Violence against women and girls has reached epidemic levels - what is Govt going to do to tackle it?
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) will scrutinise Government efforts to tackle violence against women and girls (VAWG), on Monday 17 March. The session follows a report published by the NAO on the same issue.
Meeting details
Since 2009, a woman has been killed by a man on average every 3 days in the UK, according to the Femicide Census. During the same period, the number of reported cases of rape and sexual assault offences against women and girls has increased by 264%. Since 2010, the Home Office has published three strategies aimed at reducing the levels of VAWG and supporting victims.
The NAO recently reported that despite numerous strategies aimed at tackling VAWG and an estimated cross-government spend of £312.6 million between 2011-12 and 2020-21, neither the outcome for victims nor the safety of women and girls more widely has been improved. The report also raised the need for the Government to focus on the prevention of VAWG to avoid placing unsustainable pressure on other parts of the system.
In a pre-panel hearing with expert witnesses ahead of the session, the Committee will hear evidence from the Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales, the Chief Executive Officer of Women’s Aid, and a leading academic who acts as the Government’s Independent Advisor on Criminal Justice Responses to Sexual Violence.
The Committee will then hear from representatives from the Home Office, the Department for Education, the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology with likely topics including:
- How the Home Office can achieve the Government’s target of halving VAWG in a decade;
- What the new strategy could learn and successfully implement from previous attempts to tackle VAWG;
- How the Home Office can encourage greater focus on the prevention of VAWG across Government and;
- What work is being done to tackle online harms relating to women and girls.