My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, for tabling this amendment. The Government are in full agreement with its aims; we too want professionals to have the skills and confidence to ask the right questions about domestic abuse and take the appropriate action. I will not be making arguments about overburdening them, but rather suggesting how we think it might be achieved.
We absolutely want to embed understanding of domestic abuse in all agencies. As the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said, what is the point if agencies do not know how to respond and cannot spot the signs? We want to ensure that there is strong recognition, from senior leadership through to front-line staff, of the importance of tackling domestic abuse. We want staff to ask about domestic abuse, because it is integral to their role and driven by professional curiosity. One of our concerns about introducing a statutory duty, to which noble Lords have alluded, is that it risks undermining professional judgment, and we do not want these sensitive and complex conversations to turn into some sort of tick-box exercise.
The Government are committed to taking wide-ranging action to improve understanding of domestic abuse across statutory agencies through guidance, targeted resources and training for responding agencies such as the police, social workers, healthcare professionals and universal credit work coaches. Work is already under way to strengthen the response from key agencies. In the health sector, front-line staff must undertake mandatory safeguarding training, which includes a focus on domestic abuse. The intercollegiate documents for child and adult safeguarding set out the core skills, competencies and knowledge expected for healthcare staff to be covered in the safeguarding training, and the level of training expected depending on their roles.
NHS England and NHS Improvement are strengthening safeguarding practice in local health systems through the updated NHS safeguarding
accountability and assurance framework, and a new safeguarding commissioning assurance toolkit. Schedule 32 to the NHS standard contract sets out the service conditions for safeguarding, which include that the provider must implement comprehensive programmes of safeguarding training for all relevant staff and must have regard to the intercollegiate guidance on safeguarding training.
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The Department for Work and Pensions is introducing a domestic abuse specialist in every jobcentre. These specialists will also be able to upskill their colleagues and promote awareness of domestic abuse across the workforce. To strengthen the response from social workers, we have funded the development of a training programme for professionals working in children’s services. In the housing sector we have supported the work of the Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance to establish a set of standards and an accreditation process for how housing providers should respond to domestic abuse.
On the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, investment in training over recent years is already driving a culture change and clear improvements in the police response to, and understanding of, domestic abuse. Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services has reported a significant improvement in recent years, with officers now far better equipped to ensure that victims are listened to, understood and taken seriously. In terms of resource, the recruitment of the 20,000 police officers is under way, but that is not to take away from the point that those officers also need to be trained.
Of course, there is room to do more and police forces and local policing bodies recognise it. Just last week, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, when launching his consultation on the police precept for 2021-22, said:
“There over 40,000 reports of domestic abuse to GMP every year. We need to ensure they all get a service to a consistently high standard. Transforming the response to and support for victims of domestic violence will require new training and supervision for officers, also ensuring officers are fully trained on the powers provided by the new Domestic Abuse Bill and training officers to deal with children who may have witnessed.”
Finally, the domestic abuse commissioner will play a key role in promoting greater consistency in the response of statutory and voluntary sector services across all areas of the country. My noble friend Lady Verma made a very good point about language barriers and family pressures, both of which can prevent and obstruct open communication between victim and healthcare professional. We are, however, very keen to keep this issue under review. We welcome the work that is being done in Wales to embed targeted inquiries into domestic abuse across public services through the “Ask and Act” duty, and we will carefully consider evidence of the impact and effectiveness of this measure.
While our view is that placing a new statutory duty on public authorities in relation to training and inquiries is not the best way to improve the response to domestic abuse, it is important to note that the Bill already provides for the issuing of guidance under Clause 73. Such guidance can address training needs among other things, although in many cases such guidance is best
coming from the appropriate responsible agency in each sector, such as the College of Policing. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, asked about the list and whether it included all schools and universities. It is not intended to—it covers providers, such as the NHS, local authorities and Ofsted.
In conclusion, I share the noble Baroness’s objective in ensuring that all relevant front-line practitioners receive appropriate training so that they can effectively respond to domestic abuse and support victims. We remain to be persuaded that legislation is necessary, but we will continue to keep this under review, including in light of the still relatively limited experience of the “Ask and Act” scheme in Wales. In the meantime, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.