Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 21
26th Report - Tackling Violence against Women and Girls
Published 16 May 2025
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee Tackling Violence against Women and Girls (VAWG) All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
Government has set an ambition to halve the prevalence of violence against women and girls in the next decade. To measure progress against this ambition, the Home Office told us it intends to use prevalence estimates from Crime Survey for England and Wales data (CSEW).47 We asked the Home Office how it would account for the fact that the CSEW only collects responses from individuals over the age of 16 and only includes prevalence estimates for some VAWG crime types; rape, domestic abuse, other sexual offences and stalking.48 The Home Office told us that it has agreed three headline metrics, that will be used in combination to track progress against its ambition to halve VAWG, although it did not outline specifically what these will be. The Home Office told us its approach to measuring progress will include a basket of sub–metrics to help address some of the gaps in data available.49
From: Public Accounts Committee, 26th Report - Tackling Violence against Women and Girls (HC 644), 16 May 2025
Government response
Latest Treasury Minutes progress report to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Twenty-sixth Report of Session 2024-26
The government responded to the whole report on 4 June 2026 (deadline 16 July 2025).
Treasury minutes: Government response to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Twenty-sixth report from Session 2024-26
Published 18 September 2025.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government states that it agrees with the Committee's recommendations across the areas covered, including governance, survivor engagement, funding, evidence, measurement, prevention and online safety.
- On cross-government accountability, the government says it has set up "robust governance and accountability" through the Safer Streets Mission, and that it is developing options for a cross-Whitehall team to monitor delivery of VAWG commitments.
- On funding, the Home Office will write to update the Committee once it has decisions and clarity on cross-government VAWG spending. Coordination is stated to depend on other departments completing their own internal allocation processes.
- On measuring progress, the target to halve VAWG within a decade will be set against a headline prevalence measure from the Crime Survey for England and Wales, with a target implementation date of September 2025.
- On prevention, delivery of the actions by September 2025 is stated to be "contingent on the publication of the Tackling VAWG Strategy within that timeframe". DSIT will "aim to update" the Committee in six months on early findings from Ofcom's Tracker.