Labour: Placing Women’s Safety Centre Stage December 2014 Labour: Placing Women’s Safety Centre Stage December 2014 Contents Foreword from Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP Executive Summary Introduction from Vera Baird QC Chapter 1: The changing face of women's services Chapter 2: Impact of commissioning Chapter 3: Access to justice - the impact of Legal Aid reforms Chapter 4: Defining domestic violence Chapter 5: Understanding the needs of Black Asian and minority ethnic Women Chapter 6 Prostitution law and policy Chapter 7: A Labour future for women's safety: Legislative consultation Appendix: A. Consultation on proposals for legislation B. The North East Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy ‘Everywoman Safe, Everywhere’, a Commission on Women’s Safety chaired by Vera Baird QC, is a consultation established to investigate the impact of the Tory-led Government’s policies on women’s safety and to make recommendations to the Labour Party on the direction of future Labour policy in this area. This report - drawn from submissions and evidence gathering sessions around the country – is a summary of the findings and recommendations to date. 1 Foreword Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP In the last few years, as the policies of the Coalition Government have begun to take hold, I have heard a series of increasingly worrying stories about women’s safety from around the country. Of a young mother forced to shelter with her baby in internet cafes when she was turned away from a refuge. Of women trying to get justice after being abused, but being forced to pay for the evidence they need to access legal aid. And of the address of a safe house being published in the local paper when jobs were being advertised there, exposing not only the inexperience of the service provider, but also the location of vulnerable women to their abusers. As the Women’s Safety Commission report in 2012 pointed out, it has become clear that these are not isolated incidents, but rather a consequence of a Government that is pursuing chaotic funding and policy changes, without evaluating their cumulative impact on women’s safety. To date, the Government are still refusing to carry out a proper audit of the impact of their policies on women’s safety. Labour believes that the safety of women is far too important to turn a blind eye. Services tackling Violence Against Women and Girls must be integrated across Government and that’s why we have appointed the very first Shadow Minister for Preventing Violence Against Women and Girls, Seema Malhotra MP, who is working hard to drive this agenda across the whole Labour team. From the work that Mary Creagh MP and Maria Eagle MP have done to campaign against the deregulation of taxi licensing, to Gloria De Piero MP, who has been reaching out to young women and listening to their needs and concerns, Labour is working in a range of areas to protect and support women. Few people have a stronger track record of championing the survivors of domestic and sexual violence than Vera Baird QC, former Solicitor General and Labour’s Police and Crime Commissioner in Northumbria. That’s why I invited her to chair the Women’s Safety Commission and I have asked her in this report to consider specifically how the State’s legislative and service delivery response to domestic and sexual violence could be improved. I am very grateful to Vera for all of her work gathering evidence from across the country, for this report and for the future work of the Women’s Safety Commission. In the weeks ahead, as we build towards the general election, I and my colleagues in the Labour Party will be considering this set of recommendations very carefully. We know that in the current financial climate, budgets are tight and we must do more with less. Nonetheless, we must have the strongest possible policies in place if women and girls are to feel safe and secure. That is why, today, I will commit to: • Appointing a Minister for Violence Against Women and Girls and a new Commissioner to tackle domestic and sexual violence, to integrate the protection of women and girls across Government • Establishing a new National Refuge Fund, ensuring that women and children have somewhere to turn when they are in need • Continuing to provide funding stability for Rape Crisis Centres around the country • Strengthening domestic violence laws, so that fewer offenders are able to slip through the net • Introducing a new duty to report allegations or signs of child abuse to the police 2 • Making sex and relationships education a compulsory part of the curriculum in schools But we want to build further on these commitments. Over the coming months, Vera will be consulting on the proposals put forward in this report. Labour’s Zero-Based Review has already identified, cuts, savings and revenue-raising measures that will allow us to channel more funding into refuge provision and we will expand this programme of work to ensure we can better support and protect women in the future. Working with colleagues in the trade union movement, we’ll be looking at how employers can improve personal safety in the workplace and better support survivors of violence in their workforce. And we believe, in particular, that we should be working hard to ensure the devastating legacy of domestic and sexual violence is not passed on to a new generation. Yet, something about modern culture seems to be normalising it. One in six teenagers in relationships say they've experienced sexual violence. One in three teenage girls say they've had to put up with unwanted groping or harassment in school itself. Shockingly, in 2012, the Children's Commissioner said that 2,400 children are the victims of sexual exploitation by groups and gangs - with further 16,500 identified as being at risk. The digital age means that violent, abusive or sexual images are only ever a few clicks away, and being exposed to these can have a profound effect on young people's understanding of sex and relationships. From sexually explicit text messages, to violent threats and online bullying via social media, young people today have a different world to navigate than previous generations. Our next phase of work will therefore look at these issues, starting with a series of girls’ safety summits - considering how the digital era is influencing the relationships young men and women have with each other; asking what impact cultural influences are having on young people’s attitudes towards domestic and sexual abuse. I hope that even more people will become involved in the months ahead. The message must be loud and clear: we must place women’s safety centre-stage. Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP Shadow Home Secretary 10th December 2014 3 Executive Summary Everywoman Safe Everywhere, the Commission on Women’s Safety, was established in November 2011, in response to concerns that, not only were government policies disproportionately impacting upon women economically, but may be risking their safety too. In March 2012, the Commission published its first report, which provided a comprehensive analysis of the cumulative impact of the Government’s funding and policy changes on women’s safety – from commissioning upheaval and legal aid cuts, to housing and welfare reform. It painted a stark picture of chaotic reforms that were putting women’s services – and ultimately women’s safety – at risk. To follow this analysis, in November 2012, the Commission published a call for evidence on a new Domestic and Sexual Violence Board. Rather than continue with complacency, and an assumption that everything possible was being done to tackle violence against women and girls, our idea was that a national board could deliver new oversight and leadership, to tackle this challenging issue. This report is a response to that call for evidence. Through evidence gathering and literature reviews, it provides an update on the funding and policy changes that we looked at in our first report, finding that: • Refuges continue to close or are being threatened with closure – in Gloucestershire, Cheshire, Dorset, Sheffield, Nottingham, Somerset, Leeds and Leicestershire, to name but a few. In some areas, there is now no refuge provision at all. • The number of specialist refuge services has also declined over the last four years – from 187 to 155, according to estimates by Women’s Aid. And of the 247 refuges registered on UK RefugesOnline who were telephoned in June 2013, only 16 per cent offered 24 hour support. • The scrapping of the Welfare Assistance Fund has left local authorities struggling to provide women who have left abusive relationships with basic amenities to start a new life – including, bedding, cooking equipment, school shoes. • A lack of expertise in commissioning is leading to local authorities ring-fencing refuge beds for local women only, despite the refuge movement being built on the premise that women may need to move to a new, safe area when fleeing abuse. • 43 per cent of domestic violence survivors do not have the prescribed forms of evidence to access legal aid and the ‘exceptional funding’ intended to provide a safety net for women who are unable to meet the evidence threshold was only granted in 6 cases, up to July 2014. • All regions have lost services supporting children living with domestic abuse, with the biggest losses occurring in the South West, South East and West Midlands. • There is a significant theoretical shortfall of around 36,500 places on perpetrator programmes, in order to meet current demand from referring agencies. • Prosecutions and convictions - for domestic violence and rape - are down under this Government.