Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she plans to extend the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme to include offences such as stalking, sexual assault and harassment.

The scale of violence against women and girls in our country is intolerable, and this Government is treating it as the national emergency that it is.

The Government committed in its manifesto to giving stalking victims the right to know the true identity of their online stalker. Through the Crime and Policing Bill, we are introducing statutory guidance to support the police to release identifying information about a stalker to a victim, so victims can know who is threatening them.

The Crime and Policing Bill will also enable the Home Secretary to issue statutory guidance about the disclosure of information to prevent sexual offending. This will ensure the Child Sex Offender Disclosure Scheme and any similar schemes in the future are delivered consistently by all forces.

The Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme currently enables the police to disclose information to a victim or potential victim of domestic abuse about their partner’s or ex-partner's previous abusive or violent offending.

In the recently published Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy we committed to exploring the potential to expand both the stalking Right to Know scheme and the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme to other forms of violence against women and girls.