Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate her Department has made of the number of deaths by suicide as a result of (a) domestic violence and (b) emotional abuse.

The Home Office is working to develop the evidence base on suicides that follow domestic abuse through funding research into the Domestic Homicide Project, which captures information on suicides with a known history of domestic abuse from all 43 police forces in England and Wales.

In the latest published data capturing deaths from April 2022 to March 2023, 242 deaths were counted, with 93 deaths (38%) classified as suspected suicides following domestic abuse. The full report can be found at the following link: https://www.vkpp.org.uk/vkpp-work/domestic-homicide-project/

However, we recognise that the number identified in the report does not represent all suicides linked to domestic abuse and that more needs to be done to identify these tragic deaths. The scale of violence against women and girls is intolerable and this Government will treat it as the national emergency that it is. The Government is committed to halving violence against women and girls in a decade, and preventing domestic abuse related deaths is a key part of that mission