Josh Babarinde
MP for Eastbourne · Liberal Democrat · United Kingdom
“Fly-tippers tend to vanish just as the mess gets traced back to them—much like Nigel Farage earlier this week. Closer to home, I led a community walkabout with the Friends of Outer Devonshire, alongside residents such as Emma Boyes and Kay Skinner, to look at fly-tipping hotspots in Eastbourne.”
“Civil compensation is disregarded from pension credit entitlement calculations, but military compensation is not. I know that the new Minister for Veterans is sympathetic to addressing this injustice, so I wonder whether he would meet me and the family of Pauline Cole—a veteran who was fighting to address this matter—in order to put it ri…”
“I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) for securing this debate. Beachy Head in my constituency is, regrettably, one of the most visited suicide spots in the world. Every year, brave coastguards such as Mark Francis in Eastbourne recover bodies from those cliffs and intervene at the cliff edge.”
“Disgracefully, there are some in this House who believe that it is for the England football team to prevent domestic abuse, whereas we all know that it is for perpetrators to stop their abuse.”
“Q12. As an Eastbourne boy born and bred, I can tell the Deputy Prime Minister that Eastbourne pier is an iconic part of our heritage, an iconic part of our local economy, and an iconic part of me; I literally have it tattooed on me, and I can show the Deputy Prime Minister afterwards.”
“Domestic abuse survivors who work in retail roles are at particular risk in that their perpetrators often know exactly where they are, which till they might be working at and what their shift patterns are. The perpetrators can continue to perpetrate abuse even while their victim or survivor is at work. Does my hon.”
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“It was therapy without therapy”. Throughout the programme, Aisha spent time identifying her future goals and practising interviews, and in particular, she remembers discussing how to see her weaknesses as strengths. I am delighted to say that, several years on, Aisha has secured paid employment in a profession that she enjoys, and on the side she supports campaigning against modern slavery, giving a survivor’s perspective and campaigning for change. I am sure the whole House will join me in paying tribute to Aisha and everyone whose stories she represents. A decade on from the passing of the Act, we owe it to the likes of Aisha to redouble our ambition to root out modern slavery and ask ourselves, is what we are doing now enough?”
“Aisha is a survivor of human trafficking and subsequently lived in a safe house. She said of that time: “Every day you just wait in the safe house. Days turn into months. You can’t work and it’s really isolating. I felt really sad. I had no purpose.” When Bramber Bakehouse offered her a place on its programme alongside other women survivors, Aisha wanted to see the best in this but was deeply suspicious about why anybody would pay for her to get on a train to go and bake. Her support worker encouraged her to give it a go. She said: “Getting the train felt like a big deal. I had to get ready, I had to be on time. I had my ticket. I suddenly felt independent and that I was getting away from it all. I had never baked before… I realised that I could do this. I could actually make something that looked and tasted amazing.”
“I am also proud of our voluntary sector for their very direct role in helping victims and survivors of modern slavery to rebuild their lives with dignity and hope. In particular, I pay tribute to Eastbourne’s Bramber Bakehouse, led by the amazing Lucy Butt, which uses the medium of baking to empower women survivors of modern slavery to rebuild their confidence, develop their skills and take a step towards a more fulfilling future. Most importantly, I pay tribute to the resilience of those victims and survivors of modern slavery whom this Act, and all of us gathered in this Chamber, along with many others who cannot be here, are committed to fighting for. I am particularly inspired to read about Aisha—that is not her real name—who Lucy and her team at Bramber Bakehouse have supported.”
“Member for Staffordshire Moorlands, Baroness May and many others; and proud of statutory authorities, such as Sussex Police in my patch and our local authorities—and of course their equivalents across the country—for the role they play in combating modern slavery. We should be proud of those civil servants who work across Government behind the scenes to make Britain a leader in the fight against modern slavery. I know one of those civil servants particularly well, and I will not embarrass or compromise her by naming her, but I know she is watching, and I hope that the likes of her know that their backstage efforts are just as critical as the work done by those who are front and centre.”
“It is hopeful that Parliament set out clear legal definitions, strengthened law enforcement capabilities, and demanded corporate supply chain transparency and action. It is hopeful that since the Act’s passage, many victims and survivors have been identified and supported, with great co-ordination between law enforcement agencies, NGOs, local authorities, the voluntary sector and more. It is hopeful that we have seen milestone convictions of traffickers, and that more survivors have been given a voice and a chance to rebuild their lives with dignity and hope. We should be so proud of all those who have played a role in that hope: proud of politicians such as the right hon.”
“It is sad that we need to have a debate to remind ourselves of that: sad that some of my Nigerian ancestors might have thought debates on the nature and extent of slavery should never have had to happen again; sad that we are having them in the modern day; and sad that, as we have discussed, at least 120,000 people in the UK are victims and survivors of modern slavery. It is hopeful that Parliament committed, via the 2015 Act and in many other ways, to confronting the shocking reality that slavery had not been consigned to the history books after all. It is hopeful that Parliament acknowledged its moral duty to protect those who are among the most vulnerable in our society; those who are coerced, manipulated and abused in conditions that no human should ever endure.”
“I thank the right hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Dame Karen Bradley) for securing the debate, and for all the work she did in government to give us the Modern Slavery Act 2015, which we commemorate and build on today. It means a lot to contribute to a debate on landmark legislation that affirmed our country’s commitment to eradicating this cruel and insidious crime. Slavery is one of the greatest affronts to the fundamental British principle of individual liberty: the principle that no human being should be enslaved.”
“Dorit has since committed to spending her time saying, “Never again,” and we must fight to ensure that that is the case. This debate will help to get us there.”
“I could not agree more with the hon. Member. It is critical that we educate children about the risk factors and what to look out for, and also educate the folks who are spending time supporting those children—whether they be parents, guardians, carers, teachers or others—to better identify this and then be able to tackle it before it escalates into something that is completely irreversible. We must also ensure that our rightful pursuit of a low-carbon economy is not done on the backs of the slave labour of the Uyghurs. This echoes the powerful call of my constituent Dorit Oliver-Wolff, who survived the Holocaust. She has written to the Prime Minister, telling him how her father was sent to Siberia for slave labour and never returned.”
“Technology is a significant enabler of trafficking, which has affected many women in my constituency. The incredible social enterprise Bramber Bakehouse supports women victims and survivors of trafficking through the art of baking. Will the Secretary of State join me in congratulating Bramber Bakehouse and its founder, Lucy Butt, on their work and on her being the inaugural co-chair of the new domestic abuse network in Eastbourne, which is trying to reduce violence against women and girls?”
“Heartbreakingly, last week St Wilfrid’s Hospice in Eastbourne announced many redundancies, citing the national insurance increase as a reason. I have just received a message from Mrs Robinson at Motcombe school, which faces increased costs due to a catering supplier passing on the cost of the NIC hike. If the Chancellor will not increase the digital services tax to fund a reversal of that hike, how will these organisations be supported to keep doing their great work?”
“My constituent Dorit Oliver-Wolff is a Holocaust survivor. She knows what slave labour looks like, and she has written to the Prime Minister to urge that our energy transition does not repeat so many of the atrocities that she has seen. She is awaiting a reply from the Prime Minister. Will the Minister nudge No. 10 to ensure that she gets the response that she needs and deserves on her own behalf and that of victims of modern slavery across the world?”
“According to King’s College London, one in 10 of our armed forces personnel is a survivor of domestic abuse, but, because there is no specific offence of domestic abuse in the law, the Ministry of Justice has confirmed that it cannot comprehensively identify perpetrators, and cannot therefore comprehensively rehabilitate them and keep victims and survivors safe. Will the Minister join me and colleagues across the House in campaigning for a specific offence of domestic abuse in the law so that we can better protect our armed forces personnel from domestic abuse?”
“Conservative-run East Sussex county council has introduced a booking system for the local tip in Eastbourne that will make it even more difficult for many people to get rid of their waste. Many local campaigners are concerned that it will result in increased fly-tipping, specifically in areas such as Upperton in my constituency, and we have already seen it in Hartfield Square and Upperton Gardens. How might the Minister be able to influence East Sussex county council to U-turn on its unpopular decision and to keep our community clean and free from fly-tipping?”
“With shameful vandalism of buildings in Eastbourne’s Gildredge park and the torching of park benches in Shinewater park reflected across the country, we clearly need more tools to tackle such crimes in Eastbourne and beyond. Technology is one of those tools. Will the Solicitor General share with my constituents what tech the Government are set to deploy to help us address those crimes more efficiently through the criminal justice system?”
“What we are talking about today, being passionate about correcting these injustices, is not incompatible with supporting those victims and survivors who are brave enough to come forward, who report what has happened to them to the police, who take what has happened to them to the court, but who ultimately do not get the conviction they hoped to secure. To have a criminal justice system that works for those victims and survivors, it is critical that everybody can have confidence in how it functions on both sides of the dock and both sides of the courtroom. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s take. Again, I congratulate the hon. Member for Ceredigion Preseli for securing this debate.”
“We believe that when the state wrongfully convicts an individual, it has a moral and legal duty to provide full and proper compensation without unnecessary bureaucratic barriers, or barriers that undermine fundamental maxims of our legal system. That is why urgent reform is necessary. We must ensure that compensation is granted promptly without retraumatising legal battles, and must ensure that it reflects not just the financial cost, but the emotional and psychological toll of wrongful imprisonment. When the state gets it wrong in such a profound way, it must have the courage to put things right. I conclude my remarks by touching on an insightful comment made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) about victims and survivors.”
“Despite the injustices that those caught up in this scandal faced, the Horizon convictions redress scheme and the Horizon shortfall scheme—the two special compensation schemes—have been paying out compensation at much too slow a pace, which is a great dishonour to those who were unfairly convicted. I thought the Business and Trade Committee put it aptly when it said of the process that it was, “akin to a second trial for victims”. Many folks in this Chamber and beyond, across party political divides, have long campaigned for a fairer approach to addressing miscarriages of justice. The Liberal Democrats are proud to have been part of that tradition, and we continue to be.”
“Such waits and injustices are a national disgrace, not least because they are experienced by so many across our country. The hon. Member for Liverpool Riverside (Kim Johnson) mentioned the sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses who also suffered such gross injustices after being wrongly convicted in the Horizon Post Office scandal. People like Kathleen Crane, the former sub-postmistress at Old Town post office in Eastbourne who was wrongly convicted of fraud and made to “pay back” £18,000 that she never owed before her conviction was overturned last year.”
“On the subject of compensation, the miscarriages of justice compensation scheme was set up with the best of intentions to ensure that those who have suffered the gravest injustices are properly compensated. However, as we have heard both in the Chamber today and beyond, that system has perpetuated the injustices it was meant to put right. How? We have heard that in cases where a person’s convictions are quashed, our system forces them to jump acrobatically through legal hoops to access even the most basic financial redress. We have heard about the case of Andrew Malkinson, who spent 17 years in prison following a conviction that transpired to be unsafe. He had to wait years beyond that for his first tranche of compensation, and he is still waiting for the rest.”
“It is an honour to serve under your inaugural chairmanship, Mr Turner. I look forward to speaking in the debates that you chair in the weeks, months and years to come. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ceredigion Preseli (Ben Lake) on securing this debate, the focus of which strikes at the heart of our justice system: principles of fairness, accountability and, ultimately, the duty of the state to right its wrongs. There are no two ways about it: those who have been wrongfully convicted are not merely victims of an unfortunate mistake; they are victims of a gross failure of the state. These individuals have lost not only their liberty, but their livelihoods, their families, their reputations, their dignity and much more. For all the talk of compensation today, no amount of money is able to restore a loss of such profound dimensions.”
“This scandal has left many women in financial hardship, forced to continue working or unable to retire with dignity. One of them is my constituent Yvonne in Eastbourne, who said in a letter to me: “I was offered early retirement. I did my sums carefully as I still had a mortgage to pay and accepted the offer. Only after everything was signed and settled did I discover that the months were now changed into years. This meant having to find work for longer than I expected to and giving up the plans my husband and I have.” Many more women represented by Members of all political parties could paint a very similar scenario.”
“It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate the 160,000 individuals who signed the e-petition on securing this debate, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) for opening it with power and passion. We are here to address a grave injustice that has affected millions of women across our country, including in Eastbourne—known for being home to many a great pensioner. The WASPI women were let down by successive Governments after an increase to the state pension age was implemented without proper communication or notice. As a result, these women, many of whom had worked for decades and paid into the system in good faith, found their retirement plans shattered, with little time to adjust.”
“I could not agree more with my hon. Friend, and nor could the ombudsman. The ombudsman has been very clear that these women suffered maladministration and that they should be compensated—no ifs, no buts. It is therefore grossly unjust that the Government have ruled out compensation, despite apologising for the injustice. Compensation is not just a political issue; in my view, it is a moral obligation. I urge the Government to act on the ombudsman’s findings and U-turn on their refusal to provide fair compensation to the WASPI women. The Liberal Democrats stand with the WASPI women’s continued fight for compensation. I am proud to stand alongside women like Angela Boas in Eastbourne to continue fighting for the justice that these women need and deserve.”
“I would like to think that all in this House believe in equality under the law, in sentencing matters and otherwise, but it is clear that two-tier justice has existed in our country, having been governed by two-tier Tories who thought they could get away with illegal No. 10 parties while the rest of us were told to stay at home; two-tier Tories such as the shadow Justice Secretary, who unlawfully approved a development for his donor; and two-tier Tories who have pummelled our prisons and crashed our courts, leaving victims to pay the price. Can the Minister tell us how he will reform sentencing in England and Wales to protect the victims and survivors so let down by the Conservatives?”
“For her, and for so many, such a conviction does not reflect the full gravity or the full circumstances of such a nefarious crime. That has led to all sorts of problems, not just for Elizabeth but for many other survivors as well.”
“It also created a series of domestic abuse-aligned offences, including coercive and controlling behaviour, non-fatal strangulation and non-fatal suffocation, but I am afraid that that piece of legislation, and indeed our legislative framework overall, do not go far enough to recognise the domestic abuse that my family has experienced and that many Members of this House will be familiar with, too. An example of a failing in the law exists in the form of the experience undergone by an extremely brave and inspirational survivor, Elizabeth Hudson. Elizabeth was a victim, a survivor, of domestic abuse at the hands of her ex-husband. He, among many other terrible acts at home, held a knife to her throat. He was convicted of assault occasioning actual bodily harm for his crimes.”
“There are so many people across our country who are victims and survivors of domestic abuse and other forms of abuse. It is estimated that one in five people will be a victim or a survivor of domestic abuse in their lifetime. In my view, the law does not go far enough to protect people in those circumstances. Great progress was made in the last Parliament in the form of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, which defined domestic abuse in law for the first time.”
“I say in Michelle Thomson’s words that I, too, am not a victim, but I am a survivor. As a result of that, and also of my mum’s experience at the hands of a former partner of hers, we know what domestic abuse looks like. I know what it is to be crying upstairs under the covers as a child, listening to shouting, screaming, smashing and the rest coming from downstairs and not knowing if mum was okay. I know what it is to go downstairs the morning after and see broken glass, or a kicked-in hoover and the rest, and to not know whether mum was okay. I know what it is to live in a household where you are worried that any word that you say, any movement that you do and any thought that you might have can be attacked by an abuser in your own home who is meant to keep you safe and who you are meant to trust.”
“It is an honour to lead this debate on domestic abuse offences, and a particular honour to do so on the very spot from which I saw the most moving speech that I have ever seen in the House of Commons being given. It was in 2016, around November or December time, and it was given by Michelle Thomson, who was then the independent Member of Parliament for Edinburgh West. She spoke about her experience of abuse and being a victim of violence at the hands of a man, and at the end of that speech she said: “I am not a victim. I am a survivor.” —[ Official Report , 8 December 2016; Vol. 618, c. 409.] Those words sent a shiver down my spine, gave me goosebumps, and unlocked in me a real determination to try to use my own experience and my family’s experience to improve what life is like for victims and survivors across the country.”
“I thank my friend the hon. Member for his kind words, and I completely agree that all abusers, domestic or not, must face the full force of the law. It is critical that happens for victims and survivors to have confidence in the police and our wider criminal justice system, and that is lacking for many victims and survivors. We see that in some of the consequences of the SDS40—standard determinate sentences—early release scheme that the Government had to implement in the light of the poor state that the last Government left our prisons in.”
“As a result, so many domestic abusers are falling through the cracks, and so many victims and survivors do not get the justice or recognition they deserve.”
“Unfortunately, we know many domestic abusers were released early under the SDS40 scheme. That happened because the only way someone can be excluded from, or included in, an early release scheme is on the basis of the offence they have committed—something the Justice Secretary has confirmed—and not on the basis of anything else we might know about their behaviour. The problem is there is no specific offence of domestic abuse in the law. We therefore cannot properly exclude those people from an early release scheme, if that is something we are committing to those survivors. Instead, we know domestic abusers are often convicted of actual bodily harm, assault or battery. Those offences were criminalised by an Act written in 1861—the Offences against the Person Act—that was not written with domestic abuse in mind.”
“The hon. Member is absolutely right that domestic abuse is more than just an act; it is a campaign—a campaign of abuse, of misery and of an abuse of power by one or more people against another, and that is what makes it so difficult to convict. There are so many areas in which the law could do better, and I was speaking about the early release scheme as an example. The scheme would release folks who had served 40% of their sentence rather than 50%. The Government nobly made a commitment to survivors that they would do everything possible to exclude domestic abusers from being released early under the SDS40 scheme, recognising that it can be super-destabilising for survivors, who need to prepare for when their abuser is back in society, their community and their neighbourhood.”
“I thank my Justice Committee colleague for his intervention. Of course, domestic violence is a form of domestic abuse, but we must remember that domestic abuse covers so many different kinds of activity, including emotional abuse, financial abuse, physical abuse and sexual abuse. It is critical that we recognise them all, because all too often there is disproportionate recognition of, say, physical violence, but some of the more hidden forms of abuse are just as damaging to victims and survivors.”
“That leads us to think about the solutions to patching up this legal loophole. The solution must be to create a specific offence of domestic abuse in law. I have proposed a very specific way of doing it, in consultation with a number of stakeholders, and that is to create a series of domestic abuse aggravated offences in law. In the same way that we have racially and religiously aggravated ABH, GBH, assault and so on, we would have a domestic abuse equivalent.”
“I thank the hon. Lady for sharing those statistics. More than a national crisis, this is a national emergency, and Women’s Aid has rightly declared it so. That is why it is now more important than ever that our legal framework properly recognises domestic abuse in law. I have described how our current legislation is leaving survivors without the respect and the protection they deserve. For example, many abusers qualify for early release when the Government’s intention is that they should not. I have raised this a number of times in this House and beyond, including on the Justice Committee. Ross Gribbin, a director general at the Ministry of Justice, confirmed that the only way of closing this loophole is through primary legislation that this House must debate and vote on.”
“The Government have a powerful ambition, which I fully support, to halve violence against women and girls over the next decade, but how can we possibly know whether we are achieving it if we do not know how many domestic abusers are in prison at any given time? More than that, if we are serious about reducing reoffending—I dedicated my career before coming into this place to doing exactly that kind of work—how can we know what kind of interventions are the most successful if we have no way of measuring that because there is no specific offence of domestic abuse in law?”
“I asked the Ministry of Justice a very simple written parliamentary question just before Christmas: how many domestic abusers are currently in prison and what is their reoffending rate? The response was: “It is not possible to robustly calculate the number of domestic abusers in prison or their reoffending rate. This is because these crimes are recorded under the specific offences for which they are prosecuted”. In other words, we do not know how many domestic abusers there are because there is no specific offence of domestic abuse in law. Instead, they are convicted of, for example, offences under the Offences against the Person Act 1861. This is a national scandal. We should know how many domestic abusers there are in prison.”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point. The law is already going some way to achieve that. Domestic abuse is already an aggravating factor in sentencing at the back end, but it is not an aggravating factor at the front end in terms of the offence for which people can be convicted. We know there is a precedent for making domestic abuse an aggravating factor. The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 introduced a number of aggravating factors, and it was extended to include racially and religiously aggravated offences. We ought to amend that legislation to include domestic abuse. However, this is about far more than being able to include or exclude domestic abusers from early release schemes. This is also about data.”
“It would be very easy for an abusive partner to explain away a conviction or a charge for assault or battery as, say, a brawl with a stranger in a pub, but would they be able to explain away domestic abuse-aggravated assault in the same way? No.”
“I completely agree. We know that there are links between domestic abuse and animal abuse. We also know that there are links between domestic abuse and child sexual abuse, for example—this is a link that I have experienced the hard way. Again, our legislation and the data we are collecting are not helping us to make that link in the way that we could, so that we could figure out which interventions are best at busting these social ills. There are more reasons why a specific offence of domestic abuse is so critical. Let us take Clare’s law, which is the scheme that allows individuals, mostly women, to request to see information about the offending histories of their partners. If they qualify for the scheme, they get to see things like the charges that individual has faced or the offences they have been convicted of.”
“I am also thankful for the many warm and constructive conversations I have had with Ministers, including the Minister for victims the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), the Minister for safeguarding the hon. Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips) who I met a couple of weeks ago, and the Minister for prisons Lord Timpson, but also for the exchanges I have had with the Solicitor General and the Secretary of State for Justice in this Chamber. I appreciate that constructiveness, but I am really keen now for more than warm words: I am keen for action. Victims and survivors need and deserve the recognition that the creation of a brand new specific offence of domestic abuse in law would create and I stand ready to work with anyone in this Chamber and beyond to make it a reality.”
“Women’s Aid, ManKind Initiative, Refuge, Victim Support and many more charities and support organisations in this space believe that this needs to be done. I am really grateful to many of my Liberal Democrat colleagues, who are sitting around me now, for backing this proposal, but also to those across this House; I am particularly thankful to Members on the Government Benches who have privately reached out to me to express their support for these proposals, and I know a number of them have expressed that support to their Front Benchers as well. I am grateful to lots of our media outlets for getting behind this and for platforming the campaign, in particular the team at “Good Morning Britain”, which helped me launch this campaign and the Bill I am holding in my hand to make this proposed offence closer to a reality.”
“These are the right things to do, but if we can do that for those crimes, surely we can do it for the crime of domestic abuse. I remember in the Crime and Policing Bill debate several Members, particularly on the Government side, praised the trade unions for their campaigning to get the offence of assault against a shop worker over the line. I agree that great campaigning by trade unions helped to achieve that, but the survivors and victims of domestic abusers do not have such a union. We in this House are their union, which is why we must campaign for a dedicated offence of domestic abuse to protect them. I am pleased and proud that so many have rallied around this proposal to create a specific set of domestic abuse offences in the law.”
“A challenge that was put to me was, “Josh, might this not lead to the very sentencing inflation that the Government are trying to avoid now to ensure that our prisons do not fill up so quickly?” My response to that is twofold. First, domestic abuse, as we have explored in this debate, is already an aggravating factor in sentencing. It already carries a greater sentence. I am proposing that we enhance the front end, as I said earlier, not just the back end. My second response to that challenge is that the Crime and Policing Bill that the Government put before this House very recently—Second Reading was last week—creates a number of brand new offences. They are offences that I completely agree with and commend the Government for, including assault of a shop worker and a dedicated offence of spiking.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is critical at a time like now, when we have heard about the scale of the national emergency of domestic abuse, that victim support organisations are adequately funded. I have met representatives of a number of organisations, including Victim Support, that in light of cuts to police and crime commissioner core funding and the national insurance contribution increase are facing a 7% real-terms funding cut. We should be funding these organisations more, not less, at this time to support constituents such as those my hon. Friend has mentioned. There might be some challenges to my proposal.”
“I thank the Minister for her response and for her feedback. I appreciate that setting a static list of offences to which a domestic abuse aggravation is connected could mean that when offences and the nature of domestic abuse change, things get left behind. Would she therefore consider a more open-ended aggravation that is dynamic and could attach to any offence? What I have proposed is an aggravation on the basis of the definition in the Domestic Abuse Act. Would she consider a more dynamic one that does not list a finite number of offences?”
“On behalf of the Liberal Democrats, I start by associating myself with the comments made at the beginning in relation to Joanne. So many victims and survivors rely on the victim contact scheme to know when their abuser is being released from prison or moved to an open prison and to have input into the kind of conditions that should exist when they are released. However, the system that we have inherited from the last Government is such that only survivors whose abusers have been convicted for more than 12 months qualify for the scheme. In the upcoming Victims, Courts and Public Protection Bill, will the Minister commit to scrapping that threshold so that all victims and survivors can qualify for the scheme?”
“The independent sentencing review and the Justice Secretary have been taking inspiration from Texas when it comes to reforming our criminal justice system. She might be aware that Texas has a dedicated set of domestic abuse aggravated offences to help protect and respect survivors. Will she support me and Liberal Democrat colleagues in introducing proposals to the Crime and Policing Bill in order to make similar changes to the law in England and Wales?”