Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:50 pm on 22 November 2016.
I thank the Member for her continued commitment. I visited the Live Fear Free helpline too in Bangor—I think the area is—in north Wales, and they’ve got some great staff there who are very committed to supporting very vulnerable individuals as they ring the helpline. I pay tribute to the work that they do. Indeed, I think the Member and other Members were at the relaunch of the scheme only the other week.
She’s absolutely right: redoubling the efforts of all Members is something that we should do. We should never forget that this is a day on Friday that we have in the diary to recognise these issues, but it should be the norm. It should be a process where it’s built into the system as opposed to a one-off addition. It’s the right thing to do for the right reasons.
In terms of specifics around the strategy, I’m grateful for her comments on the strategy. The development of the draft through to the final version was done working with my advisor and also with the sector to try and create a document that everybody was reasonably content with. For me, that was a legislative process, and there was a deadline when we had to produce that. I think I mentioned in committee, actually, it was quite challenging to deliver that strategy, but the most important thing is the delivery framework. I apologise to Mark Isherwood that I didn’t give him the framework timescale. I’m really relaxed about this, because I think it needs to be done, but done properly. I’ve asked part of the team in the advisory group to give me advice on this.
So, I’m not an expert in this field, and my officials have some quality skills around this, but actually real people experiencing this have the real expertise. We’ve got to buy that in to understand what these services are required for, and that’s how we’ll develop the framework with them, in the co-production way that the Member brings to the Chamber on a regular basis. But I will give a commitment to the Chamber to update Members on that process as we move forward. I don’t want it to be a prolonged one, but I want to make sure that it’s right.
I’m grateful to Elfyn Llwyd regarding the issues of the legislation around stalking. Absolutely, he was right to do that, and I’m very supportive of that principle. We should take away party politics around this and actually do the right thing for the right reasons. Indeed, the issue around coercive control is something that we also should be very aware of, and make sure that we all, collectively, if we have an issue with that, are upfront about that process and make sure we report it if that’s what we believe is happening. But I’m grateful again for the Member’s commitment during this debate today.