Hansard

I thank committee clerks and staff, SPICe and the legislation team, who helped the committee to scrutinise the bill and to frame amendments that I believe improve the bill.

I also wish Alex Neil all the best for the future and thank him for his contribution to the Parliament as well as his contribution to combating violence against women. I am sure that he will continue to do so, and he is right to say that there is much still to do in that area. I also join him in paying tribute to Women’s Aid for the work that it does, not only on the bill but, daily, to help victims of domestic abuse. I believe that it should lead the charge against domestic abuse and hope that sense can be seen and that it will retain contracts to protect women.

We welcome the bill, which provides much needed assistance to victims of domestic abuse. Domestic abuse is a blight on our society, where a perpetrator seeks to control their partner. What is even worse is that the abuse is carried out by someone who is supposed to love their victim. It happens behind closed doors and is difficult to prosecute because of the lack of corroboration.

Until now, victims have had to organise their own protection by getting non-harassment orders. That means getting legal advice, which is not always available through legal aid, even if they can find a legal aid lawyer. The bill puts state protection in place for the first time. As Fulton MacGregor said in his speech, it enables the victim to remain in the family home and is a positive step in the right direction. We welcome that, but we need to remember that such protection was available in other countries a decade ago, so we must speed up how we work to protect victims of abuse.

Neil Bibby talked about the need to protect children, Such protection is, sadly, still lacking, and we need to look at how we provide it. It is disappointing that the bill will not provide children with protection in their own right, and I am sure that we will need to return to that in the future.

John Finnie talked about the need for training of police and sheriffs, which was a point that I made when speaking to amendments. Too often, our courts allow themselves to be used in order to perpetrate abuse, by giving contact to abusive partners, which allows them to track and control their victims all over again and continue to damage the children of that relationship. Anyone who abuses their partner must be forced to relinquish access to their children until such time as they can prove that they have changed their behaviour and that they are no longer going to damage those children and the children’s parents.

This bill will not be the last word on how we deal with domestic abuse; we must deal with a number of issues, not least its impact on children. We must also take measures to ensure that victims have access to a safe place and alarms. That is especially the case in rural areas, where assistance is not close by.

We must teach boys and men that they cannot abuse their physical strength and power over their partner; that is missing from our education system. Neil Bibby made the point that domestic abuse is not a women’s problem; it is a problem with the men who perpetrate it. We must protect women from misogyny; we failed to do so with the hate crime bill last week but, until we do, women will continue to be subject to men’s violence. In a week in which we have seen, in sharp relief, men’s violence against women, we must redouble our efforts to create a safe place and an equal society for women.