Part of 4. Questions to the Leader of the House and Chief Whip – in the Senedd at 4:00 pm on 11 December 2018.
Yes, we know that a lot of domestic abuse is hidden. We do know that people don't come forward and that there are inconsistencies of evidence across the piece. So, we work very hard with the police and crime commissioners, and actually with the lead police and crime commissioner, who is an ex-colleague that you'll all be familiar with, Jeff Cuthbert, who's taken the lead in this regard for the police forces around the right procedures, identification of and encouragement of people to come forward and then the right processes.
And one of the things that the national advisers have been advising us on in their now first year of office is to make sure that we have consistency across the piece in Wales, because a lot of these services are delivered by third sector organisations. And so, they're looking to see that we have a consistency of service, so that, just to give you an example, if you show up somewhere as a victim of domestic abuse—if you show up on a Wednesday morning in Ceredigion, you would get onto the same pathway as if you show up on a Friday night in the Heath hospital accident and emergency department. And making sure that you have that consistency approach across the piece is very much where we're going, and we have good co-operation with the police forces. But the work is still very much ongoing.
We know that there's under-reporting. We're very pleased that the figures are coming up. Deputy Presiding Officer, it's always difficult to know whether the rise in figures is because there's a rise in incidents or whether it's a rise in people coming forward and being more secure in the system, and I suspect it's a little of both in some areas. We're analysing the figures to make sure that we take the right lesson from the data.