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Violence against Women and Children

My Lords, we on these Benches pay warm tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, for initiating this debate and for her introduction, which drew the breadth of the problem to our attention. She referred also to the costs to society, and not just the financial ones, enormous as those are. She set the tone for a very constructive debate. It is clear that a Minister from almost any department, certainly those covering children and families, health or the Home Office, could have answered this debate. We are very lucky to have here the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland of Asthal, who is and will continue to be such a strong advocate across Government on this critical issue. Before I turn to the many issues relating to domestic violence in the UK, I echo some of the points so eloquently made by my noble friend Lady Northover. She spoke of the situation in developing countries and of ““living on the edge””. I declare an interest as one of the chairs of the All-Party Group on Street Children and a trustee of the International Children’s Trust. Her words echoed what we have seen in so many presentations by NGOs and what I have seen in visits to street children projects abroad. The children are so often there not because they do not have families but because they have been driven out of home by the sort of violence that we are talking about this afternoon. One of the worst differences for children in that situation in many countries is that those agencies which should be protecting them, such as the police, are the very people who then abuse them and, in some cases, even kill them. I congratulate the Government on their efforts to allow the Home Office to send police to other countries to work with the police there on these issues. It is a tremendously important area of work that is often not much recognised. I also congratulate the Consortium for Street Children, the umbrella organisation for about 70 NGOs, large and small, on the work that it continues to do on violence and street children, bringing that problem to the attention of Governments throughout the world, and on working with UNICEF, which, until now, has failed to identify street children as a particular group. That brings enormous problems, because those children do not have the same access to the services they desperately need as other children. I am very grateful to my noble friend for drawing out that essential element in this debate. I am glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, phrased her Motion widely enough to allow us to do that. On the situation in the UK, I am pleased that the debate has focused on the theme of children and how to break the cycle of violence and abuse. Noble Lords have said that there is no funding for places for children in refuges. One of the most striking things, when visiting a refuge, is how many children are there. According to the organisation Refuge—the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, who is a patron, spoke about it—two thirds of the places in refuges are taken up by children. Those places have no statutory funding; they have to be funded by charitable fundraising. The funding comes through those women who qualify for support for their stay. This is a particularly grave situation when, for the very reasons outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, funding is becoming harder to come by. If we want to break the cycle of violence, it is essential to address the position of children in refuges. The speech by my noble friend Lady Walmsley taught me a lot that I did not know about, and outlined brilliantly the biological and psychological reasons why that cycle of violence is very hard to break if not addressed early on. It is hard to imagine how the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, continues to be so optimistic, given what she has observed. She shared some of that with us this afternoon, for which I am grateful. Other noble Lords have touched on the definition of domestic violence. I will not, therefore, dwell on it, save to say that I am looking forward to the Minister’s outline of what the Home Office intends to do about improving the definition so that it is more inclusive. I will touch on the issues raised by several noble Lords about the map of gaps that shows which local authorities do not supply the services. I highlight the plight of women in rural areas and market towns. On that map an awful lot of the red areas, which identify the gaps, are in rural areas. It is already lonely enough in such places, but if you cannot even access the services to get you out of a situation of domestic violence, there really is a problem. Perhaps this is an area that the Commission for Rural Communities, under the leadership of Stuart Burgess, should particularly look at. It is a very difficult situation. I am sure that the Minister will not, in her reply, pass the buck back to local authorities; nor should local authorities pass the buck by blaming a lack of government funding. Enormous effort, shared between central and local government, is required to overcome this issue because the local authorities that struggle to provide services, particularly in rural areas, are, quite rightly, subject to consultation on how they should spend their budgets. However, one effect of that is that the people who own laptops, get in touch with the council and respond to consultation are normally those who complain about potholes, not with those who suffer domestic abuse. As a result, matters such as the highways budget stay at the top of the agenda, while domestic abuse and violence stay at the bottom of the spending priorities. Only a partnership between central and local government, and Audit Commission measures, can solve this. That is one way to bring areas that tend to get ignored year after year to the attention of failing local authorities. I turn now, in the time left, to some of the issues that will be exacerbated by the financial crisis. There are several continuing studies into the effect of what is defined as economic violence, meaning the control of a woman by denying her her economic rights. Indeed, the 2001 British Crime Survey found that women in households with an income of less than £10,000 were 3.5 times more likely to experience domestic violence than those living in households with an income of over £20,000. I would be interested to hear from the Minister if that has changed over time. I suspect that it has not, and that the likelihood is, therefore, that we can expect domestic violence to get worse in a financial crisis. The Home Affairs Select Committee’s report on domestic violence, published only last year, outlined that it was important that victims are able to access financial support quickly and easily to prevent them becoming trapped in that cycle of abuse. Have the Government considered implementing the Select Committee’s recommendation of some form of support, perhaps an interest-free loan to assist with resettlement? The Attorney-General was kind enough to reply to my Question [HL488] about outcomes of the court process, and I found the table that she provided extremely useful. Where unsuccessful outcomes were recorded—there were 18,500 of them, which is not a small number—what happened next to the women concerned? They must then have been at higher risk, which is a real difficulty. The Government are to be congratulated, as noble Lords have said, on setting up the specialist domestic violence courts, but there is a way further to go. I look forward to hearing from the Minister where it will lead.