Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the implications for its policies of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services report, Police response to violence against women and girls - Final inspection report, published 17 September 2021.

This Government is absolutely committed to tackling and preventing violence against women and girls (VAWG). That is why the Home Secretary commissioned HM Inspectorate of Police and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) to carry out an inspection into the police response to these crimes.

We are considering the report’s recommendations and have already supported the recommendation from HMICFRS’s interim report to introduce a full-time national police lead for VAWG, which the Home Office is funding. We look forward to working with DCC Maggie Blyth, who has been appointed to the role, to address the report’s findings and further support our wider work on VAWG, including our Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy, which we published in July.