Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, in a way, this mirrors the previous debate, in that we are discussing how under the Bill we intend to deal with private family legal aid and its relation to domestic violence. A number of speeches have ranged wider than that; certainly, remarks made outside the House in the press, on the radio and elsewhere suggest that somehow the Government are turning their back on the subject of domestic violence. Let me make it clear from the start that the Government are absolutely committed to supporting action against domestic violence and supporting the victims of domestic violence, whether through legal aid funding or other means. I do not think it serves the interests of those suffering from domestic violence to suggest otherwise. Our record is good. We have provided more than £28 million of stable funding until 2015 for specialist local domestic and sexual violence and support services, and are providing £900,000 to support national domestic violence helplines and stalking helplines. The Ministry of Justice contributes towards the funding of independent advisers attached to specialist domestic violence courts—a total of more than £9 million up to the end of 2012-13. In addition, the victim and witness general fund will provide a total of nearly £15.5 million in grant funding over the next three years to voluntary sector organisations that support the most seriously affected and vulnerable and persistently targeted victims of crime. Of that, nearly £4.7 million will be used to fund 44 court-based independent domestic violence advisers across England and Wales over the next three years. We will also allocate £3 million a year for the next three years to 65 rape crisis centres, and are working with the voluntary sector to develop the first phase of new rape support centres where there are gaps in provision. Domestic violence protection orders are being piloted in three police force areas. They are designed to give immediate protection to victims by banning a perpetrator from returning to the house and giving the victim the breathing space they need to consider their next steps. Just today, we announced a one-year pilot which will take place from this summer to test domestic violence disclosure schemes, known as Clare's law. The pilot will test a process for enabling the police to disclose to the public information about violent offending by a new or existing partner where that may help to protect them from further violent offending. So the claim that we are turning our back on the problem of domestic violence is simply not true. Thankfully, there has been a real change in attitudes in this country towards domestic violence over the past 30 years. Of course, the party opposite can take its share of the credit for that progress. We still have some way to go—some would say a long way to go. The Government will continue to give priority to this issue but on the basis of the facts, not fantasy. For example, I make it absolutely clear that we are retaining legal aid for the purpose of seeking an order or injunction to prevent domestic violence, exactly as at present, although that was not the gist of the letter referred to by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Exeter. This means keeping the power to waive the upper financial eligibility limits and a relaxed merits test, so that those who need help can get it. Defining domestic violence or what evidence is needed to show domestic violence to qualify for legal aid simply does not arise in these cases. Legal aid is, and will remain, available in these cases on the non-means-tested basis that applies at present. These are the cases which are about protecting someone's safety, about not revealing where someone lives and about ensuring that the abuser is excluded from the family home—the cases that we all agree need prioritising. We know that domestic violence can have a devastating effect on victims. It is also a significant predictor of children being taken into care, as well as a precursor to all sorts of other social problems, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, pointed out. On top of this, we also know that perpetrators of domestic violence can assert a controlling, insidious power over their victims, including financial power, and this could stop a victim effectively presenting their case against the perpetrator in court, for example. That is why we have made a large, and extremely important, exception in our proposal to remove most private family legal aid from the scope of legal aid—that is, where domestic violence is involved. To be absolutely clear, these are the follow-up issues concerning children and money that arise after someone has left their abuser and their safety has been secured. Because domestic violence is involved, and because someone may be much less able to present their case in court against their abuser than in a case where no domestic violence is involved, we want to make legal aid available. However, I remind the House that no one has ever suggested that this should be the almost means-and-merits-free legal aid that is available to get an injunction or domestic violence order. Normal means-and-merits-testing will apply in these family cases, as it does at present. This point is relevant to Amendment 2, tabled by the noble and learned Baroness, which essentially states that means-testing would apply to victims of domestic violence. It does, of course, although in a very relaxed way for injunction cases and in the normal way for private family cases. I suspect that her main reason for tabling the amendment was simply to ensure that this matter was debated, and I think she was entirely right to do so. This is a vital subject but her amendment, perhaps inadvertently, underlines the point that legal aid resources have to be prioritised. That has always been the case and is even more so now. We absolutely prioritise cases where safety is an issue—the injunction cases—and we are still prioritising family cases that involve domestic violence, but I make a plea to the House to remember that we are talking about legal aid for two very different types of case, and different rules must of necessity apply. I turn now to the subject of how the Bill should define domestic violence. This is covered by government Amendments 37, 38, 40, 42, 70, 71 and 72, as well as Amendment 41, tabled by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland. There has of course been much debate on this point. The issue has been that the Bill as introduced does not use the operational definition of domestic violence first devised by the Association of Chief Police Officers. As I have previously explained, the Government think that these concerns are misplaced. The definition in the Bill was always intended to be broad and comprehensive and to cover the same cases as the ACPO definition, including financial abuse. The Government do not consider that the definition originally used in the Bill is any narrower. However, I recognise that we have failed to convince the House of this and I hope that the amendments that the Government have tabled, using the words of the ACPO definition in the Bill, will put this particular issue to rest. I know that the noble and learned Baroness is concerned that we have not put ““any incident””, from ACPO, in our amendment. The simple reason is that we have always been clear that, to qualify for legal aid in a private family case, objective evidence of domestic violence must be provided, and I think there is general agreement on that principle. In drafting terms, the phrase ““any incident”” simply does not work with this principle, but the main point is that all forms of abuse, as defined by ACPO, will explicitly be covered. I hope that, although the noble and learned Baroness has tweaked the ACPO definition slightly in her amendment, she will be satisfied with ours. I turn now to Amendments 39, 43 and 44, which concern the forms of evidence of domestic abuse to be accepted in order to qualify for legal aid in a private family case, and whether any time limits should apply to that evidence. I would like to remind the House of my earlier remarks that the evidence requirements apply only to private family law matters and not to injunctions or domestic violence orders to secure someone's safety. Amendment 43 would specify on the face of the Bill, rather than in regulations pursuant to Clause 10 as has been our intention, a broad range of evidence to demonstrate domestic violence for the purpose of qualifying someone for legal aid in a private family law case. Amendment 39 does something similar, albeit with a narrower list. As I have said before, we want victims of domestic violence to have the benefit of legal aid in such cases where they will be disadvantaged by facing their abuser as the other party. It is important to remember that our proposal is that victims of domestic violence remain in scope of the legal aid provision. The noble Baroness, Lady Gould, asked about the basis of our claims for unfounded allegations. From this Dispatch Box, I have never justified what we are doing in terms of unfounded allegations. During our consultations, there was evidence from the Family Law Bar Association, from the Law Society, from Resolution and from the NSPCC as well as from family judges that this proposal could see a rise in unfounded allegations, and we need to guard against that. I could throw the question back to the noble Baroness: where is the allegation that this is based on some specific examples?