20
Examination of witnesses
Natalie Fleet MP and Gisela Carr.
Q159 The Chair: I welcome everyone to this meeting of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 Committee, which is reviewing this Act that came into being in 2021, five years ago. It is post-legislative scrutiny, to see whether the legislation is working effectively. There was a call for this review to take place, and we are very happy to be doing it. Good morning to everyone, especially to the two witnesses we have with us today, whom I will introduce in a minute. We are in a room that, sadly, is not air conditioned, so I say to the viewing public that, if you see us suddenly descend into grease spots, that is why.
Let me introduce our witnesses. The first is Natalie Fleet, Member of Parliament. She is the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, the Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls. She has served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in this role since May. She has been the Member of Parliament for Bolsover since 2024. Before entering electoral politics, she spent over a decade working as a senior trade unionist and serving as an official for the National Education Union. It is really wonderful to see you, Minister. I hope you will not mind if we occasionally refer to you as Natalie or Ms Fleet. With the Minister is Gisela Carr, deputy director of the Interpersonal Abuse Unit in the Home Office. Welcome to you both.
This legislation was very innovative in that it really dealt with things that had been discussed but not legislated for. Coercive and controlling behaviour is one of the five stand-alone bullet points in the definition alongside physical and psychological abuse. We have heard that coercive and controlling behaviour is the overarching concept that binds together all forms of abuse but that listing it as a bullet point along with other forms of abuse fails to capture that, so we are seeing that some of the intentions not being realised adequately. What could the Government do to make it clearer to the police and the courts what coercive control means within the context of this Bill?
Minister, perhaps you might just have a sense of what that means. I have heard you speaking about this in the Commons, and others will have too. Your expertise is well known. You are new to the role, so I will not ask you to fill in too much of the detail; I am sure that Gisela can help us on that. Can you say what your general feeling is about how the police and the courts are responding to the whole business of coercive and controlling behaviour?
Natalie Fleet: Thank you for having me here this morning and for your kind welcome. It is wonderful to be sitting among such experts in your field. I have been in post for six weeks, as you say. My background is as a trade unionist, but the reason I have an interest in this area is because of my lived experience. When we talk about coercive and controlling behaviour, this label did not exist; these words, this terminology was not there. It is only since I have been in post that somebody referred to me as a “Child victim of domestic abuse”, and I did not even know that was a thing. This is the viewpoint from which I have come to my scrutiny of the Act; it is very much from a victim’s viewpoint, looking at how good the legislation is at protecting the people we want to protect. I am grateful that you are doing this piece of scrutiny.
We know the impact that coercive and controlling behaviour can have. I absolutely recognise—especially since being in this role—the long-lasting impact it can have on victims, without them even realising it, and the way they carry it through life without it even being acknowledged. I am glad we have this language now. I am also glad that we are seeing prosecutions increase. In 2023-24, we had 3,000 prosecutions; in 2024-25, we had 5,300 prosecutions. It is fantastic that we have seen such an increase in a one-year period. However, we in this room know the scale of coercive and controlling behaviour in our communities and homes. There is so much more to do.
We have really detailed statutory guidance that talks about what people should be looking for. We are making sure that it will be updated before the end of the year because we want everybody who is using the guidance to have a really clear understanding. Most importantly, if we have people looking at what is happening, we really need them not to look at that individual incident and what is happening in that moment but instead to see this really profound, long-lasting, damaging pattern of behaviour and the impact that it has.
I am really pleased that the Home Office is funding the National Centre for VAWG and Public Protection. I met the leads just this week. The fact that it has been around for only a year blows my mind because we all know that this type of really damaging behaviour has been around—
The Chair: For ever and a day.
Natalie Fleet: Yes; since before any of us were born. It is our job to make sure that it is not still here once we are no longer here. The updated statutory guidance, the National Centre for VAWG and the higher awareness of coercive and controlling behaviour are really important.
The Chair: Of course, one particularly innovative thing that the Bill did was to introduce the acceptance in legislation that children inside homes where there is domestic abuse are victims in their own right. I know that is close to your heart. You will get some questions about that from Lord Polak later on, and I am sure you will want to contribute to that. The legislation has been innovative, but there are still blurred lines that make it more complicated for policing of this. Although, as you have described, the statistics are looking much better about prosecution generally, we are still worried about whether it is reaching all parts of the system.
Q160 Baroness Neate: You have touched on this in your answer just now, but we have heard from quite a few witnesses that the police still have a tendency to treat domestic abuse as incident-based rather than as a pattern. Coercive control in particular, as you know, is by definition a pattern of abuse. I am interested in what the Government could do to improve practice, particularly in terms of the police looking at that pattern of behaviour. As a sub-question, I am also interested in your view around the pilot of domestic abuse protection orders and notices, and what plans there are to roll those out nationally. There are two questions in one there—I hope that is okay.
Natalie Fleet: I will have a go at answering those. It is really incredible and I am really pleased that we are now rolling out Raneem’s law into the second phase. It means that when those 999 calls are made, there is a domestic abuse specialist ready to take those calls who is far more likely to understand the nature of the pattern of abuse because they have been trained to do so. We were speaking just yesterday about somebody leaving a rose emoji. That was not anything that was illegal. When you looked at that incident, it was absolutely innocent. However, when we looked at the pattern of behaviour over the longer period and the impact that had because of threats that had been made relating to a rose, it looked different. Having specialists in 999 control centres who can take those calls is really important in terms of improving confidence that we will get the right response.
You also touched on domestic abuse protection orders. I am really excited about these. As you know, they are the first civil order that captures coercive and controlling behaviour. I have been to visit one of the five pilot areas; it was the first thing I did in post. We are taking the learning from those, which is really important. They are feeding into the system. We are making sure that we take the learning, apply it and keep reviewing to make sure that when we get to the wider rollout, which will be as soon as possible, we are ready and they are in a good place to be rolled out nationally. The protections they will offer the women and children involved are just fantastic. That is why I am so pleased to see them. Was there anything you wanted to add, Gisela?
Gisela Carr: I can give a little more detail, if it is helpful, about where we are with DAPOs and where we hope to get to. We are really excited by the early learnings that we have had from the five pilot areas where they are running at the moment. It is really important. DAPOs will have such an impact because they are the first order that can be made in all courts. However, because they involve a wider range of operational partners than perhaps the police-led orders we have had in the past, it is really important that we have all those operational considerations fully understood as we move to roll them out in a wider number of areas.
Importantly, we have been able to take learning quickly from the pilot areas and reflect on that as we move to roll that out nationally. We have an evaluation running alongside the pilots, looking at both the impact and the process because we want to be able to take that learning directly from the pilot areas and make sure that, when we go to national rollout across England and Wales, we have learned the lessons from trialling them in real-life situations. The feedback that we generally get from police forces—obviously that is the Home Office area of interest in those areas where the pilots are live—is really positive.
Baroness Neate: Just to quickly come back to the issue of it being incident-based rather than a pattern, one specific thing that we have heard is that the police do not have the history when they attend an incident. That being the case, it is quite difficult for them to see that incident as part of a pattern. Is that something you have been aware of?
Gisela Carr: There are probably two things that I would point to. I absolutely recognise and understand the issue; it is something we are concerned about. We have done some work with policing. You might be familiar with the DA Matters training that came in and particularly focused on coercive and controlling behaviour. The Minister has talked about the National Centre for VAWG and Public Protection, and one of its roles is around how we do training at all levels of capability across police forces. That could be really specialist investigative training on things such as rape and sexual offences or training for front-line first-responder police officers, particularly in the context of domestic abuse. They are most likely to be the officers who are first on the scene, so it is important that they have better training to address exactly the issue that the committee has identified about understanding the complexities of domestic abuse rather than treating incidents in an isolated way.
The Chair: Are the pilots well spread around the country?
Gisela Carr: Yes. We have the pilots running in three areas in the Metropolitan Police Service; in Cleveland; in Greater Manchester; in north Wales; and with the British Transport Police. That mix of areas is quite intentional because we wanted to test effectively and make the most of learnings from the pilots. We wanted those orders to be available in forces with different demographic make-ups and splits between rural and urban communities—so testing in Wales, for example, is really important. We have selected those pilot areas to give us the best possible evidence base as we move to roll out more widely.
The Chair: People might be puzzled about the British Transport Police being one of the pilots. Why is that one?
Gisela Carr: I can say a bit more about why we were happy to partner with BTP and have it testing these orders. We know that BTP is obviously responsible for policing on the rail network. That is actually quite often a flashpoint for coercive and abusive behaviour. For example, if you think of children who might have some time with both parents, handovers can happen at railway stations. That is the kind of thing that BTP was quite interested to test, having not particularly been involved in working with protective orders in the same way that other police forces have. We were happy to test DAPO with BTP and see how that can work effectively.
Baroness Barran: I just wanted to pick up on Baroness Neate’s question. She was saying that first-response officers are turning up at an address without the previous history. Of course, there is an element of training in terms of understanding the significance of the previous history, but it is just a call handler job to say, “Five call-outs in the last six months”. You do not need 100 years of training to work out that that is a lot. Is that a fair observation? If so, who is responsible for understanding why it is happening? It feels super basic to get that right.
Natalie Fleet: We know how important this is because of all the reasons you have set out. That is why, when I met the police leads, they were talking about all this, the reason for the additional training and how statutory guidance will help. There is also a huge element of police reform here. When we look at reforming policing and treating violence against women and girls in the same way as we treat counterterrorism, it should be nationally managed. Then we can improve training and look at how there can be more consistency.
Gisela Carr: There are two things that I can highlight on the operational policing side, if that is helpful. We absolutely recognise the problem. You will know of really hideous cases. The Minister has talked about Raneem’s case in the context of experts in control rooms. We know there are issues and challenges around information-sharing. It is sadly something that is raised all too often, and we are working on this with policing and data systems to work out how we can better address that.
For example, there is some work that we are leading in the Home Office, working with the Ministry of Justice as well, on how we build a better link between orders made in the family court—where many civil orders in relation to VAWG and domestic abuse are made—and policing systems. We have not waited for the big transformation that is coming with police reform and LEDs; we have gone ahead and thought about what an innovative interim solution would look like. We can therefore build that information picture and make sure that forces have the best possible information about the totality of orders that affect either a victim or a perpetrator.
The Minister has also mentioned Raneem’s law. We made an announcement yesterday about highlighting that in a wider range of areas. That obviously brings a specialist domestic abuse perspective into the control room. Those specialists help the call handlers and the response officers by saying, “Think about this incident in a wider context. These are the things to consider as you go and respond”. I do not want to suggest that we do not recognise the problem; we absolutely do, but we have started to think about how we can change things to address that.
Q161 Baroness Sugg: I wanted to ask about “personally connected”, which as you know, was introduced as part of the Act’s first statutory definition of domestic abuse. We have heard various evidence on this. Some people have referred to it as a “double-edged sword”, saying that it is welcome as it helps capture issues such as honour-based abuse, but also that it can be too broad and creates too much pressure on policing resources. Is there anything the Government can do to help resolve this, to help on the investigation front and ultimately the prosecution front?
Natalie Fleet: We all know that, because domestic abuse takes so many forms, we need to have a really broad definition, which needs to capture abuse by current and former partners and wider family members. We do not feel that we can reduce the scope of the definition because we do not want to leave anybody behind. We are instead looking to work with police to introduce new training so that officers have the skills to recognise all forms of domestic abuse and respond appropriately. The statutory guidance that we are introducing has a statutory definition of honour-based abuse, which will capture abuse perpetrated by individuals in the same community. As you said, it reflects the distinct dynamics of honour-based abuse, which involves multiple perpetrators and broader social networks.
Q162 Baroness Gohir: My question is focused on online abuse and tech-facilitated abuse. We have seen a massive growth in this type of abuse, but it is not addressed in the Act. What can the Government do to address this type of abuse?
Natalie Fleet: The definition of domestic abuse focuses on behaviours rather than methods. Something written five years ago could not capture the landscape that we have now online, and we cannot predict what landscape we will have online in five years. I spoke to Baroness Casey yesterday, and we talked about grooming and how it was experienced in my community 25 years ago. There is no way that any of these things are perpetrated now without an online element. You are right, and the definition of domestic abuse should absolutely capture things that happen online.
In the VAWG strategy, we have specific commitments to tackle online and technology-facilitated harm. In the Crime and Policing Act 2026, we have introduced measures to tackle these harms, especially around non-consensual image abuse. Within 24 hours of a report, it has to be taken down.
This is really exciting: just a couple of weeks ago the Prime Minister announced that we will be the first country in the world to have device-level controls. When people have asked me about it, they have said, “Oh, this is too big a burden. How are you going to do it?” Every time I have explained it, I have said, “This is so simple. With the way that you can’t screenshot your internet banking or you can’t record Netflix, the technology already exists. Once it’s implemented, you can’t take a nude photo, you can’t share it, you can’t store it on your phone unless you can prove you’re over 18 and the receiver has consent”. When you explain how easy it is, people then say, “Well why hasn’t it already happened?” It has not happened anywhere in the world. I am glad that we are looking at all the different ways that we can protect children and young people. The domestic abuse protection orders can then also capture everything that happens online, which is incredibly important.
The Chair: Minister, you have just said something that the committee has not heard from anyone else about the methodologies that already exist. You are saying that, for example, a big platform such as Netflix is able to make sure that nobody can copy stuff and then use it. There are other situations where, basically, there is a cut-off that does not allow certain kinds of behaviours. Certainly, we have heard evidence of this in the House of Lords in relation to pornographic material of a certain kind and how you could do that, particularly in relation to children but also in relation to certain subjects, such as incest. Are we talking to technological experts about how this could be done with speed?
Natalie Fleet: I know that Home Office officials have been speaking to Android and iPhone representatives about how this technology exists and how it can be used to protect children so that we do not have to legislate either. This is specifically about taking pictures. In terms of the wider conversations, I am not sure. Do you have any idea around that, Gisela?
Gisela Carr: We engage with tech platforms and wider online service providers. We have had a number of conversations with them, former Ministers, DSIT Ministers, experts from the VAWG sector and leads from the tech companies on how we make the Online Safety Act 2023 work most effectively for VAWG. You will have seen that we have set out expectations and ambitions around that in the VAWG strategy. Part of delivering that is the engagement we have with those companies, to understand what more they are able to do within existing frameworks to tackle the harms we are most worried about.
Natalie Fleet: When we think about the impact that these have, the testimony that I have heard—I am sure you are all aware of it—tells us that we have young people who have these images, we have sextortion, and the things we see online are shared and ruin lives. When we think that 90% of these images are generated by children themselves and there is a really easy way to stop that, then we absolutely need to be working with technology companies to see what more we can do to protect our young people.
Baroness Gohir: I just add one more question. Are the Government doing enough to raise awareness among victims so they can better protect themselves from tech abuse?
Natalie Fleet: Gisela will find out if we have an official line. My personal reflection is that we do incredible work to make sure that the law is robust but, when we look out into the real world at the people who come to my constituency office or the people I see online, I realise there is absolutely more that we can do in terms of awareness. I have been living in this space, I have been professionally working in this space and I care about this space. There are things I have learned in these past six weeks that I did not know existed. There is so much more that we can do because it does not matter how well-meaning the expert advice is that we have and how well it is implemented; if you cannot identify what is happening, that is a problem.
This is an area where technology also gives us an opportunity. Young people get their news, and interact on social media and online in those spaces, in a way that we did not when growing up. When you look at the stats around reports and ages, younger people are more likely to report in the national Crime Survey. Is that because of an awareness? Is it because of what is and is not acceptable? At my age I might have thought, “I didn’t really like that”. They are more likely to say, “That’s rape. You don’t do that”. They understand more, and they are having conversations among themselves around what consent is, what it looks like, and why it is important.
There is absolutely so much more to be done in terms of schools and the work that the DfE is doing—I am sure we will come to that throughout the session. However, that is a job and a responsibility of us all. We are in the bubble; how do we get the laws we are making, embedding and making sure are robust here out into the real world in terms of awareness? That is the challenge.
The Chair: Minister, one thing that has been drawn to our attention in relation to technology is that there are now many other forms of technology. It is not just people using naked photographs of their former wife that they took when the relationship was in its early stages, which they then put out into the world just to humiliate, embarrass and diminish the confidence of their former partner. There are ways in which revenge is taken by doing that. There is also another thing: if you have access to your partner’s phone, you can know where they are at any given time. If you have those alarm things on your door, you know who visits her. Does her sister get to visit her? If members of her family have been banned from visiting, “I know that you saw your sister yesterday because I’ve looked at the camera on the door”. Other technologies in the house can follow women’s activities and what they are doing. There is also the whole business of eating habits even, and control in other ways.
There is this concern about the wider use of technology, but also that there are apps now, which have been drawn to our attention, that can be used to share knowledge about how you can make your wife or partner comatose in order to sexually abuse them. We all thought that the Gisèle Pelicot case was an isolated, rather rare and extraordinary thing, but we are finding that actually there are whole networks of men—crossing borders—whose interest is in raping partners who are drugged. There is this whole business of how the internet interfaces with abuse—we did not have this knowledge before.
Natalie Fleet: Yes. The tracking apps that you are talking about can be used in the worst possible ways. They are used by my family, to give them a sense of security when I am so far away, so they know that I am safe. But whenever we have something that can be used for good, it can be used in this space in the worst possible way. That is why policing reform is so important.
A constituent came to me about an image. She lived in Derbyshire, but the image had been generated by a bot so there was no police force for that. The person who had retweeted it had been in Northumberland, but then the IP address came under a different police force. This is why we need police reform, so that we are able to tackle this abuse nationally.
Lord Polak: Minister, you sound extremely practical, which is refreshing, but you said something just now. You said that you have been in the job six weeks and, although you have been in the industry, you have learned so much. There seems to be some sort of disconnect between what is happening and what is helping. How do you think you would be able to bridge that gap?
Natalie Fleet: Do you mean how do I, as an individual, bridge it?
Lord Polak: You said you have come in and found, in the last six weeks, things you had no idea existed. How do practitioners and people in the world know what is going on and bring this together somehow?
Natalie Fleet: If you are a victim and this has happened in your home—whether it happened 30 years ago or it is happening right now—you do not care about the political turmoil that we care about here. It is a good thing that there is cross-party consensus and the support of the whole House and the sector in terms of tackling violence against women and girls. However, victims have told me that they feel like they have to project manage their own police case, such as when they have moved because of domestic violence to another police area. We can do something here. We have had legislation on coercive control for 10 years, but we have not had any convictions around it. That is a huge problem.
Prior to being in this post, I did not have experience of being in Government. As a victim—I will be very honest, because we need to be—I would not report what happened to me. I have been groomed and impregnated, but I will not report because I do not want to go through the hell and the trauma that it would bring. I do not want to put my family through it. I have asked them, and they already have enough with me doing this job. They do not need to be re-traumatised in that way. Since doing this, I cannot understand why it cannot be easier and better.
My ambition is that a woman comes to me at the end of this first term, and I can say, “We have specialists in each police force who will believe you, and the police will believe you. There will be support throughout that process because we’ve invested in it. You will then get to court, and we will have brought down waiting lists. There will be specialist courts, and we’ll have made space in prisons so there will be capacity there, so that you can be really sure that you get what you need”. That is what keeps me going. That is why I do what I do, even though at times—as I am sure you can understand—it is really difficult.
When I came into Government, I understood that, for this to happen in a victim’s journey, to get that change, we need to get the Home Office to work with the Ministry of Justice, which we are doing, but I did not understand the silos. I just thought police and courts worked together. I was the kind of person who thought that the Government were one. If you told a police officer something, I did not realise you had to go and then tell it to the courts in a different way and so on.
The landscape of government can feel very difficult for a survivor, which is why I am glad we are doing all this work. Seeing it from the other side makes me understand the challenges. This legislation is five years old, but we are only just putting domestic abuse protection orders in place. I asked why, and it is because of the legislative difficulty you get trying to make a difference in the real world. In the pilot areas, they are making a difference and, when they are spread out nationally, they will be a game-changer. I believe in them strongly. However, I understand that things are difficult for us to do in a way that people cannot understand in the real world.
Lord Polak: That is what I meant by being practical. Do not lose the dream. You are now in a position to be able to make it happen. I am sure we will all try to help you.
Baroness Barran: In previous sessions, Baroness Neate has taken the opportunity to sneak in a second question. I will follow her strategy, if I may. I will take my second question first. I am struck by and absolutely understand your focus, Minister, on training particularly the police and how you improve that. However, we also know that a huge amount of training has gone on in the sector generally over the last 20 years and the police in particular over the last 10. We need to think beyond training, given the level of staff turnover, et cetera. Training does not age very well. What else is in the toolkit to try to change this?
There is one thing I would be interested in your reflections on. When I was working in the sector, I was struck by how many serving officers were also victims of abuse, very often from a senior officer in the force. Would you agree that one way of changing the culture would be to address abuse within individual public services? We know there are a lot of scandals at the moment about the Army, but there is also a lot going on in the police that gets brushed under the carpet. I would be interested in your thoughts on that quickly, and then I will come to my real question before the Chair sacks me.
The Chair: They are all going to be doing the Neate way of asking questions. A double whammy. What about training?
Baroness Barran: Sorry, it is more about dealing with abuse within the force.
Natalie Fleet: I walk into a room such as this, I count the number of women, and then I extrapolate from rape crisis statistics: that means that four of us in the room have been raped. It does not matter what institution you are in—you can be in a supermarket—and people, not just women, are walking around as victims, and it is no different in the police force. The Home Office is no different. Parliament is no different. We need to make sure that there are robust HR practices and that shame changes sides, as Gisèle Pelicot said. The question is how to make that happen. When people speak out, are they able to be believed and be supported? That is how we make a change. There is no institution in the country that does not need to look at what is happening and where there should not be strong, robust practices.
Q163 Baroness Barran: If I may, the police are different. One of my colleagues at SafeLives was the sergeant in charge of public protection while she was sofa-surfing with her kids as a victim of domestic abuse. She was expecting people to turn up and respond effectively on the doorstep when nothing was happening about her. This is a very long time ago and she has spoken about it publicly. She is the person who wrote the DA Matters course, so she knows what she is talking about.
There would be a massive impact if forces really showed leadership on that as an issue. Otherwise, we are expecting people to behave one way at work and another way at home. That erodes a culture in which we are saying this really matters. I just push that point.
I will move on to my real question. We heard quite a lot of questions raised about the age of 16 and whether that is the right cut-off, given that children younger than 16 are experiencing abuse within their intimate relationships. Obviously, it is fraught with difficulty, but we were wondering what thought, if any, you are giving to whether that needs to be reviewed and what considerations you are taking into account to balance that decision.
The Chair: We also heard that sometimes perpetrators are boys who, at 15, can be big and quite threatening persons towards their mothers and elders in the household. Abuse can take different forms and not just between intimate partners.
Natalie Fleet: On your question, we are reviewing right now how the law handles this and tackles it. We have to be really careful to ensure that any law change leads to better outcomes for teenage victims. We are looking at the detail now, because there is nobody who should not be worried about what is happening within teenage relationships. I am glad that we are not just saying, “Oh, they’re children. They’re below the age of consent; it shouldn’t be happening”. No, it is happening, and we are absolutely looking at how we tackle that.
On the issue that you raised about the domestic abuse protection orders, I thought it was wonderful that, when we were speaking to officers, they were telling us about how they have been tailored, including between a mother and a son. For one of the DAPOs, they put restrictions in that meant they could continue that relationship, recognising the complexity but also the desire of the mother to want it to continue. They thought about how they could adjust the order to make sure that she was kept safe. That is what is really important: how they can and are being individualised.
The Chair: Yes. It presents particular problems because, for those very reasons, mothers sometimes do not want to report because they feel that it damage their own relationship with their son and his life. There are sensitivities around this, which would be part of any training.
Q164 Lord Polak: I was a youth worker. I could not understand, at the time the Act was going through, why children were not mentioned—a number of us fought to have children within the Bill. You made the comment before, Minister, that there is no point putting a law through that then does not happen or does not have any effect. I have a couple of questions on the children aspect, if I may.
First, the Act defines children as victims in their own right. We have heard that these children are not always treated as such by statutory agencies, including the police. What can be done to improve that? Secondly, we have also been told that support for child victims is, “The least stable part of the sector”, possibly because it was added in at the last minute, including a lack of child-focused independent domestic violence advisers. What can be done to improve that part also?
Natalie Fleet: We are rightly talking today about the challenges and the scale of the problem. That it is incredible and right, but it shows how far we have come in that we now recognise children as victims in the way that we do. I can remember seeing a poster when I was little and it said, “Just because they’re in the next room, doesn’t mean they can’t hear you”. I thought, “I didn’t know people went in the next room. I thought you had to look after your mum. I thought that was your job”. The way that we now see children as victims and are doing absolutely everything we can to support them is so important. I cannot believe this happened only in November, but I am thrilled it did.
We have made it the law that police forces must notify educational settings when they have attended domestic abuse incidents through Operation Encompass. This is so important. I thought it had always happened; it did not. It has been happening since only November. I was just absent from school—there were just days I did not go. That was just my job. I needed to look after my mum and make sure she was okay, and go to the solicitor, or help her with her injuries or whatever it was I needed to do. School was never told. It just thought I was a high achiever, and I could just keep going back to school and working as hard as I could. Now schools will be told. There is no way that I can fault my school in the way that it looked after me. It was the place where I absolutely felt safe, and I will always be grateful for that. However, the fact that schools now know that something has happened in the home means that they can intervene, they can step in and see if there is anything that that child needs more, which is incredible.
The DfE obviously leads on the multiagency response to children. It is establishing the child protection authority, which will improve national and local leadership and learning so that children, including those who are affected by domestic abuse, are better protected. That is really welcome.
Baroness Neate: Interestingly, I was at the APPG on Perpetrators of Domestic Abuse only yesterday. There was quite an animated conversation about statutory children’s services and the lack of awareness, or even acknowledgement, of the perpetrator within children’s social care. That means that often it is the woman—usually the woman, the victim—who is being challenged to make things all right for the child or to keep the child safe. There could be an unintended consequence there of children being victims in their own right. It is absolutely right that that should happen, but if all the onus is then placed on the non-abusing parent—I have seen it myself, when I was until very recently the chief executive of Shelter—women can actually become homeless for that reason. It is a serious issue. What can you do to talk with DfE to get the perpetrator present in those conversations about children at local level?
Natalie Fleet: This is so important. I have also learned a lot about family court and how difficult it is, and the impact of who the carer is and how they are trying to protect the children. It is really important that we get this right. Is there anything that you want to say on this, Gisela?
Gisela Carr: We absolutely recognise the issue that you have highlighted, Baroness Neate. I would just draw out one thing in the VAWG—violence against women and girls—strategy, which was published in December last year, that is quite different is the extent of cross-government working. That is both in terms of other departments, particularly the Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care, bringing forward really ambitious VAWG and domestic abuse-specific programmes, but also how we have managed to leverage some big flagship programmes to make sure they have a greater focus on domestic abuse.
To give you one example, the Families First Partnership programme, which has about £2.4 billion of investment behind it, is around supporting children and families who are in abusive situations. That will not be exclusively domestic abuse, sadly, but domestic abuse will be a big part of it. That is one of the ways of thinking about what the holistic support should be for a family, for all parents, and how you can support them to access targeted services. There is a focus within that, obviously, on helping victims to leave dangerous environments, but I would definitely recognise the wider point you have made about what that means for both parents in those circumstances.
Q165 Baroness Hyde of Bemerton: I would like to ask a bit about migrant victims’ experiences of domestic abuse. The committee has heard it is often further exacerbated due to immigration status, particularly for people with no recourse to public funds. What can the Government do to specifically improve this and the response to migrant victims more generally?
Natalie Fleet: Every victim should absolutely feel safe, regardless of their immigration status, but we know that coming forward can be a real challenge. We also know that perpetrators often use immigration status and knowledge around that as a tool for coercion and control. We are introducing a requirement for the police to obtain a victim’s agreement before their data is shared with immigration enforcement. That is incredibly important. We are working with operational partners and specialist VAWG organisations in the sector to implement this policy, including Baroness Gohir’s Muslim Women’s Network. We have invested £2.4 million in the Support for Migrant Victims scheme in this financial year, which helps with accommodation, subsistence, counselling and immigration support. We are going to launch a competition later this year for the future provision of the Support for Migrant Victims scheme.
Baroness Hyde of Bemerton: Having the victim’s agreement before contacting sounds incredible. What happens if the victim declines to agree? I do not know how that goes then. Do you see what I mean?
Gisela Carr: The Minister has talked about the commitment we have made. We are now working with the police, immigration enforcement and our expert networks in the VAWG sector to think about exactly how we implement that. Obviously, there is a really important shift here around obtaining consent and permission. I would note that engagement and data sharing with immigration enforcement can be helpful because it allows the immigration system to be aware of and support that victim. As the Minister said, we also know that immigration status and uncertainty around that can be used as a tool of abuse. One benefit of consent for data sharing is that it allows the immigration enforcement authorities to work with that victim, to help them regularise their status. It potentially removes a tool for abuse.
However, we need to work through in detail with our operational partners and with experts in the sector exactly what we do in the circumstance you have just highlighted. We need to be really clear about how we manage risk around that while recognising the really important issue around consent, which is what we are trying to address.
Baroness Gohir: I have a question on transnational abandonment; I declare an interest because I have written to the Home Office about this a number of times. I asked a question about it last week, and there is another letter on its way. The question I have with transnational abandonment is why we cannot just follow good practice of Australia and have exit trafficking as an offence, so that perpetrators are held accountable. At the moment, they are not. We know that there are probably at least 60 to 80 cases a year. Those are the 60 to 80 cases that apply for the public funding, but there are probably many others that do not.
I have been told that we would use existing legislation. There are only two pieces of existing legislation that can be used. One is if the document is stolen; there is a law about stealing someone’s passport, but not everyone has their passport stolen. The other one is coercive control. We know that we are struggling to get convictions of coercive control, let alone then trying to get a transnational abandonment case through the courts. Why can we not just have an offence on exit trafficking? How are perpetrators of transnational abandonment being held to account?
Natalie Fleet: This is a really serious issue. It is obviously something you care passionately about, and rightly so. I just do not have the information around that now. I just do not know that level of detail. I absolutely will make sure I will follow it up as soon as this committee meeting has ended. We will write to you and make sure you get responses to the letters you have already sent in, and we will get you some information on this.
Q166 Baroness Rafferty: Thank you, Minister and Gisela, for your very clear and thoughtful answers. My question really is continuing on the minorities theme. What could the Government really do to support minority groups, including ethnic minority victims, disabled victims and LGBT+ victims? It is quite a broad question and quite an ask, but we would love to hear your response.
Natalie Fleet: It is a broad question, but a very good one. We know that when you belong to a minority community, it can be really difficult to get the specialist support that you need and that should be available. Last week, the Home Office launched competitions for helpline and advocacy services. There is £24 million of funding over the spending review period. The helpline and advocacy services will be tailored to different groups of victims. There will absolutely be specialist provision for LGBT+ victims, deaf and disabled victims, and victims from minority groups.
We are going to publish a cross-government national commissioning statement on VAWG, which will introduce definitions of “specialist” and “by and for” services. My department has been working with the Ministry of Justice, and we have already convened two round tables with the by and for and specialist VAWG services to inform future work on police reform. Coming back to that, we need to make sure that police are aware that not only is there this pattern of behaviour, but that it will be prevalent in certain types of minority groups that will need specialist support if it is not identified.
Gisela Carr: If it is helpful for the committee, I can give a bit more detail about exactly what that funding we have just launched the competition for is intended to cover. Would that be helpful?
The Chair: Yes, but we have to be mindful of time.
Gisela Carr: As the Minister said, we launched a competition last week for £24 million of funding to deliver VAWG helplines and advocacy services. To be clear, the helplines that are included within the competition are the National Domestic Abuse Helpline; the men’s domestic abuse helpline; an advice line for domestic abuse perpetrators; an honour-based abuse helpline; the National Stalking Helpline; the non-consensual intimate image abuse helpline—you might better know that as what is currently the Revenge Porn Helpline—a helpline for LGBT+ victims; a helpline for older victims of VAWG; a helpline for children who use harm; a specific helpline for victims from ethnic minority groups; and a helpline for deaf and disabled victims.
That is our national coverage. It is informed by census data, which tells us where we need to provide those services at a national level, and the findings from the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s mapping report.
The Chair: That is very interesting. It is quite a wide-ranging offering.
Q167 Baroness Porter of Fulwood: This builds a little on that previous point you have just made. We have heard session after session, consistently, from charities and different service providers that they feel incredibly underresourced. The issue is not just about the lack of resourcing, but about the processes involved: a lot of the procurement is inappropriate; they are concerned that contracts are too short when work is being commissioned; specialist services in particular often struggle to access funding; thought is perhaps not given to whether—if it is only a small pot of money—going through an expensive, complicated procurement procedure is always going to be appropriate.
It would be helpful if you could just talk a little about both whether you feel the resourcing is currently adequate, or whether that is something that you are concerned about. From the commissioning side of things, I know this is being looked at in various different places around government, but can you say a little about your specific concerns around that and what you are considering?
Natalie Fleet: As a Member of Parliament, but also for anybody who meets anybody in the voluntary sector—any public servant, on anything that is government-funded—there is always a concern about underresourcing. We know the impact when things are not properly resourced. That is why I am glad that £98 million launched in the last three competitions for multiyear funding. However, the money alone is never going to be enough because we know the scale of the problem.
The really important thing that we have done that I am really pleased about is multiyear funding deals. Short-term funding for a year is just never okay. I am glad that we have gone to a three-year departmental settlement so we will be able to give three-year funding deals.
The Chair: That is really interesting because one concern expressed to us is that often the money is very short term, and does not allow for the development of expertise and the skills that come with certain kinds of provision.
Baroness Neate: When we have heard about this, it has really been in relation to local authority commissioning. It is brilliant that the Government have introduced multiyear government funding. That is great, but there are some significant issues around the way specialist domestic abuse services are being commissioned at the local level. You are having to put your staff at risk of redundancy every year and, sometimes, you do not even find out by 1 April whether you are getting funding. That is not uncommon. I understand that is not a Home Office responsibility, but there are things that Government can do to put in place a different approach to commissioning, for example, in this area.
Gisela Carr: There are two things I would highlight there. First, I just say that we absolutely recognise the problem, and some things we have set out in the VAWG strategy are exactly to identify that. As the Minister highlighted earlier, we have committed in the VAWG strategy to looking again at the national commissioning statement. We will do that really thoroughly, led by the Home Office but bringing in at least four or five other departments across Government and working really closely with the VAWG sector. We have already started some discussions in the context of PCC reform because, for example, lots of our victim services that the MoJ funds or that we fund in the Home Office for perpetrators go through PCC. As the Minister has highlighted, we need to make sure that, as we move towards police reform, it also delivers benefits for those services.
The Minister has talked about the multiyear funding that we have secured and are now competing for in the Home Office, which is really welcome. That obviously applies to our colleagues across Government as well. The MoJ has been able to launch multiyear funding for victim support. Almost £500 million from MHCLG is going to local authorities for Part 4, the safe accommodation duty, and there is also investment that DHSC is making into therapeutic support.
I recognise that there is more we need to do to address the concerns at a system level but, where we have pots of funding, we are making sure that as far as possible we can do this on a multiyear basis. It is something we are very keen to do from central government as well.
Q168 Baroness Neate: I am back on the theme of perpetrator programmes. We know that they can be effective. There is evidence around that, but there is also a massive shortage of perpetrator interventions in relation to the size of the problem. Obviously, I am aware of the focus on this in the violence against women and girls strategy, but could you spell out what further intentions the Government have to address this?
Natalie Fleet: You are absolutely right; there is a transformational approach to perpetrators in the VAWG strategy, which I really welcome. One thing that I had not thought about before I was in Government, but which you hear about once you are ingrained in the learning in the sector, is that every time we work to make a woman and child—a family—safe, that perpetrator moves on. If we can tackle this and have an intervention with the perpetrator, it will do so much long-term good. It is such common sense that I had not even thought about before. I am glad that the people who were writing the VAWG strategy had.
The Home Office is investing £53 million over four years in the national rollout of the Drive project. It is a proven approach that targets the most dangerous perpetrators of domestic abuse: high risk, high harm. An independent evaluation shows that the Drive project delivers a significant reduction in abuse: an 82% fall in physical abuse, 88% reduction in sexual abuse, 75% reduction in stalking behaviours, and 73% reduction in jealous or controlling behaviours. Obviously, we have to go beyond the most dangerous perpetrators to achieve our ambition to halve VAWG in a decade, which we absolutely will. That is why we have launched a £74.5 million competition for domestic abuse and stalking perpetrator interventions, to make sure that we are targeting all levels of risk.
Q169 The Chair: Minister, we had a very good session on perpetrators and on these programmes. As you have just said, it is dealing at the moment with people who are violent, but nipping things in the bud at an early stage is very productive in any of these kinds of abusive behaviours. We were encouraged by those who gave evidence that we should be looking carefully at ways to encourage men who feel that they have violent outbursts of rage that are uncontrollable—but they do not want to be like this and they want help—to come and seek help to deal with that in the right way at an early stage.
I just ask that you take that message away with you, because it fits in with what you have just said about reaching beyond the most extreme kinds of perpetrators. The truth is that stopping this at an early stage is what women want, and it is what those who are abused want. That really is going to be the answer.
I have the final question, always. I am asking you about the evidence we have received about a postcode lottery, because that can undermine the effectiveness of the Act. We hear that there are good places and bad places. However, we heard plenty of evidence about the things that were not working well enough; there must be good stories in here too, and that is what I want to hear from you and Gisela. You have given us some, but where are the places that are doing really interesting, good things and are taking this very seriously? Let us leave with some hope.
Natalie Fleet: I love the framing of that question because that is absolutely what we need. There is some incredible work. I have been really impressed that the Home Office has been looking across the piece nationally: where are the really good news stories and how can we take learning from them and apply them? This is where Gisela can come in on the detail of what is working well.
Gisela Carr: There are a couple of things I could highlight. Baroness Kennedy, I can also try to respond to the point you just made about perpetrator programmes, because that is an example. The Home Office has funded perpetrator interventions through PCCs for a number of years. As the Minister has highlighted, we have a competition out at the moment to expand that provision. The Minister has talked about Drive, which is obviously for the highest-harm and highest-risk perpetrators, but across those DA and stalking interventions, different PCCs have interventions and models at different levels of harm. There are also PCCs that run programmes around children who harm and child-to-parent violence.
To pick up on the point that you just raised, Baroness Kennedy, one of the programmes we have previously funded is the CARA programme—Cautioning and Relationship Abuse. When somebody has their first contact with the police or the criminal justice system for DA-related behaviours or offence, they can be diverted into that programme. It identifies people the very first time that harmful behaviour becomes evident and thinks about how to intervene early and prevent that behaviour escalating. That is an example of where we have learned and understood about how that can work through evaluation that runs alongside the PCC funding, and then that informs the policy and decisions that we can make at the national level.
Similarly, to think beyond the Home Office, one of the flagship policies in the violence against women and girls strategy is the Steps to Safety programme that the Department of Health and Social Care is rolling out across NHS England. This will enable GPs to refer patients who have disclosed being a victim of VAWG directly into a specialist service, which is a really transformational and important thing because we know so many disclosures happen in healthcare settings. That model has been piloted in Devon and Cornwall. DHSC will now look at the successes and the innovation from that model, also learning from what organisations such as IRISi have been doing in the sector for a number of years. It will think about how we can take that really good local practice and expand it nationally. That is always something that we are keen to do.
I just have a final point. We try to build evaluation as close as we can into all our programmes. You will appreciate some limitations around evaluation in this area, but that enables us to understand the direct impact of the programme and the process evaluations around them. It also enables us, for example, in the Drive programme, when we have an evaluation that shows a really strong benefits and evidence base, to take that and think about how we apply that learning nationally. Obviously, the end point for Drive has been the commitment and funding, alongside that national rollout of Drive across England and Wales.
The Chair: The business of the general practitioner as often being the source of a first revelation is very real. I have just been taking evidence in relation to drug-induced rape in the domestic setting of wives and partners. The women who gave evidence testified to going to their doctor and saying, “I think something’s happening”, and the doctor is saying, “Look, talk to your husband, but I suspect that you are just imagining this”. Time and again, that was the account. Doctors are busy; they are supposed to deal with every patient for only a few minutes, so they often do not have the time to sit and listen carefully to what is being described to them. There is that whole business of the first responder being a medical person, but a medical person who does not really understand a lot of this.
This has been a really important session to us. I thank you, Minister, because you are early in the role and you clearly have a great deal of knowledge. As my colleagues have said, you bring a new energy, which is always good, and a refreshing set of eyes to this.
Natalie Fleet: Thank you. I have made one mistake. Sorry, Chair, could we just clarify something?
The Chair: Oh, it is lovely when a Minister admits a mistake. We like that in a Minister.
Gisela Carr: We have a bit more data, thanks to the team, to support what the Minister said around CCB convictions because I know we talked about prosecutions, but we did not quite get to talking about convictions. Convictions for CCB as a principal offence have risen since the offence was introduced in 2015, which is the 10 years the Minister was referring to. In the year ending December 2025, there were 1,223 CCB convictions. That is almost a 40% increase on the year before but, obviously, as we have discussed earlier in the session, while any increase in successful prosecutions is welcome, we know there is a lot more to do and we will be addressing that with the police and CPS.
The Chair: Thank you both. I do not think that that was not a mistake; it was just an addition. I thank you both for coming and for giving us such valuable information. We are all grateful to you for doing that. Thank you very much. I now bring this session to a close.
