Domestic Abuse Victims and Family Courts

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Wednesday 18th July 2018 Westminster Hall

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an incredibly powerful speech, and I congratulate her on securing the debate. Does she agree that that loophole in the system makes those—usually women—who have been victims of domestic violence victims twice over, not only in the attacks that they have sustained but in a court setting?

[Jess Phillips]

Absolutely. It is, fundamentally, revictimisation and—if the Minister cares to browse the Equality Act 2010—illegal. There is a very real case for a public sector equality duty on the basis of gender to be made against existing practice in the family court. If such practice does not change soon, that is absolutely the route that people such as me will take, because our public sector is not meeting that duty.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jess Phillips]

Absolutely. The Minister will no doubt respond by saying that the Government have made changes to legal aid in civil and family court cases involving domestic abuse, but every single day I am notified of at least one case of domestic abuse victims not being able to access legal aid in the family court. I am writing lots and lots of letters to the Legal Aid Agency to remind it of its duty to victims of domestic abuse and of the ruling on how long someone has to be free from violence or abuse. That limit was changed from two years to five years by the Government, but that was thanks once again to campaigners taking them to court—the Government did not make that change out of the kindness of their heart.

[Melanie Onn]

My hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way. Has there been any analysis of the long-term mental health impact on victims of cross-examination by their perpetrators? The justice system is facilitating and enabling such cross-examination.

[Jess Phillips]

I certainly do not know of any. I will mention the recent study by Queen Mary University of London, in partnership with Women’s Aid, of how people are treated in the family courts. I am not aware of any Government reviews of the effect of litigants in person and, more broadly, of people being cross-examined by people who abused them, but I would certainly like to see one. If our courts and the Department are happy for that to go on, it is only right that they review whether it should continue.

Queen Mary University of London found that 24% of domestic violence victims who had gone through the family court system had been cross-examined by their perpetrator—someone who may have raped them, kept them prisoner or made them look on while they abused their children. We have the “achieving best evidence” standards in this country. I am not sure I can remember the bit in those standards that says the best way to get evidence in a justice environment is to allow someone who is utterly terrifying and has abused the victim to question them. I am not sure that we currently meet any sort of standard for achieving best evidence.

James Munby made it clear that the hands of family courts are tied—they simply cannot stop that cross-examination. Legislation is not in place to allow them to stop it. I know the Government want to stop it, too, and I am glad they heard our calls about that. I suggest that they do it. When the right honourable—I am not sure whether he is right honourable, and I am certainly not sure whether he is right or honourable—Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) embarrassed them on upskirting, a Government Bill was suddenly introduced to address that. It has been widely publicised that the House will sit for two days next week. I would gladly come back then to see through a piece of legislation that has been passed once already—it has already gone through rigorous scrutiny by the Clerks and the House. I would gladly pop down on a train from Birmingham to stop the cross-examination of victims of domestic abuse by their abusers.

The second area that everyone who has been in touch with me has given a lot of attention is practice direction 12J and new practice direction 3AA. I believe practice direction 12J was reaffirmed for magistrates courts and our family court system because, frankly, it was not being followed. For those who are not as geeky as I am about the old practice directions in the family court system, practice direction 12J basically undoes the idea that someone who has been abusive has a right to see their children. That is not an automatic right, especially in cases where there is domestic abuse. Practice direction 12J gives that steer to people making such judgments. I handled hundreds of cases involving domestic abuse, and I cannot say I ever noticed that practice direction being used. I have great faith in the Magistrates Association, and I believe from what it wrote to me this week that that direction has been affirmed.

I wonder whether the Minister will join me in stressing the importance of this very simple message: “If you beat, coerce, humiliate and abuse your children’s mother, you waive your right to be their father until the moment the non-abusive parent decides otherwise.” I am not saying for one second that no one who commits domestic abuse should be able to see their children, but they should not have a right to demand to see them where the non-abusive parent does not wish those children—and the children do not wish—to be put in that situation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jess Phillips]

I agree entirely. The plain and simple fact is that currently it does not protect them. The family court system fails victims of domestic abuse more often than it succeeds. I say that with absolute confidence.

[Melanie Onn]

What does my hon. Friend consider the ramifications of that failure to be for those victims? Does she think a lack of confidence in the judicial system, and particularly in the family courts system, could give rise to people staying in a domestic violence situation, thereby prolonging their situation and perhaps causing greater damage to their health?

[Jess Phillips]

There are lots of case studies in the papers in front of me where the consequence of a lack of trust or of a lack of safe and free access to our justice system is that women return. Women are now convinced that they will not win in a family courts setting. I would stay with somebody who beat me black and blue every day if it meant that I got to watch over my children and did not have to leave them alone with him. If someone has a violent partner and the choice is, “Leave them with this man, who you know is violent, or take the beating on behalf of your children,” we would struggle to find a single parent in the land who would do anything other than return.

The worst ramifications are, of course, that we are leaving people in violent homes. My hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge has handled one of the worst cases of failings in the family courts—the case of her constituent Claire Throssell, who is a personal hero to many of us in this House, and my hon. Friend will talk about that later. The ramifications are the deaths of women and the deaths of children. That can no longer go on.

I cannot understand why the special measures issue has not been sorted yet. It is not that hard to sort out. Every single court in the land has a robing room for the judges. How about putting the victims in there? I think the judges could put their robes on in the corridor. We manage it—I put my coat on just earlier. I have a fancy job, but I do not need a special room.

On the issue of special measures in courts, James Munby has said:

“In too many courts the only available special measure is a screen or curtains round the witness box. What, for example, about the safe waiting rooms for which the APPG has…called?”

I feel that he is personally talking to me in this quote. He goes on to say:

“The video links in too many family courts are a disgrace—prone to the link failing and with desperately poor sound and picture quality… The problem, of course, is one of resources, and responsibility lies, as I have said, with HMCTS and, ultimately with ministers.”

Those are the words of the outgoing president of the family division. Special measures are something we should invest in, and we should do so immediately. I welcome whatever the Minister can say today about any schemes currently in place to improve the situation, because 61% of the women surveyed by Women’s Aid and Queen Mary University of London were offered no special measures at all in the family courts.

Another issue that was raised was specialist support and advocacy for women going through the family justice system. I believe schemes are under way to pilot that issue up in the Northumberland area, where the brilliant Dame Vera Baird is the police and crime commissioner. There will be lots and lots of evidence of the value of the independent domestic violence adviser role in the criminal court and in community-based domestic violence services. With independent sexual violence advisers, the arguments are long ago won: having these advisers maintains victims within the process and means that they understand the process and can continue to try to get their rapists convicted.

There is no Government scheme or nationally recognised network for women facing civil issues through the civil courts, and I might argue that there is a far greater need there, not only because of the issue of litigants in person, but because—in an era when we have no representation for a lot of these women and many do not have any legal aid—having a system of advocacy in our family courts so that victims can understand exactly where they are meant to sit and what they are meant to present is something the Government should look at funding. Independent domestic violence advisers were launched under the last Labour Government, with match funding from local authorities and the Home Office, and I recommend that the Ministry of Justice creates a similar scheme, in partnership with the Home Office, for the family courts system. Certainly, every single one of the organisations that wrote to me called for that.

The next issue that everybody raised, which we have already touched on, is legal aid. Legal aid is currently available to victims of domestic abuse going through the family courts system, but that is still on a means-tested basis. There are all sorts of reasons why that system continues to fail victims of domestic abuse, meaning that they cannot access legal aid. The Law Society, which has written jointly with Women’s Aid to the Secretary of State for Justice, has called for a review into all the things I am talking about, but it and the Magistrates Association wanted me to stress today that the capital element of means-testing for legal aid is massively disadvantaging women.

Yes, a woman may well have been left after her ex-partner has put her through the wringer and no doubt left his name on her property, and it has probably taken her two or three years to get it off. She has already been through all that process, and she has managed to maintain a home where she and her children live, and that home now means she cannot access legal aid. I am not talking about the people who buy houses around Westminster; these are people living in my constituency, where it is about £120,000 for a three-bed semi, with one car on the drive. They are not rich people, and their capital means nothing in terms of their ability to pay. We cannot for a second suggest that they should be selling their house to protect their children from a violent perpetrator, yet, seemingly, we do suggest that.

Everybody has called for an end to the capital means test, which in many circumstances means that the equity in someone’s home should be used to fund legal costs. Of course, that is a double-edged sword, because if I were to use the equity in my home, I would then lose my home and would be much less financially secure—and when a woman is not so financially secure and has a precarious housing situation, it will be about 15 minutes before a social worker is saying to the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service that she should not be looking after her children, and we will end up in exactly the same situation we were in at the beginning. We are exacerbating things.

I am here to tell hon. Members from personal experience that, currently, victims of domestic abuse in the family courts system are, more often than not, unable to access legal aid. That has to change. The problem in the family courts with perpetrators, which I highlighted at the beginning, has been caused by this Government’s policy on legal aid—let us not use these things to twist the knife.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Melanie Onn Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 11th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union urged us to vote for the Bill, and said:

“Providing certainty and stability in the lead up to our withdrawal is a key priority. Businesses and individuals need reassurance that there will be no unexpected changes to our laws after exit day and that is exactly what the repeal Bill provides.”

If the Government really wished to provide certainty they would guarantee in the Bill that there would not be any reductions in workers’ rights post Brexit. The Secretary of State and the Prime Minister have gone to great lengths to reassure us that people will not see any reductions in their rights at work under this Government, but the White Paper covers only two of the three main ways in which rights could be reduced after Brexit. The third is by leaving those rights in secondary legislation, coupled with the powers that the Government have sought to grant themselves in the Bill, which would allow any Government in future to water down basic privileges that people enjoy at work today. The only assurance we are being offered that that will not happen is the words of the Secretary of State asking us to trust him and his Government. I am afraid that it just is not good enough to ask us to place our faith blindly in the Government. The point has already been made in this debate that even if we were inclined to trust him based on his record, those around him continue to fail to convince us that they would carry through their lightly given assurances.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), in his excellent speech on Thursday, quoted the Foreign Secretary, the International Trade Secretary and the International Development Secretary, who have all made their true intentions known on this issue. He could have added to that list the Transport Secretary, who said in 2014 that he wants to “slay health and safety culture”, or even the Prime Minister, who said that the Labour Government’s adoption of the social chapter showed their weakness in standing up to trade unions. According to the Prime Minister, the only reason a Government would ensure that part-time workers are treated the same as full-time workers, ensure that no one is made to work more than a maximum of 48 hours a week, or secure leave for pregnant women, is if a trade union made them do it.

I cannot in good conscience support the Government’s Bill, which I fundamentally believe fails to protect the scrutiny role of Parliament, and therefore puts the rights and interests of working people at even greater risk. I genuinely hope that Ministers will consider carefully and take on board the well thought out objections to the Bill from those on the Government Benches. However, I cannot share those Members’ optimism that the Government are listening all that closely.

Oral Answers to Questions

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

I thank the Chairman of the Select Committee for that question. We will take every action necessary to make sure that we deal with the scourge of drugs in our prisons.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

After a constituent of mine residing in HMP Lindholme was seriously assaulted when other inmates had access to keys to their cells while he did not, is it not abundantly clear that the people who are in charge of our prisons are not governors, and certainly not the Secretary of State, but the prisoners?

[Mr Gyimah]

That is certainly not the case. We do recognise, however, that by recruiting more staff and strengthening the frontline we will make it much easier for staff to challenge and support prisoners. That is why we have announced new investment to recruit 2,500 new officers for our jails, and we are also enabling a caseload of one prison officer per six prisoners, so that they can support our prisoners in the efforts to rehabilitate them.

Domestic Abuse Victims in Family Law Courts

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Thursday 15th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friends on bringing this debate to the Floor of the House of Commons. I acknowledge Women’s Aid for the protection and support it provides to women and children, and for all the vital work it does to highlight the suffering caused by domestic violence. In particular, I pay tribute to Denise and all her staff at Grimsby Women’s Aid, and all the women I have met there. They are amazing and, despite some real tragedies and difficulties, they continue to face life with bravery and extraordinary good humour.

Several victims of domestic violence have come to my surgeries in Grimsby looking for help because they feel they have been let down. They feel that the whole system is stacked against them. They are the ones who have to move out of the area they lived in. They are the ones who have to provide the burden of proof; that all falls on them. They are the ones whose parenting is constantly questioned. They are the ones who live in fear of abuse and in fear of losing their children. They are the victims, but too often they feel that they are treated with suspicion rather than compassion, and that they are made to feel as though they are the guilty party.

The way in which family courts operate reveals a real lack of understanding of the situation in which victims of domestic violence find themselves. As we have heard in so many testimonies today, victims clearly should not have to share a waiting room with their abuser, and they should not have to face cross-questioning from them. As the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), who has just left her place, mentioned earlier, it is too difficult for individuals to be faced with their abuser in a small space.

I want to thank Rochelle, one of my constituents, for allowing me to use her name—in fact, she was insistent that I use it—to highlight her very personal and individual difficulties, which represent the difficulties of so many women. She fled her abusive partner, yet she has been forced to face him in court several times during the last six years. He is using the court system to gain access to her, and as a means of getting around the restraining order. The courts have failed to provide security at their meetings. She has been made to sit at the same table as her former partner in a small room, and he has taken such opportunities to make horrendous sexually derogatory comments to her. This man had twice put her in hospital while she was pregnant. She should never have to be in the same room as him again, but she feels that the family court forced her back into the perpetrator’s presence and under his control. In addition, she has had no access to social housing, because the local authority deemed her to have made herself intentionally homeless, after having fled her home. That is incredibly common. As we have heard, she is not alone in being in such a situation.

[Seema Malhotra]

I thank my hon. Friend for her speech. She has highlighted a very important issue, which has certainly become increasingly apparent to me from my casework, about the training given to local authority teams—sometimes in social services and sometimes in housing—that deal with family issues involving domestic violence or domestic abuse. Does she agree with me about the importance of awareness, training and leadership in local authorities on such issues?

[Melanie Onn]

Absolutely. I agree with my hon. Friend that training plays a big part, and there is a lot more that could be done with cross-agency working and understanding.

When I visited a school in my constituency recently, I was really shocked to hear a support worker—she has worked in a school for nearly 30 years, and lives in the community in which she works—say she believed that about one in five children at that school were in families that had experienced domestic violence. The figure is shocking in itself. On the positive side, however, she said it was very important in a school environment that children should feel they have a safe space, where they feel they have good relationships with and can open up to the staff. My hon. Friend’s point about training applies to schools as well.

I believe that a lot of this is unreported violence. Will the Government consider how they can give people greater confidence in the system? People also need to recognise violence in the household as a problem. I think some people accept it as part of a volatile relationship and may not even recognise it as domestic violence. That is where the coercive element also comes in. That makes me believe all the more that good relationships education in schools can help children to realise that those are not normal relationships, and that that is not how loved ones behave towards one another.

Before the summer, I tabled some parliamentary questions relating to the effect of domestic violence on the children who are subject to it or who witness it, and I am very concerned that the Government do not seem to be sufficiently interested in that subject. I asked how many children the Government estimate live in homes where domestic violence occurs, and how they believe the educational attainment of children who experience domestic violence is affected. The answers I received from the Department for Education stated that, although it counts the number of referrals to children’s social care in which domestic violence is a factor, its figures do not include all children who experience domestic violence, and it does not publish attainment data for children who have been referred. Would not greater cross-departmental work ensure that domestic violence is better understood, highlighted and prevented? I worry that those answers show a lack of urgency in tackling this problem.

Finally, and quickly, I want to raise an issue that another constituent brought to me in relation to the Concentrix debacle that is currently being uncovered. A women with two children had her tax credit money stopped two weeks ago because she had been subject to a random check. She was told she was suspected of living with a partner. Concentrix would not disclose the name of the person it suspected to be living with her, and it would not make any home visits. She is a single parent, and she has been left to evidence the fact that she is single. She has now been forced to use food banks and to have meals at her parents’ house, and she has received assistance with her children’s school uniform costs. This is particularly difficult because my constituent is a victim of domestic violence. She has had to set up her life again from scratch to make sure that she and her children are safe. Again, it feels as though the state and all the agencies involved are working against her having a fresh start.

The lack of sensitivity, awareness and preparedness across state agencies—from the welfare system to family courts, as well as the police and the education system—lets down children and victims of domestic violence, and leaves them feeling as though the whole system is working against them.

Court Charges (Access to Justice)

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

I call Lisa Nandy.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

It is Melanie Onn.

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

I beg your pardon; I blame my hon. friend.

[Melanie Onn]

Thank you, Mr Gray; the Minister referred to me as Liz Saville Roberts yesterday, so I am not doing very well.

On the point about people who are unable to pay the costs, for some, a financial penalty is utterly meaningless. Those without the means to pay are without the means to pay, and reducing the cost will not make a difference if they are already severely indebted. If they are not in a position to earn any additional funds, does it not add to the burden of an administrative system to seek to reclaim costs from somebody who clearly is never going to be able to pay them?

[Mr Vara]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for intervening; she gives me the opportunity to explain an important issue. The criminal courts charge is payable only after, first, the compensation has been paid; secondly, the victim surcharge has been paid; thirdly, the prosecution costs have been paid; and, fourthly, fines have been paid. A judge imposes those, and only when all four have been paid does the criminal courts charge come along; and, although set at a specific rate, it is nevertheless assessed by the court’s officers on the basis of ability to pay. That means that the other debts, income and all other such financial factors are taken into account; and then, based on what the officer feels is an acceptable way for the charge to be paid, the money is paid, after the other four impositions have been dealt with. I might add that if an individual has made all reasonable efforts to make the payment and they have not reoffended, then after two years whatever is left is scrapped.