27
Examination of witnesses
Alex Davies-Jones, Florence Eshalomi and Josh MacAlister.
Q194 The Chair: Can I welcome everyone to this session on the Domestic Abuse Act 2021? This piece of legislation was passed five years ago and today we are conducting post-legislative scrutiny to see how the legislation has worked. While this is not done with all legislation, this particular Act has involved changes at many different levels so we want to look at whether it is truly effective and achieving its intended aims.
Let me welcome the expert team of witnesses that we have here today. Sitting there to the left in red is Florence Eshalomi MP, the Minister for Homelessness, Democracy, Communities and Faith. Appointed Minister of State in July of this year, her responsibilities include community, green spaces, social cohesion, faith, homelessness and supported accommodation for domestic abuse victims. That last point is clearly the key issue for us today. She was previously the co-chair of the APPG, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Ending Homelessness, so it is going to be a big challenge given the priority the Prime Minister is giving to this. We are very concerned to ensure that domestic abuse victims remain a high priority within that category.
Then I would like to welcome Alex Davies-Jones, who is the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Victims, Violence Against Women and Girls and International Justice at the Ministry of Justice. Also appointed in July, she is a new and important arrival. Her responsibilities include criminal law, victims, witnesses and vulnerabilities, rape and serious sexual offences, the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority and miscarriages of justice. That is going to keep her very busy I am sure. We are glad to see her here today.
We also have John MacAlister—
Josh MacAlister: Sorry—
The Chair: It is Josh—forgive me. We have Josh MacAlister, who is the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children and Families at the Department for Education. He was actually in post before, in September 2025, and reappointed in July of this year. He has given real priority to the position of children and that is one of the issues we want to address today.
I want to start the session by asking: how are responsibilities for the different provisions of the Act divided in practice? One common problem we have is that responsibilities can fall between ministries; how do you maintain cohesion, and who is accountable for ensuring that the Act actually works coherently? I see a nod from Alex.
Alex Davies-Jones: I can happily explain to the committee how we have set up and developed the strategy for tackling violence against women and girls across government. I am responsible for this, alongside my counterpart in the Home Office, Minister Kaur, who succeeded Minister Phillips.
To ensure collaboration, we have developed a cross-government ministerial board. This board reviews everything within the tackling violence against women and girls’ strategy that the Government published in December last year, which includes the Domestic Abuse Act. We welcome attendance at that board from Ministers in other government departments to look at how best to deliver both the Act and the strategy. The board really pushes accountability and delivery and implementation on all violence against women and girls’ issues across all other government departments. Minister Kaur and I chair this board together.
The Chair: Can you spell his or her surname for me?
Alex Davies-Jones: Her surname is K, A, U, R.
The Chair: Do you have a regular meeting pattern?
Alex Davies-Jones: We did; we are yet to meet since the forming of the new Administration, but we previously met regularly every six weeks across government. Attendance was a three-line whip from every government department that had a stake within this. We were also joined by a representative from the devolved Government of Wales given the cross-nation situation, because a number of the provisions such as health, housing, social care and local government are devolved to Wales. Therefore collaboration was needed in order to deliver on the aims, means and priorities of both the violence against women and girls’ strategy and the Act.
The Chair: Who deals with it at Cabinet level?
Alex Davies-Jones: At Cabinet level, it is primarily led by the Home Secretary, but under the previous Administration, before Andy Burnham became Prime Minister, we also held high-level Cabinet meetings. At the time, Minister Phillips and I would attend these sessions alongside then-Prime Minister Keir Starmer. While these meetings have yet to be reconvened under Andy Burnham, my understanding is that it will be imminently.
The Chair: We are expecting to have a voice in Cabinet then?
Alex Davies-Jones: Yes.
The Chair: We heard from Jess Phillips, although she was no longer Minister, and we heard from the Minister at that time. What was quite revelatory about the evidence we had from Jess Phillips was the extent to which she felt that resource should be coming from more than one space—because these are Health issues, and they also fall under other ministries—and where there could be some greater complementarity, particularly around resourcing. She also felt there was still a sense of silo around these issues; it was not spreading across the ministries well enough. I do not want us to go into this in any more detail, but I want you to take this message away with you: there is a strong sense in which this should not be falling between ministries and we want to see cross-ministerial collaboration to ensure it works, as that is the only way this issue will be well addressed.
Alex Davies-Jones: I totally agree with you on that point and we noticed that the departments that did step up to the plate, not just in meeting their obligations but prioritising the implementation of the Act and the strategy, were ones where there was ministerial direction and prioritisation for this. Where there was a Minister in post that saw this as a priority, that is where it got driven.
The Chair: She told us something that very few of us knew—certainly I did not—which was that she received assistance from the Department of Health and Social Care and that some resource of the Department of Health and Social Care actually went in her direction, which brought about a great deal of loyalty from her to the Secretary of State at the time. All I would say is that this seems to be a rather good example of a Cabinet Minister recognising that this is a subject that falls on everybody’s plate.
Alex Davies-Jones: Totally. Just on that point, victim support is one of my policy areas that I lead on for victims within the criminal justice system. However—I am sure the committee will be very well aware—victim support is very, very broad; particularly when you are discussing health concerns by long-term health conditions. Mental health support, provisions for children—all this comes from the Ministry of Justice victim support fund. Before we set up the inter-ministerial board on tackling domestic abuse and violence against women and girls, there was no contribution from the Health department. That changed following direction from the then Secretary of State, Wes Streeting, to fund the Steps to Safety programme for GPs to have a set direction to point survivors and victims of domestic abuse through the right pathways and then make sure that that was supported and funded along the way. We also introduced the Child House model across England. Previously, there was only one funded model in existence. The commitment to fund this model, and to grow and increase the number of them for child victims of sexual abuse, now comes directly from the Department of Health and Social Care.
The Chair: It is very helpful to hear you speaking with such familiarity about all this. One of the repeated pieces of evidence we have had on this committee has been about people going to their GP and somehow it never filtering onwards or not getting the advice that they, looking back, feel would have assisted them greatly. She is not here today but we have a GP who sits on this committee so we have been very mindful of that and we would like to see that progressed with the new Administration.
Josh MacAlister: Can I add two reflections? First, Government are awash with inter-ministerial groups.
The Chair: That is one of the problems.
Josh MacAlister: They are not all that effective; I do not think that will be a bombshell to members, but the work that Jess and Alex have led with the VAWG inter-ministerial group is unusual in both its effectiveness and its degree of accountability. The fact that there is a clear action plan, with a strategy driven by very effective Ministers, has been a large part of the ability to bring across-government commitments together, including at the Department for Education. If part of your work is looking at Government’s ability to work across departments, there is definitely more to be done, but this is probably one of the areas where it has been more effective than others.
Secondly, most departments will have an insight into the same group of families we are concerned about when we are talking about domestic abuse. These are families where there is a mental health concern, families where there may be substance abuse issues, housing problems or child poverty. We often find ourselves coming at the problem through the perspective of our own system. In my world that is children’s social care and how we make sure social workers are effective and equipped to respond to significant harm and abuse. I chair the keeping children safe board alongside Jess and health colleagues, where domestic abuse is a massive feature of the discussions that we are having.
There are moments where we step back as Ministers and realise we are talking about the same group of families. We are all trying to crowd in investment and changes to systems with a common aim; it does not necessarily mean they all fit into the same spreadsheet of tracked actions called the VAWG strategy. As a point of reassurance I am happy to elaborate later on in this session on some of the changes we are making.
The Chair: There are specific things that, of course, we are wanting to hear from you about, but it is very interesting that you have mentioned children. We have some questions for you, particularly around the special way in which this piece of legislation really homed in on the fact that children inside families where there is domestic abuse between the adults suffer enormously, with a long-term impact on their lives. That is something that we have to have to the fore in all this because of the cost to the lives of people and to society as a whole. Thank you, Josh, for that. Florence, is there anything you would like to add at this stage?
Florence Eshalomi: I echo comments from both Alex and Josh in that it is cross-departmental including a big role that MHCLG play in this because—
The Chair: Now listen, I have to remind you about acronyms simply because we have people who listen in who do not know them. If we could tell people what we are talking about, at least in the first instance, that would be great.
Florence Eshalomi: The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government plays a key role in this and attends the inter-ministerial board. Obviously for MHCLG—Housing, Communities and Local Government—the key areas are around looking at the homelessness provision and rough sleeping element: when you look at the issues that women and men fleeing domestic abuse are facing, it comes down to where they lay their heads, in terms of safe, secure accommodation. We have heard many examples of some challenges many local authorities are facing when people present themselves as homeless. This is a key area that we are looking at in terms of working with the other departments and making sure that the housing element is treated as crucial.
As Josh mentioned, it is not just the women and the men fleeing domestic abuse, it is also the children and the impact on them. We know that a number of them are still very sadly caught up in temporary accommodation, and many are caught up in unsuitable B&B accommodation exceeding the six weeks’ limit. These are key areas that we are really trying to address to ensure that councils remember and implement their duty to act. That is a key area that I am keen to explore with the committee later on.
The Chair: Yes, there is research that statistically shows that young people who are rough sleeping have often come from backgrounds where they have experienced domestic abuse with their parents. I will move to Lord Russell, please.
Q195 Lord Russell of Liverpool: You might want to get your pen and paper because this question has three parts and you might wish to remember which they are and in which order. This is to do with the experience of victim-survivors.
I would just say as a preface that we have focused quite a lot during our inquiry on trying to find examples of best practice in a variety of areas around the country, and they are many. What they almost all have in common is a bottom-up strategy: they look at the experience the victims are having and they work their way up to see what can be done regardless of financial boundaries, departmental boundaries, or whatever, because it is victim focused.
First, in your particular department, what do you consider to be the principal barriers that victim-survivors are having problems with? Secondly, what plans do you have to improve their experience? Thirdly, much more specific, we have heard a lot of evidence about the value brought by IDVAs—independent domestic violence advisers; there are a lot of acronyms here—to improving victim-survivor experience, including specialist IDVAs such as criminal justice IDVAs, child IDVAs, and housing IDVAs. What plans do you have, if any, to increase the number of IDVAs available in your department to help victim-survivors? Could I start with you, Alex, please?
Alex Davies-Jones: I would say the biggest challenge that victims are dealing with is the criminal justice system at the moment, given the incredible backlogs in court delays. The issue of victim support and the capacity problems we have across the system are proving incredibly challenging. You will all be aware of the issues surrounding the entire criminal justice system at the moment: prisons at capacity; courts with severe delays; rape victims waiting three or four years for their trials to get to court; victim support is very patchy across England and Wales, particularly for child victims who—as you quite rightly pointed out, Chair—were recognised for the first time as victims in their own right as part of this Act, yet services and support for them are still very limited.
All this has been recognised, not just by the Ministry of Justice but by the cross-government working group to tackle the problem. We have funded record levels of court sitting days. We have funded record levels of victim support services—over half a billion pounds, and made that funding available for three years, which is something that the sector primarily told us was needed in order to put that sustainability and continuity in place.
However, it is not enough. It is not enough in terms of the court sitting days; it is not enough in terms of victim support services. So we really need to get to the heart of tackling prevention, looking at what more we can do. Specialist domestic abuse courts—problem-solving courts—are doing really great transformative work. This is where the judge follows the victim and perpetrator through the entire journey, bringing in positive requirement trainings. We are trialling domestic abuse protection orders, again introduced in the Act, across specific areas in England and Wales at the moment, but they are truly life-saving so we are committed to rolling them out as quickly as possible. There are issues with them because they do not cover children, so family courts are choosing not to use them. However, we have recognised this and are seeking to address it.
In terms of IDVA provision, with the record funding for police and crime commissioners, which is devolved to them, we have ring-fenced the violence against women and girls’ pot that we give to them to ensure that they are able to fund more IDVAs and child IDVAs where necessary. We know, because victims have told us, the huge impact that they make. In the Courts and Tribunals Bill that is currently making its way through the Commons, we have made a provision for IDVAs to sit as a trusted person in the courtroom with victims as well, so that will be a new measure that we are introducing to improve victim experience in court. We are getting rid of so-called bad character/good character evidence in the court as well, which can be used to showcase perpetrators in specific lights, which is not helpful, and to discredit victims and survivors of domestic abuse as well.
We are also ensuring that trauma-informed training is rolled out across every part of the criminal justice system. That is essential in terms of how victims and survivors are treated within the system. We are working with the judiciary, who are of course independent but who recognise that domestic abuse—particularly coercive and controlling behaviour—needs to be better identified in the courtrooms; the Judicial College are working on training packages. The Judicial College has been working with Women’s Aid to develop this and I am looking forward to actually seeing for the first time ever this training being rolled out. The Judicial College and the judiciary have invited me in to witness this, which is a first, and I am very much looking forward to that too.
The Chair: That is terrific because there was a time when I raised the idea of us getting women’s organisations to be the trainers of the judiciary and it was seen as the wildest idea possible, so I am glad—
Alex Davies-Jones: The training is still being done by the Judicial College, but the training has been developed in partnership with women’s organisations.
The Chair: That is a step forward; that is terrific.
Baroness Sugg: Just a very brief follow-up on the PCC point; obviously they are on the way out in 2028. Do you have clear plans on how you are going to ensure that IDVAs are properly funded?
Alex Davies-Jones: Yes, just to reassure you and the sector that might be listening to this: one of my key priorities now in post is looking at how we can reform the victim support funding model post the abolishment of the police and crime commissioners. We are working to address systemic issues such as postcode lotteries and ensuring we have good service provision while maintaining the violence against women and girls’ funding because we know how crucial that is.
The Chair: Lord Russell, I saw that you were anxious to come back in.
Lord Russell of Liverpool: Liz asked exactly the same follow-up question I was going to; great minds follow other greater minds. Josh, over to you please.
Josh MacAlister: The biggest barrier for parents and adults in terms of the children’s social care response is that we have a children’s social care system that, over a number of years, has become increasingly skewed towards late-stage crisis intervention. It is now spending about £15 billion a year. While that spending has gone up hugely above inflation every year, it has been driven by a rise in the number of children in care, particularly those in residential care, where costs have escalated. We are in a cycle where more and more of the overall spending goes towards that late-stage, costly and often poorer-outcome resulting service, which has squeezed what was already a very limited amount of support for families in the first place.
The Government’s plan—following my independent review of children’s social care that was published under the previous Government in 2022—now has a £2.4 billion reset package over the next three years. We are currently in the first full year of that rollout across England. That is money going into local authorities that is conditional upon those areas building up a multidisciplinary family help service: it is not just social workers; it is made up of other practitioners—including those that work in domestic abuse fields—who can do more intensive work to help change family circumstances before the crisis escalates into a child protection or care concern for the child.
I can say a lot more about that but essentially the main system obstacle is finite resource to help families because of the doom loop of late-stage crisis interventions. That is being addressed at the moment through a massive programme of change that is about funding and legislation.
Specifically for children, if you are a practitioner at the moment the biggest barrier is there is no UK-based, evidence-based intervention of what works to respond to children as victims of domestic abuse. That is staggering because it is one of the most prevalent causes for state intervention in family life. We are feeling around in the dark for what to do that is effective for these children. If this was any other public health area, for years we would have had randomised control trials, impact evaluations in the field identifying what works and what does not. That is not just a UK problem; that is a worldwide issue of an evidence gap.
Before being elected here, I was the executive chair of Foundations, which is the What Works Centre for Children and Families. We began a programme of building up the evidence around the most promising interventions; two are currently now in evaluation, Bounce Back 4 Kids and For Baby’s Sake, and I believe the committee has heard from the organisations behind those. Both have been through, or are in, a randomised control trial as a pilot. One of them is now in a full randomised control trial. That matters so much for the Department for Education and the work that we are doing, because establishing a proven model of intervention that changes outcomes for children who are victims of domestic abuse allows me, as a Minister, to set practice guidance that can then be inspected against; so the system follows scientific rigorous evidence of efficacy rather than spending lots of money on people trying to do their best, which can sometimes cause more harm than good. A good example of this is some evidence showing that doing group work with perpetrators can result in it not only being ineffective, but it can actually be counterproductive to the effort. There is a specific problem to overcome with regard to what works and there is a broader system dynamic at play, which we are addressing.
Lord Russell of Liverpool: Where are we in terms of timing? When will you be able to sit where you are and say, “This is now happening”?
Josh MacAlister: The Families First Partnership programme, the £2.4 billion, is money being spent this year; so over £800 million is this year, over £800 million is next year. That programme needs to be fully implemented by every local authority by March next year, so that is six months from now. I guarantee you, there will be lots of problems with the efficacy of the implementation of that reform. However, on a quarterly basis, I am monitoring local authority implementation and we will take intervention action with councils that prevaricate, delay or do not implement those changes. It is absolutely essential.
By the end of financial year 2027-28, they will have had the full funding for the Families First and the system should be seeing more money going from the late-stage crisis costs end of the system—hundreds of millions and then eventually billions—towards more intensive help for families. The work of building up the evidence base will take as long as it takes to do randomised control trials. It is worth saying that we have not kind of left that to chance: Government are behind Foundations and the organisations that are doing that work.
Florence Eshalomi: From a housing perspective, the biggest barrier is definitely access to secure, safe, affordable, social housing. There simply is not enough accommodation for women and children fleeing domestic abuse.
If you look at the situation across England, the majority of councils are currently facing major financial challenges. In my former role as the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee, one of the key areas we looked at was temporary accommodation and its impact on women and children. That report highlighted that, because of the situation with housing, some councils are sadly sending women fleeing domestic abuse into shared accommodation with men who have just been released from prison. There are women sharing accommodation where they are having to use mixed facilities—such as kitchens and bathrooms—with men and known abusers.
You also have situations where children are being placed outside their home borough, meaning families are travelling up to two hours just to get to school every morning, and we see the impact that is having on those children. You have a situation where, because of this pressure, a number of councils are placing families and women fleeing domestic abuse in hotels with no cooking facilities and no proper washing facilities. The impact this is having on women who are fleeing horrific circumstances is just adding an additional burden on them.
The key area that we are looking at from MHCLG is how we are working with local authorities to bring down the temporary accommodation bill. A number of councils across England have been given exceptional financial support to stop them going into bankruptcy. However, that is not a permanent solution. In essence, we do not want councils relying on what has been described across the sector as an overdraft facility from the Government. We need to look at how we fix the long-term issues.
That will only happen if we build the homes. That will not happen overnight. The Government’s key ambition is making sure we build 1.5 million new homes before the end of this Parliament, and what I am really keen to see is that a number of those homes are affordable homes that will be able to address this specific issue. There are things that we can be doing in the interim to look at areas where we can help.
First is making sure councils are remembering their duty. We regularly inspect and help councils on that. Second is funding for the Women’s Aid project, No Woman Turned Away, so that when women and children are presenting before their local councils for emergency accommodation they are not being turned away. Third is working with housing associations and private housing providers around what more they could be doing in terms of that duty. There are some really good plans around no-fault evictions in the Renters’ Rights Act 2025, where we are securing tenancies for women. Before this, the threat of being evicted by a landlord for no good reason was hanging over their head: you have finally been able to secure somewhere only to face the threat of being evicted just because a landlord changed their mind. That is a monumental piece of legislation that will help many women in terms of having a base and having roots.
In the Social Housing Bill that is going through now, there will be additional changes to protect tenancies. We are finding that whenever there is an issue around domestic abuse, it is the women and children that have to leave the property. Why should they? In most cases, the abuser stays in the property. We want to ensure we are addressing that through legislation so women and children have a safe space to lay their head, while recognising that there is a lot more to do on that.
IDVAs are generally supported by MoJ funding. For housing IDVAs, it is a local decision from the councils in how they allocate that funding. Again, we are working with the Local Government Association and other councils, ensuring that money is being spent in the right areas. There is a lot being done, but rightly there is a lot more that needs to be done to address this area.
The Chair: Thank you. Now we move on to training. Baroness Neate?
Q196 Baroness Neate: Just to say, I am really heartened actually from everything you have all said about addressing some real systemic issues that lie behind. In my professional experience I have seen them all, so I am heartened by that.
My question is about the here and now really. One of the things that we have heard repeatedly in the evidence, which I have personally seen, is just the lack of understanding of domestic abuse right now and the dynamics of domestic abuse in many of the professions that victim-survivors and their children come into contact with on a daily basis. There is also a lack of understanding and knowledge of the responsibilities that some statutory agencies hold in relation to domestic abuse, and specifically the interplay between those statutory duties and the dynamics behind domestic abuse so that you really know when you should be applying those duties in the first place.
One way to address this could be mandatory or improved training. Training is not a panacea, I absolutely get that, but it could be one way to address this knowledge gap. This is a kind of short-term issue and it has been going on for a long time.
I just wanted to know what views you have on training. We have heard a bit about the judiciary, which is absolutely brilliant. We have heard that the family court is a retraumatising experience for survivors, and I have certainly seen that in my career a lot. I would like to just hear a bit more about training in the judiciary, in local authorities—particularly maybe housing—and in children’s social work and children’s services where, again, the understanding of the dynamics of domestic abuse among children’s social workers is often not great.
Florence Eshalomi: There is an independent evaluation on Part 4 of the duty. That evaluation found that while in some places the duty had been strengthened by local authorities, it is fair to say—I am sure you have probably seen some evidence—that across others it can be a bit patchy.
I am not here to defend local authorities, but equally I want to highlight some challenges that they continue to face. Many of them have had to take difficult decisions in funding and changes in front-line staff. We in the ministry continue to remind them of their duty under that Act. We need to look at the infrastructure, local experiences, and what additional support they have. We regularly engage with different local authorities in terms of their implementation of Part 4 of the duty, which includes webinars reminding them about that and looking at how we can help. We are also investing an additional £12 million over the next three years, looking at the workforce capability and the homelessness team during the National Workforce Programme, which will be a key area to pick up those issues.
There was a report from either Crisis or Shelter—I need to double-check—again looking at specific training for housing officers, especially when they are coming into contact with people who are presenting as homeless. It is really important that all staff are trained to recognise when women and others are presenting with homelessness and coming from a domestic abuse background. There is a lot more that we can be doing on the training, and these are key areas that we will continue to focus on.
Josh MacAlister: I will start with schools, where Operation Encompass is a really wonderful example of some things that have improved for the better.
The Chair: What did you say it is called?
Josh MacAlister: Operation Encompass is a notification system that, when police get a call for a suspected domestic abuse incident, automatically notifies the designated safeguarding lead or the head teacher at the primary school the child in that household attends. There are many stories now of teachers greeting a child at the school gate, where they may not have a conversation with the young person but they know a little about what might have been going on for them the night before. It does something really powerful to close some of that gap between information being shared between different services.
The rollout of Operation Encompass and the strengthening of the Keeping Children Safe in Education guidance, which acts as an effective bible for designated safeguarding leads in schools, has significantly raised awareness across the education field. Education is doing a much better job in recognising the impact of domestic abuse than it was a few years ago.
There is a lot more to do. We are making changes to the RSHE— relationship, sex and health education—curriculum to put a greater emphasis on violence against women and girls and domestic abuse and what healthy relationships look like. Further to that, we are working with the Home Office as part of the cross-government VAWG strategy to test and roll out whole-school approaches to improve that kind of development for children, and a big part of that is what we are doing to support teachers in teaching it.
On the children’s social care side among social workers, this gap around knowledge of domestic abuse and its impacts has been flagged by a number of reports, including my own back in 2022. The national panel looks at patterns around very serious incidents and child deaths and highlights, again and again, gaps in knowledge. Off the back of a recommendation from my work, taken forward by this Government, we are building a new post-qualifying professional development programme. At the moment, lots of effort goes into getting social workers qualified, but we know from any field of expertise that the novice-to-expert journey really begins when you are in practice working with families and honing your craft. We are introducing a new post-qualifying two-year early career standard for all social workers, which we will fund across the whole of England.
We are right now appointing a number of national lead providers who will be really good in the quality of what they are designing the curricula to be. I have set out and published new standards that those curriculum bodies need to meet, and that will be rolled out from September next year. This time next year, all new social workers will be getting very high-quality instructional teaching on how to build and advance their knowledge and skill beyond just the initial experience of social work for the first two years.
Further to that, we have set another set of standards out for lead child protection practitioners. These are social workers who should be even more experienced, who will be working in multi-agency child protection teams; essentially, the social workers making the very difficult decisions about whether the threshold for significant harm has been met, where the state steps into a family and says, “This is not a relationship based on your consent. This is the state saying we are so worried we are now getting involved in the family in a way that is much more hands-on and may result in a care order”. For those social workers, we have set an even higher expectation on their knowledge and skill, and there will be a corresponding professional development programme for them as well.
The Chair: I am really interested to hear about the extent of trying to develop the expertise, which is most essential here, and for probation officers, for example, as well. However, are we seeing enough people coming through our universities and our training colleges to actually fill the enormous demand that there is going to be, especially given the challenges around our prisons and so on? Are we producing enough social workers and people with the kind of expertise that is going to be necessary?
Josh MacAlister: If you had asked me that question at any point in the last 15 years, I would have had to say no. This is the first time we are now saying yes. There are more social workers in employment in local authorities doing this work than ever before. Vacancy rates are lower than they have been and are trending down, while permanent appointments are trending up. The use of agency staff is down and we have taken a whole series of action to curtail and limit the use of agency social work staff to make it more permanent. There are a number of routes into social work that are performing really well. The picture is positive. There is more to do but, for the last two years, the figures have been trending in the right direction.
The Chair: Are you getting men to come in?
Josh MacAlister: We are not getting enough men. I ran Frontline, the organisation I set up in 2013, which is a sort of Teach First route for social work. At our peak, we had about 25% of the cohort, when about 13% of those—this is scratchy as this is from memory—entering social work are men. We need to get that ratio up. It is healthy for teams of social workers to have that difference—
The Chair: A mix of genders.
Josh MacAlister: Absolutely, and teams of social workers should reflect the communities that they are serving. Of course, there are things you can do to kind of mitigate more homogenous demographics but it is important we get more men into social work.
Alex Davies-Jones: I do not want you to think it is all rosy, Chair; we have identified a challenge with this. Yes, we are getting more social workers into the system, but part of the challenge is that they are being poached from third-sector organisations, who are struggling and do not pay as much as public authorities. Therefore, because of the unsustainable nature of the funding that has been systemic for so long, our IDVAs or our caseworkers who work in the third-sector organisations supporting victims and survivors are moving over—not all of them, but we are poaching from the same pool.
Josh MacAlister: This is good; we are having a debate in front of you.
Alex Davies-Jones: We recognise that challenge, and we are losing that expertise from one part of the system to another. How do we make sure that we are maintaining that expertise in the system to support victims and survivors?
Josh MacAlister: There may be examples of that happening. What I would say is I am not sure anything on that has changed recently that has been the cause of the improved picture in social work.
Alex Davies-Jones: No.
Josh MacAlister: That is the result of other action.
The Chair: Our report is not yet before the world but one of the things that we have been impressed with is the way in which third-sector organisations can have a very positive impact. Specifically on the investigation of domestic violence and on the criminal justice end of this. They bring a sort of real-life experience into things that can easily become institutionalised. We know that, so it is really important to have that working together aspect.
Josh MacAlister: I see that in my own constituency where the Freedom Project West Cumbria does an amazing job of building relationships with victims and survivors, much better than statutory children’s social care services do. It provides something in support and, frankly, intelligence gathering about what is going on for the family that a statutory service would struggle with. This tension of third sector and the ability to pay, and particularly pensions, is a long-standing issue. As I say, I do not think something has changed recently that has been the cause of the improved picture.
Florence Eshalomi: From a local authority perspective, in terms of staff maybe moving from the third sector, a key issue that local authorities would say back is the workload that social workers are facing: high caseload and high volumes. There is still such a big issue around special educational needs and disabilities, SEND, that takes up a lot of time for social workers. We need to make sure that the domestic abuse element is still at the forefront of the work they are doing. When you have so many more families essentially fighting to get the education, health and care plan for their children in terms of getting additional support in school, that is where some of the challenges arise. Again, just to echo Alex’s comment on that, it is a good thing that we are seeing more social workers but we need to recognise challenges that they still face.
Josh MacAlister: My department will share a report with the committee on where we are with these figures, but caseload numbers are also down. Social workers on average are working with fewer cases than they were a few years ago. It is all moving in the right direction. The issue is that children’s social care sits right up against housing, SEND, schools, the family courts, police. As a result, pressures in one place distort the picture. It is not good enough to say the picture is getting better for the workplace just in the field of children, family, social workers. It is but, of course, if something comes in from left field, it has a major effect.
Baroness Neate: Everything you have said is really reassuring and positive. Some of this is about the combination of a lack of resource and a huge level of need that you have talked about. Inevitably, what that leads to is a culture where the biggest burden that individuals feel is gatekeeping. People are gatekeeping access to a very scarce resource. That is a cultural issue within many of these professions—not so much the judiciary, but it is a cultural issue that a lot of victim-survivors come up against; that the understanding of what they are experiencing is coming second to this instinct of gatekeeping. I guess that is something for the employing agencies—local authorities in the main—to address as a culture, almost.
Baroness Rafferty: Can you unpack what you mean?
Baroness Neate: It is complicated. In housing, never mind there is not enough social housing, there is not enough temporary accommodation either. There is not enough of anything.
Josh MacAlister: I often hear from families who say, “Look, we were asking in different ways for help for a long time and we’re drowning over here”. It was only at the point where it got so serious that there was an emergency care order, a child was moved, and a child protection plan was put in place that we threw the kitchen sink at it. Actually, we do not throw the kitchen sink at putting the resource around a family who may have the solution. We put the kitchen sink into the system, which is much more expensive and often less effective, and then things escalate.
We are doing two things at the moment that are immediate; they are right now. One is well illustrated with Luton, which was one of the earlier local authorities to get a share of the £2.4 billion Families First funding that is going into that reset programme. It has an IDVA in its family help service working with it on a multidisciplinary basis. Rather than systems gatekeeping its resource and thresholds in a siloed way, which means lots of families on the cusp are just being told, “No, no, no” by housing, by police and by social care, there is more of a wraparound of the family. That is happening and we are starting to see more of that multidisciplinary team being built. The second thing is somewhat controversial in the social care field at the moment, but we are consulting on changing the categorisation within Working Together—the statutory guidance for different agencies for safeguarding—over the child in need in Section 17 and the targeted early-help categories. It sounds very techie, but—
Baroness Neate: No, it is really important.
Josh MacAlister: If you are a family and you are on the scale of need, there is early help, which is broad and should be able to support lots of different families when they are not in crisis. There is a threshold to get through to targeted early help, which the Government mainly funded through what was the Troubled Families and then the Supporting Families programme. Then there is another threshold with another assessment and another set of forms and another team for child in need work. What I saw in the review was that the category of targeted early help and Section 17 of the Children Act 1989—the child in need category—was completely arbitrary as to whether you were a family who is in targeted early help or a child in need.
The Chair: That is where the gatekeeping problem comes in.
Josh MacAlister: Exactly.
The Chair: I hope, Anne Marie, that you see that when you have that, that is when judgment calls are being made, which can often be deleterious.
Josh MacAlister: It is really resource intensive. That gatekeeping costs the system so much money. It breaks the relationship that is the actual engine of change between the state and the family. At the moment, we are consulting on just making those two categories—targeted early help and Section 17 as it is called at the moment, the child in need category—into one family help category. There are cultural challenges with that because local authorities often recognise that the child in need category itself is quite bureaucratic, adversarial, and stigmatising. We need to resolve those fundamental problems with the child in need category rather than just accept they are a problem and tolerate having a separate category with extra assessments and all the rest of it adjacent to it. There is some quite deep work being done on that at the moment.
The Chair: I am very impressed at the extent to which you are looking at the systemic problems that are here rather than the quick fix. It is so important. It is really interesting to hear the extent of your knowledge.
Q197 Baroness Rafferty: My question is on innovation and each of you has already alluded to innovations within your own departments. Alex, you talked about the court system, the specialist domestic abuse courts, and the child focused courts. Josh, you talked about Operation Encompass. Florence, you have talked very eloquently about the sanctuary schemes and the rehousing issues that arise. Are there are any other initiatives that you would like to draw to our attention? Are there any other innovations that should be part of the scores on the board, as it were?
The Chair: Or are there examples of best practice? One thing Lord Russell keeps bringing us back to is that in any system there will be gaps and flaws and one tries to find remedies for them. You are obviously doing that at a level that is heartening. Can you flag some good things?
Florence Eshalomi: Greater Manchester is supporting women around legal protection occupation orders where, essentially, it will enable the perpetrator to be temporarily removed from the property and the tenancy transferred to the victim, making sure we are victim-focused as opposed to perpetrator-focused. Subject to possession proceedings, that should go through. It is really important to—
The Chair: Stop for a minute. What would be involved in doing that all over the country? Is it just about getting our judges up to speed so that they know they have the powers to make these orders? Or is there anything in law that has to be changed, which is much more time consuming? What is the way of making that roll out?
Florence Eshalomi: Measures in the Social Housing Bill will help that in terms of the rollout. To have it in legislation, to increase protections for victims of domestic abuse, would be a way that we could essentially roll out what they are piloting in Greater Manchester. Another area is developing a domestic abuse homelessness prevention kit because, as we know, prevention is better than cure. How do we stop people who are fleeing domestic abuse facing homelessness in the first instance? It is always a good way. It is looking at a range of packages: are there patterns in terms of people falling behind on their rent? Are there issues where we see children not attending school? These are key signs to show that there is something going on within that family unit and making sure that housing officers and staff are able to spot that, working in conjunction with children’s social workers. Developing that homelessness prevention toolkit is something we are keen to look at in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, making sure that it is rolled out and supported by the Local Government Association.
The other area I want to talk to is around the whole housing approach delivered by Standing Together Against Domestic Abuse. This is a key framework in looking at how you address housing and safety needs across all tenures. We talk about social housing a lot but actually this is happening in the private rented sector, with owner-occupiers, and with people who own their own property. We know that people in many different forms of housing face domestic abuse. That is another area of innovation to capture some issues around domestic abuse, homelessness and rough sleeping. It is a key area to make sure we are talking to all sectors. Again, it is not just a role for local authorities. What role do our housing associations that have a large chunk of homes play? What role do private landlords who have a large chunk in terms of people with tenancies play in this?
The Chair: What happens if there is co-ownership of the property?
Florence Eshalomi: This is definitely an area in terms of looking at what more the courts could be doing around that as well.
Alex Davies-Jones: As the Ministry of Justice we are consulting on cohabitation, looking at what protections we could potentially bring in for the 3.5 million people who are in a relationship that is not marriage or a formal legal partnership. We are consulting on that too in order to protect vulnerable individuals who might be in a relationship where they do not have any legal protection over property and assets.
Just to build on prevention and what we are doing: the vast majority of victims and survivors tell me that they do not actually want a criminal justice intervention; they just want the abuse to stop. The perpetrator is normally the husband, partner or father of their children. In some instances, it is their son, because we are seeing a huge rise in matricide, which is where sons murder their mothers or take abuse against their grandmothers, or grandparent; it really is interfamilial abuse. We are seeing a huge rise in child perpetrators, which is why we have directed funding specifically for police and crime commissioners on early intervention programmes to reduce offending and prevent escalation of offending with children who are causing harm, because we are seeing a dramatic increase in that coming forward. Again, it is their children who are hurting them.
It is about how we get the abuse to stop and how we prevent escalation of crimes, reduce that re-offending, and where possible steer away from a criminal justice response. How do we work with family and domestic abuse courts on addiction, alcohol problems, and gambling addictions that are causing and driving this behaviour, to really tackle anger management? How do we work on reducing offending and preventing escalation? All this is very novel I might add. This work that is primarily being done by the Drive project is very novel and, to go back to what Josh said, we do not really know what works so we are having to evaluate this. Therefore, when you work on perpetrators, you also have to ensure that that comes with work and support for victims because that could potentially be where they are most vulnerable; where you think that you are working with a perpetrator while the victim is still in a very vulnerable position.
Josh MacAlister: It is worth highlighting that the work of the Drive programme is fantastic and is a real beacon in the system.
The Chair: We are aware of that; we have heard very good things about it.
Josh MacAlister: Just very briefly, there are two other examples. One would be Redbridge Council, who recently had its Ofsted inspection report and has again been leading the implementation of the Families First programme. It has also brought in domestic abuse expertise to the team of social workers. If you read that inspection report, it is a description of the new system that we want to see everywhere and is a real beacon.
Lord Polak: Did it get special support because it is the constituency of the former Secretary of State for Health?
Josh MacAlister: It did not. No.
Lord Polak: Sometimes these things work—
Alex Davies-Jones: I believe it was actually Jas Athwal’s constituency.
Josh MacAlister: We funded a number of local authorities that were chosen based on their differences in the first wave of Pathfinder local authorities; it was not chosen based on who was in the Cabinet at the time. The second point was about something that happened this week as a result of Dame Siobhan McDonagh’s long-standing campaigning to look at the benefits of notifications for parents and children who have been moved into temporary accommodation to other services. Siobhan’s long-standing campaign, with support from Florence when she was the chair of the Select Committee, persuaded the Government to amend the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 to require that notification regime to be in place, and that was turned on as a provision this week.
Q198 Baroness Hussein-Ece: My question follows on very smoothly from the previous question about best practice. We have heard a lot of evidence extensively over the weeks and months of a postcode lottery. We have heard from third-party organisations and all sorts of agencies that excellent work is taking place but that it will, however, rely on where you live. Victim-survivors will have very different experiences depending on where they live. What plans does your department have to address this to improve the experience for as many victim-survivors as possible right across the country and not just rely on good work that happens to be going on in one area but not in another? Sometimes there is quite an extreme variation.
Alex Davies-Jones: I mentioned earlier the postcode lottery victim support that is provided across England and Wales. As much as I champion devolution, being a Member of Parliament from a devolved area and recognising the new mission of the Government and the Administration at hand around devolution, postcode lottery is sometimes what happens when you devolve services to different areas and different priorities are identified. My team will know that I was quite critical of one police and crime authority area that was funding therapy ponies while its rape crisis centre was closing, for example. It seems to be very patchy as to who gets what in terms of services, particularly for children as I have already outlined.
Part of the work we are doing around the victims’ funding reform following the abolition of police and crime commissioners will be how we recognise this more, how we put in place common practices and principles while also respecting that not every area will be the same. For example, an area such as Birmingham will need specialist provision for victims and survivors of female genital mutilation compared to an area such as mine in south Wales where that need will just not be there or will not be as great. That is the benefit of it, but it is also recognising that sometimes that causes patchy support. We are working with a range of communities, providers and specialists to make sure we get this right.
Florence Eshalomi: Definitely, if you look at postcode lottery where people are fleeing from domestic abuse and presenting as homeless it is very difficult. I look at my own constituency, my own local borough, where we have over 28,000 people on the waiting list for social housing, and over 8,000 people in temporary accommodation. The figures may be much smaller in the constituencies represented by Josh and Alex, but the temporary accommodation bill for the 32 London boroughs alone is over £5.5 million a day just to address temporary accommodation. The Local Government Association highlighted that collectively councils across England are spending over £2 billion a year on that. It is a big issue in how much housing provision is available for women and children fleeing domestic abuse.
Part 4 of the duty in providing that accommodation is locally led, and it enables local authorities to respond to the needs within their respective areas. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government guidance has clear national expectations on how local authorities should carry it out and make sure that they all meet in that. It is important that it is locally led. However, it is the case that some local authorities do not have the means to be able to house people fleeing domestic abuse; it is about how we build in new services and help those local authorities. Last July, there was a review and evaluation that found that the duty had seen significant improvements across different local authorities but, as you say, there are still some patches depending on where you live. Some areas do not have any form of decent accommodation, some areas have really poor accommodation, and all this comes at a cost to the taxpayer. There is a big cost to this because public money funds some of this unsuitable accommodation.
I acknowledge there are variations across different local authorities depending on which local council you present to on any one day in terms of homelessness. It is about how we continue to work with the sector and with homelessness charities to improve the offer and to make sure councils respond to that duty but ultimately, as I mentioned earlier, it is about how we make sure we are building the homes. That is the only way we can solve this and make sure anyone who is fleeing domestic abuse has a safe home.
The Chair: I am just going to remind the committee and our Ministers that we had allotted a particular period of time and some Lords have to leave at around 12 pm, so I am keen that we get through the rest of the questions.
Q199 Baroness Porter of Fulwood: We are keen to understand more about the domestic abuse protection order pilots. It would be helpful if you could give us an overview of the results of the pilot so far. I know the formal evaluation is coming at the end of the year, but if you could flag whether you have received any kind of interim report or review that would be helpful.
We would like to understand what the plans are for rolling it out across the country. You mentioned positive requirements and we are very mindful of the fact that the ability for people to access those depends on services being available in those local areas. They are obviously all funded at the moment through a patchwork of different arrangements and in the rollout that is going to be a major area of challenge, so we would be keen to understand your current thinking around that.
Alex Davies-Jones: You are right to highlight this. The domestic abuse protection order pilots that are currently live in five areas have been transformational where they have been granted. They have definitely saved lives; we know this for a fact. The police have stated that around 1,000 of them have been issued thus far, and we have seen really strong evidence of police responding to any breaches of them immediately with the recall to prison. That has made a dramatic difference. Being able to apply for them via third parties—local authorities—has also made a huge difference. We have committed to rolling them out nationally and doing so quickly, while also recognising that they are not perfect because, as I have already stated, they do not cover children. The family courts are still favouring non-molestation orders over domestic abuse protection orders at the moment for obvious reasons: they cover children. That is a loophole we are determined to close. We need legislation, but we have plans in train to do so.
You are right to identify the patchy nature of positive requirement trainings. It is down to funding and practitioners being available in certain areas. North Wales—where the pilot is currently operating—has shown really good promise with this in terms of Police and Crime Commissioner Andy Dunbobbin really prioritising it and funding it. Again, it depends on the police and crime commissioner and the funding from the Home Office. All this is very joined up, we are alive to that, and we are getting real-world feedback.
Another challenge has been legal aid. We have provided legal aid for the DAPOs, for victims to be able to apply, but because of the nature of how the legal aid is administrated it is really difficult for solicitors to apply and get one. It is a very administratively heavy burden and many are choosing not to take it up. Many victims and survivors are currently unable to obtain the legal aid to apply for DAPOs. These are problems that we are alive to and looking to address while we are rolling it out. We are committed to rolling it out through all police forces because we know that where the police are able to give them, they really are benefiting. I do not just want them to become another order that only the police can give. What was special about the DAPOs—domestic abuse protection orders—was that they could be issued by the family court, by anyone, and therefore I do not want to lose that element of it. We need to fix that while making sure the police have access to them straightaway.
Baroness Porter of Fulwood: Do you have any kind of interim report from which you are drawing these conclusions?
Alex Davies-Jones: All this is coming forward from the judiciary, so from the family courts, the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, the police, and victims and survivors. They are feeding in real-time data so it is happening, and our officials are very looped in.
The Chair: Alex, the next set of questions are all more or less directed at you, so just brace yourself.
Q200 Baroness Sugg: I want to ask you about family courts specifically. You talked earlier about the wider issues around the criminal justice system, but we have heard really concerning evidence—as Baroness Neate mentioned—about family courts sometimes being retraumatising, the treatment of children, the approach to child arrangements, and the limits of the special measures. It would be great to hear your assessment of how effectively family courts have implemented the Act, and where you think the weaknesses are and if you have any plans to address them.
Specifically on special measures, hearing that they are not consistently available to victims, what are your thoughts on that, and how do you think we can move forward to make sure that they are understood consistently, applied appropriately, and delivered in practice?
Alex Davies-Jones: There are two very important points there. We are committed to reforming the family court. You will hopefully be aware of our commitment to roll out child-focused courts—formerly known as Pathfinder courts—across England and Wales because where that trauma-informed, child-first practice is being used it is really making a difference. The CAFCASS officers having that trauma-informed training, child-first approach, knowledge and awareness of domestic abuse is key. The Government have committed to repealing the presumption of parental involvement, which has been a huge issue around domestic abuse and in family courts for a long time. Again, I pay tribute to Claire Throssell MBE and her Member of Parliament, Marie Tidball, from Penistone and Stocksbridge, and Women’s Aid for campaigning on this. It was rightly recognised that it needed to be repealed. That will be done in the Courts and Tribunals Bill currently making its way through Parliament.
We are also working with the Department for Education to establish the family justice strategy, which will come out later this year, setting out exactly how we improve the entire family justice journey and system to reduce those court delays and ensure that all families, wherever they are, get the support that they need; so working again in collaboration with other Government departments to ensure that.
On special measures, you are right, again this is a challenge. We are committed to rolling it out, and we have been focused on rolling out those special measures, particularly for video evidence. It has been a challenge, and we have prioritised children and child victims, vulnerable witnesses and victims and survivors of rape and serious sexual assault for this. We know the provision is there within the Domestic Abuse Act. The challenge we have is ensuring that provision is available to all victims and survivors while recognising the judiciary’s ability to grant and authorise it is hindered by huge court delays. Allowing these special measures will have an impact on that. For example, we are ensuring that all courts have separate entrances and exits for domestic abuse victims. We are putting in new provisions in the Courts and Tribunals Bill to allow those IDVAs to sit with them or to have a trusted person with a victim-survivor if they need it, and looking at what more we can do to expand that.
The Chair: It is good that you are back in office with all the experience you have had of developing these things.
The next question was going to be about housing, but I think we have covered most of the issues because you have been so knowledgeable and fulsome in the information you have given us, Minister. It was really about the implementation of aspects of this Act, and how it related to housing. I think you have fulfilled our questions, but Baroness Hussein-Ece has a specific thing that she wanted to ask.
Q201 Baroness Hussein-Ece: We have heard a lot about how Part 4 of the Act is being implemented. Florence, you have talked quite a bit about it. There seems to be insufficient oversight in how it is being implemented, and you have said that there are different local authorities; obviously London has more pressure, while maybe there is not so much in other areas. Do you have a handle on how it is being implemented or if it is being implemented properly? I raise this because I have been dealing with a case in a London borough where a victim and her children finally got temporary accommodation at the beginning of the year and already the local authority is sending people around knocking on the door—I think it is called “knock and know”—to say, “Right, you’ve got to leave in a few months’ time”. They say, “Well, where am I going to go?” “You’ve got to go.” Is that within the Act? Is that something that local authorities should be doing? Is that permissible?
Florence Eshalomi: Part 4 is how we make sure that local authorities are aware of their duty. Obviously, all tier 1 local authorities—councils that have provision of education, housing, social care—have to ensure that victims of domestic abuse and their children can access safe accommodation. They will implement that in different ways. Some will have local partnership boards to set up the implementation and how that is working. All local authorities under this duty also have to update their assessments every so often, so that is another way we can check this is working on the ground.
I mentioned an independent evaluation that started last July led by Ipsos and Ecorys and it found that the duty had led to an expansion and more local authorities fulfilling their duties. Since 2021, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has provided over £890 million to support the delivery of that duty. Part of that funding has also been ring-fenced specifically around the homelessness and rough sleeping duty elements, so looking at how we can support that. We have a more joined-up approach on homelessness but, as I mentioned, and not to defend councils, a number of them continue to face those challenges.
At the national level, I will look at chairing a domestic abuse housing group, and there will be different members on that. The Domestic Abuse Commissioner will be on that and one of the key areas we will want to look at is how local authorities implement and carry out that duty. I am happy to send written updates to the committee at a later date. We have not met yet; I am still quite new in post, but this is a key area that I want to focus on over the next few months.
The Chair: That is a shocking business with the uncertainty and being made to think about how vulnerable you are as to the permanence of the situation you are in.
Baroness Hussein-Ece: Yes, especially for children who have just settled in school or taking exams, after a year of certainty hearing, “Right. You’ve got to go”. Go where?
The Chair: I really want us to have the opportunity of talking about children again, but Baroness Gohir has questions on commissioning.
Q202 Baroness Gohir: Florence, we have heard about various issues with local commissioning processes and the ways in which the competitive local commissioning processes can disadvantage local specialists and community organisations. What are the Government doing to address this?
Florence Eshalomi: The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has published statutory guidance looking at supporting the implementation of the duty I spoke about. This is where we are making sure that the commissioning of suitable, safe accommodation is provided. The guidance also advises local authorities around commissioning and making sure it is not excluding some smaller charities that, as Alex and Josh will know, provide that really specialist support for people fleeing some of the most horrific forms of abuse and recognising the roles that the different services play in that.
What needs to happen is a refresh of that and considering what more we could do in pushing and aiming for good commissioning practice. For example, working with local authorities in their programme of commissioning at the moment to look at where victims can access specialist support; where the LGA can help in peer reviews for different councils; working with known charities such as Women’s Aid in good practice on domestic abuse commissioning so that local authorities are getting this right.
It is going back to my answer on training and what additional support and capacity is needed in local authorities to make sure that this is a key area, that in-house local authorities continue to focus on making sure that the staff are there and, most importantly, making sure that some of those smaller specialist providers are not locked out. Whether it is the timeframe on returning applications or how they are being invited to submit bids, all those areas are key things that we should be looking at and it is one of the things that we will probably look at on this new group that I will be chairing.
Baroness Gohir: Do you think local authorities might want to go to fewer big providers rather than lots of smaller ones because it means more work for them, but then ultimately smaller organisations are missing out? Could that be the issue?
Florence Eshalomi: One thing we need to look at is making sure that, within their commissioning and procurement framework, local authorities are building space for a range of those. Also, being honest about it not being the cheapest tender, it is about the most effective.
The Chair: I was going to raise that.
Florence Eshalomi: It is about the outcomes for the victims, so we should not be looking at this from a cost basis because, if you are just commissioning the cheapest service, will it have the intended outcomes in supporting victims? It is about making sure the most effective service is commissioned.
There is a lot of work to be done with the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice around some of those shared services, so looking at a strategy of committing to victim services with the housing element is quite important. I am going to meet with my opposite number in the Home Office on some issues around temporary accommodation and some of the accommodation that is procured, because we know that there are pressures with reducing the use of hotel accommodation with asylum seekers. In some examples you will see local authorities bidding with MHCLG because there is just not enough property. It is around working with the Domestic Abuse Commissioner to make sure we are focused on this. The key thing I want to see is around commissioning the right services that are able to provide specialist support, and that they are not squeezed out of the procurement process.
The Chair: Lord Polak, the last issue?
Q203 Lord Polak: Listening for the last 90 minutes has fulfilled the ambition that a few of us had in 2021 to get children on the face of the Bill. It was a battle; it was not easy and I voted against my own Government enough times on that issue. It is for the children; it is really important. The obvious question is—we have dealt with this a lot—is it working? Is it working for children? Before you answer that there are a couple of things I really want to say.
First, if I may say, Josh, is: for you to have done what you did from the front line and build an organisation to now be in the seat to be able to enact must be extremely satisfying, but it also adds an extra burden to what you are doing. All three of you have given us hope that things are being dealt with.
You mentioned the thing that bugs me the most, and this is something I want to raise: the ones who are victims are the ones who have to move, and we really need to find a solution to that. I am for ever practical because while we are sitting here having this discussion, I accept what you have said about rigorous data. While we sit here, there are children and victims who are trying to work out how they are going to get through the day, and we need to keep that at the forefront of everything we do.
In terms of practicality, I was very taken by the Police CPI—crime prevention initiative—that has created a sanctuary scheme to help victims stay in their homes, as opposed to those poor children having to go to another school where they know nobody, and actually that does not help them at all. There are a lot of benefits in them staying in their local communities. Given the priority of the Government on homelessness, you can probably help your neighbour, because if we can keep people at home in some way, it is going to put less pressure on homelessness and children as purveyed everywhere, but I am keen on trying to be practical, and I hope that this Police CPI sanctuary scheme may be of use. If you have not looked at it, I urge you to do so.
Josh MacAlister: I would appreciate any further information you have on that if you could share it with me, and I am sure colleagues would appreciate it. Thank you for the spirit of your comments as well.
The Chair: Stuart was a voice that was really important in the children’s issue when this legislation went through. He stayed with it and has come on to the committee basically because it is so close to his heart, as it is for us all, but it was particularly important that he took a stand and it has had an impact. I am sure that you could work closely with him but I, like him, want to say, and I am sure this is a view shared by everybody, that it is really heartening to hear the depth of understanding that all three of you have and of course—as Stuart has said— Josh, the idea that you are the man in this seat is a particularly reassuring thing, and it is really wonderful.
Josh MacAlister: Thank you.
Q204 The Chair: Alex, Lord Russell wanted to raise an issue that is in all of our minds: the hot discussion that there has been about releasing people from prison in order to deal with the crisis within the prison system. We cannot underestimate just how serious that crisis is because we want there to be a place to go for those who might be arrested tonight having viciously assaulted or raped a girl or a woman; that will be happening up and down the country, not just a one-off. Every night people will be arrested for doing terrible things. There is a serious challenge here, but there is also the issue of what happens around domestic violence. Many of the victims have said, “The idea that the man who made my life and my children’s lives so wretched, who has, even after we separated, pursued and harassed and made me terrified for my very existence, is coming out of prison tomorrow”, or in September or whenever, “is a very frightening prospect. I needed a period of knowing that that was not going to happen”. What is the position?
Alex Davies-Jones: You are right to highlight this, and it is something that the Justice Secretary, the Prime Minister and I are very alive to. If we could have gone further with the exemptions, as you have said, we would have, particularly for domestic abuse. Part of the challenge around this is that there is no recognised offence of domestic abuse. Under the Sentencing Act 2026, we introduced the new judicial marker or flag so that we can now differentiate between what is common assault—for example, a brawl in a pub between two very drunken men—or domestic abuse, so that the judiciary is able to put that flag on the case file so that we are able to deal with those perpetrators differently, because they need to be dealt with differently.
The Chair: I did a report in Scotland around misogyny. In some ways what you need is the idea of an aggravating factor to be enunciated by the judge to say, “Although this assault did not lead to huge damage and did not constitute grievous bodily harm, the fear that was inculcated—the fact that it is part of a pattern—is the thing that is affecting how I am sentencing and therefore should affect the considerations as to the risk that you pose, should you be allowed out”.
Alex Davies-Jones: In the Sentencing Act, following the independent review of sentences carried out by David Gauke, there was a presumption against short sentences because they do not benefit the vast majority of perpetrators; if you take them out of their accommodation, off universal credit, out of their jobs, you do more harm than good, actually.
However, the point was very validly made by the Domestic Abuse Commissioner and the Victims Commissioner that the exception to this is where there are crimes of domestic abuse or stalking—for example, where you have fixated individuals—and that short period gives the victim-survivor the opportunity to flee, to put special measures in place to protect themselves, to get the services involved to protect them, et cetera. Therefore, in the Sentencing Act an exemption was made for short sentences and that is still in place for domestic abuse and stalking, for example. That is still in play.
We are also working on what more we can do for victims and survivors when the perpetrator comes out of prison after serving time. You will know that we have introduced this very novel measure of restriction zones where we are placing the perpetrator in a very small, confined area. There is a presumption that all perpetrators will now be tagged with GPS on leaving prison. All this is being worked through with the Ministry of Justice and we recognise the challenges we are facing.
The Chair: One thing I really am concerned about in this area is that we are recruiting many young, new probation officers and they are gaining a lot of knowledge. I have intimate knowledge of this because one of my grandchildren is becoming a probation officer and is doing his master’s in criminology. I was talking to him about the domestic abuse aspect of this. There should be assigned probation officers who are more experienced in dealing with perpetrators when they come out because we know that the perpetrator can be very charming, very manipulative, very good at persuading people that they are a reformed character. We need to have, if you like, tagged probation officers who are the right people to be overseeing perpetrators of domestic abuse.
Alex Davies-Jones: That is definitely something we can take away and it is something the Domestic Abuse Commissioner recognises.
The Chair: Can I thank you all for coming? This has been a very enlightening and helpful session. I wish you well with your work because I know how challenging it is. It was really very helpful to hear from you this morning and giving your time. This is when I formally have to say that I am going to conclude this session. The session is ended. Thank you.
