Domestic Abuse Bill (Second sitting)

Huw Merriman Excerpts

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

[Gillian Keegan]

Q It is fascinating to hear all about the services, and the people of Newcastle are obviously very lucky to have them. We heard in other evidence sessions that not having services such as these is often a barrier to women going further to seek out more services, because they do not think their children will get the services required. Do you have a view on how widely available they are across England and Wales? What difference will the role of the Domestic Abuse Commissioner make in ensuring that when she and her team are mapping all these services, it will help to improve the availability of such services across the country for children affected by domestic abuse?

Eleanor Briggs: The research that we did with Stirling University looked at 30 local authorities and at where services were available and where they were not. It varies a lot. In two thirds of local authorities involved in the study, there were some barriers to accessing services. In 10% of areas, there were no support services available. In a third of areas, access to services was restricted by postcode. We know it really varies, which relates to the lack of duty and the instability around funding being an issue.

We really welcome the role of the commissioner, and it is fantastic to see that. We welcome that she has a specific remit on children and that she will have a child advisor as part of her office. We would really like to see children included in the statutory definition, just to strengthen it and ensure that it is absolutely clear. We would also like to see a bit more clarity in the wording—when she looks at the provision of services, it should include children’s services as well, because it could be a real tool if it was absolutely clear that she is going to look at that.

[Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

Q Thank you very much for the interesting evidence. Can I just come back to your point on people under 16 being victims? The Bill states:

“Behaviour of a person (‘A’) towards another person (‘B’) is ‘domestic abuse’ if…A and B are each aged 16 or over”.

Are you suggesting it should be the case that, in that scenario, B does not have to be aged 16 or over? Is that what you were driving towards?

Eleanor Briggs: No.

[Huw Merriman]

Sorry—I beg your pardon.

Eleanor Briggs: It is really confusing, and we have spent literally hours thinking about this. We want to keep the domestic abuse age at 16, because of the issues around child abuse that we have talked about. We are working on various amendments. We would like to see something added, probably under clause 1(5), so that the impact of domestic abuse on children is recognised in the definition. The offence would be between A and B, who would be over 16, but then further down we would have the impact recognised on children, as happens at the moment in the Australian model. It is complicated legally, but we are working with a number of barristers and there are options that we are pursuing about how that could fit.

[Huw Merriman]

I have probably missed it—if so, my apologies—but, from a legal perspective, what would you be wanting to occur as a result of that addition at paragraph 5?

Eleanor Briggs: We would want it to be linking in to the commissioner and to the new MHCLG duty that we have there, so that it is absolutely clear. The notes with the Bill also make very clear that this definition will be used well beyond the scope of the Bill. It will be used by frontline practitioners as well. We are really passionate that that has to be in there, so that when healthcare or the police are responding to a domestic abuse incident, they are recognising children in there. We know from the joint targeted area inspection reports that were done in 2016 that a lot of adult services just did not ask any questions about children. We think that we need it there in a definition, so that everyone is aware. The Children’s Act is great, but it does not do all of that, and a lot of other practitioners will not be looking at it.

[Huw Merriman]

So it is a similar concept to the discussion we were having about recognising the gender imbalance and that being on the face, but there was also a feeling that that could be covered by the statutory guidance that comes out. Could that not be a place for what you just described there with regard to children, in terms of the guidance, and knock on to the providers of the services?

Eleanor Briggs: We do welcome the guidance, and that is definitely a step forward. But for us, that is not going to be strong enough. We do not feel that you can guarantee that everyone is going to read the guidance—or when they see the guidance they might see children and think, “Actually, that is just relevant to children’s services”. If you have got it on the face of the Bill it will be much stronger, and we can guarantee that we are getting the proper response that we need.

[Huw Merriman]

Thank you.

[The Chair]

Do any Members wish to ask further questions? I thank both witnesses for their contributions today and discharge them from the Committee.

Examination of Witnesses

Emily McCarron and Jo Todd gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vernon Coaker]

Q Emily, could you say a little about the difficulty with elderly people disclosing the fact that they are victims of this sort of abuse, and how difficult that must be? This morning, somebody raised the issue of older people, and I think this is a problem as you get older—hopefully, younger people have a different attitude, which is that you don’t suffer in silence. Have you made any estimate of the number of people that this affects? What initiatives have you found that have made a difference? What can we do about it, given that it is not only physical abuse and the economic abuse that Sarah was just talking about, but emotional abuse, control and those sorts of things?

Emily McCarron: You are right to say that older people often suffer in silence because they face a range of barriers to reporting the abuse. In many instances, it might be that they have suffered from the abuse for a very long time and are simply resigned to it or feel that no one is really listening to them. They might be very frightened. It is also the case that some older people have cognitive and physical decline, which makes it much harder to report. We know that there are very few services available to older people. We have reports from older people that they think that domestic abuse services are not for them; they think they are for younger women and do not want to take up the places of younger women and children, so are reluctant to report the abuse. It is also due to fear and a reliance on people financially. In many instances, they might not want to leave the perpetrator, so it is about what the correct response to that person’s needs is. That is why we are calling for a better response from healthcare professionals.

As it stands, the Bill is very focused on the criminal justice response, and that may not always be the only response that is right for older people. We are calling for better co-ordination and links between the criminal justice system, the healthcare system and local authorities, for a more co-ordinated response that is also linked up to social care, which obviously plays a part.

We are also calling for greater links with local authorities. At the moment, the possibility of domestic abuse is not always fully considered in assessments under the Care Act 2014, so we are calling for a better understanding of it. Certainly some successful training programmes have been delivered specifically to train people up on the needs of older people, because it is not always the criminal justice response that is needed.

[Huw Merriman]

Q Emily, may I take you back to your suggestion that the definition be widened to include carers? I can absolutely see the logic of that, but is there not a danger? Currently, “personally connected” effectively means being or having been in a relationship or being a relative. If you extended that to carers, why would you not extend it to people who provide paid services to the home, for example? There is a danger that you go from “personally connected” towards “comes into contact”. Where would you stop? I wonder if you have thought about that in terms of extending the definition.

Emily McCarron: We have. We see that there is a role for the Care Quality Commission to play in ensuring sufficient safeguards for professionals who provide paid professional care. We are going on the evidence we see at Age UK, on what the calls to our information and advice service tell us, and on case studies. We are seeing that, in addition to intimate partner abuse, older people raise concerns about the abuse they experience at the hands of unpaid carers. I can see that there would be some concerns about how far that goes, but we are just going on the evidence.

We see that older people are experiencing abuse at the hands of their carers. As I have said, that is related to their vulnerabilities, and often that person is the only person who they see—they are not in contact with many other people. We are seeing evidence of the same coercive control and of older people adapting their behaviour to deal with the abuse that they experience—for example, sticking to their rooms and avoiding all conflict. That is exactly the same pattern of abuse and coercive control that we see in other examples of domestic abuse. That is really what is driving our desire for this amendment to expand the definition of abuse.

[Huw Merriman]

Q Clearly, this is an area that you would think needs addressing. Did you consider whether there are other vehicles to address that point or is this neatly fitting?

Emily McCarron: I do not think that it is ever neat—I do not necessarily think that anything fits neatly into this area. There are other opportunities beyond the Bill. There are opportunities to look at the guidance for the Care Act and how we address that. There are also discussions around the definition of coercive control and whether that is always in the domestic setting. The Bill provides an opportunity to improve the lives of older people who are experiencing domestic abuse. That is why we are focusing on this as a vehicle to make some change and have some relevance to the lives of older people who are experiencing abuse.

[Gillian Keegan]

Q There is no doubt that this is a very big area that is relatively new in terms of our considering it. As you say, older people are definitely much more vulnerable, particularly with regard to intimate care. They are much more isolated, and I guess they are more conscious and concerned about loneliness too, which could be the consequences of taking any action. I have encountered a number of distressing cases involving either carers and the abuse of elderly victims, or other residents abusing people’s relatives in care homes. Obviously, the Government want to ensure that we get this right and make domestic abuse everybody’s business in order to try to identify and help victims, and I suppose that is even more critical with elderly people. What do you think needs to change to ensure that the response to older victims is as good as it can be? How do you see the role of the Domestic Abuse Commissioner in helping us on that journey?

Emily McCarron: The first step is the need to correctly identify that this is happening. A budget of £100,000 was allocated to support older people experiencing domestic abuse. While we are certainly not arguing for resources to be diverted away from younger people, that indicated to us that this is not recognised as an issue. In part, as I have explained, that is a data issue: we just do not quite know how many older people experience domestic abuse. We have quite a stark figure that one in four victims of domestic homicides are over the age of 60. We believe that is a consequence of the fact that older people are not accessing the services they need.

Really, this is about recognising that this is an issue for older people, that it is quite a hidden issue, that more needs to be done and that their particular needs must be recognised in terms of the response. The response should not just be a criminal justice response; it should also be about healthcare, social care, housing and the provision of services. On asking the commissioner, this is about recognising the issue and allocating resources—or the Government response—in accordance with the number of older people who experience it. It is quite a stark issue, but it is still very hidden.