Asked by: Andrew Jones (Conservative - Harrogate and Knaresborough)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to tackle violence against women and girls through the criminal justice system.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
This Government has introduced a comprehensive legislative framework to prevent violence against women, including our landmark Domestic Abuse Act 2021.
We have pioneered the creation of new offences including coercive control, non-fatal strangulation and intimate image abuse; more than doubled the number of adult rape cases reaching court compared to when we commissioned our End-to-End Rape Review; and made sure that sentences for adult rape are almost 40% longer than they were in 2010.
And through our Sentencing Bill, we will ensure that rapists and serious sexual offenders spend the entirety of their custodial sentence behind bars, without possibility of parole.