We move on to the next item, a statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children on progress on implementation of the Violence Against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (Wales) Act 2015. I call on the Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children, Carl Sargeant, to make the statement.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. I feel privileged to again take on this important agenda to end violence against women, domestic abuse and sexual violence. I am proud to have been the Minister responsible for the early development of the Bill, which was successfully taken forward by my colleagues Lesley Griffiths and Leighton Andrews.

In June of 2014, Welsh Government was awarded White Ribbon accreditation and there are several White Ribbon ambassadors within the Cabinet, and I am proud to have been one for many years. The purpose of the Act is to improve prevention, protection and support for people affected by gender-based violence, domestic abuse and sexual violence, and we’re making good progress on the implementation. To improve early intervention, it’s vital that the public sector workforce can identify abuse and get help and support to victims.

In March, we published the national training framework. It sets out training requirements for all roles within the Welsh public service, including awareness-raising training for all staff, helping professionals to deal with disclosures of abuse, and ensuring that consistent training is available for specialist professionals. A key part of the framework is the e-learning package published last September. The e-learning will raise the awareness of about 0.25 million Welsh public service workers over the next two years.

We have also introduced ‘ask and act’. This requires professionals like health visitors and housing officers to identify symptoms of abuse and to ask clients if they are being abused. They are required to offer referrals, interventions and specialist support depending on what they need. This is a five-year project funded by Welsh Government and is being piloted in two parts of Wales. We have received extremely positive feedback on this project.

To really help us prevent violence against women in the future, we have to focus on children, to make sure they understand what constitutes a healthy relationship and how to recognise the symptoms of unhealthy relationships. So far we have published a whole education approach to good practice guide, produced by Welsh Women’s Aid, and an awareness-raising guide for school governors published in March 2016. We’ve also held a joint national education conference.

Statutory guidance on education will make local authorities designate a member of staff for the purpose of championing violence against women, domestic abuse and sexual violence matters in schools and other settings. Our aim is to publish this by the end of the year. We have also commissioned Welsh Women’s Aid to develop a package of best practice materials in relation to these matters, for use in education settings across Wales. These will also be published shortly.

Public services need to work together to protect people experiencing violence against women, domestic abuse and sexual violence from suffering any further harm, and protect any family member and children.

In 2015-16 we increased the budget for tackling violence against women, domestic abuse and sexual violence to £5.4 million and this remains unchanged for 2016-17. We have also taken significant steps to reduce the incidence, and to protect victims, of female genital mutilation, forced marriage and honour based violence.

For the future, we know that a big part of tackling violence against women will be to tackle perpetrators. We are working with the National Probation Service and the national adviser on guidance on perpetrators. We are also working with victims and survivors to help us shape our ongoing approach.

We continue to support the Live Fear Free website, which provides a comprehensive resource for victims, survivors, families and friends and professionals. The website supports the work of the helpline in providing advice and signposting.

The Welsh Government has produced several high-profile campaigns to raise awareness and change attitudes in the last year. This includes the award-winning Cross the Line campaign, which deals with emotional abuse. This campaign received both silver and gold awards at the Chartered Institute of Public Relations awards last October. I intend to build on the success in 2016-17.

We’ve also made significant progress but there is more to do. We will consult on the national strategy, including measures of performance and progress, which will inform a framework for regional delivery of services. And I look forward to working with the national adviser, Rhian Bowen-Davies, who I met last week, public and third sector organisations, with victims and survivors to continue the excellent work done so far in delivering our activities to tackle violence against women.

Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Sian Gwenllian.

Thank you very much, and thank you for that update. Of course, you acknowledge here that the central grant has been increased, but much of the funding for this area in terms of assistance to women in refuges does come through local authorities, and local authorities have faced financial cuts year on year. Some of these services are suffering as a result of cuts that vary from 3 per cent to 20 per cent, and there are some examples of cuts of up to 70 per cent in the support for women’s services in some parts of Wales, unfortunately. This leads to a dire situation on occasion, and, during 2015, Women’s Aid had to refuse service to 284 women because there was just no room in the refuges and no funding available to maintain the services. So how, therefore, do you intend to implement the framework in this area, given the lack of resources and funding, and what is the Government’s financial strategy?

If I could just turn to two other issues, Plaid Cymru has been emphasising healthy relationships education and the need to maintain and roll that out as a holistic approach to this most complex of problems. How are you now going to be monitoring the implementation of the guidance that’s been published in order to ensure that we do achieve our aims in that particular area? I note that you don’t mention one very important aspect in this area, namely the issue of the banning of smacking children. The decision of the Government in the last Assembly was not to actually do away with the reasonable chastisement defence, which was a great shame, because it would have given equal protection to children in law. There is now some sign that your Government is willing to reconsider this particular issue, thanks to pressure from my own party, so I would like to know what steps have been taken and what is the timetable for achieving this, because it is an issue that is crucially important for our children in the future.

I thank the Member for her contribution. She should be aware that this is the second time that I’ve been in this portfolio and I have worked with many groups to increase the opportunities we have, working with Government to make sure we tackle these issues. I welcome the opportunity to work with the Member in a more constructive way in the future too. I think it would help though if the Member were to look in more detail at some of the issues that she raises with me today. Of course, I did mention to the Member that, in 2015-16, we increased the budget for tackling violence against women, domestic abuse and sexual violence to £5.4 million. That remains unchanged for 2016-17. The Member is right to raise the issue of local authority intervention, but there are so many other players too, and the issue around the Supporting People grant around refuges particularly—we work with Supporting People, which issues a significant amount of money to third sector organisations and indeed to housing associations too, who are also partners in this. I’ve already spoken to three of the four police and crime commissioners across Wales, who I know are also very keen to join with us in tackling some of the issues that the Member raises.

It is also perhaps unfortunate language that the Member uses in terms of the defence of reasonable chastisement. This Government will legislate on the defence of reasonable chastisement in this term of Government, and I will be taking that legislation through. I look forward to the Member’s support as we move forward. There are many complex items in dealing with these issues, and some of the priorities that my team have already started working on, which I will be pursuing with colleagues across Government, are things like adverse childhood experiences, ACEs for short, which have a massive impact on the way people grow up and the effects of that. We’re also seeing some great programmes already running in pilot form across Wales—the IRIS programme, which started its life in Bristol, is now being rolled out across many of the Cardiff GP surgeries, where we are seeing first-time referrals increasing dramatically, day by day, which seems tragic, but actually it’s great news that we’re seeing people have the ability and confidence to be supported in this tragic position they find themselves in. We’ve got IDVA health-led services being rolled out across Wales, and also the issue around a perpetrators’ programme that’s run in Essex and Sussex, and the south Wales police and crime commissioner is looking at the ‘Drive’ programme, which should be, again, something we should think about—how do we make sure these programmes are consistent across the whole of Wales?

Again, I am pleased to welcome you back to a role, Minister—or Secretary—that I know that you care passionately about. Passion does play a part, of course, on both sides of this debate. I would like to point you in the direction of a passion to do something positive about this, and I’d like, here, to commend the work of Coedcae school in Llanelli, from where the pupils came here and they actually delivered their action plan and their understanding in their White Ribbon campaign two years ago. They put together a play—that is, the pupils put together a play where they had starring roles within that play and they discussed all consequences concerning all aspects of domestic abuse and violence within the home. The then education Minister, Huw Lewis, came along to the school, and I’m inviting you, Minister, and hoping that you will take that opportunity to come along as well, because it is a real example of peer-led group work within a school and is most definitely a model of best practice.

On the other hand, I conducted a survey of students two years ago, and I asked a very few basic questions about, ‘Have you ever seen or have you ever witnessed, and how do you feel about different levels of violence?’ I was absolutely astounded and disappointed when 50 per cent of those who replied said they had, and 50 per cent—and it didn’t really matter whether they were male or female—thought that it was quite acceptable for a male to hit his girlfriend or his partner by just giving her a slap. Those were the replies I received. So, when we say that we need to look at and legislate, that is correct, but what we absolutely have to do—and this is where I wholeheartedly support the work with young people and children—is change attitudes. Because there’s a direct need for attitudinal change that came out of my survey, and it absolutely staggered me.

Of course, what we’re really talking about when we’re talking about changing hearts and minds—we’re talking about the respect agenda, that people actually respect each other, whatever age they are, whatever gender they are. And that brings me neatly on to, I think, probably an area that doesn’t get an awful lot of airing. That is the area of same-sex relationships. It is a wonderful thing now that people can openly have same-sex relationships without any fear of retribution from the wider society, but I’m not so convinced that those same couples find the same freedom to come forward and express, and whether people are actually trained to help those couples, when they’re experiencing domestic abuse.

Finally, I’d like to know, Minister, what you’re going to do about monitoring progress. It is fantastic that we’re world leaders in this field, but we need to monitor the progress to make sure that what we’re trying to lead on actually gets delivered. It’s fantastic that we’ve got champions being placed here, there and everywhere, but what exactly is it that they’re doing? Will we know what it is that they’re doing, and who are they accountable to, and what is it that they are actually accountable for?

Also, I heard the account just now about 70 per cent reductions by one authority in their budget given to Women’s Aid. I think that’s disgraceful. That’s a political decision, and they need to take that into account within their own local authority. But the housing Bill actually does allow to free up some of those places. Again, on the same thing about monitoring progress, have you looked at whether any of the housing associations or local authorities are taking forward the provision that they now have within the housing Bill that actually tells them that they can, where it is safe to do, move the perpetrator, not the victim?

I thank the Member for her contribution. Again, Joyce Watson, thank you for your contribution to this programme as well—internationally recognised in terms of the work that you’ve done. So, working together we can make a big difference in this, as many other people in the field do too.

The Member raises some really interesting points. I am aware of the school in Llanelli and the play that they put on, because, while you invited Huw Lewis to attend, I seem to recall having some intervention as well in that process. I congratulate the young people, building on healthy relationships, because that’s what I believe. The communities portfolio has been enhanced by actually having responsibility now specifically for children and young people, because I do believe that if we can make some early interventions on healthy relationships at a young age it prepares people for the long term in life. I’m really pleased to be able to work with my Cabinet Secretary colleagues in terms of how we can jointly work to this single agenda of well-being in our communities, starting with young people.

The issue the Member raises regarding housing, particularly, is another area in which I’m very interested. I’ve always been very impressed at the way that the housing sector can support this very issue. I remember, back in the portfolio many years ago when I asked the housing associations to introduce work-based policies and client-based policies for domestic violence, that nearly all of them did. One was a little bit challenging, but, when we talked about money, they decided that it was probably a wise idea to move into that space for the right reasons. We’ve got all housing associations across Wales now with work-based policies around domestic violence, and for their clients too. So, they are able to influence and do some more work. The ‘ask and act’ programme they’re involved in is something that, again, remains unique to Wales in a global setting. So, we are doing some really clever work.

The same-sex relationships: I share your concern, and in particular we saw the tragic events that happened in Orlando last week—just saying that we still aren’t, people aren’t, accepting what is perfectly natural to what we see in daily life, and how do we make sure that services align to supporting people who choose to live in same-sex couple relationships? Actually, domestic violence isn’t just about marital relationships: it’s father and son, mother and daughter, and a whole mixture of how these incidents are taken forward. We have to be very clever in the way that we look and how we support people in their disclosure programmes.

I’m very keen to make sure that we make progress on this. I think there were some people in the sector—some of my officials, even—who were thinking, ‘Oh no, he’s back’. Well, I am back and let’s hope that we can work together to make sure that we can make real changes—passionately doing something that will be for the good and safety of people across our communities. The way we’ll do that is working with the national strategy, the national adviser and national indicators, and working with the principles we set down in Government last term about the well-being of future generations Act, making sure we can plan for the future, working with our young people, encouraging, educating people about healthy relationships. That’s something I know, working with you and many in this Chamber, that we can achieve.

Welsh Conservative spokesperson, Mark Isherwood.

Thank you. I think, when you last held this portfolio, I held the shadow portfolio, and I’m still spokesperson for my party on this issue. Can I start by giving credit to people who aren’t here: Jocelyn Davies, who led on this for Plaid Cymru in the last Assembly, and Peter Black, for the Liberal Democrats, who worked with me to strengthen the Bill with the Minister, particularly at the end? Those of you who were here will remember in those last weeks, particularly the last week, how tense matters became, because we as members of the committee that scrutinised it at Stage 1 had said the Minister should amend the Bill to make provision for compulsory whole-school age-appropriate education programmes on healthy relationships, and we still hadn’t achieved that at Stage 3. The Minister came forward with some concessions that enabled the Bill to go through with unanimous support at Stage 4.

Today, you referred to the whole-education approach, the good practice guide, the national education conference, and statutory guidance on education to make local authorities designate a member of staff for the purpose of championing violence against women, domestic abuse and sexual violence matters in schools and other settings. At Stage 3 and 4 the Minister had said the statutory guidance then would provide or include provisions for approaches such as how schools can drive forward a whole-school approach by appointing a staff, pupil and governor champion, and it therefore doesn’t require them. Can you therefore confirm that this will make local authorities introduce that staff champion? But also, could you perhaps respond or develop the omission here in terms of children and governors, who your predecessor had also referred to in this context?

You referred to developing a package of best practice for use in education settings across Wales. The Minister at Stage 4, and I quote, said:

‘Mark Isherwood asked specifically about how we keep up to date on the curriculum and the implementation of the Donaldson review,’ and you propose that healthy relationship education is developed within the curriculum followed by all schools. Your predecessor said

‘that is certainly something I will want to be reporting on’.

So, I wonder if you could add comments in the context of the Donaldson review recommendations.

You say that, for the future, we know a big part of tackling violence against women will be to tackle perpetrators, and that we’re working with the National Probation Service and the national adviser on guidance on perpetrators. Well, again at Stage 4, the previous Minister said:

‘I can also give Mark Isherwood an undertaking, given his continued pressure throughout this process on the importance of perpetrator programmes, that, of course, we will be reporting on those as well, where they operate, bearing in mind that the research in this area is still being developed and we need to ensure that we are putting in place programmes that actually work.’

In my contributions I’ve referred, for example, to the work of Relate Cymru and their voluntary perpetrator programme, which found that 90 per cent of the partners they questioned, sometimes after the end of the programme, said that there has been a complete stop in violence and intimidation by their partner. I’ve also referred to the knowledge and expertise of an organisation you also hold close to your heart, the domestic abuse safety unit on Deeside. I wonder if you can comment on whether or how you could extend your work with this to organisations like that, so you may access the front-line expertise that they and their partner organisations already have.

The Stage 1 committee report in the last Assembly recommended that the legislation should ensure that services are tailored to the specific needs of men and women respectively. I quoted then from the domestic abuse safety unit of Flintshire, who’d given me a booklet, a men’s health forum booklet, which said that it’s important to recognise that men experience domestic violence both as victims and perpetrators, and I referred to the Barnardo’s ‘Hidden in Plain Sight’ report on the sexual exploitation of boys and young men. They said this begins to address the gap created by the focus on female victims with little attention given to males. Well, there was a call for gender-specific approaches for women, yes, absolutely, but also for men.

At Stage 4 I said I’d be looking to see how the Minister developed his pledges in this respect. Could you comment on the pledges your predecessor made in this respect, and how you might be looking at this in the future?

My final point: at that stage I also identified concern that the name change from ‘ministerial’ to ‘national’ adviser was apparently just that—a name change. The Minister previously acknowledged what he referred to as inconsistencies within the Bill created by the name change and stated his intention to clarify these. Again, could you confirm whether you have or how you will be addressing those inconsistencies? Thank you.

I thank Mark Isherwood for his question. I can’t comment on the former Minister’s decisions and his evidence in committee stage. What I can do is certainly update Members, which I’m hoping to do today, in terms of where we’re taking forward the Bill and the concepts behind that and the implementation, which I think is a very important part of that. The Member is right to raise the issue of statutory guidance. The previous Minister may have said that it can drive forward change; my assumption will be that it will drive forward change, and I will be making sure that’s very clear in statutory guidance that will be issued around the training for certain members of staff and governors of boards.

I’ve already started early discussions with Kirsty Williams regarding the Donaldson review and recommendations around that, because my own view is that healthy relationships and the teaching of healthy relationships isn’t optional for schools. This should be what we should be doing from a very early age. I met, and I suppose the Member has also met, with many schools in affluent areas—may we say—that don’t believe there is an issue with domestic violence in their community at all. Well, it’s complete nonsense. There is domestic violence prevalent in all our communities. It’s not class based and it can happen to anybody. That’s why, I think, healthy relationships across the whole sector, of all our schools, is not optional. I’m very grateful for the work, already, that Kirsty Williams is helping us develop in terms of training. I will come back to the Chamber with more detail when we have that.

Perpetrator programmes—it is early days for this. I’ve got evidence to see how they are effective. But I really am impressed by the work of Alun Michael, working with other police commissioners from England, actually, where there are three police authorities practising the ‘Drive’ campaign, it’s called, working with perpetrators at very high incidence rates. They are already seeing some great turn-around where perpetrators sometimes don’t realise they are actually having an effect on their partners in any way.

Mark Isherwood raises a very important point, which is again close to my heart. It is about actually talking to people who have experienced this. Forget the—I think we should use the work of academics and the civil service, who have a great knowledge of this; but the real people that know about this are the people who have been affected by that. People like a good friend of mine, Rachel Court, or Rachel Williams, who was shot in Newport by her late husband, and then she lost, within weeks, her own son too. She can tell you a very dramatic story about how it affected her and her family. Now, she sees herself on a mission as a survivor on how she can help people deal with these issues. I want to listen to people like Rachel so that we can develop Government policy that will have a real meaning to real people.

I welcome the Cabinet Secretary’s statement and his clear commitment to taking forward and building on the pioneering made-in-Wales legislation that was brought forward by his predecessors Lesley Griffiths and Leighton Andrews. The detailed plans laid out in the statement show there’s a real commitment to take forward and turn bold legislation into bold implementation that will make a real difference in our communities and to the lives of many people who are exposed to domestic violence.

I want to explore with the Minister how this interacts with other England-and-Wales legislation brought forward in the UK Parliament, not least the recent offence under the Serious Crime Act 2015, England and Wales, of coercive and controlling behaviour. It was very welcome because it acknowledged, in hard black and white, the frequency and the destructiveness of this form of often hidden and often harder-to-identify abuse. As Professor Evan Stark of Rutgers university and long-time campaigner on this issue has said:

‘Not only is coercive control the most common context in which women are abused, it is also the most dangerous.’

I the past, the law has seemed inadequate when police officers are called to incidents of domestic abuse, not least because, too often, only a physical act causing actual injury or criminal damage would result in an arrest. The offence of coercive behaviour, this new offence, allows enforcement agencies to identify and to act on a pattern of abusive behaviour where victims are subject to controlling, disempowering behaviour and emotional abuse and to do this before it progresses to actual physical violence. But, this will need a new skill set, both for police officers and other agencies to identify this behaviour and to gather the evidence needed for prosecution and conviction. So, would the Cabinet Secretary ensure, in light of the welcome national training framework, the Ask Me pilot, and so much good work that is now happening on a multi-agency basis, that we can promote the successful use of these new powers on coercive and controlling behaviour and add to the work of those like south Wales police commissioner Alun Michael, who I understand the Cabinet Secretary met with very recently, who is working with partners on the ground in seminars, in workshops and elsewhere to develop awareness of these new powers and understanding of how to use these new powers and to put them into action?

I thank the Member for his comments. People who know me will really understand that there are certain things that excite me about the opportunity to make a difference; this is the field where I’m really passionate about making a difference, because this is the difference between life and death. For many people who have tragically found the latter, it sort of escapes them from domestic violence, but it’s a tragedy for them and their families and friends.

The issue around the national strategy will be an important one. It’s about delivery—are we doing this right and can we deliver on all of the issues that the Member raises: the coercive control, the child sexual exploitation, physical, verbal, coercive control, and financial—all have an influence on people and we’ve got to make sure that, collectively, we can find solutions to that. Governments do many things, and they don’t always get these things right, but there are some people out there who are experts in the field, and what we have to do is open the doors to make sure that we bring these people together, work with national advisers and work with an advisory group. I’m looking at refreshing the advisory group, because when we were developing this groundbreaking piece of legislation, which had worldwide recognition, we listened to people and understood what it really meant for delivery. That’s what I intend to do as we move forward on the implementation of this Act. It is a great start, but there’s so much more work we can do collectively.

Thank you to the Cabinet Secretary.