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Perhaps more importantly, what is happening in the magistrates courts? Magistrates courts are frequently in very old buildings and--as a member of the Bar who has practised in the courts, frequently on this type of case--I know at first hand that the accounts that I quoted are accurate, because women have to go through quite an ordeal in magistrates courts before their case starts. That is a high priority if we want more women to come to court and more proceedings to take place.I also want to mention organisations that help women who are members of the black and ethnic minority communities. I pay tribute to the work of Asian Women's Aid in my constituency, and I recently had the pleasure of helping to launch Jewish Women's Aid. Perhaps the most famous organisation is Southall Black Sisters, which has done impressive work with black and ethnic minority women. It gave excellent evidence to our Committee and was able to describe the plight of women who come into the country to join husbands, or whose husbands have refugee status, and who have no rights of their own. Under our immigration rules they come in for an initial 12 months. What happens to those women if they are the subject of domestic violence during that time? They cannot call on public funds. The rule is that they must have no recourse to public funds during that period, which often makes them totally dependent on their husband and his family. If they leave the family, the Home Office often wrongly assumes that the marriage was only one of convenience.
As Southall Black Sisters said in a submission to Amnesty International's hearing on human rights on 8 June this year : "We come across many cases of women and children who have experienced violence and abuse and are unable to seek help for fear of being deported. This double bind can become life threatening. The choice is stark--on the one hand, women risk their lives, and those of their children, if they stay in violent situations, on the other hand, they risk being deported to their countries of origin, where they face open hostility, intense discrimination and risk to their health and lives".
I emphasise that only a few women are involved, but the cost to those women's lives is absolutely vital.
It is an important omission--again, I shall be interested to hear the Minister's comments--that the ministerial working group on domestic violence does not include the immigration and nationality department, given the serious problems for women whose immigration status is not secure. Will the Minister ensure that that section is included in future? It is a very important issue.
I would be extremely interested to know how many women are deported each year after leaving their violent husbands. The Government, in their response to the Select Committee, assert that the immigration and nationality department is alert to the difficulties faced by some women who have insecure immigration status and a violent partner, but the experience of groups campaigning for women contradicts that. My own view is that no woman should be deported when there is even a possibility that she is suffering at the hands of a violent partner. Unless something is done about the problem, such women will continue to die or face a living death.
Hon. Members will wish to comment on provocation. It is a great pity that the Government could not agree with the Select Committee and the Law Commission. We
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believe that the law should be changed and clarified. We also await the Government's response to the Select Committee's report on legal aid--a vital matter. If women are to obtain injunctions and have the protection of civil remedies, they need a proper legal aid system. In our report we say that we wish to return to the subject of domestic violence. I was extremely glad that the Government agree with the Select Committee on the importance of increasing public awareness of domestic violence. The Metropolitan police referred to Canada. Sandra Horley, a witness who appeared before the Committee, has made a great study of the system in Canada, where, because of publicity campaigns, there is heightened awareness of domestic violence.Domestic violence is a crime--it is that message that we have to get across. We have to change the culture of our society from an early stage. A properly funded and directed campaign of public education would bring together the other recommendations in our report. I hope that, by the time the Select Committee returns to the subject, such a campaign will have been undertaken and will have lessened the incidence of such a shocking, tragic and brutal crime for so many women.
5.2 pm
Mr. John Greenway (Ryedale) : I have had the privilege of serving on the Home Affairs Select Committee for six years. In terms of seniority in this House, a period of six years does not count for very much, but such has been the changing membership of the Select Committee that I am now one of its longest-serving members. I am not sure whether six years is long enough to show the validity of my point, but no Committee produces more reports than ours--seven or eight each Session. I have never known the Select Committee to spend so much time carefully discussing the issues in our report and coming to our conclusions. That was not difficult, because often there was a party political dispute between the two sides of the Committee.
We very carefully considered all the evidence that we received, which was carefully prepared and painstakingly given. Some issues in our report need great consideration, and answers to them are not easily found. That is particularly true about whether there should be a change in the law on murder.
The Select Committee often sat until almost midnight, even though the House had adjourned some hours before, and long before 10 o'clock. It is fortunate that hon. Members have understanding families.
I welcome the opportunity for another debate on the Floor of the House. We have published our recommendations. The Government's swift, detailed response is also available to hon. Members. In this debate, we need merely to draw attention to some key issues.
We must consider how big a problem domestic violence is. It is very difficult to provide precise statistics, but, at the end of our inquiry, I was left with the clear impression that the incidence of domestic violence in Britain today is infinitely worse than the figures show.
Hon. Members who visited the domestic violence unit at Islington will recall that the staff in the little office there seemed to be doing a tremendous job for the local community. They appeared to have a record of a domestic violence incident in one out of every 30 families in the borough of Islington. We were told that that was by no
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means extraordinary in that inner-London Metropolitan police district. That is a staggering figure, and it shows the huge social cost which domestic violence represents for society today. As my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Burton (Sir I. Lawrence) pointed out, although our inquiry concentrated on assaults on women by men, it became increasingly clear that, in many families in which domestic violence is prevalent, it is the children who suffer greatly. Hon. Members see the effects of abuse of and violence to children in our constituencies, even in some of the more affluent parts of Britain. It is right and proper to pay tribute to the work not only of refuges that support some of the women who have been on the receiving end--the victims of domestic violence--but of some child support agencies.The next issue is to what extent we should treat domestic violence differently from other forms of violence. Violence is violence, and as such is unacceptable. Murder is murder, and serious assault is serious assault. Whether violence occurs in the home or in the world at large should not affect the seriousness with which we treat it. Another problem is that, unless we can identify violence in families throughout Britain, we cannot possibly hope to begin to deal with it. To that extent, we need different solutions and programmes to remedy what is going wrong. One is challenged by the thought that the circumstances of violence could be a mitigating factor or could make the violence much more serious and less acceptable.
As our inquiry unfolded, and as we visited refuges in London, it became apparent that some women have been the victims of violence but have retaliated against it--only to find themselves in court charged with assault and, in one tragic case, with murder.
What response should the police make to incidents of domestic violence? Should it be different from their response to violence in other circumstances? Over recent years, the police have made great strides in the way that they deal with the problem. As the House knows, during the 1960s I served for five years as a policeman in London's west end. The police culture then was that domestic disorder was not a matter for the police service. If I remember correctly--it was 28 years ago--some of our training pointed us in that direction. Of course, that attitude is no longer acceptable. It should reassure hon. Members to know that Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary, and chief constables throughout the country, have made considerable progress in ensuring that the police give a more appropriate response to incidents of domestic violence.
What should the police do when they are called to such incidents? Should they arrest the husband who has beaten his wife? What happens when that man is released from the police station, where he may have been for some hours? Where does he go? Obviously, he goes home. Discussion of these matters throws up challenging issues. There is a need for the highest possible standard of training and the dissemination of best practice throughout the police service, so that an appropriate response is made in each case.
In the Metropolitan police area, priority has been given to the creation of domestic violence units. Parts of my constituency, especially the rural areas, are often 20 or 30 miles from the nearest police station, which is not necessarily manned 24 hours a day, as many of them close
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at night. Therefore, it would not be easy for the North Yorkshire police force to set up special units similar to those in Islington and other parts of London.My constituency may be more sparsely populated than inner-city areas, but we should not ignore the fact that domestic violence occurs throughout the country. It does not occur just in inner cities, albeit that, because of the concentration of population, they have more incidents. We must remember that when we respond to the Government's White Paper on the structure of the police service, and when we decide what to do about the Sheehy report.
Police in rural areas have to be jacks of all trades, with the training, skill and professionalism to deal with all possible incidents. There is not enough manpower, and never could be, to staff the specialist units enjoyed by the Metropolitan police.
Best practice and training does not stop with the police service--it extends to the Crown Prosecution Service in the processing of cases. I am pleased that the Government's response to our report included the republishing of the CPS guidelines on how domestic violence cases should be treated. Just as the police have a difficult decision to make on whether or not to arrest, so the CPS has a difficult decision to make on whether or not to prosecute a husband or partner still living in the same house as the woman. Prosecution might make the position worse. Despite that, the Committee felt that prosecutions were not brought often enough.
One reason for that view is that, if someone is prosecuted and pleads guilty or is found guilty by magistrates or a jury, the court then has some influence over his punishment, and may direct that he has some treatment. If the treatment were voluntary, the offender could quickly give up, but with the compulsion of the court order as part of his sentence, there is a better chance that the treatment will continue and eventually produce a statisfactory result. Another benefit of bringing such a case before the courts is that agencies that can support the family can be brought into play more easily. Recommendation No. 5 in the report says that resource limitation should not be an excuse for inaction. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Burton, the Chairman of our Committee, mentioned that. The truth is that refuge provision is inadequate. Those of us who visited the refuges and met some of the women living in them found vivid examples of the ludicrous problems caused by a lack of flexibility in housing provision.
In one refuge in Hammersmith, a woman with three or four children had been living in a single room for nine months. It would be an insult to the refuge to paint too grim a picture of her living conditions, but those of us who saw them felt that they were quite unsatisfactory. That woman was in receipt of housing benefit in two separate locations and there appeared to be a total inability to find an answer to her problems because of the inflexibility of the two local authorities involved. I am sure that there are many similar cases.
We therefore welcome the response from the Department of the Environment, contained in the Government's response, about improved guidelines for housing authorities. It is simply not good enough to say that a woman fleeing with her children from serious violence against her in the matrimonial home is making herself intentionally homeless, and is therefore not eligible to be housed by the local authority.
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We must also look to the future. We need to change the guidelines and tobelieve that we should go even further than what was recommended in our report.Most of my constituency no longer has council houses, because they have all been successfully transferred to housing associations. That provides a good opportunity to increase housing provision and the level of repairs to the existing stock of property available for rent. I want housing associations to make an assessment of the problem in the areas they serve--particularly those associations that have taken over council homes--and to make the necessary provision. As to whether the Government should reconsider aspects of the law on murder, I echo the disappointment expressed by my hon. and learned Friend and the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Mrs. Roche) at the Government's response. We did not reach our recommendation lightly, but responded to evidence that the present law is unsatisfactory. Given that our view was in line with the Law Commission's recommendation, I find it difficult to understand why the Government are so relucant to re-examine that issue.
Since making our report--this relates to a different issue, but one related to the law on murder--there was the shocking case last week of the acquittal in a murder trial of Joseph Elliott, whose defence counsel successfully argued that Elliott had acted in self-defence. I am sure that the whole House feels that the law on self-defence, as well as on provocation, needs to be re-examined.
The Government may, after further examination, reach the negative conclusion that change would be difficult, but many of us feel that the present situation is unsatisfactory. We do not pretend that there is an easy solution, but that issue ought to be considered. Having chided the Minister in that respect, I should add that I welcome much of the Government's response, which was largely positive, and highlighted the great steps that are already being taken. I hope that the interdepartmental working party will find practical solutions to many of the problems that our inquiries identified. As our report itself concluded, unless improvements are made, it is not right hon. and hon. Members, or even the great majority of the British people who will suffer, but the victims of domestic violence.
5.22 pm
Ms Liz Lynne (Rochdale) : I welcome this opportunity to debate domestic violence, especially as we have discussed family values extensively over the past few months. Not all families hold to the values that we expect. Half the women killed are killed by their husband, partner or ex-partner. One third of reported crimes against women are crimes of domestic violence, and one quarter of all assaults occur in domestic circumstances. Those statistics are not generally acknowledged. We tend to view family life through rose-tinted spectacles, assume that all families get on well and believe that children are best brought up in a family atmosphere--but they are not if that atmosphere includes violence.
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Much of the improvement over the past few years is the result of the establishment of domestic violence units. Many more women now feel more able to report domestic violence--but not Asian women, many of whom still feel that there is a stigma attached to reporting domestic violence. Many of them are 20 years behind the rest of the community in that respect. I hope that will improve, and we must do all in our power to encourage Asian women to report domestic violence in the same way as other women. Many other hon. Members and I have dealt with such cases.Before domestic violence units were established in London in 1986, there were only 860 reported cases of domestic violence. By 1991, that figure had increased to 8,000. We must congratulate those responsible for that success. They are not always brillant, but the situation is far better than in the past. Many women do not report domestic violence to the police but go to hospital casualty departments. I should like women social workers in particular to be immediately on hand there, to help women who turn up at the hospital with a black eye, broken ribs, a broken limb or any of the other injuries synonymous with domestic violence. A social worker could then do follow-on work with the family.
Although the situation has improved, a large problem remains. Recent evidence from Canada suggests that a woman has to be assaulted 30 times before reporting domestic violence, and I am sure that the experience in this country is very similar--that is extremely frightening. Many women fail to report violence against them because of lack of money. They fear that they will be unable to survive on their own. They see leaving their husband or partner as the inevitable result of reporting violence and are afraid of then being unable to manage financially. They fear reprisals, not only from their husband or partner but from his relatives.
Alcohol is a predominant factor in many incidents of domestic violence. Turning Point and Alcohol Concern say that between 50 and 60 per cent. of domestic violence involves alcohol and alcohol abuse. I urge the Government to reconsider removing the ring fencing of the drug and alcohol abuse budget. If a man who seeks help--having acknowledged that he is abusing his wife and that his children are being affected--cannot find a way out by entering a Turning Point hostel or getting help from another agency, the violence will continue.
Unemployment and poverty also lead to a lack of self-esteem. When someone lacks self-esteem, he wants to make someone else feel lower than he does. That person is invariably his partner or wife. The individual with low esteem will take it out on his partner, so that he feels big, adequate and masculine. We all know that that is not true, but such an attitude is usually brought on by low self-esteem. Twenty-four hour helplines are also needed. The Department of Health is funding the Women's Aid Federation to the tune of £136,000, but it cannot operate a 24-hour helpline. I understand that that is the only money coming from central Government. Compare that £136,000 with the situation in Canada, where spending to combat domestic violence is $136 million.
Local authorities are responsible for refuges, of which there are very few. I agree with other hon. Members that a national strategy is needed to provide them throughout the country. At present, 27 per cent. of local authorities provide no refuges, 11 per cent. provide only one and only
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5 per cent. provide more than three. That is not acceptable, given the continual increase in domestic violence. Proper national funding would ultimately prove cost effective, reducing the number of problems--especially those related to health--that currently force Government Departments and agencies to pick up the pieces. Women's Aid and Chiswick Family Rescue--now known asRefuge--estimates that it needs £270,000 a year just to keep going. It is finding it difficult to cope. It is not raising the money that it needs, and it has already had to cut services. It will cut others next month, and it has said today that it fears that it may have to close completely in 1994 if the money is not forthcoming. It is scandalous that the first women's aid refuge to be set up should face such a funding crisis. We should be finding more money to set up more refuges, rather than allowing money to be taken away. In today's economic climate, people find it difficult to give to charities. The problem is the same throughout the country. What happens to women when refuges close? They have nowhere to go but the streets. The current homelessness problem makes life very hard for them. The Rochdale safer cities project estimates that 25 per cent. of Rochdale's homelessness is the result of domestic violence. That problem, too, exists throughout the country.
Today's debate concerns abuse of partners, but children who witness such abuse are scarred for life. It has been recorded that more than half the children living in a violent home in West Yorkshire witnessed or experienced abuse. One third of those children tried to protect their mother. We do not do enough to counsel and help such children ; services are cut time and again, and, without the necessary counselling, love and affection, the children may ultimately become abusers themselves. That is well documented. It is a great shame that we cannot do more.
As others have pointed out, it must be made easier for mothers to cross local authority boundaries. Even if an authority can rehouse a women, and accept that she did not make herself homeless intentionally, what women wants to be rehoused in the same street as a violent partner, or a few streets away from him? Women fear that, when they are out shopping, they will bump into the person who has abused them persistently for years, or that their children will be terrified going to school knowing that he may be around any corner. Local authority homelessness sections should employ more women who are properly trained to pinpoint homelessness resulting from domestic violence. Many women still refuse to admit that they have been beaten up or otherwise abused, because they feel that it is a fault in some way. They feel that they have done something wrong, or that they are inadequate ; they will not accept that it is the man concerned who is inadequate, sensing that they are themselves failures. Trained people would be able to spot that, and perhaps act on their perception more quickly than is possible now.
More emergency legal aid provision is also needed. I am very worried about the current proposals, which will prevent many women from acting against violent partners. This is at the heart of the problem. Many women who have left their husbands and want to take them to court accuse their former partners and then decide not to give evidence. The Crown Prosecution Service must prosecute far more often ; it should not be up to the women concerned to initiate such action.
I know that the probation service is doing a very good
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job, but we must ensure that all aspects of domestic violence are taken seriously. Part of the problem is the fact that a range of Departments must deal with domestic violence. Recently, in another place, Earl Ferrers mentioned the forming of an interdepartmental group. Will the Minister tell us whether such a group has met? I hope that all Departments will recognise their responsibility in regard to women who have been subjected to domestic violence.I welcome the Government's response to the Select Committee on Home Affairs, but I want them to go further. I hope that the Minister will take on board all that has been said by hon. Members on both sides of the House.
5.36 pm
Ms Jean Corston (Bristol, East) : I congratulate the Select Committee on Home Affairs on choosing such an important topic for its first report to the House. It reflects the current concern about domestic violence, particularly that felt by women.
Domestic violence is not an isolated phenomenon, as hon. Members have made clear today. It is widespread, and it is no respecter of social class. Indeed, it has an ancient tradition. All hon. Members will be familiar with the phrase "rule of thumb" ; how many know what it means? In the past, a man was permitted to beat his wife as long as he used a stick no thicker than his own thumb. Thus, violence was legitimised for a long time, and passed into folklore. Only 20 years ago, it was still seen as solely a matter of feminist concern : it was then that Erin Pizzey wrote her seminal book "Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear".
The hon. Member for Rochdale (Ms Lynne) and others have mentioned the effect of domestic violence on children and the cycle that builds up. One of the saddest things that I recall hearing in recent years was a friend's account of enduring 17 years of domestic violence. Finally, she left her husband with her two children. Only after talking to other people did she discover that such violence was not the norm. Her father had beaten her mother, and her husband had beaten her ; she considered that to be normal married behaviour. Moreover, her case is not an isolated instance.
Our domestic violence legislation completely fails women who are brave enough to go to court. The law is a mess--I say that as someone who, before becoming a Member of Parliament, was a barrister specialising in domestic violence law. The law is spread among different Acts of Parliament, all attested to in the Select Committee's excellent report. That means that a woman has to deal with a maze of legislation, and it is difficult for any barrister or solicitor trying to advise her to find a remedy that offers protection to her and to her children.
The Domestic Violence and Matrimonial Proceedings Act 1976 and the Domestic Proceedings and Magistrates' Courts Act 1978--both introduced by the Labour Government, I am pleased to say--still stand as the basic corpus of domestic violence law. However, the Domestic Proceedings and Magistrates' Courts Act, which is obviously more widely available because it falls within the jurisdiction of magistrates, applies only to married people, not to people who are cohabiting. We know that in a large proportion of "marriage" relationships people have not gone through the marriage ceremony but are simply cohabiting. The Domestic Violence and Matrimonial
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Proceedings Act is available to co-habitees only in the jurisdiction of the county court, which means that people often have to travel long distances to get to the court and apply for an injunction.The Select Committee report and the Law Commission have attested to the way in which domestic violence legislation makes if difficult to obtain injunctions. One of the most iniquitous aspects is the fact that it is difficult for a woman to get an injunction if she has not applied to the court quickly. There is supposed to be an obvious element of urgency, yet I have known of many cases in which a woman has been traumatised by the violence, has needed to recover from her injuries, or has needed to escape the relationship and find somewhere else to live.
There has been a delay while she has adjusted to the injuries that she has received, and to having fled from home, and that is seen by the courts as a reason not to grant the injunction. They say that she could not possibly really need an injunction, because she did not go to court as soon as the incident happened. I suspect that most women who are beaten up repeatedly in violent relationships want to get away from the relationship, to seek medical attention and to get better, and to make sure that their children are safe. Going before a county court judge is not necessarily No. 1 on their list of things to do.
The law also fails women because of the way in which it treats as strangers people who have been but are no longer cohabiting. The only remedy available is a tort injunction--one of the old torts of assault, battery or trespass. The difficulty with those is that, if a woman goes to someone else's house to stay, perhaps as a lodger, or returns to her parents' home or that of another relative, she cannot obtain a trespass injunction because she is not the tenant or the owner-occupier ; therefore, in law she cannot apply for such an injunction. She cannot apply for an injunction to stop the man coming to the place where she is living and assaulting her. There is no tort of harassment.
Moreover, no tort injunction carries the power of arrest, and that power is so important for women in such circumstances. If there is a power of arrest, at least if the man comes near her the police have an absolute obligation to arrest him and bring him before a court at the earliest opportunity.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Mrs. Roche) referred to domestic violence suffered by women from ethnic minorities involved in what we could describe as immigration cases. I endorse what my hon. Friend said. If a woman leaves a violent husband within 12 months of marriage, she risks deportation. I know that because a constituency case was recently brought to me, involving a woman who had obtained a judicial separation after eight months of marriage. The judge found that her husband's behaviour was such that it was unreasonable to expect her to continue to live with him, yet she has now received a letter from the immigration and nationality department telling her that she is on 28 days' notice to leave the country. That has happened through no fault of her own. That woman is a victim, and she is being treated shamefully by the application of our immigration rules.
We should also deal with the questions raised by the programme "The Bounty Hunter", which was on BBC2
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some time ago, and which revealed how men in the Asian community make a nice living out of hunting like animals women who flee from domestic violence and violent relationships. The subterfuges that the bounty hunters use to track down women and drag them back home are alarming, and I hope that the Government will deal with the matter. I hope that the Minister will say something about it when he responds to the debate.Reference has already been made to the attitude of the police. I welcome the change in their attitude, and have spoken to police officers in Bristol who have told me that they no longer treat such incidents as merely domestic matters, as they so often used to do in the past. In 1977, I took a friend who had been severely beaten up by her partner to the police station, and I remember being appalled by the pressure that was put on her not to bring proceedings. The police kept saying, "You'll have to go to court, and in the meantime you've got to live with him, so wouldn't it be better if you went home and patched things up?"
It is good that there have been some changes in attitudes, but it is important to recognise that both the police and the legal profession tend to give such work to young inexperienced people. In the legal profession it is seen as the "rough trade", and police officers tell me that such work is often given to people with little experience. As a barrister, I grew sick and tired of hearing other lawyers say, "I went to represent this woman and she said she was going to go back home. What a stupid woman !"
That attitude totally fails to recognise the position of most women who suffer domestic violence, which, as other hon. Members have said, often involves homelessness, and the way in which the rules on intentional homelessness operate. If one asks women victims of domestic violence what they want, they usually say, "I want things at home to go on as they are, except that I don't want him to beat me up any more." It would be a good thing if the police and the legal profession would adopt those changes in attitude.
With regard to the criminal law, we need different definitions of provocation and self-defence as defences to charges of murder and manslaughter, and we should also examine the way in which the rules of evidence operate against women. The law on self-defence is based on the notion of a punch-up in a pub, and the definition of provocation is based on the notion of a threat to a man's potency or virility. The way in which those definitions operate means that any victim of domestic violence who has not responded immediately is without the law. A well-founded fear of domestic violence should be a defence against such charges. We should also change rules such as the corroboration warning in the law on rape. That is an outrage to all women, and the House ought not to allow it to continue.
I welcome the Government's response to the part of the Select Committee report that deals with refuges. In 1988, I visited a refuge in a small town in central Sweden. It was beautifully appointed and well furnished, yet the people there apologised to me because they felt that it was not quite as smart as it might have been. Any woman who had seen a refuge in this country would have been astonished at how well appointed the Swedish refuge was. There was also immediate internal alarm contact with the local police.
National funding for a proper network of refuges is vital so that women can seek refuge quickly and safely for
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themselves and their children, and there must be mechanisms for ensuring that those refuges become staging posts to enable women to escape from violent relationships and to rebuild their lives. The law of this country cannot possibly be respected or properly applied when such a large section of the population feels that the remedies that ought to be there do not exist. The resources that ought to be in place are not there. It is important for the House to make it clear to men that such behaviour is not acceptable, it is not their right, we condemn it and it ought to stop.5.49 pm
Sir Dudley Smith (Warwick and Leamington) : I had not intended to speak, but I was so interested in the various speeches that have been made that I wanted to refer briefly to one point.
I very much welcome the speeches of my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) and the hon. Member for Rochdale (Ms Lynne), with most of which I agree. I would part company with the hon. Member for Bristol East (Ms Corston), in that it is not my experience that the police are giving enough attention to what we broadly call domestic violence.
My worry as a constituency Member of Parliament, which is probably replicated throughout the House, is that, because of the declining moral fabric of Britain over the past 25 years, many more people live together, often on a short-term basis. There are many cases where a woman, probably unwisely, has taken a man in or formed a liaison with him, and then discovered to her cost that he is a violent type because of drink, or is naturally violent. She then has the utmost difficulty in getting rid of him.
A number of cases have been brought to my attention in which women have been badly beaten up on a regular basis after barring their attacker from the house. The offences are committed with a great deal of guile. Harassment is the order of the day ; it is not just banging on the door and coming in : there are all kinds of sneaky ways of getting into the house and attacking the woman on her way home from work or going out. One woman said to me, "It is all very well being battered around occasionally, but do I really have to be killed, seriously injured or hospitalised before something is done about it?"
We all know that the police are under great pressure because of rising crime statistics, and domestic cases have always taken a fairly low priority. When couples are not married and the man is on a determined course repeatedly to attack and batter the woman, action ought to be taken.
I agree with the hon. Member for Rochdale that women should not have to take this. Society ought to make an example of men who carry on in that way. The sooner we do it the better it will be, and the sooner the statistics will improve. It is all too easy for the wrong kind of man to be able to get away with it.
5.52 pm
Mr. Malcolm Chisholm (Edinburgh, Leith) : Everyone must agree that we are debating a serious and urgent issue when we consider that one in five murder victims are women killed by their partners or ex-partners, and one in three of all reported crimes against women result from domestic violence. We should also remember the high level
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of unreported domestic violence which has blighted our society for hundreds of years, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, East (Ms Corston) has reminded us.I join other hon. Members in welcoming the Select Committee's decision to investigate these matters. I also welcome the recommendations in the Select Committee report. However, I have one or two minor reservations. Why is there no recommendation on legal aid, although there are laudable words about its inadequacy? Why is there no recommendation about the training of the judiciary, which is equally important? I was also rather disappointed that there was no mention of the prosecution service having to lay down some guidelines. It is sometimes rather a mystery why the prosecution service proceeds or does not proceed with prosecutions.
The Government's response contains much that is to be welcomed, but I have some serious reservations. First, I join other hon. Members in regretting their decision not to have even consultation on the law of homicide.
We all know of several well publicised instances of women unjustly condemned on a charge of murder. The attention drawn to the subject by the soap opera "Brookside" will bring it into the public eye even more in the months ahead. I do not know how many hon. Members watch the series, but the plot deals with the reasons why women may kill their partners or ex- partners.
I wonder why the Select Committee ruled out a defence of self-preservation, as that would be another way of approaching the problem. Another reservation of mine concerns funding, which I shall refer to later. I am also concerned about the note of delay which creeps into the Government's response to the recommendation of a public education and awareness campaign. Perhaps they are a little reluctant to go down that path.
I want to say something about public education and awareness campaigns. In Edinburgh, part of which I represent, over the past few months there has been a high-profile and highly successful public education and awareness campaign called the zero tolerance campaign. I know that other local authorities are examining this initiative, and I hope that more local authorities and central Government will also look at it.
It is based fundamentally on challenging male behaviour. Those who have visited Edinburgh over the past few months will have seen a large number of posters with messages directed at men. For example, the fundamental message of the campaign is "Zero tolerance of violence against women". Another notable message is "Male abuse of power is a crime". There are many other messages that are challenging certain male assumptions.
Edinburgh district council's women's committee, which initiated the campaign, took the view at the end of the day that the root of the problem was the unequal power relations between men and women in society. There is a continuum from male attitudes of superiority to the slapping of women, which has been supported publicly by Sean Connery and many others. Just a few days ago, I saw a popular comedy programme just casually accepting that view. That level of violence is tolerated by thousands of people when it should not be, and the continuum proceeds to more drastic and serious violence.
The zero tolerance campaign aims to challenge those male attitudes and to link domestic violence with other male abuses of power. It has highlighted the crimes of rape and sexual abuse.
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The campaign has also enlisted the support of the local newspaper, The Edinburgh Evening News, which has given it a great deal of coverage. That has helped to give the campaign a high profile, and I pay tribute to the newspaper, and to Jean West, the reporter who covered it so brilliantly.I also suggest to the Government that, as all that work has been done in Edinburgh, and as they are supposed to be considering a public awareness campaign, perhaps they should consider extending it to the whole of Scotland. I am aware that the report refers only to England and Wales and that some of the detailed recommendations would have to be different for Scotland, but the issues are fundamentally the same. Perhaps the Government would like to consider extending the zero tolerance campaign as a pilot scheme throughout Scotland. Of course, I should like it to be extended throughout the United Kingdom.
There is a campaign by the Scottish Office, which is all right as far as it goes, but it targets women, telling them to behave in this way and take care in that way. It is okay as far as it goes. However, the Scottish Office campaign makes no attempt to target male behaviour, although that is the fundamental requirement of a public education and awareness campaign. I hope that that will be taken on board by the Scottish Office in Scotland and the Home Office in England and Wales.
Leaving aside the fundamental aspect of prevention and turning to the terrible realities that go on around us daily, I endorse what the Committee said about the importance of treating domestic violence as a crime and prosecuting people who perpetrate it. I am sure that we all agree that that has not been done enough in the past and, although it is improving, there is still plenty of room for improvement. I hope that the police and the prosecution service will take that on board.
As well as prosecution, women must be protected. Civil law is important in terms of the protection of women. Many good suggestions in the report will apply to England and Wales and in a slightly different way to Scotland. Many civil law remedies are available to a large number of women only if they have access to legal aid. Therefore, the section of the report that criticised the Government's legal aid cuts is important.
As I said, it is unfortunate that there was not a specific recommendation relating to legal aid. Nevertheless, there is the message that many women are not able to pursue civil remedies because of the cuts in legal aid and the reduction of the income level at which legal aid becomes applicable. Certainly, the Government will have to address that. I hope that they will get the message in the Select Committee report on that subject.
Another important aspect of protection relates to refuges. Clearly, there is a serious problem and, unless the Government are prepared to put money into refuges, it will continue. I am worried because I remember a Select Committee report in 1975 which said that there should be one family refuge place for every 10,000 people in the population, yet less than a third of that number exist at present. With this report, I hope that we will not have a similar gap between what is asked for and what is delivered. Aberdeen is the only city in Scotland with the level of refuges that was recommended by the Confederation of Scottish Local Authorities.
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The whole thrust of the Government's response is that all of the funding issues are for local authorities. At the end of the day, local authorities are largely funded by the Government, so there must be a role for central Government finance. If the Government are putting all of this emphasis on local authorities, why cannot we have ring-fenced money specifically for refuges? Unless we have refuges, many of the other recommendations in the report will fall down. My hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Mrs. Roche) referred to the sort of things that are happening because there is not enough money. We heard that help lines are being shut down and there are no child care services. Perhaps some hon. Members saw the programme "First Sex" a couple of weeks ago,ions--if not the central one--in the report.Time is running out, so I shall not talk about the other issues that I wanted to talk about. My hon. Friend the Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen) may talk about the Child Support Act, which impacts on this issue. I shall say a word about the social fund, which has not been mentioned. Domestic violence victims were removed from the highest category of that fund and that is another issue. Clearly, there are many issues. The Government said that they will accept some of them. I hope that they will accept more of them, and act with urgency on the ones that they seriously support.
6.3 pm
Mr. Mike O'Brien (Warwickshire, North) : The Select Committee on Home Affairs, of which I am a member, published a strong report containing 42 positive recommendations. The Government's response was acceptable in a number of areas. However, in other areas, it seemed to have something of the cold antiseptic voice of the quiet man in the warm office trying to make the right sympathetic noises without committing the needed resources. The Government's sympathy was there.
Undoubtedly, Ministers are genuinely horrified by domestic violence and wish to reduce it. However, we need more than just sympathy--we need political will and, as the report calls for, political momentum to deal with the problems. Words of sympathy come cheap ; action requires resources. The Government must be prepared to commit resources.
During the inquiry, we saw the extent of the problem. The hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) referred to an important visit that we made to the Islington police station. There we saw a card-index system that showed that one in 30 households in that area reported a domestic violence incident to the police. If we accept what the hon. Member for Rochdale (Ms Lynne) said- -that only a small proportion of domestic violence incidents are reported-- the incidence of domestic violence could well be much higher. It may even be as high as one in 10 households. Almost certainly, domestic violence incidents take place in most communities and on most streets in Britain. The size of the problem does not seem to be recognised by the Government, local authorities and some of the other agencies that deal with the issue. I exempt from that criticism the police who, because of the increasing need to
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