Domestic Abuse Bill

Baroness Harman Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton). I absolutely agree with everything she said. I, too, pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield), because what she said will save lives. We are incredibly proud of her, and she should be incredibly proud of herself.

There is so much hope and expectation surrounding this Bill. Every woman who has suffered from domestic violence and every child who has lived in a house subjected to the terror of domestic violence will be watching what we are doing today and wishing us forward. All those who work in the charitable sector and in refuges will be watching what we are doing and supporting it, as will all those who work in the police services. Up and down the country there are police officers who want to do more about domestic violence and are dismayed at how little they are able to do. The Bill will strengthen their elbow in their own police forces, and the same applies to the Crown Prosecution Service and the court services. The Bill will be a focus, not just as a piece of legislation but in the context of a determination to provide more support, including proper financial support—proper funding for services—and to see the whole issue in the round.

I pay tribute to every Member who is present to support the Bill, and to all the organisations that have given their support. I pay particular tribute to the Minister for Women, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), who has doggedly pressed forward with the Bill. Let me also point out, however, that we would not have a Bill to provide this focus had not the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) made it a priority. It is our Bill but it is also her Bill that we are discussing today.

Men used routinely to get away with murder and be charged only with manslaughter, because a man could say that, although he had killed the woman, it was not his fault but hers, as she had provoked him. That was the provocation defence, which led to a charge being reduced from murder to manslaughter. A man would say, “It was only because I loved her: I killed her because I loved her, and she was having an affair”, or “She drove me to it, because she nagged me and wore me down, so she provoked me into killing her.” I am afraid that it used to be called, at the Bar, the “nagging and shagging” defence, while in Scotland it was called the infidelity defence.

It was as recently as 2009 that the provocation defence, used in that way, was put a stop to. Now, however, another version of “She drove me to kill her—I killed her, yes, but it was her fault” has reared its ugly head. Men are now, literally, getting away with murder by using the “rough sex” defence. Although the man has to admit that he caused injuries which led to the woman’s death, he claims that it was not his fault, as it was a “sex game gone wrong”. She, of course, is not there to say otherwise. In the witness box, he gives lurid, unchallengeable accounts of her addiction to violent sex, and explains that the bruises that cover her body were what she wanted. The grieving relatives have to listen to his version of her sexual proclivities, and see them splashed all over social media and the newspapers. He has killed her, and then he defines her. She is dead, so only he gets to tell the story. I will just say a few words about the case of the constituent of the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier)—the case of the young woman Natalie Connolly. I know that the hon. Gentleman will be talking about it in due course, but this is why we want to change the law to prevent men from being able to argue that “the injuries that she died by, she consented to.”

[Hannah Bardell]

On the subject of responsibilities, does the right hon. and learned Lady recognise that the way in which the details of such cases are reported in the media, and the way in which the narrative has grown around these issues, has a huge impact on public perception and on the behaviour of men, and violent men?

[Ms Harman]

Absolutely. I completely agree. Men are using the narrative of women’s sexual enjoyment of being injured to escape murder charges and face only manslaughter charges. Instead of being imprisoned for life, they are out in just a few years. The woman’s grieving family, though, are never free from their loss or the stain on her reputation. What an irony it is that the narrative of women’s sexual empowerment is being used by men who inflict fatal injuries. It is what I describe as the “Fifty Shades of Grey” defence.

The killing of Natalie Connolly is the worst case that I have come across, but it is far from the only case. In that case, not only were the relatives absolutely distraught, but the jurors were dismayed that the man had not faced a murder charge. They approached the relatives on the steps of the court and said, “What on earth happened?” They even approached me, which was unprecedented: jurors had never come to me before. We can change the law in the Bill. There is case law on this. In 1993, in R v. Brown, the House of Lords, which preceded the Supreme Court, ruled that if injuries are serious a defendant cannot claim as a defence that the victim consented. We need that in statute, so that it is right there under the noses of the Crown Prosecution Service and the judges.

For years, men got away with murder, claiming, “She asked for it.” Now we have to shut down this modern version of the defence. I want to say to the relatives of Natalie Connolly that we can see that she was a wonderful young woman. We can see that she was a precious daughter, a devoted mother, a twin sister, a beloved granddaughter. We recognise who she was, and that is what we want them to remember. We will get justice for her in a change in the law.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Courts and Tribunals (Judiciary and Functions of Staff) Bill [Lords]

Baroness Harman Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 27th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

I totally agree. These are useful, practical measures on their own, but they are by no means a solution to the problem. In fact, they are but a very small part of the solution.

I am a bit concerned by some of the Law Society’s suggestions in briefings that some of the broader programme of courts reform is posited on making savings in judicial posts and appointments of about £37.5 million. I hope that the Lord Chancellor—or the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer), when she responds to the debate—will be able to set our minds at rest on that. We can make savings by using staff qualified at the appropriate level in what one might term purely interlocutory or procedural matters, but all the decisions on issues of substance in any case—whatever the sum involved or whatever the nature of the charge, in a criminal case—have impacts on the individuals concerned, and they should, in my judgment, be taken only by properly qualified lawyers in an open court process. That is important.

We cannot allow the valuable nature of this Bill to take away from the fact that we need an injection of resource into the criminal justice system. We are seeing a shortfall in appointments to the High Court bench on a regular basis. A number of hon. Members have talked about the integrity of our justice system and the importance of its legal standing, and the quality of the judiciary is key to that. We also see difficulties in making sufficient appointments—full time, at any rate—to the circuit bench. It is easier with recorders, I grant, because they are able to sit part time, but there is a real issue there.

There is also a real issue, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham knows, about morale. I think that the Lord Chancellor and the Under-Secretary of State understand that and take it on board. I do not expect them to be able to wave a magic wand and solve everything overnight, but it is important to stress these things. Technical changes are useful as far as they go, but they cannot underpin what is essentially a people-based system.

[Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the excellent work that the hon. Gentleman’s Committee does on these and many other issues. I agree that there were perhaps things in the Prisons and Courts Bill that have not found their way into this Bill. He may agree that we should, none the less, take the opportunity of this Bill to try to sort out the problem of the previous sexual history of victims in rape trials being dragged through the court and used by the defence in an irrelevant way to undermine the complainant’s evidence, sometimes when applications are not even made to introduce this material. Does he agree that this Bill is an opportunity to deal with that problem? We know that this is happening, and it undermines getting rape convictions.

[Robert Neill]

I very much respect the point that the right hon. and learned Lady is making, but I must say to her frankly that I am not convinced that this Bill is the appropriate vehicle for dealing with that issue, although it is a real one, simply because the Bill is very tightly drawn in scope and relates to function. What she wishes to do—I understand why she may wish to do it—would have significant impacts on the operation of the law of evidence, which is a consideration that deserves to be looked at on its own. We probably have a shared view as to what we might want to achieve, but I am not sure that this Bill would be the right one to achieve it.

We do need to look very carefully at the whole approach to the way that previous sexual conduct is dealt with in rape and other sexual offence cases, but we also have to bear in mind—I say this as somebody who prosecuted and defended in these cases—that we should not assume that these issues will never be relevant to the key issue in the case. A balance has to be struck, and very often that is a decision that can only be taken by the trial judge in the light of the submissions made by the parties. I would not want us to restrict the ability of the trial judge to make that decision, because they are best placed to do that. However, the right hon. and learned Lady’s point about failure to follow the procedures and make proper application in advance, and enforcement of those procedures by the judiciary, is an important one that we certainly ought to take forward.

[Ms Harman]

Can I go back to plan B, then? Even if the hon. Gentleman thinks that the Bill is not the right place to address such a considerable evidential problem—and there is controversy around this—would he not, at the very least, like to see tucked in under clause 3, “Functions of staff”, an obligation on staff to record, when an application under section 41 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 is made, what evidence was brought forward and what the result of the application was? There is an absence of evidence about what the courts are actually doing. That enables them to say that there is not a problem, when evidence such as that brought forward by Vera Baird, the police and crime commissioner for Northumbria, says that there is a problem. Does he agree that this Bill could at least get us recording that very important information?

[Robert Neill]

That is a very interesting and constructive point, because we do want to have an evidence base. Again, the only caution I have is this: is it appropriate to do that through a form of statute, or is it better done through placing that requirement in the criminal procedure rules? I am going to talk about the procedure rules in a moment. Either way, there should be a means of capturing that information, and I am very sympathetic to doing so. Perhaps the right hon. and learned Lady and I could talk with others about the best way forward on achieving that, because it should certainly be possible, with modern court technology.

Victims Strategy

Baroness Harman Excerpts

Monday 10th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is quite right to highlight the importance of this change. She has campaigned very strongly on this issue, as has the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion). Only recently, my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) highlighted the very important campaigning of his constituent, Alissa Moore, on this issue and the huge impact that that has had on bringing about change.

My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) asks about timescales. We will be responding to IICSA, the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, which plays into this agenda, but at this stage we anticipate that we will be looking to consult early in 2019.

[Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his statement and say how much there is in it that is really warmly to be welcomed. I think it will get strong support from the agencies outside, from the voluntary organisations, and across this House. I commend his approach in dealing with it cross-departmentally. I share the concern of my hon. Friend the shadow Minister: we look forward to this proceeding to legislation.

May I put to the Minister an issue that has been omitted—victims in rape cases who, when they are in the witness box, are, in effect, put on trial by being cross-examined about their previous sexual history? Everyone in the House agrees that that should not happen. A defendant dragging out the victim’s previous sexual activity in order to besmirch her reputation to the jury or to intimidate her out of giving evidence in the first place should not happen, but unfortunately, the law to protect victims from that is not working.

I know that the Minister will be able to get wise counsel from the Solicitor General and the Attorney General, and I know of enthusiastic commitment of the Minister for Women to justice for rape victims. If the Minister does not add this to the strategy, it will be a glaring omission, so will he include in his very commendable approach tackling this injustice?

[Edward Argar]

The right hon. and learned Lady has long been a doughty campaigner on this and many other important issues, and I pay tribute to her work. She is right that this is not explicitly in the victims strategy. I and my fellow Ministers, including the Solicitor General, have heard her make her point eloquently and forcefully, and we will reflect carefully on what she said.