Domestic Abuse Bill

Peter Kyle Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Robert Buckland]

I will give way in a moment. I have not yet finished this part of my speech.

I believe that the days of the courts approaching abuse as “just a domestic” have, happily, gone, but my goodness me, we still have a heck of a way to go. I want to give the House one statistic before I give way. In the year ending March 2018, some 2 million adults between the ages of 16 and 59 experienced domestic abuse. That is 2 million people, like the woman I was talking about, whose everyday lives are blighted by abuse and who live with the effects, be they physical or emotional. So we have a high degree of duty to them to pass this legislation.

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

Another aspect highlighted by the Secretary of State’s incredibly moving story is just how long the survivors of domestic abuse have been waiting for this kind of legislation. They have been waiting for 25 years, and indeed for much longer, but for the past three years the Government have been promising to outlaw cross-examination by perpetrators of domestic violence. People have waited for so long, so will he now give a commitment that this Bill will be seen through before the House is prorogued once more? If it was not, that would be the final straw for many very vulnerable people.

[Robert Buckland]

I pay warm tribute to the hon. Gentleman, who has been an assiduous campaigner on this issue. Domestic abuse is predominantly experienced by women, but we also know that there are many relationships in our society in which men suffer in silence. We are speaking for everybody, whatever their gender, orientation or classification. This is for everybody. On the question of the carry-over, that motion is on the Order Paper and I know that hon. Members will want to support it. This Bill will be carried over. That is an important sign of our deep commitment to this issue.

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[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

May I start by saying how much I and many others present appreciate the consensual nature of the debate? As well as praising the leadership of my own party’s Front Benchers, who have been fantastic on this issue, I thank the Government Front Benchers for the remarkable leadership they have shown. In particular, I thank the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), who has met me many times to discuss this and other issues. She was the first Member from the 2015 intake to go into government, so I see her as an ambassador for all of us in that intake, and she has done very well. The Minister for Health, the hon. Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), was previously in the Ministry of Justice. Although he has now been moved to another Department, he is back here supporting the Bill. Those things do not get noticed by people observing us from outside, but they really matter to those of us who are here.

I was made very aware of the problem of cross-examination by perpetrators of domestic violence when a woman came to see me at a surgery soon after I became a Member of Parliament. She had suffered so much abuse—she had been raped multiple times, she had been knocked unconscious and she had been hospitalised more than a dozen times—but the perpetrator of those crimes, from prison, summonsed her to family court on three separate occasions. She told me that on the third occasion she had to ask the taxi driver to stop on the way home so she could vomit in the gutter because of the experience of being cross-examined by the perpetrator of the crimes against her. She told me that if she was summonsed a fourth time, she would capitulate and give him whatever he wanted. She was broken, not just by the criminal who raped and abused her, but by the system that allowed her to be cross-examined by him, and that allowed the abuse to continue under the nose of judges, and in front of police—the very people the state appoints to support and protect women like her.

After a huge campaign, both from Members from across the House and in the media, the Government finally gave way and agreed to make a change. I credit Mr Speaker with granting me an urgent question on the subject in January 2017, almost three years ago, at which the Government relented for the first time and promised to change the law. The right hon. and learned Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald), then Minister for Courts and Justice, said in response to the urgent question:

“This sort of cross-examination is illegal in the criminal courts, and I am determined to see it banned in family courts, too.”

He reiterated the urgency thus:

“work is being done at a great pace…the urgency is there.”—[Official Report, 9 January 2017; Vol. 619, c. 25-27.]

That is important. The woman I mentioned cried with joy at the news that there would be a change. In her words, she felt liberated; a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

However, we must recognise the scale of the suffering that there has been since the Government gave that commitment almost three years ago. While we celebrate the Bill finally bring brought in, there has been much suffering as a result of the delays. As Lord Justice Munby said on Radio 4 recently:

“Every day that passes exposes more victims to what is intolerable. Today, in court somewhere in this country, there will be someone—a frightened victim—being let down by the system. It must stop”.

I pay tribute to Lord Justice Munby for the support that he has shown for the changes.

In the time left to me, I want to mention quickly the role of Domestic Abuse Commissioner. It is essential that we get that role right. We have seen how Brexit eclipses everything in this Chamber; we urgently need an independent, strong voice for victims of domestic violence that can rise above that.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend share my concerns about how this place can scrutinise the new commissioner? I have absolutely no doubt that they will work in the best interests of all our constituents, but perhaps we are not yet sure how we will find that out.

[Peter Kyle]

My hon. Friend raises an incredibly important point. The Home Affairs Committee, after much deliberation, wanted the commissioner to be independent of Government and to report directly to Parliament, and I agree. The Joint Committee on the draft Bill suggested that there be Cabinet Office involvement to avoid conflicts of interest in the Home Office reporting line. It is important to stress that the Children’s Commissioner is independent of Government and Parliament. The Information Commissioner’s Office is independent, even though it is supported and sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. The independence of those organisations, even though they report every year to Parliament, is absolutely essential. That kind of independence would give a credible, powerful, unignorable voice to victims of domestic violence.

We hope that Brexit is in its endgame, but even if Parliament passes a deal, we will then enter years of negotiation and turmoil in this House. We need to make sure that we never lose our voice on domestic issues such as this, and particularly on support for victims of violent crime such as domestic violence. As the Bill moves into Committee, I urge a detailed re-examination of the reporting line to the commissioner, to ensure maximum independence for them, the greatest voice for abuse survivors, and maximum benefit to our body politic from the commissioner’s role. The commissioner-elect is here; I say to her and others observing the debate that I am not criticising her role but making sure that she has all the powers she needs. If she uncovers something that needs to be voiced and that needs to change, and we are too busy, or the media are too occupied, to listen to her voice, and if that is buried in the normal Home Office reporting line, that will be to her detriment.

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[Naz Shah]

I agree with my hon. Friend and thank her for that timely intervention.

Twenty-seven years ago, when Zoora Shah did not have the right services, she went to prison for 14 years. At the time, she did not tell her story. I am talking about this in this debate because I want to talk about specific services for BAME women, especially specialist services that understand domestic abuse, as my former colleague on the Home Affairs Committee mentioned.

It is more complicated for women of BAME heritage. My mother did not talk about being abused because of the concept of honour. I have talked about honour crimes before, and I shall give an example. Had Zoora Shah been arrested by an officer who was non-white, she might have had a different experience. Had she been arrested by a woman of colour, or even a woman of her background, they might have understood her experience of abuse, which drove her to kill. Had she been represented by a female solicitor from her cultural background, she might have had a different experience. Had her case been dealt with by a judge with an ethnic background or who understood her culture, the outcome for her might have been very different. The outcome of my life might have been very different, and that of my siblings and my family.

That is why it is important to have a reflective workforce. It is about having specialist services for women from black and minority ethnic backgrounds who understand the culture. When a lady called Tahmina rang me on a Saturday morning three years ago to say that a girl in Pakistan had been murdered, I could identify it straight away as an honour crime. That girl was not just murdered and buried: she became a campaign and a cause, ensuring that we talk about honour crime and about her rape, and continue to try to seek justice for her.

I have an understanding of honour and the impact of it on me. I will describe it in the words that my dear friend Sal used to me last week:

“Izzat”—

honour—

“is the shroud that covers me, weaved from the threads of my identity, integrity, values and the decisions that I make.”

I am emphasising honour because my mother served extra time in prison—she could not speak up because of the impact of honour. It is a code of conduct in my community by which we behave.

It is apt today that I talk about honour in a different context. Yesterday, The Guardian reported that in my election campaign in 2017 I had felt suicidal because I was dishonoured. My opponent, having a background from my community, knowingly ran a campaign in which a man in the community stood up and actually said, “When we buy a dog, we check its pedigree. Look at Naz Shah’s character, look at her demeanour, her chaal chalan”—as he put it—“and how she presents herself”. What The Guardian did not report was that in this email I equated that to honour abuse, and I do not say that lightly, as a daughter of a woman who at one point in giving evidence about her abuse referred to herself as having become a “mattress” to men. When someone who comes from that background ends up being a Member of Parliament and the shadow Minister for Women and Equalities, sitting on these Green Benches and able to represent the voices of those who are dead and buried thousands of miles away—

[Peter Kyle]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for her speech, which is very wide ranging. She is cramming a huge amount into a short time, but we are learning a huge amount. She has mentioned the importance of having staff who are trained in issues relating to different ethnicities and BAME backgrounds and cultures. Does she agree that now that the Government are finally recruiting more police officers, it is essential that these issues are taken into account, as we have the opportunity to get more people into police enforcement?

[Naz Shah]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comment. I absolutely agree with it, which is why I am so passionate. I teach and deliver the diversity session at the national police strategic command course, because I want my experiences to influence that change so that we have a reflective workforce—the police officer, judge and solicitor I mentioned—for all these women.

Importantly, we must recognise that the experiences of women from BAME backgrounds are different. They impact upon us differently and they have ramifications for us. I was literally feeling suicidal during that campaign because my very fabric was being attacked publicly—honour really does play a part. When we talk about men who kill women because of “honour”, because they have been “shamed”, because it has impacted upon their izzat, I want this House to recognise the severity of that—of what it means. Even today, as a woman, I did not recognise my own forced marriage until I was in my 30s. I did not recognise that I was involved in marital rape until I was in my 40s. That is what domestic violence is.

As a proud survivor, I will say this to this House: we may be taking this into account and putting £300,000 into BAME specialist services, but that is not enough. We need much more for those women. We need that specialist service, in order to understand the experiences of migrant women—the experiences of women who do not have English as a first language. We need specialist services.