Contribution
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 7, in my name. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Russell, and my noble friend Lord Farmer for supporting it.
The Government’s own intention with this Bill is to “strengthen support for victims” and deliver a justice system that puts the “needs of victims first”. These are crucial aims that I wholeheartedly support. However, I do not see how they can achieve such goals without addressing the concerning lack of specialist support services available to victims and survivors of abuse and exploitation across our country, something on which the Bill is notably silent. Therefore, I urge the Government to accept Amendment 7. The amendment proposes to introduce a duty on local agencies to commission specialist support services for victims of abuse, which would help put a stop to victims and survivors being denied their right to access support. It is backed by 16 charities that work every day with victims of exploitation and abuse.
This is an urgent issue. Every year, millions of victims and survivors suffer horrific abuse and exploitation, including sexual abuse, domestic abuse, stalking and many other forms of harm. These are staggering numbers. We cannot ignore them. Yet right now, the support services available do not come close to matching the scale of abuse and exploitation. Support services are vital for enabling victims and survivors to process what they have experienced and begin to move on with their lives.
The lack of provision has left victims and survivors facing a postcode lottery of access to support. Fewer than one in 10 women and one in 10 children who have experienced domestic abuse are currently receiving support from a refuge or community-based support service. Similarly, according to the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse, an estimated 55,000 adults and children in England and Wales are currently on waiting lists for child sexual abuse support services. There are just 363 services remaining across the whole of England and Wales providing the necessary specialist support. That leaves an estimated, and frankly unworkable, 16,500 victims and survivors for each service. Additionally, the Suzy Lamplugh Trust has found that fewer than 1% of all stalking victims are supported by specialist stalking advocates due to limited capacity and funding. We cannot allow this undeniable trend of patchwork provision to go on.
While I welcome the recent announcement in the Government’s freedom from violence and abuse strategy of funding for victim services, including the rollout of child houses for victims of child sexual abuse, according to the sector this will simply not be enough to address the current gaps in provision. In addition, this kind of funding too often gets diverted from specialist care to more generic services that simply lack the knowledge to support survivors in their time of need. I must emphasise that the specialism of these services is crucial to their success. Specialist services are best placed to provide the wraparound support that survivors need. Instead of leaving victims to be passed around from service to service, having to retell their stories, often not being believed, specialist victim support understands the needs of survivors and ensures that they get the right care and support when they need it most. Support specialism is not a luxury for survivors; it is a necessity.
Without a statutory imperative to commission these services, and clarity on what organisations should be funded, specialist community-based services will continue to go undercommissioned and the support available to victims and survivors will be further diluted. Not only do we have a moral duty to ensure that victims and survivors receive these services but it is their right under the victims’ code of practice—a right that countless victims are currently being denied.
Recent activity from the Government has made it clear that they know commissioning is in desperate need of reform. With the announcement of the abolition of police and crime commissioners, the police reform White Paper, and the actions committed to for improving commissioning in the freedom from violence and abuse strategy, I argue that now is the crucial time to reshape our commissioning landscape into one that works for victims and survivors. To do this, there must be clear systems in place that guarantee victims and survivors the support they are entitled to, no matter where they live. We need to seize the opportunity that we have in front of us to ensure that we will not only preserve current provision for victims but make the system better for all.
It is a simple and harrowing fact that our commissioning system is letting victims down. We as a country have allowed this dearth in services to go on for far too long, and we owe it to victims and survivors to act with urgency to rectify our current failings. By doing so, we can work together towards ensuring that every victim of abuse and exploitation has guaranteed access to the specialist therapeutic support that they are owed. I urge the Government to incorporate that in the Bill.