Domestic Abuse: Older People

Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts

Wednesday 14th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con) [V]]

The noble and learned Baroness is right that the effects of domestic abuse and forced marriage are not confined to any one age group. She will also know that 297 forced marriage protection orders were made last year, and that between 2008 and this year nearly 3,000 orders have been made. This must go some way to try to prevent it but the point that she makes about the ongoing trauma post forced marriage is absolutely right.

[Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD) [V]]

The Domestic Abuse Act removed the upper age limit from the definition of domestic abuse and included relatives in the definition of “personally connected” but the elder abuse charity Hourglass found that only 0.7% of crimes against older people result in prosecution. With more tools in their toolkit, how can the police improve on this appalling prosecution rate and make abusers understand that there will be consequences of their cruelty?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con) [V]]

I agree with the noble Baroness: it is very concerning that that statistic evidences such low rates of conviction. It is probably multifactorial: people are unwilling to come forward, as I said earlier, perhaps not even knowing that they are victims of domestic abuse. As I said earlier, training for agencies and front-line staff will be crucial in identifying domestic abuse, bringing perpetrators to justice and supporting those victims in the future.