Ruth Davison and Ellen Miller gave evidence.

We will now hear evidence from Ruth Davison, chief executive of Refuge, and from Ellen Miller, interim CEO of SafeLives. Ms Miller, thank you very much for coming; I know there was a problem on Tuesday, so thank you for coming in person.

Q We do not have very long, so I will be as brief as possible.

First and foremost I suppose, could you could give a brief assessment of whether you think what is currently in the Bill will make a big difference to the victims that you support—victims of domestic violence and, in lots of cases, sexual violence?

Ruth Davison:

Speaking as Refuge, we are obviously the largest provider of specialist services to women who are experiencing gender-based violence, particularly domestic abuse. We absolutely support the intention of this Bill and its founding principles: to give greater voice and power to victims. Unfortunately, however, as it stands, my best description of it is a missed opportunity. Without any funding attached, we do not see any opportunity for the transformational change that these women desperately, desperately need.

To give you some sense of scale, still one in four women in this country will experience domestic abuse in their lifetime. It is one of the most heinous and prolific crimes that we have in this country, yet when we are calling for full funding of community-based services, which is only estimated at £238 million a year by the Women’s Aid Federation, we are not seeing any traction on that.

So, while it is great that there is a duty to collaborate and it is very positive that statutory bodies come together and look holistically at the needs of victims, without a corresponding duty to fund, I am afraid we do not think it will make any difference to the women we are supporting, the vast Majority of whom do not report to the police anyway, because confidence in the police and criminal justice system is so low and retraumatisation is so high, as you try to work through that process, that they are not really included in the scope, even though they are covered by the technical definition.

Q On that specific point, do you think it would be important to put explicitly in the Bill that the victims code and all the rights that come with it should apply to anybody even if they do not report?

Ruth Davison:

Absolutely. I understand that the victims code focuses on criminal justice practitioners, but I would absolutely enshrine not just four overarching principles but the specifics of the code in the law. We met some survivors, here, two days ago. One of the panel asked them whether they knew what the code was. Only one woman in that room knew what the code was, never mind knew how to uphold and access her rights. They absolutely need to be listed in the Bill and they need to be legally enforceable as a last resort.

To pick up on that point, do you think that they need to also be enforceable with victims of domestic abuse going through the family court?Q

Ruth Davison:

Absolutely, I do. Victims who are experiencing domestic abuse, through no fault of their own, are suddenly having to navigate housing, the family courts and social services, as well as the criminal justice and policing system. There is no tied-up approach and yet we know that so much trauma and so much post-separation abuse is perpetrated in the family courts at the moment.

Ellen—now we can finally hear you.Q

Ellen Miller:

Thank you; I am real! It is a shame the link does not reach as far as Blackpool, but never mind.

I will focus in on two things. We would much rather have this Bill than not. There are two things I would focus on. The first is duties. The second is teeth.

I spent 20 years in local government. I would liken putting in a duty to collaborate to when somebody puts in a planning application, send an email to the Environment Agency and, three months later, it sends one back saying, “No, we haven’t got any record of protected newts.” Any duty that you can effectively discharge by email, you might as well not bother putting in. That is what we have at the moment. If I may politely do so, I would suggest that, instead, we look at a duty to listen—to listen to survivors and hear what their lives are like, and to see them as real people.

Secondly, we should look at a duty to acknowledge the level of need. You have heard about the joint strategic needs assessment. That exists in so many other fields of the social sector and social change work; why can we not have that for victims and survivors of domestic abuse?

Thirdly, there is the duty to act. When I say that, I do not just mean the duty to act on people who come to the police force at a moment of crisis, which is the Majority of people for whom there is funding at the moment. We have to have that, but at the moment the system we have is a bit like having an NHS that is just A&E. We are never going to solve the systemic issues around domestic abuse unless we have a duty to not just immediately protect, but to prevent and ensure recovery, and to allow people to have the lives they should have the right to.

I would put those duties in the Bill, if you want to take my advice on it.

Oh, I will.

Ellen Miller:

The other area is teeth. I have worked in the field of victims for a long time. I have seen so many atrocious things that are not in line with the victims code of practice. The code of practice is great, if only it happened. A screen when you go into court that is 4 foot high—that is not protecting a witness. Giving them a fold-out leaflet in English—that is not telling somebody what their rights are. This just does not happen. Please, let’s have some teeth. Let’s have some accountability around this. Let’s recognise the rights that should be there.

On the independent domestic violence adviser and independent sexual violence adviser clauses in the Bill, SafeLives is obviously the organisation that at one time, called Caada—Co-ordinated Action Against Domestic Abuse—was the absolute pioneer of the IDVA position. There has been quite a lot of discussion against the idea that the definition of an IDVA and ISVA is the be-all and end-all.Q

Ellen Miller:

Absolutely, and that is why I really wanted to come down, apart from the duties point. There was a history; there was initially funding for the equivalent of A&E-type stuff. In order to make that credible, the IDVA role was set up. In the past, the IDVA has been associated very much with only doing those really high-risk cases.

Let us deconstruct what an IDVA is. An IDVA is somebody who has gone through a 12-day training programme. This is not a master’s degree or an impossible bar; it is a really basic level of minimum threshold that you should get to. Everybody who works in domestic abuse should have the right to that level of training. We expect it in the care sector—we expect care workers to know how to safely manage cases, to report safeguarding, and to understand the dynamics of power and control within the care setting. We expect that in care. We should expect that in domestic abuse.

To us, the biggest provider of IDVAs, it is a programme of knowledge—a starting point. It does not give you cultural competence, which you have if you are a “by and for” organisation. It does not give you in-depth knowledge around things like non-fatal strangulation, honour-based violence and so on. It is your basic core concepts. It gives a bit more power and respect to individuals who do not have parity with the police officer, the psychiatrist and the social worker—it gives them a status. I wish it was not the case that you need a badge to be respected and listened to, but on the other hand it gives the credibility of a level of basic knowledge. To me, it is about a set of learning, so it is therefore useful, but it is only a starting point.

Ruth Davison:

I would build on that, and echo what the Domestic Abuse Commissioner said to the Committee on Tuesday, which is to look at and value all the community outreach roles. When we are in the context of an absolute drought of funding, there is a potential unintended consequence of elevating the IDVA and ISVA roles over and above other roles that are equally skilled and vital—as Ellen said, particularly those roles that focus on cultural competencies and serve the “by and for” community. There is a real concern from us as a sector that we could unintentionally, by elevating one role, make it even harder to access funding for those culturally specific roles in the “by and for” services, which are already six times less likely to receive statutory funding.

Q Ellen, you talk about having teeth, but what does that look like? We have seen suggestions that police officers have their pay docked, for example, if they do not enforce the code. What do you mean by that? What does enforcement look like?

Ellen Miller:

I would look at enforcement through the inspection and reporting regime. First, we must ensure that there is a Victims’ Commissioner and a Domestic Abuse Commissioner, and that they have the right to be very public and open. Ruth will have done this, and we have done this: when you have data and look at the differences in the level of funding, it is absolutely shocking and it is not reported. Some things that, for example, the victims grant gets spent on are just jaw-dropping. There is not that level of accountability. Accountability comes through inspections, the roles of the independent commissioners and reporting—and the right to properly kick-off in a way that will actually lead to something. There needs to be the equivalent health and care ombudsman: a proper complaints process.

Ruth Davison:

I agree with what Ellen is saying. It comes back to putting the four overarching principles into the Bill. We have already seen reports saying, “That won’t go far enough. It won’t lead to the cultural change that is so necessary if victims are actually to be able to access those rights—not for those rights to just exist on a piece of paper that they may or may not be able to read even if they receive it, but to be acting throughout the whole process.”

Missing from the Bill as a whole is a recognition of how far there is to go in terms of tackling culture. The fundamental understanding of domestic abuse and of many of the crimes that are faced by women in this country is missing. We are calling for mandatory training for police forces, which would lead to the kind of enforcement and teeth that Ellen is talking about.

Q Thank you for what you are bringing to the table, and for what you do in your daily lives. Ruth, you spoke about the event at the beginning of the week with some of your service users. In the Bill, the victims code compels each criminal justice body to take reasonable steps to promote awareness. Is that enough?

Ruth Davison:

No, it is not enough. You were there at the event, so you heard women saying, “What is this?” If they do not know what it is, it is not being upheld at the moment. We do not think that reasonable steps to raise awareness and make people aware of the code is adequate. Making it enforceable gives it teeth. I feel like I am repeating what Ellen is saying, but we need to go further.

These are women who are in a period of crisis in their lives. They may be being forced to flee their home with their children in the middle of the night, leaving friends, family, pets, and toys behind. They are dealing with all these institutions through no fault of their own. Those institutions need to have very clear and holistic approaches to their support. That is what is done on the frontline of community-based services, whether or not they enter the criminal justice system, report to the police and have their case dismissed due to lack of evidence, or endure the re-traumatisation of testifying again and again in the family court or in the legal case. Recognising that holistic support is essential, and embedding that in the Bill through the victims code being enforceable feels like a critical part of it, alongside the funding I am calling for.

Q It is usually the police who are the frontline staff that people go to first. Do they know about the victims code?

Ruth Davison:

If they do, I do not think they are communicating it—so, no. I still think we find absolutely shocking responses from frontline policing, and at the moment obviously the level of police-perpetrated domestic abuse and sexual offences coming to light is only deterring people further from reporting to the police. The first place that many of them come—the frontline—is the national domestic abuse helpline or their local frontline community service, not the police. That needs to change, because police need to understand the dynamics of domestic abuse. I often say that if I spotted a suspicious package on the bus on my way here and I phoned it in, no one would say, “But what are you wearing and why were you on that bus on your own at that time of the day? Had you been drinking?” People would say, “Tell us where the package is,” and they would deal with the package, not start to interrogate me as if I were the criminal.

Far too many victims are unfortunately still receiving victim-blaming language and feeling as if they are criminalised themselves when they come forward. That is even before you get to the points made very well by Southall Black Sisters on Tuesday about the absolutely desperate need for a firewall to separate statutory services from immigration services, because women thinking they could be criminalised or lose their right to stay in this country is another massive deterrent to them feeling safe to come forward.

Ellen Miller:

Can I add to that? There should also be a firewall to separate independent support for victims from the statutory organisations that have so often let down these individuals. That is why people are not going to the police. People are worried that their children will be taken away from them. They are worried about getting the father of their child in huge amounts of trouble. They are worried about what it might mean to them—they may not speak English in a particularly strong way, but have had it explained and know their rights. They may feel they do not have any chance of having their rights realised. Independence really matters, and that is something that is absolutely not universal in the support for victims. It is very hard, in some places, to get independent support. We see that in care: we have the independent health advocate, which is again written into the Care Act, but we do not have that provision for survivors of domestic abuse. That is a legislative issue.

Q I have two very quick questions, if I may, Chair. I am grateful that the Minister has tabled amendments around counselling notes. You were talking about the chilling effect of not having the firewall. I do not know if you have seen the Minister’s amendments, but why should it not be automatic that counselling notes are used or accessed by police?

Ruth Davison:

Maybe this comes back to understanding the dynamics of domestic abuse. An abuser will isolate you, gaslight you, tell you no one will believe you and cut off your routes to support. Something we hear time and again from survivors who come to us—survivors who phone the helpline and come to community-based services—is the unbelievable relief of someone believing you, having some empathy, listening to you and treating you like a human being. Obviously, there is then all the practical guidance that the independent advocates are able to give, but not having anywhere to speak and being silenced through these processes that are highly traumatic is dangerous for women, dangerous for their mental health, dangerous for their children and dangerous for their recoveries. Having a safe space in counselling as well as with your independent advocate in a community-based service is absolutely critical. That should not be automatically accessible by the police—who we know unfortunately have a whole habit of using that against you and looking into your past, rather than the past and motivations of the perpetrator. A firewall is absolutely essential if we to start to see confidence rebuild.

Ellen Miller:

There is something about what this crime is, as well. Intimate violence does the most awful, traumatic things to your brain, and it gives you the hugest impacts that will stay with you for a lifetime. I myself have survived sexual violence—35 years ago, briefly, in an attack. That stays with me forever. The gap between that happening then and going forward to a case and prosecution—what that did to me. I have worked with survivors of sexual and domestic abuse and violence. How can we leave people—women, mothers, fathers—without someone to help them sort that out? They have been severely damaged by what has happened to them, and it feels to me callous and appalling that we then have ISVAs who have to say, “Well, I know you really, really need support, but the choice is you can have support or you can have justice.” That is just not okay.

Thank you.

We have to finish exactly on time—it is in the programme motion.

Q I can do that. Very briefly, Ruth—because I am really interested in this—you are not suggesting that there should be a ban on disclosure, but that it should be a judge’s decision. Is that right?

Very short answer.

Ruth Davison:

The default should be non-disclosure, but a judge decision, yes—not an outright ban. Hopefully that was quick enough.

Q Ruth, you mentioned a culturally-specific disadvantage there already. What would you like to see in the Bill regarding cultural sensitivity and culturally-specific—

Very quick answer.

Ruth Davison:

Very briefly, at the moment women who have no recourse to public funds are completely locked out of any provision. We would like to see that change, and that has been costed by Imkaan. We would also like to see that there is more funding and more support for the “by and for” services, which is where our slight concern around definitions of IDVA and ISVA would come in—

Order. Thank you very much for taking the trouble to come in person. I know you have come a long way, but it is a lot better when people come in person. Thank you so much.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Fay Jones.)

Adjourned till this day at Two o’clock.