Meeting of the Parliament 28 September 2017
We have responded to the committee by setting out that the approach that we will take will be to reform child welfare legislation, which will allow us to consider creating a specific measure to tackle the effect that domestic abuse has on children. That is a more appropriate avenue for considering the issue. The reason for that is partly that the qualifying criteria that are set out in the bill in relation to adults would be very difficult to apply to children. That is why it is important that we take a different approach to dealing with children, in this context. We must ensure that not only the approach in the bill but the approach for children that we take in the future can work.
The creation of a new offence of domestic abuse will not on its own end domestic abuse, but it is a groundbreaking approach that will put Scotland at the forefront of efforts to tackle the scourge of psychological abuse and coercive control. The new offence will provide greater clarity for victims and send a clear signal that what their partners do to them is not only wrong but criminal. It will improve the ability of the police and our prosecutors to intervene in cases, and it will change societal attitudes about what domestic abuse is. Domestic abuse is not only physical violence but psychological abuse, whereby someone exerts total control over a partner’s every movement and action, thereby forcing them to live in constant fear.
For too long, the attitude has been allowed to linger that domestic abuse is a private matter that is no business of the criminal law. The bill makes it crystal clear that those days are long gone.
I move,
That the Parliament agrees to the general principles of the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Bill.
15:26