Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, we now move to Motion B, which contains amendments in relation to domestic violence. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, told this House on Monday that we had a choice to make. Let me reassure this House that the Government have made a clear choice in favour of victims. The Lord Chancellor made this very clear last week when he stated: "““It was never in doubt that there would be legal aid for the protection of victims of domestic violence. Domestic violence is an issue that this Government, like any Government, including the previous one, take extremely seriously””.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/4/12; col. 219.]" The debate on the Bill that we have had over the past few months has not always reflected the extent of the Government's clear commitment to victims, so I will give some examples. The Home Office will provide more than £28 million of stable funding until 2015 for specialist local domestic and sexual violence support services, and will provide £900,000 to support national domestic violence helplines and the stalking helpline. The Ministry of Justice will contribute towards the funding of independent advisers attached to the specialist domestic violence courts a total of more than £9 million up to the end of 2012-13. We will also allocate nearly £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. We have also announced a one-year pilot that will take place from this summer to test out a domestic violence disclosure scheme known as Clare's law. We have always been clear that where there is a need for a protective order to prevent victims coming to further harm, legal aid will be available regardless of means. Separately, legal aid will be available for victims of domestic violence for the secondary issue of private family law proceedings—we have always made clear that this should be the case. The issue in hand is how best to apply this principle. I will remind the House how far the Government have moved. The evidence list has been very significantly lengthened to include protective injunctions, criminal conviction or ongoing proceedings, undertakings, police cautions, evidence of admission to a refuge, evidence from social services and GPs, referral to a multi-agency risk assessment conference and a finding of fact by the courts. We have doubled the time limit on evidence to two years, other than for convictions, where the only limit will be if the conviction is spent. This is a wide-ranging evidence set, which we are confident will meet the needs of victims in these cases. I remind the House that our package of proposals contains two very important safeguards that will provide genuine victims with a route into legal aid even if they do not have the headline forms of evidence, the need for which may not have been fully appreciated. One is a finding of fact by the court. This is not part of the UK Border Agency list, which is often cited when assessing proposals, but it is extremely important because it means that where someone does not have the evidence we have stipulated but the courts determine that domestic violence is a relevant factor, perhaps on the basis of evidence from friends or family or a domestic violence support organisation, legal aid will be triggered. As such, even in older instances of domestic violence that go beyond the two-year limit, funding will still be available where a court has determined that it is still pertinent to the case. Of course, there remains the more generic safeguard of the exceptional funding scheme. I submit that this package represents significant movement by the Government. I remind the House that we have now accepted the ACPO definition of domestic violence in full. We have listened and we have learnt from what noble Lords, Members of the House of Commons, and others said about our proposals. We absolutely agree that victims of domestic violence should receive legal aid. However, other than in protection cases, there needs to be evidence, and this should be covered in regulations because of the level of detail that will be required. This package is now worthy of support. The House of Commons gave its support to this, and now should we. I beg to move. Motion B1 (as an amendment to Motion B) Moved by