Violence against Women and Girls Strategy

Josh Babarinde Excerpts

Monday 15th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips]

Absolutely. I would say, as would anyone who has ever worked on the frontline, that there is a time-honoured tradition of the police blaming the CPS and the CPS blaming the police—it is a sort of roundabout. The Attorney General and the Solicitor General—a brilliant feminist, who wrote much of what went into the Labour manifesto on violence against women and girls, alongside me and others—have been absolute allies throughout this, and making sure that our every part of our justice system and every part of our system is better is vitally important.

[Josh Babarinde (Eastbourne) (LD)]

Clare’s law gives people the right to ask about the criminal history of their partner to help keep them safe, but Clare’s law let down one of my constituents, whose abuser lied about his identity and therefore lied about his criminal past. Will the Minister confirm that the strategy to be released on Thursday will make provision to enable women and girls who request their right to ask to be better protected by Clare’s law, and patch up the loophole that allows abusers to lie about their identity to continue their abuse of women and girls?

[Jess Phillips]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for, over the year and a bit that he has been here, genuinely bringing forward issues on which he wants to see change. Clare’s law is patchy across the entire country; it is brilliant in some areas. One of the issues we face is the fact that there are 43 police forces. If he is talking about a specific legislative change, I would be more than happy to hear about it. However, we are funding the national policing centre for violence against women and girls, and seeking for it to do specific work on Clare’s law—the domestic violence disclosure scheme system—in order to improve experiences. I have received ministerial letters from across the House about failures on Clare’s law, so this is definitely an area that vastly needs improving.