Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of issuing statutory guidance to NHS commissioning bodies to ensure that they commission counselling and psychotherapy professionals to provide specialist support for survivors of domestic abuse and sexual violence from accredited registers.

The Department is working with the Home Office and other partners across the Government on a new strategy to tackle violence against women and girls. There are no current plans to issue any such guidance to National Health Service commissioners.