Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Because the Bill and relevant clauses are still going through the House and still have to go through the other place. The regulations will be produced once the Bill comes into law. Those criteria will set out the specific requirements as to evidence of the fact of abuse or the risk of abuse. The definition of abuse itself is therefore only a preliminary part of the picture. In that sense, it might be argued that it makes little difference whether definition takes one form or another arguably rather similar form. However, we are still not convinced that the definition should be changed in the way suggested in the amendments. The definition in the Bill embraces mental as well as physical abuse, neglect, maltreatment and exploitation. Those references would cover, for example, abusive behaviour relating to the family finances. The definition in the Bill would not exclude from scope any of the types of abuse covered by the definition used by the Association of Chief Police Officers, and this part of the amendment is unnecessary. The amendment is, however, also potentially misleading. It would take a definition intended as a very wide operational net to catch behaviour that should not be disregarded and should be investigated —although it may emerge from the investigation that no action is called for—and place it in a context that is inevitably after the fact and directed to the effects of the behaviour in subsequent proceedings.