Violence against Women and Girls Strategy

Mark Sewards Excerpts

Thursday 18th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips]

My hon. Friend will be pleased with the Government action that the strategy proposes with regard to some of the commercial sexual exploitation that occurs within pornography—she rightly points that out—based on Baroness Bertin’s review. Much more broadly, we must properly integrate adult sexual exploitation —including the terrible commercial sexual exploitation—into what we consider to be violence against women and girls, and have robust measures to deal with that. That is a fundamental part of changing this.

[Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)]

I welcome the strategy that the Minister has set out, and commend her and everyone around her for their tireless, often lifelong, work that has got us to this point. When I speak with the charitable sector and with third-sector organisations, such as Leeds Women’s Aid in my constituency, which has worked in this space for years, they keep telling me that the funding period for grants is often far too short, and grants come up for review far too frequently. They tell me that when the cost of applying for those grants and the time that staff spend applying are factored in, long-term strategic decision making in their organisations becomes really difficult. Can the Minister assure them that the strategy will address this common challenge?

[Jess Phillips]

As an alumni of Women’s Aid, I can absolutely do so. One of the strongest messages that came from the sector, especially the domestic abuse sector, is how crackers it is that these organisations have to apply for their funding every year. Obviously, we cannot commit funding for longer than comprehensive spending review periods, but we are committing to long-term funding going out of our door and into those organisations’ doors, under a set of standards and commissioning models that we in the Government will work to, because there are also quite a lot of complaints about localised commissioning. That is a fundamental way of allowing those organisations to grow, and to breathe again.