Support for Victims of Abuse
What steps his Department is taking to support women and children who have experienced abuse to access support services.
This Government are supporting victims with more than £1 billion of funding, including £499 million for safe housing for victims of abuse, and the largest ever investment—£550 million—in victim support services, over the next three years. Under the victims code, all victims are entitled to referral to victim support services.
I recently visited the Liberty Centre in my constituency, a fantastic charitable organisation that supports individuals and families who have been affected by domestic abuse and violence. It told me that it could fill its refuge places three times over, but it does not have the resources. Will the Minister say what the Government are doing to ensure that voluntary and charitable organisations that do such excellent work in this space continue to be supported and sustained?
I thank my hon. Friend for raising the hugely vital work that the Liberty Centre does. Local authorities in England have a statutory duty to assess and address the need for support, with safe accommodation for all domestic abuse victims, including children who need to flee their home. Lancashire county council has been allocated more than £3.3 million to support important local services, such as those delivered by the Liberty Centre—part of the £499 million the Government have committed to councils to commission lifesaving accommodation support for victims, in our mission to halve violence against women and girls within a decade.
In Gravesham, I recently visited the new Maltings child contact centre hosted by the City Praise Centre in Chalk. It is the only one in north Kent, and provides a calm, safe place for parents to meet their children. It takes place on a Saturday once a month from 10 am to 12 noon. Given the vital role that local organisations play in supporting families to connect and reconnect safely, what steps is the Minister taking to ensure that services such as these are more widely available?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Child contact services provide safe and neutral spaces for children to meet parents or other family members that they do not live with as part of supervised or supported contact arrangements. I thank my hon. Friend for highlighting the work done at the new Maltings centre. This Government are committed to supporting this sector and we provide £450,000 to assist supported child contact centres in England and Wales, as well as funding their national association for its work on training standards and monitoring.
The brilliant Denise Farman has been the chief officer of Women’s Aid in Grimsby for the last 25 years. She has pioneered move on accommodation for those women and children leaving refuge to start to build the foundations of their new life, which has been remarkably successful. She notes, however, that there are more than 2,000 empty properties across north east Lincolnshire. Has the Department had any discussions with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government about how we can better integrate projects such as Denise’s for this move on and supported accommodation, and about linking it up with an empty home strategy?
It is powerful to hear about the impact that Women’s Aid is having in my hon. Friend’s constituency. I visited Black Country Women’s Aid and Solace Women’s Aid in London and listened to victims and survivors who told me what it meant to them to have been provided with a place of safety and sanctuary. The Government’s strategy for halving violence against women and girls is truly cross departmental, and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government have committed £499 million to councils for safe accommodation for victims. The Government want more empty homes brought back into use and intend to strengthen the ability of local authorities to do so.
I recently met a constituent whose child was subject to repeated sexual abuse. She found access to justice very difficult and is still awaiting trial, but now fears that the accuser will not be found fit for trial and will be subject to a trial on the facts. She is now fearful that if the accuser is found guilty on the facts, they will not be subject to appropriate sanctions—for example, being subject to DBS checks. What reassurances can the Minister give my constituent about the resources allocated to such prosecutions, both by the police and the criminal justice service, about whether the bar for somebody being appropriate to stand trial is correct, and what sanctions will be applied, because they are fearful that this person will be at liberty in the wider community, subsequent to conviction?
Under this Government, prosecutions and convictions for child sexual abuse have gone up, but I would be willing to meet the hon. Member to discuss this case.
Children are often forgotten when abuse has taken place in a household. Following the brutal murder of Natalie McNally and her unborn son, Dean, in my constituency in December 2022, why does the law still fail to recognise the death of an unborn baby caused by criminal violence as a separate offence? On the day Stephen McCullagh murdered Natalie, he murdered her unborn child, too, yet there has been no conviction and no acknowledgment that baby Dean was of inherent value. Will the Government commit to reviewing the law, and will the Minister meet me to discuss it?
I am very happy to meet the hon. Member to discuss this issue. Domestic violence and all its ramifications are absolutely the priority of this Government, which is why we are determined to halve violence against women and girls within a decade.
Disgracefully, there are some in this House who believe that it is for the England football team to prevent domestic abuse, whereas we all know that it is for perpetrators to stop their abuse. As for those making more positive and valuable contributions in this space, will the Minister join me in celebrating the amazing work of Eastbourne Survivors, who support folks on an entirely voluntary basis to recover from the abuse they have experienced throughout their lives?
I absolutely join the hon. Gentleman in celebrating the work of Eastbourne Survivors. He is right that domestic violence is a choice for perpetrators; it is not about the score when the final whistle goes. To frame it in any other way does a significant disservice in allowing perpetrators to try to deflect from their actions.
I call the shadow Minister.
One thing that we know children will contact victim support services about is the letters they receive telling them that their abusers will be getting out of prison earlier. Victim Support supports more than 814,000 victims every year, and its CEO, Katie Kempen, had this to say: “Having already endured long waits for justice—often with their lives on hold—and the distress of going to court, many will feel shocked and frightened to learn that offenders may now be released months or even years earlier than expected.”
She is right, isn’t she?
It is important that there is transparency and communication with victims, unlike what we saw under the Conservatives; when they were letting people out, they did so with almost no notice, if any at all. I absolutely acknowledge the concerns from victims, but what is not in the interests of victims is having prisons so overcrowded that perpetrators cannot be housed in cells. What the last Government did to our prisons—leaving them so full that the entire criminal justice system was at risk of collapsing—is an absolute disgrace, and yet again, it is this Government who are clearing up their mess.
I am in wholehearted agreement with the Minister that transparency is really important. One thing that would help Victim Support and other organisations to plan their response is knowing how many people are getting out and what offences they have committed, but like us, they are in the dark.
I thank you, Mr Speaker, because your intervention yesterday prompted the Department into publishing a response to my question, but it was not an answer. Shockingly, the Government now officially say that they do not know how many people they are letting out in September. If the Minister and the Government refuse to tell us, can they at least let victim support services and victims know when they will tell this House, victim support services and the wider public how many perpetrators of serious offences they are letting out and when that will start?
The Government have published the victim impact assessment and are ensuring that people are communicated with. What is essential is that the Government have a violence against women and girls strategy, which will ensure that we are pursuing perpetrators, supporting victims and stopping violence in the first place. This Government, yet again, are clearing up the Conservatives’ mess, whether it is to do with prisons, backlogs or the investment we are making to support victims.