Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent steps her Department has taken to help tackle domestic (a) abuse and (b) violence.

Tackling all forms of domestic abuse, whether or not they involve physical violence, is a priority for this Government.

That is why we introduced our landmark Domestic Abuse Act in 2021. The Act strengthens our protection to victims and ensures perpetrators feel the full force of the law. It includes the first legal definition of domestic abuse, improved support for victims in the courts, a new offence of non-fatal strangulation and an extension of the controlling or coercive behaviour offence.

More recently, in March 2022, we went even further and published our Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan which seeks to transform the whole of society’s response in order to prevent offending, support victims and pursue perpetrators, as well as to strengthen the systems processes in place needed to deliver these goals.

This Plan, backed by over £230 million, commits to exploring options for a register to manage the most harmful domestic abusers, to providing support services with multi-year funding, with £47 million ringfenced for community-based support services, and funding for police training and development of a ground-breaking algorithm to help police better target the most harmful serial domestic abusers.

We are now in the process of delivering these commitments.