My Lords, I am going to be very disciplined in this Bill—some people may say that that is a bit unusual for me—and
speak only to those things that are not part of the criminal justice system. I am concerned that overall the Bill has been dominated by the criminal justice system, and most of the women I have worked with for many years want problems to be sorted before it is necessary to go to court, because things really have failed once it gets that far. That is why I was really pleased to support the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, in these amendments, because they are about early intervention and, in terms of domestic abuse, about how we prevent it and how we break that cycle.
7.45 pm
Noble Lords have heard the detail of what happens to the development of the child and its brain if the parents are not in a state to nurture and support the child effectively. It is interesting to look at the work done by the charity For Baby’s Sake and the Family Nurse Partnership. Parents will say that they did not realise the effect on their unborn child of what they ate and drank and what substances they abused. For example, in the evaluation of For Baby’s Sake a father is quoted as saying that:
“Doing this programme made me realise I was very controlling without realising.”
That had been his experience throughout his childhood.
“To me it was normal.”
We have a position where people behave in a violent and abusive way and they think it is the norm. We need to give children experiences which are not dominated by abuse and controlling behaviour. A mother said that being involved in trauma-informed work allowed her to heal and come to know herself. She said that it had given her the confidence to be a good mother.
We know the effect on the unborn child and very young children of this sort of abusive, neglective, difficult behaviour. The facts are now well known and other speakers have gone through them carefully. We have known this sort of thing for at least 20 years. I understand why the Minister is reluctant about the amendments; it is because she wants to get the Bill through. But we know how to effectively support parents so that their pregnancy is safer and more healthy for the unborn child. We know how to support new parents to be parents who do not rely on violence and abuse for sorting things out and who learn how to work with their children in a much more positive and effective way. I ask the Minister to think about that.
We know what to do; we know that we can prevent years and years of abuse. We know what will happen if a child is subjected to this in the womb and in the early years. Why can the Minister not commit tonight to saying that the Government have learned these lessons and are going to invest in that sort of early intervention? I know that money is tight, but the Minister might make the argument, in her department and with the Ministry of Justice, that spending money on five new prisons for women is not a good use of it. If they put that money into supporting women at this early stage when they are first having their children, the long-term effect on the lives of families in our communities will be much more substantial than more prison places, which do not do anybody any good.