Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, on what date the Government plans to ratify the Istanbul Convention.

The Coalition Government signed the Istanbul Convention to show its strong commitment to tackling violence against women and girls, and this Government remains committed to ratifying it.

In most respects, the measures already in place in the UK to protect women and girls from violence comply with or go further than the Convention requires.

Further amendments to domestic law, to take extra-territorial jurisdiction over a range of offences, are necessary before the Convention can be ratified. We will seek to legislate when the approach to implementing the extra-territorial jurisdiction requirements in England and Wales is agreed and Parliamentary time allows.