Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, this is the first of a group of amendments relating to domestic violence. Some of them overlap and are repetitive but they all have the same desire at their core—that the Government should listen a little more carefully to the very real concerns of many people about the incidence of domestic violence and the fact that the Bill, if not improved, may do a lot of damage to extremely vulnerable people. I have also put my name to Amendments 45, 46 and 48. Amendment 42 relates to a situation where a woman alleges domestic violence against a man and he is not represented. He will therefore be asking her questions about the abuse which she says he has perpetrated. If that abuse has occurred, it will be an extremely painful experience for her to undergo that questioning without the intervention of a lawyer. I well remember the Minister pointing out on Monday that judges are there to keep matters in order. I can only say to him that that is not entirely easy because there is a right of cross-examination and any defendant has a right to put his or—sometimes a woman is an abuser—her case to the person making the allegations. Therefore, as I know from experience, the judge’s ability to stop the sort of questions that will be asked will be quite limited. Some of those questions will have to be asked, but being questioned by the man who has committed the sometimes very serious domestic violence is in itself a form of abuse against the woman; as I said, occasionally a man is the victim. I hope that the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, will be speaking to Amendments 45, 46 and 48, so I shall make only one or two brief points about them. I notice that Amendment 44 is very similar to Amendment 45, although our amendment is slightly broader. The definition of domestic violence currently proposed is, in my view and I think the view of many others, inadequate and requires to be much broader, particularly in relation to threatening behaviour and psychological behaviour. Some men drive their wives or their partners almost to suicide by never putting a finger on them; in many ways, psychological and threatening behaviour is even more dangerous and even more debilitating than the man who returns home drunk on Saturday night and knocks his wife around but who does not ill treat her from Sunday to Saturday. Psychological abuse is usually daily and nightly and, therefore, it requires a rather broader interpretation. I ask the Minister to pay particular attention to Amendment 46. The proposals of the Government about what will be acceptable domestic violence in order to get legal aid are profoundly too narrow. There are so many situations. For example, no woman goes willingly to a refuge. I do not know whether the Minister has ever been to a refuge, but no one in their right senses would want to go there unless they were driven by real abuse from their partner. That is an absolute minimum. A woman who has been accepted in a refuge really should be treated as a victim of domestic violence. I hope that the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, will say more about these matters; they are of enormous importance and, so far, the Government have given an inadequate response to matters which I know they take seriously. However, if they do not give a sufficiently adequate response to these amendments, they will not be seen to be treating them sufficiently seriously. In relation to Amendment 42, I beg to move.