Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what evidential difficulties the police have experienced in taking forward complaints of coercive control since December 2015.

The previous Government created a ground-breaking new offence of controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship, which came into force in December 2015, to recognise the patterns of manipulation and control that characterise domestic abuse. Since then we have seen 294 successful convictions and the number of prosecutions increased threefold in 2017. However, we recognise that there is further work to do to raise awareness, improve understanding of the offence and increase the number of prosecutions.

As part of the Government’s domestic abuse consultation last year, we asked whether further action should be taken to strengthen the offence.

In our response to the consultation we agreed that we will update the statutory guidance and Crown Prosecution Service legal guidance on the offence. We will also improve understanding of the offence throughout the justice system, and work to dispel stereotypes by promoting the updated statutory guidance for the offence through the courts and justice system. This will help to increase the number of cases that are brought, charged and successfully
prosecuted under this offence.

The Home Secretary chairs a national oversight group that is driving a culture change in the police response by ensuring that the recommendations from the Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) reviews into domestic abuse are acted upon. This includes improving police understanding of coercive control

Police training and guidance is the responsibility of the College of Policing and the College has produced a training programme, called ‘Domestic Abuse Matters’ developed by the charity SafeLives, which focuses on improved evidence gathering and understanding of controlling and coercive behaviour. We will invest in further police training on coercive control to extend the rollout of the Domestic Abuse Matters police change programme.