Domestic Abuse Bill

Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale Excerpts

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

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)]

Many noble Lords in this excellent debate have referred to the change in culture and public debate around the issue of domestic abuse over the decades. I can vividly recall, as a young newly elected councillor in Stirling in the 1980s, the heated debate across all political groupings in the council about the funding of the first refuge in Stirling at that time. I recall the fear in the community at the prospect of “battered wives”—a phrase used earlier in the debate—living next door to families in a particular part of the town.

I am so glad that we have moved so far from that time; it has taken us a long time to get here, but we have definitely come a long way in our understanding of domestic abuse—its scale and the impact and nature of psychological abuse alongside physical abuse. Our understanding today of the impact on children in particular is much deeper and broader than it ever was then. It is not just the debate that has changed; our understanding has changed for the better.

There have been some fantastic contributions to our debate this afternoon and evening, and, in particular, I want to record the excellent contributions of the Minister and my noble friend Lord Rosser that started our debate, setting out the issues and commitments that have been made. I strongly welcome this Bill and I look forward to the debates on many issues; dozens of them seem to have been raised in the debate, and I am sure they will take up a lot of time in Committee and on Report in the weeks ahead.

Today, as the new lockdown starts, let us take a moment to reflect on the possibility that, somewhere in the UK, a brave woman who took a decision to break up a relationship that had been abusive and perhaps was particularly so during the first lockdown, is sitting with three kids and a mobile phone, facing the prospect of online home schooling for up to six months, potentially, as the Prime Minister stated earlier this evening. We should think for a moment about the immediate impact of these decisions around lockdown on the most vulnerable people in our society, and about the lack of preparation for the families and children that are affected by school closures. It breaks my heart to think about what they will go through in the weeks to come. When we pass this legislation in due course, with great cheers, we must also deal with the immediate impact of government decisions on individual families and children.

I will strongly support moves to include community-based services in definitions, and, in particular, I will support amendments on threats to expose explicit images online. I also hope that, in the debates, we can learn from the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018: there are positive and negative experiences from it that I am sure we can refer to in the debates to come.

I will ask the Minister specifically to address one point in summing up this evening. We have lost the protection of the European protection orders as a result of the reclaiming of UK sovereignty in recent days, but an issue about cross-border co-operation that was often spoken of by those involved in supporting victims of domestic abuse in Scotland was that securing justice co-operation across the European Union was, at times, easier than securing it across the jurisdictions of the United Kingdom. I wonder whether there is perhaps an opportunity, in the absence of our engagement with the European protection order from now on, to look at how we can put in place UK protection orders or some other form of formal co-operation that would make it much easier for the different jurisdictions in the UK to support those who have taken the brave decision to flee for their freedom, and also to ensure that those who have decided to flee from justice can be caught and prosecuted.