Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, I am fully supportive of the spirit behind these amendments. I rise simply to query a small point concerning the definition of abuse in Amendments 41 and 42, both of which are to the same effect. Amendment 41 states that, "““'abuse' means any incident or repeated incidents of threatening behaviour, violence or abuse (whether psychological, physical, sexual, financial or emotional””." When one speaks of domestic violence, I imagine that, like me, most Members of the House have a fair idea in their minds of what is involved, and the speeches that your Lordships have heard this afternoon rather underline that: namely, that some party to a domestic partnership has been battered or threatened with violence in some way. If the only threat is a financial one, is it appropriate to describe it as domestic violence? I accept that financial threats might exacerbate other examples of domestic violence. However, I refer to financial pressure alone—nothing but financial pressure—whereby one of the parties to the domestic partnership is endeavouring to control the expenditure of the other party in one way or another. We have heard a great deal about cuts on a national basis and nations living beyond their income. However, parties to a domestic partnership can live beyond their income as well. One of the parties may seek to curb this, and that could be described as threatening behaviour of a financial character. Is that to be called domestic violence? For my part, I think that including the adjective ““financial”” as being sufficient by itself to constitute domestic violence rather diminishes the impact of ““domestic violence””. I suggest that Amendments 41 and 42 would be better amendments if that adjective were removed from them.