Policy background
Domestic abuse remains one of the most prevalent crimes in England and Wales. An estimated 2.3 million adults aged 16 to 74 experienced domestic abuse in the year ending March 2020, around two-thirds of whom were women. 1 The police recorded 1,288,018 domestic abuse-related incidents and crimes in the same period (excluding Greater Manchester Police (GMP)) and, of these, 59% were recorded as domestic abuse-related crimes; domestic abuse-related crimes recorded by the police accounted for 35% of violence against the person offences. 2 Of the 362 domestic homicides recorded by the police between March 2018 and March 2020, 276 of the victims were female (victims aged 16 and over. 3
	Domestic abuse is not limited to physical violence. It can include repeated patterns of abusive behaviour to maintain power and control in a relationship. The current non-statutory cross-government definition of domestic violence and abuse recognises this and defines domestic abuse as:
	"Any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive or threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are, or have been, intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality. It can encompass, but is not limited to, the following types of abuse:
	psychological;
	physical;
	sexual;
	financial;
	emotional.
	Controlling behaviour
	Controlling behaviour is a range of acts designed to make a person subordinate and/or dependent by isolating them from sources of support, exploiting their resources and capacities for personal gain, depriving them of the means needed for independence, resistance and escape and regulating their everyday behaviour.
	Coercive behaviour
	Coercive behaviour is an act or a pattern of acts of assault, threats, humiliation and intimidation or other abuse that is used to harm, punish, or frighten their victim."
	From 8 March to 31 May 2018 the then Government ran a public consultation on the Government’s approach to tackling domestic abuse. The aim of the proposals in the consultation was to prevent domestic abuse by challenging the acceptability of abuse and addressing the underlying attitudes and norms that perpetuate it. The consultation asked questions under four main themes with the central aim of prevention running through each:
Promote awareness – to put domestic abuse at the top of everyone’s agenda, and raise public and professionals’ awareness;
Protect and support – to enhance the safety of victims and the support that they receive;
Pursue and deter – to provide an effective response to perpetrators from initial agency response through to conviction and management of offenders, including rehabilitation;
Improve performance – to drive consistency and better performance in response to domestic abuse across all local areas, agencies and sectors.
	The consultation sought views on a number of legislative and non-legislatives measures under each of these themes. The legislative measures, now incorporated in this Act, included:
introducing a new statutory definition of domestic abuse (Part 1);
establishing a Domestic Abuse Commissioner in law (Part 2);
creating a new domestic abuse protection notice and domestic abuse protection order (Part 3);
creating a legislative assumption that domestic abuse victims are to be treated as eligible for special measures in criminal proceedings (section 62);
prohibiting perpetrators of domestic abuse cross-examining their victims in family proceedings in England and Wales (section 65);
extending the extraterritorial jurisdiction of the criminal courts in England and Wales to cover further violent and sexual offences (section 72 and Part 1 of Schedule 3);
putting the guidance underpinning the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme on a statutory footing (section 77).
	Some 3,150 responses were received to the consultation. In its response, published on 21 January 2019 alongside a draft Bill, the Government committed to legislate to introduce these measures.
	The draft Bill was subject to pre-legislative scrutiny by a Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament, chaired by the Rt. Hon. Maria Miller MP. The Joint Committee published its report on 14 June 2019. The Government response to the Joint Committee’s report (CP 137) was published alongside the introduction of the Bill in the House of Commons on 16 July 2019. The Bill was given an unopposed Second Reading on 2 October 2019, carried over from the 2017-19 session and re-introduced on 15 October 2019, but fell with the dissolution of Parliament ahead of the December 2019 election. The Bill as introduced in the House of Commons on 3 March 2020 was broadly the same as the Bill originally introduced in July 2019, but with the addition of the measures in Part 4 in respect of the provision of accommodation-based support by local authorities in England and the omission of the Northern Ireland domestic abuse offence (what was Part 2 of the Bill introduced in July 2019) which was taken forward in the now Domestic Abuse and Civil Proceedings Act (Northern Ireland) 2021. Alongside the re-introduction of the Bill, the Government published a further response to the Joint Committee’s report (CP 214).