Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent steps he has taken to support victims of domestic abuse.

On 18 December 2025, we published our VAWG Strategy; ‘Freedom from violence and abuse: a cross-government strategy to build a safer society for women and girls’, which sets out how we will support all victims of VAWG, including domestic abuse.

Recently, the Ministry of Justice has already committed to many changes and initiatives to support victims of domestic abuse, including:

• Supporting victims with the largest ever investment of £550 million in victim support services over the next three years;

• Introducing a domestic abuse identifier at sentencing in criminal cases to enable police, prisons and probation to more consistently identify domestic abuse offenders. This will mean improved support for victims, whether the domestic abuse perpetrator is in the community or in prison;

• Stronger perpetrator management through the national rollout of Domestic Abuse Protection Orders across all police forces in England and Wales which, will allow tough restrictions on abusers and can include behaviour change programmes, to stop the cycle of abuse from repeating; and

• Considering measures to achieve better outcomes for victims in criminal courts, including considering how to expand the use of Specialist Domestic Abuse Courts.

We are also introducing measures through the Courts and Tribunals Bill to recognise the overlap between different forms of domestic abuse – such as coercive control or sexual offending. Legislation will clarify that any domestic abuse conviction can show propensity for this kind of behaviour, even if the offender has not committed the ‘same offence’ each time.