Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if her will make an assessment of the potential effect of the UK leaving the EU on funding for specialist women's services.

The Government is carefully considering all implications of the UK leaving the European Union and has held preliminary discussions with the voluntary sector, including specialist women's services, about any potential effects.

The Government published a new Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Strategy on 8 March setting out an ambitious programme to make tackling VAWG everybody’s business, ensure victims and survivors get the support they need and inspire confidence in the Criminal Justice System to bring more perpetrators to justice as well as doing more to rehabilitate offenders.

The strategy committed £80 million between 2016 and 2020 to protect women and girls from violence. This increased funding will help to deliver our goal to work with local commissioners to deliver a secure future for rape support centres, refuges and FGM and Forced Marriage Units, whilst driving a major change across all services which promotes early intervention and prevention including through specialist domestic and sexual violence charities.