Domestic Violence Refuges: Funding

Chris Elmore Excerpts

Tuesday 12th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Jess Phillips]

It is a totally untenable situation. I understand that we all have to cut our cloth to meet our needs; however, I never hear Ministers just say, “We can’t afford this.” If that is the reality, they should come out and say it. We cannot say that we will do something about the problem, when the reality is laid so bare across the country.

I would stake £100 million on the fact that the first page of the Minister’s speech is about the £100 million that the Government are investing to prove their commitment to the problem of domestic violence. He has time to amend that now; otherwise I will owe him £100 million. Where the hell is the money going? By all accounts it is stuck in a local authority commissioning problem in most cases, which should be a warning for the future. I am not seeing any extra money. What I am seeing is 90 women and 94 children turned away from refuges every day. I am seeing Birmingham City Council removing 2 million quid from their supported accommodation budget in 2020, including refuge accommodation. The local drop-in services for victims across the city have already gone and the housing and homeless advice provided in local neighbourhood offices has also gone—but then so have the neighbourhood offices.

Where is the £100 million? Has the Minister’s Department done an assessment of how much local councils have taken out of domestic and sexual violence services in the last seven years? The £100 million cannot be a number that people say at the Dispatch Box; it needs to mean something. Although I am not normally a betting woman, I will go double or quits with the Minister that, in fact, much more than £100 million has been taken out of local services.

I pay tribute to the 118,000 people who signed Women’s Aid’s petition to stop those changes. The specialist women’s sector have all come out to say that the proposed refuge funding changes will potentially cut a third of all refuge beds. We must listen to the sector and think again. In total, Women’s Aid estimates that 588 bed spaces will be lost—places that would have supported 2,058 women and 2,202 children during this year. When added to those who were already turned away, as my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) said, the result is 4,000 women and children being turned away from life-saving services that they desperately need.

I will add my two pennies’ worth—or my £10 million; I seem to be in over my head financially—and say that is not that complicated. We must make refuge accommodation a statutory requirement of local authorities and give local councils exactly what that costs, along with guidance and standards. We have written those before and it is not rocket science; we used to have them when I first started. We used to require councils to provide one bed space for every 10,000 of the population. I remember filling in the very dull monitoring forms myself. Let us look at what is actually needed and fund that.

We cannot just let some councils opt out. I have been a local councillor; in fact, I oversaw much of the vulnerable adults commissioning. Local councils care, but if there is a homelessness problem and a pot of money that will pay to solve that regardless of the actual needs of those who need housing, councils will take the path of least resistance. Local commissioning practices, which often lack domestic violence expertise, have severely damaged specialist refuge provision. In the context of major demand for refuge and other short-term services, budget constraints and pressures on local authorities to improve homelessness provision, there will be little incentive to commission a range of specialist services that meet differing needs. Instead, this one-size-fits-all model will further encourage generic, short-term housing that can be provided at lower cost but does not deliver the specialist support of a refuge. I will not bore hon. Members with details of what a murder costs the taxpayer, or how much money we spend on victims of violent crime in our A&E services. I am bored of saying how much money would be saved if we got this right. I have been saying that for years and I will say it for years to come.

I ask the Minister to do the following, and I am sure he will recognise that I will keep on pushing until he agrees, so he could save us both a lot of time and effort: he must halt the proposal to include refuges in the new funding model for short-term supported housing services, at least until the Government’s comprehensive review of refuge funding has been completed in 2018. I ask him to work with me, Women’s Aid and specialist refuge providers to design a new model that will provide a long-term and sustainable funding solution for refuges.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a hugely important and passionate speech on this subject, which I know she cares so much about. She has mentioned lots of services in England, but could I take her to Wales for a moment? The Welsh Government have devolved responsibility for many of the areas that she is discussing. We have the Violence against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (Wales) Act 2015, which brings consistency, quality of service and joined-up service provision for women and children who are seeking refuge, and I am sure that there is a similar situation in Scotland. Does she agree that the Government need to learn from devolved Administrations about this work? Also, the Welsh Government have allocated an extra £500,000 to tackle some of the cuts coming from consequentials in relation to refuge and housing benefit changes linked to domestic violence cases. Does she share my view?

[Jess Phillips]

As somebody who moans about how everything is so London-centric, I recognise that I am a bit England-centric. I apologise for that. When I worked in a refuge, we always rolled our eyes a little at the standards in Wales and Scotland. We used to say, “We wish it was a bit more like that here.” One particular area of Wales seemed to get all the innovative projects. Scotland absolutely leads the way in promoting the message that domestic abuse and sexual violence are completely intolerable. Compared with England, Scotland has always had the run on the cultural debate. The Governments of all the devolved nations and the Westminster Government need to work together to ensure that we do not have a postcode lottery, which is exactly what we have now.

The final thing I wish the Minister to commit to is a big one. I want him to make a clear commitment that no refuges will close or have to turn any women or children away as a result of the new funding model. The domestic violence and abuse Bill will, I hope, be a great thing, and I will support the Government in making that so. It would be a shame if we had to seek to amend it to include mandatory funding for refuge accommodation. If the Government get this wrong, it will be a stain on their record. They have always committed morally to this problem, although they have perhaps found committing resources a little more difficult.

I want the Minister to focus on the dancing, laughing 11-year-old. I want him to imagine her and her family support worker working through her trauma. I want him to see her mom slowly but surely take over the reins, so that that little girl can be free from her responsibility as the protector. I do not want to see her living in any old bed in any old service, away from her things, her school and her friends, with nothing but a bed. I do not want her to be the protector anymore—I want it to be us. She was magical. Her name was Aliyah and I will never forget her.