Hansard

I thank the members and clerks of the Justice Committee, the Finance Committee and the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee for their diligent consideration of the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Bill. I also thank those who have taken the time to engage in the bill process and share their knowledge, experience and views during the scrutiny process. In particular, I applaud the courage of the individuals who shared with the Justice Committee their personal experiences of suffering domestic abuse. That assisted the committee’s consideration of the bill and helped the Parliament to gain a fuller understanding of what it is like to experience domestic abuse.

Members will recognise that attitudes towards domestic abuse have changed considerably since the Scottish Parliament was established, in 1999. Back then, some people—including some of those who worked within the justice system—were of the mindset that domestic abuse, especially when it did not involve physical violence, was a private matter and no business of the police or the courts. Attitudes have changed.

One effect of that has been that, as victims have become more confident that they will be taken seriously and more willing to come forward to the police, the true scale of domestic abuse in Scotland has been made more apparent. In 2016-17, nearly 59,000 domestic abuse incidents were reported to the police. However, we know that even that is likely to be a significant underestimate of the actual scale of domestic abuse. The 2014-15 Scottish crime and justice survey found that, of those who had experienced domestic abuse in the previous 12 months, around 20 per cent stated that the police came to know about the most recent incident. That is in contrast to a reporting rate of 38 per cent for all crime in that survey.

It is right that we also reflect on the changes to attitudes that have happened—and that are still happening—as the bill has proceeded through Parliament. The #MeToo campaign, which is shining a light on the experiences of all too many women across the world, only demonstrates further the need for the bill. Although attitudes to domestic abuse have changed and, as a society, we have a fuller and richer understanding of what domestic abuse is, the criminal law that is used to prosecute the perpetrators of domestic abuse has not reflected that understanding.

I pay tribute to Lesley Thomson, the former Solicitor General, who led from the front in publicly calling for a new criminal law approach to domestic abuse. It is worth recalling why she made that call. She said that, in her experience of prosecuting domestic abuse, the way in which the existing criminal law focused on individual incidents of assault or threatening or abusive behaviour was misguided because it did not reflect the way in which victims experience domestic abuse as an on-going course of abusive behaviour that is sustained over time, not as a few isolated incidents.

Responses to the subsequent Scottish Government consultation made it clear that there was a gap in the law in that it was difficult to prosecute cases in which an abuser behaved in a highly controlling, manipulative and abusive way towards their partner over a long period of time without using physical violence. Examples of the kind of behaviour that perpetrators may engage in are harrowing. Behaviour intended to humiliate or degrade their partner can include abusive name calling, sharing private information and making them eat food off the floor or from pet dishes. Perpetrators may also try to exert control over every aspect of their partner’s life, such as by preventing contact with family or friends, checking and controlling their use of their phone or social media, stopping them from attending work or college and making unreasonable demands about such things as food preparation, housekeeping, where the victim needs to be and when, and what the victim is allowed to wear. Those actions will not necessarily be accompanied by physical violence or overt threats, because the perpetrator knows that the victim may be in such fear of their partner that physical force or overt threats to them are not needed to exert horrendous control over them.

Even when a prosecution is possible using the current law, a conviction for a single incident of assault or threatening or abusive behaviour, for example, may leave the victim feeling, quite rightly, that the court process and the sentence imposed do not reflect the seriousness of the abuse—the background of long-term psychological abuse and controlling behaviour—that they have suffered. That is what we are addressing through the new offence of domestic abuse. The offence modernises the criminal law to reflect our understanding of how victims experience domestic abuse by providing a specific offence that is intended to be comprehensive in that the abuse can be prosecuted as a single offence, ensuring that the court considers the totality of the abuse that it is alleged the victim has experienced. It will enable the court to consider not only behaviour that would be criminal under the existing law, such as assault and threats, but psychological abuse and coercive and controlling behaviour that can be difficult to prosecute using the existing law.

The Justice Committee heard evidence from stakeholders that identified a number of ways in which the bill could be improved. Scottish Women’s Aid highlighted the importance of providing extraterritorial jurisdiction for the offence, and we amended the bill at stage 2 to do so. As this is a “course of conduct” offence, it is possible that, in individual cases, abuse may occur across a long period of time and in more than one jurisdiction, and the bill now caters for that.

Groups that represent the interests of children asked us to consider how the child aggravation could better reflect the harm that is experienced by a child who grows up in an environment where their parent or carer is being abused, irrespective of whether they see or hear the abuse or are present when that abuse takes place or whether the abuser directs that behaviour at the child or tries to involve the child in the abuse. We widened the scope of the child aggravation at stage 2 so that it can be proven if a reasonable person would consider that the perpetrator’s course of behaviour, or an incident that forms part of that course of behaviour, would be likely to adversely affect a child who lives with the victim or perpetrator.

That change has been warmly welcomed by key stakeholders. It means that the aggravation can apply when, for example, the perpetrator’s controlling behaviour has the effect of isolating a child, as well as the primary victim, from friends, family or other sources of support or where abusive behaviour undermines the ability of the non-abusing parent or carer to look after the child—for example, by restricting their access to transport, limiting their ability to get a child to doctor’s appointments or restricting their access to money and thereby limiting their ability to provide essentials for a child.

I am not under any illusion that creating a new offence of domestic abuse will, on its own, end domestic abuse. Changes to the mindset of the men who perpetrate domestic abuse will take a generation or more. Only once it can be said that women are treated equally in our society can we be confident that we are on our way to eradicating domestic abuse. Nevertheless, it is heartening to see the pace of change. The #MeToo movement, which emerged during the scrutiny of the bill, is an example of what we all hope are seismic shifts in society’s views on how women are treated.

I am proud to have led the bill through Parliament. This is a momentous day, as our laws will be changed in a way that reflects the experience of domestic abuse that all too many women have suffered. Although I am under no illusion that laws alone can address domestic abuse, they have a key role to play. Once implemented, the bill will allow our justice system to deal more appropriately with domestic abuse.

I move,

That the Parliament agrees that the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Bill be passed.