Domestic Abuse Bill

Lord Strasburger Excerpts

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

[Lord Strasburger (LD) [V]]

My Lords, given this Government’s abysmal performance in much of what they touch, particularly their dithering response to the pandemic and their anti-democratic treatment of Parliament, this admirable and urgently-needed Bill comes as a pleasant surprise, and I welcome it wholeheartedly. Even more encouraging are reports from the other place that the Government engaged constructively on the Bill during its passage there and accepted many amendments to improve it. I hope we will see more of that attitude from the Government during the Bill’s passage through this House because there are many gaps that need to be filled to make it into an excellent Bill.

Most attention will rightly be focused on protecting and supporting the victims of domestic abuse and their children, but the vast majority of perpetrators of domestic abuse are men, particularly so for the more serious crimes, so I feel a duty, as a man, to do something to tackle the problem at source through a national perpetrator strategy to prevent repeat offending and even perhaps head off the initial crime before it happens. If we can do that, even with moderate success, we will save many victims from having to endure abuse in the first place. So I will be supporting amendments to introduce a national perpetrator strategy to address and correct the behaviour of abusers on a long-term basis. That needs to exist alongside high-quality support for victims and an effective criminal justice system.

We know that a quarter of high-harm perpetrators are repeat offenders, and some have six victims or more. In England and Wales there are approximately 400,000 perpetrators causing medium or high levels of harm, including murder, yet only a tiny percentage—less than 1%—receive specialist intervention that might prevent future abusive behaviour. There is a growing body of research to demonstrate the effectiveness of quality-assured intervention. One study of 12 intervention programmes found a reduction in the number of women whose partners tried to assault them from 54% to 2%. Other studies have shown smaller but still significant reductions in offending. Survivors are strongly in favour of interventions for perpetrators. The right interventions at the right time can stop abuse occurring, recurring or escalating.

Currently these programmes are patchy, and are limited in terms of the range of perpetrators that they can reach safely. The pre-legislative committee on the Bill noted the need for investment in perpetrator programmes and for co-operation with expert providers. I believe that attempts were made to add a requirement for a national perpetrator strategy in the Commons, but they failed. We must correct this defect in the Bill so that many potential victims can be saved from domestic abuse or repeat abuse before it occurs.