The hon. Lady will know of my commitment to legislation in Northern Ireland—I spoke this week on children’s funerals and gambling—and I would very much like to see the Assembly reconvened. Women everywhere—victims everywhere—need to be guaranteed every protection that we can offer them.
I have very real concerns about migrant victims when we eventually leave the EU. Under the EU settlement scheme, European citizens and their families will need to apply to secure their status in the UK. Survivors of domestic abuse are at particular risk of being left out of this by abusive partners in a bid to control and isolate them. The Government must ensure that legislation is in place to support these victims, allowing them to apply even after the deadline has passed in order to prevent a situation where survivors are forced to choose between staying with their abuser or being illegally resident in the UK. The Home Affairs Committee has already highlighted this scheme as running the risk of becoming another Windrush. We must ensure that the Bill gets it right in order to prevent that.
The Bill is vital legislation that will help some of the most vulnerable in our communities and undoubtedly save lives. Home should be a place of comfort, love and stability but, for an estimated 2 million adults, and very many children, it is anything but: it is a place of fear that brings with it pain and devastation. This is our opportunity to rectify that. The Government must ensure that they not only make the changes to the law but back it up with the necessary resources and funding.
Getting to this point today has been a rough ride, and there were times when many of us thought we would never see it happen, but we all recognise that this is our optimum opportunity to change the future for domestic violence survivors and their families. We must all commit to making the changes, funding the services and reducing the tragic consequences we are currently witnessing. We desperately need this legislation to be comprehensive, robust and fully funded so that we can start punishing the perpetrators and prioritising the victims. This Bill will go down in history as landmark legislation. Let us make it a Bill that we can all be proud of.
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