Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

I declare an interest as a legal aid family lawyer who specialises in domestic violence. I shall speak to amendments that deal with the widening of the evidence gateway for victims of domestic violence and the time limits applied to that gateway. However, at the outset I pay tribute to the Government's wide strategy of combating the scourge of domestic violence. During the course of this Bill's progress, they have clearly demonstrated their commitment to the legal needs of victims of domestic violence and their related family law issues. The Government have my support, but I would have liked them to go a little further on the time limits. Let me turn first to the evidence gateway. Domestic violence is so often a hidden crime. It is committed behind closed doors, where the victim's primal need to preserve a relationship or family unit can overwhelm their fear of continued abuse. There are often no witnesses, save for the sad exception of children, and it is one person's word against another's if the police arrive on the scene. The vast majority of victims are women. They find help, support and guidance in the face of adversity through their GPs, hospitals, social services and DV support organisations. The Government are absolutely right to ensure that the gateway criteria reflect and accommodate the alternative routes that women—and some men—take to address the pain and suffering that they are experiencing. Evidence, in the form of medical reports and letters from health professionals, social services and refuges, is successfully relied on every day in the courts. Judges use it all the time to justify the making of non-molestation orders and occupation orders, under the Family Law Act 1996. If such evidence is acceptable to the courts in establishing violence, it should surely be acceptable to the Executive agency of the Ministry of Justice in making its funding decisions. Some who suffer abuse have even heavier armoury to prevent the disclosure and reporting of domestic violence. Be it a matter of duty, shame or honour, there is often huge familial and cultural pressure in black and ethnic minority communities to avoid the police, lawyers and other statutory bodies. Women also often feel compelled to use alternative but unacceptable community mechanisms for dispute resolution, which can often expose them to increased risk of harm and injustice. A widening of the gateway will especially help those women and girls, many of whom also have practical problems in reporting violence owing to language barriers, unawareness of services and fear of deportation. There is also a need to maintain consistency across Departments in our treatment of domestic violence. Since 2004, in dealing with applications for leave to remain on the grounds of domestic violence, the UK Border Agency has used similar criteria to those advocated today by the Government. Although I appreciate that the list of criteria is now used as indicative guidance rather than compulsory evidence, it should be accepted that during the last eight years it has worked effectively, and without opening the fearsome floodgates to the outside world. Having given reasons to support the widening of the gateway, let me now deal with one of the principal objections that has been raised against it. During earlier Government consultations, evidence was submitted by the Law Society and other bodies which suggested that a domestic violence gateway for family legal aid could lead to false allegations. However, having worked as a legal aid family lawyer for more than 20 years, I can tell the House that the overwhelming majority of my clients would not have deliberately recruited social services into their affairs, inviting all the risks that go with such involvement, nor would they have left the family to place themselves and their children in a hostel or women's refuge, or deliberately inflict injury on themselves or their children and then falsely report the injury to a GP or hospital. Such acts require a high degree of wanton and malicious forethought. Yes, dishonesty exists across every section of society, but we need to weigh up the quantum of potential abuse and balance it against the harm that would persist if we fail to provide essential legal services for the most vulnerable people in society. On the time limit applied to the criteria, I do not believe that the gateway should remain open in perpetuity, but there are strong reasons for extending it beyond 12 months. Such a limit does not recognise the dynamic of domestic violence or the genuine potential for post-separation violence. Research published by Women's Aid found that 76% of those who have experienced violence also experience post-separation violence. Also, many non-molestation injunction orders are granted for just six months or a year. It is a sad fact that on expiry a significant number of respondents return and bring to bear a threatening presence, albeit one that is perhaps not sufficient to merit the making of a further injunction order. For many women, especially those who have suffered years of abuse before taking any action, 12 months is simply not sufficient to reach a state of physical, emotional and financial readiness to commence divorce or other legal proceedings. Indeed, a short, 12-month limit could encourage women to take action too early or miss out altogether on the help they need. In the fullness of time, however, things settle down. Acrimony reduces, people move on, people remarry, children grow up, and old wounds start to heal. We therefore have to question the equity of bleeding the scars of old battles simply to obtain legal aid ad infinitum. All this suggests that at some stage a statutory line has to be drawn under the issues of the past. My personal view is that three years, rather than one, would be more appropriate for the majority of cases, but I of course leave that open for debate.