Domestic Abuse

Lord Bishop of Derby Excerpts

Thursday 22nd March 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for introducing this important debate. It is crucial that we hold together support for victims and prevention. To get value for our investment we need to push back against the space that allows this crime to happen. I want to offer one or two thoughts about the framework within which resources need to be spent, and about the challenge to the Minister and to local authorities in the complexities that we are trying to deal with. The smaller the budget, the greater the odds against anything working.

Domus—home—is to many people a sacred space where they find their security and identity, and from which they negotiate into the world. That was probably a Victorian creation. The reality is that that private space has often been a space for rules to be made up and power to be exercised in an abusive way. That is a deep reality.

One of the big-picture things we have to consider is how, when we have public values and standards, we enable people to recognise that those should apply in private spaces, and that they should not feel free to run their own circus and make up their own set of rules—often short-tempered and fuelled by drink, drugs or whatever else. Somehow we have to connect the public expectations we can all sign up for, and which many people who get caught up in domestic abuse would sign up for, with the private space in which people sometimes feel free to behave in an abusive way.

The work of refuges is invaluable, and in particular the specialist care—but the point about funding made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, leads to the fact that a refuge is often a stepping stone in a whole process of destabilisation for people. Enormous resources and skills are therefore needed, not just around the refuge but around continuing care and continuing resourcing, for people to become stable and stand on their own feet.

The notion of partnership is crucial. If we are to invest in local authorities having a lead role, there must be an expectation and commitment that those authorities work in partnership with Women’s Aid and other experts on the ground, so that funding is deployed most effectively and the needs and voices of the victims are heard and help us shape the investment. It is the partnerships that allow that connectivity from the professionals and agencies into where the money needs to be deployed.

I will give some headlines from Derbyshire County Council—I work in Derbyshire—about what it is trying to do in this area. The council says that it has made no cuts at the moment, so that is a small sign of hope. The basic problem of victims not knowing where to turn was met by establishing a dedicated team and a phone line. In three months there were 12,000 calls. This is in just one county. The demand is enormous. As we said, there is a hidden demand below those who have the courage to pick up the phone. But it is complicated. In urban areas such as Chesterfield there are drop-in centres, and in rural areas one has to rely on GPs or other public officials. Resourcing all of those people is a massive challenge. There is a male-only refuge in Derbyshire, mainly for victims of arranged marriages. We must remember that, although this is a gendered issue, there is an underside of male victims.

We are trying to push back. In the High Peak area there is a programme in schools to try to identify vulnerable and potential victims. The Minister might like to think about the enormous investment that we make in education for 10 years of character formation for people. As the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, said, with this 2019 plan, how can we ensure that it is not just some gentle stuff about the perfect relationships that created the Victorian idea of the home? It is about the reality of people losing their tempers and drinking too much—all the kinds of things that fuel this. That is a huge challenge for government and educational authorities.

We in Derbyshire also run a voluntary scheme for perpetrators. It is right to challenge people’s criminal behaviour, but we have to look at the possibility of what I call reformation of character and reach out, as we do to victims, to those perpetrators. Again, that is a huge area of expertise that requires investment. We must not neglect the importance of trying to help people who are perpetrators to climb out of that cycle that they so easily get into.

I have a number of strands that the Minister might like to comment on. How can we deploy funds to give priority to partnerships around local authorities that involve victim input so that we can get value for money? Secondly, how can we make sure that education about relationships can be 10 years of formation about the realities and challenges of relationships, which are tough for all of us, and not just some academic enterprise? Thirdly, how can we make sure that we reach out to those who are properly criminalised when love and power go wrong and seek ways of reformation and reconnection often into families, through connection with children and into society?

Trafficked Children: Asylum

Lord Bishop of Derby Excerpts

Monday 19th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I am clear that the national referral mechanism meets the needs of children. As the noble Lord may know, the Minister for Crime, Safeguarding and Vulnerability announced the Government’s proposals to reform the NRM. For children, this ensures that support for child victims is improved by continuing with the rollout of the independent child trafficking advocates. We are trying new and innovative ways to give money to NGOs as part of the child trafficking protection fund.

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of the advisory panel of the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner. I ask the Minister about the role of the modern slavery unit in the Home Office, in this area to do with children and more generally. How does the modern slavery unit help those of us working in this area of children and care for victims? How do we know what its priorities and practices are so that we can best co-operate?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The role of the commissioner should be to assess how the system is working. As I said in answer to the previous question, children should receive the specialist support and assistance that they need according to their circumstances. The role of the NRM is to ensure that a trafficked child is given the appropriate support they need from all the agencies involved to be able to move on from that traumatic experience.

Water: Developing Countries

Lord Bishop of Derby Excerpts

Wednesday 24th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, for introducing this vital issue. The timeframe is pressing and getting shorter. It is wonderful to hear the testimony of colleagues about Nepal and the inspiring story of the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, on what can be done with commitment. However, it is the scale of the problem that we have to mark.

Clearly, water is basic not only to life but to health. Many of us now carry bottles of water because we know it is good for our health. Lack of water causes droughts, which cause death; too much water causes devastating floods; and untreated water causes death and disease on a vast scale across the world. So how we talk about water, and how as a country we contribute to the global management of water, is a mark of how civilised our world can be and the role we can play in a civilisation that takes seriously how basic good water is for human life.

I shall talk briefly about two areas. The first obvious area is how we can intervene when there is a crisis and a shortage of water. In doing research for this debate I was delighted to find that, within a few miles of where I live in Derbyshire, in the small town of Wirksworth the rotary club set up a scheme called Aquabox, which has sent to disaster areas over 100,000 boxes containing hydration units, education materials and cooking utensils. It is an amazing local charity, which received the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service in 2016. This shows, as in the example given by the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, that we can make interventions. My question to the Minister is: how can all those small, passionate efforts be gathered up strategically to contribute not only to staving off disasters but to building creative steps to put things right in the long term and not just plugging the gaps, if I can use that terrible metaphor in a debate about water?

In addition to responding to disasters, the second area concerns the lack of an infrastructure to provide proper water for so many of our brothers and sisters. As the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, and others have said, the statistics of the number of people who lack access to proper water and sanitation, who suffer from the results of contamination and who have to go miles and spend many hours to collect water are horrific, as is the sheer vulnerability of the women and girls who carry the water.

I want to ask a number of questions about big players such as DfID. In terms of DfID’s strategic operation, to what extent can the long-term provision of a proper infrastructure to provide good water be built in to the grants given to areas for development? All the evidence shows that if we do not do that, however much money we put into education, other forms of healthcare, malaria control and so on, if the basic infrastructure for water to provide a quality of life is not there, it is a dubious investment. There will be short-term gains but, in the long term, disease will keep coming and people will struggle.

What leverage do DfID and people like the Minister have, when we are negotiating to give aid and to join in partnerships with aid agencies, to make the provision of long-term infrastructure for good water a part of the deal? Otherwise a great deal of our investment will be far more short term than we hope.

On a similar track, I should say that I am proud of our amazing aid budget and I congratulate the Government on maintaining the percentage. As we decide on how to invest that budget, how can we build into our aid programmes a challenge to the kind of culture that the noble Lord, Lord McColl, and the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, talked about, where people are expected to sort this out locally and get by? One of the problems with water supplies is that we expect the local people to sort them out and get by. They do that by travelling to fetch water and by losing many of their children at young ages to disease. But that is getting by in an uncivilised way. If we can make targeted and strategic investments into a culture that would allow this kind of development to happen locally through investment in infrastructure, we might begin to make some progress. I turn to the third area: DfID often carries out development in partnership with business enterprises. To what extent can they be challenged to push this issue up the agenda through how we work on development as a Government?

I want to make two more brief points. We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, that what is key is the development of appropriate technologies. We have some marvellous research and technological wisdom in this country and through other countries we partner with. That needs to be part of the planning equation and the crafting of the strategy equation. I hope that the Minister will reflect on that for us. Lastly, as the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, said, we have a number of levers in terms of international co-operation. Water knows no borders and so it has to be managed politically as well as practically. It would be interesting if the Minister could share with us the role of the Government, especially through DfID but also in terms of other foreign policy relations, in how they approach the political importance of the management of water and what kind of aspirations DfID may have to see that within its portfolio?