8. Submission by Ms Davies, KC

Ms Davies: Thank you, my Lady. Can I confirm that you can see and hear me all right?

Baroness Hallett: I can, Ms Davies, thank you.

Ms Davies: Thank you very much, my Lady.

I represent Southall Black Sisters, who are commonly abbreviated to SBS, and I do so with Marina Sergides and we are instructed by the Public Interest Law Centre. I have five headings for my submissions, which will be shorter, as a result of Mr Keith’s opening this morning, than I had anticipated. So that is helpful.

My Lady, I need to start with the funding decision. SBS is, of course, pleased that we have been granted funding for legal representation. But, as we say in our written submissions, my client is devastated – and that is not too strong a word – that Solace Women’s Aid was not awarded funding for legal representation. Solace will be speaking immediately after me and they can put their own case on funding, but we do want to say that SBS supports their sister organisation in asking for that funding decision to be reconsidered.

SBS understand exactly the difficulties that Solace face. As a charity, all of Solace’s money is fundraised for specific purposes. Those specific purposes are the delivery of frontline services supporting women and girls who have experienced domestic abuse. When the public and funding organisations give money to Solace, they do so on the basis that that money be will be used to provide those necessary frontline services and not legal representation.

Both SBS and Solace were designated as Core Participants precisely because of their expertise in domestic abuse. SBS are, of course, experts in domestic abuse. They deliver frontline services and they lobby on the issue. But their focus and their clientele are black and ethnic minority women and migrant women. The two groups were designated jointly with Core Participants with joint legal representation because we assumed it was thought that the two groups acting together can assist the Inquiry in scrutinising Government decision making to ascertain what consideration was given, if any, to the consequences of lockdown on domestic abuse.

SBS are concerned that without funding for legal representation, Solace will be unable to participate effectively in this Inquiry, and SBS believes that that will be a loss to the Inquiry. It will diminish the Inquiry’s ability to scrutinise Government decision making in terms of the pandemic and lockdown on violence against women and girls.

We thank you the TUC, who will be speaking shortly after Solace, for their support, and we agree that the TUC, as representatives of frontline workers during the pandemic, should also be granted funding.

In summary, on funding therefore, SBS supports both the TUC and, most importantly for SBS, its sister organisation Solace in their requests that the refusal of funding be reconsidered.

Let me move on to Rule 9 requests. We raised a number of questions about the content of Rule 9 requests in our written submissions and some of those were answered very helpfully this morning by Mr Keith.

But we repeat the point that others have made that the decision not to disclose those requests has led to uncertainty for the CPs, and we repeat the request made by ourselves and others that the Rule 9 request should be disclosed.

We appreciate the confirmation that Rule 9 requests have been sent to the Government Equalities Hub, to the Domestic Abuse Commissioner and to the Victims Commissioner. We also note Mr Keith’s statement this morning that the different units of the Home Office that we suggested, the Forced Marriage Unit, the Interpersonal Abuse Unit and UK Visas and Immigration were not sent individual Rule 9 requests, and we hope that the Rule 9 requests to the Home Office will cover those areas and of course we await receipt of those responses.

We do, finally, on Rule 9 requests, raise the Government’s Equalities unit which, as we understand government structures, is separate to the Government Equalities Hub, and is also separate to the Cabinet Office, although the Equalities unit does work with both of those, and so we suggest a separate Rule 9 request to the Equalities unit.

On experts, we join the call for copies of the letters of instruction. On 31 October, at the last preliminary hearing in this module, we submitted that expert evidence was needed on the assessment of the proposed policies of lockdown dealing with the pandemic and so forth on those protected characteristics. We’ve looked at the website of the four instructed experts and we cannot see that any of them have a specialism in equalities.

My Lady, the very first part of the Inquiry’s terms of reference as published state that the Inquiry will consider any disparities evident in the impact of the pandemic on different categories of people, including but not limited to those relating to protected characteristics under the Equality Act. My Lady, we know that you are committed to that personally and that counsel to the Inquiry is also committed to that.

Discrimination and the appropriate focus to be given to equalities issues in public decision-making is a complex matter. It is, of course, partly a legal analysis which is for you to carry out, applying the Bracking principles, which include that equalities duties are an integral and important part of the mechanism for ensuring the fulfilment of the aims of anti-discrimination legislation, and that the court must be satisfied that there has been a rigorous consideration of the duty so that there is a proper appreciation of the potential impact of the decision on equality objectives and the desirability of promoting them.

But, my Lady, in order for you to conduct that legal analysis and come to a legal decision, compliance with the public sector equality duty is also a factual question. We say that in order for the Inquiry to be satisfied of legal compliance, it cannot do so without receiving expert advice on how the public sector equality duty should have been approached when it came to assessing the potential impact of the Government’s decisions regarding the pandemic and lockdown on women and girls, and whether, having considered the evidence, the various public bodies did approach their decisions with that awareness. That is, the expert evidence we say does not decide compliance, that is a matter for you, but it assists and informs the legal analysis and the legal decision that you have to make, my Lady.

For that reason we propose the instruction of an expert specialising in the equalities aspects of public decision-making when it comes to the interests of women and girls. We do not suggest one general expert dealing with all aspects of equalities and none of the Core Participants have made that suggestion.

Expertise in, for example, structural racism is an important matter and is different to expertise in the protected characteristic of sex. We support the other CPs’ requests for an expert in structural racism but our separate request is for an expert whose specialism is the equalities impact on women and girls that should be considered in public decision making. And within that specialism we would expect the expect to adopt an intersectional approach, so that she or he understands that women and girls have multifaceted characteristics and can have more than one protected characteristic.

SBS’s particular interest, of course, is in the areas of black and ethnic minority women and migrant women, and we would expect an expert specialising in the protected characteristic of sex, and its interaction with race, class and immigration or nationality, to understand those intersectional nuances.

There are various suggestions by other Core Participants with which we agree. We agree that a third preliminary hearing sometime in the summer seems a sensible suggestion.

We support consideration of the opportunity for Core Participants to ask questions of witnesses directly, as raised predominantly by the Families campaign. We would envisage that all Core Participants would appropriately limit themselves, bearing in mind time constraints, but we agree with the Families that facilitating CP questions ensures the effective participation of the bereaved and, we would say, ensures the effective participation of survivors of domestic abuse as well as others.

We have already said that we support the instruction of an expert into structural racism and of disclosure of the letters of instruction to experts, and I do not need to repeat Ms Morris’ detailed submissions of the importance of structural racism to this Inquiry.

We also agree that when it comes to the question of scope and the list of issues that will be considered in this module, and we support the submission made just now by Ms Twite, that it would be helpful for Core Participants to have the opportunity to feed in to the list of issues by draft listings being circulated or however it is done, but that the scope or list of issues should take into account the context of the pandemic: that it came ten years after austerity; that it came to a society where we have racial and ethnic inequality, including health inequalities, and inequality between disabled and able-bodied members of society; as well as a society that has not tackled violence against women and girls. We say that that context is a vital area that the Inquiry cannot avoid and that the Inquiry will be scrutinising Government decision making bearing in mind what had happened to public services as a result of austerity over the previous ten years.

My final heading is on the Listening Exercise. We are concerned at the ability of the current contractors to undertake a trauma-informed approach to gathering people’s experience. Mr Keith’s setting out of how the contractors would work this morning was helpful, but our concern is that the voices of women and girls, particularly black and ethnic minority women and girls and migrant women and girls, should be heard in the listening exercise. We note that additional contractors are to be engaged and we have recommended in our written submissions – I don’t need to repeat them – a number of institutions who regularly undertake research into domestic abuse, and therefore they have the appropriate expertise when it comes to listening to trauma with a confidential, sympathetic and understanding ear, and we do submit that the listening exercise should consider instructing one or several of them to undertake work with survivors of domestic abuse.

My Lady, those are my five points.

I want to reiterate that you will next hear from Solace Women’s Aid and I have made the point that SBS support their request for the refusal of funding to be reconsidered.

Unless there is any other matter that I can help your Ladyship with.

Baroness Hallett: No, thank you very much, Ms Davies. As constructive as ever. And I shall bear very much in mind the submissions you make. And I do understand the point you are making about funding, I do, and I undertake that I will consider very carefully the submissions that are made, after we have taken a break, from your colleagues at Solace Women’s Aid. So thank you very much.

We will break now until 3.25 pm, please.

(3.12 pm)

(A short break)

(3.25 pm)

Baroness Hallett: It is now the time for Ms Goshawk to address me on behalf of Solace Women’s Aid.

Ms Goshawk, are you there?

Ms Goshawk: Yes.

Baroness Hallett: Hello. Can I just say this before you begin, and I’m sorry to interrupt you before you have even had a chance to start, if one can do that.

In your submissions, and Ms Davies has already referred to them, Ms Goshawk, you refer to my funding decision. I just wanted to say this. Funding decisions are normally determined in writing. I do understand the disappointment my decision was to your lay clients, and I have read your written submissions carefully and I think the best way forward, to prevent people thinking they can make oral representations on funding decisions, what I would like to do is to consider the written submissions you have made and to see whether they provide me with new material upon which I can reconsider my decision, but I would rather we didn’t have oral representations on funding decisions. Does that make sense?

Ms Goshawk: Yes, I will keep my submissions short then.

Baroness Hallett: I’m sorry about that, and I appreciate that you thought that you would be able to deal with it. I should have mentioned it before. But I have to be really careful about the process because I have to be fair, obviously, to all participants. And as far as other Core Participants are concerned, I have been sticking strictly to – and for example, with Core Participants status, as you may know, I deal with that in writing. And save in exceptional circumstances, and so far I haven’t found them, I think it is the only fair way to process it. But I promise your lay clients I will look very carefully at all the matters that you have put in your written submissions and see whether there is scope for a reconsideration.

Ms Goshawk: Thank you.

Baroness Hallett: Thank you very much.

So as far as any other issues are concerned, Ms Goshawk – I’m sorry, I hope I haven’t, as it were, cut straight across you.