Domestic Abuse Bill

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 5th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, this year marks the 10th anniversary of the Istanbul convention, formulated by the Council of Europe to address the needs of women victims and survivors of domestic abuse and violence across our entire continent. A total of 39 countries have ratified the convention, but not the United Kingdom.

The Government were elected just over a year ago with a manifesto commitment to

“support all victims of domestic abuse”,

as has been mentioned several times already in this debate —I repeat, “all victims”. Yet there is a glaring omission in this Bill that robs it of the universal provision promised at the time of the election. There is no mention of how to provide services for migrant individuals, as recommended by the Joint Committee, so much of whose work has been integrated into the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Woolley of Woodford, the noble Baronesses, Lady Meacher, the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, just a moment ago, and others spoke passionately about this. We are far from dealing adequately with the needs of migrant women who have no recourse to public funds. As the designate domestic abuse commissioner puts it,

“Unless they are included, their options are brutal.”

I must therefore ask the Minister whether it is possible to include in the provisions of the Bill a way of meeting the needs of this group? It is not a matter of letting the ideal get in the way of the good: this is, after all, one of the great needs of our time, and here we are in the process of shaping a piece of legislation on this very subject.

The recommendations of the Joint Committee on this matter led to the setting up of a review, the report from which in July last year led the Government to express their concern at the lack of evidence to demonstrate how long individuals might need support. Many of us find that difficult to understand. How long will it take for the pilot scheme set up to gather this evidence before presenting its findings? What evidence do the Government expect to gather in the timescale allowed for this scheme, and what will they do with it? We welcome the £1.5 million that has been set aside for a migrant victims support scheme, but this can be only a temporary fix. Will this exercise provide a long-term policy strategy to fulfil the conditions—both the letter and the spirit—of Articles 59 and 4.3 of the Istanbul convention?

Add to all that the conflict of roles on the part of the Home Office, which has to deal with the process of settling people’s immigration needs while addressing the need to offer them support as victims of domestic abuse. Is it any wonder that some women fear that they will be met with deportation rather than assistance?

As a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and its migration committee, I feel some shame that the United Kingdom stands alongside countries such as Bulgaria, Hungary and Ukraine in not yet having ratified the Istanbul convention. As long as we fail to address the needs of migrant women, we can only report to the Council of Europe that the matter is under review. That of course will only prolong our failure to ratify the Istanbul convention. I look forward to the day when we can stand tall in the company of those who have already reached that point. Will the Minister listen hard to these concerns, and assure us that she senses the urgency of this matter? Will she assure us that it is not too late to include provision for this in the Bill before us?

Domestic Abuse Bill

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 8th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Woolley of Woodford (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I shall speak in favour of Amendment 151, tabled by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester. I want to start by commending the right reverend Prelate, the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and Southall Black Sisters for their work on this amendment and more generally for their work on behalf of migrants. I also want to mention a dynamic Christian group, the Black Church Domestic Abuse Forum, made up of academics, lawyers, pastors, therapists and counsellors who would, as well as representatives of Southall Black Sisters, very much like to meet the Minister to discuss these and other related issues. During the course of the Bill, we have heard a great deal from many unsung groups such as Southall Black Sisters who, by the way, have been on the front line of this work for more than 40 years.

I believe that the Government need to shift their position and ensure legislative protection for all migrant women. This amendment is a test for the Government as to whether they will turn their back on some of the most vulnerable women in our society today. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester, the noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Hussein-Ece, and many others have given us eloquent and passionate chapter and verse about the plight faced by these women, including intolerable coercion and the use of absolute power by abusive men. In effect, the Government are operating a two-tier discriminatory system of support for those fleeing violence, one in which migrant women and children, in the absence of state protection, are at heightened risk of escalating abuse, exploitation and harm. Their plight is summed up by Farah, a survivor being supported by Southall Black Sisters:

“I guess that No Recourse To Public Funds means that it is ok for me to be violated, physically and mentally abused by my father. I guess the Government approves of people like me being treated like I was.”


I appreciate that the Government have committed to support the migrant victims scheme pilot, but, frankly, the support is not enough. It will not reach the majority of abused migrant survivors who urgently need protection. Southall Black Sisters has estimated that the number of abused migrant women who are subject to NRPF and need support is likely to run into the low thousands—anywhere between 2,000 and 4,000 women a year. At a stretch, the pilot project is likely to provide only minimal support for up to 500 women for a maximum period of only 12 weeks. What answer should Southall Black Sisters and other groups give to the thousands of women and children who are turned away because the money has run out?

Without this change to the Domestic Abuse Bill, migrant women will continue to be turned away routinely at a time when they most need help and, worse still, are being regarded as potential immigration offenders rather than the victims of domestic abuse. This could be a matter of life and death. As the Bill makes its way through Parliament, we have borne witness not only to the Windrush scandal but to the Black Lives Matter movement as well. These are transformative events that have shed light on the deep and widening nature of structural economic and race inequality in the UK. This Bill offers the Government a real and ready opportunity to change course and provide redress for those who have been historically, and are presently, being excluded from protection and from their rights because of their background or immigration status. This would demonstrate a commitment to the promises made by the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, following the Windrush Lessons Learned Review, to address institutional ignorance and thoughtlessness towards the issues of race.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

I rise to speak to Amendment 160 while offering my sympathy and support for the other two amendments in this group. I reflect on the words of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, who said that this is a landmark Bill and needs to be as near perfection as we can possibly make it. I speak also as a member of the delegation from this Parliament to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The Istanbul convention is one of the key cornerstones of the achievements of that council over the last several years. It grieves me that I regularly see on the material put out by the council that the United Kingdom is one of the countries that has not yet ratified the convention, although of course it added its signature in 2012.

The idea is that our legislation is not yet in line with all the requirements of the convention, and that we are working on that. Earlier today, I heard extraterritoriality mentioned in debates and that a parallel effort is being made in the Northern Ireland Assembly which, mercifully, will deal with a major part of what prevents us at this minute ratifying the convention. That leaves us with Article 4(3) and Article 59. The whole question of discrimination has been properly alluded to as a very important thing for us to accord. I believe that the Government wish to do that, but they have taken the extraordinary step, having seen the recommendation in what is the fourth report since we have had these annual reports, to refer the matter into a pilot that will sit from December last to the end of March. That pilot’s findings will help us to quantify and find sustainable responses to this particular need.

I say that it is ironic and it is because, in a sense, the two other amendments in this group, were they on the statute book, would provide exactly the guarantees being sought and would allow us to ratify the convention at once. Is the fact that we have the pilot, which goes on to the end of March, going to make it necessary or impossible for us to include any measures to deal with discrimination for migrant women within the timescale of the passage of this Bill? I cannot see that we can possibly do the Bill and include any outcome from this process, which means that we will have missed the opportunity in this landmark Bill to deal with the two outstanding obstacles to our signing the Istanbul convention.

I missed a lot of these riveting debates because I was in Strasbourg, virtually—but we were talking about the same things. It pains me that we have not ratified the convention. At this minute Turkey and Poland are on the point of withdrawing from the Istanbul convention, and our moral stance in urging them not to is greatly diminished by the fact that we ourselves have not ratified it. With all that in mind—and this point has not yet been made, although it has been alluded to many times—I wish that these amendments could be made. Some 58 people and organisations wrote to me, as I am sure they wrote to the Minister, to say that all the evidence we could possibly need has been gathered. What is to stop us going forward? Why cannot we find a way between now and Report to leapfrog any obstacle, if necessary? Is this really impossible?

At the end of the day, it will all come down to money—£1.5 million will not do what needs to be done in the next five months and certainly, it will take a lot of money to deal with this in a sustainable way in the fullness of time. The domestic abuse commissioner designate—what a welcome appointment and what a clear-sounding person she seems to be—says that, unless migrant women with no recourse to public funds are included,

“their options are brutal.”

So, there it is from the person who will be overseeing this whole area of our national life.

I do not know whether the Minister can assure us that, even though we are out of sync with the passage of the Bill, we can hope in the not too distant future to incorporate retrospectively all that we are seeking to do through these amendments.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)]

I call the next speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, who will be followed by the noble Baroness, Lady Verma.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 15th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Alderdice) (LD)]

The noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been a passionate debate that has focused on a group of people who in normal circumstances—normal for them—have little opportunity to articulate their needs. That makes its importance all the more obvious and necessary. I have a carefully written speech, but its points have been made and I have no intention of repeating them.

I have nothing to add on the vulnerability of migrant women; this has been amply, eloquently and passionately described. Nor have I anything to add to the setting out of our long-overdue need to fulfil our international obligations by ratifying the Istanbul convention—that has been done in detail, again and again, by previous speakers. I also express my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, for painting a picture of the 135 Friday attendees, which is itself a considerable statement.

I am interested in the question because I and the noble Lord, Lord Russell, who is no longer in his place, are the two representatives from the delegation to the Council of Europe who sit on the Council’s migration committee. We met last Friday, where one of our major topics of discussion was how the Council of Europe, with its focus on human rights, the rule of law and democracy, could play its part in conscientising the European Union—which is establishing a pact to deal with immigration—and affect and engage it in bringing to fruition an outcome which will both in this area and across a broader spectrum of issues enhance the diligent observation of the human rights of these vulnerable people.