To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate she has made of the number of women killed by men since 2012; and what steps her Department is taking to prevent women being killed through men's violence.
Answered on
9 December 2021
The Home Office Homicide Index shows that between 2012/13 and 2019/20 there were 1,005 female victims (aged 16 and over) of homicide where the suspect was male.
The Government takes women’s safety very seriously and is determined to tackle crimes which disproportionately affect women and girls.
We have published a new Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Strategy and will be publishing a complementary Domestic Abuse Strategy in the New Year. The new strategies will help transform the response to these crimes, from prevention and raising awareness, support to victims and survivors, to ensuring perpetrators are brought to justice.
As part of the new VAWG Strategy commitments, work is underway to launch a national communications campaign in the New Year, which will focus on targeting perpetrators, educating young people about healthy relationships and ensuring victims can access support.
We are doing a considerable amount of work on domestic homicides which is a horrific crime that disproportionately impacts females. Homicide Index data for 2017/18 to 2019/20 show that 76% of victims of domestic homicide were female. The Home Office worked with the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s domestic abuse and homicide leads to fund a rapid review pilot at the start of the first lockdown to track domestic homicides and enable the police to respond to spikes.
We firmly believe that tackling perpetrators of abuse is key to reducing domestic homicides. In 2020/21, the Chancellor announced £10 million in funding for DA perpetrator programmes, which was the first fund of its kind. This year the funding has increased to £25 million, more than doubling the funding for addressing perpetrators of domestic abuse. Of this, over £18 million has been provided to local areas to introduce new perpetrator programmes this year.
In addition to this, Domestic Homicide Reviews (DHRs) must be considered for all deaths involving a person over the age of 16 where domestic abuse has, or appears to have been a factor. We have undertaken to create a central repository for all DHRs which will allow us to better understand the patterns and trends of domestic homicides.