AN MPs’ report on domestic violence could have “gone much further” by calling for an end to “hostile environment” immigration policies that scare victims of abuse into silence, according to women’s groups.

Black Women’s Rape Action Project and Women Against Rape responded to a report by the home affairs select committee that was published today.

The groups said that the MPs should call for an end to the Tory government policies of “detention, destitution and ‘voluntary returns’,” that discourage women from reporting domestic violence.

In the report, MPs condemn police forces that have provided the Home Office with details of victims who may have insecure immigration status, as well as not having taken victims’ reports seriously.

The groups welcomed the MPs’ recommendations for the government to increase national funding for local authorities to run domestic violence refuges, but also pointed out that a lack of truly affordable social housing keeps women stuck in bad relationships.

According to the committee’s report, at least 90 women and 90 children are turned away from refuges every day because of a lack of space.

New universal credit benefit rules are making it more difficult for those being abused to leave their spouses, the report also says.

The MPs are calling on the government to urgently scrap “backward” single household payments and make split UC payments for couples standard as part of an upcoming bill on domestic abuse.

The women’s groups responded by saying that the MPs should have supported the “widespread call for universal credit to be scrapped along with the discriminatory and degrading two child tax credit limit.”

The two-child limit denies a mother benefits for a third child conceived through rape unless she could “prove” she was raped.

In the report, the committee called on the government to take heed of their recommendations ahead of an upcoming bill on domestic violence.

MPs have called for a new register of serial stalkers and perpetrators of domestic abuse, as well as investigate the introduction of paid “domestic abuse leave” for survivors – like that in New Zealand.

Women’s Aid chief executive Katie Ghose said that the bill is a “golden opportunity” to tackle root causes of domestic abuse but it “must reflect the reality of survivors’ experiences.”