Hello and welcome to Women of Balls, where I, Katie Balls, speak to today's trailblazers.

This is the special panel edition of the podcast.

The coronavirus pandemic has brought a number of issues to the fall from the NHS preparedness

to long-term challenges relating to the economy.

It has also meant that domestic abuse services are braced for an avalanche of new cases as a result of measures designed to prevent

the spread of the disease. There is global concern that social distancing practices put in place

across the world will lead to an increase in domestic abuse. The Office for National

Statistics estimates that 1.6 million women and 786,000 men in England and Wales experienced

some form of domestic abuse in 2019. When it comes to how this abuse manifested itself,

Women's AIDS's Domestic Abuse Report for 2019 found that nearly a third

of respondents who suffered abuse said access to money during the relationship was controlled by

the perpetrator, with a quarter saying their partner did not let them have access to money for

essentials during the relationship. The government's domestic abuse bill is the most comprehensive legislative

package to date on the issue, and among its new measures, economic abuse will be for the first

time recognised as a form of coercive control that sits alongside physical and sexual abuse.

Introduced to Parliament in March, it's been a long time in the making.

So what does the new legislation mean for how we tackle domestic abuse?

What more can be done now and who exactly needs to do it?

To try and answer these questions, I'm joined by Jess Phillips, Labour MP and domestic abuse campaigner.

Jess spent five years working for women's aid, the charity which works to end domestic abuse against women and children. Olivia Robey, who advises organisations on safeguarding and vulnerability policy,

she previously served as special advisor to the Home Secretary on crime, policing and vulnerability,

where she worked extensively on the

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