My Lords, the new statutory duty on local authorities to provide safe accommodation-based services for victims of domestic abuse and their children is widely welcomed, but I am still sympathetic to the ongoing fears that this might mean local authorities simply redistributing funding away from community services in order to meet that statutory need. I welcome these thoughtful amendments and the discussion that focuses on protecting specialist community service provision. While I am still not sure whether this issue should be dealt with through legislation, it is very important that it has come up. I am minded to consider seriously Amendments 30 and 31 in particular.
However, there is one category of specialist services that I am worried the Bill has inadvertently not focused on: women’s domestic abuse services, whether community or accommodation-based, which are under threat. Ironically, council funding does not help. The Bill’s increase in funding and the new legal duty on councils will not resolve this issue. There seems to be some muddled thinking about how councils should deliver specialist services more broadly. I would appreciate it if the Minister would take that into account in this set of amendments or in guidance notes.
I declare a minor interest, in that I am a long-standing columnist for the MJ – for the uninitiated, the Municipal Journal. It has been eye-opening watching councils in recent years trying to negotiate equalities legislation in the context of new political trends such as gender-neutral policies. The Equality Act 2010 clearly protects single-sex exemptions that allow women to have legitimate access to women-only services and spaces: gyms, hospitals, changing rooms and, of course, crucial services such as Rape Crisis, women’s refuges and women’s advice services. The newly launched organisation Sex Matters notes that rules and explanations are now confused and controversies around gender identity mean that organisations can be reluctant to communicate their women-only services clearly, and, when they do, councils can use this against them. This needs to be clarified as we go forward; otherwise, all the good will will be undermined.
One example of the unintended consequence of fudging championing women’s refuges is how councils are interpreting equalities impact assessments. In the drive for more inclusive, non-gendered service provision that caters for the needs of all protected characteristics, women’s refuges are in danger of losing funding for not being inclusive enough.
2.15 pm
One recent example that I mentioned in relation to another Bill is the Brighton-based organisation RISE, which has lost a contract worth £5 million over seven years. After 26 years of stalwart work, its existence is now threatened. RISE is predominantly, but not exclusively, a women-for-women service, but the briefing from Brighton & Hove City Council’s bids evaluation team explained that RISE needed to cater more for heterosexual and gay men and specifically address the
barring of services experienced by the trans community. The message was clear: that RISE should stop mainly focusing on women victims of domestic abuse. RISE has an LGBTQ domestic abuse casework service and it has co-piloted an LGBTQ refuge. Surely, its women-only services should not need to be anything other than exemplary for women, whether accommodation-based or community-based. However, the council was clear that the contract would not be continued because RISE is primarily a service for women. As Women’s Aid’s Nicki Norman said:
“We are at serious risk of losing our network of refuges run by women for women.”
We should not be naive or disingenuous here. One reason why there is a coy reluctance to demarcate services for women only is the controversies over definitions of a woman, as defined by biological sex. Gender neutrality can become a shield to avoid any accusations of transphobia, and councils can hide behind that. Even this Bill, in its attempts at being gender neutral, seems reluctant to defend or bolster the women’s refuge movement or women’s services in the community, without which, to be honest, the whole issue of domestic abuse would not even be on the political agenda at all.
Perhaps the Minister can just assure us that the Bill will not lead to a new type of procurement of less-specialised service provision or the downgrading of essential services for women, whether accommodation-based or community-based, and that communities will not lose the unparalleled expertise, garnered over decades, of women’s refuges and women’s services in the enthusiasm to hand over funding and procurement to councils. Do not forget some of the risks involved in that.