Baroness Burt of Solihull
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Violence Against Women and Girls
Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts(4 days, 2 hours ago)
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Baroness Smith of Cluny (Lab)
I think the noble Baroness’ comments reflect my comment, indeed my opening sentence, which is that this Government are treating this as a national emergency. On online safety, we are working with Ofcom to ensure that the Online Safety Act is implemented quickly, and Ofcom is already enforcing duties on publishers of pornography. Services within the scope of the Online Safety Act must take action to tackle illegal pornographic content, and the strategy we are working on will take into account all these issues and bring a holistic approach to them.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
My Lords, the domestic abuse charity Women’s Aid welcomed the Labour Government’s pledge to halve violence against women and girls in a decade. However, it also urged the Government to address the funding gap of £232 million that domestic abuse services are experiencing right now. As violence against women and girls offences constitute more than one in six of all offences reported in Britain, how will the Government halve domestic violence against women and girls if those charities are £232 million short before we even start?
Baroness Smith of Cluny (Lab)
It is vital that we work with the third sector on the strategy and that the Government work with other public bodies and with the private sector. That is why we are engaging across the sector to ensure that the new cross-government approach and strategy is effective. On funding, we have spent £20 million on domestic abuse and stalking perpetrator interventions and £17.4 million on victims services, including national helplines and specialist services, which is an increase of £3 million from the last financial year. There is an additional £27 million to strengthen policing and wider criminal justice system responses and £2.47 million on prevention and early intervention to help stop these crimes happening in the first place. We will be working in the coming weeks to finalise our wider budget in support of the strategy.