My Lords, this is the first opportunity I have had to speak on this Bill, so I hope that noble Lords will permit me to begin by agreeing with my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering and the wide range of noble Lords from all corners of your Lordships’ House who have paid tribute to my right honourable friend Theresa May for bringing forward this landmark legislation, as my noble friend called it. I mentioned in my maiden speech in your Lordships’ House more than a year ago that I hoped this Bill would see swift passage to the statute book. I hope this reassures noble Lords that I speak not just as a Government Whip but as an
enthusiast for seeing this legislation on the statute book. I hope that we can conduct our scrutiny rigorously and swiftly, including of the nearly 200 amendments which have been tabled to it so far.
I am grateful to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and others for introducing these amendments, and all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. I will begin with the amendments which seek to expand the definition of “personally connected” in Clause 2 of the Bill.
Amendment 6 seeks to expand the definition to include guardians. The Government have understood this to mean legal guardians of children under the age of 18, but we believe that the existing drafting already covers guardians to the extent that it is appropriate to do so. Clause 2(1) defines the term “personally connected” for the purposes of the definition of domestic abuse in Clause 1. Among those groups of people who are taken to be personally connected are two people who each have, or have at one time had, parental responsibility in relation to the same child. Subsection (2) goes on to define a parental relationship as being one where the person “is a parent of”, or has “parental responsibility for the child”. Subsection (3) then provides that parental responsibility,
“has the same meaning as in the Children Act 1989 … section 3”,
which defines parental responsibility to include legal guardians of children. So, if the two individuals within an abusive relationship are, say, the birth mother of a child and a legal guardian or former legal guardian of the same child, then those two individuals would come within the definition of “personally connected”.
Amendment 8, in the name of the noble and learned Baroness, seeks to expand the definition of “personally connected” to include victims of forced marriage or those in a situation where one person is forcing the other into a marriage with another person. As the noble and learned Baroness said, this affects a large number of people from a wide range of parts of the community. She mentioned, for instance, gay men and women who are forced into marriage by their families and others, and that, sadly, it is often accompanied by violence or so-called honour killings. We are confident that victims of forced marriage are already captured under the existing definition of “personally connected” in Clause 2. Among other things, this provides that a personal connection exists if persons A and B are, or have been, married to each other, or if they are, or have been, in an intimate personal relationship.
We are also confident that victims who are being forced into a marriage with another person by a family member will also be captured under the existing definition at Clause 2(1)(g), which provides that a personal connection exists when person A and person B are related. Moreover, the draft statutory guidance clearly signals that forced marriage is one manifestation of domestic abuse.
That leaves one potential situation arising from Amendment 8, in the name of the noble and learned Baroness, namely where a victim is being forced into a forced marriage by somebody to whom he or she is not related. In this situation, the victim would not be considered “personally connected” to the perpetrator, and it would not be considered domestic abuse in the
context of the Bill. Similarly, with reference to Amendment 9, victims of domestic servitude who are suffering abuse would not be considered victims of domestic abuse unless they were personally connected to the perpetrator as defined in Clause 2. That is because the definition of “personal connection” is key to the approach we are taking in this Bill.
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The personal relationship between the perpetrator and the victim is central to the nature of domestic abuse. It is this personal relationship—be it an intimate or familial one —which makes domestic abuse a unique form of abuse. That is how domestic abuse is generally and commonly understood among the public and the various agencies, charities, and NGOs which do such important work seeking to tackle it. As such, it would not be appropriate to expand the definition of “personally connected” to include all those people who might play a role in forcing a person into a forced marriage. It is in any case a rare scenario for someone to be forced into marriage solely by people who are not their relatives. A family member would often be involved.
That is not to say that the Government do not take the issue of forced marriage extremely seriously, and I pay tribute to the noble and learned Baroness for her excellent work as head of the National Commission on Forced Marriage. As she will be fully aware from that, in 2014 the Government made forced marriage a criminal offence, in order better to protect victims and to send a clear message that it is an unacceptable practice which will not be tolerated in the United Kingdom. I am proud to say that the UK is a world leader in the fight to stamp it out, for instance with our dedicated Forced Marriage Unit leading efforts to combat it both at home and abroad.
Turning to Amendment 9, as the noble and learned Baroness will also know given her deep involvement in the passage of the Modern Slavery Act, anyone who is suspected of being a victim of domestic servitude—a form of modern slavery—can be referred into the national system of identification and support for victims, the national referral mechanism. That mechanism operates a two-stage process to determine whether someone is a victim of modern slavery, and people referred to it can receive a package of support including accommodation, financial support, healthcare, and other support dependent on their needs.
I turn now to Amendments 7, 11, 12 and 13, in the names of the noble Baronesses Lady Wilcox of Newport, Lady Grey-Thompson, and Lady Hamwee, which seek to bring to bring carers within the definition of “personally connected”. Similar considerations apply here to those I have already set out regarding the risk of diluting what we mean by domestic abuse. Extending the definition explicitly to cover carers—and I was struck by the words of the noble Baroness regarding the very large inverted commas which are needed to cover the definition of carers—would, I suggest, broaden the definition of domestic abuse unhelpfully. It would then encompass a whole range of people who are not actually personally connected in the way we mean when we speak of domestic abuse specifically. That would not help us with one of the Bill’s overarching aims, which is to raise awareness and understanding about the devastating
impact of domestic abuse on victims and their families—a point made a few moments ago by my noble friend Lady Bertin. This is a Domestic Abuse Bill, not an abuse Bill, which is why we do not believe that it would be appropriate for these sorts of relationships to be included within that definition.
This is not to negate or to ignore the abuse of elderly or disabled people, or any of the other groups who have been mentioned by noble Lords this evening. A carer, by definition, should be enabling the people they care for to live their lives as independently as possible, both at home and outside it. Of course, any abuse carried out by carers should be called out and tackled and there is already legislation which does just this, as noble Lords anticipated. For example, as noted by the noble Baronesses, Lady Campbell of Surbiton and Lady Wilcox of Newport, Section 42 of the Care Act 2014 places a duty on local authorities to carry out safeguarding inquiries if they have a reason to suspect an adult in their area with care and support needs is at risk of abuse or neglect.
It has been almost six years since that Act came into force, and we have seen a steady increase in the number of concerns raised under it and the number of Section 42 inquiries conducted year on year, clearly demonstrating that this law is having an impact. The accompanying statutory guidance under the Care Act regarding the duty on local authorities has also helped to ensure that the services they commission are safe, effective and of high quality.
The Care Quality Commission is also instrumental here, playing a key role in ensuring that care providers have effective systems to help keep adults safe, ensuring that they are free from abuse and neglect. It has a duty to act promptly whenever safeguarding issues are discovered during inspections, raising them with the provider and, if necessary, referring safeguarding issues to the local authority and the police.
In addition, statutory local safeguarding adult boards provide assurance that local safeguarding arrangements and partners, including the police, local authorities and the NHS, are all acting to help and protect adults who might be at risk of abuse or neglect. Furthermore, under Section 20 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015, the offence of “ill-treatment or wilful neglect” was introduced specifically to help tackle the abuse of those people who are dependent on care services. As such, as my noble friend Lord Randall of Uxbridge and others anticipated, we believe that these important issues are already covered in statute. I was struck by the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, who rightly identified the dilemma here of making sure that we are covering the wide panoply of human relationships, while not creating a legislative framework that makes it more difficult to bring prosecutions and tackle the abuse that we all want to tackle through this Bill.
My noble friend Lady Altmann asked about the use of independent domestic violence advocates, and, where they are provided, whether by local authorities or local health services, they will indeed provide support for all victims, including older people and people with disabilities. She also asked about training, which we will have an opportunity to discuss further when we
come to Amendment 53, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top—so I hope she will forgive me if I return to that point then.
Finally, Amendments 10 and 14, in the names of my noble friend Lord Randall of Uxbridge and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, in effect seek to expand the definition of domestic abuse so that it covers people who either live in the same household or are regular visitors to that household. Extending the definition of “personally connected” to cover those who live with, or are exposed to, perpetrators to whom they are not personally connected would, again, unhelpfully stretch the definition of domestic abuse. It would then encompass a whole range of people who live together or visit one another but who are not actually personally connected, such as landlords, tenants or friends—a point raised by my noble friend Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth and others.
This is emphatically not to say that we do not recognise the impact of all abuse, regardless of whether the victim is personally connected to the perpetrator. For adults who are experiencing abuse at the hands of a person with whom they live, but to whom they are not personally connected, there are existing protections, such as the offences under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. In addition, a number of safeguards are in place to protect children not personally connected to their abuser: these are captured under the broad definition of “harm” in the Children Act 1989. The definition of “harm” is not limited to a child being related to the perpetrator of the victim.
On Amendment 14, I hope I can offer the noble and leaned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, some reassurance. Under Clause 3, a child is to be regarded as a victim of domestic abuse if he or she
“sees or hears, or experiences the effects”
of domestic abuse and is related either to the direct victim of the abuse or to the perpetrator. As such, in the scenario she set out at Second Reading and in Committee today, as echoed by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, of an abusive man living in a house with his victim and her children, where that man is not the father of the children, those children would still be regarded as victims of domestic abuse under Clause 3 by virtue of their relationship with the abused mother.
I hope noble Lords will accept my point about retaining the importance of domestic abuse as a distinct form of abuse in the Bill, and will be reassured that the many and important areas that they have raised in the debate are already covered in existing statutes. I hope that the noble and learned Baroness will be willing to withdraw her amendment.