My Lords, when I reviewed the terrorism laws I often used to reflect on domestic violence and abuse. They bear no national security label, but they seem to me to be threats on at least a comparable scale. Domestic violence takes far more innocent lives in this country than the 100 or so who have been killed by terrorism since the turn of the century. I suspect that fear of domestic abuse, just as much as fear of terrorism, conditions the behaviour of huge numbers of people. I therefore welcome this important Bill, while bearing in mind another important lesson from the world of counterterrorism: the further reaching the powers we enact and the more universally welcome they are, the more important it is to examine the attendant safeguards.
I am grateful to the Magistrates’ Association for its briefing on domestic abuse protection orders. Among the practical issues it highlights are whether there should be a statutory maximum time limit on DVPOs, subject to renewal; whether the family courts should
be able to impose a domestic abuse perpetrator programme on an alleged offender without any conviction or prior finding of fact; whether it is right to impose positive requirements, such as drug rehabilitation, when there has been no opportunity to find out if the subject will engage with them; and whether there need to be processes to deal with the overlap in jurisdictions of criminal, civil and family courts. Some of these issues will, I am sure, be ironed out in the pilot or in guidance, but we may need to consider whether others should be reflected in the Bill.
Finally, a word about the proposed new offence of non-fatal strangulation. I have studied in detail the March 2016 report of the New Zealand Law Commission, which stated a preference for generic crimes and warned against what it called a slide into a chaotic plethora of specific offences. That was also a strong theme of our own Law Commission report of 2015, Reform of Offences Against the Person. However, the New Zealand Law Commission did accept the case for a new offence of non-fatal strangulation. The case for such an offence is a strong one, for the reasons which the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, and others have so ably explained.
However, counterterrorism also teaches us that hurried law can be bad law, and we need to be sure that all the necessary thinking has been done. Would a more generic offence, such as aggravated assault or recklessly endangering life, meet the case? If not, how are strangulation and suffocation to be defined, and should personal connection in the language of the Bill be a condition of the offence or not? What is to be the mens rea, and should there be a statutory defence of consent? What are the sentencing implications? These are issues which the report of the New Zealand Law Commission helps us to address but on which it cannot be the last word in the circumstances prevailing here.
I hate to miss a bus as much as the next person, and this Bill is an inviting, indeed overdue, vehicle. If the Government see merit, as so many of us do, in the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, I hope they will start working constructively on it at the earliest opportunity. Perhaps, if necessary, they will do this with the urgent involvement of the Law Commission so that we can be sure that it will be as effective as it needs to be.