Domestic Abuse Bill

Debate between Baroness Brinton and Lord Rosser

Report stage & Lords Hansard
Monday 8th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Burt and the noble Baronesses, Lady Newlove, Lady Meacher and Lady Watkins, for their careful and thoughtful introduction to, and support for, both the amendments. I also thank the Minister for his comments at the end of Committee on the Bill, but, as others have said, it is certainly easier for the Government to work with Amendment 13, because the responsibility falls on the commissioner to work with the NHS—whether it is CCGs or hospital trusts.

The key point for me is that there is already the ability to choose your hospital, which we do through NHS e-referral services. For these children, fleeing domestic abuse and probably being moved on at extremely short notice, the real crisis is that they will plummet to the bottom of a long waiting list at exactly the crisis moment when they will need support.

I urge the Minister to consider that particular problem. I appreciate all the arrangements that the Government have made. We shall see what is in the NHS Bill, as and when this is published, but this very small, particular group of children need very particular support. This is absolutely the case for children applying to child and adolescent mental health services, where we know that there is already an extreme shortage of access to these services. The one thing that is true about children fleeing domestic abuse is that they are likely to be traumatised. Delaying their treatment further will give them very serious problems.

On the schools issue, I think it is an excellent notion to use the same duties as for looked-after children. I also want to make the point that I made about NHS services in Committee. Military children should also be prioritised for school places when they move. This should apply also to children fleeing domestic abuse.

In certain areas where schools are full, a six to eight-month gap to find a school place is not uncommon. This exacerbates the problem of the children not getting any part of their lives back to normal. I appreciate that processes and protocols take time, but there must be some interim measures to help these children. There is no doubt that this Government understand the importance of getting children back into school. As the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has said, the impact of Covid and the pressure on schools to reopen as quickly as is safe is completely understandable. These children’s lives are being traumatised by the pandemic—although perhaps not as severely as those of elderly adults. They need a transformation. They need access to school and medical services.

So I urge the Minister to agree to these amendments and ensure that the processes which need to be set up behind the scenes between the commissioner, NHS services and the DfE can happen.

[Lord Rosser (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, Amendment 13, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Burt of Solihull, would require NHS bodies to co-operate to allow children who have had to move due to domestic abuse to receive any NHS treatment for which they had been referred no later than if they had not moved. Amendment 76 would extend the duty on local authorities to provide school places for looked-after children to children who are forced to change schools as a result of domestic abuse.

In Committee, the Government’s response to Amendment 13 was the same as it had been in the Commons: namely, that access to the NHS is based on clinical priority and that a child’s need to access and receive health services is assessed and services provided according to clinical need. The response overlooked the point that, in the case of children forced to relocate because of domestic abuse, if the forced move is from an area where the wait following referral could be 18 months to two years to another area where the wait is for a similar period, a clinician might not see that vulnerable child for a lengthy period—literally years—and that any decisions would not be being made by clinicians.

Nor was there any response to another point made in the debate in Committee: namely, that, since the Armed Forces covenant protects service people’s waiting list position if they are redeployed and the family moves home to a new area, why could a similar principle not be applied to children who have to move home to another area due to domestic abuse?

In Committee in this House the Government said:

“When patients move home and change hospitals, the NHS should take previous waiting time into account and ensure, wherever possible, that these patients are not put at a disadvantage as a result … Where the systems or processes of the NHS are an impediment to equitable treatment for this group, it will be important for the NHS to work to ensure that such impediments are removed, and we will support and encourage that.”—[Official Report, 27/1/21; cols. 1727-28.]


In Committee, the Government made no attempt to say whether they either agreed or disagreed that there was a problem of extended delays in waiting times, or whether vulnerable children who had to be relocated due to domestic abuse do or do not receive NHS treatment for which they have been referred no later than if they had not moved.

Could the Minister, in his response today, give us the figures setting out the extent to which children having to relocate due to domestic abuse do or do not receive NHS treatment for which they have been referred no later than if they had not moved? Presumably the Government would not have rejected this amendment in Committee without knowing what the figures were, and thus the extent of the problem and its consequences for the vulnerable children concerned.

Likewise, on the issue of the provision of school places for children who are forced to move location and change their school as a result of domestic abuse, can the Government, if they are not prepared to act on this amendment, provide figures showing the extent to which they consider that there is or is not a problem in respect of the provision of school place for these vulnerable children who need all the support they can get? Like other noble Lords who have spoken in this debate, I look forward to the Government’s response and hope that it will be a positive one.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Debate between Baroness Brinton and Lord Rosser

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

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, about four years ago, I was among a group of parliamentarians taking evidence from a number of survivors of domestic abuse and coercive control. One particularly haunting case has stayed with me: we heard from a woman who had to flee repeatedly, with her primary-aged young son, from repeated physical and mental abuse by her former partner. They were living in a small flat when her ex-partner broke down the door. He attacked and then raped her in front of her young son, who, when he tried to stop the attack, was thrown across the room and badly concussed.

The mother and son had to flee again to yet another local authority area to avoid being followed. I remember this extraordinary woman describing how, each time they moved, they had to find yet another GP and get fresh referrals to new and safe hospitals for treatment for them both. Each time, they had to explain the horrors they had faced and often went to the bottom of lists for new referrals to specialists, even though they had been receiving urgent services elsewhere. This young boy needed consistent long-term physical and mental health services as a matter of real urgency—not to have to relive the horror in each new town.

This is why I support my noble friend Lady Burt on Amendment 52, which seeks to protect waiting-list positions for children who are victims of domestic abuse. It is to the credit of this Government that the Bill recognises these children as victims in their own right. One in seven children and young people under 18 will have lived with domestic violence at some point in their childhood. The mental damage inflicted on them can be as serious as physical abuse and often much longer lasting.

We know that many survivors of domestic abuse and their children need to leave their local authority in order to be safe, and government guidance is clear that local connection rules should not apply when allocating housing in these cases. However, in health, children who move to a new area and are awaiting healthcare treatment can be required to rejoin waiting lists with a new CCG. This means that vulnerable children with complex physical and mental health needs can wait longer as a result of fleeing an abusive home. Parent victims of domestic abuse may also find themselves torn between staying in an area to ensure that their children can access treatment and fleeing violence, a choice which no parent should ever have to make.

There is a number of academic articles on the long-term consequences for children growing up in homes where there is domestic abuse, and these make chilling reading. In addition to the perhaps more obvious physical and mental health issues, many also develop long-term conditions, such as irritable bowel syndrome. In 2006, UNICEF published its report, Behind Closed Doors: The Impact of Domestic Abuse on Children. It says:

“The particular impact of domestic violence on children must be taken into account by all government agencies responding to violence in the home … Governments must specifically allocate resources to support children who are exposed to violence in the home”.


The excellent briefing from Hestia talks about the inconsistent, even haphazard, way clinical commissioning groups deal with their waiting lists. There is no guidance for them on how to handle those fleeing domestic abuse, stalking and coercive control, but there is NHS guidance for CCGs on how to help members of the Armed Forces and their families. The Armed Forces covenant ensures “fair access to treatment” and protects servicepeople’s waiting list position if they are redeployed and the family moves home to a new area. There is also guidance for schools in picking up any special educational needs of forces children, without the need to reassess them from the start. To the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, I say that this does not just work elsewhere in the United Kingdom, it works when families are moved abroad as well.

A similar principle could be applied to these children, recognising that domestic violence is not the same as simply moving home. The Bill recognises that these children are themselves victims of domestic abuse, and I ask the Minister to consider what action, such as the current NHS guidance used under the Armed Forces covenant, can be taken to ensure that change happens swiftly and that these children get the help they need wherever and whenever they are forced to move home.

[Lord Rosser (Lab) [V]]

Amendment 52, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Burt of Solihull, would provide that NHS trusts must co-operate and work with the domestic abuse commissioner to ensure that when a child has to relocate due to being affected by domestic abuse, they can still

“receive any NHS treatment they had been referred for no later than if they had not moved.”

This issue was raised in an amendment by the shadow Minister in the Commons debates on the Bill, and we agree with its objectives. Children who are forced to relocate because of domestic abuse ought to be prioritised to the extent set out in this amendment because, as the evidence shows, they are vulnerable victims in need of urgent support.

However, in order to receive support from health professionals, children need a diagnosis, and the reality is that, at the moment, people can wait for considerable periods of time—up to 18 months or more—between referral and the start of an assessment. If a child is forced to move to a different NHS trust or clinical commissioning group, they may have to repeat that wait all over again. The cost of the long-term effects of exposure to severe domestic abuse is estimated at between £500 million and £1.4 billion per year, including on education and health services. Providing resources to children in the way and in the circumstances proposed in this amendment could help to reduce that figure.

The Government’s response in the Commons was that access to the NHS is based on clinical priority and that a child’s need to access and receive health services will be assessed and services provided according to clinical need. However, the difficulty is that, in the case of children forced to relocate because of domestic abuse, if the forced move is from one area where the wait following referral can be 18 months to two years to another area where the wait following referral is for a similar period, a clinician might not see that child for a lengthy period of time, literally years, and any decisions made are not being made by clinicians. There should be a way to prioritise the needs of a child who has been relocated because of domestic abuse and has already been on a waiting list somewhere, and that is what this amendment seeks to do.