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Pemberton Homicide Review

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise again the lessons that arise from the terrible murders of Julia and William Pemberton. The deaths followed a history of domestic violence to which the police were alerted 15 months before the tragedy. I am proud to follow the lead of my predecessor, Julia Drown, by working with Frank Mullane, the brother of Julia Pemberton, and my constituent, to keep the House's attention on the matter. Since the murders, Frank has joined the Government's victims advisory panel and has created a registered charity called Advocacy After Fatal Domestic Abuse, of which I am a patron, partly to help families to interact with criminal justice agencies and other bodies when they are trying to establish what happened, and to ensure that learning is identified and applied. The Pemberton homicide review reported in November 2008, five years after the tragedy. The report identified significant recommendations for many agencies, including the police, the local authority, schools, the primary care trust, general practitioners and central Government. The family, some of whom are my constituents, asked for the debate because they do not want us to forget the review, its recommendations or its findings. The family campaign on behalf of the hundreds of domestic violence victims who have urged them to make sure that the PHR is learned from. It is important that we should congratulate the relevant agencies and individuals who have taken forward recommendations, and that we should give encouragement where findings and recommendations need more attention. We need to ensure that the learning points from the PHR have been identified. I use the word "learning" to avoid any accusation that we want to blame agencies. Blame will not get us anywhere. We are all here to make sure that lessons are learned by all. We need to ensure that everything is done to get the outcomes applied both locally and nationally. There is also the general question of who ensures that the recommendations and learning from voluntary homicide reviews are taken forward. Who brings the wide-angle perspective? The debate is important because no one wants there to be another serious injury or murder after which issues from the Pemberton review are found not to have been dealt with. First, to give credit where it is due, I, like the Mullane family, want to commend all the agencies for their work following the review, where they have taken forward the recommendations. However, much of the substance of the Pemberton review is in the body of the report and is not reflected in those recommendations. The family want to ask the agencies to go back to the review, and not just to look at the recommendations but to take a holistic view of the substance. It would be useful for those agencies to bring together evidence of where recommendations have been followed, and develop plans to apply all the lessons. Victims and their families deserve a thorough response. I shall set out some examples of the responses of the police, West Berkshire council and the primary care trust, and give the family's view of how those responses could be improved. Thames Valley police initially responded just to the recommendations in the review, but following a request from the family they developed and shared with them a further action plan in response to the PHR, on which I congratulate them. However, it is the view of the family that that plan should be looked at again. Julia Pemberton's nephew, Desmond Khan, did a great deal of work to identify where the police action plan could be improved. Thames Valley police were then invited to respond. I understand that they are looking at the suggestions, and I ask that they give them due weight. One suggestion concerns supervision. The PHR found that Thames Valley police officers were "poorly supervised or supported", and that the situation regarding Julia's reporting of threats to kill was""compounded by a lack of policy or supervision to direct and ensure minimum standards."" The report raised another point:""Chief Officers must evidence their knowledge of key policies and critical incident management relevant to Domestic Violence."" That is particularly significant as the report criticised leadership in the force, and the family believe that it demands a full response. They have met academics, police officers and domestic violence workers and strategists, and I am told that they all agree that a lack of intrusive supervision is a major issue when it comes to the effective policing of domestic violence. There are thus issues for Thames Valley police to reflect on and act on. Dr. Carolyn Hoyle, who is reader in criminology at Oxford university, commented that Thames Valley police""must ensure that the tragic deaths of Julia and William are embedded into its institutional memory in order that the current commitment to helping victims of domestic violence does not wane."" The family also invite West Berkshire council and primary care trust to take a more holistic view of the review. They have given the two agencies a list of learning points and offered some comments on the council's actions so far. They tell me that the council took on board some of their comments and said that others will be built into "individual agency action plans". Will the Minister clarify today what that will mean in practice, and assure the family that it will mean that the agencies will give due weight to the list of learning points they submitted? The family drew my attention to the part of the review that says that primary care trusts have the opportunity, through their contractual arrangements with general practitioners, to include requirements with regard to domestic violence. In their view the local authority response does not appear to be robust enough. A recommendation of the review is that GPs should be better trained, including, significantly, being told of the risk indicators associated with perpetrator behaviour in domestic abuse. The family highlight one of the council's actions in response to the recommendation:""Review training provided to GPs and others on Domestic Homicide as part of the safeguarding framework"." The family would like clarification on whether all GPs in the authority have been made aware of indicators associated with perpetrator behaviour, because until that happens they feel that to report that action as "complete"—as it has been reported—is incorrect. I am sure we would acknowledge that action plans should be unambiguous and that there should be expressed outcomes, so that we can easily link the recommendation or learning point to an action and then to an outcome. That is what the family suggest. The review found that""the weaknesses and gaps in the council's overall policies and procedures in relation to Domestic Violence did not impact on the outcome"." However, one expert consulted by the family disputed that that could be concluded from the review. Similarly, the review found:""The Primary Care Trust had no direct involvement with Julia Pemberton that could have influenced the course of events"." However, another expert remarked that, had the primary care trust developed services such as a staff domestic violence policy, those might have helped to influence events. The family feel that bringing those views to light may encourage the local authority and primary care trust to develop more services. There are learning points within the report that should be of interest to the Government as well. One of those is:""Domestic violence training should be made available for Coroners"." That seems to me a practical suggestion, and I raised it with the Minister during the passage of the Coroners and Justice Bill. I now want to consider the question of who ensures that the recommendations and findings in voluntary homicide reviews are taken forward and that individual agency plans are adequate and implemented effectively. Neil Websdale, who is a professor of criminology and the principal project adviser to the national domestic violence fatality review initiative, said:""The Pemberton Homicide Review constitutes a landmark achievement in the field of domestic violence fatality or homicide review. It is meticulous in its approach, honest in its conclusions and forward thinking in its recommendations. As such, the review sets a gold standard in terms of its detailed appreciation of the complex issues in domestic violence cases and its pressing calls for agency accountability and interagency liaison."" It is important, when there are lessons to learn, that we encourage all those agencies to ensure that they are learned. It is equally important to ensure accountability in the process. If the tragic murder of 17-year-old William had been followed up by a serious case review, I believe that it might have attracted the attention of Ofsted. As for the Pemberton review, the family, with the help of a substantial network, have brought a great deal of accountability to the process. I pay tribute to them for that; they have worked tirelessly and did not give up when many others would have. I ask the Minister to assure the family that, in homicide reviews such as this, the Government will ensure robust accountability. One system that he might want to consider is that used by Ontario. The family have asked me to cite the work of Professor Peter Jaffe, who said that death reviewers there require agencies to come back after one year to explain what progress has been made since their review was published. The family believe that something similar applied in the UK could help agencies to identify and apply all learning points. As I said earlier, the family's purpose is not to apportion blame but to ensure that similar circumstances do not arise again. The family was disappointed by the behaviour of some individuals in the agencies during the review period. Julia's brother-in-law, Mike Mason, has written a concise protocol, including on behaviours, saying how agencies should treat families in this position, and I am pleased that the Home Office's violent crime unit has asked to see it. I was extremely shocked at much of the family's evidence on that matter. The review found that the response of Thames Valley police and the council to inquiries by the family after the murders caused the family difficulty—and that is an understatement. Thames Valley police has apologised for that, as well as for its response prior to the murders; and the council, too, has agreed to apologise. That apology is welcome, but the family should not have needed to seek an apology more than six months after the report. The Pemberton homicide review came into being partly because of the persistence and determination of the family and friends of Julia and William Pemberton, some of whom are here today. The family also had, and continue to have, the assistance of a wonderful friend and empathetic solicitor, John Latham, and a significant network of academics, strategists, media contacts and Members of Parliament from across the House, including my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General. Indeed, she has been giving advice and help to the family for many years, including before she became a Minister. I note the presence today of the hon. Members for Newbury (Mr. Benyon) and for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), who represent family members. The resourcefulness and capacity of the network that the family has at its disposal is not available to all families, so we need to assure the public that when things go wrong our public services are able and willing to correct problems, to identify opportunities and to help victims. The family are aware of the Government's significant efforts to provide services for victims of domestic violence—for example, specialist domestic violence courts, multi-agency risk assessment conferences and independent domestic violence advocates. The Government are developing a homicide review model, and the family welcome the invitation from the Home Office to be a part of that review. The family and I also look forward to the implementation of the strategy on violence against women. I ask the Minister to assure me that each agency will do more to ensure that all the learning points in the Pemberton homicide review are identified; and that each agency will show, with evidence, that all learning points from the Pemberton review have been applied—or that they will provide clear actions, with owners, dates and outcomes, to demonstrate that outstanding learning will be applied. Will he assure me that accountability structures will be put in place to identify and apply all learning points from the review? Finally, will the Minister assure me that everything that we can learn from the review is being applied and that its effectiveness is being shared nationally, so that fewer families will go through what this family went through?