Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what changes the Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy has achieved since it was published.

We committed through the Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy to introduce a new full-time National Policing Lead for VAWG to take the lead for this area nationally, and the HMICFRS inspection into the police response to VAWG crimes showed that radical reform is needed.

We are working closely with DCC Maggie Blyth who has been appointed in the role to improve the policing response to these crimes. The role includes working with police forces and across Government to make sure action is taken in response to the recommendations made in the HMICFRS inspection report.

Actions we have taken since publishing our cross-Government Tackling VAWG Strategy in July 2021 includes:

• appointing transport champions to help make public transport safer for women;
• awarded £30 million to help make our streets safer through the ‘Safer Streets Fund’ and ‘Safety of Women at Night’ fund;
• launched a pilot of ‘StreetSafe’ to enable the public to anonymously report areas where they feel unsafe; and
• provided additional funding for specialist support services such as the Revenge Porn Helpline.