Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Lords, 2021-02-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Brian Paddick (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, the first and perhaps most obvious thing to say is that, following the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, scratching from this group, I am the only man speaking here. If the Committee will allow me, I am going to take this very carefully I thank my noble friend Lady Featherstone and the noble Baronesses, Lady Hodgson of Abinger and Lady Sanderson of Welton, for their support. I want to carefully go through what the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, said, before getting on to my substantive remarks. She said that domestic abuse disproportionately affects women. Clearly, it does. She also felt that the ONS figures took no account of coercive control. On where men are likely to be able to use their power to exert control over women, there are certain circumstances where coercive control is more in the hands of the man than the woman. However, on the other hand, it does not require physical strength, for example. I am not sure how much including coercive control would change the dial on the statistics. Speaking for myself and the abuse that I suffered, coercive control was the major part of that abuse The noble Baroness, Lady Gale, talked about higher levels of femicide; I will talk about homicides where there are male victims in my main remarks. She talked about violence directed against women because they are women. Clearly, that is the definition of violence against women and girls, but my position is that that is not the definition of domestic abuse—and this is the Domestic Abuse Bill. Agreeing almost completely with the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, I would say that an accurate description of domestic abuse is not, to use the expression of the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, that it is a subset of violence against women and girls I accept far more the amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett. She explained that her amendment would mean that the guidance should take into account any strategy to end violence against women and girls. I agree that it makes no sense for any guidance issued under this Bill not to take account of any strategy to end violence against women and girls, as there is a substantial, but not exclusive, overlap between the two Amendment 173 requires the Secretary of State to take into account the evidence that domestic abuse affects women disproportionately and, as I have just said, is a subset of violence against women and girls. I accept that two-thirds of the victims of reported domestic violence cases are women and that, as a result, it can be said that domestic abuse disproportionately affects women—there is no dispute about that. It is also therefore a fact that one-third of victims of domestic abuse are men. Domestic abuse is not a subset of violence against women and girls in the sense that it is not exclusively, or even overwhelmingly, the result of male violence against women It has been suggested that you cannot rely on the statistics. Noble Lords will be familiar with the alleged connection between lies and statistics, but I will give the Committee some more. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, talked about wanting incontrovertible facts. In the area of domestic violence, I do not think that incontrovertible facts exist. We know that domestic abuse is common, but it is often hidden and difficult to quantify. Half of male victims fail to tell anyone that they are the victim of domestic abuse I was a senior police officer when I was subjected to domestic violence that caused cuts and bruises, where I was kicked and punched by my abusive partner—legally, an assault causing wounding, punishable with a maximum sentence of seven years in prison. I did not report it to the police, and I did not even tell my own parents, such was the shame and fear of retribution from my abusive partner that I felt at the time The information that I have been provided with—I am grateful to the ManKind Initiative for its work in this area—shows that male victims are far more likely to report that the perpetrator of domestic abuse was female, in 60% of cases, compared with 1% of cases where the abuser was male. Of course, female victims were more likely to report that the perpetrator was male, in 56% of cases, but also that more than 2% of perpetrators were female. The Crime Survey for England and Wales for 2017-18 recorded 695,000 male victims of domestic abuse, compared with 1,310,000 female victims. If these statistics are correct, a significant amount of domestic abuse is perpetrated by women.