Home Office Minister Jess Phillips has admitted measures to protect victims of domestic violence have “obvious problems”. Ms Phillips, minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, said she was reviewing systems to support victims, including the Dash (Domestic, Abuse, Stalking, Harassment and Honour-Based Violence) questionnaire.
Respondents are assessed on their answers and if they are deemed “high risk” they are referred to specialist care. But Ms Phillips suggested the system wasn’t working, saying: “Until I can replace it with something that does, we have to make the very best of the system that we have.”
Any risk assessment tool is “only as good as the person who is using it” and people were killed even when deemed to be at high risk, she said.
It comes after the Government announced new measures will be introduced to crack down on so-called “honour-based” abuse.
In 2021, pregnant Fawziyah Javed, 31, died when she was pushed from Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh by her husband after she decided to leave the marriage.
Campaigner Nour Norris, whose niece Raneem Oudeh, 22, and sister Khaola Saleem, 49, were murdered by Ms Oudeh’s ex-partner in 2018, said her loved ones “lost their lives because of the failing of the system”.
“Raneem was failed because her risk was downgraded to a tick box exercise,” Ms Norris told the BBC’s Today programme on Tuesday.
“That’s how simple it is, and we can’t allow victim safety to be dependent on which police force is going to answer their call. In other words, the system is just a tick box.
“In order for us to save lives like Raneem’s and many victims’ as we speak today, we must evolve the system and reform the police and change the justice system in many ways. This system has to be evolving all the time.”
