My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 114. As the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, has just said, it is purely a probing amendment concerning the need for additional safeguards in cases where a
conviction or caution has been spent. It seeks to build on the excellent proposals championed by the Government to protect the survivors of domestic abuse from being cross-examined by their perpetrators in the family court. As the former Victims’ Commissioner, I sadly heard directly from abuse survivors who had endured the pain, humiliation and re-traumatisation of being questioned on the stand by their abuser, and I am glad that we are putting an end to this blatantly abusive practice.
None the less, I am concerned that the current provisions overlook a scenario that we are likely to see in the family courts. Clause 63 does not currently apply to a conviction or caution that is spent. This is for the purposes of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. I understand the motivations behind not further punishing an offender past the time when they are considered rehabilitated, yet we know that domestic abuse involves patterns of behaviour that will not necessarily be interrupted or indeed stopped by a conviction. Thanks to data from SafeLives, we know that a quarter of high-harm perpetrators are repeat offenders, with some having at least six different victims. In other parts of the Bill, we will debate the need for an effective perpetrator strategy that will undoubtedly seek to improve our interventions post conviction.
Proceedings in the family courts can go on for years and may well continue past the time when a conviction or caution has been spent, especially if other convictions or cautions occurred. However, unless some sort of intervention has been made with the perpetrator, the risk could well remain. I raise this scenario to suggest not that we should further punish, but that such risks have not been fully considered. If there was one key takeaway from the Ministry of Justice Expert Panel on Harm report, it was that there are systemic issues with how risk is identified and managed in the family courts in relation to domestic abuse.
I therefore ask my noble friend the Minister whether he considers that the proposals in the Bill as drafted will ensure that such risk is properly managed in cases where convictions or cautions have been spent. I suggest that this provision needs to be reviewed and that extra safeguards such as risk assessments should perhaps be introduced in such cases.