Seema Malhotra – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Seema Malhotra on 2015-01-14.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what progress her Department has made on implementation of the violence against women and girls action plan.

Lynne Featherstone

The Government is committed to ending violence against women in all its forms. We published our cross-government strategy, ‘A Call to End Violence Against Women and Girls’ in 2010 and have published supporting action plans with
updates on progress each year since 2011. We have ring-fenced nearly £40 million of stable funding up to 2015 for specialist local support services and national helplines.

We have criminalised forced marriage, introduced two new stalking offences, piloted new ways of protecting the victims of domestic violence and sex workers and we have launched prevention campaigns to tackle rape and relationship abuse
amongst teenagers. We recently announced a new offence of domestic abuse to tackle coercive and controlling behaviour.

The 2014-2015 Action Plan details recent progress and on 8 March this year, we will publish a full progress report on the implementation of the strategy.