Domestic Abuse Bill (Eighth sitting)
Jess Phillips ExcerptsThursday 11th June 2020
(5 years, 1 month ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Domestic Abuse Bill 2019-21 View all Domestic Abuse Bill 2019-21 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 11 June 2020 - (11 Jun 2020)
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 81, in clause 56, page 36, line 22, at end insert—
“(2A) Before issuing guidance under this section the Secretary of State must lay a draft of the guidance before Parliament.
(2B) Guidance under this section comes into force in accordance with regulations made by the Secretary of State.”
This amendment requires the Secretary of State to lay any guidance under this section before Parliament and provides that this guidance will come into force in accordance with regulations made by the Secretary of State.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 82, in clause 56, page 36, line 28, at end insert—
“(ba) persons, groups and organisations providing support and services with those affected by domestic abuse locally, regionally and nationally, and in particular those working with or providing specialist support services to affected women and children,”.
This amendment sets out additional persons, groups and organisations the Secretary of State must consult.
Jess Phillips
I will not speak for long. We have already gone over lots of what is in this amendment, including in the large and wide-ranging debate we had on part 4 of the Bill. Some of what the Minister has said gives me hope that we will get more detail on how this will be administered. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 56 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 57
Interpretation of Part 4
Amendment made: 36, in clause 57, page 37, line 1, after “London” insert
“in its capacity as a local authority”.—(Victoria Atkins.)
This amendment clarifies that the reference to the Common Council of the City of London in the definition of “local authority” for the purposes of Part 4 of the Bill is to the Common Council in its capacity as a local authority.
Clause 57, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 58
Special measures directions in cases involving domestic abuse
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
I beg to move amendment 54, in clause 58, page 37, line 32, at end insert—
“(3A) In cases where it is alleged that domestic abuse is involved, Chapter 1 of Part 2 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 (special measures directions in case of vulnerable and intimidated witnesses) applies to proceedings in the family court as it applies to criminal proceedings, but with any necessary modifications.”
This amendment extends statutory eligibility for special measures to the family court in cases where domestic abuse is involved.
Christine Jardine
That is the next clause, I believe. There is no measure we can take in the Bill that goes too far, or that could be regarded as being in any way sufficient, until we can do no more. No length is too great when it comes to protecting women. Banning cross-examination by perpetrators of domestic abuse is valuable, but it must be written in the legislation that special measures are available. It is not just women themselves who will be cross-examined; it might be their children. It is about coming in and out of the court. It is about having to face the person who has abused them—often for decades—in a corridor because they did not have a special entrance. We need to look at all these things. I cannot imagine what that would be like. No step is too far.
In 2018, Women’s Aid found that 24% of respondents had been cross-examined by their abusive ex-partner in the family court, and that was traumatising for them, so I do agree with the hon. Lady. Victims can feel that their experiences have been minimised in proceedings, and if protective measures are not granted by courts, they will be exacerbating that and letting these women down.
Christine Harrison from the University of Warwick has concluded that domestic abuse was and is persistently minimised and dismissed as irrelevant in private law proceedings. Lesley Laing from the University of Sydney in Australia has also found that accounts of engagement with the system often mirror domestic violence narratives. That is known as secondary victimisation, and it is not acceptable.
Resolution, the family justice charity, has said that although there have been changes to the family procedure rules, it is widely recognised that current special measures facilities in family court hearings—such as video and audio link, and screen facilities—are not satisfactory or on a par with the facilities available in the criminal courts. Resolution’s members, who are family lawyers, have raised their concerns.
We have talked about the Bill for three years as landmark legislation—a once in a generation opportunity to tackle domestic abuse. However, if we exclude the family courts from the Bill, we will miss a valuable opportunity to tackle domestic abuse in an area where it has perhaps been minimised and overlooked in the past, which is not acceptable. I therefore ask the Committee to consider the amendment.
Jess Phillips
I will speak to new clause 45, which has been grouped with the amendment. I support everything the hon. Lady has just said. I will not repeat much of what she has said about the number of victims who find they cannot actually access any of the facilities that are said to be available in the family courts. In one recent case—I will not cite the case here, but I have the details in front of me—the victim was denied special measures, even though the perpetrator had been arrested for battery, coercive control and sexual assault by penetration. The victim was also living in a refuge. However, she was denied special measures in the family court.
There is not only an absence of legislative guidance. It is clear, as some of the reports the hon. Lady referred to show, that facilities such as video and audio link are not as readily available as they are in the criminal courts. I absolutely welcome what the Bill attempts to do in formalising in legislation what largely exists in the criminal courts for most criminal court cases. In fact, I think that in every single domestic violence case that I have ever been to court about, special measures have formed a part of proceedings, or at the very least have been on offer. I myself have been offered special measures in cases that I have personally been involved with. Sometimes, victims do not want to use them; they want to sit and face the accused. I cannot remember a case in the criminal courts where special measures were not on offer; sometimes the video links leave a little to be desired, but they were none the less available.
It is great that the Government wish to formalise the special measures in our criminal courts in the Bill, and we support that. We simply wish to see those measures extended to court facilities where family law and civil law matters are discussed.
Stay Safe East, the disability charity that focuses on domestic abuse, has advised us that in the local family courts in its area, only one out of the 12 courtrooms has a video facility. I am sure I am teaching Ministers to suck eggs when I say that someone does not always get to decide which courtroom they go into when they get to court. It is therefore a sort of “luck of the draw” situation at the moment.
Automatic eligibility, which new clause 45 and the amendment would allow for, would place special measures on a statutory footing and ensure that family and civil courts make structural changes to safeguard victims, thereby removing the burden on victims to have to request special measures. We want a situation similar to the criminal courts, where such measures are offered in a very proactive way. In fact, long before someone even knows that they will ever be in court or has been given a court date, they are asked about special measures. The amendments are just about equalising that system across our justice estate, to reduce the variation in judicial approach and provide much-needed predictability for victims.
That is especially important because in lots of the cases we are talking about, victims go through a criminal case and a family case at the same time. It is unusual that they can be in one courtroom on a Tuesday and another on a Wednesday, and have completely different safeguards in place. Their case is exactly the same. The perpetration that they have suffered is exactly the same, yet they are safe in one courthouse and not safe—or do not feel safe—in another. There are, I am afraid to say, some terrible examples of women being attacked by their perpetrators in the toilets of family courts, which were written about in Women’s Aid’s “Nineteen Child Homicides” report for the Child First campaign. We just seek to equalise the situation.
Fay Jones (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)
The hon. Lady mentions some improvements that could be made, but does she welcome our election manifesto commitment about integrated domestic abuse courts?
Jess Phillips
Perhaps I am being a bit premature, but I look forward to the progress on that, because the sectors have been crying out for the integration of different court systems for years and years. As we have said about a million times during these debates, the approach of the specialist domestic violence courts have been patchy across the country. In some areas, they have dwindled, but in others they have come to the fore because of the covid-19 crisis. I would very much welcome anything that would standardise the situation in courts for victims of domestic violence, especially in respect of their experience of the courts, whether they be civil, criminal or private.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
It is exactly on that point that I want to talk about special measures. I hope that it is acceptable to the Chair for me to mention some matters on clause 59 as well, because these things will interact. I will not then rise to speak on clause 59. Much of this is to do with the lack of communication between jurisdictions and the experience of victims and survivors as a result. I welcome the opportunity to speak now because, in December 2017, I brought forward a private Member’s Bill on courts and the abuse of process. From the point of view of the victim’s experience, special measures and cross-examination—those two things—are inter-merged.
Back in 2017, my office carried out research into 122 victims of stalking and domestic abuse, which gave us a snapshot of those individuals’ experiences when they went to court. I understand that this was a self-selecting study, but 55% of those people had had court proceedings taken against them by their abusers. It should be noted that all those victims had restraining orders in place. None the less, that was their experience—court proceedings were brought against them. Two thirds of them then had to appear in court, and a third were personally cross-examined by their perpetrator. In only a quarter of those cases did the police view the court proceeding as a breach of the restraining orders on the perpetrators.
At that time, I was trying to limit the capacity of perpetrators, primarily of domestic abuse, stalking and harassment, to use—indeed, to misuse or abuse—the family and civil courts in a deliberate, calculated effort to continue to distress their victims and manipulate their behaviour to exercise deliberate control over their actions.
At the time, what needed to be sought was the means for the court to have the power to dismiss any meritless applications where it was apparent that the purpose of the application by the perpetrator was specifically to distress or harass the victim, in the guise of an appeal to justice in matters relating to civil or family court jurisdiction. Many of us will have come across instances of repeat applications, particularly in the civil court, but also, from the point of view of the perpetrator, to again be able to hold the victim under their control and, within that cross-examination, gain the satisfaction of that aspect of the relationship again.
I will mention what was proposed at the time, because it was felt to be suitable then. The proposal was that the applicant would be obliged to declare any unspent convictions or restrictions in relation to the respondent, or similar convictions against other victims; the respondent would be given the power to inform the court of any relevant convictions or restraining orders in respect of the applicant; and the court then would have a duty to investigate the claims. In such circumstances, if proceedings were permitted to continue, the respondent would be able to request special measures, such as the provision of screens or video links, and of course there would be a possibility of other special measures in relation to cross-examination.
I will just touch on a couple of examples. I do not want to go on forever with case studies, but they do give some colour as to why this point is relevant. One instance that became apparent to us from our research was of a man who had been a victim of stalking for over six years. His stalker had repeatedly brought baseless, vexatious claims against him through the civil court, and he had no option but to represent himself because of lack of funds. Despite the fact that the stalker was subject to a restraining order, he was allowed to continue to cross-examine the victim in the civil court, and neither the police nor the Crown Prosecution Service recognised those vexatious claims to be in breach of the restraining order. It was difficult to come to any conclusion other than that the court procedures themselves were at that time colluding with the applicant and his continued abuse of the respondent.
I will give a second example, just to give a sense of the costs. It involves another respondent to our research. This woman’s ex-partner had also had a restraining order, having been charged also with stalking her. He had taken the woman to court 15 times, in both civil and family courts. That had cost her about £25,000 because, like many people, she was not eligible for legal aid in those circumstances.
I will not rise to speak to clause 59, because I think this discussion does lead us on and there are a few specific points that I would like to make about clause 59, which is where the concerns are.
Jess Phillips
The Minister says that the report will be published in the coming weeks. Does he expect that we will see it prior to Report stage of the Bill, or potentially prior to Committee stage in the Lords, as he has leaned on for one particular review? I ask only because I am seeking to understand what will be given to me as I consider whether to push new clause 45 to a Division.
Alex Chalk
I invite the hon. Lady to listen to the end of my remarks. If I can put it in these terms, the words I will use at the end are carefully phrased. I invite her to listen to those and then decide. A huge amount of work has gone into this panel, and getting to a place where we are ready to publish is the stuff of enormous effort. We are moving as quickly as we can, and it will be published as quickly as possible.
On the civil courts, there are no specific provisions in the civil procedure rules that deal with vulnerable parties or witnesses. However, judges have an inherent power, where the court is alerted to vulnerability, to make a number of directions or take steps to facilitate the progression or defending of a claim or the giving of evidence by a vulnerable party.
Jess Phillips
I welcome what the Minister is saying, but on the specific instances he is outlining of who exactly would be able to assess this, does he foresee an element of the judge’s discretion also allowing them to go to central funds where they believe enough that cross-examination would cause distress, regardless of whether there may previously have been a conviction or an order in place? As we all know, there is a disparity between conviction and order rates on the one hand, and domestic violence rates on the other.
Alex Chalk
Courts have a common law discretion to manage their own proceedings, but it will be important for us to assist the them as much as possible by setting out the categories that should trigger the exemption. Although courts can act of their own motion, it is none the less important to prescribe to an extent that the provision applies in circumstances where somebody has been convicted, charged or cautioned. I will develop that point in the following passage.
In the light of the recommendation from the Joint Committee on the Draft Domestic Abuse Bill, the clause now makes provision that the automatic ban will also apply in other cases where a witness has adduced specified evidence of domestic abuse. The evidence will be specified in regulations and, as recommended by the Joint Committee, we intend for this evidence to broadly replicate that which is used to access civil legal aid. That is probably the point that the hon. Lady was driving at.
The prohibitions also apply reciprocally, to prevent a victim from having to cross-examine their abuser in person. Where the automatic ban does not apply, the clause also gives the court a discretion to prohibit cross-examination in person where it would be likely to diminish the quality of the witness’s evidence or cause significant distress to the witness or the party. That is the point about a court’s discretion: the judge has the individuals in front of them, can hear from them and can make a decision based on that.
In any case where cross-examination in person is prohibited, either under the automatic prohibition or at the discretion of the court, the judge must consider whether there is a satisfactory alternative means by which the witness can be cross-examined or the evidence can be obtained. That would include means that already fall under the judge’s general case management powers, such as putting the questions to the witness themselves or via a legal adviser, or by accepting pre-recorded cross-examination. I suppose one might imagine cases where the things that need to be cross-examined on are so narrow in scope that it would not be worth the aggravation of instructing independent counsel if the judge can do it and do justice in that way. It is important that the court can act of its own motion and flexibly, and the clause retains that flexibility.
If there are no satisfactory alternative means, the court must invite the prohibited party to appoint a legal representative to carry out cross-examination on their behalf. If they choose not to, or are unable to, the clause gives the court the power to appoint a legal representative—an advocate—for the sole purpose of conducting the cross-examination in the interests of the prohibited party. The court must appoint an advocate where it considers this to be necessary in the interests of justice.
There could be circumstances where it is not possible to protect the prohibited party’s rights to access to justice and/or a family life without the appointment of such an advocate. This might be in circumstances, for example, where the evidence that needs to be tested by cross-examination is complicated, because it is complex medical or other expert evidence, or because it is complex or confused factual evidence, say from a vulnerable witness. The clause also confers power on the Secretary of State to issue statutory guidance in connection with the role of that advocate.
The clause also confers power on the Secretary of State to make regulations about the fees and costs of a court-appointed advocate to be met from central funds. We understand the particular skill and care that is needed to carry out cross-examination of a vulnerable witness effectively. We will be designing a full fee scheme to support these provisions, in consultation with the sector and interested parties, prior to the implementation of the Bill.
This clause seeks to ensure that, in future, no victim of domestic abuse has to endure the trauma of being questioned in person by their abuser as part of ongoing family proceedings. It makes a big difference, and I commend it to the Committee.
Jess Phillips
Is one reason why Lobby journalists and other journalists did not believe it potentially because of the deep secrecy about what occurs in family courts? In the case of the Cloughs, while they were going through the court, they would have been forbidden from speaking about it.
Peter Kyle
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who makes an important point. She is right about the secrecy of family courts. In a subsequent urgent question that I was granted on cross-examination, I asked for a full review of practices in family courts with that very much in mind. Since then, some journalists have been allowed into family courts, but it is heavily regulated to the point where it still stymies the process, work and operation of the family court. It might interest Members to learn that in that quote from Hansard, I used parliamentary privilege. I broke the regulations of the family court to even describe the process that occurred in that exchange in the family court with the Clough family. That is how heavily restricted the processes of family courts are at times, and that is what has led to the lack of reform in comparison with other parts of the criminal justice system. Everything that we are discussing in this clause is already the case in criminal courts.
If the press and the media had been able to scrutinise, and if we had known what was happening in some of those cases, it would have been dealt with some time ago. That is another important point, because The Times splashed the story twice on its front page over Christmas 2016. On 5 January 2017, it again placed the story on the front page, but at that point with an off-the-record briefing from a source in the Ministry of Justice who said that they were going to review and take action on it.
What frustrated me at that point was the equal opposite to what elated me. I was absolutely punching the air that there was going to be movement. What frustrated me, as a parliamentarian, was that we had given the Government half a dozen opportunities in the previous six months on the record in the Commons using the right procedures to get the change that we needed, but it took getting the media involved to deliver it.
We all know that, no matter who the Speaker is, every Speaker will go through the roof when they see an off-the-record briefing making announcements to the media. I immediately asked Speaker Bercow for an urgent question, which I was granted on 7 January to discuss cross-examination in family courts. The Minister who responded to it on 9 January was the right hon. and learned Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald), who was characteristically decent and wholehearted in his response and who engaged with the issue head on. He said:
“Is it necessary to change the law? The answer is yes it is. Primary legislation would be necessary to ban cross-examination…work is being done at a great pace to ensure that all these matters are dealt with in a comprehensive and effective way—the urgency is there…My feeling is that what is required is pretty straightforward: a ban, and then the necessary ancillary measures to allow cross-examination without the perpetrator doing it.”—[Official Report, 9 January 2017; Vol. 619, c. 27.]
Hon. Members can imagine that that was a big moment.
As an aside, I refer to the exchange that just took place between the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley. When she intervened on him and asked, “When will it be done?”, he replied saying, “As soon as possible.” There was a guarantee to sort out cross-examination almost four years ago—the right hon. and learned Member for North East Hertfordshire said on the record, “the urgency is there”—so when we hear such things from Ministers, we sometimes have that experience, which is why we often seek to probe and get things on the record about timings.
We had a huge opportunity for change. We had the commitment of the Government. At one point the then Minister, the right hon. and learned Member for North East Hertfordshire, giddily galloped across the Chamber to put the amendment that he sought to move to the Prison and Courts Bill in my hand and said, “There it is. We’re going to do it.” Then, of course, we fell into the 2017 general election. Repeated attempts to get it fixed in the subsequent period also fell to the challenges of the time. Then, of course, we had the Bill that fell before the 2019 general election.
After the UQ of January 2017, I received over 1,000 messages from around the world—mostly women, but some men—who had experienced this in their own lives and felt an incredible need to share their experiences. I had underestimated the degree to which this is a community of people who have suffered, survived and are connected in various ways to share their stories. I had to take on a team of volunteers just to cope with their specific correspondence. Every single person who contacted me had such stories of pain and suffering, as well as persistence and fortitude to a degree that is almost unimaginable for someone who has not experienced it, that I believed every single one of them deserved a personal response.
What united every single message was gratitude that change was coming and a sense of relief that other people would not go through what they went through. That is why the delay of four years has been so difficult for very many people to stomach. Although the numbers have declined because courts have become more aware of the challenge, even one victim and survivor of domestic abuse experiencing a fraction of what we have just heard about would be one too many. So when my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley, members of our Front-Bench team and I read in clause 59:
“In family proceedings, no party to the proceedings who has been convicted of or given a caution for, or is charged with, a specified offence may cross-examine in person a witness who is the victim, or alleged victim, of that offence.”—
believe, me, I want to jump up and down screaming, “Hallelujah!” This is a very important moment. I wish it had come sooner, but it takes away none of the excitement, elation and gratitude that it is actually coming now. This is a good day and a good moment for very many people.
Some representative organisations and campaigning groups have been in touch with a request to amend the clause. They have concerns that still, within the letter of the law, it would be possible for a perpetrator, or alleged perpetrator, to nominate somebody close to them—a friend or a family member—to do the cross-examination on their behalf who might well act in their interests in terms of carrying on the abuse. I do not believe, from reading the Bill, that that is in the spirit of the proposed law or is something I believe a court would countenance. However, I seek reassurance from the Minister that they are aware of that, and that should it ever happen in court they will not wait six months, a year or four years before fixing it, but do everything in their power, including bringing something to the Floor of the House, to deal with it if that is what it takes.
Alex Chalk
The clause simply reintroduces schedule 2, which contains amendments relating to offences committed outside the UK. As with clauses 60 and 61, the amendments are necessary to ensure compliance with article 44 of the Istanbul convention. Part 1 of schedule 2 contains amendments to provide for extraterritorial jurisdiction over certain offences other than those set out in clause 60 under the law of England and Wales. Part 2 of schedule 2 contains amendments to provide for extraterritorial jurisdiction over certain offences under the law of Scotland. Part 3 of schedule 2 contains amendments to provide for extraterritorial jurisdiction over certain offences not including those set out in clause 61 under the law of Northern Ireland.
Schedule 2 contains amendments to a number of enactments to provide for extraterritorial jurisdiction over certain offences under the law of England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Together with clauses 60 and 61 and provisions in the Domestic Abuse and Family Proceedings Bill currently before the Northern Ireland Assembly that give extraterritorial effect to the new domestic abuse offence in Northern Ireland, schedule 2 will ensure that the UK complies with the jurisdiction requirements of article 44 of the Istanbul convention.
Part 1 of the schedule covers England and Wales and gives effect to the UK’s obligations under article 44 as it applies to article 33, which covers psychological violence, article 34, which covers stalking, and article 36, which covers sexual violence, including rape. It does so by extending extraterritorial jurisdiction to offences under sections 4 and 4A of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, sections 1 to 4 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 where the victim of the offence is aged 18 or over, and section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015, which is about coercive control. It will mean that a UK national or a person habitually resident in England and Wales who commits one of these offences outside the UK can, exceptionally, stand trial for the offence in England and Wales. Where the offence involves a course of conduct, the offence may be committed wholly or partly outside the UK.
Part 2 of the schedule covers Scotland and gives effect to the UK’s obligations under article 44 as it applies to articles 33 to 36 and article 39. It does so by extending extraterritorial jurisdiction to the common law offence of assault, to offences under sections 1 to 4 of the Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2009 where the victim of the offence is aged 18 or over, and to the offence of stalking under section 39 of the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010.
That will mean that a UK national or person habitually resident in Scotland who commits one of these offences outside the UK can, exceptionally, stand trial for the offence in Scotland. Where the offence involves a course of conduct, the offence may be committed wholly or partly outside the UK.
Part 3 of the schedule, as the Committee will be cottoning on to by now, covers Northern Ireland and gives effect to the UK’s obligations under article 44 as it applies to article 34 and 36. It does so by extending extraterritorial jurisdiction to offences under article 6 of the Protection from Harassment (Northern Ireland) Order 1997 and part 2 of the Sexual Offences (Northern Ireland) Order 2008, again where the victim of the offence is aged 18 or over. It will mean that a UK national or person habitually resident in Northern Ireland who commits one of these offences outside the UK can, exceptionally, stand trial for the offence in Northern Ireland. Where the offence involves a course of conduct, the offence may be committed wholly or partly outside the UK.
Jess Phillips
I simply want to welcome specifically the terminology of “habitual resident” within the UK. The Minister and I have met a number of different families over the years who have suffered violence, and I am afraid to say that those cases we get to see usually involve murder in a different country. Where the perpetrator of the crime was back here in Britain and was not a British citizen but was habitually resident in this country, the authorities had found that their hands were tied. While the measures seem perfunctory and were a lot of words for the Minister to say, to families they mean a huge amount, so I welcome them.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 62 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 2 agreed to.
Clause 63
Polygraph conditions for offenders released on licence
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Alex Chalk
This clause is about polygraph conditions. It is an important clause that relates to conditions for offenders released on licence. It is one of a number of measures in the Bill directed at strengthening the effective management of domestic abuse perpetrators. It allows the Secretary of State for Justice to introduce mandatory polygraph examinations as a licence condition for offenders convicted of a relevant domestic abuse-related offence. The relevant offences include murder, specified violent offences and the offence of controlling or coercive behaviour under the Serious Crime Act 2015. Necessarily, this is a new departure to some extent, but it is kept within tight limits, as members of the Committee would expect.
Jess Phillips
I beg to move amendment 52, in clause 64, page 47, line 15, at end insert—
“(1A) Before issuing guidance under this section, the Secretary of State must undertake a comprehensive assessment of the contribution of the disclosure of police information to the prevention of domestic abuse, drawing on disclosures made by chief officers of police prior to this section coming into force.
(1B) Disclosures of police information for the purposes of the prevention of domestic abuse may only be made—
(a) where reasonable, necessary, and proportionate,
(b) with regard to the best interests of children likely to be affected by the disclosure, and
(c) after ensuring there is an operational plan to support the recipients of such disclosures.”
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 53, in clause 64, page 47, line 17, at end insert—
“(2B) Each chief officer of police of a police force must annually review—
(a) the compliance of their own force with any guidance issued under this section, and
(b) the overall contribution of the disclosures under that guidance to the prevention of domestic abuse in their force area.”
An amendment to demand review from police of how the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme policy is working, and to clarify the ‘pressing need’ test.
Jess Phillips
The domestic violence disclosure scheme, which I will refer to from this moment forward as Clare’s law, was introduced in 2014 after Clare Wood was murdered by her ex-boyfriend, George Appleton. For those who are unfamiliar with the case, Clare Wood had made several complaints to the police about George Appleton before her death. Those complaints included criminal damage, harassment, threats to kill and sexual assault. A panic room had been installed in her house following an attempted rape.
Clare was unaware that George Appleton had a history of violence against women and had been jailed for three years in 2002 for harassing another woman, and for six months a year earlier after breaching a restraining order. However, he was still able to enter Clare’s home, strangle her and set her on fire. The Independent Police Complaints Commission concluded that Clare had been let down by individual and systematic failures by Greater Manchester police.
Clare’s law was designed to set out procedures that could be used by the police in relation to disclosure of information about previous violent, abusive and offending behaviour by a potentially violent individual towards their partner where that might help to protect that partner from further violent and abusive offending. There are two procedures for disclosing information: the right to ask, which is triggered by a member of the public applying to the police for a disclosure, and the right to know, which is triggered by the police making a proactive decision to disclose information to protect a potential victim. Disclosures are made when it is deemed that there is a pressing need for the disclosure of the information to prevent further crime.
While there is no doubt that Clare’s law was introduced with entirely good intentions—I am not here to challenge that at all—there is some concern that this well-intentioned piece of legislation is currently not operating as it should be, and concern about some alarming instances where, as it operates currently, it could be causing more harm.
First, Clare’s law has had limited use since its creation in 2014. According to data from March 2018, there were 4,655 right to ask applications, resulting in 2,055 disclosures, and 6,313 right to know applications, resulting in 3,594 disclosures, so it can be seen clearly that disclosures are not made in every case. In comparison, in the same time period there were just shy of 1.2 million recorded domestic abuse cases in England and Wales, so we are talking about a very small number of cases that seem to be using the scheme. That in itself is not necessarily evidence that it is not working, but I think it is descriptive of where it may work in some places and not others.
In addition, there appears to be a postcode lottery regarding disclosures. It is assumed that that variation is due to the vague nature of the pressing need test that currently exists in the law. For example, in 2019 Kent had an 8.5% disclosure rate for right to ask disclosures, while Hampshire had a 99.5% rate. That is worrisome, but what is of even greater concern is that the average time taken for each disclosure is 39 days. I imagine all will agree that in cases of domestic abuse, that mitigates quite a lot of the potential prevention and could potentially heighten a victim’s risk.
In addition, while there was a review of the initial pilot phase of Clare’s law and a review one year on, those reviews were procedural and did not consider the impact of the scheme on domestic abuse or analyse the scheme’s value for money. There is therefore no evaluation of whether the disclosures made have any benefit to the person they are made to. In fact, one survey indicated that 45% of early-wave recipients of information went on to be victimised by the partner they warned about. In normal language, that means that 45% of the people who have been given the information following one of the variety of requests under this law went on to be victimised and abused by that person.
One such example is Rosie Darbyshire, who was murdered with a crowbar by her partner Ben Topping. Having made an application for information under Clare’s law on 28 January, she was killed just over a week later on 7 February. She was left unrecognisable after sustaining more than 50 injuries.
Other concerns include the impact of coercive and controlling behaviour where women are unable to contact the police or where contact from the police would only serve to make matters worse. At the beginning of a relationship—I think we can all understand this, and it applies not just to women but anyone—women are often not alive to the risk of domestic abuse. Only when it is too late are they advised of their partner’s past.
Gemma Willis from Teesside, reporting to the BBC, was only advised of Clare’s law after her partner was arrested following smashing her head into a window, slashing her neck with a trowel, hitting her with hammers and threatening to kill her family. Also reporting to the BBC, Dr Sandra Walklate from the University of Liverpool said of the scheme:
“We have no real way of knowing whether it’s working or not”.
While clause 64 operates to place Clare’s law on a statutory footing, the proposed amendments are designed to safeguard against circumstances and the case studies outlined above. The amendments would mean that police should evaluate whether disclosures made under Clare’s law are having a positive impact on the safety and empowerment of victims. I am not seeking for police forces just to do a paper-shuffling exercise: “A request has come in. What will we do with this request? Does it meet the tests as set out in the law?” I am rather seeking for police forces to run some manner of risk assessment on the impact of this disclosure being made, not on the perpetrator but on the victim.
The amendments would also require police to undertake an exercise to establish the efficacy of the disclosures that have been made in the past few years, to simply have a look over how well it is working. The pressing need test, which I have already referred to, would be refined and clarified to create uniformity with future disclosures. Based on information set out, it cannot be argued that my amendments are anything less than essential for the Government, if they want to ensure that Clare’s law is as good as it could be and that the protective effect it was intended to have does not, in some cases, cause harm.
Victoria Atkins
I would like to take a moment to reflect on the extraordinary campaigns, charities and local efforts, through which families, such as the Wood family, often find the strength and resilience somehow to campaign and carry on when they have suffered a devastating loss in their family. We have heard why Clare’s law is called Clare’s law: her family felt that had she been aware of her murderer’s background, she would have been able to stop the relationship earlier.
There are so many efforts in the world of looking after and helping victims of domestic abuse, both at the national and local level, where people have done the most extraordinary things. I want to put that on record, because I am very conscious of it as we work through the Bill and our non-legislative work.
We absolutely acknowledge that there is much more to be done to raise awareness of the scheme, primarily with the public, but also with the police. We want to increase the number of disclosures and ensure that the scheme is operated consistently across all police forces.
Jess Phillips
I am indeed content. I look forward to working with the Minister to ensure that the law—it bears somebody’s name and is their legacy—truly does what Clare’s family wish it to do. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 64 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 65
Grant of secure tenancies in cases of domestic abuse
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Victoria Atkins
Part 7 of the Bill is a collection of important measures, although there is perhaps not a common theme running through them other than that. The clause relates to secure tenancies and contributes towards the Government’s wider aim to support victims of domestic abuse to leave their abusive circumstances, and to ensure that they and their families have the stability and security they need and deserve.
Clause 65 does two things. First, it will ensure that victims of domestic abuse who have or had a lifetime social tenancy, and who have had to flee their current home to escape abuse, will retain the security of a lifetime tenancy in their new social home where they are granted a new tenancy by a local authority. The provisions apply to all local authorities in England and protect all lifetime social tenants in such circumstances, regardless of whether they hold a secure local authority tenancy or an assured tenancy with a private registered provider of social housing—usually a housing association.
Secondly, the clause will safeguard domestic abuse victims who hold a joint lifetime tenancy and who want to continue living in their home after the perpetrator has moved out or been removed from the property. It does this by providing that, if the local authority grants them a new sole tenancy, it must be a lifetime tenancy. The provisions apply when the tenant is a victim of domestic abuse, and they extend to situations where a member of the household—for example, a child—has suffered domestic abuse. In the year to the end of March 2019, nearly 1,500 local authority lettings were made to social tenants who cited domestic violence as the main reason they left their former social home. Although that is a small proportion of new tenants overall, the provisions would protect more than 1,000 households affected by domestic abuse.
The measures largely mirror current provisions in the Secure Tenancies (Victims of Domestic Abuse) Act 2018. That Act, which delivers on a 2017 manifesto commitment, ensures that when the mandatory fixed-term tenancy provisions in the Housing and Planning Act 2016 are brought into force, the security of tenure of victims of domestic abuse will be protected. After listening carefully to the concerns of social housing residents, the Government announced in August 2018 that we had decided not to implement the mandatory fixed-term tenancy provisions at that time. In order to ensure that victims of domestic abuse are protected, we also announced that we would legislate to put in place similar protections for victims of domestic abuse where, as is the case now, local authorities offer fixed-term tenancies at their discretion; the clause gives effect to that commitment. The clause also amends the definition of “domestic abuse” in the 2018 Act to bring it in line with the definition in this provision.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 65 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Rebecca Harris.)
Domestic Abuse Bill (Sixth sitting)
Jess Phillips ExcerptsWednesday 10th June 2020
(5 years, 1 month ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Domestic Abuse Bill 2019-21 View all Domestic Abuse Bill 2019-21 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 10 June 2020 - (10 Jun 2020)
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
I was just discussing the issue of a notice being breached on behalf of the victim. I had started to say that in the case of Caroline Flack, who sadly took her own life, there was a notice between her and her partner that they had not breached. In that instance, the partner would be considered the victim in the context we are discussing. That case has highlighted in the public’s mind the fact that when a victim is told not to contact somebody, there will always be pressures, for lots of different reasons, and certainly if the victim shares children with the perpetrator.
In a case where somebody is struggling with their mental health or wishes to reach out, I just want some assurance about how it might play out in court if a breach of these notices occurred on the side of the victim—that is, if a victim breached a notice for pressure reasons, or even for humanitarian reasons. I have seen lots of cases in the family courts, for example, where the fact that orders have not been kept to has been used against victims. I wondered what we might think about breaches of these particular notices from the victim’s point of view.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
The hon. Lady’s question relates to clause 23, but my answer will be given on the basis that we are debating clause 21. Before I answer, I want to clarify that when I said the perpetrator could not make representations, I was thinking of court representations. I suspect that the officer can take representations into account if they arrive at the scene and the perpetrator says something to that officer, or whatever.
In relation to breaches, again, we need to be careful about the language we use. The notice will be between the police, who issue it, and the perpetrator; it does not place any restrictions on the victim. However, with other types of orders, there are of course circumstances in which non-contact orders have been made and the person being protected by that non-contact order contacts the person on whom it is placed.
That must be a matter for the court. As the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley has set out, the person being protected may well have had perfectly reasonable grounds for making contact, but that must fall into the arena of the court. I do not think we could interfere with that, because the judge will have to engage in that balancing exercise when considering the orders, as opposed to the notices we are debating at the moment. I am sorry that I cannot provide the hon. Lady with more information than that, but in those circumstances I recommend to the Committee that the clause stand part of the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 21 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 22 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 23
Breach of notice
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Victoria Atkins
One key advantage of the DAPO over other existing orders is that it can be obtained via a range of different application routes. Unlike the current domestic violence protection order, which can only be applied for by police to a magistrates court, or the non-molestation order, which can only be applied for by victims to the family courts, the DAPO provisions allow far greater flexibility in who can apply for an order, and to which court the application may be made.
Clause 25 sets out who can apply for a DAPO: namely, the victim, the police, a relevant third party specified in regulations, or any other person with the leave of the court. The provision for relevant third parties, which is to be set out in the regulations, ensures that such parties would be able to apply for an order directly without first obtaining the leave of the court. We will use the pilot of the orders to assess whether the current provisions for anyone to apply with the leave of the court are sufficient, or whether it would be beneficial to enable local authorities, for example, to make an application without first having to seek leave of the court. If there is a case for expanding the list of persons who can apply for a DAPO as of right, we can provide for that in regulations at a later stage.
Subsections (3) and (4) set out which police force, including the British Transport police and the Ministry of Defence police, should lead on an application for an order in different circumstances. Where a notice has already been given, the application must be made by the police force that gave the notice. Where the police wish to apply for a stand-alone order without a notice having been given, the application should be made by the force for the police area in which the perpetrator resides currently or intends to come into. The purpose of the provision is to make it absolutely clear which police force has responsibility for applying for a DAPO in order to avoid any confusion, duplication of effort or delay in putting protective measures around the victim.
The clause also sets out to which courts applications can be made. Police applications are to be made to a magistrates court, as is the case for domestic violence protection orders, and other applications are to be made to the family court. To ensure that DAPOs are widely accessible in other circumstances where they may be needed, the clause also allows for applications to be made by a victim during the course of certain proceedings in the family and civil courts, as specified at clause 28.
Jess Phillips
The clause is very robust and replaces an incredibly confusing picture of which orders one can get where. As somebody who has filled in the paperwork for pretty much all of these orders, I do not think I could explain it right now. It is very complicated, but we have a clear listing of exactly who can do what. What the Minister has said about regulations being laid around relative third parties is an important point. I know that the Joint Committee on the Draft Domestic Abuse Bill and also anyone who works in this building will have potential concerns about the misuse of third parties applying for DAPOs. I cannot imagine many circumstances in which they could be misused, but unfortunately perpetrators are particularly manipulative and can sometimes find ways to do that, so I will be interested to see the regulations on third parties when they are laid and how much that will be in consultation with the victim and, in fact, the perpetrator. We are infringing on people’s rights. Although I want to see those rights inhibited in lots of cases, they are none the less rights that we are here to fight for.
The Minister has outlined the police force area in which the DAPO is filed. This is always a complicated thing, but does she foresee any problems with resource in the police force area? I raise this because of personal experience in having orders in my own cases. I am not very popular in Manchester for some reason. I feel desperately sorry for Greater Manchester police. When coming to take statements from me to look at options around protections for me personally, it takes a whole day out of a police officer’s time to come all the way to Birmingham and sit in my house, sometimes for nine hours.
Is there a plan that could be put in guidance around police force partnerships where there is a big geographical spread? In these cases, most likely people will be close by, but when women go into refuge they can move across the country, often from Birmingham to Wales, for some reason—I do not know why, but it is close and we like the water. I have concerns about victims feeling, “Oh, that’s really far away,” or, “Gosh, I’m bothering the police.” I have certainly felt myself that I am bothering Greater Manchester police and that I might just give up on this because it is such an effort for them to drive there.
Those are not reasonable things, and we cannot mitigate people’s feelings in the law. As the Minister said, we do not try to put people’s feelings into the law, because we would never be able to represent them properly, but I think this has to be considered. The clause is well written and substantive in its detail.
Alex Chalk
Clause 28 makes provision for the court to make a domestic abuse protection order of its own volition during other ongoing proceedings that do not have to be domestic abuse-related. It is an important provision that shows the flexibility of the legislation.
The family court will have the power to do so in cases where both the victim and the alleged abuser are parties to the proceedings, which means that the family court will be able to make an order in other ongoing proceedings where the court becomes aware that an order would be beneficial. For example, if an issue of domestic abuse is raised during ongoing child contact proceedings, the victim would not have to make a separate application to the court to obtain an order. Instead, the court can make an order of its own volition as it sees necessary. That is an important element of flexibility, and indeed robustness, built into the legislation.
In criminal courts—I am conscious that we have expertise here in the form of a former magistrate, which is excellent—as with the current restraining order, the court will be able to make a domestic abuse protection order on either conviction or acquittal. To that extent it is similar to a restraining order, which can also apply in the event of an acquittal. Importantly, however, the DAPO is an improvement on the current restraining order because it can impose positive requirements as well as prohibitions on the perpetrator. All Committee members will recognise that, although we of course want to protect victims first and foremost, we also want to stop further abuse happening, so anything that can be done to ensure that people are rehabilitated and see the error of their ways is a positive thing for society as well as, of course, for the victim.
In the case of a conviction, that will allow the court to, for example, set an order with a longer duration than the sentence passed, to ensure that the victim receives the protection they need beyond the length of their sentence. In the case of an acquittal, it will ensure that the victim still receives protection if the court thinks that is necessary.
The court will also be able to make a DAPO of its own volition during other ongoing civil proceedings where both the victim and the alleged abuser are parties to the proceedings.
We will specify the type of civil proceedings in regulations, but initially we expect it to cover civil proceedings in which issues of domestic abuse are most likely to be raised or revealed in evidence, such as housing-related proceedings.
Jess Phillips
I feel that, now Minister Chalk is on his feet, I should have some things to say; I do not want to leave him out.
I cannot say how important the idea that the court can put in place an order on acquittal in these circumstances is to somebody like me, who has watched many cases fall apart over the years. I am always slightly jealous of the Scottish system of not proven, because in too many cases in the area of violence against women and girls, it may well be that the balance of evidence needed cannot be provided either at the magistrates court or at the Crown court in these circumstances, but there is still gross fear among all involved that the fact that it is not proven does not mean that it did not happen.
The idea that, on acquittal, courts could put these orders in place is a huge step forward, ideologically and politically speaking. My concern—I am almost doing myself an injustice on what I am going to say about some of the amendments later—is what the Ministry of Justice foresees as a review mechanism to ensure where this is going, how it is working and how regularly the family courts are dishing out such orders.
If everybody was like Essex police force, I would be jumping for joy. I do not hope for this, but maybe one day somebody will perpetrate a crime against me in Essex and I will see how brilliant the force is at orders, as we heard from the evidence earlier. What worries me is whose responsibility it will be, after a year or two years—even after the pilot scheme—between the Ministry of Justice, the head of the family courts structure and the chief prosecutor at the head of the Crown Prosecution Service, to see how readily these orders are being used in our courts.
I have already said this once today, but often people like me put in annoying questions to people like the Minister, such as, “Can you tell me how many times this has been used in these circumstances?”, and very often the answer that we receive back is, “We do not collect this data nationally”, or, “We do not hold this data in the Department.” I want a sense of how we are going to monitor this, because while I know this just looks like words on paper, to people like me it is deeply, deeply important that the courts could take this role.
However, I have seen too many times that, even the powers that the courts have—certainly the family courts, which no doubt we will come on to tomorrow—are not always used wisely and well, so I want an understanding of how specifically we are going to monitor the use of the courts giving out the orders, which is new in this instance. How are we going to test that it is working and try to improve its use? I would be very interested in even just a basic data gathering each year of how many were done on acquittal, how many were done on conviction and how many were done in family court proceedings where both parties were part of proceedings.
With regard to the family court, and in fact in all these circumstances—whether it is a notice or an order; whether a police officer has to make a decision there on the doorstep or we are talking about orders—how are we going to deal with some of the “he said, she said”? I have seen an awful lot of counter-claims in the family courts. Often somebody will talk about being victimised as part of domestic abuse, and it becomes: “Well, actually, she was domestically abusing me,” or, “He was domestically abusing me.” I wonder whether any thought has been given to how, in giving out DAPOs in a family court, we do not end up with potentially two people, both with an order against each other—or maybe that could happen.
Alex Chalk
This clause concerns matters to be considered before making an order. Similar to the provisions at clause 21 in relation to a notice, clause 30 sets up particular matters, which the court must consider before making a domestic abuse protection order.
First, the court must consider the welfare of any person under the age of 18, whose interests the court considers relevant, in order to ensure that any safeguarding concerns can be appropriately addressed. The person does not have to be personally connected to the perpetrator and could, therefore, for example, be the victim’s child from a previous relationship.
The court must also consider the opinion of the victim as to whether the order should be made. As set out, however, in subsection (3), the court does not have to obtain the victim’s consent in order to make an order. We have already discussed why that is desirable. It enables the court to protect victims who may be coerced into withholding their consent, or who are fearful of the consequences should they appear to be supporting action against the perpetrator.
Where the order includes conditions in relation to premises lived in by the victim, the court must consider the opinion of any other person who lives in the premises and is personally connected to the victim or, if the perpetrator also lives in the premises, to the perpetrator. For example, if the perpetrator has caring responsibilities for a family member, the court would need to consider the family member’s opinion on the making of an order excluding the perpetrator from the premises.
Jess Phillips
I wonder whether the Government foresee a child being included in that instance. If it was an elderly relative, that is reasonable. But are we saying here—or perhaps it will be in the much-awaited guidance—that if a child was living in the house, their opinion might be sought?
Alex Chalk
Yes, I think it would be and I think that is appropriate. One thing that certainly the criminal law has done over the last 20 years is start to recognise that people under the age of 18 have views that are sometimes worth hearing. In the past, they were almost kept out of court, but now of course we try to facilitate their giving evidence. I would imagine that that would be the case in these circumstances and that a court would want to hear that.
It will be for the court to weigh up the different factors to come to its decision on whether a DAPO is necessary and proportionate in order to protect the victim from domestic abuse or the risk of it.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 30 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 31
Making of orders without notice
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Alex Chalk
Clause 32 concerns provision that may be made by orders. The Committee will recall that we heard earlier about provision that may be made by notices. This is the twin in respect of orders.
Clause 32 provides courts with the flexibility to impose in respect of a DAPO not only restrictions but positive requirements, depending on what is necessary in each case to protect the victim from all forms of abusive behaviour. Subsections (4) to (6) provide examples of the kinds of conditions that could be imposed by a DAPO, but subsection (3) expressly provides that those are not exhaustive.
It is up to the court carefully to tailor the conditions of the DAPO to meet the needs of the individual victim and take into account the behaviour of the perpetrator. The reason is that circumstances are varied and it is important to ensure that the court considers each case on its merits, and the circumstances as they apply, and ensures that the conditions are tailored accordingly.
Jess Phillips
Specifically with regard to what we were discussing earlier in relation to workplaces, does the Minister foresee that that could be one of those issues that could be discussed in the court—that there would be an allowance for the workplace to be included, with leave of the court?
Alex Chalk
Absolutely; I do not see why not at all. In fact, when the hon. Lady was making those points in respect of notices, I did fast-forward to clause 32, and it is deliberately broadly cast. Clause 32(2) says:
“The court must, in particular, consider what requirements (if any) may be necessary to protect the person for whose protection the order is made from different kinds of abusive behaviour.”
Jess Phillips
It is very pleasing to hear that—it is reassuring. I urge that the point is made explicitly in the guidance that will go along with all the orders. I wanted that on the public record.
Alex Chalk
It may be in the guidance but, I respectfully suggest, does not necessarily need to be in it. When a court comes to consider what it will or will not do, it may look at this measure and say, “Are we precluded from banning him from her workplace? If the answer to that is no, we will go ahead and do it, regardless of what is in the guidance.” It may be that it will be in there anyway, but I am confident that, as the Bill is set out, it is drafted sufficiently widely—deliberately so—for the courts to see their way to do justice and impose protections as they see fit.
Alex Chalk
May I gently push back on that? I understand the hon. Gentleman’s observations about the need to ensure that one modernises and so on, but if we think for a second about the sorts of conditions that the court is likely to impose, those will be along the lines of conditions routinely imposed in respect of bail, for example—not to contact an individual, not to go within a certain a postcode, not to go to a school, not to visit the home or not to contact relatives directly or indirectly.
I am confident that the courts will be well able to impose those conditions without requiring any particular leap of imagination. They will welcome and embrace these powers, which are deliberately drawn widely, so that the courts may apply their everyday experience of the world to understanding what is required to do justice and to provide protection in an individual case.
On the issue of keeping an eye on this, there are data and statistics, which will be published in due course. It will be open to hon. Members, the domestic abuse commissioner and the Victims’ Commissioner to keep a close weather eye on that. I know that the hon. Member for Hove will do precisely that.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 32 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 33
Further provision about requirements that may be imposed by orders
Jess Phillips
I beg to move amendment 51, in clause 33, page 21, line 3, leave out subsection (2) and insert—
“(2) A domestic abuse protection order that imposes a requirement to do something on a person (“P”) must—
(a) specify the person who is to be responsible for supervising compliance with that requirement; and
(b) meet the standard published by the Home Secretary for domestic abuse behaviour interventions, if the requirement is to attend an intervention specifically designed to address the use of abusive behaviour.”
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
New clause 26—Publish statutory standards—
“It is the duty of the Home Secretary to consult on and publish statutory standards in furtherance of section 33(2)(b) within 12 months of royal assent to this act, and to review these standards at least once every 3 years.”
This new clause is contingent upon Amendment 51 and seeks to ensure that all interventions designed to address abusive behaviour, that are imposed by DAPOs, are of a quality assured standard, as made clear under published statutory standards.
New clause 27—A strategic plan for perpetrators of domestic abuse—
“Within one year of the passing of this Act, the Government must lay before Parliament a comprehensive perpetrator strategy for domestic abuse to improve the identification and assessment of perpetrators, increase the number of rehabilitation programmes, and increase specialist work to tackle abusive attitudes and behaviour.”
Jess Phillips
The amendment is not dissimilar to new clause 26, so I shall speak to them together, before moving on to new clause 27.
This part of the Bill is specifically about further provisions, beyond those that the Minister has just outlined for us—about where people can and cannot go. This is about positive actions that can be taken in the court. Of course, that is not new to the Bill. This is a new Bill, and a new clause in it, but for many years the court has had the option to make positive requirements in such cases as those we are discussing and many others, so it is no surprise to see this in the Bill.
The new Bill establishes domestic abuse prevention orders that enable judges to require perpetrators to attend behaviour change interventions as part of their sentence. Again, they exist already. It is estimated that a need for 15,200 extra places on behaviour change and drug or alcohol programmes could spring out of the possible requirement to take positive action. I do not stand in criticism—I am looking forward to 15,200 extra people going through behaviour change courses—but there are currently no proposals to ensure that such interventions meet any sort of minimum standard.
I feel as though my hon. Friend the Member for Hove and I have been constantly asking the Minister about how we will review things and how we will know how they are going. Currently, there is no minimum standard for positive actions ordered by the court. At worst, poorly run programmes can increase the risk to victims. I know the Government would not want to put themselves in a position where a programme that they have funded would ever harm a victim. At best, a poor programme is a waste of money. We can all agree that there is no room for waste in the field of domestic abuse, with services up and down the country already strapped for cash. With the necessary quality assurance amendments, however, the Bill could mark a new era in which perpetrators are held to account and given genuine chances to change.
In a sort of change theory moment, the fact that I just stood in the House of Commons and said my last sentence proves that people can change, because I did not have any time and/or respect for behaviour change programmes when I worked in domestic abuse services, largely because of some of the experiences that I am referring to and the need for such programmes to be quality assured. I saw waste, and what I saw very rarely ended up being rooted in the safety of the victim. Provision is at best patchy; there have been years of problems with evidence-based programmes for perpetrators, and it seems patchy even in areas that one might think would be compelled to deliver them, such as probation.
I have seen instances of one local authority in the area where I worked putting out a tender for perpetrator programmes. It was quite a generous tender at the time—we are talking about seven years ago—because there was not much money going around. It was around £100,000 for a small local authority area—not Birmingham, because we would need millions—to offer services to around 100 perpetrators and to set up a programme to do that. During the tendering process, I saw the amount of the money that was to go to the specialist sector. The commissioners recognise—better than in most areas—that we should not be commissioning perpetrator services without the relative support being provided to victims. That has definitely happened, because, as we heard yesterday, good people and good local authorities working in the borough spoke up and said, “Hang on a minute. You can’t commission these services for perpetrators if you don’t also put in place support for the victims.”
I see the Minister nodding. It is now long agreed that that is the right way to handle this issue. However, just as an aside on what I would call patriarchal commissioning, there was £100,000 to deal with the perpetrators on the programme, and £18,000 to deal with the victims and their children. There is a balance between how much we value each thing in the system. I saw more than an unfair commissioning round, which I have been part of millions of times. Many providers who never had expertise in work with victims or perpetrators of domestic abuse saw on the council website that there was £100,000 being offered to people who could work with perpetrators, and, say, the local housing association would suddenly say “We know loads about perpetrators. We will set up a perpetrator programme.” Seven years ago when everything was being cut we used to say “diversify or die”, so if there was £100,000 they would say “We will do that.” Smaller organisations would say “We can go on Google and write a perpetrator programme.” I kid you not. That is the kind of thing that would go on.
The commissioners in our local authorities, with the best will in the world, who were in this instance doing lots of things right, were not experts in what a good quality-assured perpetrator programme might be—not at all. In the commissioning round we were commissioned, as the only violence against women and girls organisation in the area, to do the victim support work. A host of different people suddenly wanted a chat with us, to get our expertise in the commissioning round. Commissioning can make someone very popular. Never has my organisation been more popular than when probation was privatised. Every company from all over the country wanted a chat about our expert services.
A wide variety of agencies said they could handle perpetrators. In that instance the right thing happened—and fair play to the commissioners. The contract went to probation in the end, and before it could be realised probation withdrew on the grounds that it could not deliver the programme safely on behalf of the victims, because of the contract arrangements. In the end the programme did not happen. I point that out only because in that local authority area there were organisations such as the one I worked for, which punched well above its weight in lobbying and working with local authorities in the area. Also there was a decent head of what was then the community interest company in probation services, who did the right thing. However, anyone else who had been given the contract would probably just have delivered it along lines. It would have been monitored by a local authority provider commissioner with no idea about change management with offenders. With the greatest respect to local authorities, what do their commissioners know about that?
I used to go and speak to all the judges about female offenders and say, “Send them on our programmes.” I foresee a situation in which a judge, rightly looking around, thinks, “I’ve got this leaflet; I can do a positive thing. I am going to send this person”—and we have no idea, and the court has no understanding, whether where the person is being sent is any good. There is nothing in the Bill to provide quality assurance of those positive requirements.
Quality assurance provisions would be written into law only to apply to the DAPOs, but the expectation is that they would set a benchmark for all behaviour interventions commissioned by public bodies, raising, for example, the standard of work in probation. The probation service that I mentioned withdrew from the work in question out of morality and good sense, but a report from Her Majesty’s inspectorate of probation on the provision of domestic abuse rehabilitation activities demonstrates how urgently that is needed:
“Some responsible officers were delivering the domestic abuse RAR”—
the rehabilitation activity requirement—
“on a one-to-one basis, borrowing resources from colleagues, browsing the internet for resources or devising their own one-to-one interventions. There was no system in place to make sure that interventions were evidence-based and delivered safely and effectively”.
Perhaps my seven-years-ago story speaks to what was found in that probation report. The Minister spoke earlier about something else that had progressed over five years. I think that in the area I have been discussing, we have progressed vastly. The reason why I say that is that my opinion of perpetrator programmes has followed the evidence—I can change, proving that change is possible. I followed the science, as the Government like to say at the moment. The evidence base is now strong where previously it was not, so it presents an opportunity.
Victoria Atkins
On coronavirus, we have been in constant contact with charities and the police locally to understand how DVPOs are working. Where there have been problems, as in the hon. Lady’s point about homelessness, we have sent out guidance repeatedly to local authorities to say that they must include perpetrators in their rehousing programmes, precisely so that DVPOs can be enforced.
Jess Phillips
It will be a very thin silver lining to what has been an enormous cloud over our country. The Minister is absolutely right: we have been learning some things in this period. Because of the availability of resource in our police forces as a result of the reduction in other areas of crime, this will in some regards be a high point—a gold standard—in terms of how we act in domestic violence cases. If there was certainty in a police force area, built in partnership with a local authority, that there would absolutely be a place for a perpetrator to stay, I can almost guarantee that the police would be much more active in the DVPO area, because that is what we have seen during the coronavirus crisis.
There should be five elements of a perpetrator strategy. We need criminal justice systems and other public and voluntary services, such as housing, health and education. We need training, and clever and tough working, to hold perpetrators to account. We need proven interventions and behaviour change programmes for all perpetrators available everywhere, and we need education to prevent and raise awareness of abusive behaviours. We need regulation to end poorly run programmes, some of which are actually dangerous. And we need ongoing research to ensure that we know what stops abuse, particularly within groups that are currently under-served by these kinds of preventive interventions, such as LGBT groups.
Essentially, money is needed. A sustainable and predictable source of funding would save millions in policing, justice and health costs—perhaps even billions, given the Home Office costings on the cost of domestic abuse. Leadership is ultimately needed to make it happen. It is pleasing to see that the domestic abuse commissioner is taking a proactive stance on this. She will need backing from Ministers in all Departments to look beyond their important response to victims to the other side of the coin: the people causing the harm.
The Chair
I will call Nickie Aiken in a second, but I am aware that there will be a Division at about 4.36 pm. I am afraid that if a Division is called and the Committee is still sitting, I will have to suspend for at least 45 minutes. Members might want to bear that in mind.
Alex Chalk
It is important to note that clause 66 contains important provisions that allow for exactly what we want to achieve.
Turning to new clause 27 on the perpetrator strategy, I reassure the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley that we have heard the call to action for a perpetrator strategy. We commend the work of the Drive partnership of Respect, SafeLifes and Social Finance, who have done so much to change the narrative and to shift the focus from, “Why doesn’t she leave?”, to, “Why doesn’t he stop?”.
I want to be absolutely clear that we fully recognise the need for increased focus on perpetrators and are ambitious in our aim to transform the response to those who have caused this appalling harm, but to have an increased focus on tackling perpetrators, we do not need to make inflexible provision in the Bill for a one-off strategy. We have made clear our commitment to this work through our allocation of £10 million in this year’s Budget for preventive work with perpetrators. Over the past three years, we have funded a range of innovative approaches to working with perpetrators and we are beginning to build a solid evidence base on what works through some of the programmes I have mentioned: Drive, a whole-system approach to tackling domestic abuse, and “Make a Change”.
We have undertaken work to improve the response to the perpetrators through the criminal justice system. As was set out in the consultation response published alongside the draft Bill, we are taking action to improve the identification and risk assessment of perpetrators. The College of Policing has published key principles for police on the management of serial and dangerous domestic abuse perpetrators, and we are expanding the range of interventions available to offenders serving community sentences.
We recognise the concerns; that is why we want to ensure that we develop and properly test a whole-system approach, in particular through the piloting of DAPOs. It might well prove counterproductive to develop a new strategy without awaiting the learning from those pilots. I hope that, in the light of our intention to work towards that fully comprehensive package of perpetrator programmes and our wider programme of work to confront and change perpetrator behaviours, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley will see her way to withdrawing the amendment.
Jess Phillips
I recognise what the Minister says about the fact that perpetrator programmes are used elsewhere. Very often in children’s services, I have seen people sent on perpetrator programmes that, I am afraid to say, are useless. If only everything was as perfect as it is in Westminster.
Jess Phillips
I apologise if I did not cover all the boroughs in London. I did not come up with the amendments all by myself; the specialist sector is working with us to ask for these things, and the reality is that, as sometimes happens in this place, we will say how something is on the ground and we will be told that that is not the case. We will be told, “Actually, no; it’s going to be fine because we are going to have a whole-system approach.”
What the Minister says about a whole-system approach is needed wherever perpetrator programmes are issued, rather than just in DAPOs. I could not agree with him more on that point. I shall allow him as many interventions as he likes, and I will speak for as long as it takes for him to get the answer. If he is saying to me that, at the other end of this very notable approach and funding that the Home Office and the Government are putting in place, we will end up with an accredited system that stops the bad practice and the poor commissioning of services, of course I will withdraw the amendment.
Is the Minister saying that we will work towards a standard that will have to be met and that will be compelled—not dissimilar to the standard that we will hopefully come on to tomorrow, where we compel local authorities with a duty? There, I believe, we will be writing a set of standards that the local authority in its commissioning process has to live by, so that it cannot just say, “We’re doing any old domestic abuse services.” There has long been talk at MHCLG about having standards to go with any duty. Is the Minister telling me that we will end up with an accreditation system, which is essentially what I seek?
Alex Chalk
The whole point of the approach we are taking is to seek standardisation across the piece. Words like “accreditation” can mean all sorts of things, but certainly it is the case that our absolute aim is to draw on the best practice that we have referred to and combine it with the experience we glean from the pilots to work out what we think is best practice, to clarify what that best practice is and to do everything we can to promulgate that best practice. One can use words like “accreditation” or “standardisation”, but we want to use the mechanisms within the Bill—pilot and guidance—to do precisely what the hon. Lady is aiming for. We recognise that clarity, consistency and credibility are the hallmarks of an effective order, and that is precisely what we want to achieve.
Jess Phillips
I welcome what the Minister says. I suppose the reality is that if that does not happen, I have no recourse beyond changing this Bill. Actually, I can just stand in this building and say, “Things aren’t working and we don’t have good perpetrator systems,” but it will largely fall on deaf ears. It might not—we cannot know which ears it will fall on—but, largely, when people come and say that things are not working in whatever we are talking about, it is very hard.
I have a Bill in front of me, and I can attempt to compel this to happen. However, on this occasion—because I would never describe the Minister as having deaf ears, and I am quite confident in my own ability to keep on raising the issue until the right thing happens—I accept and welcome what the Minister has outlined, and I look forward to working on it with him, the commissioner and the sector. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 33 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 34
Further provision about electronic monitoring requirements
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Alex Chalk
Clause 34 sets out the circumstances in which a court can impose electronic monitoring requirements on a person as part of an order, and the nature of such requirements. The clause specifies that the electronic monitoring requirements may not be imposed if the person is not present at the hearing. The clause also specifies that, if there is a person other than the perpetrator who will need to co-operate with the monitoring requirements in order for them to be practicable, they will need to give their consent before the requirements can be imposed. That may include, for example, the occupier of the premises where the perpetrator lives. The court must also have been notified by the Secretary of State that electronic monitoring requirements are available in the area, and it must be satisfied that the provision can be made under the arrangements available. Any order that imposes electronic monitoring requirements must also specify the person who will be responsible for their monitoring.
Where electronic monitoring requirements are imposed, the person must submit to being fitted with the necessary apparatus and to the installation of any associated equipment, and they must co-operate with any inspection or repair that is required. They must not interfere with the apparatus, and they must keep it in working order—for example, by keeping it charged. I trust that the Committee will agree that proper procedures should be in place when a decision is made by the court that electronic monitoring is required.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 34 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 35 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 36
Breach of order
Domestic Abuse Bill
Jess Phillips ExcerptsTuesday 28th April 2020
(5 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Domestic Abuse Bill 2019-21 View all Domestic Abuse Bill 2019-21 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
I want to thank everybody who has spoken in this debate. In a rare moment, I agreed with almost all of it. I think I will have a chat with the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) another time; we like our little chats. I want to pay a special tribute to the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Sara Britcliffe), who appears on the call list as a virtual maiden, which I just think is an absolutely brilliant thing to be called. Her speech was full of heart—it is very odd that I cannot look at her—but from one bloody difficult woman to another, I am sure she will have an impact in this place.
I want to thank Ministers and the officials of the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice, who have always been co-operative. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris); I have worn leopard print in her honour today. She was my predecessor, and she acted with characteristic tenacity in the brief. Ministers will know how often I have fought for this Bill to progress. However, there is still such a long way for it to go for it to be truly groundbreaking. It wants to be that groundbreaking, and we have to allow it to be that.
Covid-19 has laid bare the lack of protection for women and girls from violence. The lockdown has allowed the public to imagine what it would be like if their home, a supposed place of safety, contained the danger they feared most. The Bill is of course about the long term, but we cannot ignore the crisis facing millions of people in this country today—a crisis that is threatening our precious domestic abuse sector. To all those working with victims of violence and abuse and with victims of coercion, both adult and children, I pay tribute. They deserve access to extra, emergency, ring-fenced funding, as laid out by my hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary, and they deserve it now.
So far, the sector has not received a single penny. Not from the £2 million that was announced, or from the proposed £750 million. That money was needed weeks ago. That issue was highlighted today by the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, and I could not agree more that the Minister must listen to the domestic abuse commissioner and the Victims’ Commissioner on this issue. We need a ring-fenced fund, and we need it now.
I pay tribute to the Mother of the House, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), and the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) for their dogged campaign to end the rough sex defence and post-mortem abuse. I have heard some of the worst cases, and it never stops being alarming to listen to stories such as those we have heard today. They have my full support, and from this House I hope that the hon. Gentleman will pass on our love to Natalie’s family.
I praise my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock) for her nominatively determined wallpaper background, and for her effort to continue the campaign of our friend, Gloria De Piero, to end the asset grabbing of attempted murderers. My hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) was as moving this time as she was last time, and I repeat the praise to the new hon. Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher). It helps so much for people watching these debates when people like them speak out.
In a strange moment today my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen), a firebrand union activist, joined forces with a Conservative ex-Prime Minister to call for better workplace measures and rights for workers. I am sure Ministers will be delighted to join in that union with them.
There is much to cheerlead in this Bill. I welcome proposals for a dedicated commissioner, not just in theory but in practice, and Nicole Jacobs is already breathing life into that position. I also welcome the long fought for statutory duty to ensure future sustainable accommodation-based services. I shall not retire just yet, even though we might have got that, but it is a change I have championed since I worked in refuge, let alone since I have been in this place. Finally, being able to stand here after four years and say that no perpetrator will be able to cross-examine a victim is a welcome relief.
As the Bill progresses, however, I do not want to give the impression that there are not areas that will be contentious. There are currently huge gaps in what the Bill proposes. Members across the House, including the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft), and, movingly, the hon. Member for Bolsover all highlighted gaps in the Bill regarding children. The Bill cannot simply be words written on goatskin in some attic in Parliament that Ministers lean on to prove how much they are doing.
For every part of the Bill I will ask how it would have helped or hindered the victims and their children whose hands I have held over the years. Which of those victims have we forgotten? The only qualification for access to support, housing, refuge, social security, and police protection for victims of domestic abuse in this country should be this: are you human? The issue of migrant women’s access to support was raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), my hon. Friends the Members for Brent Central (Dawn Butler), for Nottingham North (Alex Norris), for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare), and for Ilford South (Sam Tarry), and by no means only by Labour Members. Across the House, the issue of no recourse to public funds was raised again and again. We cannot pass a Bill that discriminates against migrant women, or that has a blind spot about the effect of domestic abuse on the children who live with it. Currently, the Bill would not change the lives of those groups for the better.
The past few weeks have shown that we are a community. How can it be that there are care workers, NHS workers and key workers serving the public right now in this crisis who would not be equally protected if they needed to escape abuse? Surely it is about all of us, or it is about none of us. Let the new Bill reflect that.
I am troubled that in this area the Home Office is currently in the middle of a review into migrant women. The gaps are already well known. The right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) spoke about how migrant women were an issue raised in the report by the Joint Committee, and they remain an issue today. Yesterday, a report by the Home Affairs Committee stated that migrant women are still an issue. This is not something new that we do not know about, or that needs to wait for a review. We need to act now. How can this House or the other place possibly scrutinise and seek to change the Bill without the outcome of this review or the Family Justice Board review? Surely the Minister can see that this seems back to front and that, actually, political will says that she can act today.
The hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) made eloquent cases for the priority housing need, and I hope that Ministers heard their calls, because I am certain that they will only get louder as we head to Committee.
Although we welcome the statutory duty on housing support, 70% of known victims of domestic abuse accessing support do not receive it in a refuge setting. The vast majority of support for domestic abuse victims and their children happens in the community, and the Bill is currently not addressing those needs. These are the women whose names I read out each year. The high-risk women on that list are served by our community services and our independent domestic violence advisers. The domestic violence protection orders regime proposed in the Bill, which seeks to place more of the burden on the perpetrator rather than the victim, is incredibly welcome. However, there must be an agreed set of standards in this area and a proper Government strategy on how we manage perpetrators. It has been done in a wild west fashion in the past, and that needs to change. Without that, these orders will, at best, not change people’s lives, and, at worst, place them in further danger.
The Lord Chancellor and my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), who we could actually hear when she thought we could not, mentioned Claire Throssell, and I am grateful that they did. I have to ask: what does this Bill offer to Claire Throssell and the mothers of the other 19 children murdered by known violent perpetrators following decisions in the family court? For three years, Claire has told her story to us policy makers, yet I do not see the loss of Jack and Paul reflected back at me in this Bill. I hope that I will. Many Members spoke ably about their experience of the family courts, but, alone, the changes to cross-examination are not enough to make it better. They would not have saved Jack and Paul.
My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North did a great job of giving voice to victims. I ask the Minister to ensure that, during the Bill Committee evidence sessions, we can hear the voices of victims such as Claire Throssell. I ask her to assure me that that will be the case.
Standing at the Dispatch Box in this Chamber, making my closing speech to a handful of people and a few more on computer screens, I am reminded more than ever that the decisions that we make in this room have huge consequences on the lives of the British public. Sometimes the decisions that we make here determine who lives and who dies. This is one of those moments. I hope that Ministers will work with us to make this Bill everything that it can be. This is the first major legislative Bill of a post-covid-19 world. Let it help all those who need it. Let it reflect who we want to be.
Domestic Abuse Bill
Jess Phillips Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)
May I start by saying how much I and many others present appreciate the consensual nature of the debate? As well as praising the leadership of my own party’s Front Benchers, who have been fantastic on this issue, I thank the Government Front Benchers for the remarkable leadership they have shown. In particular, I thank the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), who has met me many times to discuss this and other issues. She was the first Member from the 2015 intake to go into government, so I see her as an ambassador for all of us in that intake, and she has done very well. The Minister for Health, the hon. Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), was previously in the Ministry of Justice. Although he has now been moved to another Department, he is back here supporting the Bill. Those things do not get noticed by people observing us from outside, but they really matter to those of us who are here.
I was made very aware of the problem of cross-examination by perpetrators of domestic violence when a woman came to see me at a surgery soon after I became a Member of Parliament. She had suffered so much abuse—she had been raped multiple times, she had been knocked unconscious and she had been hospitalised more than a dozen times—but the perpetrator of those crimes, from prison, summonsed her to family court on three separate occasions. She told me that on the third occasion she had to ask the taxi driver to stop on the way home so she could vomit in the gutter because of the experience of being cross-examined by the perpetrator of the crimes against her. She told me that if she was summonsed a fourth time, she would capitulate and give him whatever he wanted. She was broken, not just by the criminal who raped and abused her, but by the system that allowed her to be cross-examined by him, and that allowed the abuse to continue under the nose of judges, and in front of police—the very people the state appoints to support and protect women like her.
After a huge campaign, both from Members from across the House and in the media, the Government finally gave way and agreed to make a change. I credit Mr Speaker with granting me an urgent question on the subject in January 2017, almost three years ago, at which the Government relented for the first time and promised to change the law. The right hon. and learned Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald), then Minister for Courts and Justice, said in response to the urgent question:
“This sort of cross-examination is illegal in the criminal courts, and I am determined to see it banned in family courts, too.”
He reiterated the urgency thus:
“work is being done at a great pace…the urgency is there.”—[Official Report, 9 January 2017; Vol. 619, c. 25-27.]
That is important. The woman I mentioned cried with joy at the news that there would be a change. In her words, she felt liberated; a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.
However, we must recognise the scale of the suffering that there has been since the Government gave that commitment almost three years ago. While we celebrate the Bill finally bring brought in, there has been much suffering as a result of the delays. As Lord Justice Munby said on Radio 4 recently:
“Every day that passes exposes more victims to what is intolerable. Today, in court somewhere in this country, there will be someone—a frightened victim—being let down by the system. It must stop”.
I pay tribute to Lord Justice Munby for the support that he has shown for the changes.
In the time left to me, I want to mention quickly the role of Domestic Abuse Commissioner. It is essential that we get that role right. We have seen how Brexit eclipses everything in this Chamber; we urgently need an independent, strong voice for victims of domestic violence that can rise above that.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend share my concerns about how this place can scrutinise the new commissioner? I have absolutely no doubt that they will work in the best interests of all our constituents, but perhaps we are not yet sure how we will find that out.
Peter Kyle
My hon. Friend raises an incredibly important point. The Home Affairs Committee, after much deliberation, wanted the commissioner to be independent of Government and to report directly to Parliament, and I agree. The Joint Committee on the draft Bill suggested that there be Cabinet Office involvement to avoid conflicts of interest in the Home Office reporting line. It is important to stress that the Children’s Commissioner is independent of Government and Parliament. The Information Commissioner’s Office is independent, even though it is supported and sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. The independence of those organisations, even though they report every year to Parliament, is absolutely essential. That kind of independence would give a credible, powerful, unignorable voice to victims of domestic violence.
We hope that Brexit is in its endgame, but even if Parliament passes a deal, we will then enter years of negotiation and turmoil in this House. We need to make sure that we never lose our voice on domestic issues such as this, and particularly on support for victims of violent crime such as domestic violence. As the Bill moves into Committee, I urge a detailed re-examination of the reporting line to the commissioner, to ensure maximum independence for them, the greatest voice for abuse survivors, and maximum benefit to our body politic from the commissioner’s role. The commissioner-elect is here; I say to her and others observing the debate that I am not criticising her role but making sure that she has all the powers she needs. If she uncovers something that needs to be voiced and that needs to change, and we are too busy, or the media are too occupied, to listen to her voice, and if that is buried in the normal Home Office reporting line, that will be to her detriment.
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (LD)
I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who concentrated on and spoke eloquently about the impact of domestic abuse on children. I, too, want to concentrate on putting children first and will focus my remarks on how domestic abuse is considered in the family courts.
Members will recall the debate I secured on this issue in September 2016. In my speech I referred specifically to a tragedy suffered by my constituent Claire Throssell as a way of illustrating as powerfully as I could the need for reform. Claire is with us today, sitting in the Under-Gallery, and I welcome her to the debate. I make no apology for recounting again in this Chamber her account of what happened on that dreadful day when her boys were murdered at the hands of their own father. I only wish the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) was in his place to listen.
“It took just 15 minutes on the 22nd October, 2014, for my life and heart to be broken completely beyond repair. I had warned those involved with my case that my happy, funny boys would be killed by their own father; I was right.
My boys were both with their father on that October day, and at around 6.30pm he enticed Paul, nine, and Jack, 12, up to the attic, with the promise of trains and track to build a model railway. When the boys were in the attic, he lit 16 separate fires around the house, which he had barricaded, so my sons could not get out and the firemen could not get in.
Only 15 minutes later…the doorbell rang at my mum’s. (We were staying there temporarily after the separation.)
‘It’s the boys, they must be early,’ my mum said—but I knew that wasn’t right. The boys would have run into the house and straight into my arms; they always did after a visit to their dad. They were frightened of him—he was a perpetrator of domestic abuse. The statutory agencies involved in our case knew this.
I opened the door. Blue lights were flashing.
‘There's been an incident at your former home; the boys have been involved in a fire…’
Running into the hospital, the first thing I saw was Paul receiving CPR. A doctor, drenched in sweat and exhausted, told me they were withdrawing treatment.
I held Paul in my arms. I begged him to try, to stay, to not leave me.
He looked at me, smiled, and the life left his beautiful blue eyes. His hair was wet with my tears as I kissed his nose. Then Paul, my boy, was taken out of my arms and into another room. There was no further chance of touching him; his little body was now part of a serious crime enquiry.”
I can never read those words or hear them—and I know the Minister feels the same, because she has sat with me and listened to Claire—without feeling the enormous loss Claire has suffered. But Claire is brave. She has chosen not to turn in on herself but rather to embrace love as a means of dealing with her tragedy. She has chosen to protect all children, if she possibly can, by making sure that the law is changed.
By that I mean reform of the family courts. We need access to special measures in those courts to separate survivors from the perpetrators, as well as special protection rooms, entrances and exits, and screens and video links. Clause 53, in part 1, provides for that to apply in the criminal courts, but we need to amend the Bill to ensure that it is extended to the civil and family courts.
Jess Phillips
Does the hon. Lady agree—and Claire’s case speaks to this more loudly than almost any that I have ever heard—that the presumption of access by an abusive parent has to end?
Angela Smith
I completely agree. Indeed, I was about to say exactly that.
We need to extend the ban on cross-examination by perpetrators to the family courts, because the Bill does not do that at present, and, more than anything else, we need to change the culture of the family courts. Claire’s children died after their father won the right to unsupervised contact. The domestic abuse that she had suffered from Darren Sykes was not taken seriously by any agency, or by the courts themselves. It was assumed that his children would be safe in his care. The judge who made that judgment is still practising in the family courts in Barnsley.
The research on this indicates clearly that a man who abuses his wife or his partner is more likely to abuse his children. We therefore need to end the assumption of contact when there is a risk to a child from domestic abuse, as called for by Claire and by Women’s Aid, and we need a ban on unsupervised contact when a father is awaiting trial, or is on bail, for domestic abuse offences. The Bill, as it stands, does not deliver such a provision. We also need to ensure that the definition of domestic abuse in the Bill includes coercive control as a source of harm to children. That point has been made by many other Members today.
The Bill needs to be amended along those lines if it is to be fit for purpose. That is the legacy that Claire has campaigned for—a positive legacy that would stand as a tribute to her children—and, in the name of Jack and Paul, we have a moral responsibility to secure these protections for all our children. Let us not miss this golden opportunity to secure the change that we need.
I support the Bill, but it can be better, and I hope that the Minister will agree when she sums up the debate.
Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)
I would like to put my thanks on record for the leadership shown by both Front Benches on this important Bill.
For me, the debate is very personal, because domestic abuse has shaped everything I stand for and is what put me on the journey into Parliament. It is brilliant that once the Bill goes through women will have services available and we will have enshrined the definition of abuse in law. That was not always the case, and some women experienced so much abuse, when the services were not there, that they were driven to kill. Twenty-seven years ago, there was such a woman who killed her abuser and went to prison for 14 years. That woman was Zoora Shah, and she was my mum.
Jess Phillips
Does my hon. Friend agree that the recent case of Sally Challen has given voice to the issue? Hopefully, legal change will continue through the Bill to allow people to understand that some of these issues are not simply black and white, but the reality of the lives of people who have been terribly abused. The worst that can happen to a family can easily happen, as she is saying.
Naz Shah
I agree with my hon. Friend and thank her for that timely intervention.
Twenty-seven years ago, when Zoora Shah did not have the right services, she went to prison for 14 years. At the time, she did not tell her story. I am talking about this in this debate because I want to talk about specific services for BAME women, especially specialist services that understand domestic abuse, as my former colleague on the Home Affairs Committee mentioned.
It is more complicated for women of BAME heritage. My mother did not talk about being abused because of the concept of honour. I have talked about honour crimes before, and I shall give an example. Had Zoora Shah been arrested by an officer who was non-white, she might have had a different experience. Had she been arrested by a woman of colour, or even a woman of her background, they might have understood her experience of abuse, which drove her to kill. Had she been represented by a female solicitor from her cultural background, she might have had a different experience. Had her case been dealt with by a judge with an ethnic background or who understood her culture, the outcome for her might have been very different. The outcome of my life might have been very different, and that of my siblings and my family.
That is why it is important to have a reflective workforce. It is about having specialist services for women from black and minority ethnic backgrounds who understand the culture. When a lady called Tahmina rang me on a Saturday morning three years ago to say that a girl in Pakistan had been murdered, I could identify it straight away as an honour crime. That girl was not just murdered and buried: she became a campaign and a cause, ensuring that we talk about honour crime and about her rape, and continue to try to seek justice for her.
I have an understanding of honour and the impact of it on me. I will describe it in the words that my dear friend Sal used to me last week:
“Izzat”—
honour—
“is the shroud that covers me, weaved from the threads of my identity, integrity, values and the decisions that I make.”
I am emphasising honour because my mother served extra time in prison—she could not speak up because of the impact of honour. It is a code of conduct in my community by which we behave.
It is apt today that I talk about honour in a different context. Yesterday, The Guardian reported that in my election campaign in 2017 I had felt suicidal because I was dishonoured. My opponent, having a background from my community, knowingly ran a campaign in which a man in the community stood up and actually said, “When we buy a dog, we check its pedigree. Look at Naz Shah’s character, look at her demeanour, her chaal chalan”—as he put it—“and how she presents herself”. What The Guardian did not report was that in this email I equated that to honour abuse, and I do not say that lightly, as a daughter of a woman who at one point in giving evidence about her abuse referred to herself as having become a “mattress” to men. When someone who comes from that background ends up being a Member of Parliament and the shadow Minister for Women and Equalities, sitting on these Green Benches and able to represent the voices of those who are dead and buried thousands of miles away—
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
I pay massive tribute, as everybody has done, to those who have spoken, particularly my hon. Friends the Members for Bradford West (Naz Shah) and for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield), and the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier), whose contribution was so moving. When we in this place talk about these things, people really are watching. Victims of domestic abuse will today feel that we care about them, and even if that is all we achieve today, that is a good thing to have done.
I notice that during this debate, Prorogation 2.0 has been announced. Somebody sent me a tweet saying that there is a view that Parliament will prorogue—sorry, shut down—again. I want assurances from the Minister, when she sums up, that we will use Standing Order No. 80A—
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
I am delighted to be able to confirm that. Indeed, the carry-over motion is on today’s Order Paper. The Bill is carrying on.
Jess Phillips
Super-duper. I am delighted to hear that.
As everybody else has said, it has been an honour to work on the Bill over the past three years—I wish it had been only one or two—not only with Front Benchers on both sides on the Chamber, but with the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) and others who are no longer on the Front Bench, including the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes). She spoke of having listened; I feel delighted to have been in the meeting about migrant women under the Bill that she spoke about so eloquently. Also, I should mention the people sitting in the Box—the civil servants we have worked with to get the Bill in front of us today, and to carry it over. It has been a real privilege to help ensure that this place recognises the effect of domestic abuse on our communities.
For the past three weeks, I have been fighting for us to come back to this place just for the sake of this moment, this day—just so that we could get this Bill back into this place. I found myself in the treasured position of defender of the Domestic Abuse Bill, as though it were mine. It is not mine; it is a Government Bill, and that needs saying. However, as a defender of the Bill, I will defend the point that improvements certainly need to be made to it.
As the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North stated, in the Bill’s next stages we absolutely must aim for it to be for all victims and all women—I am not afraid to say “all women” in this context. I truly mean that. It does not matter what a person’s status is; if my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury has taught us anything today, it is that it does not matter who someone is; the primary thing we should see when they first disclose abuse is what happened to them. It should not matter if they were born in this country, if they are here on a spousal, student or refugee visa, or if they are an EU citizen. What we should see in front of us is the person, and we should ask what we can do to help them. The Bill needs a huge amount of work in that area—not just around migrant women, but around disabled and older women and LGBT people.
With all the good work being done in here and across Departments we still need to stop essentially just seeing a benefit-dependent woman with a couple of kids in a refuge. Disabled women are being turned away. I ran refuges and I think we had two disability access beds out of hundreds of beds. It is simply not enough any more. We live in a society where we have to take need into account, no matter what. We have to take into account the likelihood of someone being abused if, for instance, they are a carer or have someone caring for them who can easily control them.
I want to say one final thing—I could speak for weeks and weeks, but I won’t. The statutory duty on refuge accommodation is so welcome. I had to explain to my husband what it was when the Ministers rang to tell me they were going to do it. I was not allowed to tell anyone, but I really wanted to tell someone. My husband was slightly nonplussed. We were promised at the time of that brilliant step forward that there would be £90 million in the next comprehensive spending review. We have now had that comprehensive spending review and it was not in there. I would be grateful if the Minister could tell us where the cash will come from.
Legislation against Female Genital Mutilation
Jess Phillips Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Lucy Frazer
I am happy to confirm to my hon. Friend that the Government think that this is a very important matter. Across the Departments, we think that it is an important matter, and the Chief Whip has indicated that he does, too. We will be bringing forward this Bill in Government time.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
Like everybody else in this building—and, frankly, in the country—I am disgusted by the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope). If I were ever to be in charge of a political party, I certainly would not allow him to keep his Whip, should he ever do anything like this in this place again. He is a total disgrace. New laws are very nice but they are often just words on goatskin to the women who are affected by these and other crimes, so what will be in this Bill to make sure that the services that used to exist in Birmingham for victims of FGM and their families will be put back?
Lucy Frazer
I know that the hon. Lady takes a great deal of interest in women’s issues, and I have been pleased to work with her on a number of issues that cross my Department. I know that many of them stretch beyond my Department as well. She talks about funding and the importance of working in the community, and she is right to identify the fact that this is not simply a matter of making laws. It is about action, education and understanding. Of course, laws must set the boundaries and tell people what is right and wrong, and this crime is absolutely horrific and must be stopped, but that is not the extent of the Government’s actions on FGM. The Home Office’s FGM unit is driving a step change in our nationwide outreach, and it has done more than 100 events across the country to raise awareness. The Department of Health and Social Care has provided £4 million for the national FGM prevention programme in partnership with NHS England. The Department for Education has provided nearly £2 million for a national programme to improve the social care response to FGM, and it has announced a further £1.7 million to continue that work. That is what is happening in this country; the Department for International Development does an extensive amount of work overseas in addition to that, to ensure that women worldwide do not suffer from this horrific practice.
Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)
Jess Phillips ExcerptsTuesday 4th December 2018
(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
The Minister is explaining who will get to decide whether we are flexible on this in the future, bit what I do not hear—what I do not hear in any of this Bill—is how we make sure that these changes mean improvements for the people who use these courts. While the judiciary and the people carrying out these functions certainly seem to have a voice in the changes being proposed, in terms of the changes I would like to see in the family courts, the voices of those people using the courts are nowhere in this Bill.
Lucy Frazer
That is a very important point. We serve the people through justice and the court system. The people who come to the courts to get justice are the people my Department is serving. In all our reform programme, we have a user-centred focus and consistently engage with users to improve our services. All the forms we have recently produced were produced with insight from users, which is why we have an extremely high satisfaction rate for the reforms we are making.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley makes an important and valid point, and I can tell her how users will benefit from this. She will have been in the House when questions were put to me about delays in the court system and about the time it is taking for certain hearings to come before the courts. We want to ensure that there are as few delays as possible and that justice is not only fair but speedily dispensed. These changes will allow functions to be operated by the appropriate people, and will enable us to get more swift, easy and quick justice for those who use our courts.
Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [Lords]
Jess Phillips ExcerptsTuesday 27th November 2018
(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Yasmin Qureshi
I have respect for the senior judiciary, of course, but Parliament should have control over what is being delegated. Taking away judges’ positions and powers is a matter that should be debated in this House. We do not think that it is a matter for the procedure rule committee. We would have a much better idea about what it should be looking at. I think that we will disagree on this issue.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend share my concern about always listening to eminent legal practitioners in the Lords? I am certain that, quite recently, they have made some mistakes.
Yasmin Qureshi
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. Those things do occur.
Let me go back to my earlier point. We believe that limits should be placed on those who can be authorised and on what powers can be given to those authorised persons. The Bill will change the very nature of our judicial system. We want a system that requires transparent and public scrutiny of the scope of future delegated powers by those in this House. That is important and I am surprised that hon. Members who are democratically elected wish to take away that element from the Bill.
We on the Labour Benches are seeking to push for a number of safeguards, the first of which places limits on the delegation of these judicial powers to non-judicial personnel. We intend to press for further oversight and accountability and will be laying down amendments to that effect. It should also be noted that the procedure rule committee has, for many years, undertaken some excellent work, but the delegation of judicial functions cannot be thought of as a simple procedural matter for a rule committee—rather, this is something worthy of secondary legislation in this House.
The reforms that the Government are seeking to introduce through the Bill are designed primarily to cut costs, but, as the Bill stands, there is a risk that the procedure rule committee will be placed in the difficult position of balancing pressures to save costs against maintaining fundamental rights. Amending the Bill so that the procedure rule committee must at least consider the impact on rights would provide important protections both for the rights of the citizen and for the integrity of the committee. We ask the Government to consider that any decision made by someone who has been delegated judicial functions should be open to a full reconsideration or review by a judge. That would guarantee that purely procedural matters could be dealt with more efficiently; if any decisions were deemed contentious, however, they could be reviewed by an experienced and appropriately qualified judge.
We also note that the Government’s late amendment in the other place obliged the procedure rule committee to consider making rules to determine which of the functions performed by authorised staff could be subject to a party’s right of reconsideration by a judge. However, that does not satisfy our concerns. Indeed, it is simply replicating the fundamental problem of the Bill. By placing the obligation on the rule committee, it delegates a legislative duty to the same unaccountable body. Consequently, we will be pushing ahead with our amendment, supported by the Law Society and the Bar Council, that proposes a statutory right to judicial reconsideration for any party to a decision by an authorised person. We will also seek to ensure that, in drawing up the rules on reconsideration, the rule committee must consider which functions and decisions will be clearly capable of having a material impact on the substantive rights of the parties. I reiterate that we respectfully disagree with the noble and learned Lords in the other place.
In the Ministry of Justice’s explanatory notes on delegation to staff, it is stated that decisions are unlikely to involve contested matters, yet this is not in the Bill. I remind the Lord Chancellor that case management decisions are essential judicial functions that should not necessarily be delegated. We need to ensure that the decisions that impact on the fairness of the process remain within the remit of the judges.
We also have concerns about the lack of minimum qualification for the authorised staff, particularly where staff are not legally qualified or sufficiently experienced to undertake such functions effectively. The Law Society has suggested that the requirements for qualification, training and experience should be set at three years’ post-qualification, as a solicitor, barrister or chartered legal executive for all types of functions, and that that approach should be consistent across all courts and tribunals. I know that the Lord Chancellor has disagreed with this, but I ask him again to agree with the Law Society’s recommendation that a minimum requirement of three years’ post-qualification as a solicitor, barrister or chartered legal executive is appropriate for court staff who are to be delegated judicial functions. Will he also provide assurances that provisions in the Bill that allow the delegation of judicial functions will only be considered where staff have appropriate legal qualifications?
A further omission from the Bill—this point has been made by Women’s Aid—is the provision prohibiting the cross-examination of victims of domestic violence that we all looked forward to in last year’s aborted Bill. The stark evidence from groups such as Women’s Aid is that this gap in the law is being used as a further means of control and abuse. We are concerned that such provisions are not now in the Bill. Will the Lord Chancellor tell us when the Government will bring this particular provision to Parliament so that we can deal with it and have a law in our statute book to bar people from cross-examining victims of domestic violence?
Jess Phillips
Those of us who have campaigned were expecting to see in the Bill some of the things that have been promised, such as the banning of cross-examination. Senior members of the judiciary have themselves called for that measure, but find that current legislation ties their hands. Given that it is not in this Bill, I am certain that Ministers will tell us that it will be in the domestic abuse Bill that will be brought forward. Why will women have to suffer this experience between now and whenever that legislation comes forward? Why is the provision not in this Bill?
Yasmin Qureshi
I thank my hon. Friend for her work on raising these issues. She is absolutely right. Why is the provision not in this Bill? It was in last year’s Bill, which was aborted because of the general election. It should not be that difficult to put it into a legislative framework.
Let me give an example of something that happened a few months ago in the family courts. Two spouses had an issue about the custody of their child. The female plaintiff had made allegations of domestic violence and sexual abuse against her husband, and it was obvious that the male respondent wanted to cross-examine her. However, the judge had to step in to ask the question on behalf of the male respondent. The case then went to the High Court, where the judge said that it was really not appropriate for members of the judiciary to have to intervene in such cases. The provision should already be on the statute book. We have talked about it for so long and it is not that difficult; it should be on the statute book as soon as possible.
To truly understand the impact of the Bill, we must look at it in the context of the Government’s wider austerity agenda. As it stands, the Bill has the potential to have a profound impact on our justice system. The double delegation of powers that the Government are intent on introducing is a slippery slope that, without proper controls, puts rights at risk. Without further careful scrutiny and additional safeguards, the Bill has the potential to erode long-established legal rights.
The amendments that Labour tabled in the other House were reasonable, sensible and practical, and we really cannot see why the Government cannot adopt and accept them. The Bill has limitations. The Government should listen to us and others who want to improve it, and accept our amendments, which have the support of the Law Society and the Bar Council, so that we protect our judicial system.
Domestic Abuse Victims and Family Courts
Jess Phillips Excerpts(7 years ago)
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Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered progress on protecting victims of domestic abuse in the family courts.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Ryan. We are here, for what seems like the millionth time, to talk about any progress on and the still numerous problems in the family court. We have been here before. We sought approval from the Government, and made gains with them, on issues presented by the all-party group parliamentary group on domestic violence. Unfortunately, a general election then got in the way, so all the progress that could have been made was lost. It is important to mention that, because that lost progress is not just one of those things; it means that, during this intervening period, hundreds and hundreds more women are being treated poorly while we do not get our act together.
I must say a massive thank you to the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) and my hon. Friends the Members for Hove (Peter Kyle), for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) and, especially, for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith). Together, as a cross-party collective, we have been fighting for an improved family court system for victims of domestic abuse for a very long time. It is a pleasure to fight alongside them.
I must also thank the previous Secretary of State for Justice, the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), who took a huge amount of flak from some quarters, some of which I think was because she was a woman. She was the only person in a ministerial post who ever really listened to us about this subject. She broke the deadlock and got the Government to agree with us, and I cannot but think that having a woman in such a position was the reason that that happened.
I thank Women’s Aid, which has done so much campaigning in the area, and many others: this week I have received briefings from all over the place, including the Law Society, the Magistrates Association, Barnardo’s and SafeLives. There is often friction among specialist women’s organisations, the judiciary and lawyers with regard to issues to do with violence against women and girls, and the court system. Often the problem is that we do not all sing from the same hymn sheet. Every single one of the briefings, however, whether from the Magistrates Association, the Law Society or one of the specialist organisations, makes at least one of three recommendations to Government. I will therefore focus on those specific recommendations and ask the Government to do something about them.
The first relates to perpetrators being able to cross-examine victims in the family court. If the general public had any real sense that that was happening, they would be absolutely horrified. Members of Parliament have come up to me in this place to say, “You’ll never guess what about this case in my constituency, Jess—her perpetrator was allowed to cross-examine her in court.” They are stunned to find that that is allowed to happen.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making an incredibly powerful speech, and I congratulate her on securing the debate. Does she agree that that loophole in the system makes those—usually women—who have been victims of domestic violence victims twice over, not only in the attacks that they have sustained but in a court setting?
Jess Phillips
Absolutely. It is, fundamentally, revictimisation and—if the Minister cares to browse the Equality Act 2010—illegal. There is a very real case for a public sector equality duty on the basis of gender to be made against existing practice in the family court. If such practice does not change soon, that is absolutely the route that people such as me will take, because our public sector is not meeting that duty.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
I thank the hon. Lady for securing this incredibly important debate. Does she also agree that one problem in this country is that, still, only about 30% of judges are female? In other European countries the average is much more likely to be about 50%. In this country women often feel that their voices are not heard in that environment, thereby adding insult to injury. Terrible stories are being judged in court, but sometimes the women feel that they are not getting justice, simply because people often do not understand as no one else is female.
Jess Phillips
I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady. We have to change the nature of our justice system from one that is fundamentally old fashioned and, at its very core, fundamentally male.
Every single one of the organisations that has been in touch with me has suggested specialist domestic abuse and sexual violence training for those involved in making judgments. Later, when I read out some of the victim testimonials, we will hear about the things that victims have put up with in court. It is as if some of those judges have never met another person, let alone know anything about domestic abuse.
The idea that in this country—still, today, right now, in the courts—a perpetrator is cross-examining a victim of domestic abuse, perhaps in order to gain access to their children, is absolutely harrowing. James Munby, the outgoing head of the family division of the High Court, made it very clear that he wished the practice to end. It is, of course, not something that happened by accident or that we ever saw when I was working in domestic abuse services; the practice is a direct consequence of the changes to the legal aid regime made by the coalition Government and this Conservative Government. As a result, it is now the case that not only perpetrators but—we must not forget this—victims must act as litigants in person. That practice would never be allowed in the criminal courts in our land. The Ministry of Justice, whose Ministers sit across from me today, rules out the use of that practice in a criminal setting on human rights grounds, but the very same Department allows it to happen in our family and civil courts every single day.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
The hon. Lady is making an incredibly powerful case. Does she agree that it is absolutely obscene that people who need help the most, at a time of such vulnerability, are denied even the most basic support via legal aid to make their case? As others have said, that is revictimisation a hundred times over and it has to stop.
Jess Phillips
Absolutely. The Minister will no doubt respond by saying that the Government have made changes to legal aid in civil and family court cases involving domestic abuse, but every single day I am notified of at least one case of domestic abuse victims not being able to access legal aid in the family court. I am writing lots and lots of letters to the Legal Aid Agency to remind it of its duty to victims of domestic abuse and of the ruling on how long someone has to be free from violence or abuse. That limit was changed from two years to five years by the Government, but that was thanks once again to campaigners taking them to court—the Government did not make that change out of the kindness of their heart.
Melanie Onn
My hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way. Has there been any analysis of the long-term mental health impact on victims of cross-examination by their perpetrators? The justice system is facilitating and enabling such cross-examination.
Jess Phillips
I certainly do not know of any. I will mention the recent study by Queen Mary University of London, in partnership with Women’s Aid, of how people are treated in the family courts. I am not aware of any Government reviews of the effect of litigants in person and, more broadly, of people being cross-examined by people who abused them, but I would certainly like to see one. If our courts and the Department are happy for that to go on, it is only right that they review whether it should continue.
Queen Mary University of London found that 24% of domestic violence victims who had gone through the family court system had been cross-examined by their perpetrator—someone who may have raped them, kept them prisoner or made them look on while they abused their children. We have the “achieving best evidence” standards in this country. I am not sure I can remember the bit in those standards that says the best way to get evidence in a justice environment is to allow someone who is utterly terrifying and has abused the victim to question them. I am not sure that we currently meet any sort of standard for achieving best evidence.
James Munby made it clear that the hands of family courts are tied—they simply cannot stop that cross-examination. Legislation is not in place to allow them to stop it. I know the Government want to stop it, too, and I am glad they heard our calls about that. I suggest that they do it. When the right honourable—I am not sure whether he is right honourable, and I am certainly not sure whether he is right or honourable—Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) embarrassed them on upskirting, a Government Bill was suddenly introduced to address that. It has been widely publicised that the House will sit for two days next week. I would gladly come back then to see through a piece of legislation that has been passed once already—it has already gone through rigorous scrutiny by the Clerks and the House. I would gladly pop down on a train from Birmingham to stop the cross-examination of victims of domestic abuse by their abusers.
The second area that everyone who has been in touch with me has given a lot of attention is practice direction 12J and new practice direction 3AA. I believe practice direction 12J was reaffirmed for magistrates courts and our family court system because, frankly, it was not being followed. For those who are not as geeky as I am about the old practice directions in the family court system, practice direction 12J basically undoes the idea that someone who has been abusive has a right to see their children. That is not an automatic right, especially in cases where there is domestic abuse. Practice direction 12J gives that steer to people making such judgments. I handled hundreds of cases involving domestic abuse, and I cannot say I ever noticed that practice direction being used. I have great faith in the Magistrates Association, and I believe from what it wrote to me this week that that direction has been affirmed.
I wonder whether the Minister will join me in stressing the importance of this very simple message: “If you beat, coerce, humiliate and abuse your children’s mother, you waive your right to be their father until the moment the non-abusive parent decides otherwise.” I am not saying for one second that no one who commits domestic abuse should be able to see their children, but they should not have a right to demand to see them where the non-abusive parent does not wish those children—and the children do not wish—to be put in that situation.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
I thank the hon. Lady for securing this debate and for the speech she is giving, and I send solidarity from all the women’s aid organisations in Scotland, which want this change to be made, too. I understand that in England there is a presumption that the welfare of the child is best served by the involvement of both parents. That is not the case in Scotland, where decisions are taken on the facts of the case. Does she agree that looking at each case individually—looking at the facts of the case, the situation and the risk—is a much better approach than an automatic presumption?
Jess Phillips
I totally agree. I can only praise Scotland for the progress it has made in this area. I very much would like the Minister to look at what happens there. I am sure it is by no means perfect, but it is a lot better than what we have here.
New practice direction 3AA requires courts to consider whether those involved in family proceedings are vulnerable and, if so, whether that is likely to diminish their participation in proceedings or—as I said—the quality of their evidence. What are the Minister and the Department doing to review the use of practice direction 12J following its reaffirmation? It has been around a long time. Can we conduct some sort of review of whether it is working or whether it needs updating, and of new practice direction 3AA? Both are key to ensuring that we can rebuild trust among victims of domestic abuse.
The third thing that every single person who has been in touch with me has raised is the issue of special measures in the family courts, which are woefully behind those in criminal justice proceedings. In some cases, the same woman may present at the same courthouse—literally the same building—and be offered different things. She would most likely be greeted at the door of the criminal court by an independent domestic violence adviser co-located in that courthouse, who would have arranged different times for her and would explain the system and help her find the special area for her in the court. She may then walk around the back of the building and go through a different door into the family court, where someone may say, “Oh, there’s Larry—you can just sit next to him, regardless of the years of abuse you have suffered.”
There is absolutely no excuse for the tardiness with which we have reacted to something we have known about for a long time. At least since I came to this place, we have been raising the need for separate rooms, separate arrival times and better evidence-giving opportunities, so that people do not just have a curtain around them but can give evidence from elsewhere via video link. Those are well-trodden practices in our criminal court system, but for some reason in the family court we seem unable to recognise that there is a victim. The fact that family court proceedings are civil proceedings in which both parties are considered equal does not mean that both parties are equal.
Wera Hobhouse
The hon. Lady is being generous in giving way. A number of my constituents who have gone through traumatic and abusive divorces have raised concerns with me about the family court. Is it not terrible that women do not feel our legal system protects them at the time they are most vulnerable?
Jess Phillips
I agree entirely. The plain and simple fact is that currently it does not protect them. The family court system fails victims of domestic abuse more often than it succeeds. I say that with absolute confidence.
Melanie Onn
What does my hon. Friend consider the ramifications of that failure to be for those victims? Does she think a lack of confidence in the judicial system, and particularly in the family courts system, could give rise to people staying in a domestic violence situation, thereby prolonging their situation and perhaps causing greater damage to their health?
Jess Phillips
There are lots of case studies in the papers in front of me where the consequence of a lack of trust or of a lack of safe and free access to our justice system is that women return. Women are now convinced that they will not win in a family courts setting. I would stay with somebody who beat me black and blue every day if it meant that I got to watch over my children and did not have to leave them alone with him. If someone has a violent partner and the choice is, “Leave them with this man, who you know is violent, or take the beating on behalf of your children,” we would struggle to find a single parent in the land who would do anything other than return.
The worst ramifications are, of course, that we are leaving people in violent homes. My hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge has handled one of the worst cases of failings in the family courts—the case of her constituent Claire Throssell, who is a personal hero to many of us in this House, and my hon. Friend will talk about that later. The ramifications are the deaths of women and the deaths of children. That can no longer go on.
I cannot understand why the special measures issue has not been sorted yet. It is not that hard to sort out. Every single court in the land has a robing room for the judges. How about putting the victims in there? I think the judges could put their robes on in the corridor. We manage it—I put my coat on just earlier. I have a fancy job, but I do not need a special room.
On the issue of special measures in courts, James Munby has said:
“In too many courts the only available special measure is a screen or curtains round the witness box. What, for example, about the safe waiting rooms for which the APPG has…called?”
I feel that he is personally talking to me in this quote. He goes on to say:
“The video links in too many family courts are a disgrace—prone to the link failing and with desperately poor sound and picture quality… The problem, of course, is one of resources, and responsibility lies, as I have said, with HMCTS and, ultimately with ministers.”
Those are the words of the outgoing president of the family division. Special measures are something we should invest in, and we should do so immediately. I welcome whatever the Minister can say today about any schemes currently in place to improve the situation, because 61% of the women surveyed by Women’s Aid and Queen Mary University of London were offered no special measures at all in the family courts.
Another issue that was raised was specialist support and advocacy for women going through the family justice system. I believe schemes are under way to pilot that issue up in the Northumberland area, where the brilliant Dame Vera Baird is the police and crime commissioner. There will be lots and lots of evidence of the value of the independent domestic violence adviser role in the criminal court and in community-based domestic violence services. With independent sexual violence advisers, the arguments are long ago won: having these advisers maintains victims within the process and means that they understand the process and can continue to try to get their rapists convicted.
There is no Government scheme or nationally recognised network for women facing civil issues through the civil courts, and I might argue that there is a far greater need there, not only because of the issue of litigants in person, but because—in an era when we have no representation for a lot of these women and many do not have any legal aid—having a system of advocacy in our family courts so that victims can understand exactly where they are meant to sit and what they are meant to present is something the Government should look at funding. Independent domestic violence advisers were launched under the last Labour Government, with match funding from local authorities and the Home Office, and I recommend that the Ministry of Justice creates a similar scheme, in partnership with the Home Office, for the family courts system. Certainly, every single one of the organisations that wrote to me called for that.
The next issue that everybody raised, which we have already touched on, is legal aid. Legal aid is currently available to victims of domestic abuse going through the family courts system, but that is still on a means-tested basis. There are all sorts of reasons why that system continues to fail victims of domestic abuse, meaning that they cannot access legal aid. The Law Society, which has written jointly with Women’s Aid to the Secretary of State for Justice, has called for a review into all the things I am talking about, but it and the Magistrates Association wanted me to stress today that the capital element of means-testing for legal aid is massively disadvantaging women.
Yes, a woman may well have been left after her ex-partner has put her through the wringer and no doubt left his name on her property, and it has probably taken her two or three years to get it off. She has already been through all that process, and she has managed to maintain a home where she and her children live, and that home now means she cannot access legal aid. I am not talking about the people who buy houses around Westminster; these are people living in my constituency, where it is about £120,000 for a three-bed semi, with one car on the drive. They are not rich people, and their capital means nothing in terms of their ability to pay. We cannot for a second suggest that they should be selling their house to protect their children from a violent perpetrator, yet, seemingly, we do suggest that.
Everybody has called for an end to the capital means test, which in many circumstances means that the equity in someone’s home should be used to fund legal costs. Of course, that is a double-edged sword, because if I were to use the equity in my home, I would then lose my home and would be much less financially secure—and when a woman is not so financially secure and has a precarious housing situation, it will be about 15 minutes before a social worker is saying to the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service that she should not be looking after her children, and we will end up in exactly the same situation we were in at the beginning. We are exacerbating things.
I am here to tell hon. Members from personal experience that, currently, victims of domestic abuse in the family courts system are, more often than not, unable to access legal aid. That has to change. The problem in the family courts with perpetrators, which I highlighted at the beginning, has been caused by this Government’s policy on legal aid—let us not use these things to twist the knife.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
May I also add the support of Welsh Women’s Aid and campaigners such as Rachel Williams from Newport, whom my hon. Friend knows, for the debate? Is it not the case that such situations become more difficult because victims can be forced to return to family and civil courts time and again?
Jess Phillips
Absolutely. I will mention Rachel in closing. It gets lost that coercive control does not stop when a woman leaves her partner. Women’s risks massively increase once they leave, and they are more likely to be murdered. In Rachel’s case, this was when the most harrowing consequences played out for her and her children. Coercion does not all of a sudden go away, and we—the state—allow perpetrators to re-victimise women again and again by hearing the same case over and over.
There are judges who try to stop that pattern of abuse in courts, but they are not the norm. There are hundreds of cases in which the same woman will be taken through the wringer again and again. She will be told that she is mad, and things will be given to the court to show that she is mad. And, yes, she is mad: she has been driven mad by having to fight the same battle again and again. There has to be some limitation. A line has to be drawn in cases where domestic abuse is evidenced. That is incredibly important.
Let me move on to CAFCASS. I may start forwarding all the complaints I receive about CAFCASS to the Minister. I have an entire folder in my email inbox called “Complaints about CAFCASS”, which has around 800 emails in it. I get them from people from all over the country, and because I am standing up and saying this, I will get hundreds more. I create a file of all the problems that people have with CAFCASS.
There is a constant feeling that the children and the women are not listened to, that their experiences of domestic abuse are diminished, that they are considered to be in the wrong and that they have to constantly prove that they are telling the truth and have understood their own experiences. The main complaint I receive is that CAFCASS does not pay nearly enough attention to listening to children, which is a grave error. Barnardo’s said exactly the same in a submission to me—that there is a barren wasteland in all of this when it comes to listening to the voice of the child. We must work much more closely with them.
SafeLives sent me a series of briefings on its concerns about CAFCASS’s parental alienation models. We will all have heard about parental alienation from some idiot dressed as Spider-Man crawling up the side of a building—the idea that women purposefully alienate children from their fathers is well known.
Those people have won the war of rhetoric. If we ask anyone in the street whether they think family court proceedings are more likely to fall in favour of a man or a woman, every single one would say it was more likely to fall in favour of a woman. The reality is entirely different. In cases of the most severe domestic abuse, 38% of violent perpetrators—people who have been criminalised for abuse—are granted unsupervised access to their children. It is absolutely not the case that family courts are favourable to women. CAFCASS plays a severe role in marginalising women in that process.
Rachel, who has already been mentioned, sent me 199 pages of testimonials this morning, with about 10 to 13 testimonials on each page. That is thousands of testimonials about the situations that women face in the family courts. I will read a couple out:
“CAFCASS is not working in the best interests of the children, who are victims of domestic abuse themselves”;
“CAFCASS is enabling the perpetrators of abuse to gain more control”;
“CAFCASS did not talk to my children, who, too, are victims. Their voices were nowhere on the accounts”;
“They think that abusive partners are good dads”;
“They were incompetent, stupid, easily taken in by a manipulative perpetrator and aggressive towards me. One woman couldn’t even be bothered to know my name. They called my 999 call a ‘minor disagreement’ in their official records. They are a complete disgrace”;
and,
“I, too, have had a terrible time with CAFCASS and the family courts. They were more supportive of my abusive ex than actually listening to my kids. Also, when my son made a statement and showed signs of abusive behaviour, they continued to put him through the court and pooh-poohed and belittled everything that we had to say.”
Those are just a few. Accounts were sent to me over the weekend from women who said that their perpetrators, some of whom had to be handcuffed, and who even kicked off during the family court proceedings, were congratulated by judges for remaining calm.
There is testimonial after testimonial from women who have been stared down by their partner and have capitulated in front of judges, just to make it stop. It is our responsibility to make it stop, so will the Minister commit to a timetable for when it will? I know that the Government want to stop this, but when will we actually do it? If I were to review the Government’s current policy, or this era in politics, I would write, “We did a review.” I ask the Minister to actually do something.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Lucy Frazer)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. I thank the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) for securing the debate. Like other hon. Members, I pay tribute to the huge amount that she has done to protect victims of domestic abuse—not only the work that she has done as an MP, which includes chairing the all-party parliamentary group on domestic violence, but what she did before she was elected, in working for a charity supporting victims of domestic and sexual abuse.
We all know, and have heard today, that domestic abuse has devastating effects. I heard about some of those when I attended a meeting of the APPG at which a victim gave evidence anonymously about her experience. Since I have been a Justice Minister, MPs have come to me to share their constituents’ experiences of domestic abuse. I am pleased to have had the opportunity both to discuss those concerns with experts such as Katie Ghose from Women’s Aid and Jo Todd from Respect and to hear about domestic abuse victims’ experiences of court from professionals in the courts, such as Her Honour Judge Rachel Karp, and academics such as Rosemary Hunter.
The Government are committed to tackling domestic abuse—dealing with abusive behaviour and improving support for victims. We want to do more to protect and empower victims, communities and professionals to confront and challenge domestic abuse wherever they encounter it. As my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) and other hon. Members mentioned, the Government have launched an extensive public consultation on domestic abuse to inform our approach to future reform. We have received more than 3,000 responses, which we are analysing now, ahead of publishing a Government response in the autumn. That will include a domestic abuse Bill, which we hope will further protect victims of domestic abuse.
As the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley said, we need to ensure that the court experience supports victims of domestic abuse and is not a forum in which to continue abuse. The Government have already taken a number of measures, to which some hon. Members have referred, to improve the court process. We have made practical changes following work with the senior judiciary. Last November saw the introduction of new rules requiring the court to consider whether those involved in family proceedings are vulnerable and, if so, whether they need assistance, such as a video link or protective screen, to participate or give evidence.
I was disappointed to hear that the experience of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley is that those measures are not working well, because I recently met a family barrister who told me that her experience was that they were working. We do need to keep this under review. Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service is collecting data, so that we can see how it is operating. We will consider whether we can do more, as we examine consultation responses in due course.
We have also introduced fresh training for family court staff on how to support vulnerable court users—by ensuring that separate waiting rooms or secure entry into and exit from the building are available, for example. The training has now been rolled out across England and Wales. Courts are also preparing local protocols on vulnerable court users, in consultation with their designated family judges. The president of the family division and the Judicial College have also taken steps to improve domestic abuse training for family judges. Issues of domestic abuse continue to be addressed on an ongoing basis as part of the college’s regular training for family judges. I recently visited the courts in Liverpool and was interested to hear from a family judge that he had found the training very helpful.
A further positive development came last October, when the president made changes to the guidance for family judges dealing with applications for child arrangements orders where domestic abuse is alleged. As hon. Members have mentioned, that is practice direction 12J. The revisions included a number of important changes, such as making it clear that family courts should have full regard to the harm caused by domestic abuse and the harm that can be caused to children from witnessing such abuse. The revised practice direction also includes an expanded definition of domestic abuse.
These changes are a positive development. At a roundtable on domestic abuse that I held recently, I heard from family judges and practitioners how they were working. I was asked during the course of this debate whether we can review the practice direction. That is primarily a matter for the judiciary, but I am happy to discuss it with the incoming president of the family court, whom I am meeting tomorrow. I should add that the current President, Sir James Munby, will be retiring shortly. As the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley mentioned, he has been a strong advocate for improving support and protections for the vulnerable. I pay tribute to the significant action he has taken in this area.
Many hon. Members mentioned the provision of legal aid. As the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley mentioned, we have changed the law to make it easier for victims of domestic abuse to access legal aid and support by reforming the evidence requirements for legal aid in private family cases. The changes included introducing new forms of evidence and removing the time limit previously placed on evidence. We are already seeing a positive effect on the number of victims accessing legal aid. The latest statistics for January to March show that 21% more victims applied for legal aid than in the same quarter last year and there was a record high number of grants. We will continue to monitor those figures.
We have made changes to support victims of domestic abuse, but we need to do more. The hon. Members for Birmingham, Yardley and for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) were right to highlight the importance of bringing forward legislation in relation to the cross-examination of domestic abuse victims by their perpetrators. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley has made a powerful case for this for some time and she made it again today. It is right that we get it on the statute book. She has already rightly identified that the Government want to see this legislation on the statute book. The Government remain committed to delivering this as soon as parliamentary time allows.
Lucy Frazer
The hon. Lady knows that it takes some time to go through parliamentary procedure and it is not possible to do that on Monday or Tuesday next week.
I have also heard concerns about the issue of abusers making repeated applications to the family court, as a means of further abusing their former partners. I recently held a roundtable with judges, academics and others from the legal profession, to discuss this. I also met the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) to discuss the private Member’s Bill she proposed on the matter. The family court does have wide powers to manage such situations, but I am looking again at whether there is more we can do across the system to tackle this issue. We will be examining this as part of the next phase of work on the consultation.
Many hon. Members mentioned important points. My hon. Friend the Member for Henley made interesting points about the recognition society and Government have of the nature of abuse, and that it is not just physical abuse and violence that form domestic abuse. He also discussed the need to see how the courts are operating. I have visited a number of courts already and spoken to a number of judges on a variety of issues. He raised the Istanbul convention, which, he rightly said, the Government have signed and remain committed to ratifying. Some of our measures in the UK, however, go further than the convention requires in some areas.
The hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) raised the need for CAFCASS workers to be trained. I should point out that CAFCASS workers do receive comprehensive training. My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) made a variety of sensible points. He rightly observed that, in a number of areas, the Government have already taken measures, some of which I have referred to. It is important to see how those operate and keep them under review. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) raised the impact of domestic abuse on victims.
I have left to the end the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith). She asked a number of questions, one of which was about the scope of the review and whether we will consider options for reform of the family justice system in the consultation that has just closed. I can tell her that that will form part of the consultation exercise. I left her to the end because she mentioned the terrible story of Claire, for whom we all must feel sympathy. I hope that this Government, with the support of hon. Members across the House, continue to bring forward measures to protect women like her, to help support them and ensure that her story is not repeated.
In closing, I hope hon. Members will agree that we have taken positive steps to improve the family justice system and its response to domestic abuse. We need to build on that and deliver further improvements. The domestic abuse consultation and the programme of work that will flow from it provides one way of doing this. I look forward to working collaboratively with hon. Members to take this important work forward.
Jess Phillips
Like the Minister and the Opposition spokesperson, I thank everybody who has spoken. My hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) never fails to move me when she talks about Claire. I have known Claire for two years now and have heard her story a million times. It still moves me to tears every single time I hear it, because it could have been avoided.
I thank the Minister for her comments. At the latest, the timetable for changing these things must come in the domestic abuse Bill. If they are not in it, we will ensure that they are put into it. I look forward to working on the domestic abuse Bill. I am sure that we will be able to make some progress.
On the issue of CAFCASS workers receiving appropriate training, I say to the Minister that it is not working. There needs to be a Government review of CAFCASS and the way its workers are interacting with victims, as well as of settings where families go for visits. There needs to be a real look into that. Most importantly, I thank all the women who write to me every day to tell me about how we should make this system better. We should hear their voices.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered progress on protecting victims of domestic abuse in the family courts.
Legal Aid: Birmingham Pub Bombings
Jess Phillips Excerpts(7 years, 3 months ago)
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Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
Thank you very much, Mr Hollobone. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) for a forensic trot-through of the problem that we face. I will not cover the same ground, but I associate myself with everything he said in laying out exactly how long we have been to-ing and fro-ing on this issue.
I feel as if I am on a merry-go-round. I have been on it for only about four or five years, from just before I was elected. I meet with the families regularly. They are in their 40th year of dealing with this issue, and I feel tired of having to bring it up once again. We have won this argument before, and we have been here before. They were refused legal aid at the inquest stage and there was a lot of hullabaloo from many of the same people who are in the Chamber today, from both parties. We won that argument, yet here we are again.
For me, the fundamental problem is inequality of arms. These people are ordinary citizens. It is not okay for the public bodies involved, whether they be police forces, Government Departments, or in this instance the coroner, to have a resource that is simply not available to the party that represents the victims. Not a single one of the families of the 21 people murdered on that night wishes to be in this position. They do not want to be any trouble and to have to constantly make these arguments. They wish, more than any of us, that we were not standing here having this debate. They wish that in a way that most of us in this place will never understand, although unfortunately some Members of the House do have personal experience in that regard. The fact that we are here again, with ordinary citizens feeling as though they were begging the state to allow them to be represented, is a source of deep sadness. I feel a bit tired by this constant battle, although having met the families I know that they are battle-weary but fairly tough.
I want to go over some of the reasons why legal aid, at this stage, has been refused, most recently to my constituent Margaret, who was the mother of one of the victims. Just to big up the women who come from my bit of the world, hon. Members will never meet a woman as tough, steely and certain as this woman. She makes me look like a wallflower.
Jess Phillips
Yes—you can imagine. As her MP, I know what it is like to sometimes have to disappoint her. The fact is that as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield outlined, the most recent round of legal aid has been endorsed by the coroner as the only fair way for justice to be served in the appeal process.
The reason given to the families for legal aid not being granted is that, despite the eligibility of one applicant, the other families cumulatively have sufficient resources to fund the legal action. I know these families. They are not rich people. They are ordinary people who live in ordinary houses. They are all extraordinary people in their own way, and in what they have been fighting, but they are not like the people we meet in this building. They are not people with thousands and thousands of pounds in the bank. They are ordinary people who perhaps own ordinary houses.
Are we saying, as the state, that if someone—a normal Joe or Jill—wants to seek justice, they will probably have to sell their house? That if someone’s family is murdered, in order for them to go through the process of getting justice we will take away all their assets? My constituent will also be judged on the assets of her children—we are going to strip away those assets because they want to go through the process. What they want is justice. Taking away their assets is not an acceptable standard for any of us here; I am certain that Government Members do not feel that it is. I wish that I could hold up photos of these people’s homes, so that hon. Members could see what ordinary lives they lead. They are ordinary Brummies.
Dame Caroline Spelman
The hon. Lady is making a very good point. There is an absurdity to any argument that justice should be means-tested, in the sense that property prices are so significantly different around the country that there is an in-built disadvantage for some parts of the country. I do not know whether the Minister knows what the average property price is in the west midlands, but the average home in the west midlands is sub-£200,000. Most people living in London could only dream of a house at that kind of level—they do not exist anywhere in London—so straight away there is an absurdity to the argument that a person’s principal home should be considered as part of a means test for achieving justice. It just is not right.
Jess Phillips
It certainly is not. I remember giving the figures on the day when the threshold for inheritance tax was raised to £375,000, when I stood up and told the Minister that, in my constituency, eight people would benefit from that, and they had to be dead. My husband said that that Budget day was a great day to be dead. That gives a bit of an idea of the property prices in the area that I represent and live in.
The second issue that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield raised was the idea that because the families have previously been successful in raising funds themselves, they could probably lean back on that. To be clear, are we saying that if families, victims or anyone else wants to seek justice, the state currently feels that it should fall to those who can shake a tin best, or perhaps run a fun run? We could dress up as—I don’t know—victims, and do the London Marathon, and see how many people wanted to give us some cash so that we could find out some of the answers that the families have waited decades for. Even for those who do not know the families and do not have personal involvement, that cannot be a standard for our justice system. Crowdfunding and who can write the best tagline on a website and bleed the most hearts should not be the most likely way for people to access justice, going up against a state actor that is paid for by the same people’s taxes—we are the same people.
Stephen Pound
My hon. Friend will be aware that on 6 November 2014, Nils Muižnieks, the Council of Europe commissioner for human rights, addressed this issue. His ruling, which we signed up to and support, was:
“It is clear that budgetary cuts should not be used as an excuse to hamper the work of those working for justice.”
We as a nation support that. Should we not extend that to this horrendous case?
Jess Phillips
I could not agree more. There are probably endless quotes from the bishop who did the inquiry into the Hillsborough situation, and we will almost certainly face the exact same arguments when the Grenfell disaster eventually comes before inquiries, courts and inquests. This is not just about the families in Birmingham; it is about a standard of justice. It is a David and Goliath situation, where David is the one paying for Goliath. That cannot be right, yet these families, having already lost family members, are having to do the heavy lifting for the rest of us to have a better system. For that, on behalf of anybody who has ever gone up against a state actor, we owe a debt of gratitude to families such as the Justice for the 21 families and the Hillsborough families, who are doing this on behalf of all of us to make justice better and fairer.
I worry that the Legal Aid Agency is using its powers to make decisions on whether it grants funding based on the merits of a case, and is deciding that it has authority on those merits. A High Court judge has agreed that the review should take place. It is perfectly reasonable that the coroner feels they have the right to appeal against that decision—that is absolutely fine—but it is not acceptable for the Legal Aid Agency to decide on the merits of that case. Are we saying that in the very complicated hierarchy of justice that these ordinary people have had to learn—they could probably sit legal degrees with ease now, these ordinary people with ordinary jobs, who did not know anything about this—the Legal Aid Agency now sits above a High Court judge in deciding which cases have merit? I hope the Minister can answer that question, because I am confused. She is learned; I am not learned—nobody gets to be learned just from being street smart, unfortunately. If only there was a degree in that.
Jess Phillips
I would be an emeritus professor in street smarts.
I feel that the Legal Aid Agency or the Government will eventually renege on this point. I associate myself with all the requests made by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield, but we have had to go around the hamster wheel again to ask whether, if the Legal Aid Agency is not the route for families, justice can be served through extra funding that the Government allocate from elsewhere.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a very good point. Most people can remember where they were on the day when this tragedy happened. It is interesting that the Government can find the money when they want to do something, but when ordinary families want to take legal action and get justice, the Government cannot find the money. I always thought it was the Government’s duty to protect people, and one way to do that is through securing justice for them. Does my hon. Friend agree?
Jess Phillips
Quite. I cannot remember where I was on that day, because I was not yet born, yet it has stayed in the history of the city that I come from and have lived in all my life. If Birmingham were cut, it would bleed still with this unsolved disaster. After years of quite rightly hearing about the miscarriages of justice for those who were convicted of the crimes, the victims in the story have been lost, and it is now time for their story to be told.
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend—the Government will perfectly easily fund the side that fights against this. I have no doubt that the coroner will have all the resources that are needed. Why can they always find it for one side and not the other? This is not a case of people making vexatious claims that will open the door to everybody being able to make a load of claims against the state really easily. If these families have proved anything, it is that this is no picnic. It is not easy. There is nothing easy about this process, and that suggestion should be disregarded as a reason why what seems to be an austerity measure is affecting them so much.
I finish my remarks by paying a massive tribute to the families in this case. I am often proud to be from Birmingham—in fact, almost daily. These families make me incredibly proud of my city’s resolve in keeping on going.
Parole Board and Victim Support
Jess Phillips Excerpts(7 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Gauke
I thank my hon. Friend for his kind remarks and confidence in me. On this occasion, however, I fear that I am not entirely in agreement with him. I think that this needs to be a decision made by an independent body on the basis of the evidence in front of it, but it is also right that such independent bodies are conscious of the need to ensure that victims and the public more widely have confidence in the decision.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
When I did the job of victim liaison, working with probation to keep victims informed, in the west midlands, where I worked, there were many people in probation working in that area. Since the privatisation of probation, in the west midlands, there is one victims officer—for an area with 3 million people. In this review, will the very welcome new Justice Secretary look at what was taken away and potentially why an email to a victim is not enough, when a relationship is what we used to have?
Mr Gauke
I thank the hon. Lady for her remarks. I do not think that this particular issue is, in truth, about resources. In terms of the requests for information made by some of the victims and the forms in which that was to be provided, which were established in 2009, some of the victims also requested to be informed at a later date. I stress, however, that I want a system that works adequately for victims.