Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Meg Hillier Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 29th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

In my brief remarks today, I want to touch on principle, policy and practice. We have to be very clear that we are having a debate not just on the principle, but on the Bill. The principle at stake is that we would cross a Rubicon whereby someone who is terminally ill, according to the definition in the Bill, is assisted by the state to die. That is a fundamental change in the relationship between the state and the citizen, and the patient and their doctor. If we have a scintilla of doubt about allowing the state that power, we should vote against the Bill today.

Like most of us, I came into politics partly to stand up for the vulnerable, and we have heard heartbreaking stories today about those vulnerable at the point of death. We have also heard—and I concur completely with my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott)—about those who are vulnerable for other reasons and who could be coerced or persuaded down this route.

I have had the privilege of being around the hospice movement for nearly 50 years, as my father established one of the first national health service hospices in this country. I saw what he did as a doctor in a world where death was not talked about, where surgeons would say, “We’ll whip this bit out and you’ll be fine.” He would be one of the first to have to tell the patient that they were actually going to die. The work that he did, on the back of giants such as Dame Cicely Saunders, is something we should be proud of. We were the first country in the world to recognise palliative care as a separate profession, and some of the tragedies we have heard about today arose from a failure in that system. A failure in palliative care and support is not a reason to continue.

I have personal experience of this. Many hon. Members will remember when my daughter was very ill a few years ago. I had not intended to speak about this today, but she was admitted to hospital as a teenager with acute pancreatitis. The Bill would not have covered her, but I did not know for five days—in fact, many months—whether she would live or die. For those first five days she did not sleep and she did not eat, and she was crying out in pain. I saw what good medicine can do. It palliated that pain and got her to a place where, although she was unable to eat for two and a half months, she was saved and her pain was managed. Our best friends were the pain nurses and the anaesthetists. I have other examples of another family member, but I do not have time to go into them today.

I hope my daughter forgives me for raising her personal situation in the House today—

[Lola McEvoy]

Will my hon. Friend give way? I pay tribute to her for the strength that she is showing. Indeed, I pay tribute to all Members on both sides of the House who are dealing with this very difficult issue. Does she agree that we already have assisted dying in this country? Legislation already allows for choice, proving that people would be able to die at home with carefully administered, practitioner-led pain management. Does she agree that the inconsistency of this application of good pain management at the end of life, causing compassionate legislators to feel that the only option is to vote for the Bill, is a failure of our existing national health system, and does she—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. Interventions will have to be short in this debate because many Members wish to speak, so perhaps that is enough.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. She is absolutely right. When we see the system working, it is great, but some of what we have heard today has referred to a failure of the system. That cannot be a reason for us to accept the Bill today. For more than 30 years I have been scrutinising the policies and actions of public bodies and seeing the mistakes that they make, both in the care sector when I was in local government and more recently as Chair of the Public Accounts Committee.

[Mr Adnan Hussain (Blackburn) (Ind)]

The time for us to make this decision is wrong, frankly. At a time when 44,000 terminally ill pensioners are set to lose their winter fuel allowance—indeed, many of them have lost it—we are discussing whether we will pass a Bill, a state-sanctioned Bill, dealing with a taboo that many of us are reluctant to talk about.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

Where I do agree with the hon. Gentleman is that the time is not right. We have not had the proper discussions about palliative care. Some of us have been trying to talk about it for many years, and we need to ensure that this debate does not stop today, but the Bill must stop today. It is not developed to deliver the palliative care resource that we need. I do want to touch on the policy, but let me first return to the point that I was making before the hon. Gentleman’s intervention.

We have seen many failures in the system, including contaminated blood, and whistleblowing in the NHS repeatedly shows such failures. There is great trust among those who support the Bill that these safeguards will deliver. I will not go into the details, because others have already done so, and I am sure that many more will, but we made coercive control illegal in 2015, and although the Bill refers to safeguards, I fear that that will not pick up coercive control. When we ruled it to be illegal, we thought that was a moment of progress in the House.

Given the time, I will now move on to some of the practical challenges. My constituents are struggling to see doctors face to face, and seeing the same doctor twice seems like a miracle in today’s Britain. My right hon. Friend the Health Secretary is trying to sort it out, but it will take a long time. We need to sort out our battling health service, we need to support palliative care, and we need to discuss what a good death is. Cicely Saunders campaigned and triumphed to ensure that we had one of the best hospice movements in the world.

If Members have any doubt in their minds about the impact of the Bill on people who do not have the same capacity as those who are talking about this in the television and radio studios, they should think of those in my constituency who have poor English, or the woman who came to see me a month ago with terrible pain in her gall bladder. Removing it would have been a simple daytime operation, but she did not understand what the doctor had told her, and she was not going to have her gall bladder taken out because she did not know what it meant to be without a gall bladder. Let me say this to those Members: if someone who was English, a bright woman in her 60s, was unable to challenge what was said to her and to have that conversation with a doctor, just think what passing the Bill today would mean for many more vulnerable people.

I thank the House for its indulgence.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Laura Farris)]

I congratulate Torbay Council and Councillor Tranter on their excellent work to keep women safe in Torbay. Spiking is a disgusting crime that carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison depending on the harm that results. We are changing the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 to define the offence of spiking specifically and comprehensively in law, with a view to encouraging more people to come forward. However, the biggest barrier to conviction remains the fact that toxicology tests are often conducted after the substance has left a woman’s body. That is why we are investing in research for rapid drinks testing kits so that spiking will be easier to prove and we get more of the offenders behind bars.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

My constituent was the victim of a violent attack, but because the perpetrator got a sentence of less than 12 months, she was not told when he was released from prison. The police say that it is impossible for them to go through the records of everybody who is released in order to advise her, so there is a gap in victim support. Will the Secretary of State commit to resolving that?

[Alex Chalk]

The hon. Lady raises an important point. I take that extremely seriously. Certainly, under the victims code, the rights of victims to be kept informed are far tighter than ever they used to be. If we need to go further, that seems to be a sensible conversation and I would be happy to have it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 16th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

I am so grateful to my hon. Friend for highlighting the brilliant work of Tracey Hanson and the Josh Hanson Trust, which supports those who have lost loved ones to violent crime. Josh’s death was an appalling tragedy. Improving victims’ experience of the criminal justice system is a core mission of this Government. Our Victims and Prisoners Bill, which had its Second Reading just yesterday, will ensure that the public and victims are better protected and can have greater confidence in the system, placing the principles of the victims code on to the face of the Bill, which will make sure what victims can and should expect from the criminal justice system.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

As the Secretary of State just said, the additional police officers will lead to more court cases, but as we heard from the previous exchange, there is a huge backlog, which the Public Accounts Committee has looked at. When our Committee challenged his Department’s officials on this issue, we were not convinced that there has been proper planning for how those additional cases will be managed on top of the existing court backlog. Can he give us any up-to-date reassurance?

[Alex Chalk]

I thank the hon. Lady for the important work she does. These are relevant questions. It is important to understand that 90% of all criminal cases take place in the magistrates court, and because of the enormously good work that they did, any meaningful backlogs had been eroded by the end of 2020. She is right in respect of the Crown court—there are pressures—but as has been indicated, we are keeping 24 Nightingale courts open, increasing the amount of judicial recruitment and ensuring that victims are supported through the process. We now have 700 independent sexual violence advisers, which did not exist as little as 13 years ago, to ensure that as people wait for trials to begin, they are properly supported through the system.

Justice

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Ministerial Corrections

The following is an extract from Justice questions on 10 January 2023.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Like the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), I have seen extraordinary situations with cases of serious sexual assault where the court case has been listed three years after the attack, in one case, with the victim saying, “I just want to give up and get on with my life.” This is a real challenge. Will the Minister outline what he is doing to get more judges in place, which is one of the brakes on this? When the Public Accounts Committee looked at this, we concluded on the evidence that, even with the interventions he has outlined, the Ministry will only be back on target from where it was with the backlog before covid by about 2024-25.

[Mike Freer]

The hon. Lady raises an important point. There are a variety of reasons why cases can be delayed. It is not just about the availability of the judiciary; sometimes it is the availability of defence and prosecution. There is a particular focus on trying to improve the number of cases that do not come forward because they are incomplete and not ready, and there is a massive campaign to improve the number of available sitting days and courts, but the most important thing is the massive recruitment of 1,000 judges for our criminal justice system.

[Official Report, 10 January 2023, Vol. 725, c. 407.]

Letter of correction from the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer):

An error has been identified in the response given to the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier).

The correct response should have been:

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I pay tribute to her for all the work we did together on these issues, and what a stalwart, doughty supporter she has been. The Victims Bill will place the victims code into law. It will increase oversight of how the criminal justice agencies work, both at the police and crime commissioner level and in the national inspections. I mentioned the increase in funding for victims. The increase in the victim surcharge will mean that we have more restorative justice, with offenders paying for the wrongs they have done and victims getting extra compensation.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I find myself in agreement with the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel), whose Government, of course, have been in power for 12 years. The court delays are a real problem for victims. One of my constituents was violently attacked and given a court date three years later. Her seven-year-old witnessed the attack, and the perpetrator keeps pestering her, breaking non-molestation orders, leaving the police pretty powerless, because he knows there is no traction. The Public Accounts Committee has looked into this. The backlog is not going down and will not be lower than pre-pandemic—it is not about covid. What is the Secretary of State doing to get a grip on his Department and make sure the courts deliver justice for victims?

[Dominic Raab]

I say to the hon. Lady that the Crown court backlog reduced from more than 60,000 cases in June 2021 to under 58,000 cases at the end of March 2022—[Interruption.] Hold on. The increase and the reversal of that trajectory were the result of the Criminal Bar Association’s strike action, which was unwarranted—[Interruption.] I am looking at Opposition Front Benchers. When we announced our proposals on the legal aid review, they agreed with every single one. Yet again, when it comes to the justice system, as with many other things, they are on the side not of the public, but of those who take disruptive industrial action.

Draft Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2022

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2022 General Committees

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I have a couple of simple questions for the Minister. As my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge has highlighted, this measure is quite late in coming. When the scheme was being put together, there must have been some thought somewhere in the Government’s system that there would be a need for this new measure. When were the Minister’s Department and the Home Office first aware that there might need to be a change in the legislation? If there were any delays in bringing it forward from that date to now, can she explain why?

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachel Maclean]

I thank all colleagues for their contributions to this debate. I will take the issues that were raised in turn before I come to the shadow Minister. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead raised very good points about the importance of using SIs for a specific purpose, which is exactly what we have done. There is a role both for the Ministry of Justice and for the Home Office. We have had to amend the Police Act 1997, as I set out in my initial remarks, and we are also having to amend the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. As other Members have suggested, the scheme has been incredibly important. I agree with the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch and pay tribute to all Members of this House and elsewhere who are hosting our Ukrainian guests. It is an incredibly compassionate act and demonstrates the true British spirit.

The hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch asked when we became aware of the issues. It is fair to say I was part of the initial set-up of the scheme in my previous role in the Home Office under the previous Home Secretary, and we worked at pace, along with Lord Harrington, to set up the scheme, which was a true cross-Government effort. It was a completely new, bespoke scheme, so we worked through the night on many occasions to try to address the myriad issues that sat with our Department, with other Departments, with DLUHC, and, in some cases, with the devolved Administrations.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

On that point, the Minister says that it was a bespoke scheme. The Public Accounts Committee, which I have the privilege of chairing, looked at the Syrian resettlement scheme, which we gave quite a big tick. There are always issues with big projects, but it worked very well, so there was an example of a scheme that went before. It was not domestic hosting, so the safeguarding was slightly different, but there were still issues there. Did she look back to that scheme? I am still puzzled why the Government drew up a whole new scheme when there was a fairly good model on the stocks.

[Rachel Maclean]

That is a perfectly valid question, but I fear that the scope of this debate is very narrow and is about the exceptions in the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. I was not the Minister responsible for the policy decisions. The right answer for colleagues who have raised valid points about the future of the scheme is probably to seek a Backbench Business debate—perhaps a Westminster Hall debate—so that the relevant Minister can come along and answer all those questions. It is not possible for me to answer them now, but I am happy to feed them back to my colleagues or to answer any correspondence on them.

The hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge mentioned the fact that the scheme was initially going to run for a shorter period and that people are now coming to the end of that period, and asked what plans we have made for that. Again, it would be wrong for me to try to answer those questions as I am not the Minister with responsibility for those issues.

I very much hope that colleagues are reassured that the draft SI is an important part of the Government’s safeguarding responsibility, and I commend it to the Committee.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Maclean]

My hon. Friend is completely right to highlight the harm and the horrendous impacts of drug dealing in his constituency. There are already significant penalties for supplying that drug—as a class B drug, the maximum penalty is four years in prison—but the Government always keep such matters under review.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is not just the criminal courts that are seeing backlogs; the probate registry service and the divorce courts are also causing problems. One constituent came to my surgery last week. She is still living with her husband but her divorce case has been passed to Suffolk, where people cannot understand how she could still be living in the same house as him while trying to divorce—but that is the reality of the London housing situation. What action is the Minister taking to make sure that the pace of dealing with such cases increases?

[Gareth Johnson]

The Government have invested £324 million over the next three years to bring down the backlog in the family courts. The hon. Lady is right to mention the probate court as well. Obtaining grants of probate has a satisfaction rating of about 90%, but there are some serious delays with that other 10%. When people apply online and everything is order, probate is swiftly dealt with, but there are difficulties with some of the other 10% of cases. We are working on that at speed.

Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Thursday 6th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

Very much so. I am told that some people who fall into the criteria described by my hon. Friend have already been evacuated to the United Kingdom. I know that she has been a real advocate for the community sponsorship policy. Indeed, I am proud to say that one of my local churches is making efforts to participate in that. I look forward to seeing that in my constituency.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister has repeatedly talked about the family reunion rules and pointed to the existing rules. However, there are families who cannot pass the English language test to try to get into the UK—how on earth will they learn the English language under the current Taliban regime? Are the Government looking at loosening some of the rules of family reunion for Afghan families coming to join their family member in the UK? The family members have got housing and the ability to support their families and help them to learn English here, but that rule is one of the many barriers to them coming here in the first place.

[Victoria Atkins]

I understand the House’s focus on family reunion rules, because, as the hon. Lady said, so many already have family here. We have had to apply the rules as fairly and proportionately as we can, recognising the realities of the security situation in Afghanistan. We have no consular presence in Afghanistan, and the British Army withdrew at the end of August, so we are working with third countries and consulates in third countries to try to help people. I cannot pretend that this is an easy process. I have tried to be clear throughout with the House about just how difficult it is to get out people who are already in Afghanistan.

Black Women: Domestic Abuse

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

It gives me great pleasure to raise a very important issue to the UK and to this House, particularly as we are about to debate the Domestic Abuse Bill, which returns to this place in the next fortnight or so.

In preparation for today’s debate, I was aided greatly by a number of groups. I would like to thank Refuge; Southall Black Sisters; Women’s Aid; the End Violence Against Women Coalition; Hackney Council; London Councils; Imkaan, which does amazing work in this area; and my local organisation, Sistah Space, with whom I met recently and who were the inspiration behind this debate.

I would also like to put on record my thanks to the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), who is unable to be with us physically today, for her assurance to me that she is committed to listening on this. I appreciate her willingness to engage on this vital issue, and look forward to hearing the Minister’s detailed response to the points that I raise.

It is important to summarise some of the concerns around this. We are dealing with domestic violence and domestic abuse, which is an issue that of course cuts across all people, all ethnicities and those of every socioeconomic status, but black, minority, ethnic and migrant women are particularly vulnerable to high rates of abuse. I am concerned that small specialist organisations are often unable to compete for the contracts that Government and other authorities run to provide money and support, partly due to funding cuts to local authorities and the knock-on effects on services provided. My own local authority, for example, has suffered over 40% cuts in the past decade. This collective loss of money means that anything that is not a statutory service is at risk.

There is also a need for greater representation of black women at policy level. The term, “black, Asian and minority ethnic”, or BAME, as some people call it, groups together a lot of different lived experiences and is a lazy shorthand for the real lived experiences of so many women. In Hackney, we see domestic abuse as an issue that particularly impacts black and minority ethnic women—disproportionately so. I will be touching on the issue of “no recourse to public funds” and of course return to the Domestic Abuse Bill.

The budget cuts to local authorities have meant that there has been a general push towards generic, lower-cost service provision for domestic abuse and violence against women services. Because of economies of scale, that push towards lower-cost services favours larger organisations and contracts over the small, specialist groups that are led by and for the communities they support. They often do not have the resources or finances available to them, or the stability, because they are small groups working in the community. We need to acknowledge that the experiences and discrimination faced by black women are different from those faced by other minority ethnic women, although I shall speak about other women in this speech as well. Using that term BAME—black, Asian and minority ethnic—as an all-encompassing term homogenises vastly different lived experiences.

Let me take a very human example. Imagine someone leaves their home fearful of their situation, in the middle of the night. They have managed to escape from their abusive partner and they turn up, if they are lucky, to a refuge or a hostel and are unable, as a black woman, to have the cream to cream their body or the hair products that they need to support their hair. Their dignity is already through the floor and these little things can make a significant difference, but generic services just do not always get that. That is not particularly a criticism of every generic service—they provide a service and I am not critical of them for that—but there often needs to be much more specialism, and it needs to be locally driven, because local areas know their communities best. Even in my own borough, for instance, we see many differences between our population and that in the neighbouring boroughs of Tower Hamlets or Islington, both of which my constituency abuts.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Lady for bringing this issue to the House. I am always inspired by her care and compassion for others, for her community and for this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as a whole—that is something that I have noticed in my time in the House. Does she agree that work must be done, time put in and funding directed to enable women to know that they are valued, that their experience matters and that there is a hand to help them towards a life in which fear is not the norm?

[Meg Hillier]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his thoughtful and sensitive intervention. That is exactly what I think everybody is aiming for: to make sure that women are not living in fear and have somewhere to go. However, sometimes that somewhere to go is not a comfortable place to go for some women, and it is important that we recognise that domestic violence does not affect everybody homogenously, that different groups are affected in different ways, and that cultural, religious and other differences are important to recognise. It is important that we have an accurate representation of the needs of black women, and that they are listened to when decisions about services that disproportionately affect them are being made. Quite simply, I say to the Minister: no decisions about black women without black women.

Of course, work is being done to tackle domestic abuse, and I welcome the Domestic Abuse Bill, to which I will turn a little later. London Councils has begun work with the Women’s Resource Centre to better understand the structural inequalities that exist in grant making, to create a longer-term funding vision and framework that will bring about tangible change in the next grants programme. If we look at the numbers, we see that only 32 refuges are run by and for black and ethnic minority women. We know that there is a shortage of refuge space generally—I do not have time to go into some of the other wider issues today, but that is a big concern.

London faces some unique challenges with domestic abuse compared with the rest of the country. London-based refuges account for 23% of the total refuge spaces in England—higher than the proportion for any other comparable region—and domestic abuse is on the rise in London. Between July 2018 and December 2019, some 2,817 women and 2,425 children in London were placed in refuges. London boroughs will receive some £13 million in this financial year via the London crime prevention fund to try to tackle domestic abuse. London grant programmes distributed £14 million over the past four years to support the tackling of sexual violence and abuse.

It is important that we see better representation of different groups in the media. The London Borough of Hackney has been trying to promote awareness work, so that people from different backgrounds see themselves reflected and thereby have the confidence to come forward. It is a good way to educate people about what is available. Imagine, Madam Deputy Speaker, that you are living in fear at home. It is difficult to make that call to a domestic abuse hotline. You may be in a controlling relationship and it might be difficult to find help from a friend. You may have your phone monitored. But if the television is on and soap operas are sending out messages about where you can go for help, that is important. It is important that we press for that.

I recognise that it is not entirely in the Government’s control, but in focus groups that the London Borough of Hackney ran with survivors, the following comment was made:

“Having messages on TV shows, soap operas, radios would help.”

A recent storyline in “The Archers” was cited as a good example but, of course, only a narrow group of people listen to Radio 4 on a weekday evening. One person said,

“Having it talked about more makes it easier to talk about.”

Another said,

“There should be more advertising on buses.”

Someone said, rather poignantly,

“I lost my job due to being fearful. You cannot exactly tell your colleagues what is happening with your life, but if you see yourself represented in the media, you know that you’re not alone.”

It is a small but important element: too often, our media does not reflect the richness and diversity of cultures and backgrounds of people I represent in my borough, so I see this as a very significant issue.

I was talking about the London figures just now, but in London there was a 63% rise in reported domestic abuse offences between 2011 and 2018. In 2018, there were more than 85,000 recorded domestic abuse offences in London in just that 12-month period. Staggeringly, that represented one in 10 of all crimes reported in London that year, and that is just those that were reported. For many people, it is still very hard to report the situation that they find themselves living in, wanting to protect their children—I know that the Minister will be well aware of all the issues.

Funding for refuge provision is a key concern in London and for London councils. In my own borough since July 2017—so just in the last three years—169 women and 146 children have been placed in refuges. Of those 169 women, 110 were from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. There are real concerns about that percentage. Over and over, the evidence that I have gathered—although the data, I have to say to the Minister, could be better, including at national level—shows clearly that a disproportionate number of black women, and Asian and minority ethnic women, are affected in London.

In Hackney, in the last financial year, there were a total of 492 high-risk victims or survivors of domestic abuse reported to the multi-agency risk assessment conference. Black women constituted a disproportionately high number of those compared with the general population—27%. If this were any other group, people would take it a bit more seriously, and it is important that we recognise that.

I have mentioned children a number of times, and in my research for this speech I have been alarmed by the number of children who are affected by domestic violence, particularly for this group of women: 45% of all children assessed due to domestic abuse concerns in Hackney were black children. If there is a perpetrator in the household, it is not just the woman who is affected—it is usually a woman, but obviously men can be victims too—but it has a damaging and long-term effect on those children. In many ways, if domestic abuse was treated as a public health issue, notwithstanding the efforts of the Government to finally get the Domestic Abuse Bill through, it might have been dealt with in different ways and more seriously in the past.

I turn to the Domestic Abuse Bill, and I am particularly concerned as we approach that debate. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s views. The “no recourse to public funds” provision is a big concern in my constituency. I have many constituents who are migrants who come here to work, they work hard and pay their bills: they do all the right things according to Home Office rules, but they have no recourse to public funds, so if they need to flee a domestic abuse situation, they do not qualify for a lot of the support that is available. Those often life-saving routes to safety are not available, and the Home Office needs to look at this issue, just as it has with victims of human trafficking, for whom some safeguards are in now place—not all of them, but I will not go into that now.

There are some safeguards to support people in that situation, and there needs to be some safeguards here. These are people who want to work and will want to continue to work if they can, but if they have not got the money to pay their rent or they have a problem with their job, they will be left high and dry and in a very vulnerable position, often unable to leave, under the Domestic Abuse Bill. It is a significant barrier that excludes many people from those routes to safety.

The domestic abuse commissioner is also highlighted in the Bill. I hope the Minister can confirm that domestic abuse commissioner will listen to all voices and make sure that all these diverse groups—black women included—are at the table so that decisions are made that reflect their very specific needs. I know that my own Front Bench, with my support of course, are pushing for other migrant women to be better supported through the Domestic Abuse Bill. There is no provision, for example, for those on non-spousal visas to enter a refuge.

We also need to see a public duty on all commissioning authorities to fund domestic abuse services in the community. Refuges have a very important part to play but, as with Sistah Space in my constituency, it is the community-based services that are often there on the frontline, accessible and embedded, and they know who is who.

It is much easier to do that, especially for someone who, for example, is having their phone tracked or someone who cannot travel very far from their partner because they will not allow them to do that. Having that local specific support is very important.

It is important as well that the Bill reflects that the commissioning of community services needs to reflect protected characteristics. Too often, black and minority ethnic women’s services go completely unfunded, as I have touched on, and they cannot be sustained, and that means that black and minority ethnic women often struggle to access services.

It is essential—I hope the Minister will agree and give me some comfort and comfort to the women out there, some of whom are not yet affected, but may be in the future, and those who have been through it and those who are living through it now—that funding systems for domestic abuse understand that a one-size-fits-all policy will not address the problems within the sector. We need a granular way of funding so that whatever the main funding body, it can get right down to those small grassroots organisations that do not have the resources necessarily to bid, but can provide essential services.

We need, as I have said repeatedly, to ensure that black women’s voices are listened to and represented at policy level. I think I have time to segue into my experience 13 years ago almost to the day, when I became a Minister in the same Department as the Minister. One of the first things I was asked to do was sign off the board for the vetting and barring service. I was presented with a list of names, and I said, looking at it, “Can I just ask out of interest whether anyone has any experience of African child abuse?” At the time, there had been a number of such instances, including the torso of Adam in the Thames, which many people will remember vividly. Representing a constituency with a large number of West Africans, I was very attuned to it, but it was a very big issue at the time.

There was a slight awkward silence from the officials—I am not critical of the officials, who were trying to do a good job, but just were not tuned into this reality—but lo and behold, they went off and found an excellent woman. I have not told her I would name her, so I will not name her today. She was very expert in the area and became a vital part of making sure that our child protection and our set-up for the protection of vulnerable people began to understand and reflect some of those specific issues. It was a minority in that community, but nevertheless the issue was present.

She said to me, “I thought of applying for this position, but I thought they would not want people like me.” It is her story to tell, rather than mine, but the stories she told me about how people reacted to her as a black African woman in that position—unusual in the public sector—are important. The Minister is not entirely responsible for public appointments, but Ministers get that chance, and it is important we have a much more diverse reflection of our community in public appointments, especially for issues where their lived experience is vital to getting things right.

I do not think there is a single official deliberately trying to exclude people, but practices can build up and assumptions can be made. Unless we constantly challenge that, we will end up with a homogenous group of people making decisions about other people. I am on a mission to make sure we support civil servants and Ministers in understanding the wide diversity of people who are affected by the decisions they make.

The Domestic Abuse Bill is a real opportunity, but we also need clear data about the impact of domestic abuse on women, and we need detailed breakdowns of ethnic background, nationality and so on, so that we can really understand where the problems are and where emerging problems arise. As I have said repeatedly, future funding must recognise the importance of specialist services. In simple terms, let us make sure—I hope the Minister will agree—that we do not see decisions about black women without black women.

Streatham Incident

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

I am not going to begin prejudging what the business managers might have in mind or, indeed, the allocation of time in the House, but as soon as possible.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), the Minister said that he would look at further legislation, but she hit the nail on the head. This man was released from prison, and immediately followed by armed police. The Minister seems to have ruled out control orders, so what will be in the emergency legislation that means that that risk cannot happen again? If this man was so dangerous why was he let out?

[Robert Buckland]

I do not know whether the hon. Lady, the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, heard what I said. The purpose of the emergency legislation is to end automatic early release at the halfway point. That will apply to serving prisoners, which is why I want to introduce emergency legislation, which will be introduced as soon as possible. That ends the automaticity element, which was the reason why this individual, who posed a risk, was released. There was nothing more that we could do, because the law, as passed by the previous Labour Government, was what we had to apply. That is what we are going to do, and I am more than happy to explain it further to the hon. Lady later.