Justice & Home Affairs
46mentions · last 12 months↓
View full analysis →This House of Lords select committee scrutinises the implementation and effectiveness of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 across England and Wales. The committee holds regular oral evidence sessions with practitioners, policy officials, and stakeholders to examine how the Act operates in practice. It takes evidence under oath and publishes transcripts to inform Parliament on gaps and challenges in domestic abuse law and policy. Recent inquiries have focused on the treatment of children as victims in family court proceedings, where the committee examined how courts balance protection with contact rights. The committee has also investigated police enforcement of the Act's provisions, exploring whether officers apply the law consistently and effectively. A further area of scrutiny concerns courts and family courts more broadly, assessing how judicial systems implement the Act's protective measures and domestic abuse protections.
13 sessions published in the last 12 months
Click any cell in the heatmap to see the sessions held that day and the insights extracted from them.
169 insights
16 Jul 2026
The session scrutinised how the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 is working in practice, with Jess Phillips focusing on police reform, online abuse, family courts, domestic abuse protection orders, child victims, migrant victims and specialist services. Key positions extracted were that online harm now needs much stronger regulation and safety-by-design, that family courts remain too patriarchal and secretive, that children’s safeguarding and domestic abuse systems are still poorly joined up, and that positive requirements in domestic abuse protection orders needed to be made mandatory. Phillips also welcomed the new firewall for migrant victims, supported wider access to pathfinder courts, and argued for better commissioning and national provision for minoritised survivors and perpetrator programmes.
02 Jul 2026
The committee scrutinised whether the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 is delivering in practice, focusing on police responses to coercive control, data-sharing and victim identification, online abuse, teenage relationship abuse, migrant victims and safe accommodation, family courts, helplines, and the rollout of Domestic Abuse Protection Orders (DAPOs). Dame Nicole Jacobs argued that the main blockers are fragmented systems, weak data, inconsistent local provision, and insufficient funding, and urged government to act faster on practical changes such as better referral pathways, independent victim support, clearer firewall arrangements for migrant victims, and stronger implementation of Families First and child-focused courts. She also warned that the DAPO pilot data is not publicly available, the rollout is not ready, and key safeguards still need to be tested before national expansion.
25 Jun 2026
The committee scrutinised whether the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 is working in practice, focusing on coercive control, the police response, children as victims, migrant victims, tech-facilitated abuse, commissioning of services, and perpetrator interventions. The Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls said the Government is updating statutory guidance, expanding specialist training and information-sharing, rolling out DAPOs nationally as soon as possible, and taking a more cross-government approach through the VAWG strategy. She also set out funding and policy commitments on migrant support, specialist helplines, multi-year commissioning, and perpetrator programmes, while acknowledging gaps in awareness, convictions, and system consistency.
18 Jun 2026
The committee scrutinised how the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 interacts with the Government’s violence against women and girls (VAWG) strategy, with witnesses from Refuge and Women’s Aid arguing that the strategy is broader and more ambitious but still under-resourced, weak on migrant survivors, children, community-based services and tech-enabled abuse. Evidence highlighted the safe accommodation duty as important but insufficient without national oversight, stable funding and commissioning reform, while witnesses pressed for a statutory duty to fund community-based services, stronger support for “by and for” provision, and better protection for migrant women, including a firewall with immigration enforcement. The session also probed children as victims in their own right, family courts, misogyny/tech regulation, and the need for more coordinated, better-funded local implementation.
11 Jun 2026
The committee examined how the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 has changed perpetrator-focused responses, prevention, and support for survivors and children. Witnesses broadly welcomed the Act’s clarifications on children as victims, coercive control, non-fatal strangulation, post-separation abuse, and the creation of the Domestic Abuse Commissioner role, but argued implementation remains patchy and underfunded. Strong concerns were raised about postcode lotteries in services, weak commissioning, limited data, workforce shortages, poor coverage of behaviour-change programmes, and the need for better by-and-for provision, especially for minoritised communities. Witnesses repeatedly called for sustained funding, stronger statutory duties, better standards, and earlier intervention, while highlighting examples of effective multiagency practice and survivor-centred safeguarding.
04 Jun 2026
The committee scrutinised how the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 has changed multi-agency working, with witnesses broadly welcoming the Act’s statutory footing, broader definition of abuse, and recognition of children as victims in their own right. Across both panels, the main concerns were implementation gaps: inconsistent MARAC practice, weak guidance for child-focused and minoritised-victim pathways, immigration-status barriers to safety, insufficient move-on accommodation, and patchy, short-term or underfunded specialist provision. Witnesses repeatedly pressed for longer-term funding, better operational guidance, stronger cross-system integration, and more consistent learning from domestic abuse-related death reviews.