Recommendation 5

There are considerable gaps in the Home Office’s understanding of the scale of violence against women and girls, which will undermine its efforts to target interventions and monitor progress against its ambition to halve VAWG. To improve its chances of success, the Home Office must outline clearly how it intends to measure progress against its ambition to halve the prevalence of VAWG in a decade. This approach must be understood and accepted by all relevant government departments, and there must be clear milestones within this 10–year period to support effective accountability. The Home Office intends to use the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) to measure prevalence, but acknowledged that the survey does not collect data on all crime types, nor does it collect responses from under–16s. The Committee is concerned that monitoring progress in this way fails to adequately reflect the broad range of abuse types, and will therefore only present a partial view of how trends in prevalence are changing over time. Gaps in data make it difficult to develop a suitably agile response to VAWG. It is currently impossible to track a single case through the entire criminal justice system due to limitations in available data. Additionally, while education and healthcare settings can often be where some VAWG crimes first become apparent, the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC), and the Department for Education (DfE) do not routinely capture or share appropriate intelligence with the Home Office. recommendation As part of its Treasury Minute response, the Home Office should set out how it will: • Measure progress against its ambition to halve VAWG in a decade, demonstrating what alternative indicators will be used to measure progress in those areas not covered by the Crime Survey for England and Wales; and • Ensure all relevant departments, notably DHSC and DfE, are sharing intelligence relating to VAWG appropriately, to build up government’s understanding of the scal