Domestic Abuse Bill (Fourth sitting)

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 4th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 9th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)]

Just to recap, I was setting out to the Committee that there are many forms of exploitation that can take place in all walks of life. I was giving the example of county line gangs grooming and recruiting young children with, frankly, paltry offers given the price they pay for the items they receive, such as food or a new pair of trainers. The police have been imaginative in dealing with gang leaders, including through prosecution under modern slavery legislation, because they draw out before the court that element of grooming and long-term exploitation and manipulation. I give that just as an example.

I completely understand where the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley is coming from, but we have tried to guard against addressing all forms of exploitative behaviour in the Bill, because we do not want inadvertently to dilute that central golden thread that runs through all of our understanding of domestic abuse: namely, that it is focused around a significant personal relationship, whether as a family member or as a partner. That is the core of the definition. If an unpaid carer is a family member, they will be caught by the definition. If they are a partner—as she said, many people have taken on caring responsibilities in the last couple of months because of the covid-19 crisis—they are covered by the Bill. I would not want anyone to think that carers per se are excluded from the Bill, but we have focused the definition around the central point of the personally connected relationship.

Abuse of disabled people by their carers can be covered by existing legislation. Section 42 of the Care Act 2014 places a duty on local authorities to carry out safeguarding inquiries if they have reason to suspect that an adult in their area with care and support needs is at risk of abuse or neglect. There have been steady overall increases in the number of concerns raised and inquiries conducted under that section. In 2018-19, for concluded section 42 inquiries where a risk was identified, the reported outcome was to have either removed or reduced the risk to the individual in 89% of inquiries, which is an increase of 63% from 2017-18.

The statutory guidance supporting the Care Act also places a duty on local authorities to ensure that the services they commission are safe, effective and of high quality. The Care Quality Commission plays a key monitoring role to ensure that care providers have effective systems to help keep adults safe from abuse and neglect. The offence of ill treatment or wilful neglect provided for in section 20 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 was introduced specifically to tackle the abuse of people who are dependent on care services. In addition, we have introduced tougher inspections of care services by the CQC and made sure that the police, councils and the NHS work together to help vulnerable adults.

The plight of disabled victims of domestic abuse will feature in the statutory guidance. Indeed, there is the national statement of expectations document for local commissioners—we have not discussed it much because it is not strictly on the Bill—through which specialist needs are and will be addressed.

I hope that we have reassured the Committee that we are alive to the risks to people who are disabled. Some carers who fall into the “personally connected” definition will fall foul of the Bill, but for those carers who do not, there is already existing legislation to tackle exploitative behaviour where it transpires. With that, I invite the hon. Lady to withdraw the amendment.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for her thoughtful response. I appreciate what she said about the Care Quality Commission and its coverage, but it would have had absolutely no jurisdiction in the cases I outlined. Disabled victims are telling us that they are experiencing domestic abuse and feel that they are not in the definition. I look forward to the statement of expectations very much; I am pleased to hear that there will be expectations on commissioning in this area, but we want to get these people in the Bill. We will push the amendment to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Liz Saville Roberts]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. In the legislation, the considerations will be about how to apply that and how to do so consistently. The training that is available for police officers and other support bodies will be critical. At this time, I beg that we make the legislation as future-proof as possible, because we have experienced something that is different to how the Bill was drafted. We must consider that now; we do not want to be playing catch-up.

To come back to my point, although I entirely understand that there is a debate between what we mean by the location of the abuse—in the household—and relationship abuse, we have found ourselves in our households far more.

[Jess Phillips]

On people who live together, we must not assume that we are talking only about young, trendy people in Brighton who live together in a house share. In my constituency, there are very vulnerable people who live in houses in multiple occupation for years on end, with almost no support from the structure that is meant to support them. Landlords often receive the extra housing benefit without providing any of the support we would hope to see. We are talking about—I see it every day in my constituency—cases of very vulnerable people who may have suffered a pattern of abuse living alongside people who, also because of their vulnerabilities, are very likely to be abusing them.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

That broader awareness of what constitutes a household has been brought home to us in the past few months, as well as the nature of the tensions that can exist in such households. The thing that comes to my mind is younger households where house-sharing is common. One can imagine those are quite small households. But this applies more broadly than that.

If we were to assume that the nature of the coercive or abusive relationship is based on whether there is a sexual relationship between the two individuals in a formal sense, we would close our eyes to the wider experience and we should consider whether we should capture them in this legislation. That also applies where there are informal sexual relationships, which can be imposed on people to a degree in certain household environments.

I am aware that we have already voted on the specific aspect of this in relation to people and their carer. I would be grateful if the Minister would consider our experiences in the past few months and the inherent tension between whether we are looking at this on the basis of household—where someone is physically located—and those people who are intimately related, or whether this is an opportunity to capture a wider question.

--- Later in debate ---

Within a week, the Secretary of State had gone ahead with the appointment, against the advice of Parliament, and there has been a very fractious relationship ever since. It has never been an appointment that has wholly had the support of the sector that the adjudicator was appointed to represent. Even though that example is from a slightly tangential area of policy, the principle still stands very strong.

[Jess Phillips]

I am not sure whether my hon. Friend was going to come on to this, but exactly the same thing happened when the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission was selected. Both the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Women and Equalities Committee put in complaints that were nothing to do with his character or his abilities, but specifically to do with his running Government contracts. That was completely ignored by the Secretary of State, and I am afraid to say that that conflict of interest has been used by people who are potentially under question from the EHRC at the moment to suggest that the commission is in some way compromised. This has an effect on people’s ability to do the job.

[Peter Kyle]

I am grateful for that additional example. I am very aware of the case study that my hon. Friend refers to, even though I was not going to bring it into my few words. It illustrates an incredibly important point: having the support of Parliament is an empowering force behind any public appointment. Furthermore, it offers increased credibility. It starts with a commissioner having the respect of—and a functional relationship with—not just the Government who made the appointment, but Parliament.

In our system of democracy, we take very seriously the relationship between Government and Parliament. Parliament will play a part in scrutinising, so if it has a hand in appointing, there is buy-in from the start. It really is a win-win for Parliament to be involved via the Select Committees.

The appointment has already gone ahead, and I do not think that anybody would say that Nicole is either not qualified for the job or not a welcome appointment to it—but this is certainly something that we need to think about for the future. In my earlier example, it is very clear that even though the public appointment went ahead and had the backing of Government and Ministers, the role has never lived to up to the expectations that were set for it when it was first created. I implore Ministers not just to submit future commissioner appointments to an appointment hearing with the Home Affairs Committee, but to give the Committee the power of veto.

I realise that giving power away is not in the DNA of the Home Office. It is not the normal trajectory that we see from Home Office Ministers, but there are times when giving power away is a very empowering act that leads to a much more functional relationship between Government and Parliament, Parliament and the appointee, and the appointee and Government.

The Home Office has already appointed the commissioner, and it is worth putting it on the record at this point that the Joint Committee on the Draft Domestic Abuse Bill, which scrutinised the previous and similar legislation to that which we are examining today, was not happy that that happened. It said, in paragraph 287 of its report, that

“we were surprised to learn that the process of recruiting a designate Commissioner had almost been completed before Parliament had had any opportunity to consider—still less to recommend any changes to—the draft Bill setting out proposals for the Commissioner’s remit and powers… We consider this unsatisfactory.”

I agree, and I suspect many Members in this room agree. They are free to do so, because there will not be a vote at the end of our discussion on this clause.

We all appreciate the enthusiasm of Ministers and the Home Office to get this appointment out the door, but I have to say that, even though we agree with and celebrate the appointment of Nicole Jacobs, the Minister and Government got away with it this time. Had that appointment not had the backing of the sector and of Parliament, it would be very hard to establish the credibility that this role needs within the sector.

I hope that my words will have made an impression. We purposefully did not put down an amendment to this clause, because we did not want to press this point, but we do want to impress it on people in the strongest possible terms that the joint relationship between Parliament and Government in making the appointment in future is something that will tangibly strengthen the role.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

I do not think that anyone read into the hon. Gentleman’s constructive comments about this appointment anything other than that he was doing his job of scrutinising the wording of the Bill, and I am pleased that the designate commissioner has managed to gain such support in such a short period of time.

I commend the clause to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 3 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 4

Funding

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

[Jess Phillips]

These clauses all relate to the powers of the domestic abuse commissioner; there is a huge area of the Bill about her powers and how this role is going to work. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hove and the Minister have said, we all welcome the commissioner.

I want to make some brief comments about the issue that clause 4 deals with, which is funding. It arises from a constructive concern that I had during the evidence sessions and on Second Reading, which is that it appears that if there is something that the Government have not yet got an answer for, possibly for a completely good reason, there is a tiny bit of a willingness for them to say, “We’re going to ask the commissioner to do this thing for us.”

For example, on Second Reading, there was a push from all sides of the House, as there was from the sector and from the commissioner herself, around the provision of community-based services. Off the top of my head, the statistic is that 70% of all domestic violence victims are supported in community-based services. The vast majority of people will never end up in refuge accommodation, and that is something that we should continue to facilitate; refuges are absolutely not for everyone.

What concerns me and what we heard from some in the sector—I think it came from the voice in the room that was Suzanne from SafeLives—is that what was announced on Second Reading related to a mapping exercise rather than a duty. In the Bill, we see—it seems like we will see it in many weeks’ time—a duty on refuge accommodation, which we certainly all welcome, but there is definitely a desire, which I share, to see a similar duty on community services.

It seems that rather than a duty, the Government are proposing a mapping exercise—they proposed it on Second Reading—by the commissioner, to understand what community-based support exists. As Suzanne told the Committee in her evidence—I have to say, I think I could probably do it here now. If I did not come to the Committee tomorrow, I could probably map out community services, because droves and droves of evidence have been gathered about what community-based support services exist. I feel for the Government, because people like me put in questions such as, “How many bed spaces are there?”, when I know full well what the answer is. I understand the concern and the need to map services, and to make sure that we are funding things.

What concerned me a little on Second Reading and in the evidence sessions was that there were a huge number of questions from Members asking the sector what they felt the commissioner should be doing: “What is the commissioner going to do for my group of women? What is the commissioner going to do about this and that?”. They were completely reasonable questions to ask, although largely they were asked not of the commissioner, but of the voluntary sector aides and the victims. With the greatest respect to Nicole and her position, I am not sure most victims of domestic violence are too concerned with who the commissioner is, but the sector is.

What concerns me is the commissioner’s funding model. I know that there was some argy-bargy and push and pull about the number of days, which letters presented to the Committee on the previous Bill said would be increased. What worries me on staffing, which is dealt with in the next clause, and funding is that the commissioner will end up with all these jobs because, rather than taking direct action, we do another review or more mapping. It starts to ramp up the amount of funding that somebody will need to take on all this extra responsibility.

I want to be absolutely certain and to understand from the Minister what the mechanism is if the commissioner says: “I cannot afford to do this exercise that you have said I should do because I no longer have the funding.” What I do not want to see is Parliament scrutinising the domestic abuse commissioner—she and whoever takes the role after her will undoubtedly many times in their career sit in front of the Home Affairs Select Committee—and her being forced to answer: “I couldn’t afford to do this exercise or this report into x because we just didn’t have the budget.”

There seems to be a tendency to push things on to the commissioner that would once upon a time have sat with civil servants in the Home Office. I want an understanding of how the review process and funding will be taken forward and what grounds it will take to make a case to increase the budget, including increases that might be needed for the local boards that are associated with this part of the Bill. I therefore seek reassurance from the Minister.

There is a game that gets played—although certainly not by the Ministers in this Committee—of the devolution of blame. We devolve power, whether it is to Wales or Scotland or to local authorities, whereby the Government hold the whip hand. I am certain that all Governments of all flavours have done this. The Government hold the whip hand in deciding the funding formula or within what constraints that money may be spent. When problems arise we say, “Well, that’s Birmingham City Council’s fault because they are rubbish.” Again, if I was given £1 for every time I heard the invocation of the Welsh NHS, I could fund all community services. What worries me and what I do not want to see is an underfunded commissioner, with the Government saying, “That is the commissioner’s responsibility,” given that ultimately all this policy—everything that flows from the Bill and everything that happens in every single one of our local authorities—

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

We have heard several times today already that the Bill is landmark legislation and that we should be future-proofing it in certain ways. Do I understand from what the hon. Lady says that we have to future-proof it against undermining public confidence, through arguments about whether it has been sufficiently funded and who is to blame for that—and should we take the opportunity at this point to make sure that that argument cannot arise?

[Jess Phillips]

Absolutely. I am not asking for a bottomless pot of funding for the commissioner for ever and ever. I am sure that, even if the Minister were to ask really nicely, the Treasury would tell her no—although it would seem that that is not so much the case now, given that my husband is furloughed at home. The reality, though, is that I do not want to put the commissioner into that position. The Minister invoked the position of the independent anti-slavery commissioner. Of course, we have seen—perhaps not from this appointment, but from previous appointments, when Kevin Hyland was commissioner—that he very much felt there were problems in that particular area. Will the Minister reassure me, first, that we will not be expecting the commissioner to do the job that we do here, the legislators, people with a mandate and elected to office, and that we will not apportion blame where children’s services, for example in local areas, have not been suitably encouraged by the commissioner; and secondly, that where there is a real need for her to do something on which she will then have to answer to a Select Committee, for example, that she will be resourced properly?

[Victoria Atkins]

I appreciate that this debate has been probing clause 4 and the resources available to the commissioner. We have provided the commissioner with an overall annual budget of over £1 million, which, among other things, will provide for 10 to12 staff to support the commissioner in carrying out her functions. In addition to the money from the Home Office, under clause 8(3) we have given the commissioner the power to charge a person—and when we say “person”, we are not talking about an individual but an authority or an organisation—for providing them with advice or assistance under subsection (2). We appreciate that exercises such as mapping community-based services will take a great deal of staff time and resources: it will take relationships across the country.

On the subject of mapping, I remember that just after I was appointed, two and a half years ago, my officials had done a very quick and dirty analysis of community-based services in a particular county—I will not name the county. They had found that there were something like 80 charities in one county who were working to help victims of domestic abuse. They ranged from the largest, national-type charities to the sort of charities where it is my great privilege to meet and discuss their work with their founders, who perhaps have set up a charity to commemorate a loved one who has been killed by a partner, for example. In their individual ways these charities work sometimes at a very local level to provide services. I wish that trying to map that was as easy as one would like it to be, but it is a difficult task, which is why we are asking the commissioner to do that for us. That is not because she is going to be in charge of policy creation but because, with the powers she will have under the Bill, the commissioner will be able to request that information from the public authority, as set out in the Bill. Then she will be able to produce advice and a report.

That touches on the point that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley raised earlier about the meaning of the word “encourage”, and I apologise for not responding to it sooner. We believe that clause 14 is very powerful when read in conjunction with clauses 13 and 15. Clause 14 sets out the powers to request information and assistance from public authorities. Clause 15 sets out the requirement that the public authority must respond within 56 days to the report or the analysis by the commissioner. They report not just to the commissioner, but to the Secretary of State. I do not want to cast aspersions on any particular type of public authority; the public authorities mentioned in clause 14 include nationally known organisations as well as local councils and authorities. If there is a report by the commissioner condemning the conduct of one of those public authorities, and the authority has to respond within 56 days, that is quite a powerful tool for the commissioner. As we have already discussed, the commissioner is also required to lay annual reports before Parliament. It may well be that, as part of her general functions under clause 6, she will want to express her views on the conduct of public authorities in her annual report. Again, I do not want to direct her—she is independent—but this is a way to keep the commissioner and public authorities accountable.

On funding, we know that being in Government is about making tough choices. We have funding for the Home Office to be allocated across a whole host of deserving causes, including policing, counter-terrorism and maintaining a fair and effective immigration system. The budget we have set aside for the domestic abuse commissioner is what we have allocated. In setting that budget, we have looked at the budgets of other commissioners to ensure that it compares favourably, which it does. We will keep the budget under review, and the commissioner will discuss with the Secretary of State her budgetary needs for the forthcoming year. We have provided the commissioner with the available resources, because we want her to be able to fulfil her functions as set out in clause 6. It is not about attributing blame, but about trying to ensure that this new, powerful appointment will help us tackle domestic abuse and that, at both national and local levels, we can utilise what she will bring with her laser-like focus on domestic abuse. Her power and authority flow from clause 6, and I hope we will see real differences—not just nationally but in our constituencies over time, as public authorities realise that they are accountable not just to the public, but to the commissioner.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 4 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 5

Staff etc

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

I assure the hon. Gentleman that appointments to the commissioner’s office—precisely because they are civil servants—will of comply with civil service terms and conditions and recruitment practice. I hope colleagues will view those as being of a very high standard—objective and meritocratic. As to urging the Home Office to move speedily, I take that challenge forward. We will use our best endeavours because we want the commissioner to be as powerful as she can be as quickly as possible.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 5 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 6

General functions of Commissioner

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

[Jess Phillips]

I note that we are having a wide-ranging debate, and jumping from one clause to another, and I will take some advantage of the fact that the clause is about the general functions of the commissioner to give some general, broad input on this clause and some of those to follow.

As has already been said by pretty much everyone —probably even including myself, although it is hard to remember now—we very much welcome Nicole’s appointment, and we welcome the invention of a commissioner full stop. In fact, I remember not knowing this building at all well and being brought down here, when the now Victims’ Commissioner was a Member of Parliament. The Labour party was running a women’s manifesto-building session, in one of the rooms here for victims of domestic violence and those who worked with them. It was long before I even stood for the council, and I just came to this building and gave evidence. One of the things we pushed for then, probably in about 2011, was the creation of a commissioner, so it is incredibly welcome that we are now starting to see those powers come into play. I hope that they will be a catalyst for change in domestic abuse policy. They will certainly allow us to find gaps—or, as the Minister has outlined, over-supply—and, more importantly, solutions to fill those gaps.

In the Joint Committee report published on 14 June, a number of concerns were raised by witnesses and the Committee about the role of the commissioner. Those concerns were also raised at the aforementioned evidence session. Today, I still think that some of them have not been allayed. My hon. Friend the Member for Hove has gone over some of those issues, but there are a few things I wanted to pick up specifically around the commissioner’s general functions.

The domestic abuse commissioner has the potential to effect real change in the way domestic abuse services operate. However, for that potential to be realised, we must first ensure that the Bill is amended to resolve the substantial concerns that could stymie the commissioner’s remit in terms of independence, resource and power. We have laid some of the amendments to do that.

With regard to the remit, which is in clause 6, my first point is not a complaint but rather a comment as to the operation of the commissioner’s role and how best she can make a positive contribution to combat domestic abuse. Notwithstanding comments from witnesses to the Joint Committee and the subsequent recommendations, the Government have made it clear that the role of the commissioner and the Bill are limited to domestic abuse and do not cover other forms of violence against women and girls. One notes from our debates earlier around the definition of domestic abuse that the words “sexual abuse” are within that definition. That has not been ignored. Around 56% of all reported rapes happen within people’s marriages. One of the most amazing facts—I say this to schools when I go and visit—is that raping your wife was only made illegal in 1991. So, John Major, that and the cones hotline are things to be very proud of.

The level of sexual violence in domestic abuse cases is shocking, and there is some concern about the functions of the commissioner, whose role is—to be very purist—about domestic abuse. What is her interaction to be with rape and sexual violence organisations such as Rape Crisis England and Wales, for example? That is yet to be ironed out.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

I just want to draw attention to some of the subsections in clause 6 and the interaction between the domestic abuse commissioner and the Senedd. I can see complications in exactly that area, and it needs clarity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jess Phillips]

Absolutely, because, in Wales, it is a violence against women and girls situation. The Minister will remember—it might not be as far back as the Investigatory Powers Bill, but it is from way back at the beginning of this particular Bill—that, for many, many moons, we went over the conversation about whether this should be a violence against women and girls Bill. People like me were very much on the side that it should be—that you cannot see domestic violence in a vacuum and that it exists within a framework of patriarchal norms in society. However, I do not make those amendments to this Bill now. We have come an awfully long way and worked very hard together over many years to this point.

In this area, however, there is potential for people to put pressure on the current commissioner. I happened to run a rape crisis service as part of a domestic abuse service. We had a standalone rape crisis service. I can see how I would have said, “Well, they’ve got a commissioner—I’m just going to go to her.” Nicole may very well end up feeling conflicted by that, because much is part of the process.

It is clear that the commissioner must take care to spread her powers as widely as possible, and must ensure that a multi-agency approach is taken and that the needs of the third sector in this regard, specifically, are considered. From the evidence we received in the evidence sessions from the Victims’ Commissioner—although we did not hear from the Children’s Commissioner, she sent in evidence for us to consider—I am aware that all of the commissioners are working closely together to, for want of a better word, divvy up some of the concerns. We need some clarity on that. The Victims’ Commissioner, a woman who has incredible experience in the violence against women and girls area, is also responsible for antisocial behaviour and for victimhood of all kinds, so it will be important to make sure that we have clarity of purpose on remit and functions of the commissioners.

--- Later in debate ---

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the issue at the heart of these clauses, and this clause in particular, is the commissioner’s independence and freedom to act? We heard evidence last week that that is a concern and that it would be helpful to have assurances from the Minister that the domestic abuse commissioner can in fact act independently and without fear of ministerial over-involvement, shall we say?

[Jess Phillips]

Absolutely. For us, for the commissioner, given her own evidence, and for the sector—for everybody —independence is the single most important thing we wish to see in this role. That is not unreasonable, as my hon. Friend pointed out. Where there is contention—I do not think there is any perception of any contention whatever in the current appointment—it can be used to undermine any report that that person had written. Let us imagine that one of these bodies had to look into a political party and that political party was found wanting. It would be easy for politics to then play the game where we say, “Well, they’re just your pals. You’re giving jobs to the boys.” That undermines the fundamentals of what these bodies are doing. Independence in every part of the commissioner’s function is vital. It is to protect their work so there is absolutely no conflict of interest with the Victims’ Commissioner, the Children’s Commissioner and the domestic abuse commissioner.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon makes an important point, and perhaps the Minister can answer this: who gets to decide if the commissioner should be sacked and should no longer be the commissioner? What grounds would they have to appeal that on? We all sit here with a weird employment status, in that we have no employment status. The people who employ me are the good people of Birmingham, Yardley, but they do not ever turn up to my 360-degree appraisals. No one is giving me the appraisal.

Let us say, for example, that there has to be an investigation by the commissioner into a report of practices by the Home Office regarding victims of domestic abuse, whether through its own policy on the matter or through other, adjoining policies, such as counter-terrorism or immigration. How can we make sure that the commissioner does not get sacked? If the Home Secretary were a Labour Home Secretary—I think this is a tool. With the recent stories, the Home Office has not necessarily been covering itself—

[The Chair]

Order. I have been quite generous with time, but I have to ensure that Members do not stray from the terms of the Bill Committee.

[Jess Phillips]

Okay. I just want to ensure that there is an independent process so that if there are problems, they can be solved. I close my remarks on that point.

The commissioner is a welcome position. Almost all the functions laid out in all parts of the Bill regarding the commissioner are to be welcomed and need little amendment. I commend the Ministers and the civil servants involved. I wish to seek some assurances specifically around the independence of the commissioner.

[Victoria Atkins]

I do not propose to repeat what we have already said, because this theme runs through our discussions. We are conscious of the need for the commissioner not just to be independent, but to be seen to be independent. We have listened to the Joint Committee and its recommendations on this point.

Taking a step back, the Government cannot be accused of being shy of scrutiny on this Bill. The Bill, as published in its original iteration, was scrutinised by the Joint Committee. As those who have been in the House for a while know, that does not happen to every Bill; it is an unusual process. The reason we did that is precisely because we wanted to involve the House in the consideration of the draft Bill before it became the Bill that Parliament would consider formally.

Although politics has got in the way of the Bill’s progress, we have used those chapters in the Bill’s history to good effect, I hope. For example, since the second iteration of the Bill that came before the House, which managed to reach the first day of Bill Committee just before the General Election, we have been able to insert the duty on local authorities into the Bill. That would have had to be done by way of amendment.

We have changed parts of the Bill in relation to the role of the commissioner, because we listened to what the Joint Committee said. We also listened to what the previous Bill Committee said. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley referred in passing to the fact that the working hours of the commissioner have been changed. In consultation with the designate commissioner, we have extended her role from three days to four days a week, because she told us she was doing four days of work a week. We have listened to that and we have moved.

We also moved in relation to the Joint Committee’s recommendations about the laying of reports and strategic plans. In the original iteration, that was conducted through the Home Secretary. As happens with many reports, the report would be given to the Home Secretary and the Home Secretary would lay it before Parliament. We changed that in relation to reports and strategic plans so that the commissioner will lay them directly before Parliament, and she will choose the timing for doing so within the confines of the requirements of clause 12 in relation to strategic plans. We did that because we want her to be able to stand apart from Government and to lay her reports before Parliament as part of her role.

We have further amended the Bill to remove the requirements for the commissioner to submit strategic plans to the Home Secretary for approval. We have changed that so that the Home Secretary is simply consulted on them, and that is significant. I hope it reassures Bill Committee colleagues that, within the framework that we must have for any public role paid for through public funds—we have to have control and ministerial oversight—we have set that out in a way that safeguards independence. I hope people agree.

--- Later in debate ---

In this case, the Home Office just needs to be adult enough to accept that it would generate a lot more respect within the sector if it could just let go from time to time and allow the dissent that it says it encourages.

[Jess Phillips]

I can think of very few areas in which that will come up as a matter of dissent, so it appears that it can be only a fear of something that might make the Home Office look bad once we remove the option of protecting the identity of the victim and of what might be before the courts, understandably. It seems that it is only there to direct where the victim may have said something bad about the Home Office.

[Victoria Atkins]

indicated dissent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

It comes down to accountability at the Dispatch Box. As I say, there is a diminishingly small likelihood of that happening, but that does not mean that we can ignore it. I speak as someone who used to prosecute serious organised crime and spent a great deal of my career as disclosure counsel redacting documents and asking for protection from courts for documents that may, or have the potential to, undermine and jeopardise the safety of people for a variety of reasons, so this is something close to my heart. The power to omit this very narrowly constructed category of information is there to protect a person or to protect the prosecution or investigation of an offence. Accountability for that must fall ultimately on the Home Secretary or the Minister at the Dispatch Box.

I will give an example. I have tried not to speculate, because we all know, particularly in this field, that the ability of human beings to commit harm and to hurt other human beings seems almost infinite at times. Apologies that I cannot give details; I am treading very carefully for reasons that will become clear. A little while ago I was alerted to a mother and her family who had had to flee a house where there was a violently abusive relationship—she was fleeing in fear of her life. The circumstances of her fleeing were, shall we say, notorious in the local community, because the wider family have a reputation and presence in the local community that reaches far beyond the Bill. A person in public life inadvertently, for completely innocent reasons, made a comment about the manner in which that family fled. The concern—it was a very real concern—was that that public official, who had not really understood the ramifications of their commentary, had inadvertently put that victim and her family at significant risk.

Forgive me; I cannot go into more detail because I do not want to alert, but I put that forward because there are occasions where we have to look at not just the immediate circumstances but the possible ever-flowing ramifications that may result from a seemingly innocent assertion. I have complete faith in the designate domestic abuse commissioner that we will not get to a place where we are having to put notes in reports. I have to maintain this very narrowly constructed caveat to this otherwise wide-ranging and free power to safeguard any people or to safeguard investigations or prosecutions for offences that may not be immediately apparent when looking at the very specific circumstances of a case.

To give reassurance as well, I have asked whether this provision is in other pieces of legislation. It is in the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and indeed, it is wider there because the Home Secretary can also omit material for the purposes of national security. If one thinks about modern slavery, that makes sense because of international criminal gangs. I reassure the Committee that this provision exists in other legislation, it is very narrowly defined there and it is not about making the Government look bad or look good. It is about safeguarding people’s safety.

[Jess Phillips]

The Minister is incredibly reassuring on the point. With regard to the case she is talking about, I do not wish to gather any details. I have handled cases about misdemeanours of people in this place or of their friends, as we all know, and I seek similar reassurances that this power will never be used in a case that might be used to protect a friend of somebody in power or somebody in this place.

[Victoria Atkins]

The hon. Lady does not just need my reassurance. We have this framework—I appreciate it is a slightly tortuous process—where a very senior civil servant makes the first decision. It then goes to the Home Secretary and we then have the commissioner with the ability to put that note in the report. We have the reassurance of a very senior civil servant, with all the responsibilities the civil service bear in relation to ensuring they act within the Nolan principles and so on. We have that safeguard. We then have the Home Secretary, who has their own responsibilities under the ministerial code and being at the Dispatch Box, and then we have the commissioner being able to put that in her report. I hope that reassures hon. Members about this aspect of the report and clause 8. I invite the hon. Member for Hove to withdraw his amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Liz Saville Roberts]

Indeed. The experience of rurality will be common across other nations of the United Kingdom, but overlying that is the fact that we have a separate legislature in Wales that is producing separate legislation. We want to make sure that with the different range of provision, interested bodies and services providers, we are none the less cutting through to survivors, victims and perpetrators, in the way that is intended, and that the fact that we have a difference between England and Wales is not missed out. If we can specify four roles on the board for specifically English aspects, I cannot imagine the justification for Wales not to be represented there as well, with its separate legislation.

In the report. points are made about hospital services being provided at a distance, as well as legal practice and provision. The reality of the experience of survivors is that access to legal services is more challenging in Wales than in many areas of England, for no specific reason, as is access to services for survivors who have fled from abusive relationships and been placed in rural areas. This is often combined with the fact that survivors do not know the community around them, and that certain properties will be known to be places where survivors are placed. We have to be very careful how we handle that.

[Jess Phillips]

I am not sure whether this is just by virtue of Birmingham being relatively near Wales, but in refuge accommodation services the connection between women moving across borders between Wales and Birmingham services is very common, for example women from Cardiff or Swansea were crossing the border to be housed in Birmingham and vice versa for safety reasons. I am sure that is one of the right hon. Lady’s concerns: how we can ensure this all works well together.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

I thank the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd for her contribution, which I support. I am always one for standing up and giving a voice to Wales and I feel that Wales desperately needs a voice in the Bill, which straddles both nations and they should be equally represented.

One in four women in Wales experience domestic violence at the hands of a partner in their lifetime. They need a voice on this advisory board too. We have seen the ground-breaking legislation in Wales. Thanks to the Welsh Labour Government, we have the Violence against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (Wales) Act 2015. We have already discussed the importance of the legislation aligning with the devolved Government, so that we do not have any gaps and inconsistencies, which people can fall through.

It is vital that Wales has a voice and is represented. We know that the domestic abuse commissioner has an effective consultative remit with survivors and services in Wales, to ensure there is an understanding of the context as to how devolved and non-devolved competency areas interact, but this must be done effectively to ensure that the board has representation from Wales, so that non-devolved survivors and services are given that voice. Currently the Bill only allows representation for voluntary organisations in England and that must be changed. I fully support this amendment and I urge members across the House to do so. I know there are hon. Members from Wales who would want Wales to be represented at all levels in the Bill, so I urge them to support this amendment.

[Jess Phillips]

I wonder about specific issues that this Bill—perhaps not yet, but potentially—covers, such as welfare and immigration. We heard from the commissioner herself that an onus was put on what she would be expected to do around the issue, specifically, of migrant women. Obviously, that does not sit within the remit of the Senedd, so there is a vital need for Wales to have representation.

Domestic Abuse Bill (First sitting)

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 4th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

[The Chair]

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

[Jess Phillips]

[Jess Phillips]

[Jess Phillips]

[Jess Phillips]

[Jess Phillips]

[Jess Phillips]

[Jess Phillips]

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

[Jess Phillips]

[Jess Phillips]

[Jess Phillips]

[Jess Phillips]

[Jess Phillips]

[Jess Phillips]

[The Chair]

Domestic Abuse Bill (Second sitting)

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 4th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Thank you very much for introducing yourself.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

Q Thank you very much for coming in. I am just going to ask you a few questions about your experiences of the system. What are the main barriers that you have faced in getting the support that you may have needed?

Gilmara Garcia: The main barriers were the system and safe reporting, because I have not had it when I needed it most.

[Jess Phillips]

Q Tell us a little about your experiences and what led you to need to report.

Gilmara Garcia: I came four years ago to the UK as part of a family—me, my former partner and two children. After eight months of living with him, I was already experiencing emotional and verbal abuse, and then he exerted himself physically. My first action was to flee the property straightaway to the police station. That was the beginning of a huge nightmare. I am still improving my language, but at that time it was worse. I came four years ago, as I said.

[Jess Phillips]

Q Where did you come from?

Gilmara Garcia: Brazil.

[Jess Phillips]

Q When you came over, what visa did you come in on?

Gilmara Garcia: We came—four Brazilians—but my former partner had held a British passport. When we were settled, he said, “I will renew my British passport. I will make our young child British. Then I will apply for you.” That was the promise. Four of us Brazilians came; two of the family became British.

[Jess Phillips]

Q But you came to the country completely legally?

Gilmara Garcia: Completely legally, yes.

[Jess Phillips]

Q Tell us about how you tried to get help when your abuse started to happen in the UK.

Gilmara Garcia: At first when it started, it was emotional abuse. I did not understand that it was wrong. I wanted to try to make things right, but when the physical abuse happened, I realised that something was wrong and that I needed help. I had been told, “Let’s go there to visit. After that we will remain, and I will apply with you as my dependant.” That never happened. Six months later, my tourist visa expired and I became undocumented. At that point, things increased.

[Jess Phillips]

The threats?

Gilmara Garcia: He said, “I will report you if you don’t follow my rules. You will be returned to your country. Forget about our daughter, because now she is British.”

[Jess Phillips]

Q Just so that we have the story right, you came here with a partner who had promised you that you would settle here and that your status would become settled. He began to abuse you. He settled his status and the status of your daughter, then he used the fact that you were unsettled to abuse you and control you.

Gilmara Garcia: Exactly.

[Jess Phillips]

What happened when you tried to get help?

Gilmara Garcia: It happened. The first phrase toward me was—[Interruption.] Just a minute. It does not matter how many times we repeat the same story—first of all, to prove who we are, and, after that—

[Jess Phillips]

You take as long as you need.

Gilmara Garcia: I went to request help, and they said, “We cannot help you.”

[Jess Phillips]

Q Who said that to you?

Gilmara Garcia: A police officer—We cannot help you because we don’t have responsibility for you.” I showed what had happened to me and explained that I did not have any place to go. The police officer turned to me and said, “We are not a hotel. I cannot provide accommodation for you and your eldest.” I was with my eldest child from a previous marriage. When the perpetrator came and shared his side of the story, the approach changed. He shared the same story, with some differences. I was asked, “Where is your document?” I said, “In my bag.” The police officer said, “I can see here that it has expired. We cannot help you at all. You need to go to immigration and your embassy.”

[Jess Phillips]

Q So you went as a victim of domestic abuse and the police told you that there would be no accommodation for you and that, because your status was unsettled, you actually now had to just go to your embassy, even though you had reported to them as a victim of violence.

Gilmara Garcia: Yes, remembering that I came to England and I went straightaway to the countryside. So, first of all, I had no immigration. How was I to seek any support as a homeless person in London. Anyway, the perpetrator said to the police officers, “No worries, I can pay her one night, but tomorrow she cannot come back to the property.” The police just brought that response to me: that they would provide a lift to the Travelodge hotel—I don’t know if I can say the name, but anyway. And then, the next day, I went to the primary school of my kids to say, “I’m leaving. My youngest is staying. Please, when I send an email, answer me how she is, because I need to come back to my country.” After all, that was the suggestion to myself.

[Jess Phillips]

To go home to Brazil?

Gilmara Garcia: The headteacher at that school provided me with the fare to get to London. I went straightaway to London Bridge to the Home Office they have there. They did not know what to do. They said, “We need seven days for you to come back to your country. Where will you be?” After all, it was me and these vulnerable people with me. I was the entire day in the building.

After that, I was with the Metropolitan police. The first officer—thank God—came and said, “What are you doing here?” I tried to explain—it was more mimicking than speaking, but still she understood me—and she contacted a support worker who goes around to homeless people in the night. She put me in a hostel to spend the night and said the next day, “Please go to the embassy and seek help. But before that, try to secure a place to sleep the next night.” When I fled, it was the middle of December and being rough in that period is not a good memory at all.

[Jess Phillips]

Sleeping rough?

[The Chair]

Jess, I have a few more Members. Do you mind if I see a couple of others and return to you?

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

Q Actually, before I say anything, I would like to hear the witness continue to respond to hon. Members. Her story is important, and it is important that we hear it.

[Jess Phillips]

Q We only have a short space of time, and we need to make sure that those of us who have to scrutinise the Bill get the message about what needs to change in it. So you had to sleep rough in London—is that what you are saying?

Gilmara Garcia: Yes.

[Jess Phillips]

So you slept rough with your children?

Gilmara Garcia: Child.

[Jess Phillips]

How old is your child?

Gilmara Garcia: Now, nearly twelve—nine or so at the time.

[Jess Phillips]

Q Was that because you were not able to access any support because of your immigration status?

Gilmara Garcia: No one knew what to do with me. The police did not know what to do. They just suggested that I go to the Home Office. When I got to the Home Office, they said, “We have no accommodation. We need seven days to prepare your ticket; then you can come back.” That was my decision in that moment—to come back where I feel safe. And I couldn’t.

[Jess Phillips]

So you were left to sleep rough on the streets of London. I will let other people come in; I just wanted to set the scene.

[The Chair]

This will have to be the last question.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

Q Thank you. The Women’s Aid campaign is a great campaign, so I am pleased to hear that you are part of it. If you are familiar with the contents of the Bill, what do you think the domestic abuse commissioner can do to help women in your position?

Saliha Rashid: I think that for disabled survivors there needs to be a statutory duty conferred on all organisations to provide information in accessible formats. I support the campaign by Stay Safe East around repealing the carers’ defence clause in part 5 of the Serious Crime Act 2015, which is on domestic abuse. I think that awareness-raising is a key priority for our group, because we have found a lack of awareness around these issues, both within statutory and non-statutory services.

[Jess Phillips]

Q Just to finish up with Saliha, through your campaigning do you think that, at the moment, in different areas—you can probably only talk about your own local authority area—there are enough specialist services available for victims with disabilities?

Saliha Rashid: No, I think there need to be adequately funded services for disabled survivors, as well as for survivors from other minority groups, such as LGBT survivors and BAME survivors.

[Jess Phillips]

Q Would you support some sort of ring-fencing of these sorts of specialisms being written into the law, to ensure that they are provided?

Saliha Rashid: Definitely—it is important that this issue is recognised. I think that minority groups have specific needs, and it is important that those needs are outlined. I also think that there needs to be more guidance around this.

[Jess Phillips]

Q Thank you very much. Now I am going on to Somiya. Thank you very much for coming in. I have read a little bit about the story of your children and about your travels around the world to try to get back access to your children. Can you tell us about that as briefly as you can—not necessarily from the beginning, but from when you found yourself in Britain. Your ex-partner is a British citizen—is that correct?

Somiya Basar: Yes. And so are my children.

[Jess Phillips]

Q And so are your children, so your children are now British citizens. What is your immigration status?

Somiya Basar: Currently, we have applied for me to remain in the country as a parent, and we are waiting for the Home Office to make a decision. It has been eight months so far, and I am relying on support from Southall Black Sisters, because I do not have access to public funding—I have no recourse to public funds because of my immigration status. This has crippled me financially and kept me in limbo.

[Jess Phillips]

Q But you came to this country because your children had been brought here from South Africa—is that correct?

Somiya Basar: Yes.

[Jess Phillips]

Q Your children have been brought here from South Africa. Do you currently have access to your children?

Somiya Basar: I do have very limited access to my children. It took me four and a half years to be able to get to common ground. My daughter was three when she was abducted; she has very little recollection of me. I could not come here because of visa constraints, as my children are British citizens and I am not, and I had to go pillar to post to be able to come to common ground and to be able to have access to my children. My daughter’s elder brothers have to remind her and to ask her, “Do you remember that this is our mother?”, and she says, “No, I can’t remember.”

[Jess Phillips]

Q If you do not mind my asking—please feel free to say if you do not want to answer any of the questions I ask—did you suffer violence and abuse at the hands of your ex-partner?

Somiya Basar: When I got married, it was based on cultural customs in India. I was living in Bombay, and I was 19 when I was married to a British citizen whom I did not know. I wanted to further my studies, but my parents thought differently and according to our custom. I did not want to disappoint them, so I agreed. My idea of marriage was quickly shattered, because it was not long before I began to feel that I was married to be a slave. I was the housemaid; I was there for him to use as an object to have babies. I was the nanny, and I was the nurse.

The situation soon developed into physical, emotional and financial abuse—verbal belittling at every opportunity. My husband had total financial control over me. He controlled every aspect of my life. I was strongly disallowed from making contact with my own family, which has left me isolated and alienated from my family. I was not allowed to have friends or to work outside the house, except for at the family business. I remained in the marriage because of the constant threats that if I would not conform or do as they said, my children would be taken away from me. Because of the fear of losing my children, I remained in the marriage, which lasted for 12 years.

[Jess Phillips]

Q Do you think that it is common for women in your situation to stay in a marriage?

Somiya Basar: I do think it is common for a lot of women, usually due to the fear of losing of their children and the fear of facing humiliation in society. They remain in the marriage because they are constantly reminded that if they do not conform there will be repercussions.

[Jess Phillips]

Q Now that you are here in Britain, you have limited access through the family courts, presumably, to your children. You are fighting your immigration status. How long have you been in the immigration system, if you do not mind me asking?

Somiya Basar: Eight months now, but I would like to tell everybody that it took me three years to get to the United Kingdom. My children and I have been living with this ordeal for four and a half years. My daughter was three years old; she is seven years old today, and I have two older children who are 14 and 15 years old.

[Jess Phillips]

Q When you have interacted with services in the United Kingdom, do you feel that they understand the issue of abandonment across borders? I am afraid that I have seen lots of cases of women abandoned as part of the pattern of domestic abuse, and their children removed. Do you think there is any understanding of you as a victim of domestic abuse?

Somiya Basar: Not really, because there is a lack of awareness about the abandonment of spouses. Even though we are married to British citizens living abroad, we do not have any rights to remain in the country. It took me three years to try and understand how I could get on common grounds with my children. There is a lack of awareness. People do not know how to deal with convoluted cases such as this one. This has hampered me and I have lost a lot of precious time with my own children—so much so that they are alienated and it is going to be very hard work to be able to re-establish my life with my children.

[Jess Phillips]

Q In this country you are currently entitled to support through a pilot scheme that was funded through Southall Black Sisters, but you are not entitled to any other support.

Somiya Basar: I am not entitled to any support whatsoever.

[Jess Phillips]

Q Are you currently expected to pay any premium to use the health service?

Somiya Basar: Yes. Had it not been for Southall Black Sisters supporting me with their own funds and with accommodation, subsistence, money for trips, advice and help at many levels, I would not have had any chance to be able to come here after so long, to be able to be with my children, to have a life. If it wasn’t for them supporting me at many levels, I wouldn’t have been able to come here. I would have been homeless. I would have been absolutely devastated and destitute, because when my ex-husband abandoned me he left me destitute. After 12 years in my marriage, he retained all the savings, the earnings and the assets I had worked for. He deliberately left me destitute.

[Jess Phillips]

Q Do your children have access to any support about the situation that they have been in throughout their childhood? You might not know, but are they able to get any support through their schools?

Somiya Basar: I approached the school when I came here. My older son has special needs, but the school did not even recognise that. He had a major speech delay. He saw the abuse. As he was growing up, he saw me being abused. He was abused by the father, sometimes physically, in a very bad manner. He has been left with a lot of difficulties. I don’t think much justice is done because they need to have a lot of counselling to understand that it was no fault of mine that the children were left without their mother. It was because of the father’s choices, because the father decided to alienate the children and move away from me. He used his British passport to alienate the children from me, knowing full well that I was the only one on an Indian passport and it would take me forever to get there, because I did not have any recourse, any source of income. I had no connections in the United Kingdom whom I could rely on. He used his British passport full well.

[Jess Phillips]

Thank you for sharing your story with us.

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

Q Thank you for sharing your story. I am sure it is very difficult having to keep repeating your story, but thank you. It is very powerful.

You have obviously been getting help from the Southall Black Sisters, which is good to hear. Have they or anybody else referred you to the national referral mechanism, which is for victims like you?

Somiya Basar: From what I understand, it takes forever for that system to work, and I don’t think that system works as efficiently as the pilot scheme by Southall Black Sisters. I don’t think I am an expert here and I do not understand the terminology, but what I understand is that the other system that you are referring to takes forever. It is not a system that works efficiently to the full benefit of the victim.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)]

Q Could you outline for us the role that the domestic abuse commissioner will have in helping the court service to understand domestic abuse?

Lucy Hadley: I think the domestic abuse commissioner’s appointment is really helpful right across the public sector. She has duties, and public bodies are required to respond to her recommendations in a range of different areas, from criminal justice to health, as are other Government Departments. That is really important.

However, we need to recognise that the domestic abuse commissioner’s remit is focused on driving up standards, improving practice and ensuring that we have consistent responses to survivors across the public sector. I absolutely think that the commissioner would be able to map special measures, for example, in court systems, or map different practices in different parts of the public sector. However, without the robust legal framework that the Bill could deliver for ensuring equal access and equal provision of measures such as those for special protection, or to ensure that migrant women with no recourse to public funds can routinely and consistently access support, it will be difficult for the commissioner to hold accountable the bodies that they need to. We need the law to be really clear on consistent access to protection and support for survivors; the domestic abuse commissioner can then hold public bodies accountable for that

Andrea Simon: The domestic abuse commissioner has said that having a cross-government framework is really important. We have had the VAWG strategy for some 10 years—a cross-departmental strategy focused on tackling and ending violence against women and girls. The responses of every part of Government need to be co-ordinated. That is very important for the domestic abuse commissioner’s work.

[Jess Phillips]

Q Lots of my questions have been answered. I used to work for the same organisation, so I know that Lucy works with organisations that work with victims of modern slavery. Andrea, do you work with any such organisations, or have any knowledge of modern slavery?

Andrea Simon: Somewhat, because in a previous role I worked in the trafficking sector.

[Jess Phillips]

Q Have you ever dealt with the national referral mechanism?

Andrea Simon: I have, in a previous role, yes.

[Jess Phillips]

Q Me also, many, many times, when I worked for the organisation that Lucy works for. Have you ever seen cases of domestic abuse taken through the national referral mechanism?

Andrea Simon: That is not the purpose of the national referral mechanism.

[Jess Phillips]

Could you explain the purpose of the national referral mechanism?

Andrea Simon: It is to deal with trafficking victims. You would not refer a victim of domestic abuse to the national referral mechanism.

[Jess Phillips]

Q Let us say that a woman had a spousal visa, or did not but was here with a partner, and was essentially being treated like a slave in their home, which would not be uncommon. Would support organisations—including Women’s Aid, where Lucy works—ever refer those women to the trafficking service that exists in this country, run by the Salvation Army?

Andrea Simon: No.

[Jess Phillips]

Q You would never do that. Has any part of the VAWG strategy in this country ever made this suggestion for migrant women? Have there ever been any conversations, in the meetings that you have had, saying that migrant women should be using the national referral mechanism?

Andrea Simon: No.

[Jess Phillips]

Q It is just that the issue has come up a few times today, and I wanted some clarity. I would like a tiny bit more clarity specifically on that. If a migrant woman in, say, Bradford was in a situation and went through the national referral mechanism, what sort of support could she expect from that?

Andrea Simon: It does not necessarily provide support. There is a reflection period—I have forgotten the name—a recovery and reflection period.

[Jess Phillips]

It is called a reflection period.

Andrea Simon: Yes, but it is not the specialist wrap-around support that is run by and for black and minority ethnic and migrant women. That is not replicated through the national referral mechanism.

[Jess Phillips]

Q Would it necessarily be gender-specific?

Andrea Simon: No.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Alex Chalk)]

Q We all want public money to go as far as possible, and to go where it will be most helpful. As a result of covid, some £76 million or so is going into the sector to support victims of domestic abuse and sexual violence. How can this Bill ensure that that money goes where it is most needed, and that we, as a society, get the most bang for our buck and the most justice for the money that we are spending?

Lucy Hadley: Just to be clear, it was £27 million for domestic abuse and a further £13 million for sexual violence; I think the other funding pots were for vulnerable children and for other vulnerabilities during this time. That money is absolutely essential; it is really welcome. As I mentioned before, covid-19 has hit this sector at a time when it was already really vulnerable. It has been experiencing a funding crisis for a very long time, so it is vital that the money reaches the services that are protecting and supporting some of the most vulnerable people during this period.

What our member services tell us is that one-off funding pots provide them with no security and no ability to plan ahead or retain and recruit staff for the long term. What we would really like to see underpin the Bill’s very important statutory duty on local authorities to fund support in accommodation-based services is a commitment to long-term funding, so that year on year, services or local authorities do not have to competitively bid into different funding pots. That would provide us with a framework, so that services could plan ahead, get on with doing what they do best, which is supporting vulnerable women and children, and not spend significant amounts of time on tendering processes or bids for different funding pots.

We have estimated that fully funding the Government’s statutory duty would cost £173 million a year in England; that would ensure that the national network of refuges could meet demand. As we know, we are 30% below the recommended number of bed spaces in England, and 64% of referrals to refuges are turned away, so we would like a long-term funding commitment underpin the duty.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

We will now hear oral evidence from the Step Up Migrant Women campaign and from Hestia. Thanks to our witnesses for coming. Will you please introduce yourselves for the record? Then members of the Committee will ask you questions.

Lyndsey Dearlove: I am Lyndsey Dearlove. I am head of UK SAYS NO MORE—Hestia’s national prevention campaign—and from the charity Hestia.

Giselle Valle: Hi. My name is Giselle Valle. I am director of the Latin American Women’s Rights Service. We are a human rights organisation led by and for Latin American women. We are a feminist organisation working with migrant women. Very shortly we will be leading the Step Up Migrant Women campaign and coalition of over 50 organisations in the migrant sector, women’s sector and social justice sector.

[Jess Phillips]

Q Thanks for coming. I was going to ask you to explain what the Step Up Migrant Women coalition is, but you have done that. It is lots of different organisations. The Step Up Migrant Women’s coalition is calling for several things to be part of the Bill that currently are not. Can you give us a quick rundown of those?

Giselle Valle: Yes, we are asking for four things. The first one is to include provision mirroring the Istanbul convention on protection for all victims of domestic abuse. The second one is establishing a separate reporting pathway for migrant victims of domestic abuse. The third one is an extension of the domestic violence rule and destitute domestic violence concession to include not only a longer period of time for the concession, but also higher eligibility for women who are not married to British citizens. The last one is to allow migrant victims to remove the no recourse to public funds requirement in visa applications for migrant victims of domestic abuse.

[Jess Phillips]

Q Specifically on domestic violence and destitution—it used to be called something else, and I still want to call it that—you can get destitution funding only if you are on a spousal visa. Is that correct? So that means you come here as a partner of somebody who is British or European and was living in another part of the world. Is that correct?

Giselle Valle: That is correct. It only applies to spouses of British citizens living outside. For example, one of the survivors who gave testimony today—Gil—was completely left outside on the basis that she was not married. So it leaves a high amount of domestic abuse among migrant victims outside of the protections.

[Jess Phillips]

Q On the women you work with at LAWRS, as well as in the Step Up Migrant Women coalition—let us leave the people who are on a spousal visa to one side—what sorts of visas do the other groups of women that you support have?

Giselle Valle: The ones that are lucky to have the required visas can be on partner visas or family reunification visas. This is a crime that can also touch on children when there is domestic abuse within the family, not other types of abuse. We also have women who are on working visas or student visas who have become undocumented, sometimes through no fault of their own—a lot of the time, really. There is a wide range of visas that women are on.

[Jess Phillips]

Q So if you are a student in this country and you came over here from, let’s say, Venezuela, and you were abused by your partner, you currently would not be able to access a refuge. Is that correct?

Giselle Valle: You are not able to access a refuge; you are not able to access any state support; and you are more likely than not to be turned away by the police when you try to report these crimes. The services you are going to be able to access are going to be very limited.

[Jess Phillips]

Q Have you seen any cases where victims of domestic violence have come forward and ended up in immigration detention?

Giselle Valle: Yes. We have a report with King’s College London that was published last year that pointed to four cases of women who came to report a crime and found themselves in detention.

[Jess Phillips]

Q Thank you. Quickly to Lyndsey, I think that Hestia are specifically looking at some of the issues around children in the Domestic Abuse Bill, if I remember the 17,000 briefings that I have read in the past week. What exactly do you want to see from the Bill?

Lyndsey Dearlove: One of the key things is seeing children recognised as victims in their own right. That in turn will mean that they can access funding, which will then mean investment in recovery. We have seen time and time again that provision for children is very varied across the country, and also dependent on funding: depending on what year you went to a service, for example, you would get support.

The other piece is the fact that lots of support for children is centred on accommodation. If you are accessing a refuge, then you have support because you are in the home, but a huge group of people are not accessing refuges and living within their own homes, being supported by independent domestic violence advocates. Those children in particular are seeing the same level of domestic abuse and experiencing very similar impacts on their emotional, psychological and practical needs, but have no access to support. What we want to see is a strong focus on the provision for support as that turns into protection and stopping the repeat victimisation of individuals. For us, it is about having a very clear mention of how children are victims in their own right.

[Jess Phillips]

Q From your experience as a provider of services—you provide refuge accommodation, is that correct?

Lyndsey Dearlove: Yes, we do.

[Jess Phillips]

And community support?

Lyndsey Dearlove: Yes, we do.

[Jess Phillips]

Both of them. Okay, great.

Lyndsey Dearlove: And MARAC.

[Jess Phillips]

Q And MARAC—multi-agency risk assessment conference. From your experience in the areas where you operate, if a child living outside of a refuge—let us say, a high-risk MARAC case—came forward to the MARAC, how many times out of 10 do you think that child would be getting specialist support for the domestic abuse they are suffering?

Lyndsey Dearlove: I spent a couple of years as a MARAC co-ordinator, and I managed a MARAC in London. In that time, the provision of support for young children was about whether they met the threshold for social services, and in that instance, the support was about keeping them safe. At no point was there any offer of provision to enable children to look at their own mental health and examine their traumatic experience, because that provision just did not exist within the community.

[Victoria Atkins]

Q We all speak in acronyms, but for anyone who is not familiar with the term MARAC, can you please explain what it is?

Lyndsey Dearlove: A multi-agency risk assessment conference falls very much in line with the co-ordinated community response model, which is about bringing as many organisations together as possible and them all seeing that domestic abuse is a core issue. It entails a group of individuals who are named by their organisations to present and represent the cases on which they work. The majority of MARACs focus on the entire family: provision is put in place to keep the victim safe along with their children, but they also focus on prevention and holding the perpetrator to account.

When MARACs work well, they can be really effective. However, one of the challenges with MARACs is that although we have a huge need for people’s cases to be heard, the threshold for reaching and being heard at MARAC is often being deemed to be high risk. Obviously, risk is incredibly dynamic when it comes to domestic abuse, and with MARAC being once a month, your risk can change from day to day: you could have been able to use it, but then you cannot.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

We will now hear from Dame Vera Baird QC. When you are settled, please introduce yourself formally to the Committee, and then we will move on to the questions.

Dame Vera Baird: My name is Vera Baird. I have been the Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales since last June.

[Jess Phillips]

Q There has been a huge amount of talk about commissioners in here today—it’s been commissioner, commissioner, commissioner—so it is good to have another one in front of us. As well as your role as the Victims’ Commissioner—I think other people are going to ask you about that and about how the two roles will work in tandem—I want to ask you a couple of questions about some of the experience you gained from being a police and crime commissioner. That is a vital resource, but we have not been given any evidence by the police today, which is potentially not great.

Quite a big part of the Bill is about domestic abuse protection orders. I know that when you gave evidence to the Joint Committee, you had some concerns about how, certainly in the pilot, they were being used—about whether they were onerous and whether police forces were likely to use them versus bail options. Could you go into that a little bit for us?

Dame Vera Baird: We put it in written evidence to the last Bill Committee. Yes, we did have some concerns about DAPOs. What is very desirable, and admirable in the Government, was the decision to pilot DAPOs so that we can work out the pros and cons of different aspects of them.

There are a number of things: civil, criminal, by the complainant, by the police and by a third party without the complainant’s consent—that one worries me immensely. There is obviously a great range of things. The very positive thing about DAPOs is the addition of the capacity to add positive requirements on a DAPO. Used well, I think that could have a quite transformative effect, although I suspect it will have to be very proportionate. One would want to say that this is a route to getting good-quality perpetrator programmes in terms of the conduct of a perpetrator who has got a DAPO with a positive obligation to go on a perpetrator programme, but I doubt whether that would be proportionate actually. I suspect that all you could do is to require him to go and have an assessment for a perpetrator programme. I am not a great civil lawyer; in fact, I am not a great lawyer at all.

[Jess Phillips]

Well, you are a better one than me.

Dame Vera Baird: You have advantages I don’t have.

[Jess Phillips]

I have other skills.

Dame Vera Baird: Years ago, there was a conditional caution for women. The condition on the caution was to go to have your needs assessed at a women’s centre. I was worried that that was not sufficiently strong, but it clearly could not be much more. You cannot order somebody on a 10-year course or a five-month course as a condition of something small like a caution. In fact, it didn’t matter in that particular example, because the women’s centre, once it has assessed someone’s needs, will keep someone to get them through. I do not know if the same is going to apply here.

I am guessing that the Government must have looked at this and that the positive requirements will have to be in proportion to the fact that it is an order about curbing your conduct of a fairly minor kind. Although it looks as if it might open the door to early intervention with perpetrators to put them on a positive way out, I am not sure whether that is not over-optimistic. But that is how I greeted that aspect of DAPOs when they first came out.

What I think is problematic about them is whether they will be enforced. Quite a small percentage of domestic abuse cases have DVPOs in the first place. They are used really very rarely. It is somewhere between 1% and 2%. One suspects it will be the same again in connection with DAPOs. Why would it be different? I do not suppose the third-party provision or the individuals provision is going to multiply it by 10. The Government have some quite optimistic views about how many of these would be granted. It is not just that they are not used, but that they are not enforced when they are broken. That calls them into question.

[Jess Phillips]

Q So you think there needs to be a review process, and you welcome that it is a pilot.

Dame Vera Baird: I do, and I definitely want it to be piloted. They have to reconcile that position between an individual getting one and there being some positive attachment. Somebody is given the responsibility to supervise that positive attachment, but if it happens to be, “Go on a perpetrator programme while you’re still staying with her,” she needs to have a voice in that as well. There are a lot of complexities, but when I have reflected on it, they are better than DVPOs. One hopes that they will become the go-to and that DVPOs will disappear.

[Jess Phillips]

Q It will take time. Let us stick with the idea of perpetrators, not necessarily of domestic abuse but of other crimes, whose criminality could be linked to their victimisation through domestic abuse. Having run a women’s centre for many years for female offenders, I am only too aware of the levels of domestic abuse of women in that particular estate. Their victimhood is one of the most important things about that. Do you have anything that you think needs to go into the Bill, or into the amendments that may be proposed, to look at how we change the way we see victims in the criminal justice system?

Dame Vera Baird: I do. The definition of domestic abuse now shows the multifaceted nature of control and that it is used, specifically, to exercise control. We are now getting a broader understanding that that is the nature of domestic abuse and that it makes a person incapable of doing something without the consent of the perpetrator, who has so undermined their self-esteem that they have lost all will to do their own decision making.

You have to acknowledge that, in the same way that a victim will not go to the supermarket without being told that they can, or if they are told that they are cannot, and will not talk to their mother if they are told they cannot, they can also be told to commit criminal offences. Some 60% of women in custody have been victims of domestic abuse, and many of them are victims of domestic abuse as they are committing offences, so it speaks a very loud story about how victims can and are being used in that way. Those women have done relatively small things—probably dealt small amounts of drugs on behalf of their perpetrator—and a great deal more damage has been done to them than anything they have done in terms of their criminality.

There is an urgent need, in my view, to parallel that understanding, which the definition clearly shows is about undermining will and gaining full control, to have a defence that offers a person in that position the opportunity to say to the court, “I would not have done this if I hadn’t been compelled to do it.” It is analogous with section 45 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, where there is absolutely such a defence for a relatively low level of criminality, and no one would ask for more. In terms of the difference between the way in which people who are victims of modern slavery are, as it were, enslaved, and the way that victims of coercive control are totally controlled, I cannot draw a cigarette paper between the two—not that I smoke.

[Jess Phillips]

Me neither.

[The Chair]

Thank you. So that people can indicate, if they are not on the list, I am now going to call Minister Chalk, then I have Mike Wood, Christine Jardine, Peter Kyle and Liz Twist.

Domestic Abuse Bill (First sitting)

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 4th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Before we begin, I have a few points that we always make. First, please put your devices on silent. Secondly—a rule that I never understand—you cannot have tea or coffee in here, on the grounds that they are supposed to be hot drinks. I would argue that it will have gone cold, but you still cannot have it. Obviously, I stress the importance of social distancing in the Committee Room. If at any time you feel that the social distancing is incorrect, let me know and we will take action.

We have a problem in that every member of the Committee cannot sit round the horseshoe, so some are having to sit in the Public Gallery. I would have liked Members in the Public Gallery to have been able to speak, but unfortunately, because of the recordings that we need to make for Hansard, that is not possible. I tried to put a Member where the hon. Member for Edinburgh West is sitting, but you will have to move, because I have been told that you cannot go there. You are too close to the Member in front.

If a member of the Committee wants to speak, they will have to come into the horseshoe and somebody from the horseshoe will have to step back. That is not ideal, because we are moving around, but trust me, before we started, we tried every form of social distancing to get it to work. If you want to know what social distancing looks like, I am exactly the right height. If you imagine me flat on the floor, you have to walk round me.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

You will be flat on the floor, if the Government have anything to do with it.

[The Chair]

I will not be heckled—this is the easy bit.

Hansard has asked for you to email your written notes or speeches, because obviously these are not normal circumstances, to [e-mail].

Today we will first consider the programme motion on the amendment paper. We will then consider a motion to enable the reporting of written evidence for publication and a motion to allow us to deliberate in private about our questions before the oral evidence session. In view of the limited time available, I hope that we can take these matters without much debate. I call the Minister to move the programme motion that was agreed by the Programming Sub-Committee on Tuesday.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Before I call the first Member, Jess Phillips, to ask a question, I remind the witness that this is the only time that Ministers have fun in the whole of this process. They get to ask questions too.

[Jess Phillips]

Q Hello, Nicole, and welcome to our slightly weird distanced Committee. Some of my other colleagues will talk to you specifically about the role, the role of the Bill in creating it and some of those other areas, so I want to ask you more broadly about the Bill.

We keep hearing Ministers say, “We will be asking the commissioner to do a review of this, looking at different ways in which there might be a postcode lottery in the country for this, that and the other,” so that is expected to be part of your role. What do you think the Bill does well for the sustainability of services for victims and perpetrators of domestic abuse, and where do you think the main gaps are?

Nicole Jacobs: Thank you for that. I apologise to anyone who has heard me talk about the Bill before, but I appreciate that some Members are new here. I will say what I have said consistently from the start. I welcome almost all aspects of the Bill. There is nothing in it that I particularly disagree with, and I particularly welcome things such as the statutory definition and the inclusion of financial abuse. There are aspects that could be improved—I am sure we will talk about them over the hour—but on the whole, I support the key elements. I particularly support the inclusion of the statutory duty for accommodation-based services, because that has been such a vulnerable aspect of our services over many years.

What I have always thought is missing from the Bill and would greatly support the services sector is the inclusion of community-based services in the statutory duty. Everything I do as the commissioner in thinking about the monitoring and oversight of services—not just specialist services, but the breadth of what we expect of all our community-based statutory services—would be supported if there were greater inclusion in the Bill of the duty for community-based services. They are providing 70% of our services, and they are as vulnerable as refuges have been for years.

I am sure that I will talk about some of my mapping. Part of the reason why I am mapping services is to look at that postcode lottery. The reason why that gets a bit complicated is that all services, no matter where they are, will be cobbling together funding from all manner of places—the local authority, the police and crime commissioner, foundations and trusts, local fundraising and their own fee earning—and they will be doing that to cover the basic crisis response. There are very few places anywhere that would have the breadth of response that we would love to see, in terms of prevention, early crisis intervention, follow-up support and therapeutic support, which we know are really needed. The Bill is missing that element, which is a particularly strong one, and we have many people who have no recourse to public funds, which means there are many barriers to support.

[Jess Phillips]

Q I just want to pick up on that issue of the postcode lottery, which is potentially not harmed in the Bill but is not catered for in the Bill. In a situation where a child is a victim of domestic abuse directly or lives every day with their mother being raped, beaten and abused in front of them, are you confident that, if the child were to come forward, there would be specialist support—or any support—for that child, no matter where they stood up in the country?

Nicole Jacobs: No, I would not be confident of that. I did not mention that in my opening comments, but unless they met a particular threshold for children’s social care—most of the public would think children experiencing domestic abuse would meet such thresholds, but they often do not. Even if they did, there would be a lot of variance within our statutory provision of children’s safeguarding from area to area, let alone anything that is specifically commissioned to address domestic abuse. Children’s services, and services that help perpetrators to change, are probably the biggest areas where there are gaps in our system.

[Jess Phillips]

Q In the follow-up to the Joint Committee on the previous Bill in a previous Parliament—it looks pretty similar to this Bill in this Parliament, so we will assume it is the one for this Bill—the Government came back and said they felt that, in the wider context of abusive behaviour towards a victim under the age of 16, it would be deemed child abuse and the extra support would come through social services. Is that a picture of our country that you recognise?

Nicole Jacobs: No. Before the lockdown, I started to visit some areas that our chief social worker had told me were particularly outstanding in children’s social care. She would think it is broader than this, but she suggested a handful of places for me to visit. In the places I started to visit, I was, like she thought I might be, quite impressed by the provision of services within social care. I was seeing something that I had never seen before: a point of contact for the abusing parent, for the adult victim and for the child. I had actually not seen that before in 20 years of working, and I have not only worked in west London; I have worked in organisations that are much broader. I was really inspired by that, but I recognised something that I thought was fairly unusual. I think what you said is true.

[Jess Phillips]

Q On the gaps that you alluded to with regard to migrant women, migrant victims and migrant children, and to British children who are the children of migrant victims, you said that the Bill did not currently do enough to help them. Could you please expand on that?

Nicole Jacobs: That is right. Having been there myself, I have experienced the feeling of having someone in my office on a Friday afternoon who has three children, has no recourse to public funds and is too scared to go home, knowing that I could do very little and that I had a long night ahead of me. I understand how that feels.

That is happening every day, all the time, and I do not see anything in this Bill that would address that. I am a firm believer that we should lift the requirement that people have no recourse to public funds. It makes no sense. If you are experiencing domestic abuse, and you are here in our country, then you should have recourse to routes to safety.

Those are the people who actually got to me. I was sitting in an office that was within a broader larger charity, and it was probably lucky that those people got to me. Many migrant women will have fears about the system and about the repercussions of coming forward. They will be highly dependent on word-of-mouth networks and much smaller community-based services.

[Jess Phillips]

Q I wanted to clarify that the women—I am assuming they were largely women—who you talk about that came to you, and the people I am talking about, are here in this country completely legally.

Nicole Jacobs: That is right. They did not have a status that would allow them to have recourse to the funds. It is true that that did not mean they could not come to see me in a community-based service, but it meant my hands were tied and I had very few options. I would hope for a possible night in a hostel somewhere, but I would know that we would be back to square one the next day. That would happen over and over again, until, quite rarely, we would find somewhere more suitable. I might have been ringing around the few refuge spaces that were possibly available. The next witness will give you much more detail about that.

[Jess Phillips]

Q Absolutely. I want to finish by talking about the gap you identified around perpetrator services. The Bill has wide-ranging changes with regard to domestic violence protection orders and other such issues. Is there a particular area of the Bill that you think needs to be more robust about how we manage the postcode lottery of perpetrator services?

Nicole Jacobs: It could potentially be addressed in a statutory duty that was broadened in the clauses about domestic abuse protection orders. I leave that up to you to decide. In my years of experience working in the sector we have had huge changes in terms of innovation. It is an exciting time to think about the broad strategy that we need for perpetrators to help them change and for early intervention, all the way through to much more punitive measures. There are a lot of pilots, a lot of evaluation and practice.

We are in a better place than ever, but I am concerned about the DAPO and the positive requirements on it. You will not be able to place the positive requirement if there is not a service in the area that meets proper standards, as it is fairly unusual to find an area that would have that breadth of services.

[Jess Phillips]

Q Would it be pointless to have a Bill that makes ways for domestic abuse protection orders to exist if, in your local area, there is not a service that would be accredited, by some standard that does not currently exist?

Nicole Jacobs: I have always understood that the DAPO is in the Bill to pave the way, through its two-year piloting. There is no doubt that it will prompt many questions: the implementation, the way we should be working together, the thought we need to give to how victims and survivors are communicated with in courts, and any number of other things.

Because I am an optimistic person, I always thought that while things are not covered off completely—there is a huge gap with the idea of the perpetrator and where all the constant requirements are coming from—the general strategy is for people to learn in the process of the DAPO. I guess my plea is for you to strength the evaluation of that pilot any way you can in the Bill. It needs to be implemented and resourced properly, including the voice of victims, and my other plea would be for the Victims’ Commissioner and I to be included in the learning for the DAPOs.

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

Q I want to comment on a few things that you said in response to Jess’s questions. A lot of the things you are saying about the DAPOs will obviously come into the statutory guidance. It is important to remember that there are things in the Bill, but the statutory guidance will be the backup, and I suspect a lot of your concerns will be addressed by that guidance. When you talk about community-based services, are you talking about the charitable sector—the third sector—or are you talking about local government? In local government, there is an ability to offer a lot of domestic abuse services, but some councils do not choose to. What is your definition of community-based services?

Nicole Jacobs: In general, I am talking about the ones that are commissioned for domestic abuse services, usually—although not solely—by the local authority. Sometimes those are outreach workers or independent domestic violence advocates; at one point, I was one of those. All aspects of the local authority are highly dependent on those services—housing officers, social workers, teachers—and a whole breadth of referrals come into those types of services. Just to give you an example, in the area of west London where I worked the year before I took on this role, they had 4,000 referrals of people into those community-based services, so we are talking about quite high volumes of cases. Each worker will be supporting 30 to 40 people at any given time. That is on a rolling basis over the year, so by the end of that year, just that one worker will have probably supported well over 100 people, if not more.

There are a few places where that team will be employed within the local authority, but those are few and far between; the commissioning-out of that service is much more common. I prefer the commissioning-out of the service, because people who experience domestic abuse have such a lot of fears about seeking help because they worry about the consequences. They do not know for definite what the police, particularly, are going to do, or social workers or anyone else, and they really value the independence of that role. It is not that they would never share information: if they have safeguarding concerns, for example, they have a duty to share those, but there is a level of independence that gives them a bit of safe space to think through the complexities of their situation, and it is fairly well evaluated that these are critical services. They are also quite cost-effective. It is incredible what these individual workers will do over the course of the year. If you shifted that into a local authority, they would cost more and the relationship would change, so the case I am making is for us to recognise how critical these services are.

My worry is that if we go ahead with the statutory duty for refuge-based or accommodation-based services, local authorities that are cash-strapped or concerned about budgets will obviously prioritise that duty, and the unintended consequence could be that these community-based services are curtailed or cut. They are not in main budgets, but have to fight year in, year out or in each commissioning cycle, which are relatively short: two years or sometimes three. I worry that because they are not part of a duty, they will be cut or curtailed, when even now they are barely covering the breadth of support that they should. There could be some serious unintended consequences from the implementation of the duty.

If it stays that way, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government should include in the current set-up of the statutory duty for accommodation-based services a firm responsibility to understand what the consequences could be for community-based services. In practice, the pattern is that it is hard to see the expansion in these services that you might think there would be, considering the prevalence rates. I think that surprises many people. It might not surprise you, but it does surprise many people when they realise how these services have to survive on a shoestring with such a lot of cobbling together of funding.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Q We will now hear oral evidence from the Southall Black Sisters. I am very grateful that our witness sat through the first session, so I will not repeat all the information about social distancing and the fact that Members are sitting behind you, as you have heard that. I would be very grateful if you could introduce yourself.

Pragna Patel: My name is Pragna Patel, and I am the director and a founding member of Southall Black Sisters. We were established in 1979 to meet the needs of black and minority ethnic women, certainly in our local area of west London. Although we are based in west London, we now have a national reach.

Most of the women who come to us have been subject to all kinds of gender-related violence and, related to that, issues of homelessness, poverty, trauma, mental illness and, of course, difficulties with immigration matters. We exist as an advice, advocacy and campaigning centre, and have been at the forefront of many campaigns to highlight the needs and experiences of black and minority women in the UK.

[Jess Phillips]

Q Hello, Pragna. Thank you for coming in today in these slightly strange circumstances.

For a number of years, this Bill has been getting to the point where we are sitting here today. Organisations like yours, Southall Black Sisters, are run for and by migrant women and black and minority ethnic women. Could you estimate how many hours you have spent trying to help build the Bill, working with the Government and advocating in meetings in this House? How many hours do you think you have spent asking for things to be in this Bill for migrant women and victims of domestic abuse?

Pragna Patel: During the course of the Bill, I would say hundreds. It has become a core element of our work. The reason why we have put so much time and resources into the Bill is that, like many, we see it as a landmark Bill—a once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity Bill—to try to get things right for abused women. For us, it is vital that it includes protection measures not for some women but for all women, and particularly the women we work with.

[Jess Phillips]

Q Could you briefly, in one line, set out what exactly you—not just you, but organisations like yours and lots of more generic organisations—have been asking to be put in the Bill?

Pragna Patel: There are lots of aspects of it that I could talk about, but the key thing is the inclusion of protection for migrant women, who represent some of the most marginalised, vulnerable, forgotten women in our society. If covid-19 has taught us anything, it is that there are glaring inequalities in our society. If we want to create a new normal, we have to seize opportunities like this to combat the inequalities that are being shored up, which lead to problems in the long run. We have seen that in relation to the exclusion from the Bill of protection for migrant women.

[Jess Phillips]

Q So after all those hours of work and, I believe, two reviews—please correct me if I am wrong—on migrant women, with one completed and one not completed, do you see any of your work written on the face of the Bill in front of us?

Pragna Patel: I cannot tell you how disappointing and frustrating it is for us to feel that our voices continue to be unheard. It is not my voice, but the voice of those who remain invisible, that I am trying to amplify here. It does not signal confidence that, in the governing structures of this society and in the criminal and civil justice systems, there will be protection afforded to all women who need to engage with statutory, legal and voluntary services to obtain protection and justice. The women I work with are some of the women who suffer the most disproportionately from violence and abuse, who face some of the most prolonged and extreme forms of harm, and who have the least ability to exit from abuse and protect themselves. That is why it is so important that people here today take account of the need to make this Bill the best that it can be, in terms of protecting those who cannot protect themselves. The litmus test of this Bill has to be: are we protecting those who are the most marginalised and the most vulnerable?

[Jess Phillips]

Q Just so that people can hear this, if a victim comes forward who is working in, let us say, a hospital and has no recourse to public funds, would she be able to easily access a refuge bed for her and her children in any local authority area?

Pragna Patel: No way. There is no way. No recourse to public funds prohibits abused women who are subject to it from accessing any kind of support. They basically cannot access the welfare safety net.

[Jess Phillips]

Q Have you ever met any women in that circumstance who have children—let us discount single victims at this point—and who have been told that they would have their children removed from them? Obviously, local authorities have a duty to provide, under section 17 of the Children Act, for every child who comes forward. Have you ever seen circumstances in which women have been told that their children will be removed because the women have been victims of domestic abuse?

Pragna Patel: All the time. One of the areas of work for us has been working with our local authorities to try to encourage them, support them and challenge them to support women and children, because they have safeguarding duties to the children at least, even if women have no recourse to public funds. We are finding that there are two problems to this. The first is that many of these women have insecure immigration status. Immigration and Home Office enforcement officers are now embedded in many social services, which increases the level of fear that women have in even getting out, reporting abuse and seeking help, because they are afraid that data will be shared with the Home Office and that, instead of being offered help, they will be subject to possible deportation. That is the first problem we are facing.

The second problem we face is that, for all sorts of reasons, the local authority response is one of deterrence. It may be because they are cash-strapped; it may be for other reasons. It means that when women go and report domestic violence, particularly if they have no recourse to public funds and have children, there are three or four common responses that we are always met with. One: “We do not have a duty to accommodate you, but we can pay for your return ticket to your country of origin—this is without assessing needs and risks. Two: “We have a duty to your child but not you, and therefore we will accommodate the child and not you.” Three: “The child has not been the subject of abuse, and therefore the child can remain with the abuser.” That way, the safeguarding duties are discharged. Reconciliation and mediation meetings, offering immigration advice when they are not experienced enough to do so, having immigration officers in the building speaking to those women, which drives up their levels of fear, encouraging women to return to their country of origin or sometimes encouraging women to go and obtain asylum even though that is not appropriate, are some of the most common responses that we have received from local authorities, not just in London, but also outside.

We are in the middle of producing research to bring together the evidence around local authority responses. What I would say is that over three months last year—October to December—we had occasion to seek legal advice in 18 cases involving local authority responses, because they were not fulfilling the statutory duty in relation to section 17 of the Children Act and the need to safeguard children.

[Jess Phillips]

Q This is my final question. If it was written into the Bill that victims of domestic abuse who have no recourse to public funds, regardless of their status, were able to access welfare, security and support from any agency, would that save people’s lives?

Pragna Patel: There is no question that introducing such a measure would provide almost certainty, in terms of protection and safety and providing life-saving services and access to justice for many women.

I really want to emphasise the context of this. We have seen with the covid-19 crisis that inequalities that have always existed have been exposed and exacerbated. We have also seen, in relation to what is going on in the US, the racial uprisings, which are also a reflection of historical and glaring inequalities—in both cases, in relation to the protected characteristics of race, age, class, sex and so on. When I say that migrant women are excluded from the Bill, I am also talking about discrimination and inequality.

We have an opportunity to redress that balance and to ensure that those who need protection and justice can get it, regardless of their status, regardless of their background. That is what the Istanbul convention that the Bill is seeking to ratify—it is a step towards that ratification—is hoping to do. If we really mean that, if we really want to change and to combat inequalities and create a new normal, introducing measures that will support the most vulnerable and the most invisible—those who are most likely to be subject to the hostile immigration environment—is critical. I encourage the Committee to really think about the opportunity we have got to signal a new normal.

[The Chair]

I am going to call the Minister next, and then I will go to Peter Kyle and then Mike Wood.

Asylum Decisions (Support for Refugees)

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir David.

I will start by commenting on what has been said so eloquently by my hon. Friends about the idea that universal credit happens within five weeks, or that 28 days would be enough to get accommodation, if it were needed. If someone were to present themselves as homeless to Birmingham City Council, or just as needing housing, not necessarily as a priority need, it would probably take 18 months before they were given anywhere they could actually live. When my brother applied for universal credit, he decided to grow his beard for the time it took before he got a payment; he looked like Rasputin before he got any funding. That puts it into some perspective.

I want to talk specifically about the effect on refugee women, which I am sure will surprise absolutely no one, and to bring to the Minister’s attention the findings of the “Will I ever be safe?” report by Women for Refugee Women. I think it is vital that this element is included in this debate. The women featured in the report are here in the Gallery listening to our debate. The report details the cases of 106 asylum-seeking and refugee women. They left their countries for a variety of reasons, but around half the women said that they had experienced violence at the hands of the state authorities, 42% had been tortured and almost one third had been raped by soldiers, prisoners, guards or the police in their own country. More than one third of the women had been raped in the private sphere, with others fleeing forced marriage, forced prostitution and other forms of gender-based violence. More than one third of the destitute women were forced into unwanted relationships because of their destitution in this period that we are talking about.

When faced with an impossible situation, very often in those cases the women end up back in dangerous and violent relationships, or exploited as part of a pattern of street homelessness. Certainly, something that I have seen time and again while working with victims of human trafficking is how the constant merry-go-round of destitution for that group of women leaves them severely vulnerable to the people who come along and exploit them for sex. One quarter of the women who were spoken to in the report—bear in mind that suffering sexual violence was part of the reason they fled—were raped or sexually abused when sleeping outside or in other people’s homes.

When I used to work with asylum-seeking women, who at that time were largely from Sierra Leone, in Birmingham, it was often described as moving “from one hell to another”, and that also seems to be the case with this destitution gap. We see that one third of women raped in their home country are then raped again here in the UK. My hon. Friend highlighted the case of Mariam and how long it had taken her to gain access to benefits. That sounded much more realistic than the timeframes laid out, and much closer to my understanding, as a constituency Member of Parliament, of how long it takes to actually access benefits. She waited nine months to get her benefits.

I want to tell a tiny bit of Mariam’s story, so that she does not just become a person who had to wait a little while for benefits and so that we can feel who she is. I will read it in her words:

“I’m from Fumayu in Somalia and came to the UK in November 2008 after fleeing the war. I’m from a minority clan called Bajuni… I escaped the war in Somalia twice. The first time was in the early 1990s. Militiamen broke into our family home and raped me. They raped my daughter Amina as well. She was just 15. The men shot her dead after, and they killed my son too.”

She fled originally to Kenya and then eventually here to the UK. She applied for asylum the day after she arrived. She says:

“Because I had no money, the Home Office put me in a hostel where I got two meals a day.”

Mariam was rehoused in Middlesbrough. She was scared, and the interpreter brought in for her asylum interview spoke Swahili, not Kibajuni, which is the language she speaks. She was made to speak in a different language and found it difficult to explain herself. The Home Office refused her asylum claim. She was eventually granted her benefits, but, as has already been said, her asylum support stopped in January and her benefits did not start for nine months. The Home Office put Mariam in a dirty hotel. She had no money, and she was lucky that she had a solicitor who gave her some cash and that she was able to rely for some things on local charities.

That cannot be the system that the Minister hopes to see for a woman multiply raped, whose children have been killed in front of her. I ask him to consider all the things requested by my hon. Friend.

Children and Domestic Abuse

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

The most common thing that women in refuges or community services have said to me is that they wish that there was something for their children—somewhere that their children could go to speak to somebody about what was happening at home. Although many of those women appreciated the support that was available to them, there was a hole for at-risk children, whether in classrooms or even in social services, with zero therapeutic support or play care support, or even just somebody at school who they could speak to and who would understand.

If the women of this country who have suffered domestic violence had written the Domestic Abuse Bill and had picked a single thing to ask for, they would have asked for their children to be supported. Across the country, support for children who are victims of domestic violence is patchy at best. Sometimes it is done well. The organisation where I used to work has a huge team of children’s support workers, funded as a pilot project through the Home Office. Unfortunately, however, such things are often pilot projects that do not extend to everywhere in the country and often go to those places that are best at writing bids. As the bid writer, I am delighted that we had that project, but the reality in most parts of the country is that if a teenager who was suffering abuse stepped forward at school, or if a child in a primary school stepped forward to say something about what was happening at home with his mum and dad, there would be nowhere to send that child.

I am fairly well versed in the local domestic abuse projects where I live, and I have most of their mobile phone numbers, but I would not know where to send a child who needed therapeutic support in Birmingham, the second biggest city in the country. If provision is patchy where I live, I cannot imagine what it is like in Blaydon.

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend, whose background is in this area, is making a really good speech. As a former children’s services manager in Birmingham, she is absolutely spot on when she says that there is nowhere to refer children, especially when even children on child protection plans are not given support. Does she agree that it is wholly inadequate not to recognise children in the definition?

[Jess Phillips]

I absolutely agree. The Domestic Abuse Bill gives us a real opportunity. We will not get the moon on a stick—the Bill will not give us everything—but the annual case load at Women’s Aid, where I used to work, involved on average 8,000 women and 16,000 children. Children’s names are written down on a form and their social work paperwork is in the file, but no one from my organisation would necessarily have laid eyes on them. A tiny fraction of them would have lived in refuge accommodation—less than 10% of the total number would have gone through that in a year—so we are talking about thousands of children in the west midlands who, every day, are without someone to confide in, to talk to, or to deal with the trauma they are feeling in their lives.

Anyone who sits for five minutes with people who have been a child victim of domestic abuse, who have grown up in a home, will tell us that that trauma stays with them in adulthood. They are likely to suffer from PTSD and from problems within their own intimate relationships. All the findings from studies of crime data on knife crime or even terrorism show links to people who grow up in traumatised households. It is imperative for the future of those children and our country that we get this right. Children must be included in the Bill, and at the same time we must take a huge, wholesale look at funding for children’s services in the country. I ask the Minister directly: how many young people’s violence advisers and specialist children’s workers are there across England and Wales? The SafeLives data shows that it would cost only £2.5 million to provide those services across England and Wales. In the greater scheme of things, what it would save would be huge.

We are moving into an era when this will be talked about in schools. All of us in the Chamber have fought—some of us literally had to fight directly on the streets—to ensure that compulsory sex and relationship education will be available in our schools. As we roll that out and talk about such subjects in schools, we must ensure that we do not open a door into an empty room. We must ensure that specialist training and specialist single points of contact are available to handle this in every school, and to handle it well.

The murder rate of women and girls were released the week before last. I have forgotten the name of the organisation, but the data was released: 144 women and girls were murdered last year. That is an increase of about 27 on the previous year. Those figures include the murder of girls younger than three. The reality is that we need to provide support for victims of domestic violence who are children, and it is also imperative that they are safeguarded. We need to start looking at where we are failing in the system of children’s social care. To look at my own city again, I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) could tell horror stories about how the under-resourcing of children’s services is leading to dangerous situations for the city’s children.

I cannot stress one thing enough when it comes to the review being undertaken of the family court. All of us have been in meetings with the likes of Claire Throssell, whose children were burned in their home by a violent perpetrator who the family courts had allowed to have access to them, even though she had begged and pleaded against that. The presumption of access for domestic violence perpetrators has to end.

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

To build on the hon. Lady’s point, the presumption in favour of access for a parent who in a criminal court would be considered a violent offender has a hidden dimension. Sometimes the perpetrator of domestic abuse will use the child as a pawn. Enhanced right of access will, typically, be used as a tool to torture the mother. The hon. Lady gave powerful figures not only for women who have been killed by domestic abuse but for children as young as three. She also gave an example of arson. That grim conclusion might not be reached, but children are still treated as pawns. They are placed with the perpetrator parent, in a highly dangerous situation, and they are denied access to their mother. That is a tool to torture the mother, and goodness knows what is happening. Another problem is the reporting restrictions in the family court, which make it difficult to know how the decisions are reached and the slipstream in which those children are moving.

[Jess Phillips]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. I have seen hundreds of cases in which access to a child is used simply to extend the abuse. Children become pawns, and that has a psychological effect on them. They are pulled about and told that they have to go somewhere, such that they do not feel safe. Their mothers have to watch on and say goodbye to their children, putting them into the custody of someone they do not believe to be safe. That is psychological torture in our family court system—although, thanks to its secrecy, we will never truly know. However, I am sent emails with reams of accounts about that exact thing happening, day in, day out. We have to stop wringing our hands.

The Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service is also an issue with regard to the family court. CAFCASS provides support and services for perpetrators to try to stop the perpetration of domestic abuse. I am not here to criticise that, but I note that CAFCASS does not provide the same support for women and children. I often found a disparity when people decided to fund local commissioned services for perpetrators. Again, I have no problem with that, but there was always a discrepancy between the amount of money that would go to the perpetrator project and the amount that would go to the project that ran alongside it for women and children. Double the number of people was always a fraction of the price, I noted.

[Jim Shannon]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Jess Phillips]

I will but for the last time, because I want to leave time for my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) to speak.

[Jim Shannon]

I am conscious of the psychological, financial and emotional ways in which a partner can put pressure on a wife and mother of the children. My office has dealt on many occasions with the issue of finance, where the male controls the money and the female and the children depend on him for finances. It is another nasty form of control. I have spoken about it many times, as has the hon. Lady.

[Jess Phillips]

The hon. Gentleman is right. We will welcome the Domestic Abuse Bill giving recognition to the issue of financial abuse. Things will only ever change if there are proper support services in every part of the country, to ensure that people can recognise financial abuse and that there is a route out.

People often say, “Why doesn’t she leave?” When a woman leaves a domestic violence perpetrator, with her children, the risk that she will be murdered elevates. There is a pattern in all domestic homicide reviews and children’s safeguarding serious case reviews: when people try to escape, the likelihood of their being murdered increases. That is one reason, but the other reason a woman might have nothing is that she will have no money. It is easy for us to say that we would leave, but it is very different in practice.

It would not be a day with me and the Minister if I did not mention the plight of migrant women, but my hon. Friend for Edmonton will talk much more about that, so I shall give her the time to do so. Until the Domestic Abuse Bill accounts for all victims, whether they be children or adult victims, and can guarantee at least an opportunity of safety—we cannot guarantee safety; no Government Department can, no matter how great—for every woman in this country who comes forward, homicide rates will not decline. The people whose names I will have to read out every year will increasingly be those of migrant women and children. I shall leave the Minister with that.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) on securing this important debate about a subject that we all clearly care so much about. May I congratulate her on her timing as well? As she said, the Bill is back today.

I am delighted that my very first act as the Minister leading the Bill through the House is to respond to this incredibly important debate about the impact of domestic abuse on the lives of children, not just in the immediate term but in the much longer term. The hon. Lady articulated that extremely well with the example of her constituent Christine, who set out not just the impact on her own life but the long-term impact on the life of her daughter, who is now over the age of 18. I hope that everyone watching the debate realises that we all genuinely understand the impact that domestic abuse can have.

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who, as always, brought the perspective of a vital part of our United Kingdom to the Chamber. He made the point that domestic abuse affects many families in Northern Ireland. I hope he is pleased that we were able to remove from the latest iteration of the Bill the sections we were going to include to ensure that legislation is passed in Northern Ireland. Of course, we were able to do that because the Northern Ireland Executive is back. We have confirmation that the Executive intend to legislate on this important subject locally, which is as it should be. I am delighted by that development.

As was set out, we know that as many as one in five children in the UK are witness to or exposed to this awful crime type in their households. We know too that domestic abuse has a devastating impact on young people. Growing up in a household of fear and intimidation can have serious, long-lasting effects on the health, wellbeing and development of a young person. We know that children exposed to domestic abuse are more likely to experience mental health difficulties, to be excluded from school and to become victims of domestic abuse later in life. I do not for a moment say that is the life outcome of every child—of course it is not—but we must pay attention to the statistics and to the trends that we see in them.

The hon. Member for Blaydon rightly challenged the Government on why the definition has been set at the age of 16 and above. As I hope I have been clear when speaking about previous iterations of the Bill, that is something we have grappled with. In 2012, following a consultation, the cross-Government definition of domestic abuse was amended to include 16 and 17-year-olds, with the aim of increasing awareness of young people’s experience of domestic abuse. Indeed, there was strong support for maintaining that age limit in responses to the domestic abuse consultation we held in 2018, which was part of the foundations of the Bill.

The concern is that lowering the age limit below 16 risks blurring the line between child abuse and domestic abuse between adults. Abuse perpetrated by an adult towards someone under 16 is classified as child abuse. We argue that the distinction needs to be maintained because, as colleagues will know, many interactions with social services and so on may flow from that definition.

We note that the Joint Committee on the Draft Domestic Abuse Bill, which scrutinised the draft Bill in huge detail and heard evidence from many witnesses, concluded that an age limit of 16 is the right one, but we are absolutely clear that the impact of domestic abuse on young people needs to be recognised properly, and that we must ensure that the agencies are aware of it and know how to identify and respond to it.

[Jess Phillips]

Are we therefore to assume that any child under 16 who suffered as a victim of domestic abuse, either directly or indirectly, would meet the threshold for child abuse and therefore should be reported to children’s social care immediately by all the authorities that we would expect to report that? For example, should every schoolteacher who hears about something like that report it as child abuse? If so, what will the Government put in place to ensure that children’s social care can deal with that?

[Victoria Atkins]

The hon. Lady will appreciate that I cannot give a broad-brush answer for each and every case; clearly, every case must be treated on its facts. However, the definition of harm in the Children Act 1989—again, the Joint Committee looked at that very carefully—includes

“forms of ill-treatment which are not physical”

as well as

“impairment suffered from seeing or hearing the ill-treatment of another”.

We are therefore clear that the definition of harm in the 1989 Act includes witnessing and experiencing coercive control. From that, we concluded that the most effective way of trying to act on the Committee’s recommendation with regard to that definition is to amend the Department for Education’s statutory guidance, “Working together to safeguard children”. I hope that helps to clarify the point.

We are also clear that the impact of domestic abuse includes the impact on children living in households where abuse is conducted, teenage relationship abuse—the hon. Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) mentioned that—and abuse directed towards siblings and parents, which is perhaps one of the most hidden forms of abuse in a crime already typified by concealment and hiding.

We are seeking to address the very real points and concerns raised by Members and, indeed, others outside this House in a number of ways. First and foremost, the statutory guidance, which will sit alongside the definition in the Act—when it is passed, I hope—will specifically address the adverse impact of abuse on children. We are working closely with key charities such as Barnardo’s, Action for Children and the Children’s Society as well as the domestic abuse commissioner—the commissioner designate, I should say—the Children’s Commissioner and many others to ensure that the guidance makes the impact on children clear.

To answer the question from the hon. Member for Blaydon, we will publish a draft version of the statutory guidance ahead of the Commons Committee stage to assist in scrutiny of the Bill. I genuinely encourage hon. Members and their networks of experts and survivors to consider that draft guidance and feed back to us on it, because we want to get it right.

Importantly, the Bill as introduced today includes a new statutory duty that will require tier 1 local authorities in England to provide support to domestic abuse victims and their children in refuges and other safe accommodation. That will result in the right level of tailored support for victims and their children across the country at the time of need, with improved recovery rates and the release of bed spaces as people rebuild their lives more quickly. We will ensure that local authorities receive appropriate financial support to meet the proposed duty.

Domestic Abuse

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Tuesday 16th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues. We are grateful to everyone who represents Northern Ireland and take their seats in this House for their support. We are also grateful for the very clear message from him and others that they are keen for this offence of coercive controlling behaviour to be included in the Bill. The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), and I are very happy to look into the situation that he has described. Clearly, omitting the offence of stalking from the statute book of Northern Ireland is not what anyone wants, and, certainly, we will consider whether we can include it in the Bill.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

I am delighted to welcome the Bill today. It feels like the first parliamentary step in what has seemed like a marathon to get to this point, but I think that we can all agree that this Bill still has quite a way to go before it is exactly what everybody in this House wants it to be, which is for it to be the best thing for all women. I am delighted by the concessions and by the fact that we have been heard, specifically around migrant women, and I thank the Minister for that. We shall obviously keep our eyes focused on pushing for the Bill to be the best that it can be. I know that she has said several times that both leadership candidates to be the Prime Minister in our country have agreed to take this forward. Unsurprisingly, a number of journalists have been in touch with me today and have told me that they have been in touch with both teams; the Foreign Secretary’s team has confirmed that it would take this forward, but the team of the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) has yet to confirm that that is the case. Far be it from me to suggest that the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip is not always completely straightforward, but will the Minister share with the House specifically what the right hon. Gentleman has said to her on this matter?

[Victoria Atkins]

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady; as always, I take my hat off to her for the very practical experience that she brings to the House, given that she worked so avidly in domestic abuse refuges before she entered this place and given all the work she has done since then.

I had a confirmatory conversation only yesterday with a very senior member of the team of my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) who told me that they are delighted to support these measures and to make progress. I should say, by the way, that I have not declared for either candidate, so I am coming to this with genuinely clean hands. I feel obliged to point out that my right hon. Friend did some pretty impressive work drawing up a violence against women and girls strategy as Mayor of London, so that bodes very well. I am also conscious of the great work that the Foreign Secretary has done in his role at the Foreign Office and when he was at the Department of Health and Social Care to ensure that the wishes of women are met. I have great confidence that the message from this statement will have got through loud and clear that this House will make sure that it gives as much commitment to this agenda as we all have so far.

Immigration Detention: Trafficking and Modern Slavery

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Tuesday 9th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the immigration detention of survivors of trafficking and modern slavery.

As always, Sir Gary, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairship. I am grateful for the opportunity to debate this issue in Parliament today. Trafficking and modern-day slavery have been described by our current Prime Minister as

“the great human rights issue of our time”.

The Government have rightly committed to safeguarding and supporting those who are exploited in this way, yet new research published today by the charity Women for Refugee Women shows that Chinese women who have been trafficked to the UK are routinely being locked up in Yarl’s Wood detention centre, often for months on end. Instead of offering help and support, the Home Office is inflicting yet more distress and trauma on these women by subjecting them to indefinite immigration detention. I have stood in this Chamber and the main Chamber so many times to speak about this; sometimes it feels as if we are constantly repeating ourselves when we ask for the issue of vulnerable women in detention to be properly managed.

Women for Refugee Women’s research makes for very worrying reading. Since the summer of last year, it has received an increasing number of phone calls from Chinese women detained in Yarl’s Wood. The Home Office’s own figures show that since 2016, the number of Chinese women locked up in immigration detention has almost doubled. Women for Refugee Women has spoken to 40 women from China in total, and 29 of them have said that they have experienced some form of trafficking—often sexual or labour exploitation. For its research, Women for Refugee Women looked at the legal files of 14 of these women to see if it could identify patterns in their treatment by the Home Office. It found that the Home Office was deliberately refusing to protect these women and was knowingly inflicting further harm and trauma on them.

In four of the cases reviewed, women were detained directly from massage parlours or brothels—the very situations where they were being directly exploited and where there was a clear objective indicator that they were victims of trafficking. This is not to be questioned. These women were being taken directly from brothels. In spite of that, they were not given any help or support; instead, they were arrested and sent straight to Yarl’s Wood.

In eight of the cases, moreover, when women disclosed what had happened to them, they were referred to the national referral mechanism and the Home Office said that it did not believe them. What is more, in six cases, its reasons for refusing to recognise them as survivors of trafficking were in direct contravention of its own guidance on assessing credibility. It said that it did not believe them because they had not disclosed what had happened to them at the point when they were arrested—even though its own guidance explicitly says that delayed disclosure may be a result of the trauma and exploitation that they have been subjected to.

In some cases, the Home Office made obviously absurd assertions to justify its negative decisions. In the case of a woman who was encountered during a raid on a brothel, the Home Office said that it was reasonable to expect her to disclose her exploitation at that point, even though she was still in the situation of exploitation, and even though she thought that she was being arrested by the police.

Just take a moment to think about someone who is being exploited and is working in a brothel against their will, being forced to have sex with however many men it may have been that day. If that institution was raided by a group of uniformed officers, even I—a citizen of this country—would not be able to identify that they were the goodies, not the baddies I had been told about, who would arrest me if they found out what I was doing and who I had been groomed to be wary of. Yet we expect those women at that exact moment to say, “Yes, I am being prostituted.” It seems so unlikely and so inhumane.

Even when the Home Office recognised some of the women as survivors of trafficking, it still did not provide them with help or support. In one particularly shocking case, a woman who had received a positive reasonable grounds decision was not released from Yarl’s Wood to the safe house; she was actually sent back to the address where she had been sexually exploited before she was detained. I have worked in human trafficking services, and I understand what the pathway is meant to be once somebody goes through the national referral mechanism: safe houses, benefits and support should be available. It is a good system from the Government; it is well designed and kind, although it is not perfect. I have absolutely no idea why that pathway is not clear in situations where women are detained.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. She has done well to secure the debate and to highlight the excellent work of Women for Refugee Women. Does she agree that behind many of the problems that she describes is the way in which two separate responsibilities—for modern slavery and for immigration enforcement—sit uncomfortably within the Home Office? I declare an interest as a trustee of Focus on Labour Exploitation, a charity that works in this area; our research has shown that the conflict between those two responsibilities is repeatedly hampering attempts to protect victims. Does my hon. Friend agree that the only way to resolve the problem satisfactorily is to have truly independent decision making?

[Jess Phillips]

I could not agree more; it is clearly a problem, and not just in trafficking services. Sometimes I have to speak to the immigration wing of the Home Office and explain issues of domestic violence or sexual violence. I always sit back and think, “Hang on a minute—you’re the Department that is in charge of dealing with domestic violence and sexual violence. Why has it taken my explanation for your immigration officers to understand the nuances of the case?” I do not doubt that the Home Office is a caring and kind institution when it comes to tackling issues of trafficking, domestic abuse and sexual violence; I believe truly that its heart is in the right place, but while targets for immigration removal are maintained as high-level political targets, we will see vulnerabilities, and the care side of the Home Office will be completely swept aside. I absolutely agree that there needs to be a severing and an independence.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is right to say that she has raised the matter many times; I have heard her do so in various debates. It strikes me that very often these women are not getting any legal aid or legal assistance. Organisations that could provide such support, such as CRASAC—Coventry Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre, which I am sure my hon. Friend has heard of—are totally underfunded. Once again, as they do in every mode of life in this country, women seem to be paying a price somewhere down the line, whether it is in dealing with the national deficit or in other issues—benefits, universal credit, the lot. Although women have equal rights in this country, it all paints a pretty grim picture of the way in which they are actually treated.

[Jess Phillips]

I completely agree. Paradoxically, the support services that the Home Office funds specifically for human trafficking are good and relatively well funded for those who have already gone through the national referral mechanism. The problem is the idea that a trafficked woman, a trafficked child or a trafficked anyone understands what the national referral mechanism is. There is a high bar to accessing services, and the community-based support for people to enter the system has been completely and utterly degraded by years and years of austerity.

Birmingham, where I live, is certainly heavily reliant on religious organisations for the low-level support of trafficking victims who have not yet got to the national referral mechanism stage. That support is incredibly patchy and there is no outreach element to it; it is only provided if people manage to find those services. So, good advice and guidance on the streets, and a change in the culture of how we help these people, are vital.

I will go back to the specific cases of the Chinese women covered in this report. The distress caused to these women by their treatment at the hands of the Home Office is immense. One woman who was forced into prostitution in the UK described her arrest and detention in the following way:

“One day men in uniforms came to the house. They dragged me out and took me to the police station. Later, I was put in a van. It drove for a long time through the night and ended up at Yarl’s Wood. I was taken from one hell to another.”

Shalini Patel, a solicitor at Duncan Lewis Solicitors who has taken on many of these cases, has said:

“There is sheer disregard for the safety of these women who have already been subjected to such horrendous sexual abuse and exploitation. These women are by no means fit for detention, but despite this they are detained for months at a time with no adequate support. It is only when legal representatives step in that they are eventually released from detention. I hate to think what is happening to those women who are not able to access legal advice”,

which is an issue that has quite rightly been raised here today.

The Home Office will say that this report looks at only 14 cases, which is an understandable retort. However, although this report is the first piece of research to examine the treatment of Chinese women who have been trafficked into the UK, it is just the latest report to document how the Home Office is refusing to help and support survivors of trafficking. Research by Detention Action published in 2017 and a report published by the Jesuit Refugee Service in 2018 both showed how men and women who had been trafficked into the UK were routinely being locked up in detention.

Also, new Home Office data, which was obtained by the After Exploitation project and released today, shows that in 2018 alone 507 potential victims of trafficking were detained under immigration powers in the UK. In fact, this figure includes only those who have received positive reasonable grounds decisions and whom the Home Office recognises as possible survivors of trafficking, so it really is just the tip of the iceberg.

In all the cases that Women for Refugee Women looked at, the women were detained for over a month and four of them were detained for more than six months. These long periods of detention caused a drastic deterioration in their mental health; half the women in the sample had suicidal thoughts and six of them were self-harming in detention. And, incredibly, 92% of asylum-seeking women from China who are locked up in Yarl’s Wood are not subsequently removed from the UK but are released back into the community, which prompts the question: what was the point of putting them through that horror? As well as being extremely damaging, even traumatising, the detention of these women serves no purpose.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

As always, my hon. Friend is making an impassioned speech. Does she agree about one of the other disconnects that exists in the system? She has read out details of some traumatic cases of the long-term detention of individuals who need help, yet perversely some of us in this place have been arguing that the Government should extend the “move-on period” for those who have been given a determination past the 45-day mark, because 45 days is not long enough. The Government say it is sufficient time, even as they lock people up for months and months at a time in Yarl’s Wood. It just does not make sense to me.

[Jess Phillips]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that it is ridiculous that the “reflection period”, as I believe it is called, is 45 days and is considered to be the reasonable amount of time that somebody who has suffered terrible trauma and horrendous abuse requires. Given my experience of working in one of the services that helps these victims, I know that often it is possible to make claims for longer periods, based on certain circumstances. It is like any local resident who says, “Gosh! If I paid my council tax with the same irregularity as the bins are collected, I would be put in prison!” It is one of those things where it seems that there is one rule for the state and one rule for others.

It is also important to remember that, in developing policies on helping survivors of trafficking, the Home Office has repeatedly promised that it will reduce the use of detention for people who are vulnerable. Following Stephen Shaw’s review of detention in 2016, the Home Office introduced the adults at risk policy, which it said would result in fewer vulnerable people going into detention. The AAR policy explicitly says that survivors of trafficking and gender-based violence should not normally be detained, yet the research published by Women for Refugee Women today shows that the Home Office is deliberately going against this policy.

In fact, the report by Women for Refugee Women adds to the wealth of evidence showing that, despite the Home Office’s repeated promises to reform its use of immigration detention, very little has changed since 2016. The number of people in immigration detention has fallen, of course, but Stephen Shaw’s follow-up review of detention, which was published a year ago, found that

“it is not clear that AAR has yet made a significant difference to those numbers”—

That is, to the numbers of vulnerable people in detention. And just a few months ago, the Home Affairs Committee found that the AAR policy

“is clearly not protecting the vulnerable people that it was introduced to protect.”

What is the Home Office doing about this constant hamster-wheel of our coming here and asking that trafficking victims and victims of gender-based violence in detention be looked at and properly managed? It seems like many years now, but in 2015, when I became an MP, I went with Women for Refugee Women to Yarl’s Wood, to meet some of the women there. While I was there, because I was fresh out of working for an anti-human trafficking service, I was able to identify within seconds that the first person who I sat down to talk to—a woman—was a victim of human trafficking.

As I say, when I was sitting in that room in front of that woman, it took me seconds to identify what had gone wrong in her life, so I cannot understand why it has already taken four more years for the Home Office to consider putting in place proper safeguards. At the very least, there should be a proper specialist who risk-assesses everybody who comes through the doors at Yarl’s Wood on the day that they arrive; I will volunteer my time and I will gladly go and sit there for a few weeks.

I have three key demands of the Minister. First, the Home Office needs to stop detaining survivors of trafficking and gender-based violence immediately. It is very simple for the Home Office to do this; in fact, it is simply a matter of putting its own policy into practice.

Secondly, there needs to be a 28-day time limit on all immigration detention. The harm and distress caused by indefinite detention is immeasurable, and the research by Women for Refugee Women shows how the Home Office is detaining vulnerable people for very long periods of time. We already have much a shorter time limit of 72 hours for the detention of families with children or women who are pregnant, so I do not see any practical reason why a 28-day limit for everyone else cannot be introduced.

Finally, the Home Office needs to recognise that immigration detention is harmful, costly and completely purposeless; quite simply, nothing justifies its continuing use. Immigration cases can be resolved much more humanely and effectively in the community. If I was the Minister, I would shut down Yarl’s Wood and end immigration detention.

Again, there is this idea of one Government Department with two heads. I sit opposite Ministers from the Ministry of Justice who talk about women’s justice centres and how everybody knows that what is needed is proper community voluntary-sector provision, rather than sending women to prison, especially when so many women in prison have been victims of sexual and domestic violence, and often of human trafficking as well.

The Government line on this is completely different to reality, as they recognise that channelling the money away from prisons and into women’s centres in the community is the right thing to do, yet here we have this blot on the landscape, which is immigration detention, that does exactly the same thing as before and costs the state far more than specialist voluntary sector providers, who would do the same work better and more humanely.

I do not understand why we have to keep on having a debate on this issue. I hope that this is the last time that we all participate in a debate on this issue, but I imagine that, if she is still in her current post, I will see the Minister who is here today—the Minister for Immigration —the same time next year.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Nokes]

I will have to get back to the hon. Lady with precise numbers on those in the prison estate. Of course, it is important to reflect that those in the prison estate will be foreign national offenders who have committed some crime, which has determined that they are worthy of a prison sentence.

Each time an individual is detained, there must be a realistic prospect of removal within a reasonable timescale. Those making detention decisions consider the likely duration of detention necessary in order to effect removal.

I turn to the Shaw reforms. The Home Secretary made clear his commitment to going further and faster with reforms to immigration detention with four main priorities: encouraging and supporting voluntary return; improving support for vulnerable detainees; greater transparency on immigration detention; and a new drive on dignity in detention. We are making real progress in delivering those commitments and have laid the groundwork for that progress to continue.

I emphasise a project that I am sure hon. Members will welcome and support: the development of a series of pilots of alternatives to detention. The first one started in December 2018 with our delivery partner Action Foundation in Newcastle. We have released more than 10 women from Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre to be supported in the community, and further recruitment into the pilot is under way. We want to divert women at the point of detention into the pilot to fill the remaining places.

I can report progress towards the second pilot. There is interest from several credible potential delivery partners, and we expect to have our chosen delivery partner by August, enabling the second pilot to commence in the autumn. All irregular migrants will be in scope of that project. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is independently evaluating the pilot series, and findings will be fed into the overall evaluation framework that is being developed to monitor progress across all of Shaw’s recommendations so that any findings can be examined within the context of the wider changes to detention across the Home Office. The UNHCR is also creating an independent external reference group to monitor progress and share expertise and best practice.

We are in the process of implementing other changes as a result of the Shaw review. We are introducing detention engagement teams in all IRCs, who are ensuring better induction and improved links between detainees and their caseworkers. We are also piloting the two-month auto-bail referral, which builds on measures introduced in the Immigration Act 2016 to refer cases to the tribunal at the four-month period of detention, and introducing a new drive on dignity in detention to improve facilities in immigration removal centres, including piloting the use of Skype and modernising the facilities. We are bringing greater transparency to immigration detention, and publishing more data, including on deaths and escapes from detention and on pregnant women in detention.

I reassure hon. Members that the Government are committed to providing those being considered for immigration detention with the necessary levels of protection. We have particularly stringent safeguarding arrangements in respect of vulnerable people in the immigration system.

[Jess Phillips]

I appreciate everything that the Minister has been saying, and some of those things show signs of improvement. There are two points I am not sure she has answered. My hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) asked about the Nigerian issue. Is the policy of sending people home, saying basically that prostitution was making their home country a land of milk and honey, now over? Secondly, on the Minister’s point about the Government doing safeguarding in this area, how is it that women are being taken straight from brothels to Yarl’s Wood?

[Caroline Nokes]

The quote, which the hon. Lady has somewhat misinterpreted, has been amended to give clarification. It should not have been able to lead to such a level of misinterpretation. None of us would ever say that prostitution leads to an ideal way of life. It certainly does not. However, there is much more that we can do, working with Nigeria and our partners to address the particular problem that has arisen there with trafficked women.

The hon. Lady spoke about the safeguards we need to put in place. I will be completely candid with her, and I will give her a couple of minutes to wind up the debate. It is important that we do more. She and I recently attended a roundtable with the Minister for safeguarding, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Home Affairs, the Minister for Countering Extremism, Baroness Williams of Trafford, and the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar). At that event, I said that we needed to do much better on safeguarding across Government. That was particularly in reference to victims of domestic abuse, but I am conscious that victims of trafficking are, in many instances, victims of abuse.

We must do better at safeguarding those individuals and treating them as victims. The hon. Lady and I may disagree from time to time, but we must ensure that when we share data, we do it for good reasons so that we can safeguard and protect people in vulnerable situations. There is more work to do across Government. I said at the roundtable and will repeat today: it is no good enough for just the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice to be involved; we need the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Education involved, too. There is a piece of joined-up Government work there to ensure that we enable victims to be treated as victims, who are safeguarded appropriately, while at the same time recognising the important role of our immigration policies now and going forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jess Phillips]

I like that sentence, Sir Gary.

I thank everyone who spoke today. The strength of feeling in this House is clear: we wish to see the figure for people in our detention estate who have suffered any form of trafficking down to zero. Many of us wish to see the end of detention.

I am heartened by the Minister’s pilot projects. This system can be handled much better in the community with proper specialist partners. I hope we can go away with some sort of assurances that the Government can hear that the first thing we should do with anyone found in a brothel or clearly in a place of exploitation is care about them, not incarcerate them.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the immigration detention of survivors of trafficking and modern slavery.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Order. We can move straight on to our next debate as I see the protagonists are here. Please will those who are leaving kindly do so quietly and quickly? That would be much appreciated.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Monday 1st April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes]

The EU settlement scheme opened fully on Saturday, and we have worked with EU citizens to make it as simple and straightforward as possible. Last week, we launched a £3.75 million programme of communications that provides both information and the underlying message that EU citizens are our friends, our colleagues and our neighbours, and we want them to stay.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

I have met the Minister to discuss this, but will she tell the House what assurances she can give those who are not citizens of the European economic area but are married to EEA citizens? Under the current system, they have to obtain the permission of those EEA citizens to secure their settled status, regardless of whether or not they are victims of domestic violence.

[Caroline Nokes]

I thank the hon. Lady for that question. It is not correct that people have to get the permission of somebody who may well be a perpetrator of domestic violence, but it is important that, through our £9 million of grant funding, we work with groups and support the most vulnerable in the community so that they can help evidence their time in the UK and be granted status through the channels that we have put in place.

International Women’s Day

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

In the first International Women’s Day debate I attended, I promised to read out the names of the women killed by men since the last International Women’s Day. Today I will honour that promise. Over the years, I have had the pleasure of meeting the families of these women, who were grateful that their loved ones were being remembered. I read these names not only to continue to highlight how male violence can terrorise ordinary women’s lives, but to pay tribute to these women and those who did not survive and give them the opportunity to be heard. The reason that these women are no longer with us is that they are hard to see, hard to hear and hard to believe. I could not do this without the brilliant work of the Counting Dead Women project and Karen Ingala Smith, who tirelessly records the lives of these women. The first name I will read out is that of a woman who was murdered just days after I rose to my feet here in this Chamber a year ago.

Their names are: Jennifer Rogers; Heather Whitbread; Michelle Savage; Diane Jones; Jenny Cronin; Leyla Mtumwa; Ourania Lambrou; Tanesha Melbourne; Tracy Stonehouse; Alexis Flynn; Lesley Potter; Viktorija Sokolova; Margaret Howlett; Maryna Kavaliauskas; Angela Craddock; Samantha Clarke; Jennifer Morgan; Julie Hunt; Hollie Kerrell; Elizabeth Lacey; Fiona Fisher; Faye Caliman; Nicola Roberts; Onees Khatoon; Jessica Patel; Rosina Coleman; Bernadette Green; Sophie Cavanagh; Angela Conoby; Christina Abbotts; Laura Mortimer; Denise Rosser; Joanne Bishop; Jill Hibberd; Andra Hilitanu; Molly Frank; Sofija Kaczan; Tina Cantello; Marie Gibson; Gitana Matukeviciene; Tracy Patsalides; Gita Suri; Klarissa-Charlene Faith; Shuren Ma; Samantha Toms; Lorna Myers; Stela Domador-Kuzma; Patricia Franks; Dawn Sturgess; Gina Ingles and her son; Riasat Bi; Katerina Makunova; Lesley Davies; Sheila Thomas; Lucy McHugh; Sam Eastwood; Karen Peter; Kelly Franklin; Katherine Kemp; Tracey Evans; Marie Walker; Simonne Kerr; Barbara Davison; Kaltoun Saleh; Carole Harrison; Sharon Perrett; Raneem Oudeh; Khaola Saleem; Celia Levitt; Julie Owens; Joan Hoggett; Memunatu Warne; Kylie Dembrey; Susan Gyde; Kay Martin; Cristina Magda-Calancea; Frances Hubbard; Sandra Zmijan; Margaret Harris; Sharon Harris; Jeanna Maher; Glenda Jackson; Avan Najmadeen; Natalie Saunders; Sarah Wellgreen; Nazia Ali; Teresa Garner; Lynn Forde; Mavis Bran; Sheena Jackson; Fiona McDonald; Natalie Smith; Tanseen Sheikh; Sana Muhammad; Pauline Kilkenny; Katarzyna Paszek; Maureen Watkins; Jacqueline Allen; Samantha Gosney; Karen Cleary-Brown; Barbara Findley; Grace Millane; Maureen Whale; Sally Cavender; June Knight; Keely McGrath; Poppy Devey-Waterhouse; Lana Owen; Marissa Aldrich; Parwin Quriashi; Angela Mittal; June Jones; Joy Morgan; Lisa Jane McArity; Charlotte Huggins; Jay Edmunds; Simbiso Aretha Moula; Sarah Ashraf; Asma Begum; Luz Isaza Villegas; Leanne Unsworth; Christy Walshe; Alison Hunt; Mary Annie Sowerby; Regina Marilyn Paul; Margaret Smythe; Mary Page; Rosie Darbyshire; Aliny Mendes; and Sarah Henshaw.

I could feel the nervousness in the room that I would not finish reading the list within seven minutes. That is how we should feel every single minute of every day—nervous that one of our constituents will wake up dead. The fear and tension that we felt in our bodies that I would not get through the list and would be made to sit down is what victims of domestic violence feel every minute that they walk around their houses. The second they wake up in the morning, they feel frightened and have to walk on awkward eggshells all day long. These women need us in this place to hear their names and hear their stories, so that we can change and make it so that next year’s list might at least be a little bit shorter.