Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department has taken recent steps to ensure that male victims of rape are not classified as victims of violence against women and girls by his Department.

The Government is absolutely committed to supporting all victims of rape, regardless of gender.

Under the cross-Government Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy, published in July 2021, the term “violence against women and girls” (VAWG) refer to crimes which disproportionately, but not exclusively, affect women and girls. This includes stalking, ‘honour’ based crime (e.g. female genital mutilation and forced marriage) and sexual offences such as rape. We recognise that men and boys also experience abusive and violent crimes that fall within the umbrella of these crime types. We recognise the term VAWG cannot, and should not, negate the experiences of male victims.

We acknowledge that there are specific challenges male victims of these crimes may experience. In March 2022, we published our refreshed Supporting Male Victims document. This outlined several commitments to improve our response to male victims of these crimes including the Ministry of Justice investing £1.4m to the Male Rape Fund in 2021/22 (and a further £1.4m in 2022/23).

Additionally, both the Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy and complementary Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan, published in March 2022, sets out our ambition to reduce the prevalence of all VAWG crimes, regardless of who they affect. Commitments made within these documents benefit all victims, including men and boys.

In June 2021 we published the End-to-End Rape Review Findings and Action Plan. This action plan outlined a robust programme of work to achieve a significant improvement in the way the criminal justice system responds to rape. This includes a £6.65m investment from the Home Office into Operation Soteria to develop new national operating models for the investigation and prosecution of rape.

In terms of police recording, the police do not record any crimes as being ‘VAWG’. VAWG is an umbrella term used by the government/others to describe a range of behaviours and offences but is not a formal crime definition. In relation to rape offences, the Home Office counting rules require offences to be recorded based on the age and sex of the victim. This would mean in all circumstances a male victim of rape would be formally recorded as being a male victim of rape.