Part of 2. Questions to the Counsel General and Minister for European Transition (in respect of his European Transition responsibilities) – in the Senedd at 3:15 pm on 7 October 2020.
Well, the Member makes a series of very important points, and I appreciate the way in which she is raising this extremely sensitive matter. A well-designed legal aid scheme would address the challenges that the Member raises in her question. We are a long way away from that as a consequence of cuts in the budget over the last number of years at a UK Government level. We would wish to be in a position, in Wales, where those matters were in our hands, so that we could design a system that tackled precisely the sorts of challenges that Michelle Brown raises in her question. She will know that where we have been able to intervene in providing advice services and support for domestic violence, we have been able to do that. But the sorts of interventions that she is describing necessarily require very significant intervention, and absolutely that is why if the UK Government wishes, as it were, to continue with these powers being reserved, it is incumbent on them to provide the funding to deliver the levels of protection that individuals in those circumstances need. But I would refer her to the document that we published yesterday, which recognises that over the course of the last few months the incidence of domestic violence has increased, and we will be looking to further support domestic violence services within the resources that we have, as was flagged in the document yesterday.