My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 44. I thank my noble friend Lady Helic and Claire Waxman, the Victims’ Commissioner for London, and her team for bringing the issue of training to the forefront of this legislation. The evidence provided by my noble friend Lady Helic and others was harrowing, but hearing it is essential. As they said, too often it seems that our family courts are not the tools of justice they ought to be; instead, they can be used to continue that abuse.
Too often we fail to equip judges and magistrates with the knowledge they need to spot and prevent this reality. In doing so, we are denying many victims justice. We in this House can legislate all we like but if those on the front line are not adequately trained, as we have heard, it risks remaining just words, and, as my noble friend Lady Newlove said, not worth the paper they are written on. I believe we can and must do better than this. We should strive to ensure that our courts are at the cutting edge, and not repeatedly behind the curve.
The Bill introduces a number of excellent progressive measures that have the potential to help the family courts to deliver justice safely. They include recognising post-separation abuse and extending the grounds on which barring orders can be used. For those the
Government certainly deserve credit, but the success of such measures and the guarantee that they will be translated into better practice on the ground hinges on this training amendment.
The amendment renders the need for training into clear language, creating an imperative to act. We need accountability and oversight in this area, as many others have said. If the Government resist putting the amendment into the Bill—and I do not really understand why they should—then at least we need to get to a place where the judiciary are being open and transparent about the level and quantity of training that they are receiving. Who is giving the training? Is it quality assured and rigorous enough? These are questions that need to be properly addressed.
We have heard a lot in previous debates about the need for data collection. In many areas across business and public life, it is transparency and good reporting that often create best practice, and it does not seem unreasonable for the public but also for the Government to be privy to such data. That would drive change from the bottom up.
We also need to be sure that training reflects the new provisions in the Bill immediately rather than them filtering into the system over a period of months or, worse still, years. Of course it cannot simply be a tick-box exercise that does not drill into the complexity of the reality on the ground with some of these cases. Post-separation coercive control, for example, is a multifaceted and insidious crime committed by devious and practised individuals. They need to meet their match in the courtroom, from magistrates upwards.
As my noble friend Lady Helic has rightly said, this is not an attack on the wisdom of our lawgivers. It is the opposite: providing them with training would deepen that wisdom and arm them with the means to deal with these complex cases. Doing so would give victims faith and confidence in our justice system and let them know that our courts were with them, not against them. It would also send a strong message to perpetrators that the courts were tools of justice, not another weapon to use against their victim.
I know that my noble friend the Minister is sensitive to these issues, and I am sure her answer will reflect that. As I have said before, I do not understand the resistance to putting this into the Bill, but I will listen carefully to her response. I hope she will come forward with some answers that move towards real progress and an understanding of what needs to be done.