Highlights from the 2019-21 session in the Lords
Highlights from the 2019-21 session in the Lords
7 May 2021 2021
The 2019-2021 session of Parliament ran from 20 December 2019 to 29 April 2021. The House of Lords met for more than 1,750 hours in the chamber and grand committee, examining 59 bills and asking over 900 questions. It also published more than 200 committee reports.
Making laws
In 2019-21, the House of Lords scrutinised and revised 59 bills, asking government and the House of Commons to think again on issues such as trade with countries accused of genocide, making threats to share intimate images an offence and protecting food standards.
Checking and challenging government action
Domestic Abuse Bill
Aaron Gates-Lincoln, Immigration News
After years of development the Domestic Abuse Bill returned to the House of Lords in the UK on the 8
th March 2021 to complete its report stage, one of the final stages before being enshrined in law.
The Bill is expected to completely transform the effectiveness of current responses to domestic abuse amongst a variety of services. Its main features include placing safe accommodation service funding on a statutory footing and outlawing threats of non-fatal strangulation, post-separation abuse and sharing intimate images. It also intends to ban the direct cross-examination of survivors by their abusers in court and will importantly give the first ever legal definition of domestic abuse.
When he was growing up, the former Arsenal striker Ian Wright’s favourite TV programme was
Match of the Day. For this reason alone, when the programme began his stepfather would force Wright to turn away from the TV and stand with his face pressed uncomfortably close to the wall. If Wright turned to look, his stepdad would fly into a violent rage. Wright, his elder brother Maurice, his mother and his stepfather lived in a single room in a house-share in Brockley, south-east London; there was no escaping the violence and psychological torture. His stepdad beat his mother, his mother in turn beat Wright and would often tell him she wished she had aborted him. Who can say how these different forms of abuse ought to be weighed up against each other? But when Wright, now 57, returns for the first time in decades to that single room in Brockley he keeps thinking about that wall, how it felt as a child to stand for so long with his nose squashed up against the orange patterned wal
Duchess of Cornwall: ‘We all know someone in an abusive relationship’
We join Her Royal Highness on a visit to a domestic abuse refuge – and learn why it is a cause so close to her heart
7 May 2021 • 9:00pm
The Duchess of Cornwall talks to a domestic abuse victim at a refuge run by Berkshire Women’s Aid
Credit: Clara Molden for The Telegraph
The last time the Duchess of Cornwall appeared in public, on April 17, she was standing solemnly beside Prince Charles at the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral, as her husband of 16 years struggled to hide his grief from the eyes of the world.
Domestic abuse survivor s fears over delays in helping women
Jennifer Gilmour says there was already a backlog for cries for help
Jennifer Gilmour, a survivor of domestic abuse who now helps other women to spot signs of abuse and leave their relationships
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