Domestic Abuse Bill (First sitting)

Victoria Atkins Excerpts

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

[The Chair]

Splendid. You are projecting your voice well—we can all hear you—so that is a good start.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)]

Q It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. Before I start the questioning, for the sake of completeness, I will say that I used to practise as a criminal barrister and prosecuted for the Crown Prosecution Service and other prosecuting agencies.

Ms Jacobs, congratulations on being the designate Domestic Abuse Commissioner. You have explained your expertise and experience in this area. Could you please help us with your thoughts on how you see the role of the Domestic Abuse Commissioner? What do you hope to achieve?

Nicole Jacobs: I was attracted to apply for the role at the start of the year because I feel, having worked for many years, that there is a real need for public leadership and an independent commissioner to hold the Government to account and look at the provision of service across England and Wales. You will have heard the term postcode lottery, and you will probably hear it many times in the next few sittings. I have worked in the field for more than 20 years and know what it feels like for people who are subject to domestic abuse, how services change and how the response of statutory services will differ from area to area.

My vision for the role is to instil a co-ordinated community response to domestic abuse, where essentially you have specialist services—we all know that victims of domestic abuse say time and time again that such services make a life-changing difference, and that has been well evaluated—with the survivor voice at the centre of the response; and where all entities, including housing, health, the criminal justice system and community and religious groups, are doing their part to address domestic abuse properly, as they should.

That is why I loved the job description set out for this role, which is about mapping provision and looking at our findings from homicide reviews. I have just come from an organisation that, sadly, has chaired over 60 homicide reviews. The idea of co-ordinating the learning from those reviews highly motivates me, as well as other aspects of the co-ordinated response.

Tangibly, what I would like to set out and do, as quickly as possible, is to get on with that mapping and really help to shine a light not only on where practice is lacking but on where there is good practice, because we need to emulate that and really push for that to be much more common across England and Wales.

[Victoria Atkins]

Q Thank you; that was most helpful. Your current title is designate Domestic Abuse Commissioner, because you will not possess statutory powers until the Bill becomes an Act. To help the Committee to put the framework in place—I suspect you may be asked questions about this—what are your thoughts on the statutory powers that you are given under the Bill?

Nicole Jacobs: I have been in post for a month, and one of the things that has struck me already—I was not fully expecting the breadth of this—is how much survivors and people who work in the sector and elsewhere have embraced the idea of this role. I understand the idea of public leadership in the role and what that means to people, but the powers that the Bill will give my office are critical.

I am an expert in domestic abuse, not in commissioners’ powers, but I have done a bit of looking around and talking to other commissioners and I have had in-depth talks at the Home Office about this. Essentially, I feel that the powers in the Bill are fit for purpose, as far as I understand them. Obviously, I will defer to you if you think they should be strengthened, but what I like about them as they are set out is the ability to table reports to the Home Secretary and Parliament, and the timeframe in which the Government must respond if my office has made recommendations in those reports. I know from having talked to other commissioners that that is very important. The ability to redact information in my reports is limited; there have to be compelling reasons.

You know all those details, but the powers are quite well set out and have been well thought through, as far as I am concerned. Having said that, more power is fine with me, so if you, in the course of your duties, come across things that you feel would improve the independence and power of my office, I would certainly welcome that.

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

Q Good morning and welcome. It is an absolute pleasure to have you here. I am interested to hear you say that you would welcome more powers. An issue for me, at this moment in time, is whether you need more time. I am really concerned about the fact that the role is part time, and there is definitely an opportunity for us to look at that. I am offering you a full-time job here.

Nicole Jacobs: I would love it. I have said from the very start that I recognise that this is a huge role. I am certainly 100% committed and passionate, and I would welcome working more. I will obviously be building up a team, which will sit around me in my office. I am slowly starting to recruit for it, and I will feel better when I have got it. I always try to point out to people that they should not worry about the fact that there is not a team sitting around the commissioner. There is resource there, but of course I believe that it is more than a part-time role.

I understand from my conversations with the Home Office, which is my host, that there is a real openness to doing that. People made that clear on Second Reading—I was listening in Parliament—so I do not worry about that so much. Once I have been in post a little longer, I can make a decision if I believe I need more time, but I would certainly welcome your support on that. I would really like that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vernon Coaker]

Q Do you think it would be helpful for the Committee see that draft when we get to clause 10?

Nicole Jacobs: I do not know if I am getting into your processes too much here. I think it is being prepared.

[Victoria Atkins]

It is in hand, Mr Coaker. That point is very well understood.

[Vernon Coaker]

Q That is very helpful. So we are going to see a draft before we get to clause 10 rather than at the end. That is helpful; thank you very much.

Nicole Jacobs: I might have said “at the end” meaning published to the public.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Q We have until 11.25 for this session. Will our witness kindly introduce herself and say something about her role?

Louisa Rolfe: Good morning. My name is Louisa Rolfe and I am Deputy Chief Constable of West Midlands police, but I have been the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead on domestic abuse since 2013. The job involves working closely with the sector, the Home Office, the Crown Prosecution Service, HMICFRS and the College of Policing. For four years I have reported quarterly to the Home Secretary at the national oversight group, and my focus is on improving the police response to domestic abuse.

[Victoria Atkins]

Q For colleagues who are not familiar with the acronyms of the Home Office and policing, the National Police Chiefs’ Council is the collective of the most senior police officers in the country. It is fair to say that it is an influential and important body in the law enforcement world. Deputy Chief Constable, how do you rate the police response to domestic abuse?

Louisa Rolfe: I think it is improving. It has significantly improved over a number of years, but I think it is stretched, and it is highly dependent on partnership working with other agencies, particularly the provision of IDVA services and refuge services. As you will be aware, we have worked hard to improve identification, and since 2013, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services has noted substantial and significant improvements in the police response. It recognises, however, that the service is stretched in its response to domestic abuse.

Reporting has gone up by more than 90% since 2013, and some of that is down to improved accuracy in recording and reporting domestic abuse. Up to 40% of that 90% increase could be because we have got much better at identifying things that might have been recorded in the past as a non-crime incident that involved a verbal argument. There is now better identification of things such as common assault and harassment within those incidents. The proportion of reported incidents that become crimes has increased and, despite forces reducing in size since 2010, all have either maintained or invested in their response to domestic abuse, with dedicated investigators and specialists working in the field.

We have worked with the College of Policing to develop the domestic abuse risk assessment, which is an improvement on the established DASH risk assessment process. Evidence-based research helped us to develop that, and with a number of charities we have also developed the Domestic Abuse Matters training programme, which has been academically proven to increase the empathy of officers with victims and their understanding of abuse. Things are improving.

We are at a challenging time for prosecutions, and a number of things are driving that. Between 2013 and 2016, prosecutions for domestic abuse increased rapidly. They plateaued in 2016 and have fallen since. A number of things are driving that—this is about demand and pressures on the police service and the Crown Prosecution Service. When you look end to end at cases, however, it is also about the higher thresholds required for charging, the standards expected of digital evidence, medical evidence, and disclosure. Attrition in cases, post-charge, has reduced dramatically, but the number of cases hitting the threshold for charge has also reduced. I think that has gone too far, and we are working hard with forces nationally to improve the number of cases that achieve a prosecution and get justice for victims.

[Victoria Atkins]

Q In terms of the national oversight committee, which you have already mentioned, that is a meeting at national level, chaired by the Home Secretary, with organisations ranging from you, for instance, representing the police, through to HMICFRS and the CPS but also charities and stakeholders, who are important members of the group as well. Through that committee, what challenge do our members give to you, representing the police, in terms of the police response to domestic abuse incidents?

Louisa Rolfe: There is a quite robust challenge. Certainly, at the last couple of meetings, we have talked quite extensively about the police response to migrant women and ensuring that our work with immigration enforcement services is effective in identifying and recognising the particular challenges and concerns faced by women who may have no recourse to public funds or have uncertain immigration status. There has been an appropriate challenge from the sector in ensuring that there is an informed and thoughtful response, not a clumsy response, in addressing those issues. There has been a robust challenge about the decrease in prosecutions and particularly referrals to charge. I have worked jointly with the Crown Prosecution Service to present to that meeting a detailed overview of the challenges as we understand them and the work we are doing to improve the situation.

[Victoria Atkins]

Q Just to give us an idea of the pressures that domestic abuse in all its forms places on the police, do you have any measure of how many phone calls or reports to the police there are each day or each year, for example?

Louisa Rolfe: The Office for National Statistics collects police data and the dataset in terms of calls to police, reported incidents and crimes, is publicly available each year. We are talking about more than 2 million reports to policing every year. It is important to understand how it is a growing proportion of demand to the police service as well. More than 11% of emergency call demand to the police service is now domestic abuse and more than 30% of violence with injury incidents recorded by the police are domestic abuse. So, it is not only increasing, it is a growing proportion of caseload. It is often multiple issues together: a significant proportion of rape investigations are domestic abuse rape. Honour-based abuse, or FGM, are often issues of domestic abuse as well. It is not a simplistic issue, but very complex.

[Victoria Atkins]

Q Will the introduction of 20,000 police officers over the next three years assist in your investigation of domestic abuse?

Louisa Rolfe: Undoubtedly, yes.

[Carolyn Harris]

Q It is a pleasure to meet you. I have been very happily married for 25 years, but I was married before and it was not so happy. I was a victim of domestic abuse—I have never said this before. I can remember the police coming to my house and saying, “It’s just a domestic”. The only person who was going to be able to do anything about that was me, the following day, but I did not do anything about it, because I was afraid. Needless to say, that marriage did not last very long. But I really worry about people of my generation and older, who believe that this is normal and quite acceptable. In the Welsh valleys, I have heard so many times the expression, “Just give it a clip across the ear-hole”. We are getting better but are not where we should be. That is down to the fact that the generations coming behind us are much stronger women, in the sense that they will not take the nonsense that we took. How many older people are we seeing who we know are victims of domestic abuse but are afraid to report it or to take that step to actually admit it?

Louisa Rolfe: From my work with charities I know that that is a very real issue. It goes back to the discussion earlier about the gendered nature of domestic abuse. Some of it is inextricably linked with people’s perceptions of a woman’s place. Particularly with older generations—I know from charities that people are less inclined to report and can often feel more isolated, and that statutory agencies will be less likely to listen, support and understand if someone has been married for a long time in an established relationship.

We have found that domestic abuse is not restricted to one societal group or one area of the UK—it happens everywhere—but perpetrators, particularly manipulative perpetrators, will focus on the vulnerabilities of their victim. If that victim feels that they do not have a close network of friends or family and that agencies are not likely to believe them—perpetrators will often tell a victim, “Nobody will believe you”—that can be exacerbated by their vulnerability.

It might be that their vulnerability is that they are older and more isolated; it might be that they are somebody with uncertain immigration status and their spouse holds all their papers. There are many ways that perpetrators will manipulate and seek to control victims. This is why I promote the work that we have done on the Domestic Abuse Matters training, because it is about understanding what is behind the abuse and looking for signs of control. A lot of research now shows that violence is not necessarily an indicator of more violence, but that coercion and control tends to be the highest risk indicator that we have in domestic abuse.