Domestic Abuse Bill

Mark Tami Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Carolyn Harris]

I just want to make a little progress.

We have volumes of data relating to victims of domestic abuse, but at present this only accounts for those aged 74 and under, even though we know that domestic abuse has no age limit. Older people must have their rights protected too, and the Bill needs to recognise that. Statistics consistently demonstrate that the vast majority of domestic abuse victims are women and the vast majority of perpetrators are men, but we know that there are no barriers. Anyone—regardless of sex, sexual orientation, age or race—can be a victim or a perpetrator, so we must ensure that service and funding provision is appropriately proportioned.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend will be aware of the vital work that the Domestic Abuse Safety Unit in Shotton has been doing for many years. I have been there and have heard harrowing stories. To echo her point, so many people say that they have put up with this sort of behaviour for five, 10 or 20 years when asked, “How long had this gone on before you reached this stage?” We need to ensure that these centres are getting the finance they need to carry on with this vital work.

[Carolyn Harris]

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point; I wholeheartedly agree with his sentiments.

The Bill needs to include a legal duty to fund a national network of accommodation-based domestic abuse services as a matter of priority, to meet the needs of all survivors and, very importantly, their children. The protection and provision of support for children who experience domestic abuse—either as witnesses or as victims themselves—also need to be consistently included in every aspect of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)]

It is an honour to follow the spokesperson for the SNP, the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley). I welcome the Bill and the cross-party support for it.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor, who looks like he may be about to go and get himself a cup of tea—I cannot blame him for that—orated at length, although his speech was comprehensive, detailed and very passionate. I recall our joint work in Committee on the Serious Crime Bill; together, we introduced the coercive control measure that so many people have referred to. I remember being asked at the time, “Why are we doing something so difficult? How are we going to train the police? How are we going to do this?” If the answer is, “It’s too hard,” we will never do anything. I am very proud that we introduced that measure, and I was very pleased to work with my right hon. and learned Friend on that. I wish him well with this Bill.

I also pay tribute to some of the people who helped us get to the Bill being brought forward. They include my right hon. Friends the Members for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd) and for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), and my hon. Friends the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) and for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), who both served in the same Under-Secretary role in the Home Office in which I had the privilege to serve.

However, I pay tribute above all to my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May). I stand here making my first Back-Bench speech for seven years, having been on the Treasury Bench in that time, to find that I am following my right hon. Friend. I feel quite a lot of pressure to live up to the speech she just delivered, which showed her commitment, her attention to detail and her absolute determination to deliver on this incredibly important issue. Without her, we would not be in this place today.

My right hon. Friend spoke about the challenges with tackling domestic violence. I recall, when I was in the Home Office, looking at what we could do to change things and at how we could change society on this matter. A number of contributors have mentioned attitudes. I am pleased that the old line, “Oh, it’s just a domestic; ignore it” is gone, but it was there for far too long. The other thing on which we have seen a difference is training for police officers. It is not everywhere—my right hon. Friend mentioned that there are police officers who have not had training—but when I was in the Home Office I saw police officers being trained to believe the victim and to take belief in the victim as the first port of call. They are trained to walk in not with cynicism but believing what the victim says. If somebody has gone to the police to report domestic violence, they are not making it up; it has taken enormous strength of character for them to get to the point of reporting it, and they need to hear the police officer say, “I believe you.”

I was struck by that as a new MP, when a constituent come to a surgery appointment and told me how every police officer she had dealt with had refused to believe her. They had said, “Oh, it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other,” and that she must have contributed in some way.

[Mark Tami]

Does the right hon. Lady agree that the other thing police do so often is to look at each incident as an individual incident, rather than looking for a pattern of behaviour?

[Karen Bradley]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. It is so important that we look not just at a pattern of behaviour but across the whole family. The troubled families programme was very good at looking at the family as a whole, seeing where domestic violence was happening and identifying its effect on children—on each member of the family.

Public awareness of the crime is another challenge we have always faced. We have talked about 2 million cases a year, but of course the number of reported cases is so much lower. Reporting is on the up, and that is very good news. We need these crimes to be reported; unless they are reported, nobody can tackle them. It is incredibly important that we improve public awareness and get an understanding of what a healthy relationship looks like versus an unhealthy relationship.