Domestic Abuse Act 2021 Committee

25 juin 2026

The Chair opens the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 post‑legislative scrutiny session, outlines its purpose, introduces Minister Natalie Fleet and Gisela Carr, and sets out concerns that coercive and controlling behaviour is treated as a discrete incident rather than the overarching abusive pattern; the Minister is asked how government can clarify this for police and courts.

Domestic Abuse Act 2021 Committee

00:00 - 02:53

Intervenant 8

I'm going to count us down. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Can I welcome everyone to this meeting of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 Committee, which is reviewing this act which came into being in 2021, so five years ago, and it's what's called post-legislative scrutiny to see if the legislation is working effectively, and there was a call for this to be reviewed, this review to take place, and we're very happy to be doing it. And so I say good morning to everyone, and I say a special good morning to two witnesses we have with us today, who basically, who I will introduce to you in a minute. And I just wanted to say that we're in a room which sadly is not air-conditioned.

So to the viewing public, if you see us suddenly descend into grease spots, it's because... Ah, and we have two persons appearing online, Baroness Rafferty and Baroness Sugg, and it's great to see that they are there, visible to us. Thank you. Now let me introduce our witnesses this morning, and first of them is Natalie Fleet, Member of Parliament. She's the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, the Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls, and she has served as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in this role since May of this year.

She has been the Member of Parliament for Bolsover since 2024, and before entering electoral politics, she has spent over a decade working as a senior trade unionist and serving as an official for the National Education Union. And it's really wonderful to see you, Minister. And it's Natalie Fleet, and I hope you won't mind if occasionally you're just referred to as Natalie or Ms. Fleet. Now, also with the Minister is Gisela Carr, who's the Deputy Director of the Interpersonal Abuse Unit inside the Home Office. So welcome both of you.

Now, I'm going to kick off by just doing a sort of general thing about... The legislation was very innovative in that it really dealt with things that had been discussed but which were not legislated for. And so coercive or controlling behavior is one of the five standalone bullet points in the definition alongside physical and psychological abuse. And we've heard that coercive and controlling behavior is the overarching concept that binds together all forms of abuse. And listing it as a bullet point along with other forms of abuse fails to capture that.

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