Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Lords, 2021-04-21
Topic: Law and Crime
Simon Russell (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I am not a fan of acronyms at the best of times, but I feel that this evening does call for one, and it is DVAOA—which, as everybody will know, stands for "déjà vu all over again". So here we are again Last Thursday, in another place, there was a lamentable performance by the Government, I must say. For those who have not watched it, I suggest you take a stiff gin and tonic and then sit back and enjoy it. Particularly if you are of the Government’s persuasion, it is not very nice to watch. To her credit, the noble Baroness the Minister, as one might have expected, has performed immeasurably better, and I am very grateful to her for the opening speech, which I thought contained some very positive elements. Because of that, I will rein in the rant that I was going to deliver and make it a rather smaller rant than I would have delivered otherwise Why am I and others on our feet again? Some of what the noble Baronesses, Lady Royall and Lady Brinton, have said very comprehensively has already covered that, but I was going to wave three exhibits. The first was the report that Robert Buckland, our Justice Minister, undertook about stalking and the recommendations that he made. The second, exhibit B, would be one of a certain Alex Chalk, Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Justice, who, in his own stalking review, which he did with a fellow Gloucestershire MP, strangely used exactly the same wording as Robert Buckland’s report, basically saying "Consideration should be given to the production of a register of serial perpetrators" Last but not least, exhibit C is from our Home Secretary herself, Priti Patel, who in 2013 edited a report called Rebalancing the Scales for victims. One of the contributions, which she was responsible for editing, said very clearly that a database should be established comprehensively to cover all perpetrators and stalkers On Thursday in another place, the Government effectively admitted that the current system is not working as it should, that the current database is out of date and is not working as it should, and the Minister in the Commons, in a much more pared-down way, indicated some of what the Minister said earlier this evening. But what we are really talking about, and this goes back certainly as far as 2004, is a fundamental failure of management and leadership I do not have a background in government or public service; I have a background in business, and where I come from, over all those years, the sort of failure of management and leadership that has been consistent through changes in government, changes in Minister, changes in special adviser, would be regarded as a sacking offence, and certainly as a career-limiting offence. Given the awful, relentless toll of women dying, week in and week out, I think that, in the world I come from, it would also be regarded potentially as corporate manslaughter. Noble Lords know what the penalties are for corporate manslaughter: they are considerable. But because this is a Government, and because we are dealing with statutory agencies, that is not an option—but it really is not far off, and it is shameful. And the death toll relentlessly keeps going up, and will keep going up, whatever fine words we say As I said, the Minister has been very helpful. I was going to say that, until the point she spoke, I was much clearer about what the Government did not want to do than about what they do want to do, and I am very grateful that she has given some clear indications about the direction they want to go in. We have had, as I am sure the Minister has, some fairly intensive conversations with the domestic abuse commissioner’s office about how she sees things, going forward. She too knows and admits that the current system is not working, but, naturally, given her role and the nature of her relationship with government, she wants to be positive and to try to make it work. I am very keen to be positive, too, and to try to make this work.