Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much funding his Department has allocated to programmes aimed at tackling domestic violence in the last 12 months.

The Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Strategy set out an ambitious programme to make tackling VAWG everybody’s business.

Over this spending review period, we are providing £100 million of dedicated funding to tackle VAWG. VAWG services are mainly commissioned at a local level by Police and Crime Commissioners, local authorities and health commissioners. The Government’s VAWG National Statement of Expectations encourages such decisions to be taken at a local level and driven by local need.

We created a £17 million 3-year VAWG Service Transformation Fund, which is funding projects across 41 areas in England and Wales to embed local best practice and ensure that early intervention and prevention, not crisis response, is the norm. Details of the funding are available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/violence-against-women-and-girls-service-transformation-fund-successful-bids-2017-to-2020

Through the Police Transformation Fund we are spending £5.8 million to support innovative projects to tackle domestic abuse. More details of the funding are available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/police-transformation-fund-successful-bids-2017-to-2018

We have also announced an £8 million fund to support children affected by domestic abuse, which gives charities, local authorities and other organisations the chance to bid for money for projects designed to intervene early to help children who have been directly or indirectly affected by domestic abuse. We will announce successful bids shortly.

The Home Office also supports the national VAWG Helplines and recently committed funding of up to £1.1m per annum for these services until 2021.