Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the reply by Baroness Williams of Trafford on 9 June 2022 (HL Deb col 1240) that re-categorising crime types and publishing a “violence against men and boys” strategy could lead to complaints from women and domestic abuse organisations, what steps they have taken to confirm this concern is justified.

Our Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy and Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan, and the commitments they make, address all victims of these crimes, regardless of gender.

These documents were informed by the Violence Against Women and Girls Call for Evidence. It received over 180,000 responses, including over 500 written submissions from experts, academics, and stakeholders, with a broad spectrum of representation across domestic abuse charities and organisations. We also ran several focus groups on specialist areas, including male victims, migrant victims/survivors and perpetrator management.

We analysed responses and found a set of key themes. They included a call for a joined-up response to supporting victims and survivors and for a more co-ordinated approach across government and society to tackling these crimes.

It is our assessment that the introduction of a separate strategy for ‘violence against men and boys’ could be perceived to directly contradict this feedback.

We do understand that there are specific challenges that male victims of these crimes do face. This is why we published the refreshed Supporting Male Victims policy document in 2022, which strengthens the government’s response to male victims.