Domestic Abuse Act 2021 Committee

Thursday 25th June 2026

(began 3 months, 2 weeks ago)

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10:45
None Portrait Speaker 1
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I'm going to count us down. Five, four. Three. Two. Can I welcome everyone to this meeting of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 Committee, which is reviewing, um, this act which came into being in 2021, so five years ago. And it's what's called post-legislative scrutiny to see if the legislation is working effectively. And there was a call for this to be this review to take place. And we're happy, very happy to be doing it.

And so I say good morning to everyone. And I say a special good morning to two witnesses we have with us today, um, who basically I will introduce to you in a minute. Um, and I just wanted to say that we're in a room which sadly is not air conditioned. So to the viewing public, if you see us suddenly descend into grease spots. It's because ah, and we have two persons appearing online, Baroness Rafferty and Baroness Sugg. And it's great to see that they are.

They're visible to us. Thank you. Now, let me introduce our witnesses this morning. And um, first of them is Natalie Fleet, member of Parliament. She's the parliamentary Under-Secretary of state, the Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls. And and she has served as a parliamentary Under-Secretary of state for in this role since May of this year, um she has been the member of Parliament for Bolsover since 2024. And before entering electoral politics, she has spent over a decade working as a senior trade unionist and serving as an official for the National Education Union, and it's really wonderful to see you.

Um, Minister, and it's Natalie Fleet, and I hope you won't mind if occasionally you're just referred to as Natalie or Miss Fleet now. Also with that, the minister is, uh, Gisella Carr, who's the deputy director of the Interpersonal Abuse Unit inside the Home Office. So welcome, both of you. Now, I'm going to kick off and by just doing a sort of general thing about. The legislation was very innovative in that it really dealt with things that had been discussed, but which were not legislated for.

And so, um, coercive or controlling behaviour is one of the five standalone bullet points in the definition, alongside physical and psychological abuse. And we've heard that coercive and controlling behaviour is, is the overarching concept that binds together all forms of abuse. And listing it as a bullet point, along with other forms of abuse, fails to capture that. And we think that because of that, we're seeing some of its intentions not being relied upon adequately. Um, and so what could the government do to make it clearer to the police and to the courts?What coercive control means within the context of this bill?And perhaps, Minister, you might just have a sense of what that means.

I've heard you speaking about this, and others will have to, um, in, in the Commons. Um and, uh, and you've your expertise is well known. Um, but you're new to the role, so I'm not going to ask you to fill in too much of the detail. I'm sure that Gisella can help us on that, but if you might just, um, generally say, what's your feeling about how the police and the courts are responding to the whole business of coercive and controlling behaviour?
10:49
None Portrait Speaker 2
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Thank you for having me here this morning. And thank you for your kind welcome. I it's wonderful to be sat amongst such experts in your field, which is wonderful. I come to this post. I've been in post as you say, six weeks. My background is as a trade unionist, but the reason that I have an interest in this area is because of my experience, my lived experience. And when we talk about coercive and controlling behaviour, this isn't something that we this label didn't exist.

These words, this terminology wasn't there. It's only since I've been in post that somebody referred to me as a child victim of domestic abuse, and I didn't even know that was a thing. So this is the viewpoint at which I come to my scrutiny of the act, very much from a victim's viewpoint, and looking how how are the people that we want to protect?How good is the legislation at protecting?So I'm grateful that you're doing this piece of scrutiny. We know the impact that coercive and controlling behaviour can absolutely have, and I absolutely recognise, especially since being in this role, the long lasting impact it can have on victims without them even realising it the way they carry it through life without it being even acknowledged.

So I'm glad we have this language now. I'm also glad that we're seeing prosecutions increase. So in 2324, we had 3000 prosecutions. 2425 we had 5300 prosecutions. That's fantastic that we've seen such an increase in one year period. But we know in this room the scale of coercive and controlling behaviour in our communities, in homes, there is so much more to do. So what we've got is really detailed statutory guidance that talks about what people should be looking for.

We're making sure that that's going to be updated before the end of the year, because we want everybody that is using the guidance to have a really clear understanding. And most importantly, if we've got people looking at what's happening, we really need them to never be looking at that individual incident and what is happening in that moment. And instead to see this really profound, long lasting, damaging pattern of behaviour and the impact that that has. So I'm really pleased that the Home Office is funding the National Centre for Vogue and Public Protection.

I met with the leads just this week there, and the the national leads are I mean, it's the fact that it has only been established and only Lasso. It's only been around a year. It blows my mind because we all know that this type of really damaging behaviour has been around.
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None Portrait Speaker 1
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Forever and a day.
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None Portrait Speaker 2
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I'll have a go at answering those. So I mean, what I think is really incredible, which I'm really pleased that we're rolling out into the second phase now is law. It means that when those 999 calls are made, there is a domestic abuse specialist ready to take those calls. That is far more likely because they've been trained to do so, to understand the nature of the pattern of abuse. We were speaking just yesterday about somebody, um, speaking. Somebody leaving a rose emoji.

And that wasn't anything that was illegal when you looked at that incident then, then that was, you know, absolutely innocent. When we looked at the pattern of behaviour over the longer period in the impact that had because of the threats that had been made relating to a rose, having specialists in 909 control centres that can take those calls are really important in terms of improving confidence that we'll get the right response. But you also touched on domestic abuse protection orders. I'm really I'm really excited about these.

So as you know, the first civil order that captures coercive and controlling behaviour, the five pilot areas have been to visit one of them. It was the first thing I did in post, and we're taking the learning from those. That's what's really important. So there's they're feeding into the system and we're making sure that we take the learning and apply it and keep reviewing and make sure that when they get the wider rollout, which will be as soon as possible, we're really ready and they're in a really good place to be rolled out nationally, because the protections that they will offer the women and children involved are just fantastic.

And that's why I'm so pleased to see them. Is there anything that you wanted to add?Because, um, and I think just to say a little bit more detail, if it's helpful about where we are with depots and where we hope to get to, I think we're really excited by the early learnings that we've got from the pilot areas. So the five areas where they're, um, running at the moment, um, it's really important. Depots will have such an impact because they are the first order that can be made in all courts.

Um, but because they involve a wider range of operational partners than perhaps police led orders that we've had in the past, it's really important that as we move to roll them out in a wider number of areas, we have all of those operational considerations, um, fully understood. Um, we have been able to take learning quickly from the pilot areas and reflect on that as we move to roll that out nationally. That's really important. And we've got, um, an evaluation running alongside the pilots looking at both the impacts and the process.

Um, so because we want to be able to take that learning directly from the pilot areas and make sure that when we go to national rollout across England and Wales, we've learned the lessons from trialling them in real life situations. But the feedback that we generally get from police forces, obviously, that's the Home Office area of interest in those areas where the pilots alive is really positive.
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None Portrait Speaker 4
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Yeah. Question.
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None Portrait Speaker 4
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Thank you.
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None Portrait Speaker 3
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Yeah.
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None Portrait Speaker 3
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That's.
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None Portrait Speaker 2
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Yeah. So I think there's two things that I can just highlight on the kind of operational policing side, if that's helpful. And we absolutely recognise the problem, you will know of really a hideous cases. The ministers talked about Raneem case in the context of experts in control rooms. But we know there were issues and challenges around information sharing it. Sadly, something that is raised all too often. Um, and it's something we're really are working to with policing and with um, data systems to work out how we can better address that.

So there is some work that we are leading, for example, in the home office, but working with the Ministry of Justice as well around how we build better link for between orders made in the family court, where many civil orders in relation to vawg and domestic abuse are made, and how that then links back to policing systems. And what we haven't done there is waited for the big transformation that is coming with police reform and with Leeds. We have gone ahead and thought about what an innovative kind of interim solution would look like, so we can build that information picture and make sure that um, forces have the best possible information about the kind of totality of, for example, orders which affect either a victim or perpetrator.

Um, and then I think the ministers obviously also mentioned, um, renames law and the announcement we made yesterday about piloting that in a wider range of areas. Um, and what that brings is obviously a specialist domestic abuse perspective in the control room. And one of the things those specialists are doing is actually helping the call handlers and the response officers to say, think about this incident in a wider context. These are the things to consider as you go and respond. So I don't want to suggest that, um, that we don't recognise the problem.

We absolutely do. But there are some things that we have started to think about how we can, how we can kind of change things to address that.
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None Portrait Speaker 4
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So the definition of domestic abuse focuses on behaviours rather than methods. So absolutely something written five years ago couldn't couldn't capture the landscape that we have now online. And we couldn't predict what landscape we're going to have online in five years. Baroness Casey yesterday and we were talking about, you know, grooming in the way that it was experienced in my community 25 years ago. That couldn't happen right now without there's no way that any of these things are perpetrated without online element.

So you're absolutely right. But the definition of domestic abuse should absolutely capture things that happen online and. The Vawg strategy. We've got specific commitments to tackle online and technology facilitated harm, as well as in the Crime and Policing Act. We've introduced measures to tackle these harms, especially around non-consensual image abuse. Yeah. Within 24 hours of a report, it has to be taken down. And then this is a really exciting. Just a couple of weeks ago, the Prime Minister announced that we will be the first country in the world to have device level controls.

When people have asked me about it and they've said, oh, this is a too big a burden, and how are you going to do it?And every time I have explained it and I've said that this is so simple, the way that you're you can't screenshot your internet banking or you can't record Netflix or. The technology already exists. You just now can't take it. Well, once it's implemented, you can't take a nude photo. You can't share it. You can't store it on your phone unless you can prove you're over 18.

And the receivers got consent as well. When you explain how easy it is, people then say, well, why isn't it already happened?Well, it hasn't hasn't happened anywhere in the world. So I'm glad that we're looking at all of the different ways that we can protect children and young people. And then there's domestic abuse protection orders as well that can capture this. Everything that happens online, which is incredibly important.
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None Portrait Speaker 1
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I.
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None Portrait Speaker 4
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Gisella will have find out if we have an official line. My. So I think that we do incredible work. This is this is my personal reflection that we do incredible work. Making sure that the law is robust and. Then we look out into the real world for the people that come to my constituency office, we. And, and, and the people that I see online. And I think that there is absolutely more that we can do in terms of awareness.

I have been living in this space. I have been professionally working in this space. I care about this space and the things that I've learned in this past six weeks that I didn't know existed, that there is so much more that we can do, because it doesn't matter how well meaning. And the expert, you know how the expert advice that we have and how well it's implemented. If if you can't identify what's happening, then that's, that's, that's absolutely a problem. I think that this is an area that that technology gives us an opportunity as well, because young people do get there.

They get their news, they get there, they interact around social media and online in those spaces in a way that we didn't grow up. So when I look for the, the, the stats around reports and the ages, younger people are more likely to report in the National Crime Survey. And I'm thinking, is that because of an awareness, because of what is and isn't acceptable in a way that that at my age I might have thought, oh, I didn't really like that they would they, they'd more likely to say, that's rape.

You don't do that. If I didn't, they understand more. They're having conversations amongst themselves around what consent is, what it looks like, why it's important. There's absolutely so much more to be done in terms of schools, and we'll come to that. I'm sure we will throughout the session. And then the work that the DfE are doing. But that's I think that's a job and a responsibility of all of us. We are in the bubble and how do we get the laws that we are making and embedding and making sure robust here out into the real world in terms of awareness.
11:13
None Portrait Speaker 1
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Minister, one of the things that has been drawn to our attention in relation to technology is that is that now many other forms of. Technology, not just people using naked photographs of their former wife that they had. They took at times of. When the relationship was in its early stages, and then they put them out into the world just to humiliate and and and, and, and embarrass and, and, and diminish the confidence of their former partner. There are ways in which a sort of a revenge is taken by doing that.

But there's another thing which is knowing where if you have access to your partner's phone, where they are at any given time, knowing if you have those, um, alarm things on your door, who visits her?Does her sister get to visit her?If a ban has been put on members of her family visiting?I know that you saw your sister yesterday because I've looked at the phone thing at the at the, um, the bell on the door and the camera on the door, the business of, of other technologies in the house are following the activities of what women are doing and, and the whole business of even eating habits and looking at what, what you know, and controlling in other ways.

So there's a concern about the wider use of technology. There's also concern about the fact that there are apps now, which we've been drawn to our attention, that are being used to tell, to share knowledge about how you can, um, make your wife comatose or your partner comatose in order to sexually abuse. We all thought that the, the Giselle Pellicle case was a isolated, rather rare and extraordinary thing. And we're finding that actually there are whole networks of men crossing borders whose interest is in keeping um partners who, who are drugged.

And so that whole business of how the internet interfaces with abuse is something that has become. That we didn't have before.
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None Portrait Speaker 4
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Okay. So I think that if you are a victim, if you if this is happening in your home, whether it happened 30 years ago, whether it's happening right now, you, um, don't care about political turmoil that I think we care about here. I think it's a good thing that, that this spans that that there's cross-party consensus and there's absolutely support of the whole House and the sector in terms of tackling violence against women and girls. But I think there are. You have so victims have told me that they feel like they have to project, manage their own.

Their own police case because they have to go to, you know, they've moved because of domestic violence to another police area. And I think that's something that we can do here. I think that we have had legislation around coercive control for ten years, and we haven't had any convictions around it. So I think that that is a huge problem. I think that since being in post, I didn't have experience of being in government. And I, as a victim, I.

So I would be very honest because I think that I think we need to be. I, um, have high. I wouldn't report what had happened to me. I have been groomed and impregnated and I won't report because I don't want to go through the hell and the trauma that that that would bring. I don't want to put my family through it. I've asked them and I don't they've already got enough with me doing this job. They don't they don't need to be retraumatized in that way.

Since doing this, I can't understand why it can't be easier and better. My ambition is that a woman comes to me at the end of this first term, and I say, we, um, we've got specialists in each police force that will believe you. The police will believe you, they will be support throughout that process because we've invested in it. You will then get to court and we will have brought down waiting lists. There will be specialist courts, and we'll have made space in prisons so that there will be capacity there, so that you can absolutely be really sure that you get you get what you need.

And that's what keeps me going. And that that makes me just that's why I do what I do. Even though at times, as I'm sure you can understand, it's really difficult. I then get into government and I understand that for that to happen in a victim's journey, to be able to get that change, that means that we need to get the Home Office to work with the Ministry of Justice to work, which we are doing. But I didn't understand. I didn't understand the silos and the way that I just thought police and courts work together.

I was the kind of person that thought that the government was one. And if you told the police officer something, didn't realize you had to go and then tell it to the courts in a different way, and you have to, um. I think that the landscape of government can feel very difficult for a survivor. And that's why I'm glad we're doing all of this work, seeing it from the other side makes me understand the challenges and why we've got. I mean, if you look at this legislation is five years old and we're only just putting domestic abuse protection orders in place.

And when I asked about why, it's because of the legislative difficulty you get trying to make a difference in the real world when we get them in place in the pilot areas, they're making a difference. And when they're spread out nationally, they will be a game changer. And I do believe in them strongly, but I understand things are difficult for us to do in a way that that people can't understand.
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None Portrait Speaker 8
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I just jumped in.
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None Portrait Speaker 5
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I'm not very good.
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None Portrait Speaker 8
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I'm going to.
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None Portrait Speaker 1
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Do six.
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None Portrait Speaker 1
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Was very good.
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None Portrait Speaker 5
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Children.
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None Portrait Speaker 4
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I think today we're rightly talking about the challenges and the scale of the problem. But I just want to note that I think it is incredible and talks about it's right, but it shows how far we've come that we now recognise children as victims in the way that we do. I can remember seeing a poster when I was little and it said, just because they're in the next room doesn't mean they can't hear you. And I thought, I didn't know people went in the next room.

I thought you had to stand between the. I thought you had to look after your mum. I thought that was your job. The way that we see children as victims. And we absolutely are doing everything we can to support them. It's so important. So I can't believe this only happened in November, but I'm thrilled it did. We have made it the law that police forces must notify educational settings when It the law that police forces must notify educational settings when they've attended domestic abuse incidents, incidences through Operation Encompass.

That's so important. I thought it always happened. It didn't. It's only been happening since November. And it means that I was just absent from school. There were days I didn't go and that was just my job. I needed to look after my mum and make sure she was okay and go to the solicitors or help her with her injuries or whatever it is I needed to do. School was never told. They just thought I was a high achiever and I could just keep going back to school and working as hard as I could.

Now they will be told there's no way that I can fault my school in the way that they looked after me, and it was the place that I absolutely felt safe. And I'll always be grateful. But the fact that they know that that's happened in the home, they can intervene. They can just step in, see if there's anything that that child needs more. That's incredible. And then the DfE, obviously, they lead. On the multi-agency response to children and they are establishing the Child Protection Authority.

This will improve national and local leadership and learning so that children, including those who are affected by domestic abuse, are better protected. And that's really welcome.
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None Portrait Speaker 3
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Can I ask.
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None Portrait Speaker 1
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Strategy.
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None Portrait Speaker 10
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Yeah. There you go.
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None Portrait Speaker 11
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Yes.
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None Portrait Speaker 1
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Temperamental.
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None Portrait Speaker 2
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Okay. Um, so I think there's two things that I'd highlight there, Baroness Norton and first, obviously to just say we absolutely recognise the problem and some of the things we've set out in the Vawg strategy are exactly to um, to identify that. So as the minister's highlighted earlier, we are working we've committed in the strategy to look again at national commissioning statement, and we will do that really thoroughly, led by the Home Office. But bringing in, I think it's going to be at least 4 or 5 other departments across government and working really closely with the Vawg sector, we've already started some of those discussions in the context of PCC reform because, for example, lots of our victim services that the MoJ funds or that we fund in the Home Office for perpetrators go through PCC.

So we need to make sure that, as the minister has highlighted, um, as we move towards police reform, that that also delivers benefits for those services. Um but the minister talks about the multi-year funding that we have secured and, and now competing for in the Home Office, which is really welcome. And I would just add, obviously, that applies to our colleagues across government as well. So MoJ have been able to, launch multi-year funding around victim support, the almost I think it's 500 million from Mhclg, which is into local authorities for part, for the safe accommodation duty.

Um, and also the investment that DHSc is making into therapeutic support. So absolutely recognise there's more that we need to do to, to address the concerns at a system level. But where we've got pots of funding, we are making sure that as far as possible we can do them over multi-year. It's something that we are very keen to do from central government as well.
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None Portrait Speaker 5
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I think I was.
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None Portrait Speaker 1
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Did you.
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None Portrait Speaker 5
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Yeah.
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None Portrait Speaker 4
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Thank you. And you're absolutely right. It is. Um, there's a transformational approach to perpetrators in the Vawg strategy. And I absolutely, really welcome this. One of the things that I have, um, that, that I hadn't thought about before I was in government and you hear about once you're absolutely ingrained in the learning and the sector is that every time we work to make a woman and child a family safe, then that perpetrator moves on. And, you know, if we tackle and have an intervention with the perpetrator, then that absolutely is going to have so much long term good.

It's such common sense that I hadn't even thought about it before. And I am glad that the people that were writing the Vawg strategy had. So we, um, home office is investing £53 million over four years in the national rollout of the Drive project. Its proven approach that targets the most dangerous, perfect perpetrators of domestic abuse. So high risk, high harm. An independent evaluation shows that the drive project delivers a significant reduction in abuse. So we have an 82% fall in physical abuse, 88% reduction in sexual abuse, 75% reduction in stalking behaviours, and a 73% reduction in jealous or controlling behaviours.

Obviously, we have to go beyond the most dangerous perpetrators to achieve our ambition to halve vawg in a decade, which we absolutely will. And that's why we've launched a £74.5 million competition for domestic abuse and stalking perpetrator interventions to make sure that we're targeting all levels of risk.
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None Portrait Speaker 1
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Minister, we had a very good session on on perpetrators and and on these programmes. And one of the things is what you've just said, which is you have to reach beyond the sort of really stealing at the moment with people who are violent but nipping things in the bud at an early stage has been is very productive in any of those, these kinds of abusive behaviors. And so we were encouraged by those who gave evidence that we should be looking carefully at ways in which we can encourage men who sort of feel that they have, you know, violent outbursts of rage and the that's uncontrollable, but they don't want to be like this.

And they want help. And, and we can encourage those people to come and seek help if it's not if it's dealt with in, in the right way at an early stage. And so I just would ask that you take that message away with you because it fits in with what you've just said about reaching beyond the most extreme kinds of perpetrators. But the truth is that stopping this at an early stage is what is what women want, and it's what those who are abused want.

And, and, and it really is going to be the answer. Now, I have the final question. You see always. So I'm just going to tell you that I'm asking you about the evidence that we've received about postcode lottery and, and, and because that can undermine the effectiveness of the act. And so, you know, what we hear is that, you know, there's good places and bad places. But what I really would like your view on is, um, in order to even out the fact that we, we had plenty of evidence about the things that weren't working as well and well enough.

What I want to hear from you and from Gisella is there must be good stories in here too. So, um, and you've given us some of them, but um, we, you know. There are places that are doing really interesting good things and are actually taking this very, very seriously. Um, let us leave with some hope.
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None Portrait Speaker 2
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There's a couple of things I could highlight. And Baroness Kennedy, one of them. I can also try and respond to the point that you just made about perpetrator programmes. Um, if I may as well, because I think that's an example. Um, so the Home Office has for a number of years funded perpetrator interventions through PCCs and as the minister has highlighted, we have a competition out at the moment to expand that provision. And the minister has talked about drive, which is obviously for the highest harm and highest risk perpetrators.

But we do across those Da and stalking interventions, different PCCs have interventions and models at different levels of harm. There are also PCCs who run programmes around children who harm and child to parent violence. So to pick up on the point that, um, you just raised Baroness Kennedy, for example, um, one of the programs that we have previously funded is the Cara programme, which is cautioning, um, I think it's cautioning against relation relationship abuse. Um, but it's a programme effectively that when somebody has their first contact with the police or the criminal justice system for um a da related behaviors or offense, they can be diverted into that program.

So it's really identifying people at the very first time that harmful behavior becomes evident. And thinking about how to intervene early and stop that behavior from escalating. So that is an example of where we have learned and understood some about how, how that can work through evaluation that runs alongside the PCC funding, and then that informs the policy and the decisions that we can make at, um, national level. Similarly, if I think beyond the Home Office, um, one of the really flagship policies in the violence against women and girls strategy is the steps to safety programme that the Department for Health and Social Care are rolling out across NHS England.

Um, so this will enable GPS to refer um patients who have disclosed um being a victim of domestic abuse, victim of vawg directly into a specialist service, um which is a really kind of transformational and important thing because we know so many disclosures happen in healthcare settings. And that is taking a model which has been piloted in Devon and in Cornwall, and what DHS will now do is look at the successes and the innovations from that model learning as well, from what organisations like Iris, I have been doing in the sector for a number of years, and think about how we can take that really good practice locally and expand it out nationally.

That's always something that we're keen to do. And just a final point on, we try to build evaluation as close as we can into all of our programmes. You'll appreciate some of the limitations around evaluation in this area, but what that enables us to do is both understand the direct impact of the programme and the kind of process evaluations around them, but also then where we do, for example, in the drive programme, have an evaluation which shows a really strong benefits and evidence base. We're able to take that then and think about how, how do we apply that learning nationally?And obviously the the end point for drive has been the commitment and the funding alongside that for national rollout of drive across England and Wales.
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