Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment she has made of the adequacy of the police response to violence against women and girls in (a) Newcastle-under-Lyme constituency and (b) Staffordshire.

The scale of violence against women and girls in our country is intolerable and this government will treat it as the national emergency that it is. The police are a crucial partner to deliver our ambition to halve VAWG in the next decade.

We must drastically improve the police and wider criminal justice response, in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire and across the country.

We expect to see sustained work across policing to drive up standards and to ensure there is always a swift and specialist response to these appalling crimes. We know that these crimes are underreported, and we will take action to ensure victims coming forward get the response they deserve.

The most recent statistics show that in the year ending March 2024:

In Newcastle under Lyme, police recorded:

• 452 stalking offences, up 9% from 413 in 2022/23
• 847 harassment offences, up 9% from 778 in 2022/23
• 396 sexual offences, down 8% from 431 in 2022/23.

Staffordshire Police recorded:

• 4,362 stalking offences, up 6% from 4,113 in 2022/23
• 8,623 harassment offences, up 36% from 6,344 in 2022/23
• 3392 sexual offences, down 12% from 3836 in 2022/23.

In the year ending March 2023 there were 23,697 domestic-abuse related crimes recorded by the police in Staffordshire, a 33% increase from the year ending March 2022 (17,870).

Data on DA flagged offences are not published for Newcastle-under-Lyme specifically.