6. What is the Welsh Government doing to help victims of crime in Wales? OAQ54975

Llywydd, we work closely with the four police forces and our police and crime commissioners in Wales and other partners, including the Welsh Local Government Association and Public Health Wales, to support victims of crime and to reduce the risk of people becoming victims of crime. 

Thank you for that answer, First Minister. A number of months ago, I asked you if you would support my call for the fathers of children conceived by an act of rape being barred from gaining a right to see those children. At the time, you refused to give me a straight answer, saying that it was not a devolved matter, despite the fact that you in this place often call on the Westminster Government to act on matters that are not devolved to this place. The Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service Cymru is devolved, though, and can make recommendations to the family courts in Wales that a family court in England or elsewhere in the UK might not, and so are social services devolved.

How can a victim of rape ever find anything near closure if she has to worry that, one day, her attacker may come back and be a part of her child's life, and that her child may be forced to have contact with the person who raped their own mother? So, I'm asking you for a second time: do you agree with me—and you do have some of the levers necessary to be able to do this—that the family court shouldn't grant the fathers of children born from rape any access rights to see those children, and will you make an effort to bring about such a ban in Wales? If not, why?

Llywydd, I probably can't go further than I did in my last answer to the Member. I want to recognise the importance of the points that she makes and the debate that she has engendered around this issue. The reason why I can't offer her the guarantees that she looks to me to provide is that the powers to do so do not lie in this Assembly. That was true the last time she asked me the question and it's true again today. A change in the law of the sort that she has asked me about cannot be brought about here, no matter how many times she asks for that to happen. So, I can't provide her with a guarantee, because it wouldn't be honest to do that.

The decisions that are made in the family court cannot be made by politicians. They are made in the family court with the advice of the professional workers who report on individual cases. Of course they should take very seriously the points that the Member has made. I agree entirely with that. But it's for—[Interruption.] The Member is trying to intervene, Llywydd, from where she is sitting, but the point she makes is no better for repeating it than it was the first time she made it. She asks me to guarantee something that is not in my power to guarantee. I won't do that, because that would be to offer a false assurance to people who, quite rightly, are concerned about the points the Member has raised and, I'll repeat, deserve to be taken seriously.