Domestic violence in UK: here’s what Yvette Cooper should have argued

By
Cathy Newman, Presenter, Channel 4 News

Yvette Cooper has done more than virtually any other MP I can think of to
highlight the scourge of domestic violence – and the scandal of the number
of brutal men (and some women) who escape justice.

So I’ve no doubt she’ll be castigating herself for failing to drive the point
home on Radio 4’s Today
programme this morning.

The Shadow Home Secretary is making a big speech on domestic violence today,
so perhaps she was preoccupied with preparing for that. Certainly, her radio
appearance was uncharacteristically flat-footed.

She’d briefed
newspapers about the startling number of domestic violence cases which are
resolved via community resolutions – essentially an apology to the
victim – rather than going through the courts. Often, the perpetrator not
only escapes his or her day in court, but also a criminal record too.

In 15 police forces questioned by Labour under the Freedom of Information act,
the use of community resolutions for these cases has more than doubled in
four years – 6,861 in 2012/2013, compared with 1,337 in 2009. That rise
looks pretty alarming on paper, particularly when you consider that the
Association of Chief Police Officers advises that such resolutions aren’t
appropriate for domestic violence.

_{David Ruffley is the Tory MP for Bury St Edmonds Photo: Getty Images}

The issue has been given additional political piquancy after
the controversy over the Conservative MP David Ruffley, who was let
off with a police caution for common assault on his ex-partner.

But on the Today programme, Cooper swiftly came unstuck.

Garry Shewan, the Assistant Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police,
quietly unpicked the figures, pointing out that when you consider there are
one million incidents of domestic violence every year, the use of community
resolutions is very much a minority pursuit. Less than one per cent, he
said.

By my calculations, it’s less than 0.7 per cent.

Of course, for each of those 6,861 men or women, a quick sorry from their
assailant may feel like an insult or worse. It could potentially put
thousands of vulnerable victims in danger.

But it’s puzzling why Cooper allowed herself to get bogged down in an argument
over statistics, when she has so many devastating facts at her disposal. She
was repeatedly asked by John Humphrys where she got her figures from. Her
refusal to answer left me for one wondering about the reliability of the
stats.

_{Reports of domestic violence to police went up by 11 per cent from 2010/11 to
2012/13}

Only after a lengthy joust with Humphrys did she get to what should have been
the main rhetorical force of her argument: that too many victims aren’t
getting justice, because both the number of domestic violence cases being
referred to prosecutors, and the conviction rate, have dropped despite an
increase in reports to police.

I know that reports of domestic violence to police went up by 11 per cent from
2010/11 to 2012/13, and yet the percentage of successful prosecutions has
dropped by 14 per cent over the same time period. Scandalously, around 90
per cent of all reports of domestic violence are dropped by police in
England and Wales.

I only know this because Cooper herself gathered the data from parliamentary
figures, and published it earlier this year. Yet listeners to the radio this
morning would be forgiven for remaining in blissful ignorance, because the
Shadow Home Secretary only managed a glancing reference to all this on the
radio this morning, before issuing what was no doubt intended as her main
soundbite: that “two women a week are still killed by a partner or an ex”.

At that point, Humphrys interrupted, retorting that those partners “are dealt
with”.

Clearly stunned, Cooper paused momentarily, before completing her one-liner.
“No they’re not….two women a week killed by a partner of an ex. If you had
that level of violence at football matches or in town centres across the
country there would be a national outcry.”

Humphrys then jumped in again, with the claim: “Those cases come to court and
the people who commit those dreadful crimes are punished properly.”

Surely then Cooper should have wheeled out her own figures on the woeful
conviction rate – and the 90 per cent of domestic violence cases which don’t
get anywhere near the courts. Some of those offenders could have been
stopped in their tracks. Some may, tragically, end up going on to commit
murder.

Unfortunately, the Shadow Home Secretary didn’t say any of that. She had all
the facts at her fingertips – but somewhere on the way to the Today programme
she lost them and with them the argument too.