Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to tackle violence against women and girls through the criminal justice system.

This Government’s track record in tackling violence against women and girls includes introducing

• Our landmark Domestic Abuse Act, which created the new criminal offence of non-fatal strangulation; recognised wider forms of abuse, such as emotional and economic abuse, in law for the first time; and extended the controlling and coercive behaviour offence to include post-separation abuse; and,

• The Rape Review, through which we have tripled the number of cases the police are now referring to the CPS and more than doubled the number of adult rape cases reaching court since 2019.

And we are going further by introducing:

• The Sentencing Bill, which will legislate to ensure that rapists and the most serious sexual offenders remain in prison for the whole of their custodial sentences, up from 2/3 currently and after the last Labour Government lowered it to only 50%; and

• The Criminal Justice Bill, which will strengthen the multi-agency management of offenders convicted of controlling or coercive behaviour.