International Women’s Day

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage Excerpts

Friday 8th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords—sisters and supporter brothers—being the last of 34 speakers is something of a challenge. It has been such a privilege to listen to all the different aspects that we have heard today in this International Women’s Day debate. I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Casey. I first heard of her when I worked in policing many years ago. She showed extraordinary clarity then, as she did today, and I look forward to hearing many more speeches from her in this House.

I also congratulate Brenda Dacres, who was elected today as the first black woman mayor in a directly elected role in the UK. I send congratulations to her.

Sadly, too many women today are weakened, both mentally and physically, as a result of the domestic abuse they suffer, as my noble friend Lady Donaghy said. The effects are not only life-changing but life-lasting and, sometimes, life-limiting. Their ability to participate in economic activity can be permanently or temporarily impacted. Often, trying to carry on with a career when home is a place of terror and fear can be overwhelming, as is the dreadful fear of stigma and shame that someone will find out that life is not as it appears to be. For many women, however dreadful the abuse they suffer, the fear that escaping it can mean losing their home, financial security and status—and, in the worse cases, their children—will keep them in unimaginable and unendurable circumstances.

When we set up Survivors Against Domestic Abuse some 11 years ago, it was to provide the support that our victims and survivors wanted and, more importantly, designed for themselves. Many of the services that they used were designed by well-intentioned and caring professionals, but they did not address the very real fears that our survivors were dealing with on a day-to-day basis. For example, they often involved removing the family from the local area where they had support, work and schools. I should say that of course there are some situations where there is no other option than to move away, but, more often than not, it can be managed without that further trauma.

Domestic abuse victims suffer devasting consequences in their working lives. Research tells us that 60% feel that the abuse has a negative impact on their ability to work, and 50% believe that it affects their long-term employment prospects and earnings. More than 40% end up with considerable debt, sometimes because there is coercive control of family finances, leaving victims to turn to high-cost lenders for basic essentials. Across a range of initiatives in housing, health, financial services, including benefits, and the criminal justice system, and through an awareness in all workplaces, there is still so much to be done to help victims and survivors to continue their work and careers.

One of our early initiatives was Safe Space, which I mentioned in a Question earlier this week. We now have 35 safe spaces across Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire. They are fully furnished and equipped properties, ready to move into even if you flee abuse in the middle of the night with nothing but the clothes you stand up in. There will be food vouchers there, and even a backpack for children, with a teddy and a specially written book to ease the trauma. You can stay there on a short tenancy licence while you make up your mind what to do next, but it means that you can carry on working, if you want to, we will help get children to their schools, and our partnership with the local police means that all these properties are as secure as we can make them.

For health and mental health support, we need fast-track empathetic services for survivors. Most women experience 20 episodes of abuse before they seek help. They must get help immediately, when they need it. Can we hear from the Minister what more can be done to fast-track that?

We trained every member of staff from council directors to repairs and maintenance teams to understand the signs of domestic abuse both within the workplace and among our tenants and residents and to know how to respond when they had concerns. We now offer that training widely across local employers. Will the Minister say what more can be done to support such training in the workplace?

We now need the financial services industry and the benefits system to recognise the impact of domestic abuse and to respond quickly and effectively to meet the needs of abuse victims. If we could not make abuse victims wait five weeks while their universal credit applications are processed that would be a transformation.

The court system too often revictimises those in terrible trauma from abuse as a result of patchy witness support and poor witness accommodation in courts to the issue raised by so many survivors: the fear and trauma of parental access. I remember one victim’s words in a letter to our police commissioner David Lloyd: “Mr Lloyd, I will live for ever with the fact that this man wants to kill me and my children and that, one day, he might do so”. What is being done to make this better?

For our survivors, rebuilding confidence and skills and helping them to rebuild broken lives are vital. Local government is so often left with this task with funding cobbled together from a multitude of bidding pots. How much better it would be to have a strong, permanent, flexible fund that does not run out after a few days so that we can do this. I hope the Minister comments on that.

This is a global problem, as outlined by the recent IMF study and many noble Lords in this debate. High levels of domestic abuse decrease the number of women in the workforce, minimise women’s acquisition of skills and education and result in more resources being channelled into healthcare and judicial services. All this has a potential impact on GDP of up to 2%. Surely we cannot allow that to go on. Let us listen to victims and survivors and design solutions that disrupt the cycle of abuse to ensure that women reach their very full and extraordinary potential.