My Lords, I join others in sending our thoughts and prayers to the family of Sarah Everard. We do not know the history of her murderer, but we do know that she is just another murdered woman. As the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said, there have been 30 such women since Second Reading. I heard the story of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, as a horror story; it is something you would never wish on anybody. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, paid tribute to Jane Clough and her wonderful parents. I have met Jane Clough’s father, and I pay tribute to her parents, who have campaigned so tirelessly so that what happened to their daughter will not happen to somebody else. The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, mentioned some of the horrendous things parliamentarians have to put up with. I am so sorry for the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for the abuse she has suffered in the last week or so, and I am sure I speak on behalf of every other noble Lord in the House. And the story of my noble friend Lady Bertin was awfully sad and horrific.
To pick up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, this set of amendments is not about political digs. I totally agree with him. We all seek the same end, so it might seem odd that the words I am going to say disagree with noble Lords’ amendments. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and I have campaigned and worked together for years, trying to fix the gaps that we find in the provision.
Amendment 73 seeks to amend the Criminal Justice Act 2003, so that individuals assessed as high risk and high harm, as well as those convicted of more than
one domestic abuse or stalking offence, should automatically be subject to management under Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements, commonly referred to as MAPPA. Management under MAPPA may result in these individuals being recorded on VISOR, which is the dangerous persons database. The amendment would also place a duty on the Government to review these changes to the Criminal Justice Act and issue a report 12 months after Royal Assent. It specifies that the report would need to include a comprehensive prevention and perpetrator strategy for domestic abusers and stalkers. This links to Amendment 81, which also calls on the Secretary of State to issue a perpetrator strategy.
Noble Lords have spoken passionately about this issue and it is impossible not to be moved. I am simply horrified by some of the stories raised, not only today but in Committee. I indicated then and say again that I totally agree with the intention behind these amendments. As the noble Lord, Lord Russell, said, so much works, so why are there gaps? We want to make sure that there are no gaps and that we have the right systems in place to enable the police and partner agencies to accurately identify the risks posed by high-harm, repeat and serial perpetrators, and to act accordingly to protect victims.
We recognise that there is more that can be done to fill the gaps and ensure that the system works as intended, but we do not think that Amendment 73 addresses or resolves the underlying issue of improving risk assessment and case management. We fear, therefore, that it will not achieve the outcomes that it is intended to achieve.
In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, said—I will paraphrase—that serial and high-harm domestic abuse and stalking perpetrators can be managed under the current MAPPA legislation, but that it is not always happening in practice. My noble friend Lady Bertin echoed this and we agree, which is why, instead of amending the current legislation to add an additional category, we think there is more value in making better use of the existing MAPPA framework and related police systems.
My noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering talked about upskilling. There is a range of things, of which upskilling is one, which will drive an improvement in the system, including a better focus on the outcomes that we seek. We have already taken steps to improve MAPPA and related systems. Last spring, Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service published the Domestic Abuse Policy Framework, which sets out arrangements for working with people whose convictions or behaviours include domestic abuse. The framework mandates an adherence to the referral pathways for domestic abuse perpetrators and ensures that the required actions for these cases are fully laid out. It focuses on the need for an investigative approach, sets clear expectations about information exchange and the use of MAPPA, and draws together expected practice into a clear framework. This will significantly strengthen the consistency of our approach. It is right that we put our focus on embedding this framework, which will have a real operational impact to ensure that it is working to better safeguard victims and those at risk.
We are also introducing measures in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which was introduced in the House of Commons on 9 March. These measures will clarify the information-sharing powers of those agencies subject to the duty to co-operate under MAPPA. It will also explicitly extend these information-sharing powers to those agencies or individuals who can contribute to the assessment and management of risk—for example, GPs.
As my noble friend Lady Bertin says, we know that there is still more we can do to address the areas of concern that this amendment intends to resolve. I would like to outline the programme of activity that we will undertake to best achieve this. First, the Ministry of Justice will revisit and refresh all relevant chapters of MAPPA statutory guidance to include the sections on domestic abuse. This will ensure that all agencies involved take steps to identify offenders who are domestic abuse perpetrators whose risk requires active multi-agency management.
Secondly, we will introduce a thresholding document for local MAPPA strategic management boards to improve the consistency of assessments of MAPPA levels to ensure that those requiring greater oversight are correctly identified. We will ensure that there is a reference to domestic abuse perpetrators to assist relevant agencies in making decisions on the level of MAPPA management needed for individual cases.
Thirdly, HMPPS will issue a policy framework setting out clear expectations of the management of all cases at MAPPA level 1 by the National Probation Service, including domestic abuse perpetrators. This will further help to improve the quality of information sharing, the consistency and regularity of reviews, and the identification of cases where additional risk management activity is required.
Finally, we will improve the MAPPA sharing database —known as ViSOR—used to manage offenders, including through exploring alternative digital offender management systems, building on the success of the existing system in bringing agencies together to share information, and strengthening risk assessment, management and mitigation. To answer the point of my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering, as I said before, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill makes provision for that better data sharing under MAPPA.
There are provisions in the Bill which will also help to improve the management of risk posed by domestic abuse perpetrators. The new domestic abuse protection orders—or DAPOs—will provide an additional tool for managing the risk posed by perpetrators by enabling courts to impose a range of conditions and positive requirements. DAPOs will also require perpetrators subject to an order to notify the police of their name and address and any changes to this information. This will help the police to monitor the perpetrator’s whereabouts and the risk that they pose to the victim.
Stalking protection orders, which were introduced last year—I am glad that my noble friend is in the Chamber—can also impose positive requirement conditions on perpetrators. These orders enable early police intervention, pre-conviction, to address stalking behaviours before they become deep-rooted or escalate.
Ultimately, adding an additional MAPPA category into legislation specifically for domestic abuse offenders will not improve the practical issues it is truly seeking to resolve—and if it did, I would be fighting for it to happen. In fact, if we were to use the definition of domestic abuse offender as outlined in the amendment, we would make a large group of offenders not defined by specific offences automatically eligible for MAPPA. This would risk creating a level of complexity not reflected in the current legislation that will distract resources and could overwhelm the current system.
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The definition of “specified stalking offence” in the amendment is given as an offence contrary to Section 2A or Section 4A of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. The Section 4A stalking offence, namely
“Stalking involving fear of violence, alarm or distress”
can attract a sentence of up to 10 years in custody, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, for working with me on this. Where someone is sentenced to 12 months or more, they are already automatically subject to management under MAPPA. Crimes charged under Section 2A would be likely to involve episodes of stalking which do not involve fear of violence or serious alarm or distress and could be referred to MAPPA on a discretionary basis. We think this is the right balance to ensure that we are capturing the most harmful offenders. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, for bringing attention to this issue, but we think the package of actions that I have outlined today will be the most straightforward approach to achieving the intended outcomes and, most importantly, will make the biggest difference at an operational level.
I now turn to the part of Amendment 73 and to Amendment 81 that would place a duty on the Government to prepare a comprehensive prevention and perpetrator strategy for domestic abusers and stalkers. The Government are committed to holding perpetrators to account for their actions. As I mentioned in Committee, later this year the Government will bring forward a new, ambitious strategy to tackle the abhorrent crime of domestic abuse. Within this strategy, we will outline our plans and ambitions to prevent offending as well as to protect victims and ensure that they have the support they need. Tackling perpetrators and preventing offending will form a key pillar of the strategy, as my noble friend Lady Sanderson said.
The noble Lord, Lord Strasburger, asked for reassurance about what will be in the strategy with regard to perpetrators and prevention. He will appreciate that we are still in the early stages of our thinking, so I cannot pre-empt what the content of the strategy will look like at this stage, but I can commit that we will take all his points into consideration during its development. I know the noble Lord is particularly concerned about prevention, so I would like to provide reassurance that we recognise that to address a problem properly, we must tackle the root causes as well as the symptoms. I can also confirm that we will be consulting specialist organisations, including the Drive Partnership, other government departments and partner agencies during the development of the strategy.
The noble Lord’s amendment provides for a 12-month timetable for the publication of the strategy. While we aim to improve on that timetable, I hope noble Lords will recognise that we cannot have all the answers now. On the principle of a separate strategy, while we agree with the need to take a strategic approach to tackling perpetrators, we think it is right to do this in a holistic domestic abuse strategy and not in a standalone perpetrator strategy, to echo my noble friend Lady Sanderson again.
We continue to build up our evidence base to inform this work. As part of the spring Budget last year, the Chancellor allocated £10 million to fund innovative approaches to tackling perpetrators and preventing domestic abuse. This included more than £7 million for police and crime commissioners to support the adoption of a range of domestic abuse perpetrator-focused programmes in their area. This funding included a requirement for PCCs to conduct an evaluation of their project to strengthen the evidence base of what works to prevent reoffending. I am very pleased to confirm that we have now also provided more than £500,000 to 11 research projects to help improve our understanding of who carries out domestic abuse, how and why it occurs and how to prevent it.
I am delighted that in his Budget earlier this month, the Chancellor announced a further £15 million for the upcoming financial year to fund work on domestic abuse perpetrators. In addition to this, as part of the package to tackle serious violent crime, last week the Home Secretary announced an additional £10 million towards expanding domestic abuse perpetrator programmes. This more than doubles the total funding for tackling domestic abuse perpetrators and is an unprecedented amount of money in this area. This demonstrates the Government’s ongoing commitment to this agenda.
I apologise for detaining noble Lords for so long. I conclude by saying that we are absolutely committed to ensuring that MAPPA works as intended, but do not feel this amendment achieves that aim. I hope noble Lords will be reassured by the extensive programme of work under way that will help to address the concerns about the current MAPPA arrangements. The recent announcement by the Chancellor demonstrates the Government’s commitment to tackling perpetrators. I hope the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.