Thanks to the committee Chair for bringing today’s debate. This was a well-intentioned Act. However, the post-legislative scrutiny work has highlighted serious problems in implementing it, which we’ve been hearing about this afternoon. One of the problems is that local councils, in large part, have to implement the Act, but it comes hard on the heels of other Acts that they also have to implement, such as the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 and the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. A major issue that arose during the post-legislative scrutiny was that councils often struggle to find the staff to allocate these extra tasks to, and they’re also struggling to find adequate financial resources. So, it does cause problems.

During the scrutiny, we heard from some very able council officers who were certainly passionate about reducing violence against women, but who told us that their councils struggled with time, with staffing levels, and with money, so it will still be a big job to effectively implement this Act. I welcome the committee’s desire to introduce healthy relationships teaching at schools, but, again, this raises issues of time and expense on already time-pressured curriculums. Also, we should be mindful of a point that has been made in the Chamber recently, which is that domestic violence can affect men as victims, as well as women, albeit in lesser numbers, and I think this aspect could also usefully form part of healthy relationship lessons at school.