What Plaid Cymru is promising to do this General Election
We support the Women Against State Pension Injustice (WASPI) campaign and would provide compensation to those women who have lost out from an ill communicated and ill thought through policy.
Health:
We will restore to Wales the specialist mother and baby unit for mothers suffering from severe mental illness that was removed by Cardiff and Vale Health Board in 2013.
Education:
A new £35 a week payment for every child in low income families, lifting 50,000 children in Wales out of poverty.
Free Care and Education for all 1-3 year olds – we will provide free full-day early years childcare and early years education to all children between 1-3 years old. We will offer seamless care from early years into school. Our aim will be to use this first stage of education to ensure that all Welsh children become bilingual.
Safety:
A register for repeat domestic abuse register where abusers have been convicted of abusing two or more victims, administered by a properly resourced police force.
Prevent the police or prosecutors from disclosing the address of a victim or witness of domestic abuse, coercive control or sexual assault to the person accused of the offence.
Proper training for Police forces on Domestic Violence.
Ensuring that Accident and Emergency Departments have trained Domestic Violence advisors who can advise doctors to refer cases to the Police.
Ensuring that migrant and BME victims of domestic violence receive tailored support from authorities
Justice:
Women in Wales are especially ill-served by the justice system, with all Welsh female prisoners being held in one of the twelve women’s prisons in England. This often results in the separation of young children from their mothers and makes family visits difficult. Moreover, there is a complete absence of Welsh language services for women prisoners.
The crimes committed by men and women can vary significantly. Women’s offending tends to be of a less serious nature, which means they tend to serve a shorter sentence. In 2016, 74% of all women convicted were sentenced for less than 6 months.
Short-term sentences often bring considerable chaos and disruption to the lives of women and their families, Conversely, women who complete short-term sentences are more likely to re-offend than those sentenced to a court order.
Women are also overwhelmingly sent to prison for theft rather than violent offences. Often, women are stealing to feed their children or to support a partner’s drug habit. According to the Prison Reform Trust around half of women have been victims of crimes that are more serious than the ones for which they are being imprisoned.
We will use suspended sentences for those women who are charged with non-violent crimes, dampening the disruption caused to them and their family. Rather than being ‘soft’ on crime, this is in line with best practice as it lowers reoffending rates in comparison to short-term custodial sentences.
Plaid Cymru will support a dedicated, small, prison or secure centres for female prisoners in Wales, to ensure access to family support networks as we accept that there will be occasions where a custodial sentence is appropriate and justified.
An estimated one in five women have experienced some form of sexual violence since the age of 16. Rape is still an under-reported crime and it is estimated by the Crime Survey for England and Wales that only one in six victims of rape report the incident to the police.
There were only were three convictions for every 100 rape cases recorded by the police in England and Wales in the past year. Although the number of alleged rapes recorded by the police increased by 9%, the number of charges fell by 38%, prosecutions by 33% and convictions by 27%.
More needs to be done to tackle this heinous crime and our approach will be multidisciplinary and work across a plethora of institutions. From an early age we will teach our children about respectful relationships and consent in schools whereby they can be informed about what constitutes a healthy relationship and what is permissible. We will also launch a public information campaign to make clear what constitutes as consent and tackle rape culture. For those that have already committed sexual assault we will ensure that perpetrator programmes are well funded in prisons and within probation teams in order to minimise the risk of this crime happening in future.
We will ensure that the police, magistrates and juries have the correct information with regards to the handling of complaints and the correct information with regards to what constitutes rape. Only a tiny minority of cases fit under the ‘textbook’ definition of rape and those within the Criminal Justice System must be aware that rape can be between partners or between those that have been intimate in the past.
For those that have been a victim of this crime we will ensure that Sexual Assault Referral Centres are properly funded with adequate training for the professionals that work there. We will also ensure that counselling services are available and well-funded as victims of rape can suffer from co-occurring issues relating to mental health and drug and alcohol abuse, especially due to self-medication.
Representation:
Work to increase the participation of minorities and women in politics and public life.
Work:
We are committed to encouraging women’s full and equal participation in the economy by ending gender segregation in the workplace and promoting more flexible working patterns. Our policy of providing 40 hours free universal education and childcare to children above one will ensure that parents have the option of returning to work and save on the cost of childcare.
A Plaid Cymru Government will promote all careers as being available to men and women. We will support women and girls to follow careers in key growth areas, especially in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) fields. We will create mentorships schemes to increase the visibility of women in non-traditional occupations and senior roles and to increase girls’ awareness of the many different paths available to them.
Plaid Cymru will address the impact of austerity-led cuts on funding for specialist services for women who have experienced domestic violence or abuse and ensure continued support to marginalised and vulnerable groups in society.
Schools in Wales will be required to keep a register of bullying incidents related to sexuality, to take action where necessary and to involve students in anti-bullying initiatives. We will promote LGBT participation in sport, as part of broader efforts towards healthier lifestyles, and work with clubs and organisations to reduce homophobic, transphobic and sexist behaviour.
Plaid Cymru will support the reform of the Gender Recognition Act to introduce a streamlined, de-medicalised process. We will support efforts to reform the Equality Act to include ‘gender identity’ as a protected characteristic and to remove the use of the terms ‘gender reassignment’ and ‘transsexual’ from the Act.
With Brexit posing a real threat to workers’ rights, Plaid Cymru commits to protect the right to work of pregnant women and new mothers by supporting a legal ban on employers making a woman redundant throughout pregnancy, and until six months after return from maternity leave, other than in very limited circumstances, as called for by the charity Maternity Action.
We will also tackle pregnancy and maternity discrimination in the workplace by supporting the call to legislate to add reporting of retention rates for women returning from maternity leave to the existing ‘gender pay gap’ reporting regime.
With a multitude of changes across new parents’ lives, Plaid Cymru will work to support parents’ mental health during what can be a joyous, yet challenging time by extending access to perinatal mental health services, including access to specialist mother and baby units within Wales.
We will tackle loneliness and isolation amongst new parents by establishing local Parent Networks, inspired by the successful Mamma Gruppen initiative in Sweden.
Plaid Cymru supports the call for maternity and paternity pay and leave to be extended in the case of babies that are born prematurely (before 36 weeks’ gestation).
The recent Westminster legislation providing for free funerals for babies should be extended to cover those lost to early miscarriage.