Domestic Abuse Survivors: Government Support Debate
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Derek Twigg
Main Page: Derek Twigg (Labour - Widnes and Halewood)Department Debates - View all Derek Twigg's debates with the Home Office
Domestic Abuse Survivors: Government Support
Derek Twigg Excerpts(1 day, 10 hours ago)
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Derek Twigg (in the Chair)
I remind hon. Members that they may make a speech only with the prior permission of the Member in charge and the Minister. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.
Ben Maguire (North Cornwall) (LD)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered Government support for domestic abuse survivors.
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship in this important debate, Mr Twigg. I thank all Members for attending the debate and standing up for survivors of domestic abuse in their constituencies. I also thank the excellent women’s rights campaigners, some of whom have joined us today. Without their relentless research, activism and day-to-day support for victims, we would be unable to fully represent domestic abuse survivors.
I must open today’s debate with a sad reality: according to Refuge, an estimated 2.2 million women and 1.5 million men have experienced domestic abuse in this country in the last year alone, and according to a 2025 report by the Office for National Statistics, this issue is far from niche. Refuge also found that, on average, one woman is killed by an abusive partner or ex-partner every five days in England and Wales. The fact that we use words like “on average”, “approximately”, and “estimated” on such a serious topic beckons us to acknowledge that those numbers still suffer from severe under-reporting, highlighting just how much more work we have to do.
In the light of International Women’s Day having just passed, and with the Government’s long-awaited violence against women and girls strategy still fresh in our minds, I want to take this opportunity to assess how Government support for domestic abuse survivors holds up in practice.