Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:45 pm on 21 June 2016.
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.