Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an assessment of the implications for his policies on punishments for domestic homicide of the paper entitled Quantitative Analysis of Domestic Homicide Reviews October 2020 to September 2021, published on 12 April 2023.

In March 2023 this government published the independent Domestic Homicide Sentencing Review and announced that we will be changing the law so that sentencing reflects the severity of these crimes. We will introduce statutory aggravating factors to increase sentences for murderers with a history of controlling or coercive behaviour against the victim, and for murders involving ‘overkill’ which is the use of excessive or gratuitous violence beyond that necessary to kill. Building on our ban of the ‘rough sex defence’ in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, we also want to see longer sentences for perpetrators of so-called rough sex manslaughter and have requested that the Sentencing Council update their guidelines so that the courts can impose a higher sentence in these circumstances.

The Review makes a number of other recommendations which we are carefully considering, and our full response will be published before summer recess.

The Home Office commission the 'Quantitative Analysis of Domestic Homicide Reviews’ (DHR) reports by QE Assessments Ltd to share learning and insights from the DHR process. The cases reviewed in the QE Assessments report are likely to also feature in the cases reviewed by Clare Wade KC in the Domestic Homicide Sentencing Review.