Government mission to tackle violence against women and girls requires strong action on all fronts, PAC warns

Government continues to be outpaced in its efforts to tackle violence against women and girls (VAWG) as it lacks a full understanding of the extent and evolving nature of the issues victims and survivors face.  In a report published today, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is calling for a truly whole of government effort to tackle the unsustainable pressure on support services and the increasing dangers from online harms. 

The PAC‘s inquiry heard that the services supporting the victims and survivors of VAWG have reached crisis point, with evidence that refuges are having to refuse 65% of requests and community-based services are only able to support half of those who ask for help. The rise in demand is being compounded by the increasing complexity of the cases that services are dealing with, with almost half of those in refuges now presenting with mental health problems. 

Services also warned of the toll that the short-term and insecure nature of funding was taking on their ability to plan ahead. With 80% of these organisations relying on statutory funding as their main source of income, it is essential that government coordinates all spending on VAWG-related activities and provides long-term funding stability to the sector. 

The inquiry found that government departments don't have a complete understanding of either the extent of VAWG, or of work happening at a local level. In its report, the PAC is calling on government to gain an accurate understanding of the extent and complexity of VAWG and to learn from successful local initiatives.  

VAWG affects at least 1 in 12 women each year and 1 in 5 police recorded crimes in 2022-23 related to VAWG. However, it is likely that the true number of those affected is even higher, as many incidents go unreported. Worryingly the Home Office's current survey to measure the prevalence of VAWG does not collect data on all crime types, nor does it collect responses from under-16s. This is of particular concern to the PAC, as it heard that the most likely age range to become a survivor or perpetrator of sexual violence is between 11-20 years old. 

The PAC is concerned that the current approach to tackling VAWG is not putting enough emphasis on the preventative measures that will be necessary if it hopes to achieve long-term change. Government must set out how it will work with boys to prevent harmful attitudes perpetuating, and how it will improve the safety of children and young people online.  

The Department for Education needs to step up and take a more proactive approach given the proliferation of misogynistic attitudes across social media platforms, and their influence on young men and boys, highlighted by the PAC as a key area in need of attention. The increase in the number of cases reported to the revenge porn helpline from 521 to 22,000 in just nine years, serves to highlight the evolving nature of VAWG.  

The PAC fears this is symptomatic of a wider issue across a range of departments who appear to have limited understanding of the scale of the challenges they face in addressing this issue. Departments apparently lack awareness of wider pressures on services for survivors and victims including those caused by shortfalls in the availability of safe accommodation due to the housing crisis and increased demand for advocacy services caused by delays in the justice system. The PAC's report on crown court backlogs identified a deep concern around the devastating impacts the backlog has on victims and survivors of rape and serious sexual offence cases. 

The Home Office must now set out precisely how it will lead a truly cross-government effort in tackling VAWG that puts preventative measures at its heart and has the commitment of all departments.  

Anna Dixon MP, member of the Public Accounts Committee said:  

“The levels of violence against women and girls in our country are truly appalling and it is right the government have set out a mission to halve it. Success will require urgent and coordinated action across departments to ensure victims and survivors can be confident that they will receive the support they need, get swift justice, and preventative action is taken. This is not an issue the Home Office can tackle alone; while arresting perpetrators is vital, it will not solve this problem. It is crucial that we address the underlying cultural issues, particularly the rise in harmful online content shaping misogynistic views in young men and boys. Education and other preventative measures to counter the spread of harmful content are needed. 

“Tackling the housing crisis will also be vital if government is to achieve its aim of halving violence against women and girls.  During our inquiry, we heard that there are only two wheelchair accessible refuges nationally. This is completely unacceptable. Women should not be forced to remain in unsafe, potentially life-threatening situations because of a lack of suitable accommodation.  

“While it was welcome to hear of recent efforts to better coordinate action across departments, officials' evidence caused alarm bells to ring. On some types of harm, government appears to be oblivious to the true scale and there remains scant evidence or learning from what is working locally. It is vital that the Home Office seizes this opportunity to lead and co-ordinate strong action across departments to ensure victims and survivors have access to the services and support they need and deserve, and that as a society we reverse the worrying rise in misogyny.” 

ENDS 

Conclusions and Recommendations  

Under previous iterations of its strategy to address violence against women and girls, the Home Office failed to secure the full support of other government departments. The Home Office is responsible for leading the cross-government effort to tackle violence against women and girls (VAWG). While delivering its 2021 Strategy, the Home Office failed to gain the necessary commitment from other government departments that have vital roles in addressing this issue. The Home Office has not always had a strong reputation for working constructively with other government departments, and despite efforts to improve this in recent years, there is still a long way to go. The Home Office told us that one of the many benefits of the 'Safer Streets' mission is that it creates a framework for collaboration across government and beyond. The mission will play a crucial role in coordinating work across government and holding departments to account. We are encouraged to hear that that since September the mission board has already met four times, and the sub-board (including Home Office and Ministry of Justice Ministers) has met three times. We are also encouraged to hear that the appropriate accountability structures are in place to scrutinise Government's progress against the mission objectives via the Prime Minister's regular stock-takes. The Committee welcomes efforts to better coordinate efforts between all relevant government departments, but would welcome more assurance about how the Home Office will hold departments to account for delivering the meaningful change in practice.   

Recommendation 1. As part of its Treasury Minute response, the Home Office should outline precisely how the mission-led approach will hold all departments to account for their contributions to tackling violence against women and girls and ensure collective buy-in.   

Government departments do not have a realistic understanding of the experiences of survivors seeking support, nor the demands faced by local services on the ground. Government departments appear to have a starkly different understanding of the support provided to survivors of domestic abuse who seek support in their local communities compared with the reality. We were particularly concerned to hear that the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government believes that in the majority of cases domestic abuse survivors are met with adequate support from their local authority, as this does not align with what we have learnt from our constituents. It is also clear that this disjointed understanding extends to departments' understanding of the demands being felt by support services locally. The Chief Executive of Women's Aid told the Committee that the demands being faced by charities are increasing both in volume and complexity. For example, an increased demand for specialist mental health support for victims and survivors of violence against women and girls following the COVID-19 pandemic. Developing technology is also contributing to changes in the nature of abuse and the methods used by perpetrators. Wider pressures on services are exacerbating these demands, for example the housing crisis is making it even harder for local authorities to provide survivors with safe accommodation and, in turn, increasing the demand for temporary refuges. Wider demands on the justice system also mean that the criminal justice process is taking longer, with family courts processes becoming harder to navigate, thus increasing the demand on independent advocacy services (IDVAs). We are particularly concerned to hear that it is common for survivors to find going through the family courts processes to be almost more abusive than having experienced abuse by the perpetrator, seeing the courts as harmful, misogynistic spaces.  

Recommendation 2. As part of its Treasury Minute response, the Home Office should set out plans, over and above what it has done in the past, explaining how it will:  

a) engage with services supporting survivors to gain an accurate understanding of the demands faced by support services, and the experience of survivors seeking support; and  

b) engage with MoJ and His Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service to ensure that all survivors are appropriately supported by the family courts system.  

Short-term and fragmented funding hinder government departments' efforts to maximise the impact it is having both at the local and national level. The Home Office spent £149 million from April 2021 to the end of September 2024 tackling VAWG. Meanwhile, other government departments spent around £979 million over broadly the same period. It is vitally important that departments coordinate spending so that they can prioritise effectively and ensure efforts are not duplicated. As lead department, the Home Office is best placed to oversee this. However, throughout the 2021 Strategy, the Home Office did not understand the cross-government spend committed to tackling VAWG, nor did it centrally coordinate funding.  Short-term funding settlements can also impact locally run services' ability to provide adequate, specialist support to survivors of VAWG. Single-year funding settlements make it difficult for local services to recruit and retain specialists, and this has devastating consequences for support services particularly those run 'by-and-for' the people that they serve. 'By-and-for' services play a crucial role in ensuring that every survivor has access to, and trust in, local support, regardless of their specific needs. The Home Office told us that it intends to address these challenges by approaching funding settlement bids in a more coordinated way in the upcoming Spending Review.   

Recommendation 3. In light of the forthcoming Spending Review, the Home Office should then write to the Committee within one month outlining how government's approach is changing in order to coordinate all spending on VAWG-related activities across government and provide long-term funding stability to the sector.  

The Home Office has a limited awareness of initiatives proving effective so cannot use this information to improve its understanding of what works to prevent and reduce violence against women and girls. The Home Office acknowledges that departments do not have a strong understanding of what works to tackle violence against women and girls. Written evidence submitted to the Committee highlighted many examples of successful locally run initiatives and the Home Office may be missing opportunities to learn from good practice. While the Committee accepts that what works in some local areas may not be appropriate to be rolled out more broadly, if the Home Office is to improve its understanding of what works within the context of constrained resources, it must ensure it is benefitting from all the evidence that already exists. The Home Office has sought to improve its understanding of what works by conducting a review of the available evidence, with the aim of using this to inform its new strategy. The Committee is encouraged to hear that this work has provided some valuable insights, and it is vital that the Home Office does all it can to identify and share lessons learnt from local initiatives.   

Recommendation 4. Prior to the launch of the new VAWG Strategy, the Home Office should set out how, over and above what it has done in the past, it will capture and share evidence of successful initiatives at the local level, to continually inform its understanding of what works to prevent and reduce violence against women and girls.  

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 5. As part of its Treasury Minute response, the Home Office should set out how it will:   

a.                   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   

b.                  Ensure all relevant departments, notably DHSC and DfE, are sharing intelligence relating to VAWG appropriately, to build up government's understanding of the scale of VAWG, and its ability to prioritise efforts effectively.   

We are concerned that, to date, the approach to tackling violence against women and girls has not put enough emphasis on preventative measures that are necessary to achieve long-term change. Although it is imperative that all survivors receive effective support, government needs to do more to prevent perpetrators committing these crimes in the first instance. It is shocking to hear that the most likely age range to become a survivor or perpetrator of sexual violence is between 11-20 years old. Many government departments have significant roles to play if sustainable change is to be achieved, particularly those working closely with children and young people. For example, it is vital that DfE prioritises this issue and does more to educate children and young people on healthy relationships to reduce the chance of them becoming perpetrators in the future. We are not convinced that DfE is doing all it can to support work with young boys to prevent harmful attitudes perpetuating. Work such as Operation Encompass (a police and education sharing partnership designed to deliver a more joined up approach to supporting children as survivors of domestic abuse) shows the key role that education can play in tackling this issue by supporting survivors, but also in preventing children from becoming perpetrators in the future. However, neither Home Office nor DfE could tell us the proposed start date of implementation. We welcome these sorts of initiatives but remain unconvinced that DfE is prioritising this issue sufficiently and doing all it can to prevent these crimes occurring.   

Recommendation 6. As part of the Treasury Minute response to this report, the Home Office should outline:  

a) how it intends to put greater emphasis on preventative measures over and above work it has done previously through its upcoming Strategy, to achieve long-term change; and  

ii) how it will work with other relevant departments, notably the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, MHCLG and MoJ, to ensure all opportunities are being taken to work with young boys to prevent harmful attitudes perpetuating, and how this work is being incorporated into the upcoming VAWG Strategy.   

b) Also, as part of the Treasury Minute response to this report, the Department for Education should set out how it intends to work with children and young people to prevent violence against women and girls, including further changes to the relationships and sex education (RSE) curriculum, and how this is being coordinated through the Home Office's upcoming VAWG Strategy.   

We are concerned that government departments' approach to tech-enabled violence against women and girls is not sufficiently agile to address the threats posed by online harm. Tech-enabled VAWG is a rapidly evolving threat. For example, in 2024 the revenge porn helpline received 22,000 cases, compared with 521 in 2015. The Online Safety Act, introduced in October 2023, was designed to ensure that people are protected from harmful online content, notably children and young people. The Act legislates the removal of harmful content from social media platforms. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) is the sponsoring department for the Online Safety Act and is responsible for investigating how the design of online platforms can contribute to or mitigate such violence. As of 16 March 2025, service providers must have completed their risk assessments for illegal content which assessing the risk of users encountering illegal content or, of the platforms being used to commit or facilitate an offence. The Committee welcomes these efforts to try and address some of the evolving threats emerging from technological advancements, as it is clear that social media can play a significant role in shaping the attitudes of young people. However, the Committee is concerned that departments' reactive approach to tackling this issue may not sufficiently protect those at risk compared with focusing on reducing the production and possession of the harmful content in the first instance. We did not hear convincing evidence that DfE is yet taking a sufficiently proactive role in educating young people, especially boys, on the dangers on exposure to harmful online content, and how this can lead to misogynistic attitudes.  

Recommendation 7.   

a.           In six months' time, DSIT should write to the Committee outlining the impact that the Online Safety Act has had on improving the safety of children and young people online, and the role it is expected to play in preventing VAWG in the long-term.   

b.           As part of the Treasury Minute response to this report DfE should set out what it intends to do, over and above previous work, to keep children and young people safe from the dangers of exposure to harmful online content.