Victims and Prisoners Bill (Second sitting)

Elliot Colburn Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th June 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Jess Phillips]

Q For example, we already made a duty on the local authorities: unitary, tier 1 local authorities had the duty to offer refuge accommodation to victims of domestic abuse, and had to give priority to victims of domestic abuse in housing. In reality, that priority means that a person is almost certainly on a waiting list for a year—in fact they would be lucky if it were a year. Similarly, there is access to children’s services. The two biggest areas of victims’ lives—in the case of the duty to collaborate, which is only for domestic and sexual abuse—are housing and children’s services. The vast majority of this will fall to the local authority. Once you have this duty, is there any sense that it will not just be another thing that creates long waiting lists?

Cllr Bell: The pressure will increase. I was the previous cabinet member for community safety, which included housing, domestic abuse services, homelessness, asylum and refugees, as well as community safety and our band A properties, which are for most urgent need. Domestic abuse is in that band A category. A person could still be waiting for a minimum of a year.

Ultimately, our refuges fill up very quickly. They remain at capacity and that can be seen right across the country. That is not specific to my authority either, so you will see it right across the landscape. There are not enough houses being built to provide accommodation that is safe for people. I know that that is not necessarily what we are here to talk about today, but you do have to address that. That is why I have a concern about the duty to collaborate. Obviously, I want it to work. I want us all to work together, but I just do not think that the duty alone is enough.

[Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)]

Q I will stick with the theme of duty to collaborate, and I should probably declare an interest as a former local government councillor and a paid employee of an integrated care board in the past. We know full well from the example of the integration of health and social care how even getting the NHS and local government to work closely together has been a challenge. In fact, that is still a challenge even to this day. Catherine, where do you think the responsibility should lie for overseeing the implementation of this collaboration at a local level? Should it be police and crime commissioners, the NHS, or the councils? Where do you think that it would be best placed?

Catherine Hinwood: I am going to talk to you about the implementation of the serious violence duty and the way in which that worked, and some of the lessons that I think we should learn from that. Under the serious violence duty, police and crime commissioners were given the responsibility of overseeing the implementation of the duty and overseeing all of the funding for labour costs, which were given to responsible authorities for the set-up of the duty, as well as allocating the money for commissioning costs, which, again, were given once a new duty was put on responsible authorities.

What we saw with the way in which PCCs have taken that responsibility is that it has had a very justice-focused lens in the way that they decided to distribute labour costs. We know from the Home Office’s implementation work that a significant amount of money that ought to have been spread evenly across responsible authorities has not gone to ICBs. A significant number of ICBs did not receive their implementation costs.

What we have learned from the serious violence duty is that if you want to have some kind of equality of arms across responsible authorities to be able to ensure that they are all implementing the duty— I think that it is a great point about wanting to see ICBs much more in this space; they are talking about the fact that they want to be more in this space. If you put a PCC, for example, as the lead body—the convener—in relation to this, then the implementation of it needs to be done in a way that you are ensuring that funding is distributed equally and that responsibilities are clearly set out. I am not sure that I would put a lead authority or a lead body in place for the duty. There must be a way of ensuring equality between each of them.

[Elliot Colburn]

Q Surely someone has to oversee this. Who will pull the bodies together?

Catherine Hinwood: The way that I have read the legislation and the way that I understand the guidance is being considered is that there will be local flexibility as to what kind of body will be the convening body. For example, one area might say that they will use an integrated care partnership, one might use a violence reduction unit, and another might use a criminal justice board. If you build that flexibility in, I do not know how you can then give one body the oversight for the implementation. It might be that a national body needs to oversee it, I really do not know. But this is the kind of stuff that we need to work through, and work through in the guidance.

[The Chair]

Order. I will suspend the Committee for Divisions in the Chamber. I will suspend for 15 minutes for the first Division and 10 minutes for the second and any subsequent ones. We are expecting at least two votes, so we will suspend for at least 25 minutes.