Domestic Abuse Bill

Lord McNicol of West Kilbride Excerpts

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

Amendment 14 not moved.

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

We come now to the group beginning with Amendment 15. 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 this group to a Division must make that clear in the debate.

Amendment 15

Moved by

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

After our next speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, I will be calling the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick.

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top. I am delighted to speak in support of these amendments and join previous speakers in praising For Baby’s Sake. I will keep my remarks brief.

These amendments go with the grain of this widely welcomed Bill, and this visibility in public policy is essential if action is to follow. It follows that babies, both before and after birth, must figure in the Bill in the way that is specified in these amendments if their vulnerability to domestic abuse is to be taken into account. As my noble friend Lady Stroud and the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, both made clear, the statistics on the percentage of women who experience domestic abuse during pregnancy throw the importance of addressing this issue into sharp relief. As a lay person, it strikes me as entirely logical that the added stress resulting from domestic abuse of a mother instinctively desperate to protect her child—especially when it is at its most vulnerable in her womb—will be communicated to the baby and have a negative impact on its physical and neurological development. As we have heard, this has lifelong consequences for physical and mental health, and economically.

These amendments are entirely logical and add to the beneficial impact of this important Bill. I very much hope that the Minister will see fit to respond positively to them.

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, the Domestic Abuse Bill offers an opportunity to deliver substantial improvements to the way we respond to domestic abuse and other forms of violence against women and girls. In preparing for this Bill, we have received a great deal of excellent briefing, and some very brave women have shared their horrendous stories of violence against them and of the impact that it has had on their children. Too often, children are the hidden victims of domestic abuse, and I was particularly struck when I read the briefing from For Baby’s Sake and the Institute of Health Visiting arguing that there are baby “blind spots” in policy, planning and funding which we, in this Bill, could do much to address.

I am no expert in this area, and I was startled to discover that about 30% of domestic abuse begins during pregnancy, although perhaps not so surprised that of those women who suffer abuse, 40% to 60% continue to experience abuse while they are pregnant. The consequences for those children later in life, and for public policy and expenditure as a result, are incalculable. The Covid pandemic has exacerbated this situation dramatically. The December 2020 survey by the Institute of Health Visiting found that 82% of health visitors reported an increase in domestic violence and abuse. In an earlier survey, 83% had perceived an increase in perinatal mental health issues.

As others have said, the first 1,001 days of a child’s life from pregnancy are crucial in safeguarding and nurturing babies’ development. Domestic abuse during this period increases the risks of poor outcomes and has an impact on long-term life chances. It is linked with poor mental and physical health, impaired social development and lower academic achievement, so it is really important to ensure that in the Bill, the definition of “children” includes babies to ensure that they can specifically benefit from targeted interventions to support parents, that the impact on them is recognised in the collection of data, and that they can be highlighted in the domestic abuse commissioner’s encouragement of good practice.

When she concluded at Second Reading, the Minister said, as the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, reminded us:

“No age group has been left out of the debate, including the unborn child and the foetus.” —[Official Report, 5/1/21; col. 124.]


I am glad to support the spirit of these amendments to ensure that this is reflected on the face of the Bill.

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

I call the next speaker, Lord Cormack. Ah, we have lost Lord Cormack, but we will try to bring him back. I call Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am rather surprised to see that I am down to speak on Amendment 15. As far as I was aware, I was not scheduled to speak, and there is not a great deal that I can add, but I have listened with great care to the debate so far and can speak from a little bit of experience.

My mother had me during the Second World War. My father was away. She had three teenage boys aged 11, 12 and 13 and she was working in a mill as a weaver. Going to work in the early hours one morning during a blackout, she walked into a parked wagon that she had been unable to see. She lay on the floor unattended to for an hour and a half, while she was carrying me. She was quite ill afterwards but managed to recover. I was told that this was possibly a reason why I have not been what you might call a straightforward individual. I had other issues later in my childhood, during a formative stage, which had quite an influence on me.

I was not scheduled to speak, but that is a little confession. It is true and it is about a life that was affected by what happened in the womb and then later, during my early childhood, so I speak with experience, so the psychiatrists and doctors tell me. That is my contribution. More work needs to be done in this area. What happens to a child in the womb and in the first two years are of vital importance, and more work needs to be done on that.

[Baroness Newlove (Con) [V]]

My Lords, we have had many speakers on this amendment from my noble friend Lady Stroud, whom I support wholeheartedly, not just because of what the amendment says but because of my past work talking about foetal alcohol syndrome. If you look at what happens in domestic abuse situations, this could be an example of what we are talking about today.

It is so important that we recognise and name babies and the unborn in the Bill, because we are encouraging parents to come forward so that they can get the help they want and need for themselves and their baby at this crucial time. I thank the First 1001 Days Movement for its fantastic report Working for Babies, and the For Baby’s Sake Trust. It is a common-sense report that explains that children aged nought to two have been deprived of services and forgotten.

I greatly admire what has been said by other speakers on this amendment. I would like to reflect on pregnancy and childbirth: as a mother of three daughters, I know that it is a major milestone in their lives—or for any woman, and especially for fathers and mothers coming together as a family. That surely must be a motivation to change. Domestic abuse is prevalent in health service contacts, and I would like to have more discussions on health visitors, which is not in this Bill, and antenatal services. We really need to look at nought to two years and ensure that these vulnerable families get the support they need. More importantly, we hear many reports about there being no father in a family.

There are incalculable costs of domestic abuse as a baby that occur in later life, such as crime, poor academic attainment, adverse mental health experiences, depression, suicide, and the inability to stay in healthy relationships.

It is very late, and we have more to get through, but I wish the Government would look at this and have further discussions with my noble friend Lady Stroud and the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, because it is so important that these babies are never forgotten. We must try and nurture them as we do seeds in the ground, to make sure they look healthy and have healthy lives.

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

After our next speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, I will be calling the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, for raising this crucial issue. There are four amendments in this group, and I would like to speak to Amendments 15 and 172.

Amendment 15 underlines the importance that the noble Baroness has rightly attached to recognising in the Bill the developing child in the womb. Amendment 172 seeks to place a requirement on the Secretary of State to make provisions for publicly funded trauma-informed and attachment-focused therapeutic work to be made available to all parents of children aged under two years old, where those children are victims of or otherwise affected by domestic abuse.

In parentheses, I also support Amendments 20 and 179 relating to the functions and powers of the domestic abuse commissioner and the Secretary of State.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, reminded us, at Second Reading the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, said—and I wholeheartedly agree with her—

“No age group has been left out of the debate, including the unborn child and the foetus”.—[Official Report, 5/1/21; col. 124.]


She went on, though, to say that noble Lords

“rightly drew attention to the devastating impact that domestic abuse can have on children and young people. I talked about the foetus earlier—those adverse impacts start when that child is in the womb. Growing up in a household of fear and intimidation can impact children’s health, well-being and development, with lasting effects into adulthood—in fact, all their lives.”—[Official Report, 5/1/21; col. 129.]

The noble Baroness, Lady Williams, is undoubtedly right. Her words reinforce the arguments of the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, about the importance of naming the unborn in the Bill, which is what Amendment 15 seeks to do.

As it stands, the Bill’s definition of children does not adequately capture the child in the womb or acknowledge that they too can be victims of domestic abuse. As Amendment 15 recognises, and as other noble Lords have said, there are currently significant baby blind spots in the legislation; “a child”, as a catch-all term, does not adequately encapsulate the unborn’s unique experience of abuse in utero.

As the Bill stands, there is no requirement on the commissioner to encourage best practice in the identification of domestic abuse affecting the unborn, and likewise no requirement on the Secretary of State to issue guidance on how domestic abuse affects the unborn. This lacuna leaves a large gap in our approach to domestic abuse policy. The unborn experience of domestic abuse in utero can live with a person for the rest of their life. As the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, said, it has been suggested that 30% of domestic abuse begins during pregnancy.

We can come to a fuller understanding of the issue by looking at it from a positive, rather than negative, perspective. I once participated in an inquiry chaired by the late Lord Rawlinson of Ewell, a celebrated Queen’s Counsel and former Attorney-General. The inquiry examined sentience in the womb. It concluded that, rather than being born as a blank slate or the first page of a new book, at birth a newborn baby already has surprisingly extensive experiences of the surrounding world. It was interesting to hear the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, recount his own personal experience of the impact of an experience he had while in the womb.

Yehudi Menuhin, the renowned violinist who became a Member of your Lordships’ House, once said he first learned his love of music in his mother’s womb. Indeed, his mother was once told, “Madam, your womb is a veritable conservatoire.” Significant research has shown that listening to and experiencing music stimulates the brain of a baby in the womb and assists the growth of brain structures. Some studies suggest that babies remember music they listened to in the womb for months after being born. Music during pregnancy can have a soothing and uplifting effect on the pregnant woman, but also a positive influence on her unborn child. The womb can be a child’s first concert hall.

Conversely, as intimated during our debate, the Rawlinson inquiry also heard evidence of the effect of negative experiences on the development of a child in the womb and the long-term sequelae. Sadly, the unborn can experience any number of physical traumas when a perpetrator targets the baby violently while still in a mother’s womb. The research also indicates that domestic abuse during pregnancy is associated with poor obstetric outcomes, including low birth weight and pre-term birth.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, intimated, a mother’s emotional state has a direct influence on foetal development. As we have heard, stressors can negatively disrupt neurodevelopment in utero, which in turn impacts the cognitive functioning and emotional regulation of the child. This can be a life sentence. For all these reasons, I hope that Amendment 15 will be accepted.

I will also speak briefly about the importance of Amendment 172 about access to support for parents. The whole Bill is for naught if there are no provisions to allow people to get the help they want and so often desperately need. This admirable legislation is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to develop a step change in our response to domestic abuse. The reality is that the vast majority of victims—an estimated 70%--never set foot in a refuge and remain at home or in alternative housing. They must therefore have access to support that can actually change behaviour. We must recognise that these first days and weeks of life are also an effective time for intervention. Surely we want to be pragmatic with this Bill.

Like others, I was struck by an evaluation of the For Baby’s Sake programme, led by King’s College London, which provides trauma-informed and attachment-focused therapeutic support for parents. It found that support at this first moment—to which we can all point and say, “That is when I began to be me”—can harness parents’ motivation and empower them to make changes for their baby and themselves. The noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, alluded to this in her excellent contribution earlier.

The Committee should note that a SafeLives report highlights that 80% of survivors said they think interventions for perpetrators are a good idea. A main conclusion from Breaking Down the Barriers: Findings of the National Commission on Domestic and Sexual Violence and Multiple Disadvantage was the call from survivors for trauma-informed support to break traumatic cycles.

Trauma-informed and attachment-focused therapeutic work is about meeting parents where they are, not where we would want them to be. This therapeutic work should be publicly funded and accessible to all parents in the same way that we offer universal mental health support through the National Health Service. Amendment 172 is therefore about changing the cultural and social landscape around domestic abuse for the next generation. If we only fund refuge and not intervention, we miss a crucial piece of the puzzle in breaking the cycle of domestic abuse.

Amendments 15 and 172 provide the right architecture and structure, a firmer and surer foundation, for making the womb and early days a less dangerous place in which to be, and they help to create an environment in which the baby is loved, cherished, and nurtured. On a personal level, having recently seen the picture of a new, soon to be born, grandchild in the womb—a magical glimpse, now routinely provided by science, of the infinite beauty represented by the delicate formation of a unique, new human being—I am especially pleased to be able to add my voice to those supporting the noble Baroness and her cross-party supporters.