Victims and Prisoners Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Jess Phillips and Siobhan Baillie

Committee stage
Thursday 22nd June 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Jess Phillips]

Q On the independent domestic violence adviser and independent sexual violence adviser clauses in the Bill, SafeLives is obviously the organisation that at one time, called Caada—Co-ordinated Action Against Domestic Abuse—was the absolute pioneer of the IDVA position. There has been quite a lot of discussion against the idea that the definition of an IDVA and ISVA is the be-all and end-all.

Ellen Miller: Absolutely, and that is why I really wanted to come down, apart from the duties point. There was a history; there was initially funding for the equivalent of A&E-type stuff. In order to make that credible, the IDVA role was set up. In the past, the IDVA has been associated very much with only doing those really high-risk cases.

Let us deconstruct what an IDVA is. An IDVA is somebody who has gone through a 12-day training programme. This is not a master’s degree or an impossible bar; it is a really basic level of minimum threshold that you should get to. Everybody who works in domestic abuse should have the right to that level of training. We expect it in the care sector—we expect care workers to know how to safely manage cases, to report safeguarding, and to understand the dynamics of power and control within the care setting. We expect that in care. We should expect that in domestic abuse.

To us, the biggest provider of IDVAs, it is a programme of knowledge—a starting point. It does not give you cultural competence, which you have if you are a “by and for” organisation. It does not give you in-depth knowledge around things like non-fatal strangulation, honour-based violence and so on. It is your basic core concepts. It gives a bit more power and respect to individuals who do not have parity with the police officer, the psychiatrist and the social worker—it gives them a status. I wish it was not the case that you need a badge to be respected and listened to, but on the other hand it gives the credibility of a level of basic knowledge. To me, it is about a set of learning, so it is therefore useful, but it is only a starting point.

Ruth Davison: I would build on that, and echo what the Domestic Abuse Commissioner said to the Committee on Tuesday, which is to look at and value all the community outreach roles. When we are in the context of an absolute drought of funding, there is a potential unintended consequence of elevating the IDVA and ISVA roles over and above other roles that are equally skilled and vital—as Ellen said, particularly those roles that focus on cultural competencies and serve the “by and for” community. There is a real concern from us as a sector that we could unintentionally, by elevating one role, make it even harder to access funding for those culturally specific roles in the “by and for” services, which are already six times less likely to receive statutory funding.

[Siobhan Baillie]

Q Ellen, you talk about having teeth, but what does that look like? We have seen suggestions that police officers have their pay docked, for example, if they do not enforce the code. What do you mean by that? What does enforcement look like?

Ellen Miller: I would look at enforcement through the inspection and reporting regime. First, we must ensure that there is a Victims’ Commissioner and a Domestic Abuse Commissioner, and that they have the right to be very public and open. Ruth will have done this, and we have done this: when you have data and look at the differences in the level of funding, it is absolutely shocking and it is not reported. Some things that, for example, the victims grant gets spent on are just jaw-dropping. There is not that level of accountability. Accountability comes through inspections, the roles of the independent commissioners and reporting—and the right to properly kick-off in a way that will actually lead to something. There needs to be the equivalent health and care ombudsman: a proper complaints process.

Ruth Davison: I agree with what Ellen is saying. It comes back to putting the four overarching principles into the Bill. We have already seen reports saying, “That won’t go far enough. It won’t lead to the cultural change that is so necessary if victims are actually to be able to access those rights—not for those rights to just exist on a piece of paper that they may or may not be able to read even if they receive it, but to be acting throughout the whole process.”

Missing from the Bill as a whole is a recognition of how far there is to go in terms of tackling culture. The fundamental understanding of domestic abuse and of many of the crimes that are faced by women in this country is missing. We are calling for mandatory training for police forces, which would lead to the kind of enforcement and teeth that Ellen is talking about.

Victims and Prisoners Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Jess Phillips and Siobhan Baillie

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th June 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Jess Phillips]

Q In the case of domestic violence and sexual violence as it is in the Bill, will the duty to collaborate make that any different at the moment?

DCC Barnett: I think this is a broader issue around how we collaborate as agencies with all victims. So much of that is based on how information flows, for example, so that we can keep victims updated about the experience of their case, their investigation, their court case and so on. We must have that good understanding of how we can work together to have the information to service the needs of victims.

We have been working closely with the Ministry of Justice on the suitability of metrics and—this is really important, because it is not only about the metrics of compliance with the code—on the victim’s experience: the qualitative information in the victim’s voice, the victim survey and the work of the Home Office to generate a victim satisfaction survey. Again, that is very much focused on policing, but I think it will start to give some good insights into the whole victim experience.

We are confident in a number of compliance measures going forward. We need to understand fully how we go about collating that information, and then passing it on in a transparent way to PCCs and criminal justice boards.

[Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)]

Q The victims code is considered a positive thing—we all agree—but we heard from Dame Vera and Claire Waxman that, basically, 70% to 80% of victims who have been through the justice system did not even know that the victims code existed. I put it to you that that is an almighty collective failure of a lot of organisations. What do you think happened? Even if we managed to get our perfect Bill—if Jess and I and we all agreed, and we got our perfect Bill—nothing would change, unless things change on the ground. What has been happening that we are at the point that victims do not even know that a code exists?

Caroline Henry: I agree that not enough victims know that the code exists. That is why we need the Bill; we need to let people know that the code exists.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jess Phillips]

Great.

[Siobhan Baillie]

Q We know, and we have heard evidence today, that for rape victims the potential that their personal medical records or therapy records will be disclosed through this process is a real deterrent. What is your view on the proposals that a judicial declaration should be required for disclosure? I am interested, because among the arguments against that I have heard is that it would slow the court process even more, and we have court backlogs as it is. Where are you on that?

Jan Lamping: As I said, we apply the law as it is now, and our guidance that is in place now should provide adequate safeguards, in that we should request such material only if it is relevant and necessary, and only in pursuance of a reasonable line of inquiry. That should provide safeguards. As for it being a judicial decision, there is a danger that that would introduce further delays. It is important that we follow our guidance and the police follow their guidance, so that victims are protected from unreasonable intrusion into their private lives.

--- Later in debate ---

[Siobhan Baillie]

Q Duncan, you mentioned that you were training police officers. Have you seen an improvement in the police service in terms of understanding and working with victims, and even knowing about the code, over the years you have been working?

Duncan Craig: I did, pre-pandemic. I used to go to the local training school. For a specially trained officer—an old-fashioned Nightingale officer—the 999 call comes in, and they go and lock down the scene, with the scene even being the individual themselves. They used to get five days’ training in forensics and so on, and they would have a whole day with me on working with male victims, because everything else that was talked about was around female victims. Then, on the very last day they would do role play with an actor and get scored. Effectively, it was a bit like an exam.

Now, I go to a university. I have done two classes now. I am really angry about this: in the first class, as I was telling my story—a story that I have told for seven or eight years—an individual put their hand up. There is a picture of me in the room where it happened. They put their hand up and said, “Yes, but do you not think that you should push them all off a cliff?” [Interruption.] I had exactly the same reaction as you; I was absolutely astonished. In seven or eight years, I have never had to kick anybody out of a classroom and I have never been surprised by it. It could just be a one-off, so I spoke to the tutors and said, “Just watch that.” Two weeks later, I went back to the same university, where a new cohort of police officers were being trained, and we kind of got the same thing. I do not know what has happened, other than we have moved from police training school to university, but I am terrified. I am terrified about what we are getting and what I am seeing on the ground now. There used to be a moment in time when I had done some training with every single police officer in my force, and I was really confident. I have zero confidence at the moment, and it is frightening.

Gabrielle Shaw: I come at this from two perspectives. What we hear through the NAPAC support line, from thousands of survivors, is that some of them have disclosed to the police. Of course, people who contact NAPAC are a self-selecting cohort, but over the past five years the number of positive experiences relayed by survivors to NAPAC has risen. I think that is no coincidence, because I know at a national level—I will come to this in a second—there has been a huge drive by national policing to improve response to childhood sexual abuse. The hydrant programme has done a lot of work on this, as well as College of Policing and the NPCC. There has been a huge national drive.

As Duncan described, the issue is how that national drive, the national guidance and all those really good intentions translate down to force level. I can hear the chief constables now saying there is a squeeze on the training budgets and so on, but we need to maintain that pressure and the good intentions that have set at a national policing level, to ensure that trickles down properly. What Duncan described is not a rare or isolated experience at all. There is good practice as well, but there needs to be more consistency to get that real drive across all levels.

Duncan Craig: I am not overly concerned about the current detectives at the moment, because we have a great relationship with them, but they are about to leave because they have done their service. It is exactly like the prevention bit—the bit that I am extremely concerned about is the new people.

[Jess Phillips]

Q I want to ask you some specific questions, Duncan, although I suppose Victim Support also operates ISVA services in some parts of the country. The Bill has specific clauses about ISVA and IDVA services. What do you think the guidance should contain? Do you think guidance on ISVA and IDVA services should be in there at all?

Duncan Craig: I am a bit conflicted, if I am honest, about whether the Bill should contain the guidance around IDVA—

Family Court Reform and CAFCASS

Debate between Jess Phillips and Siobhan Baillie

Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Westminster Hall

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

I stand here to give a general primal scream on behalf of what I will say are thousands of cases that I have seen over the past seven years of victims of domestic abuse being, not to put too fine a point on it, abused by the family courts. We allow the system to go on largely in secret, shrouded in total secrecy, but it is opening up slightly now thanks to the efforts of some incredibly good investigative journalism and some incredibly brave victims of rape who allowed their cases to be the test cases to enable that transparency.

I cannot sit in front of another mother who has been beaten, raped, abused, coerced, and has had a court in our country take her children from her and given them to the man who raped, beat and abused her. It must be about five or six years ago that Women’s Aid produced a report called, “Nineteen Child Homicides”, which cites cases from the previous 10 years of 19 children murdered following the decision of a family court to place them with a violent and abusive father. I pay huge tribute to the families who were involved.

We are two years on from the harm review—it might be longer, but the covid years make it hard to remember how many years it has been; I am really only 39, because I do not count the covid years. Everyone working in this building was pleased to see the harm review, which came out of a very extensive piece of work by the Government. I take my hat off to them for doing it. However, it dodged one vital issue, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi), to whom I am grateful for securing the debate: the issue of a pro-contact culture. We need fundamentally to undermine the idea that it is better for a child to have contact with both parents when one of them is abusive and violent. Often people will say to me, “These people aren’t necessarily abusive and violent towards the children”, but I think you are a bad father if you are abusive and violent towards the mother of your child. That is fundamental for me.

In the vast majority of cases that I have handled in my lifetime, which are into the tens of thousands, mothers want fathers to have some form of contact with, or access to, their child. It is not until we come to the family courts that that becomes completely and utterly distorted, and women are cited for being insane. If I had been raped, beaten and abused for decades, I might take medication for anxiety. That has not happened to me, but I do take medication for anxiety, which could be used to remove a child from a mother. She will be called mad, hysterical or bad in a family court, even though social services might consider her to be an exemplary mother. In the family courts, fancy lawyers—as suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous), it is unfortunately still the case in the world we live in that men have more money than women—argue that women are mad.

We have allowed the situation to get to the point that any woman who tries to protect her child from a violent and abusive partner will be accused of parent alienation, which will work against her, so what we are now asking women to do is not safeguard their children in order to have access to them. There is a perverse incentive in the system that says, “If you and your children are being abused by this man, don’t mention it, because if you do, you will have parent alienation thrown at you.” There is absolutely no efficacy in what is being described as parent alienation.

On efficacy, I wish to point out that the people on whom we rely to make the judgment of parent alienation might as well be my milkman. That is literally how qualified they are. My milkman is a lovely fella who has six kids, and I would trust him more. We have specialists being paid huge amounts of taxpayers’ money, and operating in courts across our country—with a specific focus, it seems, on the south, which I presume is because people have more money to spend on such things down here—who are not psychologists. It might as well be my milkman, but they are saying, “Yes, we’re seeing signs of parent alienation”, and there is no regulation of this. The head of the family courts division has made it incredibly clear that it is up to the Government to deal with this issue. It is up to the Government to ensure that there is regulation of expert milkmen—I feel like I am taking milkmen down now, but they are perfectly good people—and expert witnesses in our family courts.

[Siobhan Baillie]

It is always important to listen to the hon. Member. One of the things that the president of the family division, Sir Andrew McFarlane, has done recently is open up the family courts for reporting pilots. That is an incredibly good step, because it will shine a light not only on what is going on with people having representation or not having representation, but on the experts who are being put forward. Even though there is work to be done, there is active effort from the top of the family division to make changes, and I hope she can see that.

[Jess Phillips]

I absolutely agree. Sir James Munby, in his final year as head of the family division, seemed to do a sort of swansong in which he said, “I am going to do something about this, recognising that the many brilliant legal minds who work in the family court know where the problems are.” In fact, it is not just victims I am representing and speaking for in this primal scream, but the hundreds of solicitors and judges who get in touch with me all the time to tell me about the terrible, broken problems in our family court system.

As McFarlane has laid out, the Government have to undertake a piece of work. The family court’s hands are tied, and it is for the Government—the ball is in their court—to say what they are going to do about unregulated experts. Members should bear in mind that I am a genuine expert on domestic abuse, with years and years of training, and I have been refused entry to family courts when I have sought to attend with victims—maybe I would get in if I did a milk round.

I am fairly certain that, in my time in this building, I will, alongside others, advance changes around domestic abuse. I feel confident about that, but I am starting to lose confidence that we will ever do enough to change the family courts. The hon. Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) mentioned the pilots, which I am sure the Minister will address. They are just pilots at the moment, and they seem to be working well, but I think that they need to go further. There needs to be a change into the gladiatorial; there needs to be much more sense of ongoing inquiry throughout such cases.

Practice direction 12J, which states that there is no presumption of contact in cases of domestic abuse, is not worth the paper that it is written on because it is hardly ever used. If it is not being used in cases involving convicted rapists, we have to ask ourselves serious questions about whether the situation that we have at the moment is working.

I just want to know from the Government when we can expect the outcome of the review into a pro-contact culture, and what the hold-up is. Why has a single point, on pro-contact culture, taken two years in the harms review? I have written to the Justice Secretary about this, and I have not yet heard back—I will cut him some slack, because it was only about two weeks ago, when McFarlane said it—but I also want to know when we will stop the use of unregulated experts in our family courts.

My point, which my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West began with, was about legal aid. Although the Government have—through an amendment that I moved initially—stopped the cross-examination of victims by perpetrators in the family court, I am afraid that the roll-out of advocates who are meant to be doing that work seems to be underfunded, and the work is an unattractive prospect, meaning that, from what I can tell—from the cases that I have seen and reviewed, and from the members of the Family Law Bar Association I speak to—the system is faltering at the moment.

I want to know and feel that there is some progress, and that I will not get another email— inevitably I will tomorrow, but maybe not next week or next year—about a mother who has been beaten and abused, has just had her child removed, and is allowed only supervised contact because some man has managed manipulate the systems in our country to make them feel as if she is mad and bad, and that he is an absolute angel. If I had a penny for every such case that I have seen, I could rebuild the family courts.