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I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) for raising this vital issue, and for her continued advocacy for victims and survivors of domestic abuse everywhere.
There are parts of this job that I find really difficult, and I know that my hon. Friend shares that. And then there are parts of being here, in this Chamber and on these Benches, that are the most incredible privilege. As I sit here, as a Minister, to be able to hear your testimony as a survivor—sorry, I mean my hon. Friend.
Thank you for your patience, Madam Deputy Speaker.
It is the most incredible privilege to be here in this Chamber to hear how my hon. Friend triumphed against the most horrendous abuse and to see her surrounded by her colleagues in the most supportive way possible. That feels like a real privilege, and I am very grateful to have been here for that moment.
My hon. Friend championed the importance of a whole system approach to domestic abuse and violence against women and girls more broadly. I also know how hard it is to come forward and share experiences of abuse. I am proud to use my platform to shine a light on the challenges many victims and survivors face, and I know that so many will have been listening to my hon. Friend’s account this evening and will take strength from it.
I want to reassure my hon. Friend that tackling VAWG is a top priority for this Government. We have made it a mission to halve these crimes in a decade. Domestic abuse and violence against women and girls are the source of untold harm. The abuse can remain hidden, regardless of a person’s lifestyle, their social circles and their profession, including people in public life. It is something that affects every single part of society, and too often it is still hidden and accepted as part of everyday life. That is why this debate is so important, and I am so grateful for my hon. Friend’s testimony and campaigning on this issue. Her bravery and honesty, and that of other survivors, is crucial. Only by listening to those who have first-hand experience can we continue to champion and advocate for victims of these crimes.
The Government have been clear that things must change. Our violence against women and girls strategy is driving that change by strengthening early intervention, pursuing perpetrators at every turn, and giving victims the best possible support. It is about not just responding to harms after they happen but focusing on stopping them in the first place. We are taking clear steps to challenge attitudes, norms and behaviours that allow abuse to continue.
Through the updated relationship and sexual health education curriculum, we are giving our children the tools to spot and challenge unhealthy relationship dynamics. We are delivering “Enough”, our behaviour change campaign, to help young men and boys reflect on and question harmful behaviours that have absolutely become normalised. By raising awareness across our society, spotting those early signs, and teaching everyone to challenge those behaviours, I hope that we continue to reduce the shame and stigma that stop people seeking help early.
We are taking a victim-centred approach to tackling violence against women and girls by investing £550 million to pay for counselling, court guidance and children’s services to support victims. In the Home Office, I am proud that this month we launched a £24 million competition for helpline and advocacy services. Those specialist helplines are for minority groups and will help victims of domestic abuse, sexual violence, honour-based abuse, intimate image abuse, and stalking. We have worked hard to secure multi-year funding that will give our services more certainty and reassurance.
If we are going to make real change in tackling VAWG, however, we need to transform how we work across the public sector and services. We need a whole-of-Government and a whole-of-society approach, so victims can access housing, health, justice and the support they need. We have established the National Centre for Violence Against Women and Girls and Public Protection, so that victims receive a consistent VAWG response across our forces. Our strategy focuses on pursuing perpetrators, holding them accountable for their crimes, and managing them, wherever they are, to prevent further harm.
An example of that is our domestic abuse protection orders, which bring together the strongest elements of protection orders into a single flexible order. That means that they can impose behaviour change programmes on perpetrators. The pilot has seen more victims protected and perpetrators held to account, with prison sentences able to be handed down where breaches occur. We are rolling out DAPOs across England and Wales as soon as we can, so that more victims can benefit from the impact it is having in pilot areas. Though we are taking active steps to combat all forms of violence against women and girls and domestic abuse, there is so much more to do.
My hon. Friend raised post-separation abuse. I found out today about the interventions that have been made in this area—it blew my mind that they were not always a thing. But they were not. Too often, abuse continues after a relationship has ended. That is why, in our changes to the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, we extended the offence of controlling and coercive behaviour to former intimate partners. We have also removed the requirement for the victim and perpetrator to live together, to reflect that this can happen once the ex-partner has left the property.
As technology advances, it amplifies the scale, severity and reach of abuse. That is why the VAWG strategy includes ambitious commitments to tackle online and technology-facilitated harm. We are already taking decisive action to protect all of us online. The Crime and Policing Act 2026 introduced measures to ban nudification apps, and requires platforms to remove non-consensual intimate image abuse within 48 hours. On 8 June, the Prime Minister announced that Britain will be the first country to prevent children from taking, sharing and viewing nude images on their devices.
My hon. Friend mentioned how difficult it is for people like her to hold public office because of the challenges she has faced. Our democracy is richer with Members like her in this House. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Democracies across the world need women and survivors within them. In fact, public office should be open to everyone, regardless of background. All our democracies are better for it. Again, I thank her for her campaigning in this area. My hon. Friend mentioned our sister Jo Cox and her legacy more than once. The work taking place in this space to ensure that we support each other to be here is absolutely vital.
The Government absolutely recognise that MPs face abuse and intimidation, and that they have a disproportionate impact on minority groups in politics, including women and those from minority ethnic backgrounds. Through the defending democracy taskforce, we are working with policing and electoral partners to ensure that candidates and elected officials are safe while campaigning and when in office. The taskforce is driving a whole-of-Government approach to tackle abuse targeted at elected officials and has taken steps to make it safer to stand for and be elected to public office. We continue to review and develop our approach, working with partners across law enforcement, Parliament and the third sector to identify and address any gaps in our response.
On vexatious civil court proceedings, the Government are absolutely committed to preventing courts from being used as tools of abuse by perpetrators. We recognise the damage that vexatious litigation has on individuals. In England and Wales, the courts have several mechanisms to protect individuals from being subjected to repeated meritless or abusive litigation. Most commonly, a party can seek a civil restraint order, which restricts a person from making further applications or issuing claims without the court’s permission where those applications have been found totally without merit. CROs can range from limited orders, which apply only to current proceedings, to extended or general orders to prevent wider use of the court system without prior approval. In more extreme cases of persistent abuse, the High Court may declare an individual a vexatious litigant under section 42 of the Senior Courts Act 1981. If this happens, the individual must obtain permission before bringing forward any new proceedings.
Along with those measures, courts must also strike out baseless claims and impose cost sanctions. In certain circumstances, where litigation forms part of a pattern of harassment, injunctive relief may be available. Together, these remedies help to ensure that individuals are protected from repeated unfounded claims while preserving the integrity of the justice system.
Once again, I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate. I have refrained from commenting on any individual case, but I will say that listening to the personal accounts in this debate has been an incredibly moving experience. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for not just the powerful and thought-provoking contribution we heard tonight, but the contributions she continues to make across the House. I have heard her.
As I hope has been clear from my response, the Government’s commitment to tackle domestic abuse and violence against women and girls is total. We have taken important steps forward, especially with our VAWG strategy to improve criminal justice outcomes, restore trust in policing and ensure that tackling domestic abuse and violence against women and girls is everyone’s problem. However, we all know that there is more to do. Across Government, Parliament, policing and beyond, we all must now step up our efforts to prevent abuse and protect the vulnerable as we work towards halving VAWG in a decade.
I have been able to set out the measures that the Government are taking and where there is more that we can do, but I cannot overstate how powerful it is for survivors everywhere to see a survivor raising this issue here, surrounded by a group of her peers who support her without question. I thank my hon. Friend for her contribution tonight.
Question put and agreed to.
It was an honour to be by the side of the Prime Minister when he met Fayed victim-survivors last week. I was proud that one of my first acts in post was to help facilitate the first meeting of this kind with these brave women. No one is above the law, and those who perpetrate or facilitate abuse must be held to account. I will continue to engage with my hon. Friend’s all-party parliamentary group so that victim-survivors know that this Government are listening.
I thank my hon. Friend for the work he is doing with the APPG. As the Prime Minister made clear, the Government are committed to engaging with the Fayed victim-survivors and ensuring that their concerns are addressed. I will shortly be in contact with them to follow up on the meeting last week, and we will set out the form that that engagement we take. We will absolutely ensure that this is the start of a process, not the end. These women absolutely need to be heard.
I thank the hon. Member for her work on the APPG and the vital work she is carrying out in supporting these women. Where there is evidence of criminal activity, it is the police’s duty to investigate, and it would not be appropriate for me to comment on the specifics. My job and the role of the Government are to support the police to ensure that justice is delivered as swiftly as possible, and I am absolutely committed to that.
Women and girls must feel and be safe everywhere, which is why we have provided funding for police to trial and evaluate Project Vigilant, where plain-clothed officers are deployed within the night-time economy to identify and de-escalate behaviours known to precede sexual offending. We are providing £13.9 million to improve the policing response to violence against women and girls nationally. New legislation means that someone causing intentional harassment, alarm or distress because of a person’s sex can now face up to two years in prison.
The VAWG strategy and the financial inclusion strategy set out ambitious commitments to tackle financial abuse. The Government are determined to embed the prevention of violence against women and girls across all Departments. Our VAWG strategy and the financial inclusion strategy are committed to exploring how we can make it harder for abusers to use joint financial products, including joint mortgages, as a tool of abuse, and how to better support victim survivors. Last week the Economic Secretary to the Treasury and I hosted a roundtable with 16 banks and financial service organisations to underscore Government priorities, share best practice in the financial services sector, and agree how we can work together to deliver commitments in the VAWG strategy and the financial inclusion strategy.
I can absolutely confirm how close this issue is to my heart. Within the boundaries of operational independence, the Home Office is regularly engaging, and rightly so, with the Metropolitan police. Those women absolutely deserve justice, and I will do everything within my power to make sure that they get it.
It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Vickers, and I am grateful to have the opportunity to speak on this most important issue. I am also grateful to all Members who have contributed with such passion, sensitivity and care for the victims—those brave women—who are with us today, as well as those who are not. At the heart of this debate has been the theme that when women and girls come forward, we must absolutely believe them, and I thank hon. Members for that.
I thank the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone), who provided a clear and balanced account of the petition’s main arguments. I also thank the petitioners for the role that they have played in bringing us together—including the 598 signatories from Bolsover—and in allowing us to have this cross-party debate with so much consensus.
This is my first opportunity to respond to a debate as Minister for Safeguarding, and it is absolutely one of the most important issues that we face as a Parliament. I pay tribute to my predecessor, the hon. Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), for her tireless work in supporting victims of these heinous crimes. The grooming gangs scandal is one of the darkest moments in our nation’s history. Every time I meet one of the survivors, I hear the same story. Not only were the girls abused by these predators, but they were ignored, belittled and even blamed. Too many endured years of being told that the crimes against them did not matter, and therefore, they did not matter either. And now, as women seeking truth and justice, there are still those who seek to exploit them with lies and misinformation, spread daily by people claiming to represent the victims’ best interests. We keep seeing too many people who are not interested in victims, but only in themselves. Their lies do nothing but undermine the hard work happening to uncover the answers that survivors have long searched for.
I am so proud to be a Minister in the Government who are fighting to get and deliver those answers. My policy responsibilities are broad, but they are connected by a single, sacred thread: the state’s responsibility to keep the most vulnerable in our society safe. There has been a lot of talk about data and evidence, and I will come to that shortly, but first, I will say a word for the victims and survivors of all the different types of abuse that we have been talking about. The testimony that we have heard has been absolutely horrendous, and I thank every Member who has brought it and every victim and survivor who has shared it. We will never forget the terrible suffering that you have endured. That is why I will be part of a team and a Government who will strive relentlessly to prevent others from going through what you have. That will be my focus every single day in this role as we drive forward the Government’s mission to halve violence against women and girls in a decade. To meet that goal, we must tackle all forms of child sexual abuse and exploitation while taking every possible step to protect children from harm.
Let me turn to the crux of this debate and the specific points that have been raised. As Members are aware—this has been mentioned often—in February 2025, the Prime Minister and the then Home Secretary commissioned Baroness Louise Casey of Blackstock to evaluate the scale, nature and drivers of group-based sexual exploitation and abuse. The Government immediately accepted the 12 recommendations from Baroness Casey’s audit. That included making it a requirement for police to collect the ethnicity and nationality data of individuals suspected of being members of grooming gangs or perpetrators of other group-based sexual exploitation.
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, and I absolutely will come to that as part of this speech.
Let me assert once more the Government’s unwavering commitment to delivering all the recommendations set out in Baroness Casey’s national audit, which exposed more than a decade of institutional failure. This was, without question, one of the darkest episodes in our country’s history, and every part of the state bears a responsibility to ensure that this is never repeated.
Baroness Casey was rightly clear that the collection of suspect ethnicity data in grooming gang cases is poor. We agree and we are acting. That is why in July last year, the then Home Secretary wrote to all chief constables setting out the expectation that ethnicity data should be collected from all suspects in child sexual exploitation cases, and to urge them to make sure that they are fulfilling that obligation. We continue to work with policing colleagues to improve data collection and analysis. But incredibly importantly, we are legislating to give the Home Secretary the power to mandate the collection of ethnicity data by police officers. The police reform White Paper, published in January, set out our intention to put data standards for policing, including in this area, on a statutory footing.
I say clearly to all those who signed the petition: the Government will legislate to ensure that we fix this issue. Baroness Casey was clear that given the evidence available in some local areas, we need better ethnicity and nationality data at a national level to strengthen understanding and accountability. We will follow that evidence without fear or favour, and we will not let cultural sensitivities stand in our way. The Home Secretary said it best last December:
“We must root out this evil, once and for all. The sickening acts of a minority of evil men, as well as those in positions of authority who looked the other way, must not be allowed to marginalise or demonise entire communities of law-abiding citizens.”—[Official Report, 9 December 2025; Vol. 777, c. 179.]
Members will be aware that the Government set up the independent inquiry into grooming gangs earlier this year. I am proud to be part of a Government who are delivering on this incredibly important work to uncover the truth. The inquiry has begun its crucial work to give survivors of these horrific crimes long-awaited answers. It will have a laser focus on grooming gangs, including the role that ethnicity, religion and culture played in these terrible crimes. It has a budget of £65 million, and the chair has confirmed that the funding is sufficient to deliver the inquiry. The inquiry has been designed to be time-limited for three years. That is long enough to go deep into where it matters the most, with a definitive end date to get the answers that victims and survivors need.
Separately, the Government are also making sure that everything we do is underpinned by evidence. I welcome Members sending me any additional research and information they have in this area. If the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills (Tessa Munt), could send me that it would be fantastic.