totally agree with the intention behind these amendments. As the noble Lord, Lord Russell, said, so much works, so why are there gaps? We want to make sure that there are no gaps and that we have the right systems in place to enable the police and partner agencies to accurately identify the risks posed by high-harm, repeat and serial perpetrators, and to act accordingly to protect victims.

We recognise that there is more that can be done to fill the gaps and ensure that the system works as intended, but we do not think that Amendment 73 addresses or resolves the underlying issue of improving risk assessment and case management. We fear, therefore, that it will not achieve the outcomes that it is intended to achieve.

In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, said—I will paraphrase—that serial and high-harm domestic abuse and stalking perpetrators can be managed under the current MAPPA legislation, but that it is not always happening in practice. My noble friend Lady Bertin echoed this and we agree, which is why, instead of amending the current legislation to add an additional category, we think there is more value in making better use of the existing MAPPA framework and related police systems.

My noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering talked about upskilling. There is a range of things, of which upskilling is one, which will drive an improvement in the system, including a better focus on the outcomes that we seek. We have already taken steps to improve MAPPA and related systems. Last spring, Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service published the Domestic Abuse Policy Framework, which sets out arrangements for working with people whose convictions or behaviours include domestic abuse. The framework mandates an adherence to the referral pathways for domestic abuse perpetrators and ensures that the required actions for these cases are fully laid out. It focuses on the need for an investigative approach, sets clear expectations about information exchange and the use of MAPPA, and draws together expected practice into a clear framework. This will significantly strengthen the consistency of our approach. It is right that we put our focus on embedding this framework, which will have a real operational impact to ensure that it is working to better safeguard victims and those at risk.

We are also introducing measures in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which was introduced in the House of Commons on 9 March. These measures will clarify the information-sharing powers of those agencies subject to the duty to co-operate under MAPPA. It will also explicitly extend these information-sharing powers to those agencies or individuals who can contribute to the assessment and management of risk—for example, GPs.

As my noble friend Lady Bertin says, we know that there is still more we can do to address the areas of concern that this amendment intends to resolve. I would like to outline the programme of activity that we will undertake to best achieve this. First, the Ministry of Justice will revisit and refresh all relevant chapters of MAPPA statutory guidance to include the sections on domestic abuse. This will ensure that all agencies involved take steps to identify offenders who are domestic abuse perpetrators whose risk requires active multi-agency management.

Secondly, we will introduce a thresholding document for local MAPPA strategic management boards to improve the consistency of assessments of MAPPA levels to ensure that those requiring greater oversight are correctly identified. We will ensure that there is a reference to domestic abuse perpetrators to assist relevant agencies in making decisions on the level of MAPPA management needed for individual cases.

Thirdly, HMPPS will issue a policy framework setting out clear expectations of the management of all cases at MAPPA level 1 by the National Probation Service, including domestic abuse perpetrators. This will further help to improve the quality of information sharing, the consistency and regularity of reviews, and the identification of cases where additional risk management activity is required.

Finally, we will improve the MAPPA sharing database —known as ViSOR—used to manage offenders, including through exploring alternative digital offender management systems, building on the success of the existing system in bringing agencies together to share information, and strengthening risk assessment, management and mitigation. To answer the point of my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering, as I said before, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill makes provision for that better data sharing under MAPPA.

There are provisions in the Bill which will also help to improve the management of risk posed by domestic abuse perpetrators. The new domestic abuse protection orders—or DAPOs—will provide an additional tool for managing the risk posed by perpetrators by enabling courts to impose a range of conditions and positive requirements. DAPOs will also require perpetrators subject to an order to notify the police of their name and address and any changes to this information. This will help the police to monitor the perpetrator’s whereabouts and the risk that they pose to the victim.

Stalking protection orders, which were introduced last year—I am glad that my noble friend is in the Chamber—can also impose positive requirement conditions on perpetrators. These orders enable early police intervention, pre-conviction, to address stalking behaviours before they become deep-rooted or escalate.

Ultimately, adding an additional MAPPA category into legislation specifically for domestic abuse offenders will not improve the practical issues it is truly seeking to resolve—and if it did, I would be fighting for it to happen. In fact, if we were to use the definition of domestic abuse offender as outlined in the amendment, we would make a large group of offenders not defined by specific offences automatically eligible for MAPPA. This would risk creating a level of complexity not reflected in the current legislation that will distract resources and could overwhelm the current system.

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

My Lords, what an extraordinary debate—powerful, passionate, distressing and harrowing in many ways. I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords who have participated, especially the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton, Lady Bertin and Lady Grey-Thompson. It is extremely painful to relive the sort of experiences that they have relived today, but I hope their courage in putting their experiences on the record will help others.

The noble Lord, Lord Russell, was right when he said we need to fix the system for victims and their families, and for us to live at ease with ourselves as a society. Today, having named so many victims and cited the cases, we must remember the families of those victims and the great pain that such debates must cause them. Equally, I hope the fact that we are debating ways of improving systems will ensure that other young women, older women or girls will not be subjected to the same abuse, the same stalking and the same murders as their loved ones had to experience.

I am extremely grateful to the Minister for her comments, and she is right: we all seek the same end. But we have always had a slight difference in how to get to that end. If she does not mind, I would like to ask her something before she sits down, as it were, although I know she has sat down. I quoted some words from the Sunday Times suggesting that the Home Secretary and the Justice Secretary were thinking of a register for stalkers and perpetrators of domestic abuse. I wonder whether she can give us any further information about the comments made to the Sunday Times.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

Like the noble Baroness, I saw that article. I have not had a chance to corroborate with the Home Secretary and my right honourable friend Robert Buckland the contents of that article. I can get some more information for the noble Baroness, because it would be useful to have their thinking on it.

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

My Lords, apparently in answer to a question from my right honourable friend Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary said, “I will be very candid: I will look at all measures”. That was in response to a question about this very amendment.

The noble Baroness mentioned the fact that more guidance is coming and that there are more policy frameworks and strategies. All that is very good, but unless people have to do what we need them to, and unless they can be accountable to the law in some way, these things will not happen. We know that, for the last 20 or 30 years, there has been a plethora of guidance et cetera, but, still, people are falling through the cracks. This is why it is extremely important to have something in the Bill to put these things in statute. As my noble friend Lord Hunt said, police forces are awash with guidance—people do not need guidance; they need to know exactly what they have to do, and we have to hold them to account and ensure that they do it.

As the noble Baroness pointed out, my amendment might not be perfect—I have no doubt that it is not. However, I would like to test the opinion of the House, so that I can perhaps enter into some discussions with the Government, especially as they are now—from what we know from the newspapers and what the Home Secretary said in the House of Commons today—looking at a register. I suggest that perhaps the amendment before us provides the basis of such a register and of the way in which the Government might move forward.

Therefore, I would like to test the opinion of the House, so that we can, I hope, enter some negotiations. It will be up to our colleagues on all sides of the House of Commons to take this forward. I am very grateful to noble Lords who have supported this amendment in the Chamber today, and I have had messages from many other Peers, on all sides of the House, who are very supportive of what we are doing.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Strasburger, that I think his amendment is excellent. I do not know if he will test the opinion of the House, but I am delighted to have been able to participate in the debate on his amendment. With that, I wish to test the opinion of the House.