Victims Strategy

Eddie Hughes Excerpts

Thursday 11th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

This is just my luck. I come to the Chamber to make two brief but personal points only to be preceded by a subject matter expert. The hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) is clearly a black belt in all details relating to this topic, so before I even begin my speech I feel somewhat inadequate—

[Gavin Newlands]

Hear, hear. [Laughter.]

[Eddie Hughes]

Not funny. However, I will proceed with my speech anyway.

On 28 September, according to the Express & Star, a young man in my constituency was involved in an altercation with some other boys. This 10-year-old lad was wearing hearing aids at the time, but they were pulled off his ears and stamped on during the altercation. The incident was reported in the local newspaper and clearly struck a chord with the local community. Earlier on, my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (James Cleverly) mentioned the idea that the compensation scheme should be “pacey” and the hon. Member for Rotherham just highlighted the fact that there is no timetable for compensation, but I am delighted to say that the good people of Beechdale and Walsall moved quicker than that.

Michelle Mansell set up a crowdfunding page through JustGiving. She intended to try to raise £500, stating on the page that she wanted to show the boy that there are more good people out there than bad. That £500 target was quickly reached and surpassed, so she then set the bar at £1,500. Just before I got up to speak, I noticed that the current amount is £5,778, which just goes to show that while the victims strategy is valid and while it is incredibly important that we as a Government provide support for victims, the support provided by close family, friends and the community is perhaps more important. The intention is not that that responsibility should be abdicated to the Government.

Like many other people, I would obviously like to see more police on our streets. I have lobbied the Chancellor and the Policing Minister to achieve that, but a conversation that I had with a chief constable some time ago encapsulated part of the problem and the reason for this victims strategy. He said that the police can do anything, but they cannot do everything. If there is a problem with crime in a particular area, the police could flood in and massively reduce or eradicate the crime, but that would only create crime in areas from where resources had been redeployed. Regardless of how many police we have, we must accept that there will always be victims of crime, which is why the strategy is so valid.

Before I became an MP, I worked for YMCA in Birmingham, a homeless charity for young people providing 300 units of accommodation. We set up our business to ensure that senior members of staff were based in areas where we offered residential accommodation, so the opportunity to see young people who were having the benefit of our services on a daily basis was a natural part of the job and there I heard stories of young people who had lived in families where domestic violence was prevalent.

The Children’s Commissioner published a report earlier this year and the figures stated suggested that 825,000 children in the UK were in a family where domestic violence is prevalent. This is not just a UK problem. I briefly read a report from UNICEF that suggests that at any one time there might be as many as 275 million children facing the problem around the world. The problem is huge and complex, because the exposure to that domestic violence might take many forms. The children might witness it first hand, they might be in another room listening, or they might be upstairs lying on their bed frightened about what is occurring.

The treatment of this problem and the support given to those young people will take many different forms, so I was delighted to read the prospectus that the Government produced in July setting out how people could apply for a chunk of that £8 million of funding. My understanding is that the minimum grant people would apply for is £500,000, and one of the most important things in considering those applications for funding is that the project being proposed should be scalable and should demonstrate interaction with other parties. Many stakeholders should be involved. Why? Because the experience those children will have will manifest itself in many different ways. With some resilient children, it might be hardly noticeable, but with others it might have some serious psychological effects. The terrible thing would be that the change in their behaviour would be interpreted by those who interact with them, perhaps by social workers or school teachers, as having a different source, so it is incredibly important that we provide funds to ensure absolutely that we provide all the support we can for the 825,000 children who might be experiencing domestic violence in their home. That is why I so strongly welcome the report presented by the Minister.