Domestic Abuse Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 5th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I am extremely pleased to be able to be part of this historic debate tonight. It brings back a lot of memories for me from when I was 20 years old and founding Spare Rib magazine. In the second month of our life, we went to visit Erin Pizzey and her newly opened Chiswick Women’s Aid. It was a first in this country and certainly a first for me in learning a bit about domestic abuse. I remember my horror at learning that almost two women a week were killed within the confines of their family. I thought, in my naivety, that women’s liberation and the newly acquired power of women would mean that this figure would reduce. Sadly, it has not, and today the rate is still exactly the same as it was almost 50 years ago.

For this reason and many others, I so welcome the passage of this Bill, and applaud the efforts of so many people who have pulled it all together. When I was a journalist and writing about this, I used to think that if all these women were killed together on one day the whole world would stop and take notice, but somehow this drip feed of pure horror has gone on under our noses. I thank everyone who has made it this far.

I would like to add a very particular and personal note—the question of alcohol in relation to domestic abuse. Twenty-five per cent to 50% of cases of domestic abuse involve alcohol—certainly mostly in the case of the abuser but often in the case of the victim as well. Moving someone to a new location and getting them out of immediate danger is obviously of paramount importance—I cannot stress that enough—but, as they say in certain organisations, just moving does not necessarily remove the problem. If the drinking is not stopped, or at least in some way modified, the victim will go on receiving the abuse.

I have a young cousin who is the superintendent of a police force outside Reading and I spoke to her yesterday about this. She said that out of 50 calls they get every day, over 25 concern domestic abuse, and a huge number of those involve alcohol.

I have been lucky in my life. I have had problems with alcohol but have been able to afford good treatment, including in-house treatment, to help me overcome the situation and to lead a full and happy life. But when I consider the prospect of being on your own with an addiction problem, having coped with a domestic abuse problem, and trying to pull your life back together without sufficient support, I wonder how many women, or indeed men, can do it. So I would like to see added to the Bill provision for sufficient funding and scope for treatment and help for people in this situation, so that they get the support they need. It is only by breaking patterns of dependency that we can stop people re-entering the same kinds of relationships.

My dear little cousin, Felicity—she is not little any more—said that in many cases the police are called to, they see the address, look round the station and say, “Here we go again. It’s probably going to be bad, they’re going to be drunk and she’s going to have a black eye. This is going to go on.”

I would love to meet the Minister to ask whether there is anything that I can do, from my personal experience, to help. It is of great importance that we understand alcohol’s role in these horrible crimes and situations in which both perpetrators and victims are themselves the victims of addiction and troubled lives. They need help to move on.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 27th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

I have received one request to speak after the Minister, from the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, the Committee has every reason to be grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, because these are all very important announcements; I thank everyone involved, and it is very good to be speaking to this group. This subject is not just close to my heart but has been part of my life. I was very pleased to hear in the Minister’s response how many things are going to be in place to deal with alcoholism, in particular. I very much look forward to Dame Carol Black’s review—I know how brilliant she is—and I also welcome the news about sobriety tags. I just want to make a few points, some of them personal.

The link between alcohol and domestic abuse is well known, and yet, strangely, it is often not at the forefront of the debate. Some 55% of domestic abuse cases involve alcohol or some kind of substance, and women who drink themselves are 15 times more likely to be abused than women who do not. I am not going to repeat the stats; one only has to read the excellent contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Marks, on Monday night to get a good picture of how solid the evidence is. Drunk people, both men and women, are more likely to abuse or be abused than those who are not. Alcohol itself is not the culprit, and it should never be an excuse for behaviour. However, I believe that it is so tightly woven into the problem that it must be treated as part of the recovery process.

I am very glad that, as a result of the Bill, the crime of domestic abuse will be better dealt with and we will have more refuges. I also welcome the commissioner. But if we do not study, understand and treat alcoholism, then we are not doing our job.

Alcoholics, when they are drinking and when they are addicted to alcohol, are really difficult to deal with. Alcohol, as people say, is both cunning, baffling and powerful. I know that, in my life, I have drunk to excess. I do not drink now and I have not done for many years, but alcoholism will be with me for the rest of my life. It is very hard to break that cycle without help, and there are far too few treatment centres in this country. I know—again, from my own experience and that of people I know—that doctors and general hospitals do not like disruptive alcoholics, who are really hard to treat and who take up beds. They sober up and are then sent back into the world, where they start drinking again. People, especially women, keep alcoholism a secret. It is seen still as an issue of shame in this country, which is one reason I have always spoken publicly about it, throughout my life.

If we do not stop the cycle, the same thing happens again. Abuse is a spiral, in much the same way as addiction, and a drunk abuser will seek a victim. A woman who drinks herself and who has, probably as a consequence, the lower self-esteem that goes along with it, will almost inevitably partner up with the kind of bloke who will, ultimately, abuse her. That is what you do when you think you are not worth anything, because you are the person in our society who cannot handle alcohol like everybody else does.

Personally, I cannot think of a more difficult thing—it is almost impossible—than to be a woman with kids who is the victim of domestic abuse and a drinker herself. Yes, the council may find you a refuge, but, when that is over and you have to go back to the world, if you do not have some solid help to get through that addiction, you are going to end up back where you were, and the saga goes on and on.

The need to break this cycle must be a fundamental, core part of the commissioner’s remit. She needs all the expertise to support her and she needs money to enable her to make the right decisions. No one in their wildest miseries or nightmares would want to be addicted to any substance, from a bottle, a needle or a pill—it is a misery you would not wish on anyone. But once there, it takes some time and patience. I have been lucky; I have been able to afford the help I needed, but this should not be an issue of money.

As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said earlier in this debate, deep cuts have been made to addiction services in this country since 2013-14. It means that the 8.4 million potentially high-risk drinkers—that is an awful lot—and the hundreds with opiate addictions, are not getting the right help. It is an insane situation, because for every addict or alcoholic, it is reckoned that at least five people are swept into the madness and distress. It costs money: to the NHS, to the criminal justice system and to society.

WHO figures suggest that 50% of men who kill their wives are drunk or addicted. Helping people who drink or abuse substances through to the other side—through to a chance, literally, to rejoin the world as a useful member of society—would bring so many great benefits. As the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, spoke so wonderfully about on Monday night, so many children would have their lives transformed. As she said, the Commission on Alcohol Harm heard from children who were terrified to go home for fear of what their parent or parents might do. The Children’s Commissioner estimates that there are more than half a million children living in households where domestic abuse, along with drink and substance abuse, is prevalent.

The alcohol lobby is big and powerful. It has successfully fought demands for minimum pricing in England—though it lost in Scotland—a measure that is known to reduce harmful consumption. This stuff is everywhere. Adverts are well targeted, promising thrills and excitement, and they all too often use sexualised images of women to encourage purchase. This ought to stop. I am the last person who wants to see alcohol sales restricted in any way, but I am convinced that we cannot keep shoving this big problem to one side. Domestic abuse and alcohol are linked, and unless we break the addiction cycle, we will not break the other. We can no longer condemn both the victims and the abusers—who are, in my mind, sometimes also victims—to the shadows.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

There is very little of what the noble Baroness said with which I would disagree. The cycle of abuse—whether that cycle is generational or whether it goes from spouse to partner and then reaches down to the children—is ever present and it needs to be broken. I agree that the links between alcohol abuse—not alcohol use but alcohol abuse—and domestic abuse are very well known. On people getting the help they need, it is absolutely clear that support for alcohol or substance misuse should mean that people can access the right services, which are commissioned by local authorities.

The noble Baroness made a point about the domestic abuse commissioner. It has been interesting in these debates that, on the one hand, the independence of the commissioner has been very much promoted, and I totally agree with that. On the other, we are by increment, through the debates in this House, trying to add additional remits and stymie her independence. She is an expert in her field. I know that she will make those links. I talk about troubled families quite a lot in the things that I say. That is because I have seen the way in which multi-agency interventions can be so effective at spotting things such as domestic abuse. The advent of that programme spotted an awful lot of domestic abuse previously unknown—and not only previously unknown but at the heart of the problems that these families were facing. We all know that when a big football match is on, women are quite often hyper-vigilant, knowing that, whatever way the game goes, they will bear the brunt of it—mainly as a result of the use of alcohol.

The noble Baroness also asked me about minimum pricing, which Scotland has introduced. We are keeping it under review as it is implemented in Scotland.