Domestic Abuse Bill (First sitting)

Wendy Morton Excerpts

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

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Wendy Morton)]

Q Good morning, Nicole, and congratulations on your new post. I want to focus on one particular group of stakeholders: victims and their children. I believe they are at the heart of the Bill; I wonder what your thoughts are on that. What do you feel are the right levers for improving the response to domestic abuse for victims and their children?

Nicole Jacobs: Without saying some of what I have said already, I think it is necessary to have the basic services on a very solid footing, in terms of the provision of funding, and to include that for all survivors, no matter whether they are disabled, LGBT or migrants. Frankly, to be the bearer of bad news, there is massive room for improvement in every direction. That would be central to my thoughts about what those levers would need to be—the levers that would enable the funding to be settled and much more stable. Later, you will hear from Jo Todd about male victims and perpetrators of domestic abuse, and I would endorse all those things.

It is not as if people who experience domestic abuse line up at the specialist service door or call. They are most likely to receive support through the nurse, the housing officer, the neighbour or the community leader. There will be a pathway to support. It is interesting to think about those levers individually. What does housing need to do? What does the criminal justice system need to do? I am a huge advocate of specialist courts so that when people access the criminal justice system for redress, the system really pays attention to them as a witness. The levers are different for different types of service and different pathways into support. I know that is not a very succinct answer, but there are many things we can do in every area that would lever support. Some would not need to be contained in the Bill; some would rightly sit in the statutory guidance alongside the Bill. An exciting aspect of this process is strengthening that guidance. I have had sight of an initial draft and was pleased to consider what this would be like and what kind of effect it would have, once it was in the statutory guidance.

[Wendy Morton]

Q In terms of working with others, we obviously have the Victims’ Commissioner and the Children’s Commissioner, and we also have the Welsh Government national advisers’ role. How would you see your work linking in with them, or any collaboration with them? How do you see it all not just knitting together, but working together in this space?

Nicole Jacobs: I always really admired Vera Baird, the Victims’ Commissioner. She has been quite active in this process and you will be hearing various things from her colleagues who work with her. In a lot of ways, the synergy with her office is quite clear to me, because of the breadth of her understanding and her background. I feel the same about my initial conversations with the national advisers—I met with them yesterday—and the Children’s Commissioner and others. Technically, there will be a memorandum of understanding that will set out and make clear the delineation of priority, duties and how we will co-ordinate. Practically speaking, we are off to a good start: I feel really enthusiastic about how we will work together and think about really practical ways to work so that we are not stepping on each other. There is plenty to do and if anything I do not think there will be any stepping on toes; there will be a lot of co-ordinating work and prioritising of what we would like to see done. That should work quite well.

One thing I find is that there has been a lot of discussion about the breadth of violence against women and girls, and that could sit in certain aspects of what I will do but it could also sit well with the Victims’ Commissioner and other commissioners. There is a lot to do to co-ordinate that work, but I feel confident that will happen.

[Wendy Morton]

Q Just one more quick question. You touched on the work of Jo Todd and we talked earlier about the definition of domestic abuse and about gender neutrality. How do you see your role in terms of supporting male victims of domestic abuse?

Nicole Jacobs: I see it in a fairly similar way, in terms of feeling that I would want people to feel I was championing and amplifying their voice, their views and their needs. I would not see it as wholly different in that way. For example, in many aspects of my career over many years I have worked with male victims, particularly in health settings, where perhaps you would be more likely to have people come forward or be able to intervene early. I would see it in a very similar way, but that does not mean it would be the same. We have to realise that there are all sorts of intersections. We have to appreciate the differences: male victims may not need the same provision of services or types of services. I would be open to having these conversations and understanding what would be individually needed for any number of groups, including male victims.

[Eleanor Smith (Wolverhampton South West) (Lab)]

Q Good morning, Nicole, and congratulations on your role. How much importance do you place on diversity in your recruitment, and within your department and the work you are doing there?

Nicole Jacobs: I highly prioritise it, partly because I understand that people who are subject to domestic abuse are very diverse. We say that it is a gendered crime, but all women are not the same. There are older women, disabled women, lesbian women—there are all sorts of people that I would want my office to represent. I really want a diverse range of people represented in my office and being engaged by my office. Put simply, I would absolutely be committed to that, because we have learned in the past that sometimes we have geared our services and responses towards people who might be similar to those running the service.

Over the years, we have learned that we must have a more diverse service pathway. For example, in the area of London where I come from, instead of commissioning one service, there is a partnership of nine services. It is a partnership and it is commissioned as one. That has allowed for smaller, community-based BME services to thrive and be part of the service framework. That is the kind of thing I would really like to see more of and to be encouraged.

There are unintended consequences of promoting the provision of service. The worry is that larger charities will come into the frame and provide more generic services. People who have been subject to domestic abuse tell us that they want many pathways and to know that there are people in particular communities whom they could approach. I am a huge advocate of making sure that we do not do anything that would make small charities even more fragile in that way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Carolyn Harris]

Q Where are you on a register for perpetrators?

Louisa Rolfe: I am concerned that a distinct register, not embedded within established police systems such as the police national computer, the police national database or the ViSOR—Violent and Sex Offender Register—system, adds unnecessary complexity cost and, most importantly, risk. The Bichard inquiry following the tragic deaths in Soham recommended that information about dangerous perpetrators should not be dispersed over different systems. That is why the PND system was introduced. There are established ways of registering dangerous individuals on the police national database. The disclosure and barring scheme system has access to that database, as do other agencies such as probation.

There is definitely work for us to do in the police service. I have been working with the College of Policing on what the principles for managing serial perpetrators should look like. It recently reported and provided a draft report in which it made some recommendations on improved use of tools to identify dangerous serial perpetrators, effective use of the systems that we have, such as the PNC, PND and ViSOR, and effective multi-agency management of those individuals at the most dangerous end, using multi-agency public protection arrangements effectively in the way that we do now for dangerous sex offenders or dangerous violent offenders, because those methods are established and it would worry me if we tried to create something distinct over here.

The draft report also recommended a more proactive use of the domestic violence disclosure schemes. If we have identified a dangerous serial perpetrator and we are really clear about the thresholds, when the police service or any other agency involved in the management of that individual becomes aware of a new relationship, there should be more proactive disclosure and use of right to know for potential victims.

My concern about the domestic abuse register is in the logistics and practicalities. Where do we draw the line? Do we intend to add 2 million individuals to that register each year? What are the risks and implications if your perpetrator is not on the register because you have not reported to the police? Would that offer a false sense of security to victims? I would be the first to say that there is more to do to use the systems we have effectively, but I would worry about creating a list that might present as a quick fix but does not address the risk.

[Wendy Morton]

Q I am really interested in hearing that you are sharing some of the work you are doing in the west midlands. You mentioned Domestic Abuse Matters training. In addition to that, could the police introduce any other measures to encourage victims to come forward to the police in the first instance?

Louisa Rolfe: We have done a lot to improve people’s confidence. If a victim is to have confidence, I have got to ensure that all the charities I work with have confidence, so that every IDVA we have a relationship with, as well as every GP or health visitor who might come across a victim, will reassure them and give them confidence in reporting to the police.

There is a lot of really good work going on nationally. For example, the IRIS—identification and referral to improve safety—project is live in Birmingham and a lot of other places across the UK. GPs and health practitioners are trained to recognise the signs of domestic abuse and to be able to tell a victim in a very informed way what happens when you report to the police. Often, people have a lot of fear about the consequences of reporting to the police, and it is really important that there is immediately accessible advice and support for victims as well.

[Vernon Coaker]

One of the real issues that has dogged us for years is the postcode lottery in dealing with domestic abuse and the different responses from agencies and police forces in different parts of the country. Some do it better than others, and prosecution rates vary, with some taking into account emotional abuse as well as physical abuse. Your role is to try to pull all that together and generate a national standard that everyone adheres to. Is it fair to say that there is still a lot of difference between forces? What are we doing to try to ensure that everyone is raising their standard to that level?

The National Police Chiefs’ Council will say, “As senior officers, we will adhere to these standards. It is absolutely right and we agree with all of it,” but we all know that sometimes it does not always work in practice. How big a challenge is that for each force? What will you do on that and what more could we do to help?

Louisa Rolfe: There are a number of issues here. When I meet with the sector and the charities, I also meet with a representative from every policing region in the UK. Additionally, the Police Service of Northern Ireland, Police Scotland and the Welsh forces are represented in that meeting. We share best practice.

There is a lot to be said for working closely with the College of Policing in ensuring that, when we are developing policy and practice, it is evidence-based. We took a long time developing the Domestic Abuse Matters training with charities and what I like about it is that it is very focused on challenging culture and perceptions. We have run a number of independent academic evaluations that prove that it increases officers’ empathy and understanding. That is the one training that I recommend nationally, and forces are rolling that out.

It is quite challenging: in my own force, the training has taken us nearly a year, because it requires an abstraction of nearly 25% of your workforce to be trained face to face. You need to commit to developing trainers within your workforce who can continue to develop practice and understanding. It is quite a big ask, but we are rolling it out slowly across forces nationally.

On the work on the domestic abuse risk assessment, the DASH tool is very good and still very effectively used by IDVA services, charities and specialists. For many years, lots of forces and academics told me that it was not working for first responders. We have worked with Cardiff University women’s safety unit to develop something that we know through evaluation better identifies coercion and control with first responders. We have worked with the College of Policing to develop authorised professional practice, so that there is one standard, and I work with regional leads and force leads. I publish a newsletter regularly to forces and practitioners across the UK on improvements and the work we are doing.

A lot is going on to improve practice, but some is dependent on local variation and local arrangements. There is a balance—I do not want to stifle innovation. Some of the best work has been developed in forces and then shared. Northumbria has done a lot of work on developing a multi-agency tasking and co-ordination response to perpetrators. That has now influenced the work the College of Policing has done and will be part of the guidance on how to better manage serial perpetrators. One of our challenges is the willingness of partner agencies locally to work with policing to develop an approach to multi-agency safeguarding and management of perpetrators.

Domestic Abuse Bill (Second sitting)

Wendy Morton Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 29th October 2019 Public Bill Committees

[Carolyn Harris]

Q Me too. When you make recommendations, do they have to be taken up by the constabulary, or can they be ignored? What impact do your recommendations have?

Zoe Billingham: We have no powers of direction. We are an independent inspectorate, so our recommendations are just that. A force could, if it so chose, ignore our recommendations. We find that that happens almost never; when it does, it will be because forces have had to prioritise in different areas. Our power is to come back time and again, to check whether the changes that we recommended have indeed been made, and to report to the public—in a clear way, I hope—whether the improvements we thought necessary have been made and, where they have not, to explain that that has not happened. That will obviously affect the grade that we provide to the force in that particular inspection.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Wendy Morton)]

Q Hello, Ms Billingham. You very kindly shared with us some statistics in answer to another question; I noted that 10% of all recorded crimes have a domestic abuse basis. I have heard concerns about the recent fall in the number of prosecutions for domestic abuse-related offences. Bearing in mind your figures and our concerns, what do you feel could be done to reverse that decline?

Zoe Billingham: I wish there was a simple answer; if there was, it would have happened and the changes would have been made. There is a whole range of issues, starting from the moment when the police are informed about an incident, that are leading to an attrition.

One concern, which we want to look at in the work we are doing this year and into next year, is how potential offenders are being dealt with and brought to justice, the interface between the Crown Prosecution Service and the police, and in particular the number of referrals being made to the CPS by the police and the advice on charging that the CPS is providing to the police.

We have not done the detailed work on that yet, but the issue is about the interface between the police and the CPS, the decision on whether a charge should be brought on a domestic abuse-related case and whether—as I often hear from the police when I go into forces—the CPS has set the bar to secure a charge impossibly high. Obviously, if we do not secure the charge then we will never secure the conviction. We hear a lot of anecdotal evidence in that regard, but I cannot give you specific, hard and fast evidence.

One thing that we are doing next year, which may help to shed a little bit of light on some of the areas where we lose victims, is whether the issue of bail and release under investigation is leading to a diminution in attendance of those needed in court and an eventual loss of victims who basically give up, because the timeframe is spread out so long across a whole domestic abuse case. We are doing a specific piece of work looking at the effect of release under investigation postal requisitions, so that we can see the real reasons behind the elongation of the time factors and the changes around safeguarding that may flow as a result.

[Wendy Morton]

Q Just one more quick question, if I may: what difference do you think the 20,000 extra police officers will make in the domestic abuse area?

Zoe Billingham: Obviously the uplift programme, as it is called across policing, is welcomed, and 20,000 officers will address some or most of the reductions in police officers since 2010. There has been a reduction in police staff and police community support officers during that period as well. The crux of that, in terms of how the police respond to domestic abuse, will be where those officers are deployed.

Of course, a whole lot of work will be done to ensure that frontline preventive policing is enhanced through the uplift programme. Although that is not a specific investment in specialist domestic abuse officers, in our view prevention is much better than cure. Clearly, however, forces will need to look at their uplift—what they are going to receive in terms of additional officers—and see whether the stretch in the system that we have identified can be alleviated by effective and smart deployment in a whole range of roles across police forces. That is really a matter for forces.

[The Chair]

We are into the last four minutes, so we must have short questions and short answers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nic Dakin]

Q We heard from the earlier witness that these sorts of services are often seen as low-hanging fruit when pressures are on budgets.

Eleanor Briggs: Absolutely. That is why for us this is the part of the Bill that offers us the best chance we have to get those services. People have already talked about how something gets done when you make it statutory. When there is an obligation, it will be provided. We want these services to be a statutory obligation to provide support to children and families and then we will see it funded. As I mentioned, we have seen children’s services, where there is no statutory obligation. Those, as you say, are the low-hanging fruit and the ones that go when there is a problem.

You say we are putting all our eggs in one basket. This is absolutely key for us and the best way that we can see at the moment to secure vital support. We also definitely want to see children in the definition on the face of the Bill. That is really important in getting a response from all services. Zoe has already mentioned that the police are doing much better, which is great to hear, but we know from studies abroad that the police have responded to children much better when children are named as victims in the definition of domestic abuse, so we want to see that here as well.

[Wendy Morton]

Q Thank you for joining us today. I want to touch on the Children Act. You are probably aware that the Government are considering the pre-legislative scrutiny Joint Committee recommendation on the definition of harm in the Children Act and whether it should be amended to recognise the impact on children of coercive control. What are your thoughts on that? What do you think the impact of such an amendment will be? Also, do you foresee any unintended consequences of singling out one form of harm?

Eleanor Briggs: We really welcome that. We were really pleased to see the Joint Committee recommendation. The Children Act is a fantastic piece of legislation. We are excited its 30th anniversary is coming up next month. It is a great piece of legislation because it has adapted and changed as things have moved forward. As part of that, in 2002, the definition of harm was changed to include impairment suffered from seeing or hearing the ill-treatment of another. That was added in relation to domestic abuse, so that recognition was there. We support the Joint Committee’s recommendation for it to be absolutely clear that coercive control is included. Our research with Stirling University, that I referred to, showed that the local authorities we spoke to felt that social workers still did not recognise coercive control and how dangerous it can be. Research shows that children really do suffer when coercive control is going on in the house. It is also very high risk. There is a high chance of very serious violence related to coercive control, so we support that widening.

We would also like to see the definition change slightly so that it talks about children seeing or hearing—experiencing—the domestic abuse that goes on. This point was powerfully made when we went to see one of our services. We did not prompt them or say anything when we did our initial research, but one of the service managers said: “Children don’t witness domestic abuse, they experience it.” She was absolutely passionate about that. They are not sitting there as some kind of secondary part of it; they absolutely are experiencing that. The Bill provides an opportunity to get that into the Children’s Act and to link it to the definition in the Bill. I am not concerned about it limiting, because from my understanding it was introduced in 2002 to be around getting domestic abuse in there. To get that right and to make sure it is up to date with the Domestic Abuse Bill, now feels like a real opportunity.

[The Chair]

Three more Members wish to speak and we have just under 10 minutes, so questions and answers need to be relatively quick.