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 levels of police participation in Domestic Abuse Matters training in (a) Watford and (b) England.

The Domestic Abuse Matters training, developed by the College of Policing, in collaboration with SafeLives, with input from Women’s Aid and Welsh Women’s Aid, aims to improve the police response to domestic abuse and to achieve national consistency in the service police forces provide to people experiencing domestic abuse.

The majority of police forces in England and Wales have undertaken the Domestic Abuse Matters training in their force to date, including Hertfordshire Police who are the force for Watford.

We have also funded the development of a new module of the training that is targeted at officers investigating domestic abuse offences to enable further improvement in police responses to domestic abuse incidents.