Domestic Abuse Bill

Lord Bates Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 25th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, we are having some difficulty connecting to the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, so the next speaker is the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin.

[Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great privilege to take part in this debate. In her opening comments the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, echoed a profound sense of solidarity and all our best wishes for this Bill going through this process. We are very honoured to take part.

I wish to put on record my thanks to the many organisations that have so diligently briefed us; I also thank the Minister. As a former domestic violence officer and child protection worker, for decades I worked practically with families of survivors. This is an incredible opportunity to place their needs and well-being at the centre of legal frameworks. Recognition of the effect on children is long overdue.

I wish to address Amendments 6 and 8, and speak also to Amendments 11 and 12. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, whom I claim to be my noble friend, argues that this legislation should encompass matters of forced marriage victims and survivors within the context of the Bill, and I very much agree with her—I support her in her cause. Although I do not claim to have the legal wisdom or expertise of my noble and learned friend, my recommendation, as the chair of the Forced Marriage Task Force, was to ensure that we embed matters of forced marriage and murder—I have distaste for the words “honour killing”; it is murder, primarily of women but of course of some men, too—in mainstream legislation.

Like other noble Lords, I would like to see the eradication of disjointedness and silos in responding to victims, as though the violence that they experience is somehow different. Similarly, on Amendment 11, I am in constant awe of my noble friend Lady Campbell of Surbiton, who is correct to assert that disabled persons have absolute rights to be heard within the purview of all public and mainstream rights to receive the necessary safeguards, protection and services that this legislation will afford and facilitate to all other victims and survivors of violence and abuse. This was very powerfully reinforced by my noble friend Lady Wilcox of Newport, and I am really grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, for her insightful recommendations for trained advocacy. I hope that the Government will give their fullest consideration to her request.

I will make some general points in support of this group. Community-based services are a critical aspect of empowering survivors and their children. According to a survey undertaken I think by Barnardo’s, 70% of individuals experiencing violence wish to receive community-based support. Specialist services that may be needed to address their welfare may include housing support, helplines and support for children, as well as programmes for perpetrators. The statutory duty on local authorities to provide accommodation-based services must not lose sight of the equal status and weight being mandated for community-oriented services, or we may unwittingly miss or discourage many hundreds of thousands of women who could find it prohibitive to seek urgent help and flee their perpetrators.

Postcode lotteries in access to services are well established, and lack of specialist services are well acknowledged. Nicole Jacobs has said that she is mapping current services. I feel that such an exercise will miss the value of all those women-led specialist services which have been shut down over the years, particularly by local authorities which have marginalised the needs of women from diverse backgrounds. I speak with some knowledge. In my own area, two critical women-led services, the Jagonari Women’s Centre and East London Asian Family Counselling, have been shut down, meaning that all the clients that they served over 30 years have nowhere to go. Whatever the excuse or rationale of local male leaderships, the end result has surely been that many women have been further alienated from reporting abuse and seeking urgent support.

Many specialist organisations have been a lifeline for women, particularly those who lack confidence and knowledge of the system and how to report or manage available services. Therefore, this legislative framework must widen its scope to ensure wide-ranging awareness of this law, once it has been passed. Also, leadership across different institutions must explicitly mandate organisations meeting the needs of all victims and survivors who experience additional distress or fears of discrimination. Furthermore, they must be held to account at the local and national levels for the quality and consistency of services for some of the most vulnerable in our society. I am grateful that the domestic abuse commissioner will broaden her reach to communities hitherto beyond the reach of the usual suspects and approved organisations.

I am grateful to have been able to participate in this discussion today. I want to make two final comments. I listened with a great deal of respect and admiration to the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, on Jewish marriages. She is right to be very specific. There are issues pertaining to other faiths, including Muslim marriages, some of which are stuck in the sharia councils—not sharia courts but councils, like the Jewish councils—

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I hope noble Lords will accept my point about retaining the importance of domestic abuse as a distinct form of abuse in the Bill, and will be reassured that the many and important areas that they have raised in the debate are already covered in existing statutes. I hope that the noble and learned Baroness will be willing to withdraw her amendment.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Bates) (Con)]

I have received one request to speak after the Minister. I call the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD) [V]]

My Lords, the Minister has given quite a long reply, which will bear reading. However, it sounded somewhat circular: the various groups referred to in the amendments are not within the definition. But that, of course, is why this long list of amendments was tabled. I felt that the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, really nailed my concerns. I am not speaking from the point of view of someone who feels that their concerns have not been picked up, but I was unclear whether the Minister was saying that there were adequate remedies and protections for every one of the people covered by the amendments. I certainly did not feel that the Government accepted that being in the same household is very close to a personal connection—it is, after all, a domestic situation. I wonder whether the Minister can help further.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right: it was a lengthy response, which I hope set out why the wide range of examples given by noble Lords are, we believe, already covered either in the drafting of the Bill or in existing statutes. She is also right to say that the debate will repay reading—for me, as well as for others—to make sure that we have indeed covered all the examples.

In brief, the dilemma, as encapsulated by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, is to make sure that, in seeking to cover the wide variety of relationships, we are not diluting the unique character of domestic abuse. A person coming into somebody’s household as a friend or as a temporary flatmate who may be there only a short time is in a different category from some of those other examples. I am sure that we shall return to this point throughout the scrutiny of the Bill.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Bates) (Con)]

Finally, I call the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, to respond to the debate on her amendment.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB) [V]]

I thank everybody who has played a part in this quite long debate. I have learned a great deal from what so many people have said. Because it has taken nearly two hours, I propose—much to my regret, but perhaps to the pleasure of everyone else in the Committee—not to reply to any of the points that have been made, save two. I also thank the Minister, although I am disappointed, but not surprised, by his response to my amendments.

My first point, which was also made by the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, is that although a great many bits of the Modern Slavery Act had been in other legislation, it was thought a good idea to have an umbrella Act that would cover all those aspects. Nobody took the point that they were actually also found elsewhere. With this landmark Bill—as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has called it—I really do not see why we cannot adopt the same process as we adopted with the Modern Slavery Act.

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Clause 3 agreed.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, we now come to the group beginning with Amendment 16. I remind noble Lords that anyone wishing to speak after the Minister should email the clerk during the debate. Anyone wishing to press this or anything else in the group to a Division should make that clear during the course of the debate.

Clause 4: Appointment of Commissioner

Amendment 16

Moved by

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Amendment 20 not moved.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Bates) (Con)]

We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 21. I remind noble Lords that anyone wishing to speak after the Minister should email the clerk during the debate and anyone wishing to press this or anything else in the group to a Division must make that clear during the debate.

Amendment 21

Moved by