Violence against Women and Girls Strategy

Debate between Jess Phillips and Josh Babarinde

Thursday 18th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips]

I thank my hon. Friend. Organisations such as SADA are absolutely vital to how we roll out new perpetrator schemes, so that victims do not have to do the work, and instead, there is offender management of their perpetrators, and support for victims. Lots of new national schemes will be rolled out as part of this strategy over the next three years, and I very much welcome, and will work with, all organisations across the country to get those schemes right in local areas.

[Josh Babarinde (Eastbourne) (LD)]

From the bottom of my heart, I sincerely congratulate the Minister and the Victims Minister on all the work with victims, survivors and the sector across the country that they have put into making this happen. I was proud to work with them both to help secure the domestic abuse identifier, which is in clause 6 of the Sentencing Bill. That will tell us how many domestic abusers there are in prison and in the country at any given time, and what their reoffending rate is. I am keen to understand when the Minister expects that information and data to go online. How does she expect to use that data to monitor the impact and progress of this VAWG strategy? What will the Government do to measure the impact of the identifier?

Violence against Women and Girls Strategy

Debate between Jess Phillips and Josh Babarinde

Monday 15th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips]

Absolutely. I would say, as would anyone who has ever worked on the frontline, that there is a time-honoured tradition of the police blaming the CPS and the CPS blaming the police—it is a sort of roundabout. The Attorney General and the Solicitor General—a brilliant feminist, who wrote much of what went into the Labour manifesto on violence against women and girls, alongside me and others—have been absolute allies throughout this, and making sure that our every part of our justice system and every part of our system is better is vitally important.

[Josh Babarinde (Eastbourne) (LD)]

Clare’s law gives people the right to ask about the criminal history of their partner to help keep them safe, but Clare’s law let down one of my constituents, whose abuser lied about his identity and therefore lied about his criminal past. Will the Minister confirm that the strategy to be released on Thursday will make provision to enable women and girls who request their right to ask to be better protected by Clare’s law, and patch up the loophole that allows abusers to lie about their identity to continue their abuse of women and girls?

[Jess Phillips]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for, over the year and a bit that he has been here, genuinely bringing forward issues on which he wants to see change. Clare’s law is patchy across the entire country; it is brilliant in some areas. One of the issues we face is the fact that there are 43 police forces. If he is talking about a specific legislative change, I would be more than happy to hear about it. However, we are funding the national policing centre for violence against women and girls, and seeking for it to do specific work on Clare’s law—the domestic violence disclosure scheme system—in order to improve experiences. I have received ministerial letters from across the House about failures on Clare’s law, so this is definitely an area that vastly needs improving.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jess Phillips and Josh Babarinde

Monday 17th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips]

I very much look forward, no doubt, to coming to the right hon. Lady’s Committee to discuss the strategy on its publication. It is not for the Home Office to tell law enforcement exactly what the definition is in this regard—there are obviously definitions of domestic abuse and sexual violence in the law—but we will lay out clearly what we mean by “violence against women and girls”, and police operational matters will be corralled, like I say, by the new centre, which has had £13 million of investment to ensure that there is standardised practice across the country and we are all singing from the same hymn sheet.

[Josh Babarinde (Eastbourne) (LD)]

The Government are right to abolish the role of police and crime commissioner—the Liberal Democrats have been campaigning for that for some time—but many victims’ organisations rely on the PCC core grant to fund initiatives that address violence against women. Will the Minister confirm that that cash will not be lost by those organisations, including mine in Eastbourne, and that they will retain it after the reform?

[Jess Phillips]

I can absolutely confirm that the part of the police and crime commissioners’ role that involves commissioning local victims’ services will be brought into the new system. It will not be that that money is gone from the centre; this is about how it will be given out. I cannot say for certain that all organisations that currently have that money will have it on the basis that they currently have it, because nobody could commit to that. That is the commissioner’s job. We look forward to the violence against women and girls strategy, because there will be a huge amount on victims’ commissioning in that.