I have tabled 26 amendments, so I have about 10 seconds per amendment. I wish to put on record my thanks to the Minister for her consideration of my amendments. We may not have ended up in total agreement on them, but I appreciate the time she has spent engaging with me on them. They are simply about trying to make sure we protect all victims of domestic abuse. I have had many, many conversations with men and women on this subject, where they have agreed wholeheartedly with what I am trying to achieve. Most people understand that both men and women can be and are victims of domestic abuse, and both men and women can be and are perpetrators of domestic abuse. There are those who seek to claim that domestic violence is a gendered crime—in other words, that it is a crime done by men to women. Not only does this insult the male victims of domestic violence and ignore gay and lesbian victims of domestic abuse, but it is utter rubbish. For example, according to the official figures, a woman in a lesbian relationship is one and a half times more likely to be a victim of domestic abuse from her partner than a woman in a heterosexual relationship.
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Two thirds of victims of domestic abuse are women and one third are men, according to the Office for National Statistics. As it happens, two thirds of people who are murdered are men and two thirds of people who take their own life are men. Does anybody seriously want to stand up and say that we should ignore the one third of victims of murder who are women or the one third of those who take their own life who are women simply because they are in a minority? Of course not, and the same should not apply when it comes to domestic violence. Being a male victim of domestic violence should not be less important or more important than being a female victim.