Violence Against Women and Girls - Independent Strategic Review of Funding and Commissioning of Services: report

Chapter 9 - Budgeting for VAWG

In this chapter, we set out the huge financial costs of VAWG and the issues we encountered in terms of how spend on VAWG is reported in the Scottish Budget. We identify some areas for improvement in financial reporting.

VAWG: Scottish Government Funding Provision

Costs of VAWG

As mentioned above, violence against women and girls represents a huge personal cost to all those affected. Furthermore, VAWG costs the UK an estimated £40bn each year.

Domestic violence and abuse alone cost the UK an estimated £15.7 billion in 2008. This included:

• more than £3.9 billion for the criminal justice system, civil legal services, healthcare, social services, housing and refuges
• more than £1.9 billion for the economy (based on time off work because of injuries)
• over £9.9 billon in 'human and emotional' costs, for example, the cost of domestic murders and attempted murders, threatening behaviour and the subsequent pain, suffering and fear caused

The cost of sexual offences in a year is estimated to be £8.46bn, with each rape costing an estimated £96,000. Surviving Economic Abuse (SEA) also report that 1 in 10 women has had debts put in her name and was afraid to say no, and that coerced debt is even more common among those who have experienced other forms of domestic abuse.

Further, in 2013, the European Parliament estimated the total costs of violence against women and domestic violence in the EU to be about €228 billion in 2011 (1.8% of EU GDP). This amounts to about €450 per European citizen per year. In 2022, the Scottish Women's Budget Group produced a briefing for elected members for the Improvement Service that highlighted:

"There are some core areas where specific spending on women's services is necessary to tackle other outcomes of inequality in our society. It requires the same kind of gender budget analysis to ensure the services are working to support women and tackle inequality. Violence against women (VAW) services is a primary example of this. Public spending decisions that do not recognise the different needs of women, men and nonbinary people in domestic abuse and other specialist VAW services fail to recognise the link between violence against women as a consequence of gender inequality."

(Scottish Women's Budget Group 2022).

Women Against Violence Europe (WAVE), advocate a funding model of 10% of the costs of violence to be allocated in appropriate financial and human resources as an appropriate level of funding. According to WAVE:

"Given the high costs of violence against women it can be argued that it would be appropriate to spend at least the equivalent of 10% of the costs of violence against women on measures to prevent violence and to protect and support survivors…this simple calculation reveals the necessity to enhance efforts to secure adequate funding for the elimination of violence against women and domestic violence. Alternative methods and models of costing are not currently known or available." WAVE, 2017: 23)

Financing for prevention and support services across the range of VAWG provision is complex and multi-layered. The multi-faceted nature of service and resource requirements across multiple agencies in public, third and community sectors, and several layers and functions of government all create and augment the complexity of allocating, following, and evaluating outcomes from public finances.

Throughout the Review, it proved difficult to identify specific allocations within the Scottish Budget and their distribution across spending and service providers due to a lack of clarity within the Scottish budget documentation, and a lack of specificity in budget lines and programme spending.

While there is no suggestion that the resultant difficulties in accessing and identifying spend and the lack of transparency in "following the money" are intentional, they certainly serve to obscure funding pathways and render the process less transparent. This has the effect of making it more difficult for funders, service providers, partners across agencies, to have a clear understanding of the levels of resourcing and spend, and therefore more difficult to identify outcomes.

Visibility and clarity on the resource allocation process, following spend, and attributing outcomes from public finances have been identified throughout the Review as key issues requiring attention and improvement.

In relation to service providers an additional set of complexities and challenges arise. These include:

• separately identifying spending by local authorities
• commissioning and grant funding of services and special projects
• complexity of funding application processes with no agreed commissioning model or framework for local authorities or partnerships to follow
• timescales and duration of funding allocations

From the evidence generated through the Review, it is clear that while centralised funding is insecure given the vagaries of Scottish Government budgets, local authority budgets are also insufficient and councils look to Scottish Government to make up shortfalls.

Areas for Improvement

There are four areas for improvement, with specific objectives for changes in allocation and evaluation processes at levels of the Scottish Government and Scottish budget, providers, stakeholders, and accountability.

1. Scottish Budget and Scottish Government

Among the principal findings from the Review are concerning issues around the visibility, transparency, and consistency of allocation through the Scottish Budget which are discussed in this section.

Analysing the Scottish Government Draft Budget 2022-23 as an example, the Review considered how funding allocations were set out in budgetary documentation, the levels of funding published, and the consistency in the presentation of allocations. Amongst the findings of concern were the difficulties in identifying spending totals and the specific allocations across portfolios due to repetition of the same information. For example, £44.98 million was cited as a budgeting line within Promoting Equality and Human Rights. In the Draft Budget, this amount was described as:

"an increase of 39% – demonstrating the Scottish Government's commitment to promoting equality and realising human rights for the people of Scotland. This will enable continued funding to organisations supporting some of the most vulnerable in society, through Delivering Equally Safe and Embedding Equality and Human Rights funds. It also delivers on a range of Programme for Government commitments in equality, inclusion and human rights, including support to front-line organisations that work to tackle gender-based violence or deliver Equally Safe."

(Scottish Government, 2021:13)

Earlier in the Draft Budget, it was stated that "Over £23 million support to front-line organisations that help eradicate and prevent Violence Against Women and Girls, and £4 million in additional funding to improve victim-centred support." (Scottish Government, 2021: 12). It is not clear from the remainder of the Draft Budget document how the £44.98m is allocated across portfolios as the same figure is repeated across other portfolios, without detail on the specifics.

For example, under Justice and Veterans, the Draft Budget states:

• "This budget supports the equality and human rights infrastructure across Scotland. Investing in the capacity of equality organisations; Strategic Interventions to support key equality outcomes; and specific funds to support frontline activity to address violence against women and to support activities to promote equality and human rights."
• "New funding commitments arising from the manifesto and Programme for Government including the government's commitment to additional support for specialist services that tackle gender-based violence and support delivery of the Equally Safe strategy."

Under Social Justice, Housing and Local Government, the sum presented is the same and the repeated text is equally unspecific:

• "This budget supports the equality and human rights infrastructure across Scotland. Investing in the capacity of equality organisations; Strategic Interventions to support key equality outcomes; and specific funds to support frontline activity to address violence against women and to support activities to promote equality and human rights."
• "New funding commitments arising from the manifesto and PfG including the government's commitment to additional support for specialist services that tackle gender-based violence and support delivery of the Equally Safe strategy."

There were further statements of commitment expressed as:

"The 2022-23 Justice budget will address many of the Criminal Justice Committee's recommendations. It includes additional funding to ensure the substantial activity on Justice recovery, renewal and transformation continues to address the courts backlog, and provides additional funding for community justice services. Additional funding will also be invested to improve victim-centred support, including for victims of violence against women and girls."

(Scottish Government, 2021: 27)

"The portfolio (Social Justice, Housing & Local Government Portfolio) supports a wide range of work to prevent discrimination and promote equality, inclusion and human rights creating the conditions for cohesive, resilient and safe communities. We support the Equality and Human Rights infrastructure across Scotland to address systemic inequality, tackle hate crime and address violence against women and girls."

(Scottish Government, 2021: 38)

It is not clear what the separately mentioned £23m was intended to support. Elsewhere in relation to funding VAWG services, the Review was given evidence about funding supporting DES. In December 2020, the DES Fund opened for applications with a series of deadlines in March, April and May 2021. Funding decisions were announced in August 2021, and the first payments were made to successful organisations in October 2021. The evidence provided to the Review detailed an overall DES budget of £38m over three years. This budget was to fund over 90 organisations 'delivering front line' services, and allocations included £15.4m to 41 Women's Aid Centres, and £7.7m to Rape Crisis Centres, with £5.2m invested in 'prevention focused activity' over 2 years, with 17 organisations in receipt of funds.

In additional evidence, the value of the DES budget was given as £38m for which there were 163 applications with an average allocation of £469k.

The UK government budget in 2021 announced additional funding bringing UK Ministry of Justice support services to over £185million by 2024/25. According to the UK Women's Budget Group this still falls significantly short of the estimated £409 million that is needed for specialist domestic abuse services across England. It is not clear what the consequential allocations to the Scottish Budget were from this additional allocation of resource.

Implications

There are inconsistencies across the presentation of budgets for DES and VAWG services, with different sums being stated across different documentation. The Review sought to identify clear budget lines from the Scottish Government. Using Scottish Draft Budget documentation it was not possible to ascertain total values of assigned funds, impeding clear transparency in tracking spend and evaluating outcomes.

This lack of specificity undermines the principles of transparency recommended in a gender mainstreaming and gender budgeting approach to which the Scottish Government has repeatedly committed. It also means that currently, the Scottish Government is not compliant with the Istanbul Convention as is not possible to identify the specific breakdown of public finance allocated through the Scottish Budget.

2. Service Providers and Partnerships

Evidence from SG officials described the funding landscape as varied, unstable, and lacking sustainability for services. The Review was given information about an online conference in December 2020, organised by the Improvement Service and COSLA which identified a number of issues in relation to the provision, sustainability and range of sources of funding including:

• Dedicated funding is required to support local multi-agency partnership working, specifically to support both VAWG agencies and wider stakeholders to identify and progress actions to support a more joined-up, person-centred approach to working with women and children experiencing VAWG.
• Long-term, sustainable funding is needed for specialist VAWG services to enable them both to deliver high quality support to women and children within local communities and to engage with wider strategic work.
• There is an unacceptable postcode lottery of support across Scotland.
• A minimum level of specialist provision should be available in all local authority areas for women and children experiencing domestic abuse and other forms of VAWG.
• Competitive funding models undermine partnership working and put additional pressure on specialist services at a time when capacity is already limited.
• Funders require more comprehensive evaluation of their activities which third sector organisations may lack resources and skills to undertake.
• Short-term funding and complex tender documentation can have a negative impact on service users if the organisation is not in a position to shield service users from cuts in service provision.
• Overly prescriptive funding formulas can also have a negative impact on service users because it restricts agencies' ability to respond to individual need.

One issue identified was the potential for greater introduction of market approaches within public sector provision resulting in charitable organisations having to compete within the sector in order to attract and secure funding. This has included the concept of "hybridity" which refers to the extent to which an individual organisation draws upon a plurality of financial sources including government, public, charitable and private sources. This has been mooted as a possible funding model in England and Wales, according to Scottish Government officials. There is some suggestion that such diversity and spread

of funding might be a model that would travel to Scotland. Such a model, it has been suggested, mitigates the usual risks of uncertainty and lack of sustainability as it provides a mixed resource base supporting organisational growth.

Currently in Scotland, there are a considerable number of funders who distribute relatively small amounts of funding through smaller grants of less than £10,000 per year to VAWG organisations, which taken together can add up to a large amount of funding for VAWG organisations, particularly for small to medium sized ones. These mixed funding models are not inherently secure, and still require sustained effort in sourcing and sustaining funds, further undermining the stability of services.

3. Accountability and Stakeholder Scrutiny

International standards on gender budgeting and gender budget analysis suggest that all stages of the budget process – overall process; preparation and approval; execution, reporting, and monitoring; audit and oversight, should be able to be scrutinised and subject to accountability. On the basis of the 2022-23 Draft Budget as an example of the presentation of budgetary information in core budget documents, there is limited opportunity for effective accountability of government and scrutiny by external stakeholders.

4. Quantifying Spend in Relation to International Commitments

The Scottish Government is committed to implementing the Istanbul Convention. Article 8 of the Istanbul Convention sets out the requirement that parties need to provide appropriate financial and human resources for the implementation of policies, measures and programmes to prevent violence against women and domestic violence:

Parties shall allocate appropriate financial and human resources for the adequate implementation of integrated policies, measures and programmes to prevent and combat all forms of violence covered by the scope of this Convention, including those carried out by non-governmental organisations and civil society.

Article 2, Part II of The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights requires state parties as duty bears to "take steps, individually and through international assistance and co-operation, especially economic and technical, to the maximum of its available resources, with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of the rights recognized in the present Covenant by all appropriate means, including particularly the adoption of legislative measures." Our emphasis added here highlights that our recommendations for resourcing, and securing a legislative underpinning for VAWG services are in line with the key principles of international human rights, including that the implementation of obligations should ensure non-discrimination, and non-regression of existing rights.

Further scrutiny of the Scottish Government's allocation of resources on the basis of international human rights standards, is significantly impeded by the limited and inconsistent presentation of public finance information.