Domestic Abuse: Victims and Survivors

Baroness Gale Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gale (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Chisholm, for bringing this debate before us today. I agree with her that the need to eliminate domestic abuse is a worthy and crucial ambition, as is supporting victims and survivors.

Violence against women and girls is not inevitable but perhaps should be regarded as a national emergency. According to the Office for National Statistics in its latest bulletin, Domestic Abuse in England and Wales Overview: November 2024, an estimated 2.3 million people aged 16 and over experienced domestic abuse in the year ending March 2024.

Two of the purposes of the Istanbul convention—or, to give it its full title, the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence—are to

“protect women against all forms of violence, and prevent, prosecute and eliminate violence against women and domestic violence”,

and to

“contribute to the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women and promote substantive equality between women and men, including by empowering women”.

The previous Government ratified the convention in 2022, and we were all very happy when that happened, but there were reservations on Articles 44 and 59. This Government are reviewing Article 59, and I look forward to the Minister reporting on that review soon, as it will be of great help to migrant women who are victims of domestic abuse. This convention is fully in line with what we are debating today.

I am pleased that this Government have set out an unprecedented ambition to halve violence against women and girls within a decade, and they have announced new measures to tackle spiking, stalking and other crimes that disproportionately affect women and girls. They have already taken significant steps to transform the policing response to these awful crimes.

I am pleased that the noble Baroness, Lady Chisholm, mentioned older people. Older people who are victims of domestic abuse are often overlooked and not taken seriously. Hourglass, the charity that campaigns for better protection of older people, of which I am a patron, is calling on the Government to begin a consultation on developing a strategy to tackle the abuse and neglect of older people. To make sure that we see the full picture of the abuse of older people, police forces should implement a consistent and accessible data collection system in each police force, categorising crime according to age. Will the Minister agree to look at this, as it is so often overlooked?