My Lords, this government amendment meets a commitment to bring forward proposals on Report to address concerns that the time limit for bringing prosecutions for common assault or battery involving domestic abuse is unfairly short. I am very grateful that, joining my name on this amendment are the names of the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, and the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross.
In response to the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lady Newlove in Committee, we acknowledged that such cases are disproportionately likely to time out. I am pleased now to present our solution to this problem—in the form of government Amendment 107B —to the House.
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The position currently is that a prosecution for common assault or battery must be brought within six months of an offence occurring, in accordance with Section 127 of the Magistrates’ Court Act 1980—I underline at the outset that this is the lowest level of criminal offence in this area; I am not diminishing or demeaning it, but I underline it because the more serious offences do not suffer from this time problem. However, we know that, for obvious reasons, victims of domestic abuse may understandably take some time to report an offence. That can leave the police and the CPS with little time—sometimes no time at all—to conduct an investigation and prosecute the offender. As I say, sometimes the time limit has expired even before the victim approaches the police.
This amendment introduces a new Section 39A into the Criminal Justice Act 1988, which will extend the time limit for commencing a prosecution for the offence of common assault or battery when it arises out of domestic abuse. The amendment provides that the time limit is still six months, but it does not run from the date of the offence, it runs from when it is formally reported to the police through either a witness statement or a video recording made with a view to its use as evidence. There is an overall time limit of two years from the offence. We are confident that this provides the best protection for victims of this abhorrent crime. The reason that it applies only from the witness statement or videoed interview is that, sometimes, a victim can go to the police, have a chat with the desk sergeant and then, for understandable reasons, say, “I’ll come back; I’ll think about it.” If the clock were to start then, we might again have problems of timing out. We have thought about this quite carefully and we think that the witness statement or video recording is the better time to start.
I am therefore delighted to present this as a solution to a problem that I think requires a solution. It will make a real difference to victims of domestic abuse and will stop perpetrators, in effect, hiding behind an unfair limitation on victims’ ability to seek justice. I beg to move.