Domestic Abuse Bill (Second sitting)

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

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

[Victoria Atkins]

Q Of course, a key difference between these new orders in the Bill and other orders is that if you breach the order, that is a criminal breach.

Lucy Hadley: Yes, and that is really important. It has been a problem with the DVPO to date, and it is really welcome that that is included.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

Q To what degree or does this actually do what is required for the Istanbul convention? If it does, great. If not, what needs to be done?

Andrea Simon: I would say that it does not go far enough in enshrining one of the key principles of the Istanbul convention: article 4(3), which speaks specifically about types of discrimination and how the implementation of the convention by parties should involve taking measures to ensure that the rights of victims are secured without discrimination on any of the grounds that are listed in article 4(3). One of those grounds is migrant status; we do not feel there is enough legal protection in the Bill to ensure that there will not be discrimination in the provision of services and support to migrant victims. To remedy that, it is important to insert the principle of non-discrimination into the Bill. That should be applied to any statutory duty on local authorities, or a wider statutory duty on public authorities to ensure that when they are discharging their responsibilities under the Bill, they are doing so mindfully and in accordance with the requirement under the Istanbul convention not to discriminate against certain categories of victim.

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[The Chair]

Thank you. We only have a couple of minutes, so we will have a quick question from Liz Saville Roberts.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

Q We have the domestic violence disclosure scheme and DAPOs, but they both maintain the onus on victims to take the initiative. There has been talk about a register for serial stalkers and domestic abuse offenders, along the lines of the violent and sex offenders register. Why can that not move ahead? What is preventing it? It seems a logical step, to take the onus off the victim or potential victim and shift it on to proven offenders.

[The Chair]

I am afraid that this will have to be a very short answer.

Suzanne Jacob: I am sorry, but I could not hear the question.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

Q What is preventing the adoption of a register of serial stalkers and domestic abuse offenders, along the lines of the register of violent and sex offenders, given its importance in shifting the onus away from the victim and on to the perpetrator?

Suzanne Jacob: At SaveLives, we believe very strongly that there needs to be comprehensive work wrapped around perpetrators of abuse. We believe that there need to be individual caseworkers of the kind that are supported by Drive, which the Minister mentioned, and indeed all sorts of other programmes. However, we also believe there needs to be a really strong multi-agency response, co-ordinated either through a multi-agency risk assessment conference, or MARAC, which is an existing procedure, or through a dedicated perpetrator panel.

The creation of another register is not something that we currently support because we know that the post-Soham recommendations were that the police are overwhelmed with the different databases and systems that they have got.

Ellie Butt: At Refuge we agree; we are unsure whether a register would make the significant difference that we need. Part of the problem is that a lot of perpetrators are not known to the police, and that is one of the concerns with Clare’s law as well.

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[The Chair]

Thank you. I will call Liz Saville Roberts, then Peter Kyle, Virginia Crosbie and Liz Twist. We are finishing at 4.45 pm, so if there is a moment—[Interruption.] No, we are finishing at 4.30 pm, so we have almost no time at all. I am really sorry; this is a shorter session.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

Q You talked about the coercive and controlling nature of relationships. In the past we have talked about the need for a domestic abuse register. I know there is resistance, but given the reality of victims’ experiences and the fact that DAPOs, notices—to a degree—and certainly the domestic violence disclosure scheme keep the onus on the victim to act, what can we do to move gradually towards a register? I know there is resistance from the police, with concerns about the additional workload, but we need to change the culture. That came up with the MARAC earlier on. What do we need to do to bring a register forward?

Dame Vera Baird: I am not over-keen on the idea of another register. What would probably be good for the kind of serial but not necessarily high-risk perpetrator I mentioned would be to get them into multi-agency public protection arrangements. It is probably better to think in terms of an institution that is already present, and get perpetrators into that, than it is to invent another separate way of recording the fact that they are a perpetrator.

[The Chair]

I’m afraid that is the end of the session. I apologise for that; I was in the half-hour session groove. Thank you for giving evidence.

Examination of Witnesses

Simon Blackburn and Sara Kirkpatrick gave evidence.

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[The Chair]

You are fine. Who was second? Liz Saville Roberts.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

Q Sara, thank you very much for coming here today, and thank you for raising the matter of CAFCASS and the fact that it operates in quite a different way in Wales. I wanted to refer to the inquiry by the Commission on Justice in Wales and Lord John Thomas’s report that came out at the end of last year, which indicates that in Wales we effectively have in many cases a twin set of bodies—those operated through the Home Office, those operated through the Ministry of Justice here, and those functions put in place by Welsh Government. How do we manage the situation? What are the lessons we should learn in relation to what the Domestic Abuse Bill is doing and the fact that we have a diverging environment in Wales, although of course we would want to use funding and opportunities as they come for common interests?

Sara Kirkpatrick: I am so sorry, but could you clarify the question you are asking me?

[Liz Saville Roberts]

Q In Wales, we have a twin-track set of justice bodies: those that come from the UK Government and those that have been put in place by Welsh Government. That is relevant here, because we have the domestic abuse legislation and we also have the CAFCASS situation, which is different in Wales from how it is here, and we are talking about children’s experiences here as well. What would be interesting for people who are not familiar with the Welsh justice environment to hear is how comfortably or uncomfortably this new legislation will sit in Wales and how we should be looking at that planning stage here.

Sara Kirkpatrick: The answer is that we should be cognisant of it at every stage within the legislation. For me, one of the stumbling blocks is the word “national”. I often hear things described as national that are actually UK-wide; then I hear things that are described as national that are actually England and Wales; then I hear things described as national that are England only, and Wales, which also has national, is slightly different.

I think it is hugely important to ensure that alignment and to make sure that there is that two-tier system. To do things differently does not have to mean that there is a gap between, but you have to be cognisant that those things are sitting next to each other. If you disregard that, that is when the problems will arise—if we do not look at the very beginning and say, “This legislation is coming into two countries; the Domestic Abuse Bill that Westminster is doing is a hugely exciting and innovative piece of work, but we have to look from day one and see whether it works in both places.” If it does not work in both places, we have to be really clear about where the gaps are and what the differences are, and also learn.

Your colleague asked me earlier what we could learn from the Welsh legislation, and Victoria asked a question about the definition. For me, the broadening of the definition is hugely important, so that it ensures that we get the different types of abusive behaviour and the different types of domestic abuse—that is very important—but also the gendered nature and the disproportionate effect of domestic abuse on women and girls and on migrant women. We need all of that stuff in there, and we need not only to have that in the definition; we need to back up our commitment by collecting data and disaggregating that data so that we can ask, if we make a commitment to do something, “Did we do that?” We should go back and check. One of the things that always frustrates me is when we make a commitment to do something and then we pat ourselves on the back without looking at the detail and saying, “Did we?”

[Liz Saville Roberts]

Q One of the issues that has come from my English colleagues as well is the availability of funding. Far be it for me to tell the Welsh Government what they should do with their funding—that is a fundamental rule of devolution, obviously—but none the less there is going to be a question as to how this operates from the Home Office to PCCs and with the different structures that we have in Wales.

Sara Kirkpatrick: Yes. There are different structures in terms of what money is devolved and what money is coming directly from Westminster. There are different settlements for different things. Welsh Women’s Aid is a membership organisation and we are currently running members’ meetings every single week, and we are incredibly privileged—sadly, that is because we are in a pandemic—to be able to engage with our members on a frontline basis and hear what their challenges are.

One of the challenges is that frontline services get confused. The information is put out from Westminster or the information is coming out from different commissioners and organisations are being asked to prove a need, which is fair enough, but they become confused because a declaration will come from Westminster that says there is money for everyone. Is that money for everyone, or is it just for some people? Clarity is so important. First is a proportionate settlement, but second is clarity about that settlement.

The last thing I would say is that Wales is physically different. This happens in England as well, actually: sometimes we take a very metro-centric view. We think that we have a lot of public transport and we think that the roads are easy. I have just walked around London today, and it has been very easy to get from one place to another. That is less true in rural areas. When we are talking about a proportionate settlement, we need to take into account the fact that rural communities have a smaller population, but it takes longer for individuals to get from one place to another. A single service provider cannot provide the same service and get everybody to a single site in the way that they can in metropolitan environments, because there is more rural in Wales—or I notice more rural in Wales, perhaps because I talk to the members.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

That is very useful. Thank you.

[The Chair]

I have four or five people who want to come in, and we have 10 minutes, so that is the guide for how long they should try to speak for. I call Fay Jones.