Meeting of the Parliament 04 November 2025
I, too, put on record my thanks to the members of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee, the clerks and all those who provided evidence for this important report. Anyone can find themselves a victim of domestic or financial abuse. Creeping behaviour and facades of charm mean that it can be difficult to recognise the early signs, but it can ultimately lead to women and children being trapped with no financial means to leave.
In 2023-24, Police Scotland recorded more than 63,000 incidents of domestic abuse. Figures from 2022-23 also recorded that more than 80 per cent of survivors of that abuse were female. We should never ignore that there are male victims of financial and domestic abuse, nor can we ignore that it can happen to those in same-sex relationships. However, the figures are clear that most abusers are male.
We cannot ignore that our society needs to address misogyny and violence against women and girls. Coincidentally, Girlguiding Scotland is in Parliament this week. I met it at lunch time, and addressing the issue is one of the asks in its manifesto for 2026.
My party recently debated the topic at our autumn conference, where we passed a policy package to better protect women and girls. I want to highlight one element of that policy, which is to update the Matrimonial Homes (Family Protection) (Scotland) Act 1981 to include
“a presumption that the perpetrator of domestic abuse will be required to leave the shared home”,
which would allow survivors
“greater choice and agency”.
Today’s motion and committee report focus on the financial considerations for those leaving an abusive relationship. Domestic abuse in any form is abhorrent. Economic abuse can take different forms, including an abuser controlling a person through restricting them from getting, using or keeping money. As the committee report web page highlights, in 2020, Refuge, a domestic abuse organisation, found that more than 8 million adults in the UK have faced economic abuse. Survivors of economic abuse who find themselves in debt owe, on average, just over £3,000.
In a previous role, I worked with a survivor of economic abuse. After the abusive relationship had ended, the financial revelations were peeled away layer by layer. The survivor knew nothing about some of the debt in her name. She had been coerced into taking out multiple loans and credit cards in her name—often, with the perpetrator standing beside her, intimidating her and making her make phone calls to banks and loan companies. Other debt was taken out in her name without her knowledge, and the amount of debt that was racked up, which the perpetrator used but the survivor did not see, was huge. Some financial institutions—although not all—were willing to recognise their failings and wrote off some of the debt, which enabled the survivor to move forward and rebuild her life.
That situation was many years ago, and there have been improvements in awareness and support. For example, the TSB flee fund provides domestic abuse victims with funds of up to £500, which is not required to be paid back, to pay for the essentials to allow the victim to leave.
As the report highlights, there are many barriers to seeking help and making the first steps. Although help and advice are available online, it can be dangerous to access such support at home, and there can be barriers for older, less digitally confident people. As Age Scotland notes, a quarter of women who have experienced economic abuse are aged over 60. Therefore, I welcome the report’s recommendation that information should be available in physical spaces, which will also help to overcome the issue of online advice not being specific to Scotland.
More information is needed on the impact on women with disabilities, women who are deaf or hard of hearing, and women with literacy difficulties.
It is also important to recognise that the level of domestic and financial abuse across Scotland is not purely an urban issue; the same issues are experienced in rural and island areas. The demand that Shetland Women’s Aid experiences is evidence of the continued need for services and support in my constituency.