GFTU BGCM 2019 Minutes

towards women, not exclusively, we accept that, before a woman will pick up

the phone seeking help. It is still a fact, depressingly, that stalking, and that is

self-evident in the motion, is not yet a criminal offence. So this motion seeks to

ask you to help in the campaign to enact the legislation of the Domestic Abuse

Bill.

It is not often that I come to a rostrum praising a Tory Government on not one,

but two occasions, firstly in respect of the probation announcement which you

have heard about already over this conference, but, secondly, that there is a

clear steer from senior Cabinet Ministers to do something about the issues of

stalking and domestic violence. We are looking for your support to help the

campaign to see this Bill enacted into legislation. I can bring you good news as

well. I have just picked up an email from gov.uk which says that the

Government is now setting up a specialist panel to look at a number of issues

in relation to domestic violence and supervision orders made by the Family

Courts. It is much needed and we welcome the announcement of that panel.

We do not know who it is going to comprise yet. There will be a three month

project to bring some real meat to this issue and we absolutely welcome that.

Motion 8 is self-explanatory. But last week we saw another ground breaking

report by someone called Lord Justice Munby who was formerly the head of

the Family Court Division. His analysis was that the court supervision process

is posing an unacceptable risk to children and parents in estranged

circumstances by serious loopholes in the contact specification system which

essentially is the process by which a former partner can have access to

children that have resulted from the partnership. Frightening instances of

failure of that system are evidenced in Lord Justice Munby’s report last week

on the Victoria Derbyshire show on BBC2, catch it on catchup if you can, in

which we had quite significant involvement prior to its release. There was one

highly serious case where tensions following a contact order led directly to a

murderous assault on the female partner. It is shocking, but, of course, it is

typical, so we need to work hard as an organised group that cares about these

issues to put pressure on the Government to make tangible change.

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