Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what discussions he has had with the Welsh Government on steps to increase charge rates for serial perpetrators of (a) domestic abuse and (b) sexual violence in (i) Newport West constituency and (ii) Wales.

The Home Office engages regularly with partners, including the Welsh Government and Police and Crime Commissioners, on policing priorities. This includes improving the response to domestic abuse, sexual violence, delivering the commitments in the Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy (2021) and the Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan (2022), and bringing more perpetrators to justice. Policing is a reserved matter, and the existing governance and partnership arrangements provide a significant level of integration and autonomy.

To improve conviction rates and understanding of why domestic abuse cases do not progress, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) are developing a Domestic Abuse Joint Justice Plan (DA JJP). The DA JJP is welcomed by the Home Office and is expected to be published in March 2024.

In addition, in 2021 we published the Rape Review Action Plan and set out a series of commitments to deliver cross-system improvements in the criminal justice response to rape. One such commitment was Operation Soteria, a joint policing and CPS programme, to develop new national operating models for the investigation and prosecution of rape and support police and prosecutors across England and Wales to ensure investigations follow rigorous procedures directed at the conduct of the suspect.