Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Commons, 2021-04-15
Topic: Mixed Topics
Yvette Cooper (Labour, Centre-left): I join in the tributes to Cheryl Gillan, whom we all miss badly from this House and from debates such as this one in which she has been a participant for so many years I welcome the progress made on the Bill with the work done in the House of Lords. It is an important Bill and I commend the work on it of the Minister, the Opposition Front Benchers and all those in the Lords who sought to improve and build on it, because it got better as a result of all that work along the way. We have seen, for example, the addition of references to children as part of the Bill—something that our Home Affairs Committee recommended some years ago—and the amendments to reflect the issues raised earlier in our Commons debates about making non-fatal strangulation an offence I want to focus in particular on two areas where the Lords have proposed amendments that the Government are still resisting. The first is to support points made by other Members about the need to make sure that migrant women are not deterred from coming forward to get help when they desperately need it. These can be some of the most vulnerable women of all, threatened by perpetrators with losing their immigration status. Effectively, what the perpetrators are doing is exploiting the immigration system to exert coercive control over vulnerable women. We have a responsibility to make sure that that cannot happen, but, again, the Government are not going far enough in that regard The second area that I want to address is in relation to Lords amendment 42, which was put forward by Baroness Royall with support from across the Lords, including from Baroness Newlove. It is similar to an amendment that I put forward at an earlier stage in the Bill’s consideration, which the Government did say they would consider, because they recognised the importance of the issue. It builds on the work that Laura Richards at Paladin has done and has the support of hundreds of thousands of people who have signed petitions for stronger action against repeat perpetrators of domestic abuse and stalking We know that there are too many cases of awful crimes against women—serious domestic abuse, awful violence, horrendous stalking, murder, and lives that are lost as a result of terrible crimes—and yet the perpetrator has committed crimes before. They may have been involved in other stalking offences, harassment, repeated domestic abuse or violence. They move from one victim to another and sometimes from one town or region to another. They find someone new to control and to abuse and someone else whose lives they can destroy. Too often, when those previous crimes emerge, everyone sighs in sadness, everyone wishes that the signs had been picked up earlier, everyone says that the dots should have been joined, and everyone says that lessons should be learned, but in the end they never are and not enough changes. We cannot carry on like this Hollie Gazzard was stalked and murdered by a man who was involved in 24 previous violent offences, including 12 on an ex-partner. Even though he had been reported to the police many times, there was no proactive risk assessment, and there was no management despite his previous violent offences. Linzi Ashton was raped, strangled and murdered by a man who had strangled two previous partners, but his repeat pattern of abuse towards women was not picked up. Jane Clough, an A&E nurse, was stalked and then murdered by a violent ex-partner, even though he had a history of abusing other women. He was not on the high-risk offenders register and the police were not monitoring him There are so many cases. Shana Grice was stalked and murdered in 2016. The man who killed her had abused 13 girls before, yet there was still no focus on him as a perpetrator, and no intelligence or information sharing. Faced with these cases, where perpetrators have repeated convictions for domestic abuse or for stalking, why on earth are their names not on the high-risk offenders register? Why on earth is there not a process to identify or manage these high-risk individuals? Why on earth do the police not take these cases seriously, because it is not happening? That is what Lords amendment 42 is all about. It adds convicted serial domestic abusers and stalkers to the high-risk offenders register so that police and specialist agencies can work together to prevent them from offending again and to use the multi-agency public protection arrangements to keep more women safe We know that, when it comes to domestic abuse, stalking, or violence against women, the most serious offenders are those repeat offenders. That is where we should be trying to focus more of our efforts Let me consider the Government’s objections. The Minister says that they will draw up a perpetrators strategy, which was part of Lords amendment 42. That is strongly welcome, but the Government are not going far enough with their plans for that strategy. For example, the strategy currently does not include stalking, which it needs to do, and it is not a replacement for the high risk register and the proper monitoring and interventions underpinned by statute that we need The Minister has said that a new category 4 is not needed on the high-risk offenders register—a new category from MAPPA—because these dangerous people can be included in category 3. The trouble is that just because in theory some of them can be does not mean that most of them are. The system is not working; simply adding a bit more guidance, a bit more urging and a bit more soul searching will not mean they are included in practice either Category 3 has historically been interpreted very narrowly and is interpreted by gatekeepers—people who are concerned about stretched resources and will continue to be so. At the moment, what that means in practice is that police, probation officers and other agencies involved in the system are simply not treating repeat perpetrators —those with repeat domestic abuse convictions—as high- risk offenders, yet they are high risk. Someone who has already been convicted of domestic abuse against a series of different women is a risk to other women and needs to be properly assessed, yet at the moment the system does not assess them as high risk. That is what we are trying to fundamentally change through legislation, to send a strong signal through the system—to police officers, specialist agencies and probation services across the country—that these cases are high risk and put other women at risk in future. They need to be properly assessed and managed to keep other women safe.