Ms Stella Creasy
MP for Walthamstow · Labour (Co-op) · United Kingdom
“I thank the Foreign Secretary for his clear-sighted commitment not only to talk about a two-state solution, but to actually try to act to achieve it, as the only foundation of a safe Israel and a free Palestine.”
“Could he reassure the House that we will not acquiesce and bend to such pressure, and that the only action that could ever be acceptable to us to make us contemplate reversing this ban would be a halt on the E1 development and a permanent end to settler violence?”
“I start by paying tribute to the new Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), for all the work she did on the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee on these issues. I know that she will do a brilliant job in this role.”
“I do not really understand the technology, but I know that he does, and I understand and share his fear accordingly. We come here today to debate this Bill because we all know that trust is a bygone issue in our politics.”
“We would welcome her having that conversation, which might be more illuminating than whether she is concerned about Zach Goldmsith’s leaflets. I add my support to the amendments tabled by my hon.”
“From today, if we do not take a stand with this Bill to tackle the ways that money has infiltrated our politics, the risk is that they will think we are acting in the interests of our own back pockets.”
The complete record
Every one of 4,976 lines we hold for Ms Stella Creasy, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 58 of 100.
“Multiple rapes, airstrikes and genocide—the crimes of the Burmese security forces against the Rohingya, as well as against the Kachin and Shan people, are well documented. The UK Government can refer Burma to the International Criminal Court from the UN Security Council. Will the Minister therefore meet the new Justice for Rohingya Minority initiative to discuss its call for universal jurisdiction and accountability for those who commit these atrocities?”
“The widespread public distress from Israeli human rights organisations such as B’Tselem reflects the fact that there is deep concern and distress about these horrendous deaths across the spectrum, even given the conduct of Hamas. But the truth is that this is not the first time that such a thing has happened at the Gaza border in recent weeks. The international community knew that the embassy move would be a flashpoint. Like Mr Speaker, I have great faith in the Minister’s persuasive powers, so will he tell us what he did before this week to talk to the Israelis about how they managed peaceful protests, which he has recognised the Palestinians have a right to undertake, and what will he do differently as a result of yesterday?”
“I thank the Minister for giving way. Nobody here can doubt his commitment, but he has just said that the Government have put on the record their frustration. Can the Government put some resources behind resolving this question, so that we do not have to listen to more stories of people who have been through something horrific and are still without settled accommodation?”
““Cruel, inhumane and degrading”—not my words, but those of the United Nations on our treatment of women in Northern Ireland. Given the absence of an Assembly, why does the Secretary of State choose to recognise the importance of a free vote in this place on same-sex marriage while refusing to extend the same protection to Northern Irish women’s fundamental right not to be forced to continue an unwanted pregnancy?”
“The NHS already has 34,000 nursing vacancies. Given that there has been a 97% drop in nursing applications from the EU and that studies show that nearly half of all hospital shifts include agency nurses, will the Minister at least admit that cutting the bursary scheme has been a false economy for our NHS?”
“T5. On 21 March, the Secretary of State told the House that he would look at the impact of private finance initiative deals on NHS hospital budgets. What has he done since then? How many meetings has he had about the issue? Will he commit not to use PF2 deals, given the concerns?”
“I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his new position, but let me give him some advice: whether the term is “hostile” or “compliant”, it is deeds not words that matter in this place. Three families who came to my surgery at the weekend have Windrush generation family members who have been deported from this country, so he has to be aware that there is a serious issue with deportation. He has told us how many people have called the hotline, but these families could not get through, so will he tell us how many members of staff there are? What will he do specifically to get legal advice to people who have already been deported, so that we can truly have justice for the Windrush generation?”
“Such paperwork will be damaging to all our constituents and will result in massive costs to manufacturing. That is before we even get on to the impact of the World Trade Organisation.”
“It matters because it is not within our gift. It is not just about the rules we create—when we trade, we are only 50% of the partnership; it is about the rules that those we trade with create. That is why the customs union is so important. We learned that lesson not least from a time in Irish history when there was a trade deal between Ireland and Britain. After 1965, the tariffs that had applied to trade since 1923 did not disappear, which is why the Irish delegation demanded that goods be labelled “Made in Britain”. That caused Denis Healey to inquire whether we should stamp that phrase on the balls of the bullocks that were being shipped to Ireland, to which Paddy Hillery replied that bullocks do not have balls, but they still need paperwork.”
“We hear from those in Dover—people who work every day on our borders—that just a two-minute delay would mean a 17-mile queue to Ashford; a four-minute delay a queue to Maidstone; six minutes and it goes to the M25; and eight minutes and it goes to the Dartford crossing, I know what that would do to businesses in my constituency and around the country. Whatever new technology has been created, it cannot make up for the delay and the impact on just-in-times. Then there is the extra paperwork involved. At the moment, we have 55 million customs declarations a year, but if we leave the customs union, that could increase to 255 million, which means British businesses large and small having a lot more paperwork. We might have a free trade agreement, but we will not have a paper-free trade agreement, and that matters to them.”
“We know that being able to trade in the way the customs union allows—making it as easy to buy and sell goods in Berlin and Budapest as in Birmingham and Belfast—is the best outcome for our communities. When the Government said they were taking the red tape challenge, I did not realise they meant creating more of it, yet that is exactly what leaving the customs union will do. I am a fan of technology—I am a geek, I love it—but even I recognise that we do not have the hovercrafts with scanners to make frictionless trade and a lack of infrastructure at our borders a reality.”
“My mother, who reaches a milestone birthday today, has taught me many things in life, including what she calls the “eat the frog” rule, which is that, if we have something difficult to do in life, there is no sense in prevaricating. I am here today to plead with Ministers to eat the frog and admit that there is no better alternative for this country than remaining in the customs union. After two years, it has become patently apparent that there is no better alternative. In the short time available to me, I want to speak up for our remaining in the customs union. I reject the argument that those who challenge our leaving it are traitors. The only traitor is the person who does not speak up for the country’s best interests and who believes that democracy stopped the day after the referendum.”
“Please, Minister, on this day of all days, listen to Ma Creasy and eat the frog—admit that the customs union is the best option, not just for our economy and British business, but for all our futures.”
“I completely agree with my hon. Friend. Our car industry imports 60% of its components, so a British-made car probably has a German exhaust, Spanish-designed seats and French windows. We have talked a lot about trade, but I also want to talk about people. It is clear that leaving the customs union will damage the lives of thousands of people in Northern Ireland and Ireland. We know that to be clear because we have no alternative. Ireland has 208 border crossings—more than the EU has with the rest of Europe. There will clearly be change. The consumers who may get cheaper goods are the same workers who will face the race to the bottom that will result from leaving the customs union and entering into the mythical free trade deals that we are being offered. We have heard that £25 billion annually will be lost to GDP.”
“Debt is breeding difficulty, and difficulty is breeding more debt for them and their communities.”
“When we look into consumer debt, we can already see just how damaging credit cards have been. At the end of 2016, consumer credit debt amounted to £236 billion, which is about 15% of total household debt, but it accounts for half the interest payments that are made each year. When the FCA conducted a survey of credit card debt, it found that 19% of consumers—one in five—paid just the interest rather than the repayment charges. What could be called “zombie debtors” had 5.1 million accounts. On average, it would take them more than 10 years to pay off their debt. They are stuck in debt because of their credit cards. Little wonder that 40% of adults say they sometimes struggle to make it to payday, and a third of them say that it is because they are making credit card repayments.”
“This is where I become Cassandra, because the risk is all too obvious. Of course there are people for whom credit cards work well, but we know that a significant chunk of the British population are in persistent debt and that their credit cards are an integral part of that debt. They are paying about £2.50 in interest and charges for each £1 of their borrowing that they repay. That matters, because we stopped it happening in the payday lending industry by introducing a cap. My simple question to the Minister is this. Why do we want to protect one group of consumers from that kind of persistent debt, but fail to learn the lessons when it comes to other types of product? The issue is not whether the credit involves a payday loan or a credit card; it is the credit itself, and the cost of the credit. I hope to convince the Minister of that.”
“It simply finds new ways in which to prey on those people. The new clause and the amendment are about credit cards. I would wager that most Members have one credit card, if not two, in their pockets. Many of us may also have had that conversation with constituents who have come to us when they are about to be evicted because they cannot pay their rent and are behind with their costs. When we ask them, “Do you have any debt?” they say, “No.” When we ask, “Have you a credit card?” they say, “Of course.” Because credit cards are so ubiquitous in our society, we do not think of the danger that they can be. That is why I tabled the new clause and the amendment. As the Minister knows, I am frustrated with the Financial Conduct Authority, which has been looking into credit cards but does not see the risk.”
“We know that there are very wealthy people whose incomes are about five times as much as those of the people in the bottom half of our income stratosphere. That is what the new clause and the amendment are about. There are people who can manage borrowing well within their budgets, but the reality of modern-day Britain is that there are many more people for whom borrowing in itself becomes the problem. We know that 25% of the UK’s lowest-income households are struggling with debt and experiencing that “chronically broke” feeling. It is little wonder that it causes so many mental health challenges. It is not the traditional demons to which people who are struggling are now turning. We did make progress on payday lending—the so-called legal loan sharks—but that industry does not go away; it simply mutates.”
“Nearly half those people were self-employed or in that insecure work, which makes budgeting, on which much of the Bill depends, so difficult, and more than half said that one reason they experienced problems was an unexpected expense—a quarter had had two unexpected expenses. The costs that people face when the washing machine breaks down or the landlord puts the rent up cannot be planned for, but they are all too frequently an everyday part of life. It is little wonder that nearly 6 million households now spend more than 60% of their income on essential outgoings. They have little flexibility in their budgets to begin with, so when those unexpected costs come, of course they turn to borrowing. We know that that is not the case for everyone.”
“Unemployment rates might still be dropping, but we all know that the cost of living has not dropped, and personal debt has filled the vacuum. So, too, has that insecurity, with 1 million on zero-hours contracts and nearly 2 million people in temporary work—and that is even before we get on to those in self-employment. In my constituency, 15% of people are self-employed. These are people who cannot predict their incomes. It is little wonder that the high-cost credit industry has been preying on these people. One in 10 UK adults say their incomes change significantly from month to month, and almost half say they have experienced at least one monthly drop in income, with the average monthly drop being £385. Who of us could afford to lose that much from our monthly budget without there being consequences?”
“We owe more as individuals than do the Government: total household debt in June 2016 was £1.23 trillion, which is more than the Government’s national debt. Average UK unsecured debt is now £14,000 and will be £19,000 by the end of the Parliament. The number of people who have gone bankrupt in the last year has soared to its highest level since the financial crisis. The reasons are not rocket science: there is simply too much month at the end of their money. Research now shows that economic insecurity has become the new normal for at least 70% of the UK’s working population, who the RSA has described as “chronically broke” and that 32% of the UK’s workers—people who are earning a wage—have less than 500 quid in savings and 41% have less than a grand. It is little wonder that a third are desperately concerned about debt.”
“I also want to get onto the next group, which are in the name of my other Co-op colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger), amendments 5, 6 and 7 on mental health and debt. In particular, however, in speaking to my new clause 1 and amendment 4, on the FCA’s potential role in tackling the impact of high-cost credit on our society, I want to repeat my Cassandra impression on debt. The Bill is about the fair treatment of consumers. I urge the Minister and the Government, in my Cassandra-like way, to learn the lessons of the payday lending industry. I do not need to tell any Member that the nation is drowning in debt, as we all have seen in our constituency surgeries.”
“I am delighted that we have finally got our time to debate the Bill; some people in Parliament might not be, but I believe that consumer protection is one of the most important things we can do in this place, because it speaks to the incremental unfairness that people face in life that individuals cannot face on their own but which together as a society we can tackle. In that sense, I rise to support amendments very much in that vein, and one of their common themes is that they come from Co-operative as well as Labour MPs. The co-op movement was founded on the values of consumer activism so I want to put on the record my support for amendments 31, 1 and 2, which my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas) will be speaking to later.”
“I am sure the Government would not want to be forced to cap the cost of credit, as we had to force them in that case, and I am sure that he is proud of the difference that capping the cost of credit for payday lending has made to millions of consumers in this country. FCA data shows us that millions of credit card owners need our help and protection now, which is why I have tabled the new clause and amendment. I believe that there will be support for them, but I want to give the Economic Secretary the opportunity to do what I know he wants to do, which is to ensure that we do not leave it so long this time. I look forward to hearing what he says, and I hope that other Members will support my call, because frankly, there are too many people in our constituencies who need and deserve nothing less.”
“I ask the Economic Secretary to show the leadership that this issue needs and that I believe the House would support. If he says today that he will take a strong hand with the FCA and not let it wait years and years, watching our constituents get into consistent debt with credit cards, logbook loans or any other form of high-cost credit, he will have my backing. I have tabled my amendment and new clause to give him the opportunity to tell us that he gets it. The House does not want to wait another five or six years watching our constituents get into debt, as we did with payday lending.”
“It is not a fair fight for individual consumers against credit card companies, just as it was not a fair fight against payday loan companies. That is why we should intervene to set a fair market and learn the lessons about capping. My new clause 1 does something simple: it asks the new financial guidance and claims body to step in, because the FCA is not doing its job and looking after the interests of consumers. It is not recognising, as Cassandra does, the risk that is coming and acting to avoid it. It says that persistent debt is when somebody pays 100% in interest and charges on top of the amount to be repaid, but it is not applying its own rule to credit cards even though we have seen how effective it has been in the case of payday lending.”
“Citizens Advice’s recent research about insecure income shows us just how much of a problem there is. People with high levels of income volatility are also five times as likely as others to have accessed this form of high-cost credit to meet the essentials—to put food on their table, to put petrol in their car to get to work and to pay their rent. Those are not costs that they can cut back on but the costs of everyday living. People with volatile incomes are also more likely to be paying fees and charges on cards, as well as overdraft fees. That is why it is frustrating that, from the get-go, the FCA ruled out capping the cost of credit on credit cards and so learning the lesson from payday lending. It thinks the answer is to ask people to pay back money earlier, as if they have the spare cash to do that.”
“Someone who has an Aqua credit card with a monthly interest rate of 3.992%, has borrowed £1,000 and is only paying the minimum monthly payment will pay £480 in interest by the end of the first year. By the end of the second year, the figure will be nearly £1,000—as much as they borrowed, which is the cap that we have put on payday lending. By the end of the third year, bearing in mind that a big group of consumers get stuck in this way for 10 years, they will have paid back double what they owed. Such companies are targeting our communities in much the same way as the payday lending industry did. They are targeting people with insecure incomes, because they have seen a new market. As I said, this industry does not go away; it just mutates.”
“So one question for us is what the consequences will be if we do not act on credit card lenders. The Minister may say to me that the credit card industry is completely different from the payday loan industry—that is what he said when we had an Adjournment debate about this—so let me try to convince him that the two are intertwined. I see in my local community, as other Members may have seen, companies such as Vanquis, Aqua and Capital One—indeed, Vanquis is owned by Provident, which is a doorstep lending company—offering credit to people who have bad credit histories and driving them into the same level of debt as payday loans did. Indeed, the FCA’s data shows exactly that, which is why it is such a mystery to me that it does not choose to learn the lessons from the payday lending industry and act accordingly.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is no surprise that she has done so much work on the link between debt and mental health issues. We are already seeing in the credit card industry the same patterns that we saw in the payday lending industry. If we are honest, we must admit that it took us too long, as a House, to act in respect of that industry. So many of us saw people in our constituency surgeries who were losing their homes and people who were massively in debt because they had become stuck in payday loans that they were using to pay for basics such as rent and food. But when we did act, what a difference it made. Bringing in a cap on the cost of credit has led to an 86% reduction in the number of people going to citizens advice bureaux with problems caused by payday lending.”
“My hon. Friend is making a characteristically powerful speech. He and I are both members of the Council of Europe’s Committee on Migration, Refugees and Displaced Persons, and there is no better example of why the Council of Europe is about not just the history of our relationship with Europe, but its future. It behoves every nation to address these challenges. Only by being able to talk to our colleagues in other countries will we ever be able to find solutions. What the Council of Europe and that Committee allows us to do is start that process.”
“In 2009, Michelle Samaraweera was raped and murdered. Since 2012, Aman Vyas has been avoiding extradition for this and eight other charges of sexual violence against women in Walthamstow. There have been 47 hearings to date, with the judge not showing up for seven of them, and seven different judges have been appointed. When the Prime Minister talks to her good friend Prime Minister Modi while he is here in London, will she commit to raising this case with him and asking India to take it seriously, so that we can finally get justice for Michelle?”
“Will the Minister join me and other parliamentarians in encouraging people to use our anonymous paymetoo.com website to report details? Will she meet us to go through the findings and look at what we can do to make sure that the culture is changing on the ground, that men’s and women’s rights to speak up on these issues are protected in the workplace and that we finally close the gender pay gap?”
“The Minister talks about wanting women, and indeed men, to be able to use this data to have conversations in their workplace. Just two weeks ago, a cross-party group of us set up the #PayMeToo campaign precisely to help women and men to do that and to make sure that they know their rights in being able to have these conversations at work. We have already had hundreds of reports back from our anonymous survey of the experiences they have had. Women are being told by their employers to raise their grievance with HR if they want to talk about these issues, being told that their careers could be damaged by talking about them, and being told, “Don’t worry—we’ll just employ some more junior men to even out the figures.” There is a clear difference between what is happening on the frontline and what the Minister is talking about.”
“The Prime Minister has just said that we should hold in our minds the images of the suffering of those children—the human cost of the consequences of Assad and his Russian backers using chemical weapons against the people and it becoming normalised—but we know that this is not the first time. With that in mind, may I beg the Prime Minister to rethink her approach to those Syrians who have fled to Europe, because they are the same people fleeing this horror? They are the people who needed a safe haven. Forty per cent. of those in the Greek camps are Syrian, a third of whom are children, and there is only one Home Office official to deal with the issue for the entirety of Greece. Do those people not deserve more direct support from us, too?”
“I thank my hon. Friend for giving way in what is an incredibly powerful speech. I am so pleased that she raised the issue of the Dubs children, because we know that there are Syrian children in the refugee camps in Greece. This conflict has been going on for seven years, and of course people have fled further than just the nearest camps. Turkey is taking 3 million, and we have not even taken the 3,000 we said we would take when we passed the Dubs amendment. We are talking about a small fraction, but it is a fraction that is life or death for those we do not take. The Prime Minister is shaking her head. I urge her to go to the camps in Greece, see those children and tell us that they are not as worthy as the children in Ghouta, because they all need our help.”
“It is obviously a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell, for this incredibly important piece of legislation. I do not think a single member of the Committee can be unaware of how important it is to get these issues right. We will have seen in our constituency surgeries the people for whom the system does not work. I want to start by giving an example of that to explain— [ Interruption. ] If the Minister has not, she is very lucky, because sadly, in my constituency—”
“We all want the best councils, the best police services, the best healthcare providers, the best social workers and the best MASH—multi-agency safeguarding hub—teams, who do not say, “Well, for the needs of the child we’ll try to keep the family together,” even though they have had perpetrators who put their partners into hospital and near death. The lived reality of trying to deal with these situations means that we have to make sure the legislation is belt and braces. Even if the Minister thinks the point is covered, I urge her to include it, to put it beyond reasonable doubt, because those cases, such as the person who moved between Redbridge and Waltham Forest, are not unusual.”
“Each of us has had that conversation with that resident, pleading with them to talk to the independent sexual violence adviser and not go back. All too often, it has been a housing officer who has not understood their obligations and said to them, “I’m sorry, if you leave, you’re making yourself intentionally homeless.” That is the phrase we have to deal with, and that is why amendment 5 is so important. It changes the conversation and says that if someone is recognised as a victim of domestic violence—I appreciate that we also need to get some later clauses and amendments right—that person is more likely to get help. The Minister does not look impressed. There are countless examples that I am sure other Members will give her. That is the lived reality of trying to get this right.”
“She says that is already written into the legislation, but why not make it certain that it can be beyond a degree of reasonable doubt with any housing authority? That way, when MPs are faced with somebody who has come from a mere 10 minutes away, who is desperate for help, in fear of their life and has made that difficult decision to leave, there is no doubt that they will be housed. There should not be a point at which a housing officer says, “I’m sorry, this postcode isn’t in our borough and therefore this person is not our responsibility. They need to go back into the system.” We have all seen the person who does not leave—the person who recognises that bureaucracy is going to be another hurdle and who, with everything else going on their life, does not want to take the risk.”
“If she had gone back to that property, he could have found her there, too. Every single day, that woman was on my conscience, all because bureaucracy could not see the victim, only the housing service and the policing requirements. The police in Redbridge said to her, “Close your windows, then he can’t knock on the windows,” not understanding what was going on, because we did not put the victim first. The challenge is that that case is not unusual. It is not about London boroughs or co-ordination; it is simply that there are two different housing departments, one of which recognises that there might be a domestic violence case, while the other simply sees somebody whose postcode is in the wrong district. I share the Minister’s desire to get secured tenancies right.”
“She fled to Redbridge, but as soon as she left the borough, a mere 10 minutes by car, everything fell apart for her. Suddenly, she was simply someone from another borough seeking housing, not a victim of domestic violence—as he stood on the balcony of the property that she had managed to find, tapping on the window and telling her that he had found her. We could not keep that woman safe. I took to calling the borough commanders in my borough and in Redbridge every single day about her, because we could not get housing and could not get the police forces to work together, merely because they were 10 minutes apart by road. They were two different boroughs and two different housing departments. She started getting chased for her council tax and rent arrears on a property that was a burnt-out shell.”
“I do not think this is about good councils; it is about how we deal with domestic violence cases in this country. Still too often, we require the victim to put the pieces of her escape route together. I say “her”, and I recognise that men are victims as well, but it is overwhelmingly women who we ask to try to work through a system based on service provision rather than their needs. I want to give the Minister an example—which I hope will explain why Opposition Members are concerned about future-proofing this legislation—of one of the cases I dealt with in Walthamstow, near the boundary with Redbridge, because in London the difference between 33 boroughs can be the difference between life and death. It is the example of a woman whose secure tenancy was ruined because her abusive partner set fire to their flat.”
“Again, I say to the Minister: think of this legislation as a belt-and-braces measure. If, one day, somebody walks into her constituency surgery and this has not been got right, she will realise why belt and braces matter.”
“One challenge we face is that, too often, we wait until something escalates before we intervene. In the past eight or nine years, we have begun to recognise that we do not want to do that, which is good. Concepts such as coercive control have become part of our conversations: we recognise that we can spot the signs when somebody is in a toxic relationship and we can intervene. However, that is not the reality on the ground. I know we are going to discuss later the questions about evidence—people having to prove beyond reasonable doubt that these things are happening to them. The problem is that they are having to prove that to people who are not expert enough to be able to understand what they are being shown. Giving them training would start to change that conversation.”
“The Minister might have a fantastic local authority, but I would love to hear from her local service providers whether they think that it gets it right every single time; whether every woman, when she first has the confidence to say, “This happened to me; I need to be somewhere safe” gets the right response. Training is a crucial part of that—getting people to think about how they deal with somebody who is disclosing trauma. These are victims of trauma, which is not easy to deal with. Any Member who has had somebody come in to their constituency surgery to talk about their experiences knows that. Sadly, for my local authority, the examples I gave were provided by independent sexual violence advisers. Those are the most serious cases of domestic violence.”
“I am ashamed that housing officers and social care workers very often do not work together, even though a social services officer might have first seen the signs that something was not right in that family. Training is absolutely crucial to put domestic violence at the forefront of people’s minds, rather than it being one of the tests that they might have to set to see whether somebody is eligible for housing. I am sure that the Minister wants the Bill to change that tick-box culture, but sadly, without that new culture, it is not going to change; all this will be is another set of obligations. If we truly want to keep victims of domestic violence safe, we have to change root and branch the way in which decisions are made.”
“As I said in my first contribution, we ask victims to navigate this system, rather than having a system that understands that domestic violence is far too prevalent in our society, and that offering housing and safe refuge is therefore one of the most important things that we can do. Training would fundamentally change that culture. I am ashamed that there is not a safe space for women in my local authority to say, “This has happened to me; can I talk to somebody about it?” I am ashamed that housing officers query whether somebody is saying that they are a victim of domestic violence as a way to get a house, as if anybody would go through the shame of having to admit that.”
“Another woman with two autistic children was provided with temporary accommodation—one room in a shared property. One woman had six children and was refused assistance. The authority insisted that she obtain a court order against her husband and request a panic alarm from the police, despite her being a high-risk victim who did not feel safe staying at her address. Additionally, the woman had a 16-year-old child who required 24/7 care, which was not taken into consideration. Another woman was discouraged from making a housing application when it was stated that she would only be provided with housing in faraway areas, such as Birmingham, which is a very long way from Walthamstow. Other women have had problems because they do not speak English as a first language.”