Parliament is to debate whether all suicides in cases involving victims of domestic abuse should be investigated as homicide.
The Liberal Democrats have tabled an amendment to the crime and policing bill saying that if “there is reasonable suspicion that a death by suicide has been preceded by a history of domestic abuse committed against the person by another person, the relevant police force must investigate that suicide as if it were a potential homicide”.
Given the size of Labour’s majority, any amendment is unlikely to succeed unless it has the support of the government or MPs are allowed a free vote.
Marie Goldman MP, the Liberal Democrat women and equalities spokesperson, said: “The current systems and laws are simply not doing enough to protect women, and in too many cases suicides driven by domestic abuse are going unreported.
“We urgently need to update the law, so that police forces investigate every suicide as a potential homicide where there is a history of domestic abuse.”
She added: “Only by making this mandatory will police be able to collect and preserve the best evidence possible to deliver justice for victims and their loved ones.
“I’d call on colleagues from across the political divide to support the Liberal Democrats amendment to ensure that perpetrators of these horrendous crimes never be able to escape the full force of the law.”
Domestic abuse campaigners have welcomed the amendment. Pragna Patel, from Project Resist, said: “We have been campaigning for a presumption to investigate domestic abuse related suicides as potential homicides and called for changes to police and CPS procedural policy to include such a presumption.”
Her organisation launched a “Suicide is Homicide” campaign last year to challenge how the criminal justice system handles suicides related to domestic abuse.
Frank Mullane, chief executive of Advocacy After Fatal Domestic Abuse (AAFDA), said: “We have been calling for this for many years. Where there is a suicide either following domestic abuse or suspected domestic abuse, police should bring the same level of seniority, expertise and organisation to the investigation as they would to a homicide.
“They should rule the death as a homicide until they can prove different. There may be multiple crime scenes to protect.”
Mullane said that doing so would further “guard against the police behaving in ways which have led to the loss or destruction of evidence, for example where police have returned the victims’ phones and laptops to persons who should have been treated as suspects”.
Ellie Daniel, head of policy and survivor services at Women’s Aid, said the charity also welcomed the proposed amendment.
“Too many women who have been subjected to devastating abuse, including coercive and controlling behaviour, by a current or former partner have been denied justice following suicide, because their death was not considered to be directly at the hands of their perpetrator,” Daniel said.
“We owe these women and their grieving families more,” she added. “More understanding of the insidious nature of domestic abuse, more joined up responses to believe and support women and children; and more justice for those victims who so tragically have their lives taken.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “The scale and nature of deaths linked to violence against women and girls is intolerable. That is why we are deploying the full power of the state to halve this issue in a decade.
“We are also improving how these deaths are recorded, and strengthening the police response to victims, as outlined in our Violence against Women and Girls Strategy, published in December.”
