Domestic Abuse Survivors: Government Support

Adam Dance Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Ben Maguire]

I thank the hon. Member for that excellent point—I will come on to accommodation issues and the impact on children.

I recognise that really important steps have been taken in recent months, on which I congratulate the Government. For instance, many people will agree that the removal of the presumption of contact puts children’s voices and experience back at the heart of contact decisions, which is a genuine step forward for their safety. The 2025 statutory reforms to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 updated the terminology to align with the Domestic Abuse Act 2021—replacing “domestic violence” with “domestic abuse”, and “financial abuse” with “economic abuse”—and recognised that abuse against an individual may consist of behaviour directed at another individual, such as their children.

However, from speaking to my North Cornwall constituents and the charity sector, I realised that the VAWG strategy does not yet place arguably the most crucial protection for victims at the centre of its aims. Of course, societal change is urgently needed to prevent so-called normal people becoming perpetrators of abuse, but what about those victims who are caught up in the cycle of abuse now? How can we help them and free them from harm?

[Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)]

Abusive ex-partners can exploit loopholes in the Child Maintenance Service to get control and avoid paying. A constituent of mine is owed over £15,000 and has been left in financial hardship with disabled children. Does my hon. Friend agree that Government guidance on child maintenance payments to survivors of domestic abuse must be written into law, including a means of getting payments from those using the process as coercive control?

[Ben Maguire]

I completely agree; I have actually had some similar casework. I will come back to that point.

In a deeply troubling case brought to me by a wonderful Cornish advice clinic, a female client, who I will call Louise for this debate, was refused legal aid on the basis that she supposedly had too much disposable income and assets, despite the reality that, at the time, she was sofa surfing, effectively homeless and earning only minimum wage. Although she may have passed the merits test, she failed the means test, because she was not paying rent and was not on benefits, so the system deemed her ineligible for legal support.

After Louise fled her partner, who had reportedly abused her, both parties applied for residential custody of their child. Although the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service recommended that the child live with their mother, the judge awarded custody to the ex-partner, arguing that the mother had not followed the correct legal route when she fled from home. She is now permitted to see her child only by travelling hundreds of miles back to the area from which she fled, and the ex-partner refuses phone contact altogether. She is terrified of returning to a family court and knows from experience how one-sided the system can be, especially as her ex-partner has the money and the legal representation, while she would be forced to represent herself. How many women consider the reality that Louise currently faces and, as a result, end up staying with their abuser?

The legal aid Minister assured me that an eligibility waiver is available for victims of domestic abuse who are applying for urgent protections, such as non-molestation orders, yet a survey commissioned by the charity Surviving Economic Abuse found that more survivors had to represent themselves in legal proceedings than were able to access legal aid. The Ministry of Justice’s own harm report found:

“The most important and frequently mentioned form of structural disadvantage was lack of access to legal representation.”

Most cases I have reviewed end with a victim—whose abuse has not yet reached so-called dangerous levels—applying for a child protection order, anti-stalking order or non-molestation order, which means they do not qualify to skip the legal aid means test. On the contrary, victims will be assessed on their income through a test that has not been uprated with inflation since 2009.

An applicant is not eligible for legal aid if their monthly disposable income exceeds £733. That threshold is clearly blind to reality. So far, the Government have chosen to ignore rising food and energy costs, as well as the huge debts that can be caused by an abuser. Even if someone has £750 left at the end of the month including those costs, which is farcical, the fact that solicitors can cost anything from £120 an hour to £400 or £500 an hour speaks volumes about the poorly executed calculations that are applied to the legal aid means test threshold.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jess Phillips]

I absolutely agree. When I was running refuge accommodation, we were moving from the era of everybody living in communal refuges to a new era of people needing separate accommodation. Some of that was about the rules on safeguarding with regard to which children could and could not live together, and about boys over the age of 16—actually, I think the age threshold was 14. As somebody who has adult male children, I would not want to flee to somewhere they could not live. That is hugely important.

The hon. Member for North Cornwall made a very important case for the need for legal aid thresholds. As somebody who has managed to amend our legal aid laws to carve out victims of domestic violence, I absolutely agree with him that we need to ensure that people can access the right legal services when they need them. If we had a lawyer from the Ministry of Justice in front of us, they would almost certainly be able to give a considerably more thorough answer, but there is relevant case law. For example, if someone’s asset is a house that they co-own, it cannot be included in the means test.

There are a number of issues, and we need to look at whether the threshold is right. My threshold is that I believe somebody when they tell me that they are a victim of domestic abuse, but I understand that the burden of evidence has to be slightly higher for Government Departments or legal departments. In the strategy, we have committed to addressing tenancies and the economic abuse of those who do not own houses, but who live in either social housing or privately rented properties. We have to look at the threshold for exactly what evidence is needed, and make sure that it is fair and balanced.

[Adam Dance]

One of the issues that we find in rural communities is that when someone flees domestic abuse and is rehoused, they are taken further afield because there is no housing nearby. They cannot meet their family or see their friends because of the lack of rural transport links. It is great to see what is happening here in London, but does the Minister believe that rural communities need more funding to support domestic abuse victims?

[Jess Phillips]

I will be down in Devon and Cornwall next week for both business and pleasure—I have turned business into a bit of pleasure as the recess comes along. I would like to thank Airbnb for that. [Laughter.]

The issue of need and how we commission services in rural areas has never been properly considered. On the basis of a headcount, we provide funding from lots of different Government Departments and lots of different sources. Whether that it is through part 4 of the Domestic Abuse Act or through police and crime commissioners, the Government send finances to local areas, and it is for them to decide. North Cornwall is quite different from east Birmingham, and it is for local authorities to make decisions.

On the commissioning arrangements, do I think that rurality has been understood as a specific need in the same way as poverty or police data? I am not sure that it always has been—but what do I know? We are undertaking a huge piece of work on commissioning, and in fact I have reached out to some Liberal Democrat colleagues who represent rural areas to look at what we could be doing to make sure that we are getting the commissioning right. I am sure that the services that I am visiting in Devon and Cornwall next week will have some excellent ideas for me.

[Adam Dance]

I am from Somerset. Will the Minister meet me to have a conversation about these issues?

[Jess Phillips]

Of course. I did not mean to exclude Somerset or anywhere else, rural or otherwise. I would gladly meet the hon. Gentleman—I would gladly meet anybody. I do not wish to cause him offence, but I would dance with the devil to make women and children safer, so I would happily meet him to talk about Somerset.

I will conclude my remarks by saying that we have a cross-Government strategy, and that the points that the hon. Member for North Cornwall passionately highlighted will inform how we measure our progress. I always welcome people pushing not just my Department but every Department to do the very best that it can on violence against women and girls.

Question put and agreed to.