Domestic Abuse Bill (Second sitting)

Mike Wood Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 4th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

I have Mike Wood, Virginia Crosbie and Andrew Bowie, unless anybody else wants to ask questions, and we have nine minutes, just to give you a guide for how long to make your questions.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

Q I will keep my question very short. Somiya, given your terrible experiences, what would you like to see the new domestic abuse commissioner do to ensure that the voices of survivors of domestic abuse are brought to the front of how we respond to that challenge?

Somiya Basar: Today I am speaking on behalf of everybody; I know a lot of women in a similar situation and it is my duty to speak on their behalf. The Government have this opportunity to right the wrongs and they must lift the ban on recourse to public funds. Most of the times, our perpetrators have used that to further exploit and blackmail us, because our immigration status is used against us. In my case, I did not have access to public funds and I was able to come to the United Kingdom and join my family and be with my children.

Time is also of the essence here; if we do not get help on time, it is as if we did not get help at all. No recourse to public funds should be lifted; help should be available to everybody who needs it, irrespective of their immigration status. The only qualification to be in the system to be able to obtain help should be that we are human beings and we should be treated that way, not differently because of our immigration status, and addressed with dignity and respect like anybody else has to be in this country. If somebody was born here and a resident, they would not have been treated as I would have, and this is an opportunity for everybody here to right the wrongs.

[Mike Wood]

Q On the specific point about the independent commissioner to lead on and tackle domestic abuse right across the country, what impact do you think having that kind of independent person established within this legislation will have?

Somiya Basar: I am not following your question. Could you simplify it, please?

[Mike Wood]

Sorry. The legislation we are considering would create a new independent office of domestic abuse commissioner, whose role is obviously to lead, to co-ordinate and to be an independent voice separate from Government Departments, working with charities, survivors and other interested parties. How do you think that role could also be used to ensure that the voices of survivors are heard more effectively than perhaps they have been in the past?

Somiya Basar: I think the answer lies in your question. The voices of the people who need to be heard, and of those who are affected, have not been heard so far. The voice of everybody affected must be heard. The independent commissioner who is going to be appointed will have to raise many issues, some of them related to the immigration barriers. With all the barriers that we as immigrants have, and not being able to access recourse to public funds, I think more understanding would help them understand how to make changes to the Bill, and what is required.

[Virginia Crosbie (Ynys Môn) (Con)]

Q Thank you both for coming here today; you are both incredibly brave. I wanted to ask Somiya how she heard about Southall Black Sisters.

Somiya Basar: When I was struggling and was pleading for help from a number of NGOs, both in South Africa and in the United Kingdom, I was told in South Africa that they could no longer help me because the children were British citizens, and then living in the United Kingdom I was told they could not help me because I was not a British citizen. Then, after exchanging a lot of correspondences with organisations and NGOs in the United Kingdom, a family law firm based in London got in touch with me. Legal aid was granted after a very long struggle, and legal proceedings began. Eventually, my immigration solicitors connected me with Southall Black Sisters, because I had to be here but I had nowhere to stay, no source of income, and nothing to rely on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christine Jardine]

Q Something that has come up several times today is children as victims of domestic abuse. Do we need an explicit recognition of the fact that a child does not actually have to be the victim? Being a witness de facto makes them a victim of the abuse, and that goes forward through their lives. Do we need some sort of recognition of that?

Dame Vera Baird: Yes. I am quite clear that children in a family in which there is domestic abuse are victims of domestic abuse, not bystanders or witnesses. In my view, that needs to be made explicit in the legislation. People have already talked about what could follow—better support, welfare, services and so on. It would also bring them into the Victims’ Commissioner’s remit, where they ought to be.

I think that change would also weaken children’s invidious position in the family courts, where it is possible to find that domestic abuse has been perpetrated by partner A on partner B, but that partner A, the perpetrator, is none the less parenting well. However, if it is understood that a child is a victim of A’s perpetrating violence—or domestic abuse without violence—on B, it will be much harder for the court to find that the person who has victimised them is parenting well. I am very troubled by the presumption of shared parenting that seems to trump practically everything else in the family court. I am very hopeful that, if one expressly makes children victims, that will undermine the strength of that presumption.

However, I hope—far more strongly even than that—that, at some point in the development of the Bill and its passage through Parliament, the Family Law Panel will report, and that what it suggests can be taken into the Bill’s provisions. In a way, to go ahead with this Bill without waiting for the outcome of that review is to miss a key opportunity. Let us face it: this is a once-in-a-generation Bill. They only come up that often, so it should be as comprehensive as possible and should certainly include some recommendations from that review.

[Mike Wood]

Q Dame Vera, there have been suggestions that the remit of the domestic abuse commissioner may be changed to being a rather different, more general violence against women and girls commissioner. What are your thoughts?

Dame Vera Baird: I would have preferred it to be a VAWG commissioner in the first instance, and indeed would still prefer it to be there now. One thing that is very evident—this is obviously not a criticism of the domestic abuse sector—is that the sexual violence sector is underplayed in the context of domestic abuse, which is a much bigger numerical problem, and is seen as something more linked with violence, but actually almost inevitably involves sexual exploitation and abuse.

If you want to abuse your intimate partner, a key tool is to sexually abuse them so that you undermine them even further. Had it been a VAWG commissioner, I think it would have meant that there was a better opportunity to bring forward the sexual violence sector, and to see the organisations in it as very important and needing the same sort of systemic funding that the domestic abuse sector is now beginning to get, particularly following this Bill, if the Government extend the statutory duty, as I know many people have suggested. That will be good for the sector, but the sexual violence sector needs funding just as effectively, so I think a VAWG commissioner would have been good.

I do not know why, but, in a sense, the Bill seems to me, from a sort of small p political point of view, to be slightly hung in the past. I understood why it was kept narrow, and that it was to cover only domestic abuse and only a domestic abuse commissioner, while the Government did not have a majority; if it became bigger, and therefore more controversial, because extra clauses and amendments were put on it, or if it widened into VAWG, there was not a majority to get it through. But now there is a huge majority to get it through. You can afford to take on all these exquisite ideas that are coming to you and have done all day. I really think you should pause and think about doing that. I am in such a hurry to get it home, so that it can help, but all the same, there are many more things that you could do with the Bill—many more.

[Mike Wood]

Q Following on from that, I want to raise an issue about funding. Obviously, you worked extremely effectively with the designate domestic abuse commissioner to help get covid funding to victims groups, both within the domestic abuse sector and more broadly. I thank you for everything you have been doing on that.

Touching on an issue that Jess raised earlier, how do you see the future relationship between the two roles, working together to magnify their effectiveness rather than duplicating each other’s work?

Dame Vera Baird: I think we have got off to a flying start, really, because it has all been condensed and magnified by the presence of covid. We had to get our heads together and do what we could. If we can have a close continuing relationship—after this experience, I see absolutely no reason why not—then, because we are sponsored by different Departments, we might be able to bring the Departments closer together in the interests that Nicole and I share. That would be a great boon, because one of the things that slowed up the delivery of funding to the charities that I think are now getting it is the difficulty of tying up funding from one Department with funding from another; you need a package that joins the two. I am hopeful that we might be able to play that role, too.

At the moment, there are no clashes of interest, and I cannot envisage any. The domestic abuse commissioner has a call at 11 o’clock on Monday with helpline providers and people in the domestic abuse sector where much of the talk is undoubtedly about victims of domestic abuse. At the same time, I have a call with all the victims hubs that the PCCs fund, and much of the time we are talking about victims of domestic abuse. There is a clear overlap, but we can tell the difference.

I may take a bit of licence here; perhaps I should not, but Minister Chalk helped me to mention the overlap between victims and defendants, which persuades me to talk a little about perpetrator programmes, which I am keen to see. That on the face of it does not look like a Victims’ Commissioner issue, but it is one because you always need to invest in victims’ services within a perpetrator programme. I would really like to emphasise how important it is never to take funding from the victims sector to give to perpetrators but, on the other hand, to fund separately a proper system of perpetrator programmes that get people early on.

The phoneline at Respect has had a large increase in calls during covid, I think because when people are boxed up with their own inclinations, they are frightened by them and able to reach out. That is one cohort of people. At the completely opposite end is a cohort of people currently dealt with by the Drive project, who are very different indeed. You need to have a whole matrix of tools in the box to ensure that at whatever stage a perpetrator is brought out to be changed, you have got that whole system to fit them into the right place. That is also a bit missing from the Bill. Having said positive things about DAPOs and how they may go forward, I would have wished for more expression of an urgent need to have a systematic programme for perpetrators.

[The Chair]

Thank you. I will call Liz Saville Roberts, then Peter Kyle, Virginia Crosbie and Liz Twist. We are finishing at 4.45 pm, so if there is a moment—[Interruption.] No, we are finishing at 4.30 pm, so we have almost no time at all. I am really sorry; this is a shorter session.

Domestic Abuse Bill (First sitting)

Mike Wood Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 4th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Thank you. I am going to change the order slightly, because Mr Wood kindly gave up his slot last time. Mike, I will come to you now, if that is okay.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

Q I shall be brief, because time is short. Turning specifically to the Bill, what benefits do you see the domestic abuse commissioner being able to deliver for migrant women who are victims of domestic abuse?

Pragna Patel: What benefits in the Bill so far?

[Mike Wood]

What benefits of the role of the domestic abuse commissioner, as it has been set out in the framework document, do you see being available for migrant victims of domestic abuse?

Pragna Patel: The first thing about the role of the domestic abuse commissioner is that it allows someone independent of Government to amplify the voices of migrant women, and also the BME women’s sector, and to help ensure that the kind of demands that we are making are included in any agenda in relation to statutory guidance, on further reforms in law and in relation to the kind of joined-up thinking that the Government need to be doing in order to meet the needs of more women.

The benefit of the role of the domestic abuse commissioner, so far as I can see, will be particularly powerful when it can influence Government Departments to work across government to try to deal with some of the barriers and obstacles that migrant women particularly face, because those barriers are intersectional. They relate to the ways in which the Home Office, the criminal justice system, the family courts and the third sector can all work together and better to provide the support and protection needed.

[Mike Wood]

Q On the statutory definition, do you think that the definition within the legislation is the right one?

Pragna Patel: I think the statutory definition is definitely a step forward. It is a very important definition. I wish it was gendered, because the social reality of domestic abuse is that it disproportionately affects women and girls. As the Bill is intended to mirror the Istanbul convention, it would have made sense to have been a violence against women and girls Bill.

That is not to say that I do not think that other groups face violence, but this is about gender inequality. Domestic abuse is a reflection of the cause and consequence of gender inequality, so it makes more sense to me to include a gendered understanding of domestic abuse for a number of reasons, including for the gathering of evidence to inform future policy and the need to ensure that support and prevention measures are targeted particularly at young girls, so that they can better understand abuse, recognise abuse and negotiate abuse.

The broad categories of abuse that are set out in the definition are very useful, but it would be important to show that there are also specific forms of abuse that are not included, including forced marriage, honour-based violence, female genital mutilation and other forms of cultural harm that straddle these broad categories. They straddle physical violence, sexual violence, emotional abuse and also financial abuse.

I think it can be strengthened. I think the statutory guidance and the explanation of the definition could spell out some of these things better.

[Peter Kyle]

Q Reading your evidence last night, one can sense the weariness of the frequency with which you have had to feed information in for a very long time. This is a fresh opportunity. I am sorry if it feels repetitive to you. There are many of us who are trying to do justice by some of the work and experience you have had.

In your written evidence and in your verbal evidence today you say that the pilot will cover support for about 130 to about 150 women. How many women will be left out from that? How many people are we talking about in general, in total?

Pragna Patel: I wish I could tell you that. I wish I could tell you how many women there are who are subject to abuse in this country and who are subject to no recourse to public funds. Those figures just do not exist, and that is part of the problem. That is part of the problem of why this issue is so invisible.

Some of the ways in which we have tried to gauge is by looking at how many women, for example, have received the DDVC. I think the figure in 2019 was, if I am not mistaken, that about 1,200 were entitled to the DDVC. If we then look at Women’s Aid statistics and the statistics that Southall Black Sisters have gathered over the years, which suggest that two-thirds of the women who come to us are not entitled to the DDVC, we get a figure of 3,000-odd women. That is the best estimate I can give you. It probably could be more because of under-reporting, so we are talking about possibly low thousands. That is why it is not beyond our ability to ensure that those women receive the support they need.

There is enough evidence. We do not need another pilot project to assess needs. Those needs have been assessed by my organisation and others over the years. The Home Office internal review has not been published. We would like to see that published. We would like to see what the equality outcome of that has been. That would also help us in terms of understanding where the gaps in the evidence are.