Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Commons, 2019-10-02
Topic: Law and Crime
Benjamin David Bradley (Conservative, Centre-right): I have sat here listening to this debate and been taken to thoughts and memories of my own, which has led me to cross out almost the entirety of my speech, to the great frustration of my staff. I have probably wasted a lot of their afternoon. I often find in this place, particularly when I end up with a very short time to speak, that I need to skip things that would duplicate what others have said. Perhaps I will stick to talking about personal experiences I want to pay tribute, as many others have done, to my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) for her incredibly considered, experienced and passionate speech. Although many people have worked on this issue, the Bill should be considered a flagship and a real bastion of her time in No. 10. It is a hugely important legacy for her as an individual, as well as for the House. I also want to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) for her incredibly passionate and moving speech, which took me back to an experience that I will mention shortly. Her speech has every right and reason to lead the news later, but it will not do so because Brexit will once again kick other news off the agenda. Her speech was incredibly important in its own right and it will help people, even aside from this legislation I said that the hon. Lady’s speech reminded me of something. I recently ran the Mansfield 10K, which also made me cry, albeit in a slightly different way. That was a painful cry, but I survived it none the less. I ran the 10K to raise money for the charity Nottinghamshire Independent Domestic Abuse Services—NIDAS. I have been working with it for two years, since I was elected. Like so many charities around the UK, it helps people in their time of need, and it has helped more than 5,000 people in Mansfield and Ashfield over the past five years. That is an area of roughly 180,000 people, and the fact that it has supported 5,000 people in five years just goes to show the extent of this issue in my part of the world. We have some of the worst figures for domestic abuse anywhere in the country The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), came to visit NIDAS, and we both had a really interesting time hearing about the services it provides. It was also a very emotional visit. I find myself feeling increasingly emotional since I had children —I do not like to admit how much that is the case—and I sat in that room crying as I listened to the accounts of some of the women who had been supported by the charity. In particular, a piece of creative writing that one of the women had done through her therapy, supported by the charity, was really moving. The contribution from the hon. Member for Canterbury brought that back to me, so I thought I would recount that experience Many of the Bill’s obvious benefits have been discussed in this debate, including preventing victims of domestic abuse from being cross-examined by their perpetrators, and the creation of the new Domestic Abuse Commissioner role, which I hope will ensure that the focus of scrutiny continues long after we stop talking about the Bill in this place. Another example that brought me back to a personal experience was the idea of broadening the domestic abuse definition in law. The hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on the Opposition Front Bench mentioned older people and talked about how the over-75s do not necessarily get the same support. I can give the House an example from a working-class community that I represent. For a lot of people who were married in the 1950s or 1960s, the husbands would have had the money and paid their wives a housekeeping allowance on a weekly basis. In many parts of my community, that is still the case. It is something that we do not necessarily see or recognise, and these days we in the Chamber would all probably think that it was unacceptable, but it persists and we do not even notice it in many cases. I was reminded of it by a point made by the Opposition Front Bencher, and it is something that we can now prevent, hopefully through the passage of this Bill and by providing a clear definition to help some of those women to come forward and say, "Actually, I now realise that this is not right." Obviously there is a more detailed debate to be had throughout the community if we are to get all this right. As was mentioned earlier, even a tiny reduction in domestic abuse will make the Bill pay for itself. If these measures make anybody feel safer or bring perpetrators to justice, the Bill will have done its job, and for that reason I trust that it will have unanimous support in the House today.