Migrant Women: Domestic Abuse

Lord Woolley of Woodford Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I agree with my noble friend that accessibility to online services is crucial, and in fact we announced funding to help with online services during the Covid period. I wholeheartedly support her point about people who have very little English. I have met women in such situations who not only cannot speak English but have had their passports taken away from them. That leaves them in the most vulnerable situation imaginable, as they are not even able to explain what has happened to them.

[Lord Woolley of Woodford (CB) [V]]

The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants argued, even before the Covid pandemic, that having no recourse to public funds had pushed families into abject poverty, unsustainable debt and homelessness. Covid has exacerbated this problem, particularly with regard to the rise of domestic violence suffered by migrant women. As a matter of urgency and decency, can we massively widen the exceptions to “no recourse to public funds” or, at best during this difficult time, abandon it?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

As a matter of course during the Covid pandemic, if someone is a victim of domestic violence, they are effectively supported as such first and foremost, before any other considerations are taken into account. Certainly, “no recourse to public funds” change of conditions grants have been 89% successful. I do not take away from what the noble Lord says at all, because he is asking whether we can help these people as victims of domestic violence first and foremost.