Baroness Barker
Main Page: Baroness Barker (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Barker's debates with the Home Office
(4 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberI join the noble Lord in his praise for the Clewer Initiative. We feel that victims have been more in danger not because local services are not available to them but because we fear that many of them, particularly in situations of domestic abuse and slavery, are actually locked in with the exploiter or the abuser.
The initial review from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of abortion services delivered by telemedicine during Covid showed that staff, highly trained in safeguarding, have found trafficked women. Will the Minister’s department work with the Department of Health and Social Care to evaluate and make this telemedicine service permanent?
I fully support what the noble Baroness has said. I will certainly go back to the department in terms of the permanency of this, but she is right to point out that it is another indicator of what might be going on.