PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Domestic Abuse Bill (Sixth sitting) - 10 June 2020 (Commons/Public Bill Committees)

The Committee consisted of the following Members:

Chair(s) † Mr Peter Bone, Ms Karen Buck

Members† Aiken, Nickie (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
† Atkins, Victoria (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department)
† Bowie, Andrew (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
† Chalk, Alex (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice)
Coyle, Neil (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)
† Crosbie, Virginia (Ynys Môn) (Con)
† Davies-Jones, Alex (Pontypridd) (Lab)
† Gibson, Peter (Darlington) (Con)
† Harris, Rebecca (Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty’s Treasury)
† Jardine, Christine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
† Jones, Fay (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)
† Kyle, Peter (Hove) (Lab)
† Marson, Julie (Hertford and Stortford) (Con)
† Phillips, Jess (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
Saville Roberts, Liz (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
† Twist, Liz (Blaydon) (Lab)
† Wood, Mike (Dudley South) (Con)

ClerksJo Dodd, Kevin Maddison, Committee Clerks

† attended the Committee


Public Bill CommitteeWednesday 10 June 2020

[Mr Peter Bone in the Chair]

Domestic Abuse BillQuestion (this day) again proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Subsections (4) to (6) contain examples of the type of provision that may be made under subsection (1), but they do not limit the type of provision that may be so made. That gives an indication of how broadly drafted the clause is, and that is necessary to ensure that the court, be that a bench of magistrates or another court, may take into account all relevant considerations.

I will never forget watching a video of a perpetrator group about 10 years ago as part of a training exercise. In the video, there was a group of perpetrators, which, when a group activity is done, has a “rogues gallery” element. I remember one man saying that he had been violent toward his wife because she had not made his cup of tea the way that he liked it. Somebody else in the group said, “Maybe the best thing you can do is to tell her more explicitly or write down exactly how you like it.” I remember being in that training exercise and wanting to say, “Make it yourself!”—as the Minister pre-empted—“Tell him she is not his slave.”
Since that wild west, through the work of some incredibly brilliant people, we have the idea of rooting out those paternalistic norms that we no longer recognise in marriages or partnerships in our society, and challenging the patriarchal norms, such as the idea that somebody is there to serve another for their pleasure, or for them to control. We are addressing those norms from the point of view of the victim and we have come a long way. I would like to think that that would never again be said in such a group and that someone might say, “Make your own sodding tea!” Excuse my unparliamentary language—I apologise.
Respect, a brilliant organisation working in the field, currently has a gold standard for quality perpetrator programmes. That standard has already been endorsed by the Government, whose new published standards could and should draw heavily from it. Those new standards will need to be developed in consultation with specialist domestic abuse sector organisations and the devolved Government in Wales. At their core, those standards will require a focus on the safety and wellbeing of the victim, so that every step taken with the perpetrator is taken with thought given to its impact on the victim. Assuring quality will be an important step forward. However, it will have to be combined with both a significant investment so that a range of interventions are available and skilled assessments, on a case-by-case basis, regarding the suitability of any given intervention for a specific perpetrator.
When we have pushed back against something and asked the Minister, “What about in this case?” or “What about in that locality?”, the Minister has pushed back with the reality that cases must be heard on their own merit and that situations always rise and fall on their own merit. The same would apply in this instance. I could easily be accused of wanting the moon on a stick, so how would it work in practice? Well, most importantly, the Government would consult the domestic abuse sector—including leading organisations such as Respect, as well as survivors—and publish standards. There are various options for accrediting programmes and ensuring that the standard is met in practice as well as on paper.
I propose that the consultation process for quality standards also seeks views on the accreditation mechanism. My preference would be for external accreditation, which would be much more robust, as opposed to self- accreditation, because then we would all mark ourselves up. [Interruption.] I get so confused by the campanology-like level of bell-ringing in this place at the moment.
It has also been proposed by Respect that sites be accredited, not programmes or curricula, as that will help to ensure that delivery meets standards.
We have seen that in lots of instances. In fact, funded by the Home Office, I have written such programmes on many occasions, including teenage relationship abuse programmes, that have gone on to be accredited by the Home Office. When I used to hand them over to a school to deliver, I knew I could not guarantee the quality of the delivery, even though the programme was accredited and might be a step forward—I would say that if I had written it. This did once lead to my husband saying that I was a perpetrator of domestic abuse, as I had left the papers of the accredited programme I was leading on the table, and one of the questions was, “Does he open your post?” My husband said, “You always open my post,” but the bills would not get paid if I didn’t.
An accredited programme goes some way, but if you hand it over to somebody who is not an expert, it could be degraded, so accreditation of delivery is important. External accreditation could work as follows: a standard is included in the body of what the Home Secretary publishes; a list of accredited agencies approved against the standard is given, with a mechanism for review—I have more to say about that later—such as ways that agencies could apply to accredit or ways that checks could be made to ensure that existing accreditation agencies were performing correctly; commissioners commission programmes only from accredited sites, which would certainly have helped in the example I talked about; reaccreditation could be required every three years, or earlier in the case of significant changes to the structure or operation of the programme; and, accreditation-failed services would have six months to meet the standard before commissioners are expected to decommission, which is not dissimilar to an Ofsted—“Get a bit better, and we’ll come back and have a look.”
As for the guidance from Respect, any quality assurance guidance will have to be combined with significant investments, so that a range of interventions are available and there are skilled assessments, on a case-by-case basis, regarding the suitability of any given intervention for a specific perpetrator.
The Committee has made reference after reference to this being a landmark Bill, and perpetrators have been long overlooked—I include myself in that category. The development of a properly funded national strategy for perpetrators, together with correct quality assurance accreditation for perpetrator programmes, would allow the Bill to effect lasting change, in way that has not been seen before.
In reference to new clause 27 and the national perpetrator strategy, we all know the statistics about how many women are murdered each and every week. The cost of the abuse of victims identified in a single year, according to the Home Office, is £66 billion. I understand that I am speaking to the idea of a level of investment, but we are talking about £66 billion in cost. Research conducted by the University of Bristol shows that a perpetrator who has been assessed as high risk, and whose case is heard at a multi-agency risk assessment conference for victims, generates a cost of £63,000 as a result of his or her domestic abuse behaviour.
There are proven ways of reducing abuse, which are not currently being used. Less than 1% of the 400,000 or so perpetrators who are assessed as posing a high or life-threatening risk to their partners get specialist intervention. The figure of 831,000 victims each year was given for children yesterday, and I am talking about 400,000 high-risk perpetrators. I have had a domestic abuse, stalking and honour-based violence risk assessment in front of me about a woman who had been beaten in the face with a brick that morning, and she was considered to be at medium risk. So I am sure that the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster knows and others can imagine what the cases would be like in a MARAC meeting about high-risk victims of domestic harm. Only 1% or so of those perpetrators have had an intervention in this regard.
There are proven interventions, as I have already said. For example, Drive combines behaviour change work with police-led disruption. Its work with high-harm perpetrators has been shown to reduce the number of perpetrators using physical abuse by 82% and jealous and controlling behaviour by 73%. I do not know how we measure the reduction of somebody’s jealous and controlling behaviour, but obviously somebody came up with a metric. The operational costs of Drive are between £1,800 and £2,000 per perpetrator.
A report from the University of Bristol shows a 30% reduction in the number of criminal domestic violence and abuse incidents among a cohort of perpetrators receiving an intervention, compared with a control group. In another study, by the University of Northumbria, an intervention was found to lead to a 65% reduction in domestic violence and abuse-related offending and a social return on investment of £14 for every £1 spent. About five years ago in the voluntary sector, we had to work out exactly what the amount of money saved was for every £1, and I have noticed that it is always between £10 and £15.
Survivors also support perpetrator programmes. Some 80% of survivors advised the call to action for a perpetrator strategy co-ordinated by the Drive partnership. They think that the perpetrator programmes’ interventions for perpetrators are a good idea. That is a really important point. I take a dim view of domestic abuse perpetrators, but Committee members would be surprised, if they spent time with them, that victims of domestic abuse often do not take a dim view of the people doing the abuse. After all, they loved them and/or married them. We hear it again and again. The thing that always got to me was hearing, “He’s not a bad dad; he’s just bad to me.” I heard a lot of, “He’s quite a good dad and good with the babbies.” But you also hear, “I want him to be able to get help.” I am not of the opinion that drugs and alcohol make somebody a domestic abuser. Power, control and patriarchal norms make somebody a domestic abuser, but if a pattern is exacerbated by drug and alcohol use, there is definitely a sense that victims want support and help for their perpetrators.
When I worked as an independent domestic violence adviser, I often thought there should be an IDVA for perpetrators. The reason why women end up taking their violent perpetrators back again in incident after incident is that their perpetrators end up homeless, and they are the father of their children, or their perpetrators have nowhere to go and no one to support them to find a job, or, when they come out of prison, no one to resettle them. So they lean on the victim, as their previous partner, and the victims want to believe that they can help. It is a terrible human condition that makes people not just say, “Sling yer hook; you’re a wrong ’un.” We all think we would say that, but, if there was somebody there for the perpetrator, like there is somebody for the victim, it would take the burden off the victim, so victims really do want interventions for perpetrators.
Unfortunately, programmes are patchy, and their availability is limited. There is a limited range of perpetrators that they can reach safely, and the programmes vary in quality. The desire for a strategy, which the new clause asks for, reflects that understanding. Lots of areas—any public body with any commissioning role, whether that is health services, local authorities and so on—have thrown a little extra money at the end of the financial year and said, “Okay. Let’s have a perpetrator thing.” I have been in those meetings many times, and I have found that the cohort of perpetrators we are going to work with becomes complicated. Who will we work with? If we say we will go for high risk of harm, a small organisation in a local area will not be able to handle high-risk violent offenders. Then we come down to the next level and say people on child protection. Immediately, when those services are being commissioned, the number of people who can go on them is limited. In victims services, we just say, “Yes, there will be a service,” no matter who they are or whether they are on child protection. With perpetrators, however, because there is no proper strategy or system for commissioning and understanding services, those services, even where they exist, are for a narrow cohort that has been identified as possible to manage—it might be that someone is on a child protection plan or the DASH risk assessment of the victim is low to medium—which immediately limits the ability of certain people to be safe.
In addition, for some groups, such as LGBT+ perpetrators, there are almost no suitable interventions available. The vast majority of perpetrator programmes commissioned in areas have heteronormative ideals. If a judge is faced with a case where he has to dispense this duty, through the DAPO, for a same-sex male couple, for example, there would not necessarily be anywhere for them to go, even if they wanted to. Actually, I would bet my bottom dollar that what we will find with the positive duty is that, even if a judge says, “You have to have this positive duty,” in the vast majority of places in the country, there will be nothing, so people will just say, “Oh well.” In making that decision, the judge was doing the right thing and trying to change something, but actually there is nothing, and probation will just say, “I’ll Google it. Let’s do it one to one.”
The Joint Committee on the Draft Domestic Abuse Bill noted the need for investment in perpetrator programmes and for “co-operation with expert providers”. In addition, the Government’s impact assessment for the Bill estimates that DAPOs will generate a need for 15,200 extra places on behaviour change and drug and alcohol problem programmes.
Despite the above statistics—they were actually over the page, but perhaps in Hansard they will be above—and evidence regarding effectiveness and projected need, the Bill does not make any provision for a strategic approach to perpetrator programmes. It is crucial for the Government to respond to victims and survivors, but they need to publish and fund a perpetrator strategy to prevent abuse. Public and voluntary services would work effectively to hold domestic abuse perpetrators to account, but they will need funding and guidance from the Government to make a real difference.
Instead of asking, “Why doesn’t she leave?” the Government and every public funded agency should be asking, “Why doesn’t he stop?” Too often, in a violent household, it is the victim who needs to leave and who is sent on programmes, largely by children’s services. What if she could stay safely in her home, with her networks of support around her, near her work and her children? Would it not be better if it was the perpetrator who had to leave, and if that could be arranged safely? That is at the heart of the DAPO process. That is not an area that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has explored, but under this strategy that is the kind of thing it would need to do. There is already emerging good practice in that area, and it would have many willing and experienced partners.
I am aware that, in some places, police have not been able to use domestic violence protection orders to protect women, for fear that, in removing the perpetrator from the home, they would make him homeless, which effectively leaves the woman at risk. Other police areas have found routes round that. During the coronavirus crisis, I looked over the accounts of the Manchester courts, and they were handing out those orders. It is a real opportunity for us to learn in this area because, for the first time, with the “Everyone In” scheme run by the MHCLG, accommodation has been offered for perpetrators. That is not the standard that we are used to, but during the coronavirus crisis, that has certainly been the case.

Hon. Members will be aware that we have committed to pilot DAPOs in a small number of areas, prior to the national roll-out. Although the timing is not set in stone, the pilot may be in the order of two years or so—that is an important point that I will come back to. The pilot will allow us to carefully evaluate the operation and effectiveness of DAPOs, including the effectiveness of any programme requirements imposed as part of an order. We will use the pilot to consider carefully the quality assurance of any programmes referred into as part of a DAPO, to ensure that perpetrators subject to this requirement are accessing the programme that is right for them.
It is our aim to ensure the availability of a wide range of high-quality programmes from early interventions of a preventive nature to programmes able to address high-risk offenders. That is an important point; one size does not fit all. There might be some people who are at the beginning of their criminal journey, if you like, and others who are hardened, entrenched offenders. It will need to be flexible to take account of the circumstances of the individual. Ensuring that such interventions are effective should therefore not be confined solely to those programmes imposed by a DAPO.
I said I would return to the pilots. We think that placing a requirement to publish a strategy before the DAPO pilots have been completed would reduce the impact and effectiveness of the strategy. Clauses 47 and 66 already enable us to issue the appropriate statutory guidance in relation to perpetrator programmes. I do not want to spend too much time on this, because we need to move on, but clause 66 contains a power for the Secretary of State to issue guidance about domestic abuse. It is worth dwelling on for a moment because it could inform other parts of the Bill.
Clause 66(1) notes:
We are in part 3. Clause 66(2) notes:
We referred to that point earlier and it is worth picking it up. The clause also says, which bears emphasis:
That is an interesting point, but the bit I really wanted to get to was subsection (5):
That is important, because we need to make sure that the Act does not ossify. It is not set in stone. Why? Because our understanding changes, attitudes change, views change and expertise changes. We get a better idea of what works and what does not work. Clause 66 builds in the flexibility to ensure that we have best practice at all times.
My final point is about clause 66(6), which states:
it is mandatory—
there is another reason why the commissioner is so important—
For these purposes, the hon. Member for Pontypridd is the princess of Wales. [Interruption.] Oh! I am sorry to my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire —the hon. Member for Pontypridd was in my line of sight. My hon. Friend is the queen of Wales.

Adjourned till Thursday 11 June at half-past Eleven o’clock.
DAB52 NSPCC
DAB53 Carla James
DAB54 Chartered Institute of Housing
DAB55 Vanessa d’Esterre - Domestic abuse specialist and expert by experience
DAB56 Tim Tierney
DAB57 INCADVA (Inter-Collegiate and Agency Domestic Violence Abuse) Forum
DAB58 Attenti
DAB59 Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC)
DAB60 Mr Andrew Pain
DAB61 Ian McNicholl
DAB62 Philipp Tanzer
DAB63 Follow-up letter from the Domestic Abuse Commissioner
DAB64 White Ribbon UK
DAB65 Women’s Aid Federation of England
DAB66 Hestia
DAB67 Women Against Rape (WAR)
DAB68 Agenda
DAB69 APPG for Ending Homelessness
DAB70 Surviving Economic Abuse