Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to ensure police officers are effectively trained to handle cases of (a) domestic abuse and (b) sexual violence.

Tackling violence against women and girls (VAWG) is a top priority for this Government and we will treat it as a national emergency. Our mission is to halve levels of these crimes within a decade, using every lever available to us in government and right across society. This means reforming the police response to these crimes, strengthening the criminal justice system, and empowering victims by providing access to specialist support when they need it.

We are committed to ensuring policing have the right skills and training to respond appropriately to victims of VAWG and have committed to mandating stronger training on VAWG for policing.

We have also supported the College of Policing to design and launch new, academic-informed training programmes on investigating rape and sexual offending. This includes new training for those likely to make initial contact with victims.

To improve the criminal justice response, the Home Office continues to support collaboration between the police and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in order to increase the number of cases being charged and prosecuted, and reduce the time taken to reach this point. This involves supporting policing and CPS colleagues to improve case progression by reducing blockages, cutting bureaucracy, streamlining processes, and improving timeliness. This Government has also committed to making it easier for high-performing police forces to charge domestic abuse suspects to speed up the charging process and improve outcomes.