Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to tackle violence against women and girls.

This government is taking significant steps to make sure violence against women and girls is treated as the national emergency it is. Already, in the first six months of this Government, that has included:

• Embedding the first domestic abuse specialists in 999 control rooms in five police forces under Raneem’s Law.
• Starting the long-awaited roll-out of Domestic Abuse Protection Orders.
• Giving the police new powers to disclose the identities of online stalkers.
• Bringing forward a new standalone criminal offence of spiking.
• And improving the management of perpetrators by ensuring that those convicted of controlling or coercive behaviour, and sentenced to 12 months or longer, are now automatically managed under Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements.

These are just some of the crucial first steps we have taken as part of our unprecedented mission to halve violence against women and girls in a decade.