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Violence Against Women

I am confident that my hon. Friend the Member for Slough will make powerful representations when she leaves the Chamber tonight. I am pleased that she will talk to Cressida Dick, who was a member of the Commission on Women and the Criminal Justice System when I chaired it, and who is very sympathetic to the issue of violence against women. That approach will be helpful. The intention, as with all new areas of activity, was that core funding would be provided for a couple of years to put the matter into the middle business of policing. It should then be taken on part and parcel, and should not require supplementary funding from outside. The funding was intended to get it in there, but it remains a hot issue and I acknowledge that. We should, at the very least, keep an open mind on whether there is a danger of expertise being lost. I am not as depressed as the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone)—I know that, because we had a quick word about this during the suspension for the Divisions—about moving responsibility to the vice squad. I understand that it deals much more with raiding clubs, public order, and so on, but it has an understanding of the nature of prostitution, and it deals with brothels, so it can understand the help that needs to be given to women who are imprisoned in that sort of work. The hon. Lady talked about the need to get the man out in a domestic violence situation, and not to get the woman, the children, the dog and the cat out. I agree that "go" orders in the Crime and Security Bill will probably be immensely helpful in that regard, but the real point is the conceptual shift. Clearly, in the past there has been the notion that we must rescue the woman quickly and get her out. The man is there, he is a hazard and the police cannot stay there all the time as he might come back. In a way, we have gone on with that cast of mind. Even without "go" orders—I am not saying that they are of no use, far from it—there are powers of arrest for common assault, which could be just a threat when someone is close enough to carry it out. People can now be arrested in almost all domestic violence situations if the policeman senses that it is a genuine case, as it frequently will be. A person can be arrested, taken away and put on bail with the condition that they do not go back, or be remanded in custody if they do go back. In a way, the powers are already there, and however they fill the gaps that are perceived to exist in the current framework, the "go" orders certainly ought to influence that perspective. Let us swap things around and make it the norm for the police to think, "What do we do with him?" and not, "What do we do with her?" I agree with that completely. There are also injunctions to remove the man and keep him away, and there are now restraining orders that can be put on to the back of criminal proceedings. As the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green knows, a restraining order is a sort of county court injunction in the criminal court, and it can be applied where there is a conviction for a criminal offence by a perpetrator of domestic violence. Furthermore, such an order could be applied in cases of acquittal should the judge perceive that there is a continuing risk to the woman on the balance of probabilities. We are not talking about locking people up under restraining orders if they are absolutely not guilty. However, if they are not guilty but the nature of the case leads the judge to feel satisfied that, on the balance of probabilities, there continues to be a threat even if someone has not been convicted of a crime, the judge would be entitled to place a restraining order on them, which could include keeping them out of the house. That is not a new power, but it has only newly been enforced. It needs to be used and strongly advertised to the magistracy. It was very badly reported in the press. I recall an article in The Observer in which a journalist suggested that this was, as he put it, yet another example of the Government's illiberality. Of course, that is not what it is. It is about making it simpler for women who need the protection of an ongoing injunction not to have to go to the county court and start completely fresh proceedings when they have spent the day in the magistrates court. Their witnesses and the policeman would not have to go twice either, and that is the purpose of the power. We must ensure that it is used. The hon. Lady also discussed the fact that there is no recourse to public funds. She is aware of the pilot scheme. This is not the first pilot scheme—there was something called the last-resort fund run by Women's Aid. Before I was a Minister, I pressed for that scheme from the then Minister at the Home Office. Somehow it did not quite click or work entirely correctly. I do not know where the fault lay, if indeed it could be allocated—that is between Woman's Aid and the Home Office. However, the effect of that pilot was to speed up the process when women show signs of domestic violence, so as to get them an immigration status of their own. It was also about widening the ambit of evidence that the Home Office will accept for domestic violence so it was not only formal affidavits, but all sort of evidence from anywhere. That was helpful and I hope that this new pilot scheme—which has a better structure than the last scheme—will show the importance of that funding and be carried on. It is being piloted mostly because the last scheme was not a great success. It needs to be tried out. I cannot tell the hon. Lady how many people are ejected from refuges in each constituency because of cost. I suspect that what happens is that refuges take people on even when they cannot get benefits, and use their core funding. That is not so helpful and the figures may or may not help if I can get hold of them, although I will try to do that. It was very good and a delight—if I can put it that way and not seek to categorise my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George) and the hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) as senior men with an enormous amount of experience—to see them supporting the agenda in such a powerful way. They forcefully brought to our attention the international dimension of violence against women, and I am glad that they appear to work together on that international agenda. As the hon. Member for Ryedale said, the Government are enthusiastic supporters of the convention against trafficking, and I was pleased to hear him praise the 2002 process, which I have just mentioned, to improve the position of immigrant women in this country. I was pleased that my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South is proud of the services dealing with violence against women that are offered in his constituency, but sad that those in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge are less good. That is a problem. The popular mood is, probably rightly, for us to decentralise funding and have indicators as to how the money should be spent in local authorities. However, we then get the great disparities pointed to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South and my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge. We must look at more sustainability for funding those organisations. The "Map of Gaps" to which my right hon. Friend referred by End Violence Against Women is a fine piece of work. The Equality and Human Rights Commission will use the gender equality duty to take proceedings against those local authorities that do not provide appropriate services. Trevor Phillips has written to those local authorities that are failing, and I have written to the MPs who represent them, asking them to go in and speak to those local authorities and tell them that they have do more. The idea behind the "Map of Gaps" has been taken up as heartily as we could wish.