Domestic Violence Refuges: Funding

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Tuesday 12th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I join other Members in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) on securing the debate.

We are talking today about funding for women in the most frightening and desperate of circumstances. I feel that there is a double injustice: not only are these women subjected to abuse and violence, but it is they, and not the perpetrator, who have to leave their home with their children, uprooting them from friends, family and schools.

Providing shelter for anyone able to flee an abusive relationship must be a basic requirement of Government in a country where two women each week are killed by their current or former partners. The security that a refuge provides is the minimum we should be able to guarantee for survivors. Unfortunately, we are not currently fulfilling that guarantee, with 60% of referrals to refuges being declined. On any given day this year, around 90 women and their children were turned away from a refuge because there was not capacity to take them in. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Julie Cooper) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) about that exact situation. How heartbreaking for a victim who has made the incredibly brave step of seeking safety to then be told that there is nowhere for them to go.

As previous speakers have noted, this is not a niche issue. There were more than 1 million recorded cases of domestic violence and abuse last year. Although their record is far from perfect, the Government have recognised the terror that victims of domestic abuse face. They promised new legislation to provide greater protection to victims in this year’s Queen’s Speech, including welcome measures to prevent victims from having to face their former partners in court. That is something I have called for, and I joined others in delivering a petition to Downing Street on that subject. In her previous role as Home Secretary, the Prime Minister introduced Clare’s law and made coercive behaviour an offence; both those measures were extremely welcome. All of this prompts a question: at a time when domestic violence is so prevalent and when domestic abuse-related offences now account for one in three of all violent crimes, why are the Government holding back the provision of refuge for victims?

Frankly, the Government appear to have stumbled into their current position on refuges. Changes to funding were initially announced two years ago in the 2015 autumn statement, capping housing benefit at local housing allowance rates and ignoring the significantly higher costs that supported housing incurs compared with general housing. My hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) talked eloquently about the inadequacies of that decision. The effects of the policy had obviously not been thought through. After the likely effects were made clear, implementation of the policy was delayed, and a review was then set up. Just ahead of this year’s Budget, it was finally dropped. Thankfully, a better solution has been found for the majority of supported housing, but the proposed model for very short-term supported housing—meaning shelters for people in the most extreme and desperate of crises—is a different matter.

The Women’s Aid survey of refuge providers tells us that the new funding model could force over half to close or reduce their provision, equivalent to 4,000 extra women and children being refused the services they need because of a shortage of spaces and resources. In the light of the points made by my hon. Friends the Members for Coventry North East (Colleen Fletcher), for Nottingham North (Alex Norris), for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin) and for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous), we really cannot allow that to happen. The prospect should send shivers down the spine of anyone who wishes to tackle the burning injustices present in Britain today.

Following the coalition Government’s decision to transfer the support element of funding for refuges into overall local authority budgets while making huge cuts to councils’ funding, 17% of specialist refuges had closed by 2014. It is little wonder that putting the entirety of state funding for refuges into the hands of local authorities, which are already under pressure, has caused so much concern for my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley and others working in the sector.

We have seen the consequences of the past two years of uncertainty about the future of funding for supported housing, with 85% of new schemes put on hold, denying vulnerable people the homes they need. These proposals could see that same damaging uncertainty locked into the short-term supported housing sector if the funding is liable to change from one year to the next. Some local authorities currently provide no refuge support at all—my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley highlighted the Prime Minister’s own council area. How will that be factored into the new system without requiring shelters in areas that have above-average provision to cut down?

When the shadow Children’s Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin), came to my constituency last month, we visited my local refuge, which is run by the indefatigable Denise Farman. It provides fantastic facilities, with special play areas for children and extra bedrooms built into its housing provision. It also provides counselling support through play for children. The refuge receives no extra funding for that, but provides it because it is a necessary part of support for families. These places are just as important for the children as they are for the women, particularly because in two thirds of abusive relationships, the children are directly harmed, while they must also be suffering mentally from having to witness extreme abuse.

The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) said that the majority of victims going to shelters flee their local area and that this is a national issue, but the Government’s consultation document makes reference to local need. This really is a national issue that demands that support be provided for victims across the country.

Having read the Government’s reasons for the changes to funding, I cannot see any justification for the provision of short-term supported housing to be removed as a duty of the central welfare system. Can the Minister try to provide one today? If the change is made and has the effect that every provider of women’s refuges believes it will, where will the women go who benefit from the information made available to them through Clare’s law? What about the women who the domestic violence and abuse Bill seeks to embolden to contact the police? How likely are they to pick up the phone to report an abusive partner if they are unable to find anywhere to go?