Secure Tenancies (Victims of Domestic Abuse) Bill [HL]

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 6th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, my name is added to these amendments. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and thank the Minister for all the work that they have done.

I have just written a short piece on scrutiny and have written mostly about the need to engage with stakeholders and practitioners—people who know what they are talking about. Although I take great delight in asking whether “and” should be “or” and so on, that is not really the purpose of scrutiny. However, this seems to be a very good example of those who have experience of real situations working together to anticipate where there might be problems if the legislation is not changed, as it has been. Therefore, I congratulate them and feel rather privileged to have been able to tack my name on to these amendments.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, as this is my first contribution to the proceedings on the Bill today, I draw the attention of the House to my interests listed in the register—in particular, the fact that I am a councillor in the London Borough of Lewisham and a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

Amendments 1 to 4, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, and supported by my noble friend Lady Lister of Burtersett and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, have my full support. The amendments in themselves might look quite small but they provide a clarity that is needed following examination of the Bill by noble Lords. A number of conversations have been held outside the Chamber to get the wording right.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, for the clarification at the start of his contribution and for the information that he has provided to the House today. Generally, his remarks are very welcome and I thank him for them. I also thank him for his personal support in getting the Bill on to the statute book to correct an error in the Housing and Planning Act 2016. As I have said before, it is not a good piece of legislation—I think it is an example of “act in haste and repent at leisure”. There have been one or two other problems with that legislation, as the noble Lord knows. I am very happy to support these amendments.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister and Lady Hamwee, and the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and will pick up on just a couple of points. I agree very much with the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, about the key point being to remove the notion of risk. Through her and through this contribution, I thank Women’s Aid for the positive engagement that we have had with it. As an organisation, it is exemplary in many ways and I thank them. I accept, and not grudgingly, the need for good, specialised training—that is central to this.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for generously adding her name to this amendment and for her positive contributions during the course of the Bill. I agree that, once again, working together, not just outside the House but within it, has engaged many people on the importance of tackling this issue and has been central to the passage of the Bill.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for his characteristic generosity and his full support as we have taken the Bill through the House. It is very helpful to be able to engage with an opponent who is certainly not a political enemy—far from it—and who wants to engage positively. That has certainly helped with this Bill.

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[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my interest in the register as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and I pay tribute to the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, and of my noble friend Lady Hamwee. They have done a great deal to secure what seems to be an agreed and agreeable outcome. The process in this Bill so far has been a good example of the House working at its best. I also want to pay tribute to Women’s Aid, in part because of the quality of its briefings and in particular for reminding us of the funding issues which still remain. I hope very much that the Minister will bear in mind the points that have been made by Women’s Aid.

I want to add only one or two points. In Committee I said that training is very important for this to work, and I was glad to hear the Minister refer to it in his opening remarks. To be effective, staff really will have to understand in great detail the processes that they should be following. I cite in particular the example of where a victim moves between local authorities with possibly a significant distance between the two. We need effective systems and networks in place for that to function properly. I have two suggestions to make as to how it might be done.

The first is one that I think I mentioned in our last debate. The training should be sub-regional; in other words, it is very important that the people in different local authorities who deal with these matters should know each other so that they know who to contact if there is an issue, and they should be trained together. Secondly, because the training is sub-regional, it would help if there were named contacts in every local authority who would be seen as the point of expertise not only within the authority concerned but also more generally. They are the people who should be contacted and they would maintain the files, particularly on difficult cases such as those requiring confirmatory evidence and so on.

With those two suggestions, I should like to thank the Minister very much indeed for getting us to this point. It is a positive outcome to our discussions over recent weeks.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, Amendment 5, proposed by my noble friend Lady Lister of Burtersett, is one that I fully support. She must be congratulated on pursuing this issue. As we have heard, the amendment puts into the Bill provisions to ensure that the protections set out in it apply to a victim of domestic violence who is living in a secure joint tenancy and stays in their home when the perpetrator leaves or is removed, as well as to victims who leave their homes.

This anomaly was first raised by my noble friend during the Second Reading debate on the Bill and she deserves much credit for persuading the Government that there was a real issue here and getting them to accept the amendment, as indeed the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, has done. He has shown himself to be prepared to listen carefully and look at the very real issues raised by my noble friend. I join others in paying tribute to the important work being done by Women’s Aid and I think that we all recognise the great job it does. Representatives of Women’s Aid have also engaged very positively with me during the passage of the Bill and I thank them for that.

I will not detain the House any further other than to say that I am very pleased that this amendment is going to be agreed shortly.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, as is indicated by my name being on the amendment, the Government are more than happy to accept it and the related amendments. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and I have worked together on them and therefore I have put my name down in support of them. As others have done, I pay tribute to her for working openly, determinedly and always pleasantly with me and my officials to ensure that these amendments are fit for purpose and improve the Bill. I also thank other noble Lords for their positive engagement.

The Government’s aim in bringing forward the Bill was to address a narrow but important issue; specifically, to remove an impediment that could prevent the victims of domestic abuse from leaving their abusive situation for fear that they might lose their security of tenure if they moved to another social home—an issue that was brought to the attention of the House by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. We recognise that there is a strong case for extending the same level of protection to those lifetime tenants who have suffered domestic abuse but wish to remain in their home after the perpetrator has left or, having taken temporary refuge elsewhere, wish to return to their home once the perpetrator has been removed. These amendments will ensure that where local authorities offer a new tenancy to a lifetime tenant in their own home, this must be for a further lifetime tenancy where the tenant is a victim of domestic abuse.

The amendments have been drawn widely. They will protect victims of domestic abuse where the perpetrator has moved out of the property and either tenant has terminated the joint tenancy. They will also cover the situation where the landlord has sought a court order to terminate the tenancy after the victim has fled but agrees that the victim can move back into the property once the perpetrator has been evicted. The new provision applies to those who had a joint tenancy, rather than to existing joint tenants—that is to say, it requires that the previous tenancy must have come to an end before a new tenancy can be granted. I agree that this is the right approach as it will obviate the risk that there could be two concurrent tenancies of the same property. These amendments, together with Amendments 1 to 4, which we have just addressed, will ensure that the Bill covers the circumstances in which a victim of domestic abuse who has or had a lifetime tenancy seeks a new tenancy as a consequence of that abuse.

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Moved by

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

6: Clause 1, page 1, line 15, at end insert—
“(2AA) The person making the application for an old-style secure tenancy under subsection (2A) must not be charged for obtaining any evidence of domestic abuse if this evidence is required to make the application.”

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, Amendment 6 raises the issue of victims of domestic violence being charged a fee to provide evidence by way of a letter or some other acceptable form of confirmation to the authorities that they are a victim of domestic violence. That fee can range from £75 to £100 or even more. I think that it is completely wrong.

Certainly some GPs charge this fee. I accept that it is a minority of GPs, but it is wrong for any GP to charge it. I raised the issue both at Second Reading and in Committee, and I do so again today.

When the amendment was discussed in Committee, I had support from noble Lords around the House, and I am grateful to all noble Lords who spoke in that debate. I read again yesterday the response of the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, to the debate in Committee. He agreed with me that charging a fee to a victim of abuse who is seeking evidence of their abuse to access a service is,

“far from an ideal situation”.—[Official Report, 24/1/18; col. 1058.]

I would go further than that and say that, in 2018, when domestic violence is centre stage—no longer an issue not talked about but out in the open, with perpetrators rightly condemned and brought to justice for the disgusting crime that it is—to charge victims a fee to provide evidence to prove that they are a victim so that they can get help is unacceptable.

The good news that the Minister gave the House the last time he spoke on the issue just does not go far enough. I note that the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, has tabled a Question on domestic violence that will be answered in the next day or two. I will raise the issue again if I can get in at that Question Time.

If you have been a victim of a crime and been beaten, distressed or frightened, it is not good enough to say that you can get around the issue of a fee by putting in a subject access request for your medical records. I have no idea what you would do with your medical records: I assume that you get a big pile of papers giving all your medical history and stuff. So for me it would be my blood pressure, and I am a diabetic so there would be issues about my feet, but I am not sure that medical records would say that you had been beaten, that you have a cut or that you have been bruised. Would they actually say that you had been a victim of domestic violence? If not, we are again in the situation where you might hand your medical records to the authority who might say, “Yes, it says you have a bruise to the head; it does not say that you have been a victim of domestic violence. You might have fallen over”. So there are some issues even with using the records. Will they actually deliver what the noble Lord says?

I think we should be very clear that no victim should ever be charged for a letter or any other form of evidence to say that they are a victim of domestic violence. We need to ensure that that happens. I accept that it is about the doctors’ contract and I am pleased that that is going to be reviewed in April, because it is certainly an issue. I accept that it is the Department of Health, not the noble Lord’s department, but this is an issue that we cannot let go: it is totally wrong that anyone is charged a fee to prove that they are a victim of a crime.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, the Minister spoke at the outset of this afternoon’s proceedings about the Data Protection Bill—the Act as it will soon be—and data subjects’ rights of access to information. I share the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, about the extent of notes that doctors may keep. I have no expertise in this area but I know that I can sit in a doctor’s surgery and witter on for seven or eight minutes and it comes out, perhaps, as a reference to a consultant in two lines. I assume that the two lines are much closer to what is kept in the notes than my seven minutes of semi-articulate complaints.

I am also concerned about whether doctors, GPs particularly, will feel able to keep notes about their assessment, which might be just a guess, as to the reason for the injuries which they are considering. Some may, some may not, and some may be concerned about the implications for them if they get it wrong. Again, it is not something that I have come across, but in other walks of life, such as universities, where teachers may keep notes about students’ attainments or otherwise, I understand that there are concerns not to say anything that might come back to bite the writer of those notes. I certainly do not think it is something we can assume will be covered by the data protection provisions that will shortly be coming into effect.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for bringing this amendment forward and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for her contribution on Amendment 6, which deals with the subject of GP letters. In fact, noble Lords will appreciate that the amendment is drawn much more widely—it refers, I think, to other professionals as well. I am sure that the noble Lord did this quite deliberately; it would apply, for example, to solicitors’ letters and accountants’ letters as well, where there are obviously rather different considerations, because we have a more direct route in relation to GPs’ contracts.

As I said previously and I am very happy to repeat, the noble Lord is quite right to say that the wording is far from ideal; that is absolutely right. I accept the point that the noble Baroness has just made, and was made by the noble Lord as well, about the data. It is hard to know without seeing doctors’ notes: sometimes it may cover the case very well, sometimes it may not. I also take the noble Baroness’s point that doctors may be reluctant to commit to writing something relating to domestic abuse, but I suppose that that could also apply in relation to the letter itself. It is certainly a consideration, I accept that. The early sounding I had when I raised this matter with the Department of Health was that it has the same view that we do. It considers that this issue needs looking at. I have not yet had a detailed response to the points I made but I am very happy to share the general thrust of that as soon as I do, because this is a very reasonable point and one that I am sure the vast majority of GPs would go along with.

On the basis that I undertake to update the House on the discussions that we are having with the Department of Health—recognising, as the noble Lord indicated, that it is the lead department on this—I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I thank the noble Lord for that response. I am happy to withdraw the amendment—I am not going to push it to a vote today—but this is a really important issue. I accept that the Minister’s department is not responsible, but it is just wrong. It is a minority, although a pretty large one, who will charge for these letters. It is unacceptable that that happens in today’s world.

The issue about the medical records—what is the point of a medical record? Is it being able to use it for other things or is it accurately recording the treatment that has been given? I do not think it is as simple as the record itself will necessarily be helpful enough. People may be reluctant to do that anyway. I do not know what the Department of Health intends to do.

I am happy to withdraw the amendment today but I am certainly going to keep raising this issue. If I get a Question later in the week I will raise it then. We have to get this changed. I accept that that involves the GP contract. At this stage, I am happy to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 6 withdrawn.