My Lords, I am speaking in support of Amendment 51, which would extend the list of public authorities that have a duty to co-operate with the domestic abuse commissioner, to include the Independent Office for Police Conduct, Her Majesty’s Prison Service, the National Probation Service, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, and the Chief Coroner. I am speaking also in support of Amendment 54, which would place a new duty on public authorities to carry out reviews and investigations into deaths where domestic abuse has been identified as a contributory factor, to notify the Secretary of State for the Home Office and the office of the domestic abuse commissioner on completion, and to provide them with a copy of their findings.
Thus, the domestic abuse commissioner is proposing to establish an oversight mechanism on investigations into domestic abuse related homicides and suicides. They are intended to ensure that a more systematic collection of investigations into suicides and homicides, in which domestic abuse is identified as a contributory factor, is made together with a robust accountability framework. This is to ensure that individual recommendations are acted upon, and that key themes across investigations are identified, to help target key policy changes needed to prevent future deaths.
The pandemic has created so many problems for our society, notwithstanding the area of domestic abuse. A number of domestic abuse charities and campaigners have reported a surge in calls to helplines and online services since the lockdown conditions were imposed. It is a sobering insight into the levels of abuse that people live with all the time. Coronavirus may exacerbate triggers, and lockdown may restrict access to support or escape. It may even curtail the measures some people take to keep their own violence under control.
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Dame Vera Baird QC, the Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales, told MPs at an evidence session last year that Counting Dead Women, a pioneering project that records the killing of women by men in the UK, had got to a total of 16 domestic abuse killings in three weeks between March and April of 2020. The usual record of 2 a week had increased to 5 a week, and she noted that that was the size of the crisis—a crisis that needs our fullest attention and our resolve to address.
In 2011, domestic homicide reviews were established on a statutory basis under Section 9 of the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004. These DHRs are carried out by community safety partnerships to ensure that lessons are learned when a person has been killed as a result of domestic abuse. They can bring a huge amount of value to local leadership, and the process brings together disparate parts of the statutory and non-statutory systems to consider how to prevent future deaths.
It was one of the most difficult and disturbing aspects of my role as a councillor when I had to take part in such a review following the death of one of my constituents. It was a devastating time for the community, and it left long-running consequences as we searched ourselves to see what more anyone could have done to prevent such a tragedy. In hard terms, what could be done now by agreeing these amendments is to establish a clear oversight and accountability mechanism led by the independent domestic abuse commissioner, which would help to drive effective implementation and share lessons nationally in the long as well as the short term.