Asked by: Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they take to ensure that child sexual abuse material is completely removed from cloud servers as well as local devices upon the conclusion of any trial concerning such material.
Answered by Baroness Levitt - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The Ministry of Justice does not hold operational responsibility for the removal of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) from devices or cloud servers. Where such material is obtained as part of a criminal investigation, responsibility for the retention, secure storage and destruction of such material rests with the police who act in accordance with operational, evidential and legal requirements.
Asked by: Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what discussions they have had, or plan to have, with the Revenge Porn Helpline about the work it undertakes helping victims of intimate image abuse.
Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Government greatly values the work of the Revenge Porn Helpline, which provides high-quality support and advice to victims of intimate image abuse.
Freedom from Violence and Abuse: a cross-government strategy to build a safer society for women and girls included a commitment to explore routes to ensure that intimate images that are taken, created or shared without consent are removed online. We have engaged – and will continue to engage – with representatives from the Revenge Porn Helpline on options to achieve this commitment. This includes considering amendments tabled to the Crime and Policing Bill on the removal of non-consensual intimate images online.
The Home Office provides funding to the Revenge Porn Helpline, which was increased for the 2024/2025 financial year in recognition of the year-on-year increases to their workload.
Asked by: Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what support is in place to help recover the credit score of victims of domestic abuse when their credit score has been impacted by an abusive partner.
Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)
This Government recognises the devastating impact economic abuse can have on victims, even long after a relationship ends. ‘Freedom from Violence and Abuse: a cross-government strategy to build a safer society for women and girls’, published on 18 December 2025, outlined a package of commitments to tackle economic abuse.
This included a commitment from His Majesty’s Treasury (HMT) to work with Credit Reference Agencies, lenders and the third sector to improve the way coerced debt is reflected on victim-survivors’ credit files with the aim of making it easier for them to access financial products in the future. This commitment was also included in HMT’s recent Financial Inclusion Strategy which considered economic abuse as a key theme, in recognition of the particular challenges victim-survivors can face in accessing financial products and services.
Asked by: Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Merron on 20 June 2025 (HL8598), what was the outcome of their consideration of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority's (HFEA) priorities for changing the law to bring digital clinics into HFEA's remit; and what measures they plan to take in response.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is continuing to engage with the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority on their priorities for changing the law, including issues relating to digital clinics, and will decide how we might move forward to improve the regulatory regime.
Asked by: Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Levitt on 24 November 2025 (HL11755), what are the reasons for the delay in bringing the provisions of section 138 of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 into effect; and what is the timeframe for bringing those provisions into effect.
Answered by Baroness Levitt - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
As with many criminal law provisions, section 138 of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 is brought into force by regulations made by the Secretary of State, to ensure sufficient time to take into account and manage impacts on the criminal justice system and operational preparedness.
We have now laid the regulations to bring section 138 of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 into force; they were signed by Minister Davies-Jones last week. The offences will come into force on 6 February (21 days after being signed) as is standard practice for new criminal offences.
Asked by: Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede on 16 July (HL9057), whether they now have a timeframe for bringing section 138 of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 into effect.
Answered by Baroness Levitt - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
This Government is committed to implementing the provisions in section 138, as soon as practicable.
These provisions will be commenced by regulations at an appropriate time, having regard to any impact on the wider criminal justice system.
Asked by: Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government when the provisions in section 138 of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 will come into effect.
Answered by Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede
This Government remains committed to delivering on its commitment to criminalise the non-consensual creation of purported intimate images.
As with several other measures in the Act, the provisions in section 138 will come into effect when commenced by regulations in due course.
Asked by: Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many women's centres there are in the UK and how they are funded.
Answered by Lord Timpson - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Women’s centres provide information, advice and support to women in the community, including those that have an offending history. Women’s centres are run by the voluntary sector and receive funding from a range of sources, such as local authorities, health services, charities, trusts, and central government. There is no agreed figure for the number of women’s centres in the UK.
The Government recognises the vital support that women’s centres provide to vulnerable women in or at risk of contact with the justice system. In 2025/26, the Ministry of Justice is investing £7.2 million in community support, including women’s centres, focused on steering women away from the justice system and custody.
HMPPS also provides funding for women’s Commissioned Rehabilitative Services contracts with women’s community sector organisations, delivering specialist support to women on probation.
Asked by: Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Hanson of Flint on 21 October 2024 (HL1289), what steps they have taken to work closely with the College of Policing and National Police Chiefs' Council to strengthen the training for officers on violence against women and girls; where is progress up to; and how they are monitoring this with specific regard to intimate image abuse.
Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)
As set out in the written answer of 21 October, the College of Policing set the curriculum for policing which includes educational outcomes on image-based abuse. At present, forces choose how to deliver this training, often by commissioning local experts and support services.
However, to ensure that every force has the right specialist capability to investigate Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) crimes, including Intimate Image Abuse, we have invested £13.1 million into the new National Centre for VAWG and Public Protection, which launched in April 2025. This included a £2 million uplift to support improvements in police training – this work is now under way, beginning with an extensive review of the current approach.
The Home Office will be working closely with the College and the National Police Chiefs’ Council to ensure the training covers all forms of VAWG, including intimate image abuse. In addition, innovative, data-driven and evidence-based police practices is being prioritised through ringfenced funding for academic input into the development of training and guidance.
Asked by: Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government how they are measuring their ambition to halve violence against women and girls in a decade; and whether this measure will include online digital violence such as image-based sexual abuse.
Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Government’s mission to halve Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) within a decade will be underpinned by the upcoming VAWG Strategy. Our headline measure will be the prevalence of VAWG as reported through the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW). This will be measured by a new combined measure which will provide one figure for those who have experienced domestic abuse, and/or sexual assault and/or stalking in the previous 12 months.
Our target to halve VAWG within a decade will be set against this headline prevalence measure. We will also use a suite of other sub-metrics that provide a more comprehensive picture of VAWG in society and measure the effectiveness of our interventions.
The strategy will be published shortly.