That this House takes note of Her Majesty’s Government’s plans to support victims of domestic violence and abuse.
Baroness Newlove (Con)
My Lords, I am pleased to be able to move this Motion. It has been mentioned several times over the past years across the Floor of the House that, sadly and needlessly, one in four women and one in six men will experience domestic abuse during their lifetime. Even more tragically, on average two women are killed every week by a current or former partner. Today, we must think of those families whose lives have been shattered as they try to cope with the loss of their loved ones.
Across government, domestic abuse is defined as:
“Any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive or threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are or have been intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality”.
Power and control are at the centre of domestic abuse. Insidious controlling behaviour, which may appear innocuous, slowly and surely removes the victim’s ability to think for themselves and erodes their feeling of self-worth. It can encompass physical, emotional, psychological, sexual or financial violence or abuse. Domestic abuse is a complex and hideous crime which knows no social bounds. It affects people from all walks of life, in all our communities. Often, those living at the end of a long gravel drive are the most isolated and the most reluctant to report it.
We must also do more about the economic abuse that is suffered on a daily basis. Surviving Economic Abuse, which I thank for its excellent briefing, has highlighted just how severe economic abuse is, whether it comes from a current or former partner—in intimate relationships, it is just unbelievable. Of those reporting economic abuse, 86% also experience other forms of abuse, and 45% are in debt because of the abuse.
Last year, the Crime Survey for England and Wales showed that more than 2 million people were the victims of domestic abuse, with women twice as likely to be victims as men. The estimated annual cost of domestic abuse is £66 billion, with an average cost for a single victim being over £34,000. The human and emotional costs borne by an individual victim cannot be quantified. We cannot and must not stand by and allow this social ill to fester any longer. Whatever the nature of the abuse, be it physical, mental or financial, it takes its toll and destroys lives.
Last month, I stepped down as Victims’ Commissioner, having spent seven years in the post. I have just come back from New York where, as a guest of the UN, I spoke about victims’ rights. In May last year, the Government launched their consultation: Transforming the Response to Domestic Abuse. Before I responded to it, I was determined to go out across the country to meet victims and practitioners. Hearing first-hand their harrowing and heart-breaking stories has never left me.
Today’s debate gives me the opportunity to pay tribute to those victims and survivors, and thank them all for sharing the horrendous and violent stories of their lives at the hands of someone who they loved, and who they genuinely thought loved them. I listened intently, not only to how their lives were torn apart but to the harm and mental anguish caused to their children, who were innocent bystanders. Some women had lost their jobs, their homes and, sadly, their businesses. I heard about the horrors experienced by victims when challenged by their perpetrators through the family courts, and how the mentality of Cafcass officers is always to meet the best interests of the child. I heard from victims who had to go back to the house they shared with their abuser, because there was no alternative safe refuge available to them. And if they did find secure and safe accommodation, if they were working, they had to pay a fee, along with paying towards a home that they could no longer live in.
My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, who made the very important statement today that this is, in a sense, an outstanding issue from her seven years as Victims’ Commissioner that she has had drawn to her attention. I thank her for that work and for this debate.
This seems to me such a long journey. I met some Women’s Aid workers yesterday who are now getting ready for their 45th anniversary next year or the year after. I had to confess that I was at the original meeting that established Women’s Aid, as I was part of setting up one of the very early refuges in Sunderland all those years ago. It makes me feel very old.
The reason I want to speak in this debate is that I still work with Changing Lives, although I am no longer its chair. It does a lot of work in this area, and I act as a friend and informal consultant to the tremendous woman who runs its women’s services. I am also a member of the Joint Committee on the Draft Domestic Abuse Bill and have just chaired a commission in the past year, whose report is called Breaking Down the Barriers, which worked with women and looked at domestic and sexual violence and multiple disadvantage among them. It was particularly looking at and working with women with complex needs. Nearly all these women have complex needs: they may have an addiction; they may be or have been homeless; they may have a mental health problem. Much of this has come from their lifelong experience of abuse, violence and neglect. As a society, we really have not begun to work out properly how we work with women with complex needs, many of which, as I say, have arisen from domestic violence.
The commissioners worked very closely with women with lived experience—which is how we now term this—of violence, abuse and the aftermath of that. We trained them to work as peer researchers: to ask the right questions and handle how they asked them, and then to deal with the trauma that they were hearing from other women. Each of them interviewed about 10 or 12 women in their own locality who had had the same experience. I met with these women about once a month during the period of the commission. Their stories were, as the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, said, harrowing. But they were also incredibly inspiring. Nearly all of those whom we trained now have jobs, and nearly all of them are feeling really positive about taking better control of their own lives.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, for securing the debate today and greatly welcome the draft domestic abuse Bill. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, I have been privileged to sit on the cross-party and cross-House pre-legislative committee to examine this draft Bill and to suggest to the Government ways it can be made even better.
Like the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, I can never unknow some of the disturbing and moving testimony given by survivors. I went to a meeting to listen to the testimony of adult survivors of child domestic abuse. Over 50 years ago, a little boy in Glasgow, along with his mother and siblings, suffered terribly at the hands of a violent and abusive father. He and his mother, brother and sister walked with their meagre belongings the length of Glasgow to seek refuge at the home of his aunt, his mother having no money for the bus fare, only to be turned away at the door. They had to walk all the way home again to witness yet another beating because there was nowhere else to go—there were no refuges in those days—and the police refused to interfere with a “domestic”. However, your Lordships should not imagine that this attitude does not exist at all today. Police called to a “domestic” today may at least ask about the children but allow themselves to be fobbed off with the excuse, “They’re upstairs, asleep”. They are not asleep. They may be upstairs, but they are awake and listening to everything. So the suffering and the cycle of abuse continues.
There is so much to say, and I am sure that other noble Lords will cover other aspects of the Bill that I do not have the time to include. In the short time allowed, I want to focus on three areas of abuse that some people may not automatically think of, including children, abused men, and abused women who end up in prison.
Children can arguably suffer as much or even more than the abused parent. They feel helpless, guilty, afraid and a whole spectrum of emotions which can haunt them their whole lives. Practically, they may have to move from place to place, missing out on schooling, doctor’s appointments and treatment for the psychological trauma they are suffering. They must therefore be included within the statutory definition, and they must have protected status, similar to looked-after children, to ensure that they get refuge places, protected status on NHS waiting lists, access to psychological help and school places. They must also have the opportunity to mix with peers and be children or teenagers in the community away from the worries of home, to have some adult support outside business hours when the professionals have gone home, through youth services and youth clubs—do your Lordships remember them? The Local Government Association says that, by 2025, there will be a £3.1 billion funding gap in children’s services just to stay where we are at the moment, and where we are now is not good enough by a long stretch.
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The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, I, too, warmly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, for calling this important debate and for holding her office of Victims’ Commissioner for the past seven years. I am sure that her fire for these issues will not diminish because she has moved on from that post. I thank the Government for the draft Bill, in particular the Prime Minister—who has made it a point since she entered office of reaching out to those just-managing families—for her work developing social housing and her courage in pushing that issue. We know that victims of domestic violence may have a short time in a refuge, but they need stable and secure housing so that they can recover from the trauma. The measures that the Government are introducing to make more social housing available are very welcome; of course, we all think that they should go much further in that regard.
I thank the Children’s Minister, Nadhim Zahawi, who recently announced significant additional funding for family drug and alcohol courts. Currently, there are nine of them; founded by district judge Nicholas Crichton, they have been going for seven or eight years. They support parents, mainly mothers, in getting off drugs and alcohol so that they can keep their children and move forward. I suspect that many of those mothers experienced domestic violence in their early lives; of course, through their addictions, they are vulnerable to further exploitation and mistreatment. I warmly welcome that funding.
I also express my thanks to James Brown, a partner in Hall Brown, a family law firm that has led work to resuscitate the Family Drug and Alcohol Court National Unit. His work has resuscitated that unit, which will help to lead work on spreading family drug and alcohol courts across the country, preventing many children going into care and protecting mothers from domestic violence.
I declare an interest as a trustee of the Michael Sieff Foundation, the Brent Centre for Young People—a mental health service for adolescents—and the Child and Family Practice Charitable Foundation, a mental health service for families.
In summary, I stress the need for specialist services in refuges, especially mental health services to support the mental health of mothers and their children in these settings. I emphasise the need to recommit to our universal services, such as health visitors, teachers and social workers. Austerity has been very challenging for them. As a nation and as a society, we need to commit to these caring professionals if these families and other vulnerable groups are to get the help they need.
My experience of this issue includes speaking with various affected individuals and victims. From what I have seen, over time, mothers can be trapped in long-term relationships, as has been said before. One particular example is a mother whose immigration status was uncertain, so she depended on her partner to be able to remain in this country in the long term. Over several years, I saw this confident, hard-working woman lose her confidence and become brittle and prone to tears when facing challenges. Unfortunately, her daughter was led to take her father’s side, so complications also arose from that. Language was also an issue because she did not speak English confidently.
My Lords, I too am grateful to my noble friend Lady Newlove for initiating this timely debate and glad to have the opportunity to pay tribute to her for the enormously hard work she has put in as Victims’ Commissioner for the past seven years. Helen has been an inspiration to so many who have suffered through no fault of their own. As she said when she was created a Peer in 2010:
“I am just an ordinary woman, propelled into high profile by a set of horrifying circumstances which I wish with all my heart had never occurred”.
What she has achieved since then is more than most of us can ever hope to. Her family and friends must be rightly proud of her—and how proud her husband Garry would have been too.
It is extraordinary to think that it was only some 45 years ago, in a speech in the other place, that the late Lord Ashley first used the term “domestic violence” in a modern context, meaning violence in the home. Until then the term referred mainly to civil unrest, violence from within a country as opposed to violence perpetrated by a foreign power. That was at a time when no agency, police or otherwise, intervened in so-called domestics and it was normal to consider intimate partner abuse, if not exactly acceptable behaviour, at least none of anyone else’s business. Thankfully things have moved on, but anyone who knows anything about the subject or has received briefings from charities or other NGOs for this debate, let alone the Library document, knows only too well that violence is still on the rise—although the increase is possibly due, at least in part, to improvements by police forces in the identification and recording of incidents and the apparent increase in the willingness of victims to come forward.
The odds are that most of us will know someone who has experienced such abuse. Looking around the Chamber, the odds are that at least some of us—although not me, as it happens—may have experienced violence. I remember the testimony from the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, in a previous debate on this topic, describing the coercive behaviour he experienced from his partner, later developing into physical violence, all while he himself was a serving policeman.
My Lords, I too pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove. I particularly agree with her opening point on the inappropriateness of using police requisitions rather than police bail when one is dealing with domestic abuse cases. This is something that I see quite often and it is of great concern. I also agree very much with the comments of my noble friend Lady Armstrong and the noble Baroness, Lady Burt. We sit on the Joint Committee for the draft DA Bill and it has been a pleasure and a privilege to serve with them both. I sit as a magistrate in London, in Westminster magistrates’ court in the Specialist Domestic Abuse Court, and I will concentrate my comments on the way we work in that court.
I have been a magistrate for about 14 years now, and in that time we have seen a development of the recognition of domestic abuse as a pervasive ill in our society. The courts have adjusted procedures and sentencing practices and we are still looking at ways to hear cases fairly and reduce the very high drop-out rate of cases coming to court.
I will make a brief comment on family courts. Some 70% of all cases in the family courts have a DA element to them. Of course, that needs to be recognised when we are finding suitable long-term arrangements for children. That is a separate subject and I will not dwell on it now, but I think that the Government’s three-month review of the role of the family courts is inadequate. It is a very complex matter and one of the most difficult things that I have to deal with, so a more in-depth study would be appropriate for the work of the family courts.
The figures for domestic abuse in England and Wales are in the briefing note that we received from the Library. It is clearly a gendered crime in that the vast majority of victims are women, but other groups such as disabled people and elderly people are disproportionately vulnerable. It is also a hidden crime in that it occurs mainly in private, in the home. It is also—this has been touched on in today’s debate—difficult to define what domestic abuse is. The perspective of domestic abuse has evolved in the time that I have been aware of it over the last 14 years.
My Lords, I begin by drawing attention to my interests as set out in the register. I do this because some of what I want to say today, particularly about technology, reflects things that I learned while I was serving as an adviser to a firm operating in this field. I want to make it clear, however, that I no longer have any commercial interests in this area.
Having got that matter out of the way, I add my congratulations to my noble friend Lady Newlove on securing this debate. Like my noble friend Lady Jenkin, I pay tribute to the outstanding job that she has done both as this country’s first Champion for Active, Safer Communities and, more recently, as the Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales, a position from which she retired at the end of last month.
I am sure that my noble friend would agree that neither of those jobs was easy, but I can tell noble Lords that, on the basis of reports I have had from police and crime commissioners around the country, my noble friend has carried out both jobs with great distinction and that she leaves her most recent post, that of Victims’ Commissioner, with the heartfelt thanks and deep respect of all those who care about victims and are trying to help them.
In two previous speeches that I made on domestic violence in your Lordships’ House, I talked about the availability of technology which would improve both the safety and happiness of victims of domestic abuse but which could not yet be used effectively in this country because the courts did not have the power to make it mandatory. On both occasions, I urged the Government to introduce legislation to allow this to happen before more innocent victims lost their lives in attacks that could have been prevented had this technology been in use. I therefore make no apology for returning to this subject again today. We really are talking about matters of life and death.
The technology that I have in mind is a form of electronic monitoring or tagging developed specifically for domestic abuse cases and known as proximity monitoring and notification systems. These systems provide victims with early alerts that their potential attacker is in the vicinity, whether the victims are at home, at work, with friends or on the move. They do this by fitting the potential attacker—sometimes called the offender or perpetrator—with a securely attached radio frequency, or RF, ankle tag and by giving him a GPS tracking unit, which he must carry with him whenever he leaves his home base.
My Lords, I declare an interest as co-chair of the APPG on Victims of Crime. Members of your Lordships’ House may know that I also have a Private Member’s Bill sitting in the queue, on the rights and entitlements of victims of crime. I hope it might achieve a Second Reading at some point in the next year. I echo the congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, on securing this debate, as well as the thanks and congratulations for her work over the last seven years as Victims’ Commissioner. I wish her successor much luck as she takes up the reins. During this period, there has been a considerable movement in support for victims of crime. I thank the noble Baroness and her staff for having been able to focus on and target that.
I will not echo the many statistics shared by colleagues on domestic violence. I want to focus on one of my—I am afraid—perennial comments: until we mandate agencies to deliver support, we cannot guarantee that support for victims of domestic abuse and all the associated crimes surrounding it will be achieved. I was pleased when the Government published their new Victims Strategy last autumn, but noted with concern that we had moved only to holding,
“agencies to account for compliance with the Victims’ Code through improved reporting, monitoring and transparency”,
rather than insisting that these agencies have a duty to deliver the support that victims require. For victims of domestic violence, a very broad range of agencies may be involved, including schools, probation, social services, children’s services and all the different elements of the criminal justice system.
I want to use as illustration a particularly distressing case where it was absolutely clear that the support mechanisms failed. This is the case of the five year-old boy, Alex Malcolm, who was beaten to death by his mother’s partner. His mother, Liliya Breha, had not been told that her partner had a list of previous offences, nor that the probation service had been in touch with him, using her phone to talk to and check up on him. At no point had she been warned that he had any history at all. After her son had been murdered and her partner was found guilty, she was horrified to discover in court for the first time that he had a string of previous convictions that it took the court 15 minutes to read out. That is exactly the sort of support I am talking about: the probation service should be mandated, where it knows that there is a new partner, to work with that partner to say, “Perhaps you need to be aware of past history”. In this case it was not a one-off; he had a long track record. It was an absolute disgrace.
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The first challenge in all of this is to give all victims of domestic abuse the confidence to come forward and seek help. This is, without doubt, a colossal step for any victim, especially when in a coercive and/or violent relationship. It takes tremendous courage for a person so vulnerable to make such a decision, but it is a formidable turning point in their recovery.
On this point, I bring to the Minister’s attention the real concerns that support workers have raised with me about police bail. They have told me that police officers say they cannot use bail anymore, resulting in perpetrators being questioned and then released unconditionally—some are back on their doorstep as soon as they leave the police station. When this happens, it not only places victims at risk but does untold damage to that victim’s confidence in the police, yet again. I am fully aware of the debate between government and the police on this issue. However, I am not interested in the intricacies of politics; human lives are more important than that. No victim must ever be placed at risk because front-line staff are unsure when bail can be used. I want to see the police enforcing non-molestation orders. I want to know that they are using domestic violence protection notices and applying for restraining orders with teeth.
It is laudable that the Government have increased public awareness. There have been greater numbers of victims coming forward. However, while this growth is positive, it places further demand on our already creaking, threadbare domestic abuse services. So I say to my noble friend the Minister: aspirations are welcome, and I truly believe we have a good starting point, but they must be backed up with sustainable funding that makes them a reality for the lives we need to save.
As Victims’ Commissioner, I wrote to the Government on this matter, because the formula of sustainable funding was a priority for practitioners. It will ensure that professionally trained workers are kept on in their roles and, through their relationships, able to raise more confidence and build even stronger victims, becoming survivors. Protecting vulnerable victims, as well as supporting survivors of domestic abuse, is at the heart of the Government’s strengthened response to domestic abuse. The draft domestic abuse Bill and wider package of measures, including the violence against women and girls strategy, will not only bolster protection for victims of domestic abuse but help to expose and bring to justice the perpetrators of this intolerable offence.
Taken together, the Government’s measures seek to make a real difference to the lives of victims of domestic abuse. They create the first ever statutory definition of domestic abuse. They establish a domestic abuse commissioner responsible for driving the response to domestic abuse and standing up for victims. They prohibit the cross-examination of victims by their abusers in the family courts, and create new domestic abuse protection notices and domestic abuse protection orders to further protect victims and place restrictions on the actions of offenders. In my capacity as the former Victims’ Commissioner, I believe that the independence of the domestic abuse commissioner is most important, so that they can hold the Government to account for the delivery of this strategy.
Legislation alone will not be enough to provide all the necessary protections. As Victims’ Commissioner, I visited many front-line services. They provide excellent support to female and male victims of domestic abuse—assessing risk and providing safety advice, housing information, legal protections and support from other professionals. I salute and applaud every one of those front-line workers. Unfortunately, the same level of support is not available everywhere. Victims of domestic abuse deserve better than a postcode lottery of support.
This brings me to the male victims of domestic abuse. We see and hear that male victims have limited access to safe accommodation. To address this, for the first time ever councils across England and Wales will be legally required to house securely all victims of domestic abuse and their children. Local authorities will also be legally required to assess the level of support needed in their area for such victims. I know that my successor as Victims’ Commissioner, Dame Vera Baird, will want to work closely with the domestic abuse commissioner, when appointed, and I have asked the Government to facilitate that. By working together they can ensure that victims of domestic abuse receive the advice and support they need, wherever they live and whatever abuse they have faced.
Both Women’s Aid and Refuge have welcomed the new legal duty placed on local authorities to work together with neighbouring councils to ensure that domestic abuse services reflect the needs of local people. Giving targeted support for minority communities, including support for BME, LGBT and Gypsy, Roma and Traveller survivors, will be the key to success.
Charities also play a hugely important part in supporting domestic abuse victims. There are too many to name them all, but as this is Volunteers’ Week, today is an ideal opportunity to celebrate and thank all those volunteers who give their time and expertise for the benefit of others. This may be in the form of listening without judging, or of advocacy support and giving safety advice to victims of domestic abuse; it may include supporting survivors as they navigate their way through a very complicated court process; or it may be assisting them as they begin to rebuild their lives, their self-confidence and self-esteem. I would like to personally thank Jan Berry from DAVSS; the Suzy Lamplugh Trust; Frank Mullane from AAFDA; Gill Smallwood of Fortalice, Bolton; and Survivors Manchester. I also thank ManKind and Surviving Economic Abuse. Most importantly, I thank my former team in the Victims’ Commissioner’s office for pulling together a lot of briefings and for the kindness they showed to every victim who picked up a phone to speak to them: victims were so pleased to hear that somebody wanted to listen to their lives.
Before I conclude my thoughts, domestic abuse remains a scourge on our society. It requires a comprehensive, co-ordinated set of measures to combat it. We are talking about human lives, not statistics. I read a great quotation the other day:
“Domestic abuse can be so easy for people to ignore, as it often happens without any witnesses and it is sometimes easier not to get involved. Yet, by publicly speaking out against domestic abuse, together we can challenge attitudes towards violence in the home”,
where we should feel safe, and show that such violent and coercive acts are crimes, and not merely unacceptable. I not only believe that this legislation is a starting point, providing measures that are necessary, but that it will make a positive difference to victims of domestic abuse and protect them and their families. This is just the beginning. We can and must always do more. I beg to move.
When it comes down to it, domestic violence happens because somebody in the relationship wants power. That is why we call it a gendered thing. Yes, men suffer from it as well, and their reluctance to come forward is largely because they feel that this is not the image they should be projecting as men. We have a problem all round, and we need to recognise that there is a gender-specific issue with the victims and offer services which respond to that.
Let me explain a little bit what I mean by that. I cannot go through all the recommendations of the commission—I am already well over halfway through my speech—but the women said to us very strongly that they had been best supported when the first person they met had some understanding of what they were going through and of how they may work. Even if they went to a homeless or mental health organisation, or somewhere else, somebody needed to recognise that it had come from trauma and abuse and that that was at the bottom of their problems. If it is not worked with in a way that recognises this, you will never get to the end you need to get to.
Therefore, we recommend that many more workers on the front line across the services be trauma informed—to be able to recognise what happens and what has happened to someone who is presenting, understand the behaviour and work from there from the beginning. When that does not happen, you never begin to tackle the problems for children or indeed the problems of recurrence of the violence and walking into other violent relationships. If we are to stop it, we have to do that.
Too many organisations do not have that, and nor do they have the safe spaces for women. I cannot tell you the number of local authorities I have talked to which think that the Equality Act means that, if they offer a homeless hostel, it has to be for both sexes. It does not and should not be. Women need safe spaces when they are vulnerable so that they will not be prey to the sort of people who have abused, troubled and traumatised them in the past. Without those gender-specific places, that simply will not work.
I have so much more to say, but I can see that my time is up. We have so much to do but, my goodness, if we do it, those women and children will give us back a lot, because they will know what to do in the most difficult circumstances. If we get it right for them, we will have a much better chance of getting it right throughout our society.
When matters get to court, children deserve the opportunity to be really listened to, and not to be forced to see an abusive parent but to be allowed contact when they want to see the parent without care. Children can be used as an emotional football, and it is sometimes hard for courts to know what is really going on, but Cafcass needs to do better in untangling that, and it can make a start by really listening to the wishes of the child.
Men are another category who are not always automatically included when we think about domestic abuse. As has been said, it can be considered unmanly to admit that one has been abused by a female partner. The charity ManKind Initiative reports that nearly half of male victims of domestic abuse fail to tell anyone. Now that the coercive control category has been included in the statutory definition, I hope that men will feel less intimidated from coming forward to ask for help, because they are certainly not getting much at the moment. An estimated one-third of domestic abuse victims are men, but there are only 150 refuge spaces available, with fewer than 50 dedicated to men only.
My final category, not often mentioned, is the plight of women victims of abuse in prison. Well over half of women who end up in prison have suffered domestic abuse, as outlined in the excellent Prison Reform Trust report There’s a Reason We’re in Trouble. The Prison Reform Trust recommends that the criminal justice agencies should routinely inquire whether the accused has suffered abuse, so that it can be taken into consideration not just in sentencing but in supporting those women to live a better life on release. Backed by the Criminal Bar Association, it says that there should be a statutory defence that criminal behaviour was driven by domestic abuse. I would appreciate the Minister’s thoughts on that, and to know whether she is prepared to put that to her colleagues in the justice department.
Overall, it is not a very pretty picture, is it? All sufferers of domestic abuse deserve joined-up help—and here is the rub. I welcome the duty placed on local authorities to provide accommodation for victims and to publish their strategy and range of support services, but they cannot provide everything needed with no additional resources—let alone, in the case of children’s services, at least, with less. Not investing in the future of current victims, and not intervening early to support victims and perpetrators, will cost far more both financially and in human suffering further down the line, when the state has to pick up the pieces of broken lives. That is why the Bill is so important. It is our chance to improve the lives of an estimated 2 million adult victims a year, let alone their children, but only if we are bold, radical and prepared to put in the resources to stop the suffering. Shame on us if we do not grasp the opportunity with both hands.
Some of the young people I have worked with and am acquainted with come from such families. They may turn to drugs for a way out, to escape the feelings arising from their experiences. That can lead to early death; indeed, it did in the case of one young person in my acquaintance. That is an issue. I know another young person from such a background who suffered from paranoia, bouts of anger and, in particular, difficult relationships with women. For girls, such relationships in their family can poison their future relationships with men and put them at higher levels of risk. As we have heard, this serious issue has serious consequences.
On specialist support for mothers, refuges run by charities and shelters run by local authorities are very important. However, a Royal College of Psychiatrists briefing highlighted that these refuges are not always fully integrated with mental health services. Professor Panos Vostanis has worked in this area at the University of Leicester for many years, providing support to families in refuges. He highlights the high level of need of these children—they live in chaotic circumstances, often with high levels of staff turnover, and are often in these settings for only a short time—and the fact that we must target support for their mothers’ mental health if we are to help these children effectively. He has found in particular that supporting family support workers in those settings can be very useful. I suggest that some sort of clinical consultation or supervision in these settings may be very helpful to these families and improve their outcomes. Can the Minister point me to a working group looking at improving mental health support for families in refuges? Would she consider a meeting with interested Peers sometime before the Recess to look at some of these issues in more detail?
I have mentioned the importance of early years in prevention. This week we heard evidence on Sure Start; 10 and 11 year-olds who have been through Sure Start have a significantly lower level of hospitalisation. Early intervention works, yet it has been stripped down in the course of austerity. We really need to reinvest in that area, and that is why the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, made is so important. We need to fund local authorities properly to provide these services. Of course, youth work is important for young people experiencing domestic violence in their families.
What can men do in this area? Men can be good fathers, grandfathers and uncles. Male teachers in schools can be consistent and reliable. It is through these early relationships with men that girls and young women can gain self-confidence and self-esteem. They can also begin to make judgments about what a good man is and perhaps make better choices in who their long-term partner might be. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Someone close to me had been physically abused for years by her husband before her injuries were so severe that she was forced to attend A&E, which finally led to the legal process taking its course. This is often the case. Through her attending hospital, the health service was finally able to reach her and she was taken care of, as are so many others in her position. The health service reaches everyone—victims, perpetrators and children—without stigma.
In this House we are lucky enough to have access to experts on almost every topic under the sun, and I for one am a bit disappointed and frustrated when—for technical reasons, I suppose—we are unable to hear from them on the subject of their expertise. I refer today to my noble friend Lady Barran, founder of the domestic abuse awareness charity SafeLives, who served as its chief executive from 2004 to 2017. We may not be able to hear from her today—although I am delighted that she is at least able to attend this debate—but I am sure my noble friend the Minister is consulting her as the Bill wends its way through the political process. I spoke to her in advance of this debate and asked her what motivated her to set up the charity. Like me, she had a friend who had experienced abuse and she realised that what women in particular really need is the ability to stay safe in their homes, to keep their children in their local schools and, if possible, to get help for their partners. It is also important to have one person to talk to who can assist and advise on all aspects of the abuse. Peer support from other women who have been through similar experiences is also crucial.
But why, in 2019, is it still an expectation that it should be the woman who leaves the family home, rather than that the perpetrator should be held to account and, where possible, helped to change? Unless the behaviour of these perpetrators is addressed, the size of the problem for both women and children will not be reduced. We may be making the current Mrs Jones safer, but Mr Jones is likely to find a new partner, will probably have more children and, in all likelihood, will repeat his behaviour. So I ask my noble friend to consider more provision for perpetrator programmes and one-to-one work with perpetrators to build on the progress made in recent years to support and protect women and their children.
These are complex issues. Every case is a tragedy and needs an individualised approach. But this is the first time in a generation that we have the chance to change and improve the system for millions of people. The Bill presents a huge opportunity to go beyond a traditional criminal justice system approach to domestic abuse. We must not waste that opportunity.
I shall say something more about the work of Westminster magistrates’ court. It is supported by a charity, Standing Together. Complainants are supported through the court process. This time-consuming work is done so that women—and it is usually women who are the victims—understand the process and the likely outcomes of the court’s sentences. Another important factor is that the court will be better informed when making bail decisions. Bail is very often one of the most difficult decisions one has to make in court. The additional information we get as magistrates means that we can make better decisions. All this extra, non-statutory support that we get in Westminster magistrates’ court is paid for by the local authorities—Hammersmith and Fulham and Westminster councils.
I shall go through the extra support we get from the co-ordinators who work in the court. First, the complainants’ wishes are much better understood by the court than may normally be the case outside a domestic abuse situation. Secondly, there is a far fuller understanding of ongoing proceedings in other jurisdictions, other matters that may be coming to court and previous hearings. Thirdly, and equally importantly, the co-ordinator will liaise with social services to understand issues in the family background and the housing status of the men and women involved. Fourthly, we get additional police information—namely, callouts to the home. That can, and sometimes does, colour our decision on bail. There is also better tracking of cases. There is liaison with local authorities through the MARAC procedure, which is the complex recording and research of difficult cases, and with police community safety officers and witness care.
It is evident to me that, while these courts play a central role in ensuring that the guilty are brought to justice, they are, and must be, only one part of a wider co-ordinated community response to the complexities of domestic abuse. Ongoing support of DA victims not only supports better outcomes in court but means that victims will feel better able to leave abusive relationships and live safe, violence-free lives. The management of specialist DA courts is done by the normal court listing process, but we have 10 agencies that regularly sit in on meetings as we review procedures and listing patterns.
As a magistrate, I do not get involved in looking at conviction rates. Magistrates leave that to the CPS and literally leave the meeting when that subject is talked about. Our concern as magistrates is just that the case gets on so that we can have a fair hearing of the matter before us. I know that the Government are sympathetic to the work of these courts, and we have benefited greatly from the non-statutory support of the specialist co-ordinators. However, I believe that, even without that support, the court could do better in addressing the procedures and levels of co-ordination with other agencies to get better outcomes for domestic abuse cases. The statistics in Westminster show that the number of defendants is increasing, the conviction rate is increasing and the number of hearings per completed case is decreasing—all of which helps to give proper support to specialist domestic abuse courts.
If the offender tries to tamper with the ankle tag or leave home without the tracking device, an alert is generated at the monitoring centre associated with the scheme, 24/7. In this way, his location is continuously tracked by the monitoring centre. Whenever an offender fitted with this equipment attempts to enter a predefined restricted zone—for example, within 500 metres of the victim’s home or workplace or wherever the victim happens to be at the time—the technology generates an alert. The alert is transmitted to the victim, who has been given a GPS alarm unit to carry with her at all times. The portable unit alerts her that the offender is nearby and that it would be sensible to leave the area. The offender is also alerted by those monitoring the system that he is entering a restricted zone and should leave it. At the same time, the police are alerted that the offender is heading into a restricted zone and can notify local units that they need to respond to a potential attack.
As I have said, I have referred to this technology in at least two speeches in your Lordships’ House. In both, I pointed out that, while proximity tagging does not deal with the underlying social and psychological causes of domestic abuse, it can save lives. To give your Lordships some idea of just how many lives I was talking about, I pointed out that between my first speech in November 2014 and my second in March 2018, 300 women had been the victims of domestic homicide.
However, this technology can save lives only if the courts have the power to make it mandatory. We have another opportunity to make this happen as part of the new domestic abuse protection orders to be included in the forthcoming domestic abuse Bill. I urge the Government to bring this Bill and these orders into law as expeditiously as possible so that this new technology can be trialled and introduced across the country. I know that several PCCs are simply waiting to be able to mount such trials as soon as the law permits them to do so.
I understand that this technology by itself is not a panacea for domestic abuse—indeed, it is not even a cast-iron guarantee that the victims of determined perpetrators will always be safe from harm. The use of tagging depends on adequate police resources to make it effective. There is no point in the police knowing that an attack is about to take place unless they have the resources available to prevent it. That is why technology by itself is only part of the answer. It must be complemented by adequate police resources and the appropriate legal powers.
I very much regret that I do not have the time to mention any of the many innovative, non-technological domestic abuse prevention and support programmes which police and crime commissioners up and down the country have developed and are funding, often out of their own resources. I have had emails from at least 10 PCCs giving terrific examples of what they are doing. I am sorry that I have not been able to include them, but I suspect that my noble friend Lady Seccombe will tell us something about what at least one PCC is doing in this area.
I do not want to sit down without mentioning the brilliant appointment of Dame Vera Baird, the PCC for Northumbria, as my noble friend Lady Newlove’s successor as Victims’ Commissioner. I congratulate Dame Vera on her appointment. I can think of no other PCC who has done more to highlight the importance of domestic abuse as a police priority. With her experience, both as a PCC and a Minister in Whitehall, victims of crime—and especially of domestic abuse—could have no better champion. Her task is immense and urgent. It is also critical to the safety of our communities. I wish her well.
By the way, I regard “agency” as everything that the victim needs for support. In this case, Ms Breha also lost her right to stay in this country when her son was murdered, although she was moving towards citizenship, because she was here as his parent. The Home Office immediately moved to start deporting her. I know that was put on hold, but at what point do we actually try to genuinely support the entire life of a victim? She had seen her partner jailed for crimes, she had not been told about what had previously happened, her son had been brutally murdered and the inquest had been delayed because of the court case. Her particular domestic violence even continued on the day when her partner murdered her son. He brought the child home and then punched her when she tried to call an ambulance because she was screaming and crying at the sight of her son’s body. Even then she was still a victim of domestic violence.
We also need to consider the view that children’s services sometimes take of mothers. The noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, said that we need to keep families together and ensure that the security of home is there, but a distressing point, also picked up by my noble friend Lady Burt, is the number of women convicted of a crime—some jailed—as a result of their domestic abuse. Louise Tickle said in an article in the Guardian last November:
“Too often victims’ experience is a grotesque indictment of the child protection system that is failing both women and children. A clinical psychologist tells me of one mother who survived a shockingly violent relationship despite getting little support from any service that might have been expected to help. Instead of support and concern for her safety, she lost her children to adoption”,
because she had not protected them enough. She continues:
“In an extraordinary twist, this woman now has a criminal conviction for failing to protect her children, while her abuser remains free”.
That is a failure of the support agencies to work with victims of abuse.
That is why I have asked repeatedly that, where there is at least one serious history of domestic abuse, coercive control or stalking, we have a register. People facing the possibility of future violence need to be able to go to the agencies and say, “Is the person I am with dangerous?” There is a second part to that, which I have already covered: the agencies need to alert partners—usually women, occasionally men—about the new partner in their lives.
I want to pick up on my noble friend Lady Burt’s very good list of things that we need to think about in relation to victims of domestic abuse and their families. While refuges are important, it is increasingly clear that housing is a major issue if people have lost their homes. The idea of a mother and child going into emergency accommodation, which is very stretched, and not having their own private unit other than a bedroom, is extremely worrying.
I conclude by saying that there are some happy endings. I worked with a woman who, along with her children, was the repeated victim of domestic abuse in Watford around a decade ago. The woman had to have panic alarms installed and the police were frequent visitors to the house; she got the support that she needed. Her young daughter at the time was absolutely terrified. The mother is now a leading advocate in Watford. Her daughter was determined that that should happen to no one else, and she is now a police officer.