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Domestic abuse victims should at least get paid leave, says GMB union

PAID leave and flexible working should be offered to workers who experience emotional and physical domestic abuse, GMB said today, as MPs debated the Domestic Abuse Bill.

The Bill, which received its second reading today, seeks to give better protection to those fleeing violence by placing a new legal duty on councils to provide secure homes for them and their children.

It would also update the government definition of domestic abuse to specifically extend to economic manipulation.

But general union GMB’s national equality and inclusion officer Nell Andrew said the union has “grave concerns” that the Bill does not at least include workplace measures for paid leave in instances of domestic abuse.

She said: “Domestic abuse is a workplace issue. If this Bill is to have a meaningful impact it needs to cover all walks of life, especially the workplace, to ensure that survivors are not further penalised by losing their jobs and their livelihoods.”

At least two million adults in Britain between the ages of 16 and 59 reported experiencing some form of physical or emotional domestic abuse in the year ending March 2018.

Justice Secretary Robert Buckland admitted that Britain has a “heck of a way to go” before domestic abuse is effectively tackled.

He told the Commons today that the Bill would bring together a “plethora” of separate measures into a single domestic abuse protection order (DAPO) that could be issued by the police.

Such an order would require a perpetrator to leave the home for up to 48 hours. The issue of the notice would then trigger an application to a magistrates’ court for a longer-term DAPO.

Shadow women and equalities minister Carolyn Harris welcomed the hearing but criticised Prime Minister Boris Johnson for “letting the Bill fall” during his prorogation of Parliament.

Labour MP Rosie Duffield received a standing ovation after she spoke of her own subjection to coercive control.

She said: “Often we see the same images and stereotypes on TV. Housing estates, working-class families, drunk men coming home from the pub, women surrounded by children and a sequence of shouting followed by immediate physical violence or assault.

“But the soap opera scenes only tend to focus on one or two aspects of a much bigger and more complex picture.

“Domestic violence has many faces and the faces of those who survive are varied too.”

Ms Duffield described how the signs of a controlling partner are not apparent at the start of a relationship, but gradually develop.

She told MPs: “They don’t threaten, criticise, control, yell or exert their physical strength in increasingly frightening ways. Not yet. Not at the start.” 

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