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Guest Post: “Why we will not be celebrating the Domestic Abuse Bill just yet”

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JuliaMumsnet · 01/04/2021 15:57

With the Domestic Abuse bill having made its way through the House of Lords and about to return to the House of Commons, Pragna Patel from Southall Black Sisters argues that crucial elements are missing from the long-awaited bill.

"We at Southall Black Sisters (SBS) find it hard to applaud the government’s much touted ‘landmark’ Domestic Abuse Bill, which has just completed its passage in the House of Lords and is about to return to the House of Commons. Even though there are some important measures contained in the bill, it remains fundamentally incomplete and flawed for a number of reasons.

First of all, the bill is ‘resource neutral’; there is no commitment to provide the considerable resources that are necessary to transform the promises contained in the bill into reality. Secondly, it remains gender-neutral although there is some acknowledgement that domestic abuse impacts largely on women and girls. Given the massive outcry surrounding the tragic murder of Sarah Everard and the significant anxieties and concerns expressed by thousands of women about safety in our homes and on the streets, this omission should worry us greatly. It comes at a time when the government without prior consultation, has also decided to create two separate strategies; one on domestic abuse and another on violence against women and girls. Apart from making no sense, it will, in our view, take us backwards in terms of de-linking domestic abuse from the growing understanding of violence against women as misogyny and a patriarchal form of coercive control that is rooted in gender inequality.

Thirdly, the bill is heavily focused on criminal justice outcomes when so many other measures are desperately needed. For example, specialist refuges and community services, advocates, social workers, alternative ‘move-on’ accommodation, counselling and support services, better court facilities, full access to legal aid and more prevention work in schools and colleges. Above all, we need a radical shift in the social and economic policies that create female poverty and gender inequalities in the first place.

Fourthly, the bill excludes abused migrant women who need protection. This failure in particular, has been the focus of our current campaign and lobbying efforts.

We are bitterly disappointed by the government’s discriminatory stance towards migrant women, who remain at heightened and prolonged risk of abuse and coercive control due to the overlap between gender-based violence and harsh immigration laws and policies. Migrant women will remain trapped in abuse without hope of protection since many of the measures in the bill will simply not apply to them. For example, the legal duty placed on local authorities to fund refuge and safe accommodation for domestic abuse victims will continue to disregard migrant women and children.

At least 60% or more of the women that contact SBS have been subject to gender-based violence and have insecure immigration status. Some are dependent on their partners or spouses for their immigration status, whilst others arrive in the UK through other immigration routes. Most are also subject to the No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) rule, which is a central plank of the ‘hostile environment’ policy. NRPF is a legal restriction imposed by the UK Border Agency on people subject to immigration control, preventing them from accessing most forms of welfare benefits and social housing. Breaching this rule puts a person’s current or future right to be in the UK at risk.

We struggle on a daily basis to support abused migrant women with NRPF because the normal routes to safety are simply not available to these women. They cannot go to the local authority (unless children are involved and even then it is difficult) or to a refuge, because refuges rely on rental income and do not have the experience or expertise to support migrant women with complex needs. In 2019/20 for instance, just 4% of refuge spaces were accessible to women with NRPF. As a consequence many women are forced to rely on charity and hand-outs from strangers and in the process subject themselves to other forms of degradation, exploitation and harm. As a result, we are seeing higher rates of destitution, poverty, indebtedness, trauma and mental illness amongst abused migrant women and children. What makes their position even more worrying is that they are held hostage by their abusers who routinely tell them that they will be arrested, detained and deported if they report the abuse. Their passports and other documents and any money they have are taken away from them and they are deliberately kept away from the outside world, in order to limit their opportunity to tell someone about the abuse. What is particularly palpable is migrant women’s overwhelming sense of fear; fear of what will happen to them if they stay in abuse and fear of what will happen if they leave. This is powerfully captured by the following quotes from survivors:

‘Day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year, a whole dark world built up around me. It was then that I realised that I was trapped by him. I had been sexually, mentally, verbally abused by him every day. I was so scared to talk to anyone about it because of my immigration situation. He knew that too so he carried on doing it. I wanted to go to the police but I thought they would send me home. I cried my eyes out every day. I walked in the dark and sat at bus stops until I was sure he had gone to sleep.’

‘He tells me… you are in this country because of me, I have the power to get you out of the country. He controls me in every way’.

We invite you to and read the many more powerful and moving accounts given by migrant survivors of abuse and violence.

Over the years, we have attempted to address the problem by setting up an emergency ‘No Recourse’ fund made up of grants and donations for migrant women across the UK, but this is nowhere near enough to address the level of need for crisis accommodation and support. Without question, it is now one of the most challenging problems facing the Violence Against Women and Girls sector.

For this reason, we have worked with others to include amendments that enshrine legislative protection for migrant women in the Domestic Abuse Bill. For example, we have specifically called for the Domestic Violence (DV) Rule and the Destitution Domestic Violence Concession (DDVC) to be extended to cover all migrant women trapped in domestic abuse due to their lack of immigration status. Currently the DV Rule and the DDVC only apply to women who arrive on spousal visas and are subject to domestic abuse. They are able to exit abuse and access benefits on a temporary basis, pending their application to remain in the UK as victims of domestic abuse.

Our amendment was passed in the House of Lords on 15 March 2021 with considerable cross-party support, but we fear that the government will reject it when the bill returns to the House of Commons. Despite a growing consensus that something must be done to protect all migrant women and children, to date the government has rejected this and other amendments that address the problems faced by migrant women. Instead, it has offered a paltry £1.4 million pilot project to support migrant women for one year only! This is wholly inadequate. At best, it is only likely to provide minimal support to a few hundred women for three months each. Countless women will continue to be denied support and there are no guarantees that following the completion of the project, lasting measures and new laws will be introduced to protect migrant women.

The Covid-19 crisis has brought with it additional challenges and risks as reports of domestic abuse have risen sharply, but it has been deeply disappointing to us that in this moment of unprecedented crisis and lockdowns, the government has chosen not to lift the NRPF rule for desperate migrant women needing access to the welfare safety net.

What this tells us is that we will have to contend with a highly discriminatory government response to domestic abuse, based on assumptions about those who are ‘deserving’ of protection and those who are not. It doesn’t have to be this way. If the Covid-19 pandemic has shown us anything, it is that we are connected to and dependent on one another for our wellbeing and safety.

We urgently need your support to ensure that our amendments to the Domestic Abuse Bill are not rejected, and in challenging other alarming immigration measures that are in the pipeline such as the devastating new rule on deporting rough sleepers. The irony of this is that the rough sleeping rule will make it even more impossible for migrant women to exit from abuse, for fear not only of destitution but also of being punished for their destitution which is created by the NRPF rule in the first place. The rough sleeping rule gives a new meaning to the oft-quoted sentiment that women are not safe in their homes or on the streets.

We can do no better than repeat the words of the Conservative Peer Baroness Helić, who in supporting our amendments in the House of Lords said:

“Their financial impact will be negligible, their impact on immigration figures almost unnoticeable. Yet for the women whose lives will – quite literally – be saved by being able to trust the police, access help, and begin new lives free from abuse, the impact will be immeasurable.”

Please help us to make the Domestic Abuse Bill work for all women. No woman should be left behind, whatever her background.

Please write to your MP and urge him/her to support our amendments for migrant women when the Bill returns to the House of Commons."

Pragna Patel is the founder and Director of Southall Black Sisters Centre (on twitter @SBSisters) and co-founder of Women Against Fundamentalism.

Guest Post: “Why we will not be celebrating the Domestic Abuse Bill just yet”

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Ereshkigalangcleg · 01/04/2021 18:48

Thank you for this important post Pragna and Mumsnet. I will write to my MP