finally tabled three years after it was first promised. As part of this, ministers will look at what more can be
done to put an end to the “rough sex” defence, which campaign group We Can’t Consent to This says has
increased tenfold over the past 20 years.
It’s a promising start – but promises have yet to be made.
The bill also encompasses a new definition of domestic abuse that will include economic abuse and “tech
abuse”, described as “where abusers use personal and home devices and smart gadgets to control their
victim”; it pledges to ban abusers from cross-examining their victims in the family courts and recommends
the use of lie-detector tests on convicted abusers leaving prison who are considered likely to re-offend. A
new measure would also require councils to provide safe accommodation for victims and their children.
Women’s Aid has called the return of the legislation “welcome and urgently needed”, describing proposed
legal duty of councils to provide refuges as potentially “life-saving”. But the organisation emphasised this
would only be the case if it were also “underpinned by sustainable funding for specialist women’s services”.
Safe Lives says the bill “will not achieve meaningful change without funding attached”. The charity Crisis
has suggested the bill could see abuse victims end up in a bottleneck situation, stuck in temporary
accommodation and unable to move on with their lives.
Recent changes to the school curriculum will see the introduction of abuse
awareness, but society continues to tacitly ignore, joke about and tolerate
abuse in all its horrifying guises
Funding is vital here. Women’s Aid estimates the support required to ensure these measures are properly
implemented to be £173m annually. It sounds like a lot but it pales in comparison to the financial cost of
domestic violence to the wider economy and victims themselves – £66bn for the year ending 31
March 2017.
Numerous women’s organisations continue to raise concerns that cuts to services explain the UK’s
continued delay to ratify the Istanbul Convention, which was signed by David Cameron in 2012 and
remains the most comprehensive existing legal framework to tackle violence against women and girls. The
domestic abuse bill, campaigners argue, does not even meet the basic requirements of this convention.
And, of course, uncertainty abounds as to how funding for women’s services will fare after Brexit.
Many groups have also reiterated that the bill still lacks promise of equal protection against migrant women.
The Step Up Migrant Women coalition – of more than 40 Bame specialist services and organisations
- argues that the bill still falls short of protecting all victims. Currently, women with insecure immigration
status face barriers to protection.
And what of prevention? Recent changes to the school curriculum will see the introduction of abuse
awareness, but society continues to tacitly ignore, joke about and tolerate abuse in all its horrifying guises.
Misogyny is still not classed as a hate crime in the UK.
The Women’s Equality Party has described the bill as “one of the most over-announced and under-delivered
bills in recent political history”. It has criticised the government for re-announcing the bill as “part of the
package of ‘women’s announcements’ that are usually made at this time of year”; virtue-signalling in
extremis.
Last year, domestic abuse rose by 24 per cent while referrals for prosecution were down 11 per cent. So
while the domestic abuse bill is promising, it isn’t enough. We don‘t have time to wait; saving women’s lives