Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to improve the standardisation of comprehensive and analysable data on violence against women.

The Coalition Government is strongly committed to tackling violence against women and girls. The Home Secretary, as part of the commitment to take forward the recommendations made by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) on the police response to domestic abuse, has established and chairs a National Oversight Group. The Home Office is working with police forces to put in place measures to enable the collection of consistent and comparable data on domestic abuse from April 2015.

Additionally, the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) provides estimates which are comparable over time of the proportion of adults resident in households who experience domestic abuse. The latest published figures cover the financial year 2012/13 and were included on the Office for National Statistics (ONS) bulletin 'Focus on Violent Crime and Sexual Offences, 2012/13' available on the ONS website here:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/crime-stats/crime-statistics/focus-on-violent-crime-and-sexual-offences--2012-13/index.html