Domestic Abuse Bill 2020

The problem of domestic abuse has slowly risen up the political agenda over the past few years. For far too long regarded it was regarded as essentially a private matter in which public authorities, in particular the police, were often reluctant to act. However, the indefatigable work of charitable organisations, such as Refuge, have done much to change the minds of policymakers. And it was an issue which the former Prime Minister Theresa May took particularly seriously.

Over the last 2 and a half years, there have been a series of steps leading to reform of the law.

1. A Consultation Paper, setting out proposed changes to the law, was published in March 2018. This identified 4 objectives for change:

promoting awareness – to raise public and professional awareness
protection and support – to enhance the safety of victims and the support that they receive
transforming the justice process – to prioritise victim safety in the criminal and family courts, and review the perpetrator journey from identification to rehabilitation
improving performance – to drive consistency and better performance in the response to domestic abuse across all local areas, agencies and sectors.

2. The consultation was followed by a draft Domestic Abuse Bill in March 2019 which was considered by a Joint Committee of the House of Commons and House of Lords. It set out the following issues which required legislative change. They are:

creation of a statutory definition of domestic abuse;
establishment of the office of Domestic Abuse Commissioner, and setting out the commissioner’s functions and powers;
providing for a new Domestic Abuse Protection Notice and Domestic Abuse Protection Order;
prohibiting perpetrators of domestic and other forms of abuse from cross-examining their victims in person in the family courts (and preventing victims from having to cross-examine their abusers) and giving the court discretion to prevent cross-examination in person where it would diminish the quality of the witness’s evidence or cause the witness significant distress;
creating a statutory presumption that complainants of an offence involving behaviour that amounts to domestic abuse are eligible for special measures in the criminal courts;
enabling high-risk domestic abuse offenders to be subject to polygraph testing as a condition of their licence following their release from custody;
placing the guidance supporting the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme on a statutory footing;
ensuring that, where a local authority, for reasons connected with domestic abuse, grants a new secure tenancy to a social tenant who had or has a secure lifetime or assured tenancy (other than an assured shorthold tenancy), this must be a secure lifetime tenancy;
extending the extra-territorial jurisdiction of the criminal courts in England and Wales to further violent and sexual offences.

3. The consultation on the Draft Bill was concluded in July 2019, and a Domestic Abuse Bill was introduced into Parliament on the same day. However, it fell when the December 2019 General Election was called.

4. In March 2020, a revised Domestic Abuse Bill was published which is now proceeding through Parliament. It is largely the same as the 2019 Bill though a number of proposed clauses have been strengthened. For example, the powers of the Courts to protect victims from being cross-examined by abusers have been enlarged.

The timetable for the Bill provides that it should have passed through the Commons by the end of June 2020. It is likely to have passed the Lords and be given Royal Assent sometime in the Autumn of 2020.

Although I have not linked this initiative directly to Covid 19, as I have done in a number of other blog items, there is a clear link between the two since one of the well-publicised consequences of the Covid-19 lockdown has been a sharp increase in the numbers of people seeking help to protect them from domestic abuse.

I will update the blog on this issue after the Bill becomes law.

For the work of Refuge, see https://www.refuge.org.uk/

A press release relating to the 2020 Bill is at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/domestic-abuse-bill

Further documents relating to the Bill are at https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2019-21/domesticabuse.html