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Violence Against Women

I am grateful to the Minister for that clarification. Given that the gender equality duty is subsumed in the public-sector equality duty, as are one or two other duties, it may be helpful, when the regulations are put together and the guidance that goes with them is drafted, to address the point specifically, in terms, so that there cannot be any doubt about the matter. The subject has now been raised in this debate. One of the reasons why our strategy document—and, indeed, the Government's—looked across the whole of Government was that, as the End Violence Against Women campaign found, most Departments""have not...seen the links between their policies and their impact on violence against women."" That is one of the reasons why we want to ensure, as part of our strategy, that there is a single Minister responsible for overseeing progress, across Departments, in taking co-ordinated action on violence against women. I have already touched briefly on the issue of stabilising the funding base by ensuring that funding for rape crisis centres is moved to a stable, three-year funding cycle. I know from some of the announcements that the Minister for Women and Equality has made that there has been progress on that. I shall make a couple of specific local points, Mr. Benton, just to give a bit of local flavour, and then draw my remarks to a close. Coincidentally, a few weeks ago—not that long ago—in my county of Gloucestershire, there was a report on BBC Radio Gloucestershire by reporter Faye Hatcher, who had been speaking to Gail Meecham, the manager at the Gloucestershire rape crisis centre. She highlighted some positive news and some less positive news. The positive news was that the sexual assault referral centre, which was opened in October 2008, had been having some success, but the knock-on effect of that success was that referrals to the centre were up 25 per cent. in that one year. That was obviously putting a great deal of pressure on the staff, and made their work challenging. It was also highlighted—this is worth saying, and I know that the Minister will welcome it—that the centre has a close working relationship with the Gloucestershire constabulary, who take the issue seriously. Their recently retired chief constable, Tim Brain, was involved with the Association of Chief Police Officers on several issues in this area. He was the ACPO lead on prostitution, and was very heavily involved in combating trafficking. I suspect that that is partly why Gloucestershire has a good record on the subject. Finally on local authorities, I want to put on record that Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, is providing £1.4 million to establish three new rape crisis centres in partnership with several London local authorities, and he is continuing the funding for the existing centre in Croydon. The four centres, when up and running, will serve the north, south, east and west of London, and I understand that one will be opening in Ealing in the spring.