Oral Answers to Questions

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Laura Farris]

I say to the hon. Lady that that is not accepted. In fact, the Health Secretary made an announcement on maternal services this week; I think it would be appropriate to refer to my colleagues at the Department of Health and Social Care, and then I will write to the hon. Lady on this point.

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

3. Whether she has had recent discussions with the Domestic Abuse Commissioner on taking steps to help tackle so-called honour-based abuse.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Laura Farris)]

I meet the Domestic Abuse Commissioner regularly, and our last joint visit was to a refuge for minoritised women for whom honour-based abuse was a specific issue. It is important work of the Home Office to look at the specific harms connected with this issue. One of the things we are most proud of is our forced marriage unit, which has provided support services to more than 300 cases in the past year. We also fund a national honour-based abuse helpline, which has helped more than 2,500 people in the past 12 months.

[Kim Johnson]

Savera UK, which is based in my constituency, and the Domestic Abuse Commissioner are concerned by this Government’s failure to provide a statutory definition of so-called honour-based abuse. Does the Minister agree that that will lead to under-reporting and a lack of detail on the scale of the problem?

[Laura Farris]

I am afraid that the Government take the opposite view. We use the expression honour-based abuse, which has been controversial in itself, because often victims understand it the best. Victims of honour-based abuse are often the hardest to reach, and sometimes are the least able to articulate their claims and to escape their circumstance. We keep the definition wide to capture successfully all the various insidious forms that it takes. Let me reassure the hon. Lady that both the Crown Prosecution Service and the Home Office use a working definition to guide investigations and, so far, it is proving effective.