Women’s Aid

Tom Clarke Excerpts

Wednesday 14th March 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)]

I am grateful to have secured this debate on women’s aid and safety and access to benefits, and to speak under your chairmanship, Dr McCrea. I am also pleased to welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Maria Miller), who has a great interest in the subject that we are debating, and of course my right hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire).

The theme of the debate is, unmistakably, women’s aid and safety and access to benefits, but it is also predicated on an enlightened understanding of the scourge of domestic abuse, which is the root cause of the problem. I believe that there is a moral duty not to just pay lip service to an endemic problem visited on far too many women. Domestic abuse was succinctly articulated by the psychologist and author Susan Forward, PhD, who described it as

“any behaviour that is intended to control and subjugate another human being through the use of fear, humiliation, and verbal or physical assaults…it is the systematic persecution of one partner by another”.

Having assimilated and carefully studied the erudite view expressed by Dr Forward, I wish to proceed. The consequences of domestic abuse are simply horrific and lead women into a very dark place. They live a life in the most sinister, corrosive and destructive environment, which is as near to hell as it is possible to get on earth. Living under a reign of constant fear and terror of mental and physical torture damages the self-esteem of the victims, but what incalculable damage does it inflict on innocent children? We can ponder that. They, too, are often scarred for the rest of their lives.

One of the foremost international diplomats, renowned for resolving conflict around the world, the former UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, once said that domestic abuse

“denies women their most basic human rights, such as the right to health, and undermines the social and economic development of communities and whole countries…Domestic Abuse is widespread and cuts across class, age, religion and ethnic group…it has long been established that there can be no justification for any form of Domestic Abuse.”

He concluded:

“Domestic Abuse is perhaps the most shameful human rights violation, and it is perhaps the most pervasive. It knows no boundaries of geography, culture or wealth.”

Monklands Women’s Aid provides a first-class service to women and children in my constituency. Before institutions such as Women’s Aid existed, many women were forced to suffer in a chilling silence for the sake of their children. When we think back to previous generations, we can only wonder with incredulity at how many women lived in hell. We will never know how many were driven to such a level of despair that they took their own lives.

Clearly, most women did not have a way out of their oppressive environment. I am sure we all agree, irrespective of our political differences, that we do not want a return to those days. We have to understand that many of the partners have not only a physical hold over those women, but a mental hold, an iron grip, which is extremely difficult for many women to break free from. Women’s Aid is now inculcated in our society. Thankfully, women of this generation are not alone and they realise that they have a place of refuge.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this important debate; I know that that sentiment will be echoed across the Chamber. Like him, I pay tribute to my local Women’s Aid and I also pay tribute to Trafford rape crisis centre. There are some excellent organisations, as he says. Does he agree that in addition to the physical and mental abuse that he describes, there is financial abuse? As has been shown, when women are under financial pressure, it is more difficult for them to flee an abusive relationship, so at times of rising female unemployment and reduced access to financial benefits, more women might be trapped in the home in exactly the circumstances that he describes.

[Mr Clarke]

I agree and I hope to deal with some of the issues that my hon. Friend raises. That was an excellent intervention.

As an organisation, Women’s Aid has supported women from all social and financial backgrounds and continues to do so. One in four women will experience domestic abuse at some point in their life. Two women a week are murdered by a partner or ex-partner. Women living with domestic abuse are five times more likely to suffer from depression. In 90% of domestic abuse incidents where children are present in the home, they will be in the same or the next room.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is citing horrific statistics that are all too familiar. In some areas of my constituency, there are spikes in the occurrence of domestic violence that are way out of kilter with the national or local average. I ask that Ministers look at the areas where there are spikes and find out why they are happening.

[Mr Clarke]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making an extremely significant point. On average, a woman will be assaulted 35 times before reporting it to the police. It is the case that 30% of domestic abuse either starts or escalates during pregnancy. Domestic abuse can account for up to 25% of all recorded crime.

Let me outline current practices and why they should be cherished. What is the present position in terms of access to benefits? The present position permits organisations such as Women’s Aid to go through proper procedures to ensure the safety and health of women who come to them. Here, as they recognise, is the tragedy: many women who are experiencing domestic abuse blame themselves for what is happening to them. Clearly, it is not their fault. The only person to blame is the perpetrator carrying out the abuse.

Monklands Women’s Aid, in its last annual report, shone a light on the scale of the problem. The contact made with Monklands Women’s Aid involved 4,310 women, 1,202 children—from birth to 12 years—and 1,056 young people aged from 13 to 19. If such an organisation did not exist, we would need to invent one.

As I have discovered, if a woman requests refuge, a risk assessment is carried out to ensure that the service and refuge will meet her needs. A home application and benefit check is completed for the user. A doctor is then put in place to assess the health of the woman. If necessary, women are taken to hospital immediately. Social workers, community psychiatric nurses or various support networks are contacted, with the woman’s permission, for continued support. If the woman wishes, the police are called. Throughout the process, workers from Women’s Aid offer continued support. If children are involved, relevant schools and nurseries are contacted and provision put in place to make the transition for the woman as seamless as possible. A children’s service is put in place as part of the outreach programme. When women are leaving the refuge, support workers help them to move to their new tenancy and offer much needed help and support.

Institutions such as the NHS and police services can do only so much in providing support to women who are in desperate need of help and protection. The refuge is the foundation for all services provided by this organisation, and it signifies the basis of a new life for many women. It is still desperately needed by many women in emergency situations—when their lives or their children’s lives are at risk. A refuge is a haven that, on multiple occasions, has saved lives.

In all candour, the proposed reforms by the Government are worrying. All the services that I have described will effectively be wiped out, thus leaving Women’s Aid with the sole service of signposting women to other support services—if they still exist.

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

Before my right hon. Friend moves on to what may lie ahead for women in the future, may I remind him that when a woman seeks a Women’s Aid refuge, it may be the first time in their lives when they, as the partner of someone who has abused them, find themselves without money? The first port of call will be the Department for Work and Pensions. All too often the delay in securing money through the benefit system is bad, so much so that some 30% or 40% of women find themselves, out of sheer frustration, going back to the marital home and to the abuser, which is no answer to their problems. The system is already far too slow to respond to the needs of women.

[Mr Clarke]

My hon. Friend bases his contribution on experience, and he is absolutely right. He has outlined the problem that many have faced and sadly might face again, so we must take it seriously.

[Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. Its importance for me stems from the fact that the very first refuge in this country was created in my constituency. Does he agree that housing is an issue and that pressure needs to be put on councils to put women who are in a refuge, especially those with children, higher up the priority list for permanent housing? Temporary housing is not good enough. Bed and breakfast accommodation is not appropriate for children because they need some stability in their lives.

[Mr Clarke]

Housing is at the heart of everything that we are discussing and I welcome what the hon. Lady said. Perhaps this is an opportune moment to assess what is likely to happen, including in housing, post April 2013. Essentially, the key change is that housing benefit will be paid directly to the claimant through universal credit, which will adversely affect Women’s Aid.

I recognise the imposition of a system in which people are always better off in work than they are on benefits. However, the so-called simplification of merging income-related jobseeker’s allowance, housing benefit, child tax credit, working tax credit, income support and income-related employment support allowance into a single universal payment is not without problems. Although it may be desirable on paper, it will undoubtedly bring with it chaos for individuals and other charitable organisations.

Please be assured that the proposed changes would have a serious detrimental effect on Women’s Aid centres throughout the United Kingdom, and certainly in my constituency.

[Amber Rudd (Hastings and Rye) (Con)]

Like many Members here, I supported trying to get individuals responsible for their housing benefit. The fact that 75% now have to pay out of their own housing benefit is a positive step forward for individuals. However, I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that we must ensure that women in refuges or in Women’s Aid are allowed to have their housing benefit paid not directly to them, but to the supportive housing. I understand that the Department is still considering the matter, and I share his concerns that we need to ensure that the most vulnerable do not have to deal with their own finances and housing benefit in this way.

[Mr Clarke]

That is an important point and I am grateful to the hon. Lady for drawing our attention to the fact that the Department is now considering the matter. I hope that her points and those made by other hon. Members in this debate will be taken on board by the Department.

The changes under discussion would force women who go to Women’s Aid in moments of crisis to pay up front for refuge. That is money they simply do not have. The majority of women who seek help from Women’s Aid have few clothes and belongings, let alone the money to pay for refuge. Nevertheless, at present, Women’s Aid can provide refuge to any woman who turns up at its centres because it can claim a share of management costs through housing benefit. That crucial point was underlined by the hon. Lady, and will no doubt be underlined by others. The last thing that distressed women should be worried about is paying for refuge. Of all 4,000 women who were assisted by Monklands Women’s Aid group in 2011, not one of them turned up with enough money to cover the cost of the refuge.

There is an unshakeable belief, held by those who manage this service and by me, that existing resources will simply not be available. The private sector manager in North Lanarkshire council has confirmed that Women’s Aid received local housing allowance of £895.16 every four weeks for service users. Under the new rules, it may get £456.92 for four weeks. That is a terrifying prospect, which the Minister will have to address sooner rather than later.

I am now at the very heart of my argument. I have to pose the question: do the Government want women with small children walking the streets or, worse still, being forced to live in perpetuity under a reign of terror from an abusive partner? In 2013, is that the best we can do for abused women and children? I think not. Although I have political differences with the coalition Government on a range of issues, I simply do not believe that they want to make life any more unbearable for vulnerable women and children.

Let me now address my remarks to correspondence that I recently received from my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), Labour’s shadow Home Secretary and shadow Minister for Women and Equalities. She has launched a consultation on women’s safety, which will examine the impact of the Government’s decisions on women’s safety and consider how to protect and enhance it. The consultation is being chaired by Vera Baird QC, who will be supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), the shadow Minister for Equalities, and my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), the shadow Home Office Minister. I intend to contribute to this new commission.

I genuinely wish to report that I have made representations to the Government and that they have listened and acted in a manner that does not put women’s personal safety in jeopardy. For the record, I plan to invite Labour’s commission to visit and meet the management of Monklands Women’s Aid as well as the victims. In a spirit of fairness and even-handedness, I extend a similar open invitation to the Minister and her team.

On one unique occasion, I visited Women’s Aid to meet four women from different backgrounds and with different experiences of domestic abuse. Listening to each woman describe their lives was quite depressing; to think that so many have to live their lives in such fear and anxiety is truly distressing. Listening carefully to numerous examples of abuse, and sitting alongside the victims explaining their plight, was emotionally draining. There is a world of difference between reading about such stories in a book or newspaper and hearing first hand such dreadful experiences. The bottom line is that an abused household is no place for women and certainly no place for an innocent child.

I was shown a work of art that a victim’s young daughter had drawn. It had originally been on her bedroom wall in the abused household where she had lived. It was a self-portrait, showing a tear racing down her cheek. Yet, after a few days in the refuge, the girl took down the drawing from the wall. We all very much welcome that first step towards the happiness that that child was entitled to enjoy.

Women often come to the charity having had their family broken into pieces, yet there is a real sense of togetherness at the centres that allows them to feel as if they are joining a new family. The four women I met had differing stories of abuse, but there was one common feature—all of them felt trapped in their lives, as if there was no way of escape. They would never have been released from that stranglehold of entrapment and suffering had it not been for the help of Women’s Aid. The tremendous sadness that I felt initially turned to delight as I witnessed how these women had managed to turn their lives around, not only for themselves but, most importantly, for their children and for their loved ones.

[Kate Green]

My right hon. Friend is very powerfully evoking the experiences of women and their children who have suffered abuse. Does he agree that one of the things that those women particularly value when they go to a Women’s Aid refuge is that it is a service designed for, run by and informed by an ethos that is led by women’s experiences? If so, does he share my concern that increasingly services are being contracted out to organisations other than Women’s Aid—non-specialist organisations that do not have that necessary empathy with the women, however well-meaning they may be, and, indeed, can sometimes make quite crass decisions? For example, we heard just the other day of a provider that had advertised for new staff to work in its service and had actually put the address of the local refuge in a newspaper.

[Mr Clarke]

Again, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Certainly, the sheer dedication of the women working at the centres, which I have seen at Monklands Women’s Aid and elsewhere, is awesome, and I do not think that it can be replaced by commercial considerations. I therefore welcome what she has said.

[Amber Rudd]

May I just make the observation that men can also be very helpful and sympathetic on issues of domestic violence? I, too, congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing the debate.

[Mr Clarke]

I am again very grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention. Although it was not going to be a theme of my speech—given the title of my speech, it should not be a theme—I am aware that a minority of men are also abused and I know that that is something that we would want to consider.

The women I met at Women’s Aid said that they feared for what their life would have been like if it had not been for Women’s Aid. Meeting those women first hand showed just how vital organisations such as Women’s Aid are to our country. In many cases they can literally transform an individual’s life for the better. I was given an opportunity by my local Women’s Aid office to meet some of the women they serve. Most people would never get that close and my abiding memory is of the warmth and friendliness that the organisation sends out in abundance, which colleagues have rightly acknowledged today.

We need to appreciate that women can be mentally and physically tortured by their partner and that they often turn up at Women’s Aid penniless, with nothing other than what they are wearing and with traumatised children who are in desperate need of urgent help. Women’s Aid is the last resort for victims who are in a state of anxiety and who—emotionally speaking—are standing on the edge of a cliff. In that situation, the last thing that women should be worried about is paying for refuge.

When women are provided with refuge, there is a full range of follow-on services to ensure that they and their children are safe. Along with support workers, the women plan their future and one of the most important factors taken into account is their safety and that of their children. Refuge is the foundation for all the services provided by Women’s Aid and for many women it signifies the basis of a new life.

[Esther McVey (Wirral West) (Con)]

As patron of the Wirral Women and Children’s Aid refuge, I know only too well the harrowing stories of women when they arrive in refuge, having suffered terrible abuse. Obviously, the imperative is that they are looked after straight away. However, time and again, we talk about how to break that cycle of violence and that continuation of abuse. Should that not be one of the main imperatives in future, because the figures on abuse have gone up year after year? We must break that cycle of violence immediately.

[Mr Clarke]

I agree absolutely with the hon. Lady, but if—as I saw at Monklands Women’s Aid—staff at centres are compelled to contemplate the financial circumstances that they are facing as an organisation, that might take away some of the time that they would like to allocate to the wider objectives that she quite properly identifies.

For many women, the fact remains that refuge is desperately needed in emergency situations when their lives and their children’s lives are at risk. I hope that I have convinced the Minster that Women’s Aid is indeed a special case.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Just 10 days ago, I had the opportunity to visit the Women’s Aid centre in Bangor; it is in North Down, but it is also responsible for Strangford, which is my constituency. The staff there very clearly indicated the financial squeeze that faces them. They illustrated it by talking about the future not only of the centre in Bangor, which is responsible for a large catchment area, but of the staff. If the Government do not address those issues, I fear that the future of Women’s Aid will have a question mark over it, not only in the right hon. Gentleman’s constituency but in mine.

[Mr Clarke]

Again, the hon. Gentleman speaks from experience and I passionately believe that we should not ignore such experience. He is dealing with what he sees in his constituency, day after day, and also reflecting our experiences in our own constituencies elsewhere.

Frankly, life and death issues are at stake here, and children can be victims of abuse too. We need to ensure the provision of free and safe refuge, which is crucial to the safety of women and children who are suffering abuse. That is an inviolate principle. At a time of desperation, people in Monklands, across Scotland and—as we have heard—throughout the United Kingdom must be afforded the opportunity to seek refuge. Most regrettably, domestic abuse is a considerable problem across our country.

Women’s Aid also performs a major role in the continued development of the children who are affected by abuse. In many families, children are often caught in the centre of a storm, and thus Women’s Aid focuses its attention on providing continuity for such children.

I urge the Minister to reconsider the current proposals on housing benefit. My plea today is that she reflects upon the comments that I and others make. Later, other hon. Members will undoubtedly make valuable contributions to the debate, and it is more than likely that they will be based on the kind of experiences that we have already heard about from hard-working, conscientious constituency MPs.

This subject and the real people who suffer domestic violence are too important for there to be a partisan Government. I am leaving an escape route for the Government when I refer to the unintended consequences of their proposals. If the Government ignore my representations, that could have a devastating impact on women across the country, leading to more women and children walking the streets.

We need the continuation of the marvellous back-up services that are provided by Women’s Aid and—lest we forget—managed by outstanding, caring people. Today I want not only to convince the Minister but to gain support from all parties. We cannot and we must not abandon women who are seeking refuge. In the words of the late Mother Teresa of Calcutta:

“Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody…is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty, than the person who has nothing to eat.”