Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to (a) tackle the root causes of and (b) use a prevention based approach to violence against women and girls.

Prevention and early intervention are fundamental to tackling Violence Against Women and Girls. ‘’Freedom from Violence and Abuse: a cross-government strategy’ sets out our plans to halve VAWG in a decade. Within this, tackling entrenched issues like misogyny requires a whole society approach: working across government, public services, the private sector and charities.

Prevention needs to focus specifically on young people. The Home Office and the Department for Science Information and Technology are working to safeguard young people by making the UK one of the hardest places for children to access harmful content and misogynistic influences online. We are also ensuring that schools have the skills and support to teach about healthy relationships. The Department for Education has published its updated Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) guidance, set to be introduced in September 2026, which includes teaching on online safety and awareness, and healthy relationships.

Prevention and tackling the root causes of VAWG need to reach across society. The Enough campaign is a cross-government programme with three strands: challenging young men, supporting victims and educating young people. Many people don’t recognise their actions as abusive: phase 1 of the campaign seeks to encourage self-reflection and self-identification, particularly for young men aged 18 -24, while also engaging the wider general public to understand and prevent abuse. We have also committed to work with the Premier League Foundation to develop new educational resources that challenge harmful attitudes, to be delivered through both their Primary Stars education programme and Premier League Kicks community programmes.