Domestic Violence and Abuse

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:20 pm on 11 February 2020.

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Photo of Mark Isherwood Mark Isherwood Conservative 2:20, 11 February 2020

We've heard reference to last November's Wales Audit Office report on progress in implementing the Violence against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (Wales) Act 2015, which highlighted gaps in engagement with specialist services and survivors in the implementation of the Act. According to the crime survey of England and Wales to March of last year—and there will new figures next month—an estimated 1.6 million women and 786,000 men experienced emotional, financial and physical abuse, or a mixture of all three, in a domestic context. And, of course, the vast majority of the victims and survivors of partner or ex-partner abuse were women, and Welsh Women's Aid has also noted that their members who work with survivors of sexual violence have told them that survivors of sexual abuse are not receiving the equivalent priority by commissioners and public services as survivors of domestic abuse. How do you therefore respond to their calls, and the calls of other experts working in this field, for that deficit to be addressed so that, for example, the housing support grant commissioning covers all forms of violence against women, domestic abuse and sexual violence, rather than the default assumption focusing on domestic abuse?