Baroness Boycott
Main Page: Baroness Boycott (Crossbench - Life peer)
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist
I acknowledge the noble Baroness’s long-standing huge commitment to this issue, but I believe that her specific concerns will be addressed in the new Domestic Abuse Bill, which includes a duty on local authorities to research and find all the possible outcomes we can give to these victims of abuse. The sustainable funding provided in the Bill will be confirmed in the spending review which we will announce by the summer. In the meantime, we will have this emergency funding until the Bill comes into effect.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
It is nearly 50 years since I went to the first women’s refuge in Chiswick High Road, started by Erin Pizzey. At that point the grim statistics were that 1.5 women a week were killed in the UK by their partners or their husbands. That figure is now nearer to two per week. This is International Women’s Day and I find it unbelievable that over these years the situation is even worse. It is horrific that refuges are closing down. I urge the Government to follow up on the previous point. What systems are in place to help women afterwards and to help children who are orphaned in this awful way? If we put all these women being killed together in one place, there would be a national outcry, yet it never appears on the front pages of newspapers. This crime goes on and on.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist
The Domestic Abuse Bill will focus on providing new money for refuges. We also provide significant funding for community-based services, because we recognise their importance, including perpetrator programmes and community-based independent domestic violence advocates. Support services for victims of domestic abuse are currently provided through a whole range of organisations, including police and crime commissioners, local authorities, direct government grants and voluntary and community sector organisations. I am very pleased that the designated domestic abuse commissioner, Nicole Jacobs, has agreed to lead an in-depth exploration of the current support landscape in 2021. The former CEO of the charity Standing Together Against Domestic Violence, she said she had no quarrels with this Bill at all.