Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls
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The Minister of State, Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
It is a genuine pleasure to be in the Chamber today to discuss this important issue ahead of International Women’s Day.
We can start with some areas of agreement, because that is how we are going to change things. We can all agree that we have had enough. We are half the population and we should not have to put up with some of the behaviours and crimes that are captured by the phrase violence against women and girls. The range of behaviours and crimes caught by that phase is truly shocking—the many ways in which our sex is used against us and we are made victims of the sorts of crimes that everyone in this Chamber finds absolutely abhorrent. That is why last year we published our tackling violence against women and girls strategy, because we wanted an holistic and societal response to these crimes.
The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) rightly urges us to do more and go faster, and there is will and determination in this Government to do exactly that. That is why we worked together last year to pass the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, for example—truly groundbreaking legislation that will help more than 2 million adult victims and the children who live in abusive households with this most invidious and hidden of crimes. We have to acknowledge, however, that this will take time. I wish solving the problem were as easy as pulling a lever in one part of the criminal justice system, but it is not. Fundamentally, we know that some of the behaviours and crimes that we will hear about this afternoon have arisen as a result of behaviours, societal attitudes and so on that we must tackle. Not only do we know that intellectually and academically, because we have asked researchers and worked with charities and campaigners, but we know it from the responses of women and girls, and men, to our call for evidence last year when we were drafting the tackling violence against women and girls strategy. More than 180,000 responses were received. That is an unprecedented response rate. It caught that moment, which I am sure we all remember, when there was a very urgent national conversation about how women and girls are suffering these behaviours and crimes.
The responses share the sorts of experiences that every woman and every girl will know. Holding our keys in our knuckles as we walk home, texting friends to say we have got home safely, batting away and avoiding eye contact in a bar if somebody is approaching us and is not taking no for an answer—those are all behaviours that we know and experience. The responses and the national conversation at the time said, “Enough”. That is why we want the strategy to be seen as the start of a decade of change—that is what I said when we launched it.
It will take us time to make sure that boys and girls learn from primary school about what healthy relationships look like, and it will take time to get the communications right. Part of that longer-term societal change is about drawing a line as to what is healthy and acceptable behaviour in relationships, because for all sorts of reasons that we know about—including, we all suspect, the influence of internet pornography—there seems to be some disconnect between what we know to be healthy and what our girls and our young women are facing. We are committed to helping to draw that line, so in our response to the women and girls who responded to the call for evidence—but also, importantly, to charities and campaigners—we committed in the strategy to a public communications campaign to begin that discussion.
I am delighted that this week we launched the campaign, “Enough”. Please google it and look at it—I urge every single hon. Member, regardless of party politics, to share the campaign, which was very well received by charities and campaigners when it was launched this week. The multi-year campaign will begin that vital work to make it clear to perpetrators that their crimes will not be tolerated. It will drive societal rejection of those crimes and help to give victims the confidence they need to seek help if they feel able to do so.
Yvette Cooper
I know that the Minister takes the matter very seriously. I urge her not to just accept that it will take time. I do not think we should accept that; I think we should be much more ambitious about the changes that should happen immediately and the changes that should happen within the next few months, rather than starting from the position that it will take time.
I press the Minister for her diagnosis of why things have got so disastrously worse since 2016, with the massive drop in the prosecution rate and the pushing of the system to breaking point. I have a diagnosis around the scale of the cuts to policing and to the criminal justice system, not just the digital changes that have taken place. If the Government do not understand and recognise how things have got so much worse on their watch, people will not have confidence—women and girls will not have confidence—that things will be turned around.
Victoria Atkins
If I may, I will develop that point in my speech. As the right hon. Lady knows, an enormous amount of work is going on, particularly in the rape review, and I want to take the House through it in detail. She is absolutely right that there is action now, this day, to tackle these crimes and behaviours, but we must acknowledge—as, in fairness, colleagues across the House have acknowledged throughout our domestic abuse debates and so on—that there are real, fundamental problems that we have to tackle at a societal level so that women and girls know we agree that this behaviour is not their fault, is not their responsibility and must be tackled.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
We talk about wider societal change and bringing young people up with proper relationship training. I was a secondary school teacher; that sort of relationship training is done at the end of the day by maths teachers or foreign language teachers. Does the Minister believe that we need professionals to lead it? We cannot leave it to schools to pick up the pieces any more.
Victoria Atkins
May I say that there has been progress since the hon. Lady has been in her place? I very much hope that she welcomes the progress that we have made. Importantly, there is now a statutory requirement and, what is more, there is specific training to help to roll it out. We take her point that it has to be done in a way that is appropriate and sensitive but also effective, so we get the messages through to children at the right stage and the right time in their lives.
There is one way in which every single person in this Chamber can help and do something today. When hon. Members leave the Chamber, will they please share the “Enough” campaign across their many social media networks? Not only are we bombarding social media, but over the weeks to come we will have adverts cropping up across our towns and cities on buses, billboards, television and so on. This is how, individually, we can make a real difference today.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
I am sure we can agree with all the sentiments that the Minister has expressed. There is one other thing that we could do, which is naming this for what it is: not just violence against women and girls, but male violence against women and girls. If we start talking about it and naming it correctly, that will be a very big help.
Victoria Atkins
Male colleagues are in attendance today, although perhaps not quite as fully as in previous debates, but in fairness male colleagues across the House have accepted their role and are very much working with us to tackle this. I have one slight caveat, though: when we talk about sexual violence, we know that it disproportionately affects women and girls, but I want us to acknowledge that men can be victims of sexual violence as well. We will be addressing that in our male victims paper in due course, but it is very important that we are clear about the causes and themes that run through this behaviour.
The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford rightly challenges us to share what we have done so far. I agree that we want to look over not just the next decade, but the past few months and what we have done. We have funded local projects and initiatives across England and Wales, totalling more than £27 million, to improve the safety of women in public places, particularly as we come out of covid restrictions on social distancing and so on.
Through round 3 of the safer streets fund, we are providing more than £650,000 to the west midlands to provide interventions, such as the bespoke VAWG public spaces-tailored programme offered to all schools in conjunction with the mentors in violence prevention programme and the violence reduction unit place-based pilot, to address harmful sexualised attitudes in boys. In West Yorkshire, we are providing more than £650,000 to implement interventions such as Student Safe Spot, safe routes and sexual assault referral centre walkthroughs.
Further to the point that the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) made, relationships, sex and health education became statutory in schools from September. We are putting support in place to improve the quality of teaching so that we support children and young people through school.
The hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) talked about online crimes. The Online Safety Bill is coming to the House shortly. Precisely because we wanted help, assistance and input from Members of both Houses, and indeed from charities and campaigners, we opened the Bill up to pre-legislative scrutiny. We are going through that scrutiny at the moment and are very respectful of the Joint Committee’s efforts to draw our attention to parts of it. We are working with determination to make the online world as safe as we possibly can.
Victoria Atkins
I will give way to the hon. Lady and then to my hon. Friend.
Debbie Abrahams
I was on that Joint Committee, and I have heard some worrying concerns that some of the recommendations that we made will be watered down. We took evidence that a large proportion—I cannot remember the figure, but a majority—of primary school-age children are being sent unsolicited extreme porn images. As great as the “Enough” campaign may be, how on earth do we combat that unless we have strong legislation?
Victoria Atkins
The world in the 21st century is having to grapple with some of those factors that we have seen emerge on the internet over the last two or three decades. I genuinely think this is the moment for our country to draw a line in the sand and say, “Enough is enough. We expect better from tech companies and we expect better in terms of regulation of tech companies.” That is what the Online Safety Bill will involve.
Jackie Doyle-Price
I think we have all been very patient as women, to be brutally frank. I want to return to the point made by the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson). Let us call it what it is: this is male violence against women and girls. I hear what my hon. Friend the Minister says. There are probably more men here than I have seen in a debate of this kind, which is fantastic, but we are only really going to tackle this if we get full societal change. That means that our communications outside this Chamber must make it very clear that it is not a women’s problem that men are committing these crimes against them; it is the fault of everyone in society. People should stop looking the other way and we should cease just sucking all this up. Let us call it what it is—male violence against women and girls.
Victoria Atkins
I would very much welcome my hon. Friend’s views on the “Enough” campaign. We set out three scenes to tackle exactly that tendency to turn away, giving people the courage to call out so-called banter among their mates, and helping people who see behaviour in the street that they are not sure about to offer a helping hand and say, “We’re here if you want to talk.” That sort of approach is going to make the sort of societal change that I know we all want.
However, it is also vital that, when crimes sadly occur, victims get the support they need and deserve. That is why we have committed to increasing funding to vital support services to £185 million by 2024-25. Importantly, that includes increasing the number of independent sexual violence advisers and independent domestic violence advisers to more than 1,000. That is pivotal. The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford rightly said that there are various stages in the criminal justice system, and as I move on to the rape review I will try to explain a little more the very technical work that we have been doing on this. We know that there are certain pressure points, and there is emerging evidence that the role that IDVAs and ISVAs play in supporting victims can really help to tackle victim attrition rates. It can mean that victims are nearly 50% more likely to stay engaged with the criminal justice system.
We are also—again, I have listened to the responses that we have received and to charities and campaigners—in the process of setting up a national sexual violence helpline in England and Wales. That will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so that victims of sexual violence can get immediate access to support when they need it and when they want it. I think that will be a step change for many victims, knowing as we do just how important the domestic abuse helpline has been in offering support. We are also, of course, introducing a victims law. That is a critical part of our plans to ensure that victims’ voices are at the heart of the criminal justice process. It will strengthen the accountability of the players in that process and improve support for victims.
On another point of agreement, we want to see perpetrators of violence against women and girls ruthlessly pursued and brought to justice. Yesterday the Safeguarding Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean)—confirmed to the House that we will be adding violence against women and girls to the strategic policing requirement, meaning that it will be prioritised just as terrorism offences, for example, are prioritised. That is essential. I appreciate that it is the sort of technical thing that is all words and has very little meaning if one has just been raped and been the victim of a crime, but those of us who work in this process know how significant a commitment it is. We are now prioritising nationally the very crimes we are all so concerned about, in the way that serious organised crime and terrorism, for example, are prioritised.
However, we know that we cannot just look to criminal justice, so in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 we committed to giving the police new powers to help bring perpetrators to justice and to stop the abuse. Domestic abuse protection notices and orders were a very strong part of the Act. We will be publishing a comprehensive perpetrators strategy, which will set out our approach to detecting, investigating and prosecuting offences involving domestic abuse, assessing and managing that risk, and reducing the risk that individuals will commit further offences. The strategy will form part of the domestic abuse strategy, which is due to be published in the coming months.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
Those announcements are welcome. Will the Minister recognise the work being done by the excellent Northumbria police and crime commissioner, Kim McGuinness, who has such a holistic approach to tackling violence—sexual violence and domestic abuse—against women? She has launched campaigns such as “Fun without fear”, and she commissions work with perpetrators, as well as with victims of domestic and violent abuse, to cover all aspects of work to stop this kind of violence against women.
Victoria Atkins
I genuinely thank the hon. Lady for bringing to the fore the vital role that police and crime commissioners play in their local areas to do exactly the sort of the work that she describes. We are giving police and crime commissioners the funding and flexibility to commission plans and work in their own local areas, but we are now supporting that, as I say, with the national strategic policing priority so that there is a focus not just at local level but at national level. We have invested an unprecedented amount—some £35 million—specifically in tackling the perpetrators of domestic abuse. This is very significant work, and I am sure that we will begin to see the benefits of it very soon.
We also want to build an evidence base on perpetrators. In the strategy, we committed to creating a “what works” fund to see what is working, with risk assessment and changing behaviours, and to looking at some frankly under-researched areas such as abuse within adolescent relationships. I see the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) opposite me; we discussed this in the Domestic Abuse Bill Committee. We know that, as part of our wider societal work, we need to focus on what is happening in teenage relationships before the age of 16, when the Act kicks in, so that both adolescents and those over 16 are being looked after in their relationships.
As I hope I have already set out, we are going to be able to deliver this change by ensuring that each of the agencies and parts of the system that are responsible for tackling these crimes plays its part and that they play them together. The policing world and the Government have accepted all the recommendations made in previous HMICFRS inspections. We have already supported the introduction of a national policing lead for violence against women and girls, DCC Maggie Blyth, who is co-ordinating the policing response. She is playing a really important role in policing at the national level, which of course informs local policing on the ground, a point that I know has been emphasised and that I will develop in a moment. That means we have a national policing lead fully dedicated to looking at the police response to these crimes. DCC Blyth has already published a national framework so that police forces have clear and consistent direction.
We have also taken the opportunity in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill to ensure that it is clear that domestic abuse and sexual offences are included in the definition of serious violence when local areas are determining how to fulfil their duty under the new serious violence duty in that Bill. This is a significant step forward at local level. I know that there have been grave concerns, particularly in recent weeks, about incidents of police attitudes and behaviour. The Home Secretary has commissioned a two-phase independent inquiry chaired by Dame Elish Angiolini QC to investigate the issues raised by events last year and also to scrutinise the robustness of vetting practices, professional standards, discipline and workplace behaviour. That is important work that needs to be done to help to restore public trust.
The hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) intervened on the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford to ask about the pressure on courts. I think the Opposition acknowledge the impact that the pandemic has had on the criminal justice system and on our ability to run courts. We kept the criminal justice system and the family courts operating for the most vulnerable cases through the pandemic. I must correct him on one point. I am told that court backlogs were 19% higher in the last year of the Labour Government than under the Conservative Government in February 2020, just before the pandemic. However, I understand the spirit in which he raised that point. I am pleased—although not complacent—that the pandemic backlog in magistrates courts is well on the way to being resolved, and significant changes are being made in the Crown courts as well.
I turn now to the motion’s emphasis on rape cases and investigations. The reason I want to focus specifically on this is that it is such an important part of the Government’s overall work to tackle violence against women and girls. For reasons that have been debated previously, there are significant issues at every stage of the criminal justice process, and we are determined to tackle them. We have a highly focused programme of work looking specifically at the investigation and prosecution of allegations of rape. It is called the end-to-end rape review report and action plan. We took a hard and honest look at how the criminal justice system deals with rape, and we are clear that into many instances it is simply not good enough.
I have been asked about oversight of the system as a whole. Just to help explain, the rape review action plan is precisely about that oversight and grip of the national systems. Everyone in the Chamber will understand that the police have their role to play and that the Crown Prosecution Service has its role to play, and of course we respect the independence of the judiciary and of juries, but there must be, and there is now, oversight of the system as a whole. This is why the publication of the first six-monthly progress report and quarterly scorecard on adult rape cases is so important. If anyone wants to look at the scorecards, they are on the gov.uk website. In them, we are shining a light on every stage of the criminal justice process, not just for those who work in the justice system but for charities, for campaigners and, importantly, for the public to examine. We have a theme of non-defensive transparency running through the scorecards because we want to share what is going well—there are areas where we are beginning to see small improvements—as well as the areas where the system needs to do much, much better.
I am pleased to confirm that in the coming months we will also publish what we are calling local scorecards, because we understand that local areas will want to know what is happening in their area. As part of that, we are also rolling out Operation Soteria, which has already been mentioned today. This is a significant programme of work for policing and for the CPS. The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford has called for rape and serious sexual offence—RASSO—units in forces, but Operation Soteria is even more ambitious than that. It is about transforming the approach that the whole of policing takes to investigating crime. We are taking the focus away from the victim and putting it firmly on the suspect.
Yvette Cooper
Why, then, is the Minister not rolling out Operation Soteria to every single force straight away, and why not require RASSO units in the meantime? I would love her to go further, but surely we should be requiring RASSOs within three months.
Victoria Atkins
We will be, but this is such a fundamental review of policing and CPS practice. The area where we have piloted it already—Avon and Somerset—is beginning to roll out lessons to other police forces, but we need to be clear as to what is working and what is not working. None of us wants unintended consequences in any of this work. It will be rolled out nationally, but we are just making sure that the academics uncover everything. We have a team of academics who go into a police force area, dive into the files and look at everything. From that, they come up not just with data but, importantly, with recommendations on what went wrong and what worked. This is an incredibly intensive programme, and it will take a bit of time before we roll it out nationally, but we are already on schedule with rolling it out to the five pilot areas and the next tranche of forces. That is what we are determined to do.
I hope that the right hon. Lady also supports the fact that as part of our efforts to improve rape convictions, referrals and investigations, we have listened again to victims. One of the areas that they are understandably most concerned about is the idea that their mobile phones will be taken away from them without good cause. The right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) has raised this with me on a number of occasions. We hear that and we get it, and that is why in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill we have included new criteria that the police must abide by in the decision-making process as to whether they should take a victim’s phone. What is more, we have piloted a phone swap-out scheme if a phone has to be taken for more than 24 hours. We are seeing whether having a swap-out will help to inform a national scheme. In addition, we are rolling out digital technology across forces so that it is much quicker for them to deal with these phones—[Interruption.] I very much hear your discreet coughing, Madam Deputy Speaker—in a non-covid way—but if I may, I will just deal with the national roll-out of section 28.
Those in the Chamber will know what section 28 is. It involves the ability of victims of sexual violence and modern slavery to give pre-recorded evidence, so that, rather than waiting a long time for a trial to come to court, they give evidence as quickly as possible after the event and it is then used at the trial. This is exciting work, and we have committed to rolling this out nationally as quickly as we can. There will be more news on this in the coming months. There is much more I can say, but I am going to take your hint, Madam Deputy Speaker.
There are many areas of agreement on this. It is absolutely right of Her Majesty’s Opposition to hold us to account and scrutinise what we are doing, but there is genuinely an enormous amount of good will in Government and across the House to tackle these invidious crimes. Please, the message must go out from the Chamber that enough is enough. We—half the population—will not put up with this behaviour any more, and by working together we really can make this the decade of change.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I thank the Minister. We have 15 speakers for this debate, so I urge colleagues to be considerate of one another. I think it boils down to about seven minutes each.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
I am pleased to have this opportunity to debate male violence against women and girls.
My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) spoke about the online space, and I flag the work of the all-party parliamentary group on commercial sexual exploitation. We have taken extensive evidence on the prevalence of violent online pornography, which is ubiquitous and has, for some time, fuelled the epidemic of violence against women and girls.
Ministers have heard me talk about this many times, and I plea for them to look again at non-contact sexual offending and how it is a red flag for the possible escalation of offending behaviour into something far more serious. They will know of the case in my constituency where a man prowled the streets for months, flashing and taking part in acts of voyeurism. It was not reported, and he later got bolder and raped and murdered a student at Hull University, throwing her body into the river. I hope Ministers will look again at low-level offending.
The Government’s ending violence against women and girls strategy for 2016 to 2020 was clear about the outcomes they wanted to achieve by 2020, namely increases in reporting, police referrals, prosecutions and convictions for violence against women and girls, matched by a reduction in the prevalence of all forms of violence against women and girls, but sadly it appears that the opposite has happened. The volumes of police referrals, charges, prosecutions and convictions for offences of violence against women have plummeted since 2016-17, particularly for rape and serious sexual offences. Recent figures from the Crown Prosecution Service show that 1,557 rape-flagged cases proceeded to the prosecution stage in 2021, down from 5,190 in 2016-17.
I welcome the rape review, but I remain a little confused about which Minister is actually responsible for driving it.
Dame Diana Johnson
I am very glad to hear that because, of course, the Minister for Crime and Policing is also named as having responsibility for the rape review. There is a bit of confusion. As the Minister of State, Home Department, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), will know, the Home Affairs Committee has carried out an inquiry on rape investigations and convictions, and we will shortly publish a report.
Victoria Atkins
Precisely because this is cross-Government work, of course other Ministers are involved. We are bringing in everybody who needs to be in the room, but the Deputy Prime Minister and I are the leads. We own it, and we are monitoring it very closely and very frequently.
Dame Diana Johnson
That helps. The issue I have is that, unless one person is driving it through, things often do not happen. If the Minister is responsible, that is good to hear.
We are still waiting on some of the Government’s commitments on tackling violence against women and girls. Although there has been some progress, as the Minister pointed out—and I particularly welcome Deputy Chief Constable Maggie Blyth’s appointment as the national policing lead on tackling violence against women and girls—many campaigners have said that a number of central pledges in the most recent tackling violence against women and girls strategy, launched in July 2021, have not yet been implemented. For example, no timescale has been provided for the Home Office’s work on potential gaps in the law on public sexual harassment and how a specific offence might address them. A final version of the statutory guidance on the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 has also still not been published.
The tackling violence against women and girls strategy stated that the complementary domestic abuse strategy would be published in 2021, but it has been delayed. The perpetrators strategy, to which the Minister referred, is due by the end of April. When the Home Secretary recently appeared before the Home Affairs Committee, she did not give a date for publication and, concerningly, she did not say that it would be published in time. I know the Minister said the strategy will be published in the coming months, but there is a duty on the Home Secretary to publish a perpetrators strategy within 12 months of Royal Assent of the Domestic Abuse Act, which was given on 29 April 2021. This is urgent, and I hope we will see the strategy in time. The domestic abuse organisation SafeLives has highlighted the fact that less than 1% of perpetrators receive any form of intervention to help address their behaviour, which is why the perpetrators strategy is vital.
The support for migrant victims of domestic abuse pilot is due to end on 31 March 2022, and the external evaluation is not expected to finish until the end of August. The domestic abuse commissioner has raised concerns that the Home Office has not outlined what interim support will be made available after the pilot concludes, with survivors facing uncertainty and, potentially, a lack of support before a long-term decision is made. In its report on domestic abuse in 2018, the previous Home Affairs Committee stated:
“Victims of abuse with uncertain immigration status are particularly vulnerable because they can have difficulties in accessing financial support and refuge and other support services, so they have few options for escaping from abuse.”
I am concerned by the number of gaps and delays in the implementation of the male violence against women and girls strategy. This is now an endemic problem. The Minister said there is a cross-departmental approach, yet the Government seem to be struggling to enact reforms in one Department alone. I urge them to speed up the implementation of their commitments on this sadly growing issue as a matter of urgency.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Rachel Maclean)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing time for this important debate. I thank all Members who have contributed. I also thank Members for the tone in which most of the contributions have been made, because I have a real sense that this is a collective effort we are all engaged in. Our colleagues in the police force, local police and crime commissioners, and local authorities, with whom Members engage, also bear that responsibility, and that has come over loud and clear.
I want to start by addressing the points made to me by individual Members. I have made copious notes and I hope I can give due credit to the points that have been made. I thank the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, for her points. We will, absolutely, commit to publishing the perpetrator strategy within the legislative timelines that we have set out and legislated for very clearly. I hope that will command some welcome from the Opposition.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), the Chair of the Justice Committee, made, in his detailed speech, some extremely useful comments and challenges for us. I listened carefully to his points, as did the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins). He highlights a very important matter that the House should reflect on, which is that we are now prosecuting rape in a digital age. We are grappling with challenges on phones that simply did not exist a few years ago. We are setting out how we will tackle some of those challenges in our rape review and the end-to-end taskforce.
My hon. Friend mentioned specialist rape courts. We are looking at those as part of the report and will come forward with our response to that. Members will be interested to know—this was also referenced in the debate—about domestic abuse courts. We are taking steps on that matter. We have set up domestic abuse courts pilots to look at how we reduce the re-traumatisation of survivors of domestic abuse. We are taking a more investigative and less adversarial approach to limit the trauma victims have to go through in family court proceedings. Pilots are ongoing and we will report on them.
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) for all her fantastic work on the menopause. She is absolutely right to highlight the link between domestic abuse and traumatisation. My colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care are bringing forward the women’s health strategy, which, largely down to her, will reference that.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris) for all her points and for her very balanced comments about the somewhat fraught issue of misogyny as a hate crime. She highlights how complicated the situation is. Members need to reflect that the House voted overwhelmingly against making misogyny a hate crime, but that is not to say there are not steps we need to take to tackle misogyny in society. The Home Secretary is carrying forward that work with Maggie Blyth and the National Policing Board.
The hon. Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) spoke very sensitively about the constituency case that I think we are all aware of. She has represented her constituent and her family extremely well. I want to highlight the funding that is going into refuge spaces. I announced just last week an additional £125 million for specialist support to go into refuges to help victims to rebuild their lives after the awful experience they have suffered.
The hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) highlighted the rise in reports. Obviously, we want to stamp this out and we do not want victims, but all of us recognise the issues around reporting and recording crime. She mentioned that, and said that those crimes have gone up. It is important that we continue to capture those crimes and that people come forward. There is a positive sign there, although obviously we recognise that there is much to do.
The hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) talked about the Istanbul convention. We are already virtually fully compliant with the Istanbul convention. We already have those protections for women and girls. There are some legal technicalities, which we are resolving with our friends in the devolved Administrations, and we will be able to fully ratify it soon.
Wera Hobhouse
We have signed it but not ratified it. Is it really just a legal delay? I cannot understand it. We have been asking for this for about two years and we keep being fobbed off. Can the Minister please explain why there is this delay?
Rachel Maclean
I am afraid that I do not have the capacity in this debate to go into the technicalities. I have a lot to go through. As I have said, they are legal technicalities that we are working through with our friends in the devolved Administrations, which have a different legal jurisdiction. We can discuss that at another opportunity.
I thank the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins). We debated another tragic case in his constituency, or near to it, I believe. It was an honour to meet the family, and he is absolutely right to raise awareness of the importance of stalking protection orders. That is work that I am doing through the National Police Chiefs’ Council, to ensure that it is taking up those stalking protection orders.
The hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker) asked why we are not taking femicide as seriously as terrorism. That is precisely what the strategic policing requirement sets out to do. I am afraid that I must take issue with her comments about the allocation of funding in her area going to perpetrators, not victims. Those funding matters are local decisions. The Home Office will make funding available to her locally elected Labour police and crime commissioner, so she needs to take that up with her Labour party colleagues in the area. We have put aside national funding of £300 million for victims, so I suggest that she has those conversations.
The hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) talked about honour-based violence. Just last Friday we banned child marriage thanks to the incredible hard work of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham). We fund many services helping victims of that horrific crime.
The hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), who was very passionate in her remarks, asked why we do not talk about this as male violence against women and girls. Many Members have responded in that way. We do not shy away from talking about this as a gendered crime. As I said, we will publish the perpetrator strategy and all the associated guidance soon.
Alex Davies-Jones
The Minister is being very generous with her time. Will she meet me, as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on perpetrators of domestic abuse, to discuss this more fully with the wider members of the group?
Rachel Maclean
Of course I will. All Members across the House know that I am happy to meet them; I have met many of the Opposition Members present already. I was delighted that many of them came to the launch of our communications campaign on Monday night. They will know that the sector was there—people I interact with and meet on a regular basis. We have extensive conversations, but I am always delighted to have more.
The hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) complained that we are not having this debate in Government time. I do not know whether she was here yesterday afternoon, when I spent two hours answering questions in Government time on the reports, which cover many of the same topics that we are discussing today.
I think that we are all agreed that it is a collective mission to address violence against women and girls. It is one of the most pressing and important tasks facing the Government. Many Members present have rightly challenged us that the time for talk is over. We agree, which is why we have significant action already under way. I welcome the fact that Members noted some of that in their remarks. My hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle and I spend a considerable amount of our time working flat out on the rape review, that taskforce and all the work that underpins it.
I do not want anyone to underestimate the scale of the challenge, and how difficult it is. We are trying to change the culture across the entire criminal justice system. Many Members in this House have experience of how difficult that is. They will know what we are dealing with and they will respect, I hope, that we have been transparent about the objectives. We have set ourselves clear ambitions for where we want to go in tackling such a crimes and we are already driving action through legislative means and the other means available to us.
I was challenged by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), who started the debate, on why we are not doing anything on spiking. Today I had a cross-Government group set up to work on the Government’s response at 3 o’clock. I had to cancel it, because I was coming to the House today. Of course, I will reschedule it.
That group is a subsequent step to a lot of the work that the Home Secretary has already been doing, as the right hon. Lady would expect, with the National Police Chiefs’ Council. It is paramount that we address the issues she has challenged me on, such as what happens when young girls go to A&E. That is why I would have had the Health Minister in that group, along with the Security Industry Authority, the NPCC, the night-time economy and so on. I will reschedule that.
Yvette Cooper
I am glad that the Minister is doing something. She will know that Labour tabled an amendment in the Lords that she initially resisted. May I ask, however, whether she did anything on this subject before it became a needle spiking story in the autumn?
Rachel Maclean
I am happy to respond that as soon as the reports reached us—that very day—the Home Secretary called in the police—[Interruption.] I cannot respond to the right hon. Lady’s comments from a sedentary position. I am answering the question she has put to me. As soon we were aware of the new issue of needle spiking, we commissioned the police to come to the Home Secretary and set out what they would do. All the work has followed on from that.
I want to make a few concluding remarks. Many Members have challenged the Government on why we did not do things earlier, and why we have not fixed things. If a silver bullet could fix all of this, I think we would have used it by now, believe you me. We have already taken action across a significant number of priorities, many of which were mentioned by my hon. Friends. We have been open and honest that it will take time, because we are dealing with a number of complexities. However, the work is backed by a significant funding settlement, not only through the victims funding I have already referred to, but through the funding the Home Office is putting into multiple support lines, helplines, charities, non-governmental organisations, the Domestic Abuse Commissioner and many others who are working across the whole system to help us improve our results.
I do not think I have heard any Opposition Member mention the significant funding we have put in through the safety of women at night funding and the safer streets funding, which is operational in Birmingham and the west midlands—I just want to say that to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips).
Rachel Maclean
I will in a second, when I have actually completed my remarks. The hon. Lady has talked a lot about the systemic issues. Why are not we tackling misogynistic attitudes among young boys? That is what the work is doing. Why are not we tackling keeping women safe at night? That is what the work is doing, with additional patrols on the streets of Birmingham and other urban centres. We have safe student support zones and we have street pastors doing vital work out in the night-time economy as a visible presence on the streets. I will give way.
Jess Phillips
I can only apologise to the Minister that I did not act grateful enough for the money that has gone towards trying to keep women in Birmingham safer. I am not here to doff my cap to the Ministers; I am here to fight for the rights of women and girls. I will continue to do that, with every single bit of my tone just exactly as it is.
Rachel Maclean
Thank you.
I want to address one of the substantive points in the debate, Madam Deputy Speaker, but may I just check that I have a couple of minutes to do so?
Rachel Maclean
Thank you.
Many Members have mentioned the perpetrators strategy, and, as they will know, in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 we committed to giving the police new powers, including domestic abuse protection notices and domestic abuse protection orders to provide flexible longer-term protection for victims from all forms of domestic abuse. In addition to imposing negative prohibitions such as exclusion zones, the DAPO will be able to impose electronic monitoring requirements and positive requirements such as attendance at perpetrator behaviour change programmes. I think that that is right, despite some of the comments that have been made about spending on perpetrators. How can we expect to tackle the problem unless we spend money trying to stop perpetrators perpetrating? Are hon. Members suggesting that that is free? Yes, we are spending money on perpetrators—because we want them to stop offending. We want them to stop abusing their partners. That is why we spend the money, and I challenge any hon. Member to tell me that it is not a good use of Government funding.
Paula Barker
The Minister is being generous with her time. Does she agree that although perpetrator funding is essential, the funding that goes to the victims of violence should be increased? They are often the ones fleeing the domestic home and having to set up anew. Does she not agree that they should get more funding than perpetrators?
Rachel Maclean
With respect to the hon. Lady, I think I have addressed that point. The funding is allocated to her local Labour police and crime commissioner, and those are choices that are made on a local level. We have introduced a huge number of measures through the Domestic Abuse Act to address the issues that she has mentioned.
Many hon. Members referred to education, which is vital. They will know that funding and support are going into schools to enable teachers to deliver that education in a respectful and age-appropriate way. All children deserve to learn about what healthy relationships are and about their importance, as well as how to develop mutually respectful relationships in all contexts, including online.
Several hon. Members commented on the online safety Bill. In response to the Chair of the Joint Committee—my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins)—and others, let me say that we are strengthening the Bill. We will require all companies to take swift and effective action against illegal content, including criminal abuse and so-called revenge pornography. We confirm that stalking and harassment offences relating to sexual offences, including revenge and extreme pornography, will be specified as priority offences in the Bill. Companies will have to take proactive steps to tackle such content and prevent users from encountering it. There is no watering down going on. The Government are going to make tackling VAWG online a priority.
We must continue to drive a cultural change in attitudes and adopt a zero-tolerance approach to these crimes. I genuinely hope that every hon. Member across the House will take the time to share the “Enough” campaign, because a lot of the groups that have been referred to were in the room on Monday night, and they all welcomed the work that we are doing. They all said that we have to tackle this at the source; that is what we are doing. We launched the campaign this week to help us to make it clear to perpetrators that their crimes will not be tolerated, and we will consider where further action is needed to protect the most vulnerable in society and bring perpetrators to justice.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House condemns the Government for failing to take sufficient action to tackle the epidemic of violence against women and girls and for presiding over a fall in the rape charge rate to a record low; and therefore calls on the Government to increase the number of specialist rape and serious sexual offences units, improve police training to secure better outcomes for victims, introduce effective national management and monitoring of domestic abuse and sexual offenders and urgently publish the perpetrator strategy in full.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Could you please advise me how the Leader of the Opposition and the Opposition Chief Whip can be called to this House to explain the behaviour of their candidate in the Birmingham, Erdington by-election? It was made clear on GB News earlier that she was caught on camera saying—[Interruption.]