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Mr. Heath: The hon. Lady is making an important point. She said that the experiences that she cites are from a survey covering Derbyshire. Was the point made about the difficulties for people in rural communities, who live a long way from support structures? They can feel even more isolated, if that is possible, than someone in an urban setting, where at least there are refuges and structures that they can consult.
Judy Mallaber: There is a specific problem in rural areas, and one of the programmes in Derbyshire concentrates on villages and what we can do there, but similar problems arise in urban areas. A woman who now lives in London but previously lived in one of the towns in my constituency came to see me with her mother and sister. She had suffered the most appalling emotional and psychological abuse for many years and had never talked to anybody, including her family. She had not found it possible to raise the matter. She did everything that her husband said—she would not open the cupboard that contained the cheque books or do anything that he told her she could not do. She was isolated in an urban environment. One can be as lonely there as in a village or rural area, although I accept that specific problems apply in rural areas.
Support for perpetrators to deal with offending behaviour was also highlighted locally. Last week, I spoke to one of our local police officers who deals with the matter and was told that victims often say that they are not happy or confident about taking up and pursuing their abuser if they feel that they cannot get help for their partners who are abusing them. It can be important for the victim to feel that some help is available for the perpetrator to deal with offending behaviour. Little such help is currently available; a huge gap in services has been identified. I hope that taking people through the criminal justice system, providing continuing counselling and dealing with offenders'
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behaviour will be taken on board. These measures are a critical part of finding a legislative system and support services that will help victims, and help perpetrators to deal with their offending behaviour.
One project at the university of Derby—Prevention of Domestic Abuse—was originally funded through lottery money, but now continues solely because of an academic, who is using it as a project and getting psychology students to provide assistance. Provision is hit and miss, and such services are unavailable in other parts of the county. I am sure that that is happening elsewhere. A couple of national pilot programmes have been set up, but only in the Prison Service and the probation service. I should be interested to know their outcome. They do not tackle the problem of people who have not yet been convicted; nor do they consider the possibility of a victim seeking help if she knew that assistance was available for her abuser to deal with his offending behaviour.
Locally, we are seeking European funding through a Daphne application. We must have more consistent funding and I hope that that will be taken on board when we consider the code of practice and other services.
Training is also crucial. We are developing a protocol locally to ensure that every professional is involved and takes responsibility. All the surveys that have been conducted, the day that we spent with victims and the questionnaires that we persuaded the trade unions to send out on what was being taken up in the workplace, showed that, although there had been a sea change in attitude and despite the wonderful quotes from incredibly supportive people in all the agencies and the police, unsympathetic approaches continue to exist. A huge amount needs to be done. The protocol that is being developed in our area provides that every professional should take responsibility. In the next couple of weeks, training sessions will be held for 100 of our local professionals, for example, police officers, social workers and teachers in east Derbyshire. That is important.
I look forward to hearing what the code of practice will include and how the Under-Secretary envisages that the supplementary services, which the commissioner would presumably examine, will be taken on board. The Bill contains much that is important and valuable, but it should be supplemented by a range of other services.
I want briefly to mention a subject that was raised earlier: the amendments tabled in another place on repeat offences. I have not examined the legal position in detail and I do not pretend to understand the legal arguments, but I plead with those who intend to support the Lords amendments to reconsider carefully. One main reason given for the relevant provision is internet pornography. I have examined that issue and I recently contributed to a debate in Westminster Hall on the subject.
It is difficult seriously to tackle the crime of child pornography on the internet when one is considering only a few cases. A man in Lincolnshire was sentenced to five years' imprisonment for downloading 450,000 images. When they started some years ago, the police were chasing perhaps 12 pieces of child pornography in their area, but they now chase hundreds, thousands and millions. Every one of the 450,000 images involved a
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child being abused, yet there is a sneaking suspicion that it is difficult for current legislation to exert its full force because of the scale of the crimes.
Tim Loughton: I concur with the hon. Lady's comments. I recently spent an afternoon in the paedophile unit at Scotland Yard and saw cases of literally hundreds of thousands of images that had been downloaded. It is so easy to do—as easy as downloading a record track on to an MP3. The other problem is the enormous shortage of forensic technical officers who can get the kit together to analyse all the stuff. It is essential to make that easier when abuse is clearly taking place on a large scale.
Judy Mallaber: I understand that new technical methods may make it possible to scan through all the images and identify them as unacceptable and illegal without having to go through every one. However, we have not yet arrived at the point at which the technology has developed to the extent that courts can accept it as evidence. I urge hon. Members who are keen to accept the Lords' amendments to be careful. Every single image represents a child who has been raped, abused or had something else appalling done to them. The full force of the law needs to be applied. It is not acceptable that, because one cannot get a jury to look at 450,000 images, the case will not be taken sufficiently seriously and the appropriate sentencing will not be carried out.
I welcome the Bill. I look forward to a constructive debate and to our taking up all the issues that need to be covered to ensure that the legislation is underpinned and supplemented by the range of services required to ensure that domestic violence and other crimes are tackled seriously.
6.59 pm
Sandra Gidley (Romsey) (LD): Since we began our debate, 151 instances of domestic violence have probably been reported to the police, if the average is anything to go by. I therefore welcome the Bill's proposals, but the question of whether more could be done has already been asked. Some of what I was going to say has been highlighted already, so I shall just reinforce the points that have been dealt with in some detail.
The first helpful addition would be to include a definition of domestic violence in the Bill. The Home Office has a perfectly adequate definition. I wondered whether having a definition mattered, and what difference it would make, but when I have talked to agencies that deal with this field and try to track what is happening, I have found that the fact that different agencies have different definitions makes it difficult to track through and compare like with like. I fail to see what the opposition is to having a definition. In nearly every Bill that we deal with, we spend the first two or three hours defining concepts in fine detail, so I really do not know why there is no definition here.
Another issue, which has been raised a number of times, is the lack of recourse to public funds for women with an uncertain immigration status who are victims of domestic violence. Many of those women have been sponsored by UK-based spouses or partners, and may not have had much to do with their partner before
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coming over. Unfortunately some, within a short period of time, become subject to domestic violence. Often, because of language difficulties and other problems, the only network that such women have in this country is the friends and relatives of the family into which they have married, so they literally have nowhere to go and are often forced to remain with an abuser.
Some such women will be eligible to stay, but there is still a period of time in which they cannot have access to money in their own right. It can take months to process an application in their own right, during which time a woman cannot leave because she has no access to money for accommodation or living expenses. There might also be children affected in such cases. This is, fundamentally, a human rights issue, but my understanding is that the Government have resisted change because that would undermine the integrity of the immigration and benefits rule. I urge the Minister to consider ways in which we can get round that. I suggest that he look closely at the whole issue of sponsorship. There are probably ways in many cases in which a woman's living expenses can be recovered from the sponsor without jeopardising her safety. I hope that he will look at that in further detail.
Many groups that have commented on the Bill have called for a community-based domestic violence advocacy service. I am not sure whether that is what the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) was referring to when he mentioned a one-stop shop, but we are probably thinking broadly on the same lines. The thought is that such a service would be cost-effective. In 2000, the cost for the police to respond to a single incident was £1,027. The average cost of an advocacy service has been estimated at £778, a saving of £249 per case.
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