Domestic Abuse Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Mike Wood and Christine Jardine

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

[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.