My Lords, Amendment 176, to which my name is attached, inserts a new clause that requires local authorities, police and crime
commissioners and clinical commissioning groups to take reasonable steps to ensure sufficient provision of specialist domestic abuse support services in their local areas in both the community and refuges. This must include sufficient provision of services for children and young people, survivors with protected characteristics and migrant survivors as well as perpetrator programmes. The duty on local authorities under this amendment would improve service provision with immediate effect. Relevant public bodies would take relevant circumstances into account in deciding what constituted reasonable steps and sufficiency. As and when the outcome of any consultation, mapping exercise or guidance from the Secretary of State becomes available, the nature of what constitutes reasonable steps and sufficiency can change accordingly. As has been said, the domestic abuse commissioner-designate is undertaking a mapping exercise, but as the noble Lord, Lord Polak, has pointed out, she supports the new clause. She has said that she does not think that the mapping exercise needs to take place before the duty in the new clause, if added to the Bill, comes into force.
In speaking to Amendment 176, I want to talk in particular about adult victims and perpetrators in the context of the provision of community-based services. As we know, the majority of survivors of domestic abuse—some 70%—access support in community settings. The duty on local authorities in the Bill in respect of accommodation-based services will be of little statutory benefit to them, hence this amendment. In the last year, 65,000 adult victims, and I think about 85,000 child victims, at the highest risk of serious harm or murder received support through such community-based services. Community-based services are crucial because no one, if they can avoid it, wants to leave their home and their possessions and uproot their children from school—to effectively go into hiding—as a result of domestic abuse. Many would think it should be the perpetrator who should be uprooted. There is a danger that without the emphasis in this Bill being on the provision of community-based services as well as accommodation-based services, the latter will become the default option for adult and child victims, because the statutory provision—the duty on local authorities in respect of accommodation-based services—risks encouraging local authorities with limited resources to divert vital funds away from services provided in the community, such as advocacy, independent domestic violence advisers, outreach services and dedicated children’s services, to those services for which there is a statutory duty.
Currently, community service provision for even those victims at the highest level of risk of serious harm or murder is lacking, with 300 more domestic violence advisers still required as a minimum to help current victims to be safe. The availability of outreach workers for victims at lower risk levels is patchy across the country.
Support in accommodation is also much more expensive per service user than community-based support. Estimates suggest that each use of an accommodation-based service costs around £3,500, whereas community-based services cost an estimated maximum of just under £800 per user.
Estimates by the organisation SafeLives highlight the significant gap between what the Government have committed to combatting violence against women—a spend of some £100 million over four years—and their own calculation that £1 billion in total is required to fund the necessary provision just for adult victims of abuse.
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With 2.4 million people experiencing domestic abuse every year, at considerable cost according to the Home Office’s own estimates, putting the required and necessary human and financial resources into combatting domestic abuse would recognise the significant impact that domestic abuse has not only on individuals but on the state, which then has to address all the local and nationwide issues that follow on from domestic abuse. Hence the importance of community-based services.
Last year the Government pledged £10 million for perpetrator programmes. However, very few areas commission perpetrator programmes. Less than 1% of perpetrators receive an intervention. Responses to freedom of information requests from Barnardo’s to English local authorities showed that levels of provision are highly variable. Some local authorities are providing rehabilitation services at a rate of 24.6 perpetrators per 10,000 of population. Others are providing them to just 0.1 perpetrators per 10,000 of population, and some are not providing any rehabilitation services at all.
A recent survey of front-line practitioners across England and Wales identified a lack of funding for perpetrator services as the biggest barrier. To respond properly to perpetrators and prevent reoffending, perpetrator interventions would cost a total of £680 million. If specialist quality-assured programmes for perpetrators are not provided, the current statutory duty will fail to place appropriate emphasis on the person causing the harm, instead placing the onus on the victim to leave their home, disrupt their children’s lives and potentially isolate themselves from their community networks and work. The Bill must ensure that all adult perpetrators have access to effective quality-assured perpetrator programmes to prevent offending and reoffending.
When this Bill was going through the Commons, 120 specialist community-based support services from across the country wrote to the Government and MPs to say:
“Our services have remained open during COVID-19—our staff have moved heaven and earth to make that so—ensuring we don’t let victims of abuse down. Now we look to you to continue that commitment by pledging to recognise the huge contribution of community-based services in the Domestic Abuse Bill”.
That is what Amendment 176 would enable the Government, and this House, to do.