Domestic Abuse Bill

Tim Loughton Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 28th April 2020 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I share the Lord Chancellor’s sense of déjà vu after the previous Second Reading of this Bill on 2 October. Like every good environmentalist, I have recycled my speech from that day. It was an important subject then, and it is an even more important subject now. I am delighted to be one of no fewer than 84 Members who applied to speak today, which shows just how widespread the support and interest in this subject is.

I am delighted to make my debut in this virtual Parliament but, most of all, I am delighted to be called after the fantastic maiden speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Sara Britcliffe). It was the first virtual maiden speech, but there was nothing virtual about its content. We all welcome the latest bloody difficult woman to this Chamber. She achieved her third first today; it was also the third for the Britcliffe family. Following her father’s two unsuccessful attempts to win that seat, she did so on the third try, and this place is greatly enriched by her success.

I said in our October debate that domestic abuse was an important subject, but the coronavirus crisis has emphasised what a big problem it is and how urgently we must find practical solutions. I welcome many of the measures in the Bill, which I am sure will be further improved during its passage. However, in 2019, according to the organisation Attenti, nearly 2.4 million people—overwhelmingly women—reported being subject to domestic abuse. Some 173 women and 13 men were killed by a partner or former partner in 2019, an increase of 32 from 2018. Two thirds of them were killed in their own home. But we forget the hidden toll of the estimated 400 people, again mostly women, who commit suicide each year having attended hospital for domestic abuse injuries in the previous six months.

We know, as many have said, that domestic abuse has flourished during the coronavirus lockdown. As the Home Affairs Committee report shows, calls to helplines have increased by some 50%, and there were some 16 killings in the first three weeks of the lockdown, double the average of previous years. We need smarter ways for women to be able to present and to escape domestic abuse, and smarter ways of safeguarding children who, in many cases at the moment, do not have the early warning system of schools and calls from social workers.

I welcome the measures on the domestic abuse commissioner, domestic abuse protection orders and so on, but they will not have the desired effect unless there are sufficient and appropriate support services available, with long-term, sustainable funding, particularly for refuge place planning and so on. We need suitably trained front- line service personnel receiving cross-agency, complementary and ongoing training to identify and intervene on all forms of abusive behaviour—the sort of cross-agency approach we are beginning to see in response to child sexual exploitation. We must also encourage victims to come forward, and give them the confidence that they will be supported and the perpetrators dealt with, to keep them and their children safe. We need effective intervention, enforcement, support and safekeeping.

I want to focus for a few minutes on children, although I should point out that, contrary to perception, domestic abuse affects older people, too. One in five victims of domestic homicides is aged over 60, and there has been a 40% increase in the last two years in the number affected by domestic abuse. There is also a disproportionate impact on those from BAME communities.

When I was children’s Minister, I never ceased to be shocked that over 75% of child safeguarding cases were linked to households with domestic abuse. Some 770,000 children live with an adult who has experienced domestic abuse. It is the most prevalent risk factor affecting children in need, and we must not forget that around half the residents of refuges are children.

Millions of children are affected by domestic abuse, many traumatised by its impact on their health, their life chances and their life, yet they are seen merely as witnesses to domestic abuse, not victims themselves. That is where I have a criticism of the Bill. As a supporter of Hestia and the “UK Says No More” campaign, I hope that the Government will ensure that children feature more prominently in the Bill, starting with a reform to the Children Act 1989 so that it reflects more clearly children’s experiences of domestic abuse and how that constitutes harm to children.

Support services that understandably were commissioned for adult victims of abuse must also cater for the physiological, psychological and geographical impact on children. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children helpline carried out 663 counselling sessions in the middle week of April alone, showing that child abuse goes hand in hand with domestic abuse. I welcome the Bill and the measures in it, but we need more focus on children, too.