Domestic Abuse Bill (First sitting)

Paul Scully Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 29th October 2019 Public Bill Committees

[Vernon Coaker]

It is therefore very helpful that the Minister has helped to support your remarks that we are going to see that before clause 10.

[Paul Scully]

Q Welcome to the role, Nicole. You mentioned your views on the gendered nature of domestic abuse at the beginning. Some people have been suggesting that we should have a violence against women and girls commissioner, rather than a Domestic Abuse Commissioner. What are your views on that?

Nicole Jacobs: I understand the logic. Obviously, some of those who have said that are colleagues of mine. One of the things we would all have to understand about doing that is just how broad a remit you would be moving to. That would certainly extend well beyond all the discussion we have had this morning, to do it properly and do it well.

While many strategies and, certainly, the Government strategy is a violence against women and girls strategy—I appreciate that—when I am describing to you the breadth of what needs to happen for domestic abuse, it is a heck of a lot of work. There is a lot of progress to make. In doing that, it will strengthen certain aspects of what we call those strands of violence against women and girls. For example, so-called honour-based marriage, forced marriage—all these things intersect. By strengthening the approach in general, you are addressing aspects of that, but you are certainly not covering the whole breadth of it. That is when I was referring back to my looking forward to working with the Victims’ Commissioner, and certainly the national advisers in Wales and colleagues in Scotland, where there is a lot of expertise on that. If you wanted to broaden my remit to that, I feel I have the background and understanding to do it, but I would just caution that you are talking about a huge difference.

Again, going back to the very first thing I said to you, the reason I was so motivated by this role is the breadth of what still needs to happen. Sometimes, we think, “Oh, we’ve been talking about domestic abuse for years and years and somehow it’s all sorted.” Well, it is really not. It has shaky foundations, and I think that is what we can address here.

[Paul Scully]

Q That is great. That is why I wanted to ask you about the awareness. One of your roles is to raise public awareness as well, but you rightly said at the beginning that you do not have the capacity to do all the public health campaigns and these kinds of things. How do you see your role and capacity to join the dots, whether from entry-level, early intervention for emotional abuse at that stage, through to members of the public and others who come into professional or personal contact with people in an emotional or domestic abuse scenario?

Nicole Jacobs: I guess what I meant by that is that there is not a budget to run a huge public campaign in the same way as those run by the Home Office in the past. That rightfully sits within the remit of what needs to be funded and developed in Government, including in the Department for Education and in public health. My role would be to influence that type of campaign, and I would be mindful that my role would be about asserting what kind of services are needed to underpin that campaign. We are raising expectations and awareness. That is a good thing, but we must have the infrastructure in place to meet the needs of what that would bring.

[The Chair]

This will probably have to be the last question.