(The Secretary of State for the
Home Department): My Rt Hon Friends, the Prime
Minister and Justice Secretary and I are today publishing the
consultation response on transforming the response to domestic
abuse and draft Domestic Abuse Bill following the public
consultation last year.
Domestic abuse destroys lives. It is a cruel and complex crime
that can affect anyone, leaving physical and emotional scars that
can last a lifetime. It also places a considerable demand on
public services – Home Office research published today estimates
the economic and social costs of domestic abuse to society to be
£66 billion each year. This consultation response and draft Bill
further our ambition to transform the response to domestic abuse
and change social attitudes that keep these crimes hidden in
plain sight.
On 8 March 2018, the then Home Secretary issued a Written
Ministerial Statement (HCWS525) announcing a comprehensive public
consultation to address domestic abuse from prevention through to
rehabilitation. The consultation ran for 12 weeks and received
around 3,200 responses. In addition to questionnaires, we ran a
series of national roadshows and themed roundtables with victims
and other stakeholders. The government is grateful to the
victims, frontline practitioners and others who took the time to
respond to the consultation and supported the events. These
responses have helped us to refine and improve our proposals.
To reflect the prevalence and complexity of domestic abuse and
the harm it causes, the consultation response is truly a
cross-government effort. It recognises that change needs to occur
across all statutory agencies, including in courts, police,
schools, social care, housing, welfare and healthcare settings.
For those measures which require legislation to implement, the
government has today published the Domestic Abuse Bill in draft
for pre-legislative scrutiny. A joint committee of both Houses
will be established as soon as practicable to undertake such
scrutiny. Once the joint committee has reported, the government
is committed to introducing the Domestic Abuse Bill as soon as
parliamentary time allows.
The draft Bill includes the following measures:
a) Introduce the first ever statutory Government definition of
domestic abuse (which will include economic abuse);
b) Establish the office of Domestic Abuse Commissioner and set
out the Commissioner’s functions and powers (the competition for
the appointment of the Designate Domestic Abuse Commissioner was
launched on 4 December 2018);
c) Provide for a new Domestic Abuse Protection Notice and
Domestic Abuse Protection Order;
d) Prohibit perpetrators of abuse from cross-examining their
victims in person in the family courts and give the court
discretion to prevent cross-examination in person where it would
diminish the quality of the witness’ evidence or cause the
witness significant distress;
e) Create a statutory presumption that complainants of an offence
involving behaviour which amounts to domestic abuse are eligible
for special measures in the criminal courts;
f) Enable domestic abuse offenders to be subject to polygraph
testing as a condition of their licence following their release
from custody;
g) Place the guidance supporting the Domestic Violence Disclosure
Scheme on a statutory footing;
h) Ensure that where a local authority, for reasons connected
with domestic abuse, grants a new secure tenancy to a social
tenant who had or has a secure lifetime or assured tenancy (other
than an assured shorthold tenancy) this must be a secure lifetime
tenancy; and
i) Support ratification of the Council of Europe Convention on
preventing and combating violence against women and domestic
violence (the “Istanbul Convention”), by extending the
extraterritorial jurisdiction of the criminal courts in England
and Wales to further violent and sexual offences.
Ahead of the legislation we have already started to implement
measures to improve support for victims and their children. We
have launched applications for the designate Domestic Abuse
Commissioner role; we have announced successful bids to the
Children Affected by Domestic Abuse Fund with nine projects
across the country being funded; and 12 projects have been
awarded funding to support female offenders who have experienced
domestic abuse.
The government remains resolute in its determination to
fundamentally change the response to this insidious crime through
delivering the cross-government commitments set out in today’s
command paper. It demonstrates a clear focus on prevention and
sets out new measures to: raise awareness; better support victims
and their children; ensure perpetrators are pursued and
prosecuted; and drive consistently high performance in the
response to domestic abuse across all local areas, agencies and
sectors.
A copy of the command paper (CP 15), including the consultation
response, the draft Domestic Abuse Bill and explanatory notes,
will today be laid before the House and will be available online
at www.gov.uk.
