Domestic Abuse Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Carolyn Harris and Sarah Newton

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 29th October 2019 Public Bill Committees

[Carolyn Harris]

That is perfect.

Nicole Jacobs: I am sure we all recognise the gendered nature of domestic abuse.

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

Q It is a pleasure to see you here today, as it was to see you in the Gallery. I thought it was terrific that you sat through the whole debate.

Nicole Jacobs: I thought you were all terrific.

Domestic Abuse Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Carolyn Harris and Sarah Newton

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 29th October 2019 Public Bill Committees

[Sarah Newton]

The fact that you need to do that shows that that is an area of work, once the Bill goes through: police forces have to consider that as domestic abuse and violence. That is a whole new area for the police to be trained on and for you to inspect, ensuring that the new requirements are understood and the services are there to support victims. Clearly, there is some work to do there.

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

Q I wanted to talk about Operation Encompass; you raised it before I had an opportunity to ask. It is a wonderful scheme. I would like to see it rolled out across the UK as, I hope, a compulsory thing, so that all schools know what goes on.

You will be aware, as I am, that women’s prisons are full of women who have experienced domestic violence. When these women are convicted of criminal offences, it is very often through coercive control and behaviour. Are police forces aware of that and are resources stopping them from identifying that these women are victims of trauma?

Zoe Billingham: To reinforce what you say about women in prisons, perhaps the most profound thing I have experienced in the five or six years I have been doing this work is visiting a women’s prison and speaking to prisoners, all of whom have been victims of domestic abuse. They all gave an account in a very small focus group of the failure of the police to understand the circumstances that had, they said, driven them to activity that resulted in their being in prison. I would certainly like to look at that in greater detail in the future. It is certainly something that I know more forces are thinking about: how they can ensure, through training, that the home circumstances of alleged offenders are being taken into account when looking at women’s offending particularly. I am afraid it is not something that we have done a specific inspection on, but it is an area that we are interested in looking at in the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Carolyn Harris]

I am sold. Thank you.

[Sarah Newton]

Q We are all united in wanting to break the cycle. The evidence is overwhelming that young people who are exposed to domestic abuse, coercive control or violence are likely to be perpetrators or victims themselves. As the Government are investing a lot of money in schools on good relationship education, I am concerned that children will start to realise that what they are seeing at home is not a good relationship, but they will think that is what love looks like because that is what their mum and dad do with partners they see. In the context of what the commissioner and services are to do, what should we do to make sure that that part of the Government’s work in the Department for Education is linked to the sorts of the service you you provide and the possibilities in the Bill?

Sally Noden: I think it is about linking up with community services—making sure that there are the resources within community services. We talked about Operation Encompass, which I think is fantastic, but it needs to go further. There needs to be the support. It is great to do the silent monitoring or to enable the teacher to help that child through the day, but are we actually saying, “It’s okay—it’s okay to go back home”? We have to be honest: children will be going back home, so there needs to be an open discussion and resources to be able to work with a child to make sense of that and enable them to be resilient. There are services to support women who are in abusive relationships and plan to leave, and there is support to enable them while they are in that relationship. We need that for children as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Carolyn Harris]

Q Do you know that in Wales there is quite a big training programme on domestic violence training? Is it better in Wales, because we have more people trained to identify victims?

Emily McCarron: I cannot comment on the specific situation in Wales. We have identified a gap overall in the NHS, which could be providing much more training—or there is an opportunity for those healthcare professionals to intervene and to provide support, as well as to identify.

[Sarah Newton]

Q Actually, I can answer your question, Carolyn. Yes, it is very good in Wales, because they have compulsory IRIS—Identification and Referral to Improve Safety—training in the NHS, which is definitely something we should do in the England NHS. That is why they have got the highest detection rates in the UK of domestic abuse among older people.

Emily, you gave us very good written evidence on a different type of domestic abuse for older people from what we have been talking about. We have very much been talking about intimate partners, and this is really about adult family members abusing the older members of their family, or people with disabilities in their family. Perhaps you could talk to us a bit about what you know about that and the prevalence of it. What more do we need to do to reflect on it? For the first time, that type of domestic abuse is being captured in legislation.

Emily McCarron: We know that domestic abuse is a gendered crime. However, at Age UK we receive about two calls a day from older people, their families and their support about this issue. Older men and women, as they age, are more likely to experience domestic abuse at the hands of family members—not just intimate partners. Older people are almost equally as likely to be killed by a partner or spouse as by their adult children or grandchildren. We are very pleased to see the definition of domestic abuse expanded, particularly with regard to the inclusion of statutory inquiries into suspected financial abuse, which is very relevant to older people.

We would like that definition to be expanded further so that it recognises the whole array of family relationships and the complexities and vulnerabilities that arise in those relationships as a person ages and their care needs develop and change. We are calling for the definition to be expanded to include abuse that is perpetrated not just by family members and intimate partners, but carers, because they provide care in a domestic setting to a person whose vulnerability has increased as they have aged. That is why we are calling for the definition to be expanded. We must recognise that older people experience domestic abuse not just at the hands of intimate partners; it is a new array of family members, neighbours, friends and carers.