Violence against Women and Girls: London

Jess Asato Excerpts

Tuesday 25th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[Jess Asato (Lowestoft) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) on securing the debate. I am honoured to work with her on the all-party parliamentary group on domestic violence and abuse.

I also want to pay tribute to the Minister. Her determined and courageous leadership has seen sweeping changes, including the news today that domestic abuse protection orders have protected 1,000 victims since their introduction last year. She has pioneered a new national centre for violence against women and girls, putting VAWG on a similar footing to counter-terrorism for the first time. Raneem’s law has embedded the first domestic abuse specialists in 999 control rooms. Following years of campaigning, honour-based abuse will have a statutory definition.

I want to focus on healthcare. Health services are too often overlooked in efforts to tackle domestic abuse and VAWG, despite domestic abuse costing the UK healthcare system £2.3 billion. Investing in healthcare-based responses reduces missed opportunities to support victims, ultimately saving money and lives. In my previous life, I worked on the SafeLives report “We only do bones here”. It was titled after a survivor who gave evidence, who said that when she disclosed to her A&E doctor that she was experiencing domestic abuse, he told her:

“We only do bones here, not that relationship, mental health stuff.”

He then sent her away, without even referring her to a specialist service.

The report found that four out of five victims never go to the police, yet in the most extreme cases, victims reported attending A&E up to 15 times. That demonstrates the urgent need for specialist domestic abuse support in healthcare settings. Independent domestic violence advisers, co-located in A&E or maternity units, can identify victims earlier and ensure that women are supported to be safe, ending the awful process of patching up victims, only for them to return a few weeks later, beaten further.

We know that victims are far more likely to disclose abuse in health settings. Research found that hospital-based IDVAs generate a net saving of £2,000 per victim in health costs. Embedding IDVAs in hospitals is key to improving referrals and outcomes, with nine in 10 victims reporting improved safety after hospital-based IDVA support. Support at primary care level, through brilliant evidence-based interventions such as IRIS—identification and referral to improve safety—is also crucial.

Time after time, we read domestic homicide reviews calling on health professionals to share information that could have saved the victim’s life, but cultural change in health is stubborn. I remember meeting a senior doctor and asking why information sharing was proving so difficult. I will never forget his answer:

“I will be honest. I fear a letter thudding on the doormat with the GMC’s logo more than hearing that one of my patients has been murdered.”

Where is “first do no harm”? I know the Minister will agree that the role of health will be crucial in the VAWG strategy.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the clear funding crisis facing specialist women’s charities. That is not new, but the rapid closure of services is. Just as we approach a once-in-a-generation VAWG strategy with an incredible commitment to halve VAWG in a decade, there is a real fear that the expertise we will need to rely on may not exist unless an emergency funding package is issued quickly. I hope that the Government will consider amendments I tabled to the Victims and Courts Bill, which will soon move to the Lords, including one that would create a statutory duty to commission specialist services for victims of domestic abuse and sexual violence—women and children. It is absurd that support for the most traumatised and vulnerable victims is not even a postcode lottery; no one anywhere has an actionable right to say, “I deserve specialist support.” We will never truly protect women and girls when the spaces that heal and rebuild them are so easily dismissed.