Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Glenda Jackson Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2011 Commons Chamber

The UK Border Agency has recognised the particular difficulties experienced by people in this position, and the Government helpfully identify four factors relevant to why legal aid should be provided in those cases. They include such things as the risk that victims will stay trapped in abusive relationships for fear of jeopardising their immigration situation; the trauma they might have suffered, which often makes it difficult to cope with making an application; time pressures that apply in immigration proceedings; and difficulties of access to a properly designated immigration adviser. I agree that those are all important issues and protection is needed in those cases, but the point is that those circumstances do not merely apply to those who fall within the domestic violence immigration rule. There are several other situations in which a person’s immigration status is dependent on a partner where the person might be a victim of domestic abuse and might therefore be trapped in an abusive relationship because of fears about their immigration status.

[Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

There is another element in the situation to which the hon. Lady refers. Indeed, I have more than one constituency case where the individual being abused comes, as members of their family have told me, from a culture where such attacks are never reported to the police and these women are expected to suffer in silence. In many instances, these are elderly women.

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, which raised a really important point. It underlines the fact that we need from the Government a fuller explanation of exactly how they are going to consider the first half of amendment 113.

Let me finish by saying that the people I have particularly in mind are victims of domestic abuse who are not necessarily probationary partners. They might be a partner of someone with limited leave or of a person exercising European free movement rights. Although they do not fall within the domestic violence immigration rule, they might well face the very same problems as those who do. I look forward to hearing more from the Minister about how he intends to take forward the concerns raised in amendment 113 and that have been mentioned by other Opposition Members tonight. I very much hope that he can offer some serious reassurance for the future.

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[Mr Buckland]

It is a pleasure to contribute to the Report stage of the Bill. As a Government Back Bencher, I sat through and took an active part in the debates in Committee. They were comprehensive and dealt with many issues, not least the definition of domestic violence and the proposed criterion by which applicants may in future be able to benefit from representation via legal aid. I make no apology for having expressed, in an earlier intervention, what I considered to be reasonable concern about the application of the criterion. However, I think it important for us to bear in mind that the debate is not about the rights of women as against an approach that would deny them those rights.

Although Opposition Members have made some excellent contributions, one intervention on the speech of the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) betrayed a complete misunderstanding of the Government’s approach to the granting of legal aid to vulnerable people. No one is suggesting that there should be an end to legal aid for victims of domestic violence. Far from it. The Government are saying that there should be that protection, there should be that level playing field, and there should be that intervention. People who have been victims of domestic abuse—I prefer that term, because I consider it to be a wider and fairer definition—may be women or men, and they come from a variety of backgrounds. Such abuse knows no social or economic division.

I speak on the basis of nearly 20 years of experience, having prosecuted and defended in cases in which domestic violence was a factor. It is, perhaps, appropriate for me to chart from my personal experience as a criminal legal aid lawyer—although, as I have not practised in civil legal aid in recent years, I have no particular relevant interest to declare—the evolution of the courts’ approach to domestic violence. I remember the days when the phrase “It’s only a domestic” was used to describe these scenarios. That was wholly unacceptable, wholly wrong, and, according to our present standards, archaic. We have come a long way since those unfortunate days, and the courts have rightly been brought face to face with the realities of violence in the home.

Having met hundreds of victims of violence and abuse, I know that many of them do consider themselves to have been victims of domestic violence in the first place. They are people who were involved in a loving relationship, many of whom harbour the hope that they may return to their abusive partners. They are confused and vulnerable. Many are caring for children who have witnessed, or have been a party to, what has happened in the home. They do not know where to turn.

Giving evidence in court is a tremendous ordeal for such people, and many of them do not go through with it because they see it as a way of reliving their experiences in the home. The level and variation of their vulnerabilities is quite complex. I think, for example, of women who, having nowhere else to turn, go to refuges such as the one in south Swindon, in my constituency, which provides an excellent service for vulnerable women and their families. They are not mentally in a position to start immediate proceedings, whether those proceedings constitute a complaint to the police or the instruction of a solicitor. At that stage, when they come to the refuge, they have nowhere else to go and are literally in a state of desperation. They are not mentally prepared for the ordeal of having to go to the authorities. We must bear that in mind when considering the test applied to the finding of fact.

I know that the Opposition had that matter in mind when drafting amendment 74. I have looked very carefully at their proposal, and I sympathise with the motive behind it. Some of it has merit, but there are problems with it because it would not cure the particular mischief that Opposition Members have said could happen. None of us wants there to be any artificial inducement for people to claim that there has been domestic abuse when it has not happened, and my concern is that the amendment would not shut the door on that problem. The Government are right to identify that potential problem, and it was mentioned time and again in the consultation to which the Minister referred.

[Glenda Jackson]

With all due respect, I am having difficulty following the logic of the hon. Gentleman’s argument. He seems to be basing it on the belief that the Government’s desire to find fact is central and essential, yet he has already stated that many women who suffer severe domestic violence are in such a mentally discombobulated state that they find it impossible to speak to the authorities. We have all read recently of scandalous cases in which the authorities have markedly failed to protect women, even though the facts have been written in capital letters. Will he clarify his argument?

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[Glenda Jackson]

In the hon. Gentleman’s argument—and, more centrally, in the Government’s argument—no consideration is given to the possible consequence that what I regard as a crime may lose that classification of criminality, depending on whether the sufferer is or is not granted legal aid. Surely that is a very dangerous road for us to go down.

[Mr Buckland]

I am, as always, grateful to the hon. Lady because she makes measured contributions, and I shall respond to her point. A distinction must be drawn between the scenario in question, which is a civil legal aid scenario, and the concern that she expresses about the potential decriminalisation of what I agree is a serious crime. The tests are different; as the hon. Lady knows, the evidential tests are different, and, if anything, the evidential hurdle would be higher in the criminal scenario.

I have some sympathy with those Opposition Members who said that a uniform definition of domestic violence, not just in the legal context but across the whole activity of Government, would be welcome and a step forward. The Association of Chief Police Officers definition is largely sound, although I do have one criticism of it: it does not mention children. Domestic violence can, of course, be directed towards, or be conducted in the presence of, children. The restriction to adults alone is therefore perhaps a deficiency, and all of us, as legislators and campaigners, should reconsider that.