Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the report prepared for the Home Office by Analytics Cambridge and QE Assessments Ltd entitled Domestic Homicide Reviews: Quantitative Analysis of Domestic Homicide Reviews October 2020 – September 2021, published in June 2022, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the severity of punishments for domestic homicide.

In March 2023 this government published the independent Domestic Homicide Sentencing Review and announced that we will be changing the law so that sentencing reflects the severity of these crimes. We will introduce statutory aggravating factors to increase sentences for murderers with a history of controlling or coercive behaviour against the victim, and for murders involving ‘overkill’ which is the use of excessive or gratuitous violence beyond that necessary to kill. Building on our ban of the ‘rough sex defence’ in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, we also want to see longer sentences for perpetrators of so-called rough sex manslaughter and have requested that the Sentencing Council update their guidelines so that the courts can impose a higher sentence in these circumstances.

The Review makes a number of other recommendations which we are carefully considering, and our full response will be published before summer recess.

The Home Office commission the 'Quantitative Analysis of Domestic Homicide Reviews’ (DHR) reports by QE Assessments Ltd to share learning and insights from the DHR process. The cases reviewed in the QE Assessments report are likely to also feature in the cases reviewed by Clare Wade KC in the Domestic Homicide Sentencing Review.