Domestic Abusers: Reoffending

Lord Cameron of Lochiel Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

As I mentioned in my original answer, the Government have put £20.5 million into perpetrator intervention programmes currently, and those are under evaluation as we speak. The evaluations are slow by their very nature and, again, I can only answer for post 4 July 2024. What we are trying to do is examine, with the violence against women and girls strategy, what works effectively and what interventions we can take forward. Therefore, both the points that the noble Baroness made and other considerations of intervention—and how we evaluate that intervention to make sure it has a real impact and give comfort to victims primarily—are important issues. We will be examining that during the development of the violence against women and girls strategy.

[Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)]

My Lords, everyone’s thoughts will be with those who have been victims of domestic abuse, and supporting such victims is rightly of paramount importance. Given that the Government have released domestic abusers early as part of their efforts to manage prison capacity, can the Minister explain what assessment has been made of the risk that this policy poses to victims?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I hope the noble Lord will know that offences have been excluded from the SDS40 early release scheme. Those include sex offences, irrespective of sentence length; serious violent offenders with a sentence of four years of more; and specific offences linked to domestic violence, irrespective of sentence length, including stalking, coercive controlling behaviour and non-fatal strangulation. So the noble Lord’s basic premise is, I am afraid to say to the House, wrong. Domestic violence perpetrators are not being included in the programme he referred to.