Clause 1 - Breach of non-molestation order to be a criminal offence
Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill [Lords]
9:45 am
Mr David Heath (Shadow Minister (Home Affairs), Home Affairs; Somerton and Frome, Liberal Democrat)
I support the amendments and new clauses. I congratulate the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham on amendment No. 14, which has enabled us to debate perhaps the most crucial issue in the Bill at the beginning, rather than at the end. When possible, that always seems a better procedure.
New clause 3 is identical to the amendment tabled in another place by my noble Friends Baroness Thomas of Walliswood and Lord McNally. That is not to claim
any special ownership, I hasten to say; they were simply persuaded by the strength of the arguments for such a definition. I am disappointed that the Government, having correctly taken the view that domestic violence is an extremely serious matter that needs to be given a priority that it does not always enjoy, are resisting defining what they seek to prevent.They do so on the spurious grounds that we know domestic violence when we see it. That is self-evidently not true; as has been said, there are competing definitions of domestic violence, and it is clear that we do not know it when we see it. I reject the argument that says that simply by defining, we restrict application. It is essential to have a correct definition, and we need to bear in mind the point made by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Ms Munn): the definition needs to be comprehensive.
It also needs to be of value in three specific areas. It has to be of value to the courts in giving clarity to the interpretation of statute; that is crucial. It needs to give clarity to enable the incidence of the crime to be measured adequately, because otherwise we will have no benchmarks against which to measure progress in deterring acts of domestic violence and assessing whether education programmes, support for families, or any other measures that the Government may wish to introduce, are successful. Thirdly, we need clarity simply so that the man and woman in the street know what domestic violence is and when it is being perpetrated, and particularly so that the victims of it know that they are the victims of a crime and that they should report it, and that proper action can be taken to defend them through the judicial system. For all those reasons, we need a comprehensive definition.
My hon. Friend the Member for Romsey (Sandra Gidley) and I have introduced a further new clause—new clause 11. It will be considered later, and I do not intend to pre-empt that discussion now. It also introduces a definition, although it does so in a different context within the Bill. We can return to that debate after we have heard what the Minister has to say today. I must say now, however, that what is workable in the New Zealand context is likely to be workable here because we are dealing with a broadly comparable jurisdiction with a broadly comparable way of doing business. That which has satisfied the legislators in New Zealand is at least worthy of careful consideration in this Committee and in the House.
It is important not to limit artificially the scope of the offence because that would allow perpetrators who should be properly dealt with to go free. However, I do not believe that this definition does that. It sensibly encompasses not only obvious areas, but less obvious areas, and ones that have on occasion been open to dispute. For instance, psychological harassment is an area that some people are still concerned about, but I think that it is a very real part of domestic abuse. May I suggest a new manifestation of that, which I do not think has been considered? When the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley made her intervention about those with disabilities, I thought that one of the most cruel forms of abuse is not actually to do anything to
somebody with serious disabilities but to decline to do that which is necessary for their well-being, or to make the threat of declining to do that which is necessary by saying, ''No, unless you do what I say, I will not prepare your dinner this evening, or push you in your wheelchair in the way that is necessary,'' or do a number of other things. That is a clear example of domestic abuse in a familial relationship, and yet I am not entirely convinced that it is encompassed within present legislation.
For all those reasons—and without rehearsing all the arguments that have been put—I believe that we need a definition. This is a workable definition. It has been proved to be workable from elsewhere. I hope that the Government will give it genuine consideration because, as we have heard, it has support from Members on both sides of the Committee and from a great number of people outside the House who are practitioners in this area, who know what they are talking about and who recognise the current deficiencies.
In closing, I want to refer to amendment No. 1, which the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham did not really address. I have concerns about it. Amendment No. 1 leaves out ''does anything'' in line 8 of page 1 and inserts
''commits an act of domestic violence.''
I think that that is a limitation on the application of non-molestation orders—or, at least, it potentially is. I would much prefer the courts to have the freedom to state in a non-molestation order the behaviour that they wish to prevent. I do not want that necessarily to be limited within the strict context of domestic violence. I do not agree with the hon. Lady on that specific point and I hope that she will not press that amendment. However, I must say that I give my wholehearted, general support to the contentions contained in amendment No. 14 and new clauses 3 and 9.