Josh Babarinde

Far from letting anybody down, the hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sorcha Eastwood) has lifted survivors up with her contribution today. One of them, who has been watching from home, is my mum, who suffered abuse at the hands of a former partner. I witnessed that abuse growing up, and that is apart from some of the things that happened to me. The statistic, and the reality, that two women a week are killed by their partner or former partner particularly terrifies me, and always has. That must change, so I sincerely thank the Government for their commitment to halving violence against women and girls over the coming decade. I also thank the Safeguarding Minister for the work that she has done on this issue throughout her career. The vast majority of us in this House know that no tech billionaire, no pound-shop Enoch Powell, and no keyboard warrior can take away that record from her. The silence from Reform party Members is utterly deafening today. They might tweet about this issue while we are debating, but they are not participating, and shame on them for that. Domestic abuse is a foul manifestation of violence against women and girls, as the Government recognised when they set out their intention of excluding domestic abusers from the standard determinate sentences 40% early release scheme, but as they have said, people can be excluded from early release only on the basis of the offence that they committed, not other antecedents. A challenge is that it is not possible to comprehensively exclude domestic abusers because there is no dedicated offence of domestic abuse in law. Instead, many abusers are convicted of offences such as actual bodily harm and grievous bodily harm, which are governed by a piece of legislation from 1861 that was not written with domestic abuse in mind. Domestic abusers convicted of such offences are being let out early, or qualifying for early release. We have seen some such cases, and that loophole needs to be closed. I convened survivors, academics and support organisations to come up with a solution, which exists in the form of a Bill that I introduced: the Domestic Abuse (Aggravated Offences) Bill, which would create a specific offence of domestic abuse in law for the first time. It would work in a similar way to racially and religiously aggravated offences by creating domestic abuse aggravated GBH, ABH or whatever it might be. Beyond giving the means for the Government to exclude domestic abusers from an early release scheme, it would tighten up some of the data, which is very difficult for academics and others to analyse when they are looking into the effectiveness of interventions.