Should Christians get involved in policy making? Harshita Brella has been found dead in a car boot. Her husband can't be found. Read here how Lib Dem Women has ensured that Lib Dem policy protects women like her.

A few years ago, Lib Dem women was approached by Amnesty International and asked to submit a policy motion to conference calling for an exemption to the ‘no recourse to public funds rule’.  No, we didn’t know what this was either but Amnesty explained. When a British person marries a person from abroad, then that person can be given permission to live in Britain, but for the first two years, they will not be allowed to use the NHS, go to school or college or claim benefits. They have no recourse to public funds. The reality is that the majority of the people coming from abroad to marry British people are women who come from the Indian subcontinent. Women like Harshita Brella. If like Harshita, they then find that they are victims of domestic violence, they simply only have two options – return to their family or stay and risk being killed. It may be that they simply can’t return to their family. They don’t have the funds or may not be welcomed back. The ‘No recourse to public funds rule’ means that they cannot go to a Women’s Refuge as these are funded through the benefits claimed by the residents.

The policy motion Amnesty asked LDW to submit was simple – an exemption to the no recourse to public funds for victims of domestic violence. On behalf of LDW, I wrote a policy motion and LDW submitted it for debate at an Autumn Conference. LDW were then asked if they would agree that it could be added to the Lib Dem policy on women which was due to be debated at Conference. They agreed and I spoke on that one single line. I spoke about women like Harshita who have been killed by their abusive husbands. Afterwards, a young man came up to me and said he sat through the policy motion because he assumed it was all good stuff, but not particularly enthralling. But my speech had shown him that just one sentence in a policy motion can help save someone’s life. Just one sentence. But for Harshita and others like her, it could make the difference between life and death.

Lizzie Jewkes
LDW Exec member