Domestic Abuse Survivors: Government Support

Alex McIntyre Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[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.

[Alex McIntyre (Gloucester) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his support for my Domestic Abuse (Safe Leave) Bill, which he has backed from the start. He is making a very powerful point about the role that businesses can play in supporting victims and survivors of domestic abuse, who are the reason why we are all here and who we care so much about. Does he agree that we should be doing more to encourage businesses to support women fleeing from domestic abuse, such as through the roundtable that I hosted recently with Women’s Aid, Airbnb and AXA? Does he also agree that the response from Travelodge this week has been simply shameful and that, quite frankly, it has failed to tackle violence against women and girls in one of its properties?

[Ben Maguire]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on being such a champion on this issue, and I completely agree with his condemnation of Travelodge’s frankly despicable response. His point regarding Airbnb is interesting, and I have been making the same point recently, because it crosses over with the Travelodge issue.

I am sure that many Members have heard from survivors in their constituencies who tell them they have spent all their savings on legal fees or they have accrued tens of thousands of pounds worth of debt. We know that survivors often face crippling financial barriers when trying to protect themselves and, in many cases, their children. Would the Minister tell me why the review period for the threshold has not yet been changed and why the gap between those who are eligible for legal aid and those who can afford to pay for legal services has not received closer scrutiny during the means test review?

The previous Government completed their review in 2022 and then proposed new criteria in 2023. Implementation was later delayed and, as far as I am aware, the current Government have not yet indicated that they intend to progress the work. I would therefore appreciate an update from the Minister on the status of the legal aid means test review.

I welcome the Government’s steps to include economic abuse in the Domestic Abuse Act, but claiming that if a victim can prove they are economically abused, they will become exempt from the means test is a bit like asking victims who are under a severe threat to their health—in the most vulnerable state of their life—to sift through a haystack to find a purposefully and impossibly well-hidden needle. The £100,000 capital exemption recently introduced for the means test has been powerfully rejected by Women’s Aid and domestic abuse charities, which say that it does not go nearly far enough.

Sitting on a £1 million property that is co-owned with their perpetrator, who—guess what?—will not sell, excludes someone from any legal support. Such trapped capital should not be included in the financial eligibility calculation. I would go as far as stating that such inaccessible capital should be exempt from the means test, particularly as many victims are too afraid to leave their homes with their children as they are not certain that the family courts will bring them a positive outcome, as I have highlighted in Louise’s case.

According to the Surviving Economic Abuse 2026 report, almost 1 million women in the UK who experienced economic abuse last year said that the abuse prevented them from leaving their dangerous abuser. In the worst-case scenario, that decision, which is forced on them via our systematic failure to understand the reality of domestic abuse for victims, can be fatal. Another recent study covering a 12-year period, which included 400 homicide reviews, found that one person died every 19 days in cases that involved economic abuse. In other words, every three weeks a victim dies because an abuser uses economic abuse as a tool of control.

Refuge recently evidenced how 75 women were killed as a result of domestic homicide in the year ending 2025. Those numbers should spark outrage across our society. This final act of violence could have been prevented had there been proper legal resources in place for victims, or proper housing support that meant victims could be safe. Too many victims are forced to return to their perpetrators because they do not receive the levels of legal support needed to continue with the legal process. That means that many are unable to obtain things such as protective orders against their perpetrator, or obtain safe child contact arrangements.

Victims could even end up homeless. Those brave victim survivors who do leave their homes and apply for urgent homelessness protection can receive immediate legal support, but they end up having to go through the legal aid means test. If they are seen to have an income above the threshold, they have to support their own legal representation, when it is actually their abuser who has forced them out. Victims therefore become stuck between staying in their family home and enduring their suffering, or ending up potentially homeless—due to, again, this destructive means test.

A Cornish women’s protection centre recently reached out to me, detailing the following case that it was dealing with—for which I have again changed the name. Katy’s ex-partner abused and controlled her, both during and after their relationship ended. The ex-partner controlled contact with their children and locked Katy out of their property, resulting in her sleeping on the streets. During the family court process, which lasted 18 months, Katy had no legal aid or legal advice, and minimal support throughout the court proceedings, representing herself at the family court.

Eventually, the judge granted a non-molestation order, an occupation order, a prohibited steps order, and a full care order for the children. However, after achieving that without any access to legal advice, Katy and her children have still not been given access to their home and remain homeless. Reporting by Women’s Aid reinforces this reality. Survivors frequently cannot secure a legal aid solicitor due to the combined effects of eligibility barriers and a national shortage of legal aid providers. That leaves many women unable to challenge refusals, missing deadlines and remaining in unsafe or unsuitable accommodation because they cannot navigate the process alone.

All of that continues despite official homelessness data showing that large numbers of households become homeless or are threatened with homelessness due to domestic abuse, which means they should be treated as vulnerable and properly protected, not forced through a rigid financial test that was never designed for people fleeing violence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jess Phillips]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I was also—I feel like I have been here for ages—part of work with Surviving Economic Abuse, which the hon. Member for North Cornwall mentioned a number of times, to amend the Domestic Abuse Act to ensure that our legislation with respect to controlling or coercive behaviour included behaviour post-separation, because of the level of risk for people post-separation, which both my hon. Friend and the hon. Member alluded to. Over the years, there has been quite a lot of investment in getting somebody out in a crisis, rather than addressing the massive issues that occur in people’s lives afterwards. It is as if we tick a box when somebody leaves their home, and do not think about all the ramifications in their lives. My hon. Friend and I have worked very closely on that issue with regard to the family court and the presumption of contact, which has also been mentioned.

[Alex McIntyre]

Before she moves on from the subject of housing, does the Minister agree that the partnership between Women’s Aid, Airbnb and the Mayor of London is a really exciting pilot project for those people for whom refuges might not be the right place?

[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.