My Lords, this debate has been filled with harrowing examples, including powerful personal testimony such as the moving account the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, gave of her cousin.
In Committee, a similar amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, was introduced to make it a legal requirement that serial domestic abuse offenders or stalking perpetrators are registered on ViSOR, the violent and sex offender register, and that they be subject to supervision, monitoring
and management through existing Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements, or MAPPA. In Committee, I suggested that existing legislation and codes of practice may already require dangerous serial domestic abuse and stalking perpetrators to be supervised, monitored and managed through MAPPA, and that the issue may be one of the police and other agencies not complying with existing legislation rather than a problem with the legislation itself. The Minister appeared to agree with me. However, clearly something needs to change, as the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, so powerfully set out. Women are dying because serial offenders are slipping through the net and, if this part of Amendment 73 is not the answer, the Government need to explain very clearly what they are going to do.
My noble friend Lady Brinton’s personal experience, so bravely and powerfully put, and the personal experience of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, should leave the House in no doubt that action is needed urgently. Unlike the amendment in Committee, this amendment includes a requirement to review the operation of its provisions and to lay a report before Parliament that includes a comprehensive prevention and perpetrator strategy for domestic abusers and stalkers. Amendment 81 in the name of my noble friend Lord Strasburger also requires the Government to lay before Parliament a comprehensive prevention and perpetrator strategy for domestic abuse, the case for which he has so clearly set out.
I will not repeat the arguments I made in Committee. Suffice it to say that we on these Benches support both of these amendments, and were the opinion of the House be tested, we would support them.