My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble Baroness and her mild comments. I will speak to and welcome Amendments 17, 24 and 28. As we have said many times before, this was already a very good Bill. I thank the Government and particularly my noble friend Lady Williams for the lengths to which she has gone to improve it further. She has been unstinting in her determination to address many of the outstanding issues, always putting the victims’ needs first. With these amendments, I believe that the Government have addressed the potential unintended consequences of a two-tier system.
The Government are wary of specifying what the independent commissioner should and should not report on, and I agree with them. The Minister has also made the point that the commissioner is already undertaking the relevant mapping exercise. None the less, Amendment 17 sends a signal about the importance of community-based services. Together with the requirement for local authorities to assess the impact of the duty under Part 4 and the further requirement, via Amendment 28, for local partnership boards to advise on other local authority support, I believe that this provides a robust and, importantly, ongoing mechanism and structure for ensuring that community-based services are not adversely affected by the duty.
I welcome the Government’s commitment to consult on the provision of community-based services and congratulate my noble friend Lord Polak on all the work that he has done in this area. I also welcome the amazing number of charities and stakeholders that have welcomed these amendments. As I have said before, I understand why the Government cannot extend the duty in this Bill. On this issue and so many others, they have come forward with significant changes. They have moved where they can and altered their position in areas where we thought that they would not.
I realise that I am still relatively new to this House. I also realise that no Bill will ever be perfect and that noble Lords will fight for the changes that they think are right, but this Bill has cross-party support, and for very good reason. It will create a genuine step change in the way we tackle domestic abuse. It has already raised so much awareness. Someone who works on the front line said to me on seeing the raft of government amendments:
“You should see the amazing survivor messages I’m seeing this morning. I’m quite emotional seeing their excitement. We feel the tide is turning.”
The tide is turning but, as we all know, we have only a limited period to get this Bill through. I believe it is now up to us to bid it safe passage.