Domestic Abuse Bill

Maria Miller Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman). I thank her for the evidence that she gave the Joint Committee, as it helped our deliberations. I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield), who had enormous strength to come to the Chamber to share such a personal story. I am sure that she will take strength from the fact that those who have heard her will feel more empowered to act to put themselves into a safe position. She and I have campaigned a great deal for a number of years to get more women into the House, and I count myself lucky to have worked alongside her, given the strength and courage that she has shown today.

I commend my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), because without her I am not sure that we would be here today. She had the vision to pull the Bill together and, along with Ministers on the Front Bench, to create an opportunity for a step change in the national response to this issue. I was privileged to chair the Joint Committee on the draft Bill, and I thank Members both here and in the other place who gave so much of their time, those who gave evidence and related their personal experiences and, above all, the staff of the House, who gave us the most extraordinary professional service.

This is an incredibly important Bill, but I would like to make a couple of points. First, the Government need to make clear what the Bill deals with. They have tabled some amendments and promised others, but I am not sure that the Bill is in its final format regarding what the Government want to do. The Minister might want to make sure that Members of both Houses are thoroughly briefed on the final Bill, including all amendments, before Report. This is an important Bill, but the Government introduced amendments midway through our deliberations with regard to the statutory duty on local authorities to provide refuge places. The consultation still needs to report, so perhaps the Minister will confirm that she will ensure that the House is fully briefed before Report.

Secondly, I make a plea not to Ministers but to colleagues. Members need to resist the temptation to use the Bill to remedy all the issues, concerns, and campaigns in recent years to do with domestic abuse. Some of them have been quite open about their wish to include abortion reform in the Bill, and while there is clearly a strong case for reform, with which I would agree, this is not the place to do it. I do not believe that we have the time in this Parliament to give that issue the attention that it demands. My plea is for a separate Bill, sponsored by a Back-Bench MP in the usual way, to deal with that, and to deal with it swiftly.

[Hannah Bardell]

I take the point that the right hon. Lady makes about time, but we should look at making the Bill as broad and detailed as possible. We should also look at the issue of data sharing. I have a constituent whose data was shared by the Department for Work and Pensions. She was being protected by the police from her violent partner. Her data was shared, and she had to be moved again. Those kinds of issues need to be addressed in the legislation.

[Mrs Miller]

I have a huge amount of respect for the hon. Lady, but we run the risk of derailing a Bill that is long overdue. I urge people to have some sense of restraint on what we might do to amend it.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mrs Miller]

I am afraid I cannot take any more interventions.

I want briefly to turn to the Government’s response to our Joint Committee report and to make one point—I should like to have made a lot of others—on the inclusion of an age in the definition. My right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead is absolutely right to say that the definition is key, but Committee members were particularly concerned about the issue of the age limit. We decided not to recommend a change in the definition of domestic abuse from 16 years and above, but that was not an easy decision for us, particularly given the personal testimony we heard from young people who felt that the police and other people in positions of authority did not take seriously violent behaviour that occurred in relationships under the age of 16. This is not right, and it has to be tackled. It may not need legislation in the Bill, but it needs the Government to urgently review the police’s response in these areas.

I would like to go on to certain other issues that I believe have to be looked at carefully in Committee. The first concerns migrant women, because the Bill makes no provision for that particularly vulnerable group. The Government have reiterated the importance of treating those individuals as victims first and foremost, regardless of their immigration status, but we need to look at how safeguards are put in place to ensure that the right support is there for those individuals, including by extending the three-month time limit to six months for the destitution domestic violence concession.

I want to talk about the importance of an independent commissioner. We like commissioners, but we do not make them very independent; we need to make sure that we do. The Government must also give details of how they will fund their statutory duty on local authorities for the provision of services.

[Sarah Newton]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mrs Miller]

I cannot give way; I have only 20 seconds left.

The Committee was also concerned about the absence of a definition of domestic abuse victims who are children. I am reassured by some of the Government’s comments in their reply to us, but that needs further thought, as does a confirmation that the Istanbul convention will be ratified as a result of this Bill being put into force.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jenny Chapman]

I do not know whether I agree with that or not, but this issue needs to be examined in great detail as the Bill progresses. This is the first opportunity that we have had to raise it in this place in this way. It needs further thought and consideration, and I am certain that it will get it.

[Mrs Miller]

I understand the point that the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) made, but does the hon. Lady agree that this issue is the best argument for every child in this country having relationship education and that we should absolutely dismiss anybody who says otherwise?

[Jenny Chapman]

I completely agree, but relationship education is not enough, because I am afraid that the horse has already bolted. The University of Central Lancashire has done some research that will reinforce what I think everybody, particularly if they have teenage children, will know in their gut. Half of young people in relationships between teenagers are reporting emotional abuse and a fifth are reporting physical abuse. A third of girls have reported sexual violence. A quarter of boys have reported some form of sexual violence. Over 50% have reported abuse via new technology. Controlling behaviour through surveillance and being pressurised into sexting is the most common form of abuse reported by girls. If there are two teenagers and one of them is insisting that they check the other’s phone and use apps to monitor their location, that is a red flag if ever there was one.

The fact is that we are not adequately supporting young people and intervening. Given my background, I understand very well about not wanting to criminalise young people—I completely get that—but I am not seeing a framework, criminal or otherwise, for intervening and adequately tackling these kinds of problematic behaviours. This must not be dismissed as somehow less important because it is about two people who are under the age of 16; in fact, it is more important. There is an opportunity to intervene that we are missing repeatedly.

The problem with this Bill is that we are focusing on how the system should work. In the Bill Committee, we will receive assurance after assurance from Ministers saying, “Your worry will be taken care of because of this or that measure.” I have been through this far too many times to take those kinds of assurances at face value. We must be forensic and persistent, and we must continue to debate this in the way we have this afternoon.

I have high hopes for this Bill—I really do. I think it could be Parliament at its very, very best. But we must be persistent, we must be clear about what we want, and we need to work with those heroes outside this place who really do know what they are talking about, and who we will have to go back to when we have completed this process and say, “We’ve done our best by you.”

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. We have heard two of the most powerful speeches I have heard in my time in Parliament. First and foremost by a country mile was that by the hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield). It was one of the bravest and most powerful speeches I have ever heard not just in this place but anywhere. Her contribution to this debate will be remembered for an awfully long time, and this debate will be remembered for her contribution to it. Following hot on her heels was my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier), who also made an incredibly powerful speech regarding his late constituent. If those examples do not force us into some kind of action, nothing will. It is a pleasure to follow their speeches.

I want to make points that I do not think anyone else will make, which is often my role in these debates. In all this consensus I want to try to stop the idea that we have had throughout this debate that domestic violence is a gender-based crime. It is not, and we would be doing a huge disservice if we were to run away with that idea and make this legislation work only on that basis. Men are perpetrators of domestic violence; men are victims of domestic violence. Women are perpetrators of domestic violence; women are victims of domestic violence. I will go through the figures in a second to show why it is not gender-based. We in this House have a duty to treat everybody equally before the law. I hope that it does not matter whether the perpetrator is a man or woman—they should face the full rigour of the law regardless—and whether the victim is a man or woman, they should have exactly the same safeguards from this House. I hope that that is what this legislation will do and I do not want to hear any ideas that it should not be like that.

For the record, the latest official figures that are available show that someone is one and a half times more likely to be a female victim of domestic violence in a lesbian relationship than in a heterosexual relationship. We should not be leaving behind those victims of domestic violence by running away with the idea that it is gender-based. In fact, 5.1% of men reported being victims of non-sexual partner abuse with a male partner, which is exactly the same level as women have with a male partner. Men are just as likely to abuse a male partner as they are a female partner. So this is not gender-based violence—it is unacceptable violence by all sorts of people and we should treat them all equally before the law.

[Mrs Miller]

My hon. Friend needs to accept the fact that women are more affected by domestic violence than any other group. Does he not agree with the Joint Committee recommendation that, rather than putting it on the face of the Bill—perhaps for some of the reasons he is talking about—we should take the approach that the Government have accepted and have statutory guidance to ensure that those who commission services are clear about the need to reflect the needs of women in the services that they provide?

[Philip Davies]

I want all victims to get the services that they need, but we have just been hearing on our Women and Equalities Committee about instances of male victims of domestic violence. We heard very moving accounts of that recently. We all want to ensure that they get the services that they require too. This is not about either/or. I want to see everyone who is a victim of domestic violence get the treatment and support that they need. I do not care whether that is a man or a woman, and nor should anyone in this House. We should want to provide those facilities and services for everyone—whether someone is in a majority or a minority category is irrelevant.

Having got that on the record, there is much in the Bill that I support and some things that I would like to be added to it. In the time available, I want to mention the two things that I would like to see added. In recent years, one of the things that I have been increasingly troubled by is the level of parental alienation, where one parent tries to turn the children against the other parent, using the child as a weapon in their dispute. That is a growing phenomenon, which I see in my surgeries and is well documented.

Clearly, in some cases, in particular when domestic violence is taking place, it is right for the parent to be removed from the whole family. I am a hard-liner on crime, as most people know, and I would have the courts treat perpetrators of domestic violence much more severely than they are at the moment. However, where there is no good reason for a parent to remove the other parent’s contact with the child, that parental alienation should in itself be seen as a form of domestic abuse. One thing that has come out in this debate, rightly, is that often the people who are the biggest victims of domestic abuse are the children. When a child is deliberately turned against the other parent for no good reason, that should be included in the definition of domestic abuse—[Interruption.] I am surprised that the SNP think that is a particular problem, but that is a matter for them to explain. They ought to meet some parents who suffer from parental alienation and then they might realise what a massive issue it is for them; often it leads to suicide. The SNP ought to think about those people.

When people make a false allegation of domestic abuse—which is also a very serious thing—the Government should consider that to be a form of domestic abuse as well in this legislation. That is one of the most terrible things that someone can be wrongly accused of.