Cat Smith
Main Page: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Wyre)Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
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Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, and it is a pleasure to speak in this debate, which was secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Julie Cooper).
I should put on record the fact that I am a trustee of a charity, Empowerment, which has provided independent domestic violence advocacy services along the Fylde coast and across north Lancashire. I am also a long-time supporter of the Women’s Aid charity, having spent many years fundraising for Lancaster and District Women’s Aid by putting on performances of plays such as “The Vagina Monologues”, where women come together to talk about women’s lives and their bodies, and to raise money for those sisters who are fleeing violence.
That is an important point to make, because the funding for women’s refuges comes from three main sources. Yes, it comes from the rent that the women pay, but there is also charitable income—raised by people like me many others across the country, who either drop some coins into a charity box, do fundraising fun runs or put on performances of “The Vagina Monologues”—and local government funding, which has been under particular strain recently.
Every year, around 12,000 women and their children use refuge services, so nobody can say that their lives have not been affected by domestic violence—if someone thinks there is nobody in their life who is affected by domestic violence, perhaps the people affected are just not telling them, because domestic violence is very difficult to talk about. That is why these services are absolutely critical and why it pains me that, on one day in 2014, 112 women and their 84 children were turned away from refuges because there were not enough spaces for them. When two women a week are killed by a partner or former partner, we are talking about a crisis and one that, frankly, is only getting worse.
I want to raise the capping of housing benefit to the rate of the local housing allowance in the social sector, because it is having a crushing effect on the funding for our women’s refuges. The money from housing benefit is the secure funding that the refuges know they can receive and rely on in a very insecure world. The capping policy will have an impact on refuges, which use the housing benefit claimed by their clients to cover their rent and service costs, because delivering women’s refuge services is not cheap.
These are specialist services. The independent domestic violence advisers will support a woman and her children to come out of domestic violence and to rebuild their lives, a point that other speakers have highlighted. In response to written questions, Ministers have confirmed that they do not have basic information about the number of people in supported housing claiming housing benefit. We need to find that out, because the impact of the Government’s decisions is crushing the support offered by women’s refuges.
I am disappointed that the hon. Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson) is not in his place, because he has been talking quite a bit in the press about women’s refuges in my county of Lancashire. I would like to tell him that no council, whatever its political colour, would choose to cut support for women fleeing violence. All parties know that women need these services. I honestly believe that all councils, whatever their colour, want to deliver these services, but we are seeing huge cuts. In Lancashire, we are expected to make another £262 million of savings over the next four years. These services are not statutory, and we have to deliver the statutory services, so there comes a point where women’s refuges are taking the hit. One third of all local authority-funded domestic violence services had been cut by 2012.
Given that the last women’s refuge in Cumbria closed its doors in March and 46 women have already died this year, we know that we need to be doing far more to support women’s refuges. We need more women’s refuges, not fewer. I implore the Minister to look again, particularly at the housing benefit changes, and to exempt refuges.