Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 17 March 2021
If the member will forgive me, I will take a look at that and get back to him before the end of the session.
The powers that are provided in the bill are significant. Part 1 of the bill creates new powers for the police and the courts to make a domestic abuse protection notice or a domestic abuse protection order. They can remove a suspected—that is an important word—perpetrator of domestic abuse from the home of the person who is at risk, and prohibit them from approaching or contacting the person who is at risk or any children involved. That provides the police and the courts with the powers to take action to remove a suspected perpetrator of abuse from a home that they share with a person who is at risk for a period of up to three months. That is intended to protect people who are living with an abusive partner or ex-partner, and gives them a breathing space within which they can consider the steps that they can take in the longer term to address their safety and their housing situation without any interference from their abuser.
Part 2 makes provision to allow social landlords to transfer a tenancy to a victim of domestic abuse. As it stands, there are a number of grounds on which a landlord can evict a tenant and reassign the tenancy to another person, but domestic abuse is not one of them. A new ground on which a social landlord can apply for a court order to end the tenancy of the perpetrator is being created. That will allow the victim to remain in the family home as sole tenant. Having the legal ability to end a perpetrator’s tenancy in domestic abuse cases will allow social landlords, without requiring the victim to commence the process themselves, to take a more proactive role in supporting and protecting victims of domestic abuse, and to support the victim to remain permanently in the family home.
The bill has been subject to effective scrutiny through a timetable that has meant that the bill has moved quickly from stage 1 just two months ago in January to today’s stage 3 proceedings and debate. That has been challenging, and I thank the Justice Committee for its excellent work in proceeding with scrutiny, alongside the many other demands that have been placed upon it.
The bill provides us with a legislative framework to implement a scheme of protective orders for people who are at risk of domestic abuse. However, I am all too aware that, if the scheme is to be effective in improving the lives of those people who are experiencing domestic abuse, how it is implemented will be vitally important. Indeed, a number of the concerns that were raised during parliamentary scrutiny of the bill relate not to the exact wording of the provision but to how it will be implemented in practice. As I said during the stage 1 debate, there will be a Scottish Government-led implementation board that will bring together all the key interests and stakeholders and partners, including Police Scotland, the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service, Scottish Women’s Aid and others to work together to put in place the necessary processes to ensure that protection can effectively be given to those who are at risk of domestic abuse.
We know that legislation alone cannot address the issue of domestic abuse. However, ensuring that appropriate powers are available through the legislation is key. Once it is implemented, the bill will provide our police, courts and social landlords with significant new powers to deal with domestic abuse. Use of those powers will reduce the risk that the only way that a person can escape from an abusive partner is to flee their own home, often having to take the children with them or, even worse, to leave their children behind, then having to rely on emergency homelessness provision. That cannot be right.
We collectively have a duty to ensure that our law and our law enforcement agencies have the tools to prevent victims from being faced with such an impossible and devastating choice simply for their own safety. We have a duty to ensure that our law can keep people safe in their own homes, and I believe that the bill provides our law enforcement agencies with those tools and allows us to fulfil that collective duty.
I move,
That the Parliament agrees that the Domestic Abuse (Protection) (Scotland) Bill be passed.
17:14