3. Will the Leader of the House make a statement on the Violence against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (Wales) Act 2015 on its third anniversary? OAQ51978

Yes, with pleasure. Since the Act came into force, the approach to tackling violence against women, domestic abuse and sexual violence has been transformed. Implementation of the Act has led to increased training, stronger guidance, practice change and a clear strategic direction throughout the Welsh public service. The third sector continues to play an extremely important role in all of this.

Well, of course, as we've heard today, the Violence Against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (Wales) Act is a critically important area of your portfolio, and I do welcome the way you are engaging so fully in this vital policy area. This Act has three purposes: prevention, protection and support, and in November I spoke at the BAWSO annual Light a Candle multifaith event at Llandaff cathedral, and I highlighted that, on average, two women a week are killed by a partner or ex-partner in England and Wales. So, given the ongoing prevalence of violence against women and girls, can you comment further on the progress of implementation of this pioneering legislation, given the challenges that are facing organisations who provide specialist services for women, the pressures on multi-agency providers such as police, social services, health boards, which all have a roll to play, and the NHS, particularly as a result of austerity and the pressures this Government is facing as a result of UK Government cuts?

Yes, indeed. I mean, we have made huge progress despite the challenges, and organisations across Wales have shown a real commitment to the Act and to the services that they provide. This is not a surprise to us; we know that people are very committed in this area.

We are, as Jane Hutt knows, in the process of moving to a co-ordinated, needs-led, regional commissioning base for services for violence against women, domestic abuse and sexual violence. This is to provide for better planning and join-up of services, as I just said in previous answers, as well as some economies of scale. But we've got specialist third sector services being a vital part of that regional, collaborative approach, and just to elaborate a little bit, I did attend the launch of the the Seren Môr western bay consortium, which is a consortium of five organisations down there who have come together collaboratively. I think there is a real need for us to make sure that the way that we commission services doesn't have unintended consequences in lessening collaboration, and this regional approach will, we hope, be very instrumental in drawing those services together and getting them to work in a co-ordinated fashion together and share all of their data, rather than if we procure individual services and they compete with each other and naturally pull their data back together. So, we're very committed to doing that.

Our national training framework ensures that VAWDASV is a core part of the service that our health, fire and rescue, and local authority colleagues offer. As I said earlier, public services have shown their commitment to the training and, to date, over 70,000 people have been trained. Local authorities and local health boards are under a duty to publish their local VAWDASV strategies by early next month. It's a key commitment of the Act, and places it on a new strategic footing, which we think will ensure the stronger leadership and direction that the sector needs. We're very pleased to have got our own guidance out, as the third anniversary approaches. 

Cabinet Secretary, between November 2016 and October 2017, South Wales Police dealt with nearly 36,000 incidents of domestic abuse, and those are the ones they've dealt with. So, this is an enormous problem, and in many ways, it's only now that it's getting full recognition. Will you join with me in commending the work of the Police and Crime Commissioner for South Wales? Indeed, the leadership shown by police commissioners, I think, is key in this area, but the south Wales police commissioner received a grant last year from the Home Office of £1.4 million to help address violence against women and girls, concentrating on protection and prevention, and I understand this was the largest of any grant given to a police commissioner. I do think there's some great practice out there now, but it's a huge task, and a lot of it does relate to educating people, stopping behaviour before it accelerates, and just having a no-tolerance approach to abuse.

Yes, I couldn't agree more. I had the great pleasure of going with the police and crime commissioner around the multi-agency service hub, over in Cardiff central police station. I don't know if the Member's had the chance to do that, but I'd recommend it to all Members, if you haven't had the chance. That shows the real leadership that the police service, in particular, has given to that collaborative approach. I was able to see for myself how they were able to make sure that they responded much more quickly and appropriately to all of the incidents that they were dealing with, and make a lot better use of the wealth of data, and different professionals all working side by side to make sure that they had the best possible outcome in the circumstances that were presenting to them.

We collaborated with them, and with—as I said—a large number of our other statutory public sector and third sector partners, in rolling out our 'ask and act' training and our e-learning, which we launched just earlier last year, and that's been very successful as well. The idea is to make sure that all of our first responders and the people who deal with people on a day-to-day basis pick up the early signs of this sort of domestic abuse. So, our teaching staff, our teaching assistants, our fire and rescue services, our police services, our ambulance and other responders, are all going through the 'ask and act' training. There are several layers of the training, so the front-line responders get a particular set of training, and then there are co-ordinated training packs for the people dealing with the results—with actual live incidents in, for example, the multi-agency safeguarding hub.

We also have a number of other campaigns because we're trying to tackle the cause of much of this as well. So, we launched our This is Me campaign back in January. I was very pleased to be able to launch it down in Gower College, with an incredibly enthusiastic set of middle-range teenagers who engaged very enthusiastically with it. That's been one of the best received campaigns we've ever run, I think, as a Government. The response to it has been amazing. Because this is a big society issue as well, and the purpose of that—. We know that gender stereotyping is a large part of what drives domestic violence, as people try to live up to stereotypes, which are not realistic or live-uppable to—if that's even a word. You see the point I'm making. It's extremely important that men don't feel that they have to be strong and whatever, and women don't feel that they have to be submissive in circumstances in which domestic violence occurs. That's just to give one example. There is a large range of others. So, that's been a very successful campaign.

I hope that Members have all had the chance to see it. It runs on lots of social media platforms. We've had more response to it than we've had, I think, to any other campaign. It's been extraordinary. Because we do see this as a need to change. Societal change is required in order to change some of the stuff, and in the meantime, of course, we continue to provide services for those incidentally affected by it.