Oral Answers to Questions

Cat Eccles Excerpts

Monday 25th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Seema Malhotra]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. The death and destruction in Gaza are intolerable, and I assure her that that application is being looked at very closely and she should be receiving an update very soon.

[Cat Eccles (Stourbridge) (Lab)]

7. What steps her Department is taking to help tackle domestic abuse.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jess Phillips)]

The Government have set out an unprecedented mission to halve violence against women and girls within a decade. I say this on White Ribbon Day, and it is good to see everybody wearing their white ribbons. We are determined to tackle the scourge of domestic abuse in all its forms. From early 2025, Raneem’s law, which will embed domestic abuse specialist teams into 999 control rooms in order to improve the police response to domestic abuse crimes, will ensure that victims get a swift and specialist response when they call for help. We will also, finally, launch the pilot of the domestic abuse protection orders and roll them out across the country, which the previous Government failed to do three years after the fact of the law changing. So we will be providing stronger protections for survivors and ensuring that perpetrators are properly monitored and managed.

[Cat Eccles]

I thank the Minister for her response. My constituent Samantha Billingham is a domestic abuse survivor who now runs training sessions on coercive control. Coercive control is a thread that runs throughout all abuse, and I was shocked to hear that it does not form a core part of the training for the police, social workers or any other domestic violence training. Will the Minister meet me and Samantha to ensure that coercive control forms a key part of domestic violence training?