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<p>Our landmark draft Domestic Abuse Bill and consultation response, published in
January, includes further measures to help tackle domestic abuse, including introducing
a statutory definition of domestic abuse to include a range of behaviours that go
beyond physical abuse and explicitly recognise economic abuse.</p><p>We are including
economic abuse in the new statutory definition of domestic abuse to acknowledge the
life-changing impact that economic abuse can have on a victim’s life.</p><p>The Joint
Fraud Taskforce is leading an ambitious programme of work to prevent all forms of
fraud and protect the most vulnerable in our society who are often targeted by fraudsters.</p><p>We
are working closely with UK Finance to support their work to encourage banks and the
wider financial services sector to improve the support they provide to victims of
domestic abuse accessing their services.</p><p>We will continue to work with UK Finance
to encourage banks and financial authorities to do more to support victims of domestic
abuse and help them move forward to escape debt, joint accounts, and mortgages</p><p>We
have provided funding to the National Skills Academy to develop and deliver financial
capability training for frontline workers to support individuals who are experiencing
economic domestic abuse.</p><p>We will provide approximately £250,000 until 2020 to
create a national advice service for banks and building societies, increase the capacity
of existing telephone casework services for victims of domestic abuse and develop
resources to help people identify if they are experiencing economic abuse.</p>
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