8. Submissions on Behalf of Solace Women’s Aid and Southall Black Sisters by Ms Davies

Ms Davies: My Lady, thank you.

I represent Southall Black Sisters and Solace Women’s Aid, and I’m instructed by Public Interest Law Centre, and I appear with junior counsel, Marina Sergides.

SBS and SWA, which is how we refer to them, are grateful to have been given CP status for Module 2. They each have a significant interest in the government’s decision-making in relation to the handling of the pandemic, since they provide frontline services to women and girls experiencing domestic abuse, and they saw the demands for their services increase by significant and staggering amounts in March and April 2020, and continuing to this day.

SBS have a particular remit to provide advice services and support to women and girls from black and ethnic minorities, to migrant women, and women whose status is subject to a no recourse to public funds condition.

We refer to our written submissions which set out the particular issues that the two organisations will be concerned with throughout the Inquiry.

Those issues include the significant increase in domestic abuse during lockdown, the effect on women and girls’ mental health as a result of abuse, isolation and the health risks, the pressure on refuge spaces and on social housing, so that too many women remain trapped in abusive situations, and the particular disproportionate effect that lockdown and the pandemic had on black and ethnic minority women, women with disabilities, migrant women and women who had NRPF status.

As Mr Keith said in his opening statement this morning, a key consideration for this Inquiry should be those who stood to suffer particular disadvantage during the pandemic and whether the impact on them was sufficiently assessed.

Our principal submission is that throughout this Inquiry, scrutiny of all decisions should include scrutiny through an equalities lens, and often the problem with considering decision-making in relation to equalities is not so much what a document contains as what it omits. Ms Twite was kind enough to make the point for me earlier.

We would expect government decisions relating to lockdown, to public health measures and everything else concerning the pandemic to include an assessment of the impact on groups with protected characteristics: women and girls, black and ethnic minorities, sexual orientation, disability and so forth.

Sometimes those assessments can be found on the face of documents in minutes of meetings, but particular problems arise where those documents do not contain specific equality impact assessments, and there has to be careful scrutiny of the extent to which authors, decision-makers and so forth actually did have equalities impact in mind.

My Lady, Mr Keith this morning also quoted to you the full words of section 149(1) of the Equality Act, the public sector equality duty, and we know that you’re familiar with that duty.

With that duty in mind, we support the request from the various families’ campaign and indeed, I think, all the other organisations that have addressed you this morning and now this afternoon, for disclosure of the Rule 9 requests sent to the various government departments.

We understand the pressures on disclosure. We understand that too much disclosure could be as difficult as too little disclosure. But we believe that simply disclosing the Rule 9 requests is a proportionate step to take. We consider – we’ll be corrected if we’re wrong, but we consider that the administrative burden of doing so on the Inquiry team is relatively small. They simply have to copy those documents to us.

We’re not asking for any new documents to be drawn up. But disclosure will assist all the core participants in being able to make submissions to the Inquiry team as to whether additional categories of documents would be relevant. And from the point of view of SBS and SWA, we would want to be scrutinising for equalities impact assessments, for consultation with the Government Equalities Office and any other relevant organisation, and our hope is that, having seen those Rule 9 requests, if they are disclosed to us, that we can provide input, as can other CPs, so as to actually assist the Inquiry team in identifying whether there are further relevant documents which had not been requested and therefore not been disclosed, not least because those documents had not been considered with a view to equalities issues.

Those are our submissions on the disclosure of the Rule 9 requests. We agree with everything that has been said by the other core participants, and I don’t repeat those submissions now.

Moving on, we have made suggestions in our written submissions for other recipients of Rule 9 requests, and we’re grateful for the confirmation this morning that those suggestions will be considered.

On experts, we do support the request to have disclosure of the identity of experts and indeed letters of instructions to experts at an early stage in order that there can be proper dialogue between the CPs and the Inquiry team on those terms of instructions.

We have also suggested that expert evidence is commissioned specifically to advise on the proper approach to equalities assessment in public sector decision-making, what should have happened and what actually did happen, and whether what actually did happen was both lawful and in accordance with good practice. And again, we’re grateful for confirmation that that suggestion of that type of expertise will be considered.

Moving on to evidence and the Listening Exercise, and very grateful indeed for your confirmation just now that of course direct evidence will be heard in the Inquiry and at Module 2 and not just in the Listening Exercise.

We will be suggesting at some point when it comes to consideration of what evidence should be heard, and we accept that today is not the time, but we will be suggesting that non-state CPs be asked to give evidence if they wish, and in particular, whilst we understand that the Inquiry is going to be reluctant to scrutinise too many individual cases, it is our organisation’s view that evidence of case studies taken from their direct advice and support on the ground, from their advice sessions, during the time of the pandemic, would assist the Inquiry in identifying equalities issues, in identifying the significance of the rise in domestic abuse, the communications made to government by my clients and other similar organisations as soon as that rise in domestic abuse was identified, and therefore that that evidence would be relevant to the Inquiry’s ultimate decision as to what government should have done about the rise in domestic abuse along with other equality matters.

Given that participants in the Listening process will not have the benefit of disclosure or consideration of the evidence received at the Inquiry, then we suggest that the CPs who do have that benefit should be able to provide evidence of case studies and exemplars which would supplement those experiences along with the experiences that are going to be summarised for the Inquiry in the Listening process.

Moving on to the Listening process itself, we heard this morning details of those who are to be commissioned to undertake the organisation of the Listening process. We would support the point made by Mr Weatherby that there is considerable expertise outside of the sector that was being referred to, and there is expertise in the voluntary sector and indeed in the academic environment around listening to those who have been bereaved.

The charity Inquest stands out as a notable example, it’s not the only one, but we would ask therefore that consideration is given to voluntary sector or academic sector groups who have experience and can provide advice on how to conduct a listening exercise and listen to those who have been bereaved or suffered significant harm.

Finally, my Lady, we do welcome the Inquiry’s commitment to commemoration, and we also note, outside the terms of this Inquiry, that the government itself is consulting on a permanent commemorative memorial to all those who lost their lives in the pandemic and all those millions of people bereaved, in poor health or suffering other long-term consequences, and we see that as an important step.

Thank you, my Lady.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much, Ms Davies, and I promise that I will discuss the issues that you and the other core participants have raised with the team and do what I can to make sure that any concerns are allayed. Thank you very much indeed.

Ms Davies: Thank you.

Lady Hallett: Right, and Mr Dayle?