8. Will the First Minister provide an update on action taken by the Welsh Government to tackle violence against women and girls? OAQ51342

Could I congratulate the Member for what I think is the first First Minister's question that she has asked? I hope that I am able to give her an answer that is satisfactory to her.

We are implementing the national strategy that sets out our action to tackle violence against women and girls, and survivors' voices have to be at the forefront of this work. In recognition of that, we are developing a national survivor engagement framework.  

I thank the First Minister for that answer to my first question to him. I think it is shocking to learn this week that, on average, two women a week are killed by a partner or ex-partner in England and Wales. Yesterday, I spoke at the BAWSO annual Light a Candle multi-faith event at Llandaff cathedral, following a march from the offices of the Llamau housing society. We raised awareness and support for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. I welcomed, in my words in the cathedral, the approach that Julie James is taking regarding tackling violence against women as everybody's business. That was the message yesterday. Can I pay tribute to BAWSO, who organised the event yesterday? They undertake pioneering work, supporting women facing domestic abuse, forced marriage, trafficking and FGM, which we debated recently. Can the First Minister assure me that Welsh Government recognises the importance of the Wales-wide work of BAWSO?

Yes, I am grateful for organisations such as BAWSO, who do offer support for some of the most vulnerable members of the BME community. We have provided £446,000 of funding to BAWSO from the violence against women, domestic abuse and sexual violence revenue grant during this financial year, and officials recently met with BAWSO service users as part of the survivor engagement framework. And I understand the Leader of the House and Chief Whip is due to visit BAWSO's Wrexham office next week.

First Minister, victims of domestic abuse very often have to go into hiding or stay in shelters for inordinately long periods of time. If you look across the piece in Europe, countries such as Italy and Germany not only have much more direct and emphatic laws about removing the abuser from the marital home, rather than the abused, but they also take the view that if a family has been disrupted and a parent, very often a woman with children, has to go into hiding, rather than just leave them in shelters, they actually take them, put them in a home and then help them to build a new life, new schools, new permanency, put down new roots in a place of safety. Will you undertake on behalf of your Government to look at what places like Italy and Germany do, to see if we can actually bring that kind of groundbreaking, whole-family view to how we might help somebody who is suffering and had to leave their home because of domestic abuse?

Yes, I think it's important that we look at good examples across Europe. One of the issues that we faced at one time was the wall we'd hit with the devolution boundary and not being able to do as we would want to do in order to make sure that we can be as effective as possible. We know, of course, with the reserved-powers model, there are greater opportunities now for us to develop the kind of legal framework that we would want, but, certainly, as we develop the cross-Government delivery framework that will be complementing our national strategy, looking at other countries and what they do, in order to see what the best practice is, will form an important part of feeding in to what we will then look to do in Wales.

Women’s Aid in Bangor, in my constituency, are extremely concerned about the talk of integrating the violence against women, domestic violence and sexual violence grant into a single composite grant. They are concerned that the same thing that’s happened in England could happen here: 17 per cent of specialist shelters were lost and a third of all referrals to shelters had to be rejected because of a shortage of space. This happened after the Government in England stopped ring-fencing Supporting People as a separate part of funding. Can you guarantee that a sufficient level of funding will be available to provide shelters across Wales if this budgetary change is made in 2018-19?

That is exactly what we wish to see, and we don’t want to see the service that is there at present being reduced in any way.