My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, for tabling Amendment 17, which seeks to ensure that victims are able to access support from someone of the same sex, as registered at birth, and that women-only support service provision is confined to those registered as women at birth. I also want to thank the noble Baroness and Maya Forstater and Helen Joyce from Sex Matters for their time in discussing these matters with me yesterday, ahead of this debate.
From the outset, let me be clear that this Government recognise the importance of a victim feeling confident that they can ask for particular things, such as someone of a particular sex to make them feel comfortable and help them best engage with support. We also recognise that single-sex services can and should be provided in some circumstances. That is why we have written to providers who receive funding from our rape and sexual abuse support fund to make clear our expectation that they should take reasonable steps to provide spaces which exclude service users who are not biologically female or male, where that has been requested by a victim and where it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim, in line with the Equality Act 2010.
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I have listened to the concerns raised by the noble Baroness and reassure her that officials regularly engage with those commissioning and providing services through
ongoing grant-management processes. We will continue to use these channels to understand whether there are any barriers experienced in the delivery of single-sex services, and how the Government might support services to address them—and we will continue the conversation that we have started with Sex Matters to carefully consider how we can best serve victims.
In relation to support workers, we have included a dedicated section on tailoring support to meet victims’ needs in the draft independent domestic violence adviser and independent sexual violence adviser—IDVA and ISVA—guidance. It sets out different considerations for supporting male and female victims, which may include a preference for a particular sex of their IDVA or ISVA.
The noble Baroness asked specifically what we were doing to improve this guidance. The draft guidance has a specific section on how IDVAs and ISVAs may respond to meet the needs of different types of victims. This includes examples of how they may tailor their support to meet the distinct needs of female and male victims. For example, the guidance recommends how the IDVA or ISVA can address commonly held misconceptions about female and male victims that may prevent them from reporting their experiences. It also highlights that some victims may prefer to be supported by a worker of their own sex and to access single-sex services, where available.
Ultimately, as referred to by the noble Baroness, we consider that service providers are best placed to engage with the needs of victims and adjust their service accordingly. There is a practical element to this, too: while we know that providers will do their utmost to take into account the preferences of the victim, they are clearly constrained by their staff’s skills, expertise, capacity and availability to ensure that they meet the victim’s needs. It is for that reason that it is simply not workable to seek to entitle victims to a particular support worker they have requested.
Beyond that, I respectfully disagree with the noble Baroness’s suggestion that, in all cases, victims should be entitled to support from someone of the same sex,
as registered at birth. To require this to happen in all cases requested, service providers may need intentionally to exclude transgender persons from support roles which, depending on the circumstances, could amount to unlawful discrimination pursuant to the Equality Act 2010.
Finally, I make a legal point, but an important one: the victims’ code would not provide the legal effect being sought by this amendment. Mirroring the current scope of the victims’ code, the amendment that we have tabled, which imposes a duty to provide services in accordance with the code, applies only to persons who have functions of a public nature; it would not extend to third parties that provide support services for victims. As such, we could not set expectations to deliver services in a certain way through the victims’ code. For these reasons, I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.