Examination of Witnesses

Part of Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 3:26 pm on 18 May 2021.

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Alison Hernandez:

If I may say, I get a bit frustrated with the conversation about funding, because it is not all about having funding from the Government. I absolutely applaud the serious violence duty. One of the challenges that we all recognise is that, generally, society is getting more violent. This isn’t, “Who has got the most violence in their area?” We have a general societal problem, which every area needs to be looking at, focusing on and tackling.

In Devon and Cornwall, we are not one of the areas that received the violence reduction unit funding, so the chief constable and I have come together in a partnership to establish a serious violence prevention programme. We are funding that through council tax payers’ funding, because we believe that it is fundamentally important that we make this a priority. So you can do it yourselves if you think it is important. The serious violence duty will help people to see that this must be prioritised to be tackled. We want to do prevention; we do not want to deal with the things in the Bill that are just about enforcement and the hard end of it. We are able to look at that early intervention and prevention.

Many Members will have heard of things such as Operation Encompass, which is throughout the country in all 43 police forces, to try to help children who are at the receiving end of domestic abuse. In that sort of thing, we are trying to help children as young as possible, to break that cycle of violence. We fundamentally know that domestic abuse is one of the key issues that, if not tackled at a young age, leads to more violence in later life. I am an absolute supporter of the serious violence duty. We have things within our own powers, as commissioners with our local authorities, to set the priorities to tackle that.