Two women are killed each week by a current or former partner and one in four will experience domestic violence in their lifetime.
Legal Aid is a lifeline for women fleeing domestic abuse. It helps them to protect themselves, their children and secures their financial situation. One of the accepted forms of evidence is a letter from a GP.
Since 2016 I have been raising in the House of Lords the outrageous situation whereby GPs can charge the victims of domestic abuse up to £150 for legal aid referral letters that confirm their injuries are a result of abuse thereby enabling the victim to apply for legal aid.
Successive Ministers from the Despatch Box have expressed support for the charges to be waived, but have not taken the opportunity to end this practice. Some GP practices have voluntarily rewritten their charging policies when light has been shone on this little-known fact.
It is true that the majority of GPs do not charge for these letters, but the fact is that a significant minority do and despite all the calls for this to stop, expressions of support for victims, and even the British Medical Association having a policy that no victim of domestic abuse should be charged a fee for a legal aid referral letter. The practise continues to this day.
It was Wythenshawe Safespots, a campaigning organisation based in Manchester, that first alerted people to this dreadful situation and started the campaign to Scrap the Fee.
The Domestic Abuse Bill has recently started its passage through the House of Lords, and I am hopeful that the Bill will be improved during its passage through the Lords with many changes agreed before returning to the House of Commons.
On Monday I tabled a new clause to the Bill which will stop GPs who have a contract with the NHS from charging victims of abuse for legal aid referral letters.
To get this amendment passed in the House of Lords and to be accepted in the House of Commons we need a campaign both inside and outside Parliament to highlight how wrong these charges are, calling on members of both Houses to finally deal with this issue and commit to scrapping the fee once and for all.
It is everyone’s responsibility to play their part to stop domestic violence and abuse and this is the right thing to do on an issue that has been ignored for far too long. There just needs to be the will in Government and Parliament to do it.