Violence against Women and Children

Debate

14:34:00

Moved By

Baroness Gale
To call attention to measures to tackle violence against women and children; and to move for Papers.

Baroness Gale
My Lords, once again we debate violence against women and children, a topic to which your Lordships' House often returns. I welcome the opportunity to do so today, if only to send a message to all the women and children who are suffering from violence.

The UN defines violence against women as,

“any act of gender-based violence that is directed against a woman because she is a woman or that affects women disproportionately”.

It includes rape and sexual violence, domestic violence, forced marriages, stalking, trafficking and sexual exploitation, forced prostitution, crimes in the name of honour, female genital mutilation and sexual harassment.

The figures for violence against women make depressing reading. Three million women across the UK experience violence each year. There are many more women coping with the legacies of abuse experienced in the past as children or adults. Almost half the women in England and Wales experience domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking. Research for the Government estimates that in England and Wales in one year, domestic violence alone costs £23 billion; £17 billion is the human and emotional cost and £6 billion is the direct cost to the state.

Violence that women experience is usually committed by men they know—partners, family members, friends or work colleagues. One imagines our home to be a haven of peace and safety, but for many women and children it can become a prison and a place of fear. Sexual harassment in public is widespread, and contributes to women's fear of crime, and whether or not they feel safe in public spaces at night. Women are twice as likely as men to be worried about violent crime.

Violence affects females of all ages. Girls and young women are more likely to experience sexual violence; older women are more likely to be abused by carers than are older men. Women with mental health problems and learning difficulties are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence. Ethnic minority women face additional barriers to accessing support and experience particular forms of violence, such as forced marriage, female genital mutilation, and crimes in the name of honour.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has an excellent record of taking measures to eliminate violence against women. At present, it is putting forward ideas and suggestions to establish a Council of Europe convention on combating violence against women. In a recommendation towards this end it says:

“Despite the progress made and the international instruments already in existence, the Assembly considers that action to combat violence against women must be intensified. It is convinced that the drafting of a legal instrument which embodies the “three Ps”  (protection of victims, punishment of perpetrators and prevention) and specifically addressing the question of gender-based violence is necessary in order to encourage the member states to attain the minimum standards in this respect and strengthen their legislation. The Assembly feels that the preparation of a framework convention … would make it possible to propose guidelines and provisions defining objectives that the contracting parties would undertake to pursue through national legislation and appropriate governmental action”.
 

The assembly is now inviting the Committee of Ministers to draft a convention on the severest and most widespread forms of violence against women, associating the Parliamentary Assembly, the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, the Council of Europe and the NGOs in the drafting process. I believe that it would be an advantage to have such a convention. Does my noble and learned friend agree with this idea? Will the Government, as represented by the Foreign Secretary at the Committee of Ministers, sign up to the convention at the appropriate time?

Last week the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the End Violence Against Women campaign published the second Map the Gaps report. This is a detailed report on all aspects of violence against women and what is happening regarding the provision of services from the Government across the UK. What hit the headlines were the remarks of Trevor Phillips, chair of the commission, who said that the commission will target more than 100 local authorities with the threat of legal action as they have failed to provide specialised services for women who have experienced violence.

The report says that one in four local authorities in Britain has no specialist support services at all. This must be a concern to a Government who are committed to assisting women who are the victims of violence. How can these local authorities be persuaded to provide support? Will threats of legal action work? It must be difficult for women in these local authority areas who have no support whatever. I am not sure exactly what the Government can do, but I am sure that my noble and learned friend will do her utmost.

I praise the Government for the initiatives they have taken to deal with this huge problem of violence against women. Many organisations have called for an integrated strategy to combat violence against women in all its forms, including the Women’s National Commission, the End Violence Against Women campaign and Welsh Women’s Aid.

Welsh Women’s Aid has called on the Welsh Assembly Government to develop and implement an integrated strategy on violence against women based on gender equality and human rights. A recent YouGov poll showed overwhelming public support in Wales— 84 per cent—for such a policy. The Equality and Human Rights Commission in Wales supports the call for a violence against women strategy and it is taking steps to link up the work on prevention, the criminal justice system and those who provide protection and support for women such as the 24-hour Wales Domestic Abuse Helpline and sexual assault referral centres. As there have been so many calls for a violence against women strategy, I was pleased to learn that my honourable friend Maria Eagle MP has announced that the Home Secretary has confirmed to the Home Affairs Select Committee that the Government have accepted its recommendation to adopt a cross-government violence against women strategy and that a consultation on violence against women and women’s safety will be launched later this year. Can my noble and learned friend give any information on when the consultation will be launched?

I have concentrated my remarks in the main on violence against women. I am aware that other noble Lords—or noble Baronesses, I should say, as most of our speakers today are noble Baronesses, although I am pleased that one noble Lord is to speak—will be speaking about children. I will confine my remarks to a campaign that the NSPCC is running calling on the UK Government, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly to see domestic violence from a child’s point of view. In its petition it says that it wants to see:

“Adequate support services for children and families affected so that when they are brave enough to speak out, they know that they will be safe and supported… Training for professionals to identify children living with domestic violence so that whenever adults are working with domestic violence they think about the children affected… Education about domestic violence in schools and other youth settings so all children learn that the violence is not their fault, and how to stay safe”.
 

The Department of Health estimates that every year 750,000 children experience domestic violence but estimating numbers is difficult given that so many women do not report domestic violence, so it is possible that the true figure is higher; it is a big problem. Children need protection. It is well documented how violence in the home can affect children, and for young boys seeing their father hit their mother means that to a child this is the norm; it is acceptable, as most behaviour is learnt at home. Will my noble and learned friend give her response to the NSPCC’s campaign; and what initiatives are the Government undertaking to support children who are victims of violence in the home and outside the home such as bullying in school?

One successful government initiative has been the specialist domestic violence courts. They bring together police, prosecutors, court staff, the probation service and specialised support services so that more offenders are brought to justice. The courts were first established in 2005-06 with 25 courts receiving accreditation. There are now more than 100 and they are spread across England and Wales. I believe that there will be more announcements in the future. This is a great initiative and gives women victims much greater faith in the system by bringing the perpetrators to justice.

Since 1997 the Government have taken violence against women seriously, and have brought in many measures and new laws to try and tackle this problem, which affects women and children throughout the world. As I read, learn, and speak to women in this country and abroad, sometimes I feel that the problem is so big that whatever measure is taken, the biggest problem of all is what measures can be taken to stop men from being violent towards women?

Organisations such as the White Ribbon Campaign run by men whose aim is to stop men being violent towards women is a way forward. This is not just a matter for women; we need many more men involved. On the topic of prevention, one way would be to start at an early age with boys and girls, teaching them respect for women. That should involve education at school, in the community and in the home. It is a long-term aim. Can my noble and learned friend say what programme she is aware of that is thinking of prevention? Are there any government initiatives or programmes of that nature?

Despite the diligent work that the Government have undertaken and the work that the NGOs are carrying out in this area, there is still so much more needed. Women cannot achieve equality if they are constantly living in fear of violence. We have made great progress in terms of awareness, in speaking openly about violence and encouraging women to come forward and report any incident, but of course there is so much to do before we can eliminate the scourge of violence that men perpetrate on women.

14:49:00

Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I start by congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, on raising yet again this vitally important issue—an issue which affects the whole of society and not just the immediate victims and perpetrators. In order to justify that claim, I would like to concentrate my remarks on the effects of domestic violence on the 750,000 children in our country who experience it every year. The Home Office definition of domestic violence does not take account of the effect on children, although we know that 30 to 60 per cent of men who are violent to their female partners also hit the children. The Welsh Assembly has a much more inclusive definition. Does the Minister have any plans to change the definition for England?

The main difference between a woman and a child is pretty obvious: the former is an adult and fully developed, the latter is not fully developed. That is the crucial point that I would like to make. I am afraid that I will get a little technical in order to explain the consequences of this. It is a clear case of cause and effect.

We now know a lot about the development of a child's brain, particularly in the first three years of life. The structure of the developing infant brain is a crucial factor in the creation, or not, of violent tendencies, because early patterns are established, not only psychologically but at the physiological level of brain formation. Indeed, we also know from a research paper by Cummings et al in 1989 that male aggressive behaviour is highly stable as early as the age of two.

At birth, the infant brain is not fully developed. We now know that development is completed in the first three years of life. The human infant brain is uniquely plastic. That has enormous survival value for the human species, since it allows the human child to adapt to its environment. But there are dangers in that if the environment in which he finds himself causes his brain to develop in certain undesirable ways.

The child has about 100 billion brain cells or neurones at birth; indeed, I believe that they start to die off as soon as we are born. But what has not yet developed fully is the amazing network of connections, synapses and pathways that connect those neurones together in a veritable cat’s cradle. We need these pathways in order to think, feel and make choices. At birth there are about 50 trillion of these connections, but at age two months, new synapses start to form at a tremendous rate, so that by the age of three years this number has increased twenty-fold to 1,000 trillion. In 1997, a researcher called Shore concluded that since this is too large a number to be specified by genes alone, they must be formed by experience, and that is now accepted by medical science. That is why the experiences of children have such a major effect on their lives. Because a human baby is so vulnerable, his potential is defined by the quality of the support received in the very early formative years.

Synapses are strengthened and reinforced by experience and our early-life experiences determine which of these pathways through the brain live on and which fall into disuse. The scientists call it pruning. Some of the pathways become hard-wired by repeated use. It is a bit like when you first go to the home of a new friend, you need a map. After one or two visits you hardly look at the map, and then you do not need it at all. If you go frequently, you get to the stage where you could probably find your way blindfolded. But if you do not visit for some years, you may need the map again.

Such reinforcement makes the things that we learn when we are young very resistant to change. I find it very hard to leave food on my plate because my mother always told me to eat it all up because the poor children in China and Africa did not have any and I was very lucky. I am sure that your Lordships can think of similar examples. The way that child becomes attached to its mother or main carer is explained by this and by other, even earlier factors, since the child sees the face and hears the voice of that person most frequently and associates those things with being nurtured and his various needs being met.

The downside of all this adaptiveness is that the human brain is very vulnerable to trauma. That is why the slogan “Not in front of the children” is a good one. The way it works is as follows. The development of brain cells is affected by the chemicals that surround them. If the early experience is predominantly fear and stress, the stress hormone cortisol washes over the brain like acid and affects its development by reducing the number of connections made. By using CAT scans, scientists have found that in abused or neglected children the brain is smaller than normal and the parts governing emotion are 20 per cent to 30 per cent smaller and tend to have fewer connections. The part responsible for memory is also smaller. Bremner et al, in papers written in 1995 and 2003, stated that that is because of the toxic effects of cortisol. It is obvious, therefore, that a child whose brain develops like this will have less emotional maturity and his learning will be affected.

On top of that, in 2002, Eisler and Levine found that the normal hair-trigger effect is enhanced when the brain develops in a high-cortisol environment. You might expect this to happen in a child who is under frequent threat of violence, because it is a protective mechanism; but it means that, for such a child, the slightest stress unleashes a surge of stress hormones causing anxiety, hyperactivity and impulsive behaviour. He cannot help himself. Trauma also scrambles the signals that tell the growing neurones where to go, so children who are subjected to unpredictable stress, such as alcoholic parents who are kind one day and lash out the next, have a lower IQ and find it harder to learn. There is a whole lot more to say about infant brain development, but I think that that is enough.

A large research project in the USA called ACE has identified the specific effects on the child's health and behaviour and on society of early childhood trauma, such as violence and sexual abuse or witnessing violence. In the case of the child, it causes: violent personality and anti-social behaviour; poor mental health; lower intelligence and impaired ability to learn; low emotional intelligence; poor physical health, such as an increased chance of heart attack and liver malfunction; career failure; and reduced happiness. The effects on society are: violence and anti-social behaviour; school underperformance, so that greater resources are needed to deal with it; economic underperformance and a lower tax take; poor personal relationships, leading to more broken families; high health expenditure on physical and mental health; and reduced societal happiness, leading to all kinds of effects, including more crime.

So society suffers as well as the child by having to spend more on social welfare, health, education, and all elements of criminal justice. Therefore it is not just to ensure that the child receives his human right not to be subjected to violence that we need to identify and deal with domestic violence as quickly and effectively as we can, it is for the whole of society.

The WAVE Trust, to which I am grateful for much of this information, has analysed the factors that contribute to a violent event. There has to be both a propensity and a trigger. Short-term measures can reduce the triggers, such as drug and alcohol treatment, addressing unemployment, economic inequality and family breakdown. However, we also need long-term measures to address the propensity to violence. That is where prevention comes in, and that is why the whole of this situation is a vicious circle unless it is addressed. A child subjected to violence cannot help but grow up with a propensity to violence, and so it goes on. We therefore need to initiate measures to put a “full stop” to all that. I use that phrase deliberately, because we have all had an excellent briefing from the NSPCC, with a number of proposals which chime well with the recommendations of the WAVE Trust.

Both propose that we need to identify where domestic violence is taking place by training professionals to recognise the signs, and by that I mean teachers and nursery workers as well as social workers and health professionals. We also need education for children about what to do and who to tell. When they are brave enough to tell someone, we must be sure that there is someone there to help them. We also need to reassure them that it does not necessarily mean family break-up if the perpetrator can be helped to change his behaviour. Then, we need adequate support services for the families affected.

Those services also need to be culturally sensitive and appropriate. The NSPCC produced a very interesting report about domestic violence among South Asian communities. It stresses that there is no evidence that there is more of this abuse in that community than in any other, but it points out that the reaction of both women and children to such abuse is different. Because of the cultural context, because they often do not trust the authorities and because of the shame of family break-up, the matter is often swept under the carpet and hidden. Both women and children are reluctant to tell anyone and that matter must be addressed.

We need a much more rigorous approach based on a risk-assessment model with prevention at its heart. This is a public health problem with widespread consequences and it needs effective monitoring and intervention by health, education and social welfare professionals, not just the criminal justice system. Only if that is done will we break the cycle of violence. In doing so, we will improve the happiness level of the whole of society.

15:00:00

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, for initiating this debate. Throughout my professional career I have seen at first hand the results, physical and emotional, of abuse and violence against women and children, and I welcome the opportunity to draw attention to this important subject.

Like other noble Lords who have spoken, I shall focus on domestic violence and, in particular, its effect on children. Perhaps that will be the theme of the debate. Within the chronic pain-management programme that my team runs at Velindre NHS Trust, very many patients have been subject to abuse of one type or another, often in childhood, and often they have told no one for years and years. Sometimes when they come to our service, it is the first time that they have disclosed what has gone on. The damage from that abuse lingers on throughout the rest of their lives, is held within their chronic pain, and reinforces it. Sometimes the perpetrators have been women. There is violence from women to women, from women to men, and from women to children. We must not be under the misapprehension that there are no women perpetrators and blame it all on men. I had to appear as a witness at the Old Bailey after admitting a child to hospital who had been dipped in scalding water by his mother's boyfriend. I have seen children, toddlers and babies who have been abused and I have sometimes been the first person to diagnose that abuse.

The official Home Office definition of domestic violence that applies in England is,

“any incident of threatening behaviour, violence or abuse (psychological, physical, sexual, financial or emotional) between adults who are or have been intimate partners or family members, regardless of gender or sexuality”.

While this definition captures the essence of domestic violence between the primary parties involved, it fails to capture the impact of the abuse on children. Widening the definition to cover violence witnessed by children will ensure that greater attention is given to children and young people when policy is developed. I know that the Government are committed to reviewing this definition over the next year and I call on them to include children in the new definition.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child recommended in October last year that government give children equal protection under the law on assault. This was the third time that the committee had made such a recommendation. It is time for the Government to send a clear message that any violence is against the law, whether committed against an adult or a child. Why do this Government remain unwilling to protect the smallest, most fragile and most vulnerable in our society, who cannot even speak up for themselves and cannot call for help? Yet I fail to understand why the protection of hulking great teenagers and adults is greater than that which we afford to small and pre-school children.

The noble Baroness, Lady Gale, spoke about what has been happening in Wales, where the Welsh Assembly Government take this issue seriously. The Welsh definition of domestic violence is far more comprehensive, and makes specific mention of violence against children as well as the effect that violence has on them. Despite its length, the definition warrants being heard. It states:

“Domestic Abuse is best described as the use of physical and/or emotional abuse or violence, including undermining of self confidence, sexual violence or the threat of violence, by a person who is or has been in a close relationship. Domestic abuse can go beyond actual physical violence. It can also involve emotional abuse, the destruction of a spouse's or partner's property, their isolation from friends, family or other potential sources of support, threats to others including children, control over access to money, personal items, food, transportation and the telephone, and stalking. It can also include violence perpetrated by a son, daughter or any other person who has a close or blood relationship with the victim/survivor. It can also include violence inflicted on, or witnessed by, children. The wide adverse effects of living with domestic abuse for children must be recognised as a child protection issue. The effects can be linked to poor educational achievement, social exclusion and to juvenile crime, substance abuse, mental health problems and homelessness from running away. Domestic abuse is not a “one-off” occurrence; it is frequent and persistent”.
 

That is the English translation of the Welsh definition. I suggest that this definition may prove to be a helpful starting point when the Government come to review the definition in England.

It is vital that as a nation we protect our children from exposure to violence, not only for their physical protection but because over time violence becomes a learnt behaviour and a child will begin to accept it as normal. Children who grow up with this mentality become adults with the same mental processes, and the cycle continues. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, explained eloquently, clearly and, I have to say as a medical person, accurately, the reasons for this, I will not reiterate them; but the abused child’s brain is permanently damaged by experience. Even tension in utero from abuse of a pregnant woman affects the baby before birth. It has been shown that matching mothers at risk of postnatal depression with telephone volunteers who have had only four hours’ training, but who will personally support those women, significantly lowers the incidence of postnatal depression in those women. Some of those innovative support programmes are dramatically effective for isolated women at risk of abuse and of becoming abusers through depression.

The Department of Health estimates that every year three-quarters of a million children experience domestic violence. That is shocking, but, given that many women often do not report domestic violence, or take many years to do so, the actual figure is likely to be much higher. One study found that women had experienced an average of 35 incidents of domestic abuse before contacting the police. Anyone who has worked in a casualty department will know only too often how women will present with injuries and say that they walked into a cupboard or tripped over something, yet you are absolutely certain that they have been abused, but they refuse to admit to it, even when confronted with the fact that their injuries look like they have been hit or when asked, “Who has hit you?”.

In 2002 the NSPCC prevalence study showed that 26 per cent of 18 to 24 year-olds have lived with violence between their parents or carers. That represents a quarter of the age group. Further research estimates that in between 30 per cent and 60 per cent of domestic violence cases the abusive partner is also abusing children in the family.

Violence of any nature is awful, but domestic violence is particularly heinous because it is hidden, yet its consequences are physical, psychological and enduring. When women and children suffer domestic violence, their physical wounds heal faster than the emotional wounds. It is essential that there is early help for victims and that society adopts a protective, proactive approach for those who are vulnerable.

There are three key areas on which I would appreciate a response from the Minister. The first is the need for adequate support services for children and families affected by domestic violence, so that if they are brave enough to speak out, they know they will be safe and supported. Current government provision is not enough. You only have to see what happens in accident and emergency departments to be aware of that.

The NSPCC has informed me that there is a nationwide lack of provision for children and that many local authorities provide substandard services. However, there are areas of best practice where specialist services are provided, such as crèche facilities, carers, individual therapeutic work, advice and guidance sessions and group work programmes. Will the Government look to these areas as examples of good practice to follow them and to roll them out in other areas?

My second point concerns the need for training for professionals to identify children living with domestic violence. This would mean that, whenever adult professionals are working with domestic violence victims, they would give automatic consideration to the way that children were affected, too. Can the Minister tell us what training is provided to those who work with domestic violence victims to ensure that they consider the effect that it has on children?

The third point concerns education about domestic violence. Many children who experience domestic violence feel guilty and blame themselves for what has happened. Children need to learn that the violence is not their fault and also how to stay safe if they find themselves in a potentially violent situation. It is horrific to see how many children still do not disclose sexual abuse for years but go in on themselves, become quiet and feel guilty. They are aware that, if they expose the abuse, they will potentially break up the family.

Support can be achieved by teaching about the subject in schools and youth settings. Are there plans to introduce such teaching into schools’ curricula? Many schools now have good support systems whereby a child can report violence of any type and immediately receive support. Can the Minister tell us how the quality of such support is monitored across the UK to ensure that every child in every school is confident that school is a supportive environment?

I understand that the Home Office is currently developing a strategy on violence against women. Can the Minister confirm to what extent children will be considered within this review as either primary victims of violence or secondary victims due to their proximity to, and experience and witnessing of, violence among those who purport to love them?

15:11:00

Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws
My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lady Gale for introducing this debate. She has been a great champion of this issue and I am grateful to her for the opportunity to review what has been taking place.

I also congratulate the Government. The Attorney-General, who is here today, has been at the forefront of bringing about great change in this area. She has been supported, I know, by the Solicitor-General and other women Ministers, and we have seen a real step change in this issue over the past decade. Other parties have also been working hard at developing strategy and stepping up on this issue. I know that because I have recently seen some of the work in the policy document being produced by the Conservative Party. It, too, is now clear that this is an important issue which is central to our society because the costs to us all are so great.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, I come at this matter from a lifetime’s experience as a professional. I speak as a lawyer and she spoke as a doctor. When practising in the courts in my early years, I saw domestic violence at the front line. At that time, the taboos, which have already been mentioned, were considerable. Women felt ashamed and therefore often did not seek the help of the authorities. Their families felt shame, so women were surrounded by silence on this issue.

We also contended with many myths, one of which was that women were battered only if they brought it on their own heads. It was an example of blaming the victim, as we have so often seen. Other myths were that somehow domestic violence existed only within certain classes within society or within certain ethnic minorities—for example, the Irish or Afro-Caribbeans. The assumptions that existed within our courts were extraordinary. Happily, we have seen a recognition that this issue cuts across all the social divides and is known within all families. Any of us who travel and speak on human rights issues know that, whichever country we visit in the world, there will be women activists, lawyers and judges who raise the fact that domestic violence is a serious problem within their communities.

A lot has been done and I do not want in any way to sound displeased with the progress that has been made. No Government have done more than this one. We now have specialist courts and specialist prosecutors, and far more streamlined processes. We have also seen a great change in attitude among the judiciary and magistracy: because of good training, there is now a much wider understanding of the dynamics of violence. I have seen a remarkable difference in the approach of the courts towards domestic violence.

However, I am afraid that I am going to raise an issue of concern. I do not want it to appear as ingratitude towards the Government but, in this worsening economic climate, I am fearful that women may feel under even greater pressure to stay with violent and abusive partners, and I am very concerned that many children within families will suffer in consequence.

Today we have spoken about the consequences of domestic violence for children, but we need really good, supportive agencies and we need to ensure that the refuges that exist are maintained. I regret that the refuge movement is already seeing a diminution of its funding and of the support that it gets from donations, local authorities and others as a means of staying in existence.

I am the patron of a national domestic violence charity, Refuge, and I have seen evidence of this erosion first hand. Every day, women and children are turned away from already overflowing refuges. The ones that exist operate on a hand-to-mouth basis. Some services, such as Refuge’s independent advocacy scheme in Kent and its psychological services, are facing closure. In the current recession, donor income is drying up and Refuge has had to make staff redundant in order to balance its budget and keep essential services going. That should be a source of real concern to us all. It was very interesting to hear how people, particularly babies, are damaged by being in a violent environment. We need good specialist services provided by well trained specialist individuals, but, unfortunately, I think that we are going to see a reduction in them unless we are alert to the problem.

Service provision for victims of domestic violence is patchy. As it stands, local authorities can choose whether to provide domestic violence services, and one-third of them around the country provide none. I ask the noble and learned Baroness the Attorney-General what can be done about local authorities that fail to make such provision. We need to have a stick or a carrot. There has to be some way of dealing with what is essentially a postcode lottery for those who need support.

The chief executive of Refuge, Sandra Horley, is a remarkable woman. She was one of the people who managed to make this a mainstream issue. She has had input in policy over the 30 years that she has worked in the field. She tells me that early intervention is essential and that there must be specialist support services. The vital work to prevent domestic violence is underfunded. She says that, as one of the country's largest providers of domestic violence services, she is now seeing real problems with lack of funding. Refuge is now at risk of losing the first refuge, the Chiswick refuge, to other providers that have no specialist knowledge of domestic violence. That is a real regret, because this work cannot be done without expertise.

It may shock the House to know that Refuge currently receives no statutory funding to support children who have been exposed to domestic violence. Sandra Horley has listened to pre-schoolers talking about how daddy and mummy locked them in the bathroom while they were involved in some extremely violent event, and to teenagers describing how their whole lives have been blighted by a violent father. Finding funds to provide psychologists who can address these children's suffering is like finding gold dust. Only recently, the Department of Health turned down Refuge's application for a head of psychological services.

The Government and Comic Relief provide some funding for Refuge’s National Domestic Violence Helpline. I have sat in its office and watched it work. It is a revelation. Helpline staff provide vital, sometimes lifesaving, support, but they struggle to answer every call. The helpline is, effectively, a 999 service run on a shoestring budget. A combination of Refuge and Women’s Aid provide the service in partnership. More of Refuge's staff’s time is now being spent scrambling to find funds in an already impoverished sector, which is time that should be spent supporting women and children. Since Refuge opened the doors of its first refuge in 1971, three Home Affairs Select Committees have urged the Government to increase funding as a matter of urgency. If Refuge collapsed tomorrow, thousands of women and children would be left with nowhere to turn. We have just had a debate on the impact on families of the recession. It will be vital that there is proper funding of support services for women and children. We should not be seeing a diminution of such services but an increase. I hope that the noble and learned Baroness will come to us with good news on that front.

15:21:00

Baroness Gould of Potternewton
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Gale for once again giving us the opportunity to discuss this important issue. One appreciates that there is violence against men, sometimes perpetrated by women, but in today’s debate we are discussing violence against women. I declare an interest as chair of the Women's National Commission. Violence against women is an important part of our work, as it is consistently identified by our more than 500 partners as a priority to be addressed by governments locally and nationally. In her introduction, my noble friend indicated the complex interrelationships between the different elements that constitute violence against women, so I shall not repeat them. She also referred to a possible EU convention on violence against women, and I have a question for the noble and learned Baroness the Attorney-General. Can we be assured that there will be only one convention concerning all aspects of violence against women, not, as I have heard, one for domestic violence and one for other aspects of violence against women?

Violence against women is probably the most pervasive rights violation. It is exploitation and abuse of one person by another. As my noble friend said, violence against women is a serious problem in the UK. There are 3 million women in the UK who experience violence, and many more living with the legacy of abuse experienced in the past. To put that in the context of other reasons that women unfortunately die, two women a week are killed by a current or former partner. Women are more likely to be killed by their partner than to be killed in a road accident or to die of cancer. We often forget the other people affected by violence against women. It has a devastating impact on those who experience it, their friends and families and wider society. It brings with it enormous personal, social and financial costs. We need to take the financial costs seriously and think about how we can reduce them by providing early and adequate services.

Violence against women is both a cause and a consequence of gender inequality. Perpetrators are usually known men: partners, ex-partners, family members, friends or colleagues. They use power deliberately and systematically over time by psychological threat or physical force to frighten their victims and control their behaviour. Male control over women has a history. Women historically were legally the property of men—men owned women. The right of husbands to beat their wives was enshrined in law. Sexual access to women was a right of marriage. That was the case until as recently as the 1990s. Many of us campaigned vigorously to get that changed.

Men still blame women for violence that they experience. That history unfortunately persists today. Research by Zero Tolerance shows that one in three teenage boys and one in five girls still thinks that,

“some women deserve to be hit”,

depending on their behaviour. One in two boys and one in three girls thought that it was acceptable for a man to force a woman to have sex in certain circumstances. Those facts show the importance of teaching in schools about relationships and respect for each other, which is why the Government’s decision to make PSHE statutory is so important.

It is not surprising that young people have those views. Another piece of research by Amnesty showed that about one in three people still blames women for being raped and attributes sexual violence to some aspect of women’s dress or behaviour. More than one in three thought that a woman was fully or partially responsible for being raped if she behaved in a “flirtatious” manner. Similarly, nearly one-third thought that a woman was fully or partially responsible for being raped if she was drunk. More than one-quarter of those surveyed said that they thought that a woman was partially or totally responsible for being raped if she was wearing “sexy or revealing” clothing, or had had many sexual partners.

We must challenge the culture of excuses both with the public and in the courts. No longer should provocation be an acceptable defence. We must challenge the idea that women “provoke” violence. Nagging does not give a man the right to abuse women; infidelity does not give a man the right to beat women. Women never invite rape, whatever relationship they are in, whatever decisions they have made about drink or dress and whatever level of intimacy they have already engaged in with their attacker.

Those women-blaming attitudes contribute to the appallingly low conviction rates for rape and domestic violence and to the relatively limited access for survivors. Local and national awareness-raising helps, such as the publicity launched by Rape Crisis in Scotland, which highlights that it is a myth that a woman raped while wearing revealing clothing is to blame for leading a man on, it is a myth that a woman raped after drinking is to blame for not considering her security, it is a myth that a woman raped after consenting to any level of sexual activity is to blame for having given “mixed signals”, and it is a myth that a woman raped by a man with whom she is in a relationship has automatically given consent to sex.

I raise those points because I want to ask my noble and learned friend whether there are any plans to have similar campaigns in the rest of the UK. Challenging those myths and protecting women and children is the commitment and work of voluntary sector organisations working locally and nationally to increase women's safety and to hold abusers to account for their behaviour. Women’s services have also developed a service model that acknowledges the links between violence against women and power and control. Those organisations include Rape Crisis centres, refuges, domestic violence outreach projects, services for ethnic-minority women, and support for trafficked women and women in prostitution, but it is those women's services that currently face a national funding crisis. There are 30,000 women's services in England and Wales but, despite constituting 7 per cent of registered charities, only 1.2 per cent of government funding goes to women’s NGOs.

Independent women's services form a distinct and unique part of the wider voluntary and community sector, but the move to gender-neutral policies, the competitive tendering process and the failure to mainstream intelligently are contributing to their demise. The cross-government sexual violence and abuse action plan acknowledges that many of those organisations will find it difficult to access long-term core funding. Although extra funding will tackle the women's sector funding crisis, a greater focus is needed to address the impact of declining grants programmes, lack of understanding among commissioners about the women's sector and gender equality, and the serious and adverse impact of the competitive tendering process.

At the same time as the cuts in the voluntary sector, the recent Maps of Gaps identifies that one in four local authorities has no specialist support services. In those cases, where are women meant to go? Women who suffer violence deserve good-quality local support services which understand a woman's complex and multiple needs and abuse. Where are those women going to find a women-only space, which is often essential? I will give what I hope, but do not believe, is an isolated example. I refer to the case of a woman who went to a Victim Support unit and was met by a man. She said that she had been raped. He sat her down and said, “Have a cup of tea, love, sit for half an hour and then go home. You’ll be all right”. He did not understand the situation and had not been trained, but for a woman to go into a building and be faced by a man when she has just been raped is not acceptable. We must have women-only spaces.

The Women’s National Commission welcomes the opportunity that it has been given to work with the Home Office on consultations to develop a national violence against women strategy, as we also welcome the increase in the number of SARCs and specialised domestic courts. We also appreciate the fact that the Government last year provided emergency resources to prevent future closures of rape crisis centres and other sexual health units. However, while at local level there are instances of good practice, these are isolated examples.

Positive and progressive action is required to combat violence against women, not only to benefit the women themselves, but also to improve and redeem the lives of all those who suffer as a consequence of that violence.

15:31:00

Baroness Northover
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, for securing this debate. She has long promoted equality for women, and we are grateful to her. With her permission and that of the noble and learned Baroness the Attorney-General, I will concentrate on the situation in developing countries.

Women and children around the world suffer violence in multiple forms, from rape and assault to forced marriage, honour crimes, female genital mutilation, trafficking and use as child soldiers. The effect on them and their societies is profound. ActionAid and others claim that at least one in three women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime. As women are so often culturally the second sex, the incidence of general abuse is likely to be even higher.

Violence is a key barrier to women realising their rights and achieving social justice. It is because there is no gender equality that violence is so prevalent. Reflecting this are the hidden millions—the more than 60 million women and girls who are not here today because of sex-selective abortions and female infanticide.

Where people are living on the edge, and where there is most conflict, women and children usually lose out the most. As Amnesty International and others point out, sexual violence remains widespread in various conflicts. Few women and children have access to adequate care or justice. Perpetrators of violence against women are rarely held accountable. Often the victims are stigmatised and further marginalised. I note the horrendous case flagged up yesterday in Iraq, where apparently a woman was arranging the rapes of other women so that they would then be ostracised, their lives effectively over, and she could recruit them as suicide bombers. What a reflection on how that society views rape.

In the 1990s, rape was finally recognised as a war crime. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia announced in 1996 that it was indicting a number of individuals for sexual offences against women. That was a breakthrough. If anyone doubts rape as a means of control, they should look at how it is used to terrify, dominate and destroy in areas of conflict such as the Sudan or the DRC. Read Tears of the Desert, Halima Bashir's searing account of her life in Sudan.

According to UNICEF, up to half a million women were raped in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. In May last year, the former UN special envoy for AIDS in Africa, Stephen Lewis, warned that to end conflict without stopping sexual violence against women made peace a “mere illusion”.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Great Lakes Region and Genocide Prevention recently produced a report entitled Justice, Impunity and Sexual Violence in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance, who led this investigation, hopes to be here in time to hear the response of the noble and learned Baroness. Focusing on tackling impunity for these crimes, the report’s recommendations include wide-ranging reform and improved funding of the justice and security sector, particularly in fees, access to justice, and the training and recruitment of the judiciary. Could the noble and learned Baroness comment on the findings of this report?

We are familiar with the terrible impact of HIV/AIDS. We are becoming familiar, too, with the fact that this is an epidemic which is now affecting women far more than men. In sub-Saharan Africa, women now account for 61 per cent of all adults living with HIV, and among the under-25s that figure rises to 75 per cent. Widespread violence against women and girls increases their risk of HIV infection, and the threat of violence deters women from refusing sex or insisting on condoms, even when they suspect their partner is HIV positive. Those who have suffered from female genital mutilation, too, are particularly vulnerable to contracting HIV/AIDS. FGM is an issue on which the noble Baroness, Lady Rendell, has campaigned tirelessly, and she may well speak on it when I sit down. According to UNICEF:

“An estimated 70 million girls and women living today have been subjected to FGM in Africa and Yemen”.
 

Halima Bashir, to whom I referred earlier, was one such victim. Read her account of not only the physical but the mental pain inflicted on her by those whom she loved and trusted. Time and again, what comes through is the secondary position of women.

This is evident in so-called honour killings. The UNFPA estimated in 2000 that 5,000 women are murdered by family members each year in “honour killings”. In 2006, the UN Secretary-General launched a study into all forms of violence against women, and a violence against women database is to be released in March 2009. 1 think that it will make pretty terrible reading, but I am glad that it is being produced. According to UNIFEM:

“In a study of female deaths in Alexandria, Egypt, 47 percent of the women were killed by a relative after the woman had been raped. In Jordan and Lebanon, 70 to 75 percent of the perpetrators of these so-called ‘honour killings’ are the women's brothers”.
 

What are the Government doing internationally to strengthen legal reforms to tackle such violence against women?

I welcome the steps taken to support my noble friend Lord Lester in the legislation he initiated against forced marriages. I realise that the noble and learned Baroness the Attorney-General was not initially convinced that this was the road to go down. I wonder if she has now changed her view, and what she makes of the workings of this Act.

The position of children, especially girl children, often mirrors that of women. UNICEF estimates that 300 million children worldwide are subjected to violence, exploitation and abuse. The UN monitoring and reporting mechanism was established in 2005 to focus on the recruitment and use of child soldiers, sexual violence and other abuse. The vulnerability of children in areas of conflict, in extreme poverty or when orphaned by HIV/AIDS is very apparent when you see the increase in the numbers of child soldiers. Often they are taken from their families, but sometimes they are recruited having lost their families. An estimated 300,000 child soldiers, many of whom are girls, are often there to provide sexual services. The Lord’s Resistance Army has been notorious for abducting thousands of children in northern Uganda; in the DRC, various warring factions continue to use children.

The Paris principles of 2007, seeking to end the unlawful use of child soldiers, were signed by 58 states, including countries in conflict areas, but what impact does the Minister feel that it is having or might have? We know the problems faced by women and children internationally. Solutions and agreements are presented, but how far is this making a difference? To take DfID and the case of HIV/AIDS, the new DfID strategy recognises that tackling gender inequality is critical, but as the Select Committee on International Development argues,

“welcome as these commitments are, few have practical strategies attached to them and details as to how they will be implemented are lacking”.

That is very concerning as it is clear that there has been some excellent work in DfID on women’s empowerment. Going back a couple of years or so, an OECD review of DfID’s work on gender equality stated that DfID’s commitment was strong but that this had not translated effectively into action. Amnesty International echoed that concern. How has DfID tried to address this? I make my usual inquiry: are the cuts in staff in DfID affecting work on gender equality?

UNIFEM is the only UN gender body present in developing countries, but it is a fund, not an independent agency. Its total income was under $65 million in 2006. The Secretary-General’s high-level panel recently recommended that the capacity on women’s rights should be strengthened. There should be a dynamic new entity focused on gender equality and women’s empowerment, which should be “ambitiously funded”. What progress is being made on this?

We of course see some movement forward and it is a joy to meet so many women parliamentarians from all over the world and to see what they are doing, or to see women involved in their own enterprises funded through microfinance. The Government have worked hard to promote gender equality. They have very much pushed onwards—I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy—through the significant number of women parliamentarians and Ministers. But we have a long way to go and, for so many women and children, it is often too little and too late. In this period of enormous economic instability—again, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, pointed out—we need to remember how much needs to be done to protect women and children everywhere from violence and to ensure that where there is pressure on societies, it is not, yet again, the women and children who suffer the most.

15:42:00

Baroness Rendell of Babergh
My Lords, violence against women and children is committed from various motives—hatred, jealousy, revenge, rage or loss of control through drink or drugs—or from an irrational and mindless assault on the nearest potential victim simply, as my noble friend Lady Gale said in her excellent introduction to the debate, because she is a woman. However, there is one kind that is unique in that, dreadful though it is in its effects, it is committed out of love.

I speak of course, as I so often have over the years in your Lordships’ House, of female genital mutilation. Parents who cause this kind of physical injury to their growing daughters, or even to their baby girls, do so to protect their cultural identity and in what they overwhelmingly believe to be the child’s best interests. It is for love of their children that they commit these cruel and damaging acts and it is this that helps to make combating female genital mutilation such a formidable task.

FGM happens all across sub-Saharan Africa—in Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Egypt Eritrea, Ethiopia, the Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Sudan. People believe that, uncircumcised, their daughters will fail to be accepted socially and fail to find husbands. Therefore, FGM can be called a form of social control of a woman’s sexual and reproductive rights. The World Health Organisation estimates that between 130 million and 140 million girls and women have experienced female genital mutilation and up to 2 million girls a year undergo some form of the procedure, the most stringent form of which is the excision of the external genitalia, followed by a complete stitching up of the tissues over the wound. However, there is another, almost more repugnant, type, which involves cauterisation by burning or the introduction of corrosive substances into the vagina for the purpose of tightening or narrowing it.

These practices are age old and perpetrated in the vast majority of cases because parents desire the best for their children. It seems strange to us now—it is strange—that FGM was carried on in Africa and in parts of Asia for centuries, perhaps for millennia, with no one in Europe or the American continent having any idea of its existence, still less its prevalence. Even in the 19th and early 20th centuries, if explorers or anthropologists had brought home travellers’ tales of this practice and the suffering that it caused to women, prudish horror would have prevented its being talked about. Though missionaries were aware of it in the beginning of the 20th century and took steps—largely ineffectual—to stop it, it was not until the 1970s that, with immigration beginning, health professionals in the United Kingdom first saw its results, usually in pregnant patients. Then gradually began a movement to monitor its happening here and the start of measures to put a stop to it, leading to the Female Circumcision Act of 1985.

Now, in 2009, it is still happening here. The 2001 FORWARD study estimated that nearly 66,000 women with FGM were living in England and Wales, and the number has increased since then. FGM is against the law; performing it is against the law—a law reinforced and enlarged by the Female Genital Mutilation Act of 2003. However, just as there were no prosecutions under the previous Act, so there have been none under this one.

Much has happened to bring hope since then. When I first took an interest in FGM nine years ago and began working with groups and health professionals to end it, ignorance of FGM’s existence was profound. People preferred not to know. Many believed it wrong to interfere with tradition and cultural customs. What I will call the “yuck” factor was very evident, with those who heard about the practice recoiling from it and making a face. “I would rather not know”, was a typical reaction. Many health professionals were ignorant of the procedure or even denied its existence in this country. No one seemed to know of the custom of immigrants taking their small daughters—infants or babies even—back to their country of origin for this purpose. All that has changed or is changing.

As I have said, FGM is carried out from what may be called good motives: the welfare, as it seems to those of a very different culture from our own, of young women growing up in a society where women do not enjoy anything approaching equality and where the finding of a good husband and father of future children is paramount. In this country, if not yet to any extent in Africa, this is changing. Girls born to women of African origin have the chance here of education and a great measure of independence. If some of them suffer FGM, they will see to it that their children will not. Their children will find partners outside the ethnic group, people who find the practice of FGM repugnant. But all this is in the future. In the here and now it is said that as many as 20,000 girls are at risk of FGM in England and Wales.

It has been a matter of great regret that no prosecutions have been brought under the 2003 Act. The Metropolitan Police, with their Project Azure, do their best to find and bring perpetrators to justice in the face of what amounts to almost a conspiracy of silence in the community. However, interestingly, they say that even if the Act has not resulted in prosecutions, its very existence provides a warning to potential circumcisers. People, usually women, whose intention is to carry out mutilation, are being prevented from doing so when it is explained to them that FGM is against the law and that the maximum penalty is 14 years’ imprisonment. The FGM National Clinical Group, of which I am a patron, has experience of older women going back into their communities and deterring neighbours from taking their daughters back to Somalia for circumcision to be carried out.

Much more can be done to hasten the process of ending FGM in this country by education and explanation. Almost incredible as it seems, midwives at a London hospital have been told by young pregnant women whom they are examining that they believe their mutilated condition to be normal. When told that, after their babies are born, their FGM can be reversed and their condition restored to something approximating to normal, the reply has been that they are normal and it is women who have never been cut who are malformed. Sadly, they were so young—some of them babies under a year old—when the mutilation was done that they have no memory of a state prior to their being mutilated.

Reversals are increasingly being done and even if, with the current state of medical science, these procedures will never restore a woman’s genitalia to their full natural function, they are still an enormous advance on what came before. Women must be urged to have reversals carried out. This restoration function will not only enormously improve their sexual and reproductive health but will also show what an enhanced level of married happiness and life itself they can confer on their daughters by resisting attempts to mutilate them.

15:50:00

Baroness Massey of Darwen
My Lords, I am delighted that my noble friend Lady Gale has secured this debate, which, in her usual fashion, she introduced with such passion, to be followed by such diverse contributions.

As has been said, there have been positive initiatives to support women who are victims of violence. I have seen in the press recently that steps have been taken to make local authorities provide services. It was a shock to me to learn that one in four local authorities offers no specialised services for women who are victims. Important though such services are, however, today I shall discuss what might cause violence against women and children—indeed, against people in general—and what might be done to prevent or diminish its incidence.

A great deal of research and literature from psychologists and psychiatrists examines violent behaviour. Many have discussed the differences between aggression and violence and the spectrum between the two. For me, violence is an exaggerated form of aggression that will involve cruelty, torture and extreme power differences and may be rooted in sexual insecurity. Other noble Lords have referred to this kind of violence already. The psychiatrist Felicity de Zulueta says that violence is an extreme expression of rage due to injuries to the perpetrator at an early date. She says that it is rooted in fear, without resolution. It is about dehumanising the person to whom violence is committed and may arise from psychological trauma, loss or deprivation. She emphasises, as do many others, the crucial importance of interpersonal and early relationships and the need to co-operate rather than destroy. Those are the aspects that I shall focus on. This all points to the need for children to be brought up without violence in the home and to have positive parenting. There is strong evidence that children who experience or observe violence in the home will be profoundly affected, many seriously, and that they may grow up to be violent themselves. The noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley and Lady Finlay, have focused on this.

This week we have had the result of the Good Childhood Inquiry, which I shall return to later. We have had a UNICEF report that concluded that children in England were less happy than others around the world. We have had the joint report of the Children’s Commissioners for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, which showed many good things about being a child in England but also many disturbing worries for children about, for example, being bullied, having little space to play and being overtested in school; I believe that our children are the most tested in the world.

It is and always has been obvious that the quality of parenting and of relationships with significant adults has a profound influence on the child’s ability to be happy, grounded and confident, to resist pressure and to perform well. Such children who are well nurtured tend to develop good relationships and co-operate rather than become aggressive or violent.

The director and the head of capabilities at Demos had an article in last week’s New Statesman saying:

“It’s the quality of parenting in Britain, rather than the education system, that’s really failing our children—and the government is doing nothing to address it”.
 

They go on to talk about this in the context of inequalities. I cannot agree that the Government are doing nothing, but perhaps there could be more emphasis on prevention and intervention as well as on treatment. The Government have done much to support parents. We have only to look at the impact of Sure Start, the attack on child poverty, child tax credits and other welfare reform that supports families. We have the recent and expanding family intervention projects, which are showing very positive results. In our schools, we have programmes on the social and emotional aspects of learning. Personal and social health education will become a statutory subject. We have anti-bullying strategies and so on.

We need a huge focus on the importance of parenting, not when a child gets into trouble but from birth. Health visitors are vital. Their role is not just about health and the practicalities of parenting, but about whether a parent is interacting with a baby in a positive way. We certainly need more nurture groups of parents and children. We need to encourage the programme that I spoke of in a Question earlier this week, the UNICEF Rights Respecting Schools initiative, which emphasises the need for children to develop wide concepts of rights and responsibilities as they grow up.

If a child is nurtured, he or she is more likely to be able to co-operate rather than to use violence to relate to others. If a child is nurtured, he or she is able or more likely to be able to resist and challenge bad behaviour in others, including negative media influences, bullying, drug taking, indulging in early sex, violence and so on. The Government’s 10-year strategy Aiming High for Young People talks about protective influences and their impact on young people.

One of the things that struck me from the Good Childhood Inquiry was the emphasis by the children on the importance of relationships. They said that they want love and care from the people whom they want to love and care for them. They want someone to talk to and someone to listen. They want people to respect one another. They want close friends and a loving home—a nice home. Good families provide all this. Sadly, some families do not and, if children go into care, the system too often fails to make amends for a broken family life. I know that improvements are in train. Some things are not complicated, such as having a child attached to a key worker and not moved around.

I am worried by the rise in the use of custody for children. Both victims and perpetrators of violent crime are becoming younger. Only 4 per cent of 10 to 25 year-olds are very frequent and serious offenders, but the number of children being locked up has increased by 550 per cent in the last decade and there have been terrible examples of violence inflicted on these children. What impact must violent punishment have on damaged individuals, mainly boys? Many of these children will have been in care, will have been suspended or expelled from school and will have had educational difficulties or some trauma in their life. I agree with Barnardo’s that such children are children in need. Early interventions in their problems could help them. They are damaged and should not be encouraged by our systems to damage or become violent towards themselves and others.

If only those children who committed grave crimes or violent offences were put in custody, about £27 million could be saved to put into early intervention. The Audit Commission estimates that, if effective early intervention were provided for one in 10 of young people in young offender institutions, annual savings of more than £100 million could be made. That saving could be put to good use in prevention programmes.

Financial savings are only part of this equation. Early intervention, nurturing and good upbringing are absolutely vital if we are to encourage non-violent behaviour and prevent violence against women and children. The roots of violence, as I said, are to be found in emotional neglect, poor communication and lack of boundaries for acceptable behaviour. I ask the Minister whether the Government will expand their support for interventions to enable children to be properly nurtured so that they do not grow up to be depressed and unhappy people whose last resort is violence of some kind. Does she agree that we could pull together what we now know about effective interventions to inform government policy? I look forward to her reply.

16:00:00

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer
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 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.

16:11:00

Lord Henley
My Lords, I join all other speakers in this debate in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, on introducing this subject. Perhaps I may also say how grateful I was for her remarks welcoming me to this debate as a mere man. I think that behind what the noble Baroness said was that it is important that an issue such as this should not become a reserve only for women Members of this House or for others in the debate. Therefore, while I would like to pass on the apologies of my noble friend Lady Morris of Bolton, who was hoping to speak in this debate, I offer no apologies whatever for my own presence here and hope that, on other occasions, other male Peers will speak in debates of this kind.

I congratulate the noble Baroness also because the subject is, as always, topical. It is depressing that it is topical and that it has always been so. Perhaps I may give one faintly flippant-sounding example. Only last week, I went to watch “Carousel”. I looked at all the other operas and musicals that were on and at the lighter end of spectrum, and saw that you have “Carousel”, “Oliver!” and “Rigoletto”, all of which deal with the subject of violence against women, violence against children or violence against both. I am not saying by that that this issue will always be with us, or that the matter is in any way trivial and nothing can be done, but merely underline the importance of the issue and how long it has been with us. That point was made strongly by the noble Baroness, Lady Gould of Potternewton, who stressed that the whole legal system was stacked against women in the past. Was it only in the 1880s that women were allowed to possess their own property? I am sure that the Attorney-General will remind me of the Act.

The Attorney-General (Baroness Scotland of Asthal)
It was the Married Women’s Property Act.

Lord Henley
My Lords, other steps took a lot longer to come through.

I use the opportunity of thanking and congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, to underline what we as Conservatives on this side of the House and what a future Conservative Government, which we hope to see fairly soon, would do. I am grateful for the topicality of the noble Baroness’s debate, because, only last December, my right honourable friend Theresa May, the shadow Minister for Women—she was then shadow Leader of the House and is now shadow Secretary of State of the Department for Work and Pensions but also still the shadow Minister for Women—published the Conservative document Ending Violence Against Women. I shall say a little about it because it sets out our strategy for and vision of what should be done. I quote briefly from the foreword, which starts by saying:

“Our vision is for a society in which no woman has to live in fear of violence”.
 

In quoting that, one must emphasise that it is not just violence that we are talking about but, obviously, fear of violence as well. She goes on to say:

“Any approach that sees tackling violence against women simply as a matter for the criminal justice system misses the point. We are committed to implementing an integrated violence against women strategy in government”.
 

One might not like the grammar of that, but the intent is perfectly clear. The point was made by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, when she said how grateful she was that the Attorney-General was coming to wind up the debate but that any Minister could do it because it was a matter for an integrated policy. It is certainly one that we are committed to, which is why my right honourable friend Theresa May made that point about integration. I shall go on to say a little about that in due course.

My right honourable friend went on to make it quite clear that:

“Central to this must be prevention. We are determined to work with schools, police, health care professionals and the voluntary sector on preventative measures that can stop violence occurring in the first place”.
 

That is, it is not purely a matter for punishment in due course; it is a matter of prevention.

In the time I have available, I do not feel that I will be able to go into the full detail of my right honourable friend’s report. I hope that the Government and the noble and learned Baroness have taken the trouble to read it. If they have not, I shall certainly make sure that copies are made available to them, and I hope that they will study it. There are one or two points that come up in the paper which it would be useful for me to underline. I hope that in due course we can have some response from the noble and learned Baroness.

First, there is the need for an integrated strategy—and here I echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, said. This is something that goes across all parts of the Government, and not only central but local government. The shadow Minister for Women, my right honourable friend, would be responsible for overseeing this. But all other departments would have to report on their progress every year. We would want to ensure that all departments adopt and work to the United Nations definition of violence against women, to which earlier speakers referred. Similarly, we would want to ensure that central government issued clear guidance to all local authorities to stress their responsibilities under gender equality duties in respect of violence against women. That is only guidance that can be issued to local authorities and it might still be that there are what people refer to as postcode lotteries. However, we would hope to ensure that we have the highest standards available to all.

Secondly, on prevention, this is not just a matter for the criminal law. It is important to work with schools to encourage them to tackle violence and bullying as part of the culture of British education. We would want to issue further guidance on specific forms of violence against women, explaining clearly to teachers what they should do if they have suspicions and concerns about children.

This brings me on to another aspect of domestic violence. The noble and learned Baroness will remember the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004. I imagine that it was the noble and learned Baroness who took it through this House, along with a very large number of other Bills that she has taken through the House over the years. We would certainly want to give a commitment to review that Act and consider what changes are necessary. I should be very grateful if she could tell us what studies into it the Government have done and are likely to do in future. I say that because one section is causing us some confusion: the noble and learned Baroness will remember Section 12 of the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004. We want to see that implemented. Why has it not been implemented? The noble and learned Baroness will remember that assurances were given by her right honourable friend Harriet Harman and by Gerry Sutcliffe in the Home Office in 2007 that Section 12 would be brought into effect. That was reversed by a statement from the Home Secretary some time later in 2007 when she stated that she did not think that it was necessary to introduce it but no reason was given. We are confused: we are entitled to an answer and I should be grateful if the noble and learned Baroness could cover that point.

A range of other points are raised in the report. I am grateful for everything that has been said by noble Baronesses on forced marriage, female genital mutilation and rape and sexual violence. I will not be able to go into them in detail on this occasion. I want to end with a couple of further questions. First, on early release and the end of custody licence, we have a sneaking suspicion that a great deal of early release—this goes wider than the subject of violence against women—is a means of massaging the prison figures and getting them down. In the case of domestic violence, does the noble and learned Baroness agree that these are particular cases where early release is not suitable? We give a commitment to legislate to end the automatic release at the half-way point of an offender’s sentence and we will not be using early release as a means of reducing numbers in prisons.

My final question is about the matter relating to the funding of rape crisis centres. I should be grateful if the noble Baroness could say a little more about the funding. At the moment, as I understand it, the funding is allocated on a year-on-year basis. We will give a commitment that a Conservative Government will end that process of short-term annual funding by introducing a stable three-year funding cycle for rape crisis centres. Will the noble and learned Baroness be able to match that commitment? We will give an assurance that we will fund a further expansion in rape crisis centres to ensure adequate and equitable provision for victims across England and Wales. We intend to allocate some £2.6 million over three years for 15 new rape crisis centres, growing the network by more than one-third to ensure that more victims of rape and sexual violence have access to that vital support service where necessary.

I end with one final question on costs. The noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, rightly referred to the costs of keeping young persons in youth offender institutions and said that the money spent there could be saved and spent on early intervention. Will the noble and learned Baroness be able to give some idea of the cost per annum of keeping a young person in such an institution? We have recently heard figures quoted of the order of £200,000 a year. I have a sneaking suspicion that most of us would agree that that money could be much better spent at an earlier stage. I look forward to hearing what the noble and learned Baroness has to say.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Gale for initiating this important debate and for setting out the issues so comprehensively in her opening address. I particularly welcome the noble Lord, Lord Henley. He may be the only male voice in this debate, but his is an important voice and we welcome him wholeheartedly. We would like to see more support on his Benches, but I am sure that that is not because of any lack of interest on his part.

The definition of what makes up domestic violence is something that we have debated for a long time. Some would like the definition to be wider, some would like it narrower. I am pleased to say that it has been an iterative process. The definitions used in England and Wales diverge, but only by a small amount. As part of the 2009-10 national domestic violence delivery plan, we are reviewing the definitions and considering others such as the one used in Wales.

It is important to recognise, as noble Lords have said in this debate, that much has changed. It was right that the noble Lord, Lord Henley, mentioned “Oliver!” and other examples. The difference, of course, is that it was deemed acceptable in those days and something that may not have been acknowledged across society, and that has thankfully changed and changed radically. I also thank all noble Lords who complimented the Government on the improvements that we have sought to make in this important area. In turn, I thank all those who helped us. The third sector has played a huge part in knocking on the door of Government so that we have been able to hear. It is a great privilege that, since the Government came to office, we have been able to meet the aspirations that many people have.

Over the past 30 years, domestic violence in the United Kingdom has gone from being an unspoken subject to one that is being jointly tackled by the Government and the voluntary sector together. The first refuge for women and children experiencing domestic violence opened in 1971 and that number has now increased by hundreds. It is right that my noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws mentioned it.

The detrimental impact of such violence on children is unquestionable, and I was pleased that the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, took as her subject matter that aspect of this issue. It has been clear and well documented that it is an integral part of the future of the child and it is essential that we address that. Regrettably, therefore, I am not surprised to hear what the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, said about what she has seen over the years. I regret to tell the House that that very much reflects what I have seen over what is now 30 years of experience in this area. However, we are making significant changes.

The effort to integrate children into the policy is clearly seen in the first national delivery plan on domestic violence that we have put together. I will come to that in a moment. Your Lordships will know that in 2003, the Government and Comic Relief each contributed £1 million over three years towards the cost of developing new initiatives addressing domestic violence. There was the freephone helpline that received £600,000 over three years. Calls from landlines do not appear on telephone bills, which is an important factor. The helpline joined together with Refuge and Women's Aid existing helplines to provide a single and unique freephone service. It builds on the charities’ support for services for women and children experiencing domestic violence.

We understood in 2003 that the approach had to be holistic end to end. It was my great privilege to chair the Inter-Ministerial Group on Domestic Violence, which was responsible for putting together that integrated, holistic end-to-end approach. In 1997, we brought the issue of domestic violence right to the forefront, so that it would no longer be the taboo subject that many of us were grappling with. We produced the first cross-government national domestic violence delivery plan. I should make clear that the reason that I made it a delivery plan—I shall come clean—is that we wanted change, we wanted outcomes and we did not want platitudes. That would involve every single government department making a commitment to that change.

Professor Sylvia Walby’s work was instrumental in helping us to identify the contribution that had to be made by each department to reduce that £23 billion cost. We have been able to take a range of actions to reduce domestic violence, including establishing 104 specialist domestic violence courts. The plan is to reach 128 by 2011 and we have provided more than £6 million in this financial year to support the rollout of independent domestic violence advisers. I tend to call them “divas”, because that is what they are and they do fantastic work. They are with the victims from the beginning to the end. They are at the end of a telephone and are present with the victims in court. Just the idea that someone is there to help is a huge support to victims.

The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, asked what has happened regarding unsuccessful outcomes. The good thing that has changed is that there is now someone to walk with that person. A domestic violence independent adviser can remain with a victim for up to three months for there to be an opportunity to consolidate on improvements that have been made, because many women feel incredibly vulnerable and go back to their partners because they do not think that they have a choice. Making that change has been important.

Multi-agency risk-assessment conferences across England and Wales have linked into the specialist domestic violence courts. The identification of and dealing with risk, not just for the adult but for the children involved, has been pivotal. We started this work in 1997, and there had been a 58 per cent decline in the incidence of domestic violence by 2007-08. Your Lordships will remember that we made some clear outcome objectives in that delivery plan. We said that we wanted to reduce domestic homicide. We wanted to reduce the level of severe injury caused. We wanted to reduce the damage caused to children, and we accepted very hard targets. I am pleased to say that we have made real improvements in all those areas.

The success rate on prosecutions for domestic violence continues to improve. In December 2003, only 46 per cent of domestic violence prosecutions resulted in convictions. We knew that that did real damage to confidence. By September 2008, that figure had increased to 72.1 per cent. That was not just in relation to the figures that we had in 2003; we have almost doubled the number of women who have the confidence to come forward. That is an important achievement.

In 2007, we published a cross-government action plan on sexual violence and abuse and have provided more than £11 million in the past five years to support victims of sexual violence, in addition to the funding that has been provided locally. We have extended the network of SARCs—sexual assault referral centres. There are 26 SARCs, more are in development and further funding will become available in April this year. I very much welcome the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Henley, said that Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition would agree with our commitment and would support our continued investment in this area. I hope that, in time, his party will match the extent of our commitment. I know that as a result of this debate he will make every effort to ensure that it does. We are also piloting independent sexual violence advisers to mirror the work already being carried out by the independent domestic violence advisers.

The reporting of rape has increased since 1997 from 6,628 to 12,654 in 2007-08. I commend all the comments made by my noble friend Lady Gould in relation to this matter, because it is critical. The rise in the number of convictions is slow but it is surely going in the right direction. Now, 37 per cent of all cases prosecuted as rape cases result in a conviction, and 59 per cent of cases prosecuted as rape cases result in a conviction for another offence. This is the highest conviction rate for 10 years and, alongside that, the sentences increased from an average of about 40 months in 1984 to 77.9 months in 2007.

The trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation and prostitution is another area that we have committed to. I know that we have not concentrated on that in this debate but it is a matter of real importance to our Government. In 2006, the Serious Organised Crime Agency was launched with trafficking as one of its key priorities. Following the first national enforcement campaign, Operation Pentameter, the multi-agency United Kingdom Human Trafficking Centre was established.

Therefore, we have, as has been pleasingly acknowledged, been able to make a real difference. How have we done that? The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, asked about training. Professionals who have contact with domestic violence victims will receive training to address the needs of children who witness domestic violence. The individual domestic violence advisers, whom we have spoken about, receive accredited training. Their course consists of 15 days of modules, and children’s issues are included in almost every one. As well as addressing children exposed to domestic violence, the course also deals with issues such as adolescence domestic violence, forced marriage and so-called honour-based violence. All the modules are delivered by experts in the field and, once the course is completed, there is ongoing development and support to ensure that advisers are updated with new developments.

I also reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, that we have probably one of the most comprehensive legislative programmes for the protection of children in the world. All that legislation is there to help professionals to exercise their judgment so as to better protect the children about whom we care so much.

The European Union has developed a set of guidelines on combating domestic violence against women. The guidelines mean that from now on the European Union will conduct systematic lobbying and reporting on this issue, as well as using funding to tackle it. The United Kingdom is actively contributing to current Council of Europe debates on violence against women. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s annual contribution to the Commonwealth Secretariat is about £4.2 million, and the gender section is developing a programme of work that spans gender-based violence, trafficking of women, children’s human rights and other issues. We are committed to looking at whether it would be appropriate to sign the convention.

The implementation of that programme is important, and it has to be seen alongside the work that DfID is doing with its international partners to tackle violence against women in 20 countries worldwide. We recognise that women are particularly vulnerable in conflict situations, but we also recognise that they should be seen not only as victims but as having an important role to play in peace-building and reconstruction efforts. The United Kingdom has been one of the principal supporters of UN Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security, which calls on the UN and member states to ensure equal participation in peace-building and reconstruction efforts, women’s empowerment, and the protection of women and girls in conflict.

More recently, in June last year, we were active in lobbying for agreement to UN Security Council resolution 1820 on sexual violence in conflict. I was very proud to represent our country at that time and, indeed, to attend the informal meeting of female Ministers put together by Condoleezza Rice. There, we discussed how better to address these issues and how to ensure that women’s issues are at the top of the agenda. We also discussed how to ensure that good practice is shared, perhaps through toolkits, and what works right around the world. There were some very impressive contributions from the different countries and that work will continue.

DfID is also supporting measures to eliminate female genital mutilation through its support of organisations such as UNICEF, as well as by being a member of the FGM donor working group. I was warmed to hear my noble friend Lady Rendell rise again on this issue. She has a made a real contribution to making sure that this unpalatable, distasteful issue is understood by those who are obliged to deal with it. We know that there is no quick fix to the problem of female genital mutilation and that legislation alone cannot eliminate the practice. It is a matter of comment that there have been no prosecutions so far. However, I agree with my noble friend when she says that prosecution alone is not enough. The fact that this practice has been made illegal has materially advantaged the community. Educating the practising communities to abandon the practice is the best way to break the cycle of mutilation, and the 2003 Act is being widely used to help to further that. I am pleased that my noble friend mentioned Project Azure within the Metropolitan Police child abuse investigation command unit, which specifically deals with this potentially fatal child abuse practice. We have released a DVD for health professionals to enable them to provide effective and sensitive care for women who have undergone FGM.

I commend my health colleagues for the work that they have done not just on FGM but on domestic violence in general. We know from the World Health Organisation that domestic violence is the greatest cause of morbidity in women worldwide. The fact that we now have health professionals screening for domestic violence during pregnancy is making a huge difference. One in three of the women who come forward has indications of domestic violence. That is huge. The fact that we are now dealing with this aggressively is a huge contribution.

We recognise that there is a strong link between child protection concerns and domestic violence and we stress the need for awareness of those links in the interagency guidance Working Together to Safeguard Children. There is much that I would like to say, because the DCSF is providing real support to the NSPCC—£30 million between last year and 2011—to support the expansion and integration of the NSPCC’s listening services. This money will allow the NSPCC to expand its services significantly so that more children can be given the advice and help that can be so important.

The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, spoke about forced marriage. I am very pleased with and proud of the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act. As she knows, the Act is materially different from the Bill that was proposed by the noble Lord. I was pleased to be able to help to reshape it so that it was in a form that would have utility and application and that would be welcomed. It was a great pleasure when the Bill went through this House. It was something that I could wholeheartedly endorse, and I feel proud of having shaped it.

That is a specialised area. All these issues integrated together cause us real pride, but also real concern. There is strong benefit from having a clearly recognisable leading service for supporting children and reporting suspected abuse. During 2007-08, the number of volunteers increased by 222, or 20 per cent, which enabled them to counsel 37,000 more calls. Over the same period, they made 9,500 referrals to social services and the police. Through feedback, it was found that 40 per cent of them were previously unknown to the authorities.

My noble friend Lady Massey rightly asked, “What can we do to help parents? Are we getting in early? Is early intervention right?”. The answer is yes, yes and yes. We are investing £102.5 million in 2008-11 in the deployment of parent support advisers, with more than 1,500 parent support advisers and similar professionals currently working in schools. We want to provide support for families to improve relationships, prevent problem behaviour and break the intergenerational cycles of violence and abuse.

There are so many things that I would like to say about the issue. I know that I am over time, but I wonder whether I can touch on the funding issue raised by my noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws. The Supporting People programme allows local government to determine the focus of funding and to support the most vulnerable. Evidence shows that funding of domestic violence services has risen from £59.3 million in 2005-06 to £61.6 million in 2006-07. That programme provides flexibility.

I know that it is said that there is a lottery and that we want consistency. I endorse that, but the figures demonstrate that 73.5 per cent of local authorities now have specialised services to address violence against women. That is markedly different from the previous situation. Too many local authorities are still not providing support, but that is changing. Local area agreements give us light that can be used to ensure that funding provided to local authorities is used for that purpose, and authorities can be interrogated. The Government have invested about £11 million during the past five years in specialist services for victims of sexual violence. Improvements have been made, but there is much, much more to do.

I would have liked to spend more time talking about some of the international dimensions and answering many questions about them. I assure noble Lords that I have answers for all of them; I wish that I had the time to give them. On behalf of the Government, perhaps I may say how proud we are of how much has been done not just by us but by all those who have contributed to this agenda. I thank each and every Member who has participated in the debate. We are old friends. I hope that as we continue to have these debates there will be less for us to be concerned about. I will write to Members on all the matters on which, regrettably, I have not had the opportunity to reply in full to the House.

16:47:00

Baroness Gale
My Lords, I begin by thanking my noble and learned friend Lady Scotland for her response. She has given us positive things to think about. I started by saying how depressing are the figures for violence against women and children, but things are happening and we are making progress. We still want much more to be done. I thank all the other speakers as well, because we have had a wide-ranging debate geographically—internationally, across Europe, Wales and the United Kingdom. I thank them very much.

The outcome has been that this is not a party-political matter. We can all agree on many things about how we tackle violence against women. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Henley, as the only male Peer speaking today, will now be an ambassador among all the male Peers to encourage them to take part in debates on what is, as we have said, not just a women’s issue but an issue for women and men.

I hope that one day the preventive actions that we are taking will greatly reduce the number of acts of violence against women and children. Once again, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate and I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion withdrawn.