The Home Office’s efforts to address violence against women and girls have not yet improved outcomes for victims, according to the public spending watchdog.
Described as a “significant and growing problem”, the National Audit Office (NAO) says one in 12 women can expect to experience some form of gender-based violence each year.
Around one in four women will be a victim of sexual or attempted assault in their lifetime.
Louise*, whose identity we have protected, says she suffered sexual and violent abuse at the hands of her former partner for seven years.
“He was a very jealous and controlling man,” she says.
The abuse would come in “different forms”, Louise explained. “Sometimes it was straight beatings. Other times it would be restraining and threatening with knives etc. And of course, there was the mental abuse.”
It’s been a few decades since her traumatising experience, and she says: “It’s incredibly depressing to hear things haven’t changed or moved on. I find that shocking.”
She now has three children who have more awareness about gender-based abuse and “understand things like gaslighting and coercive control”.
But she says now the culture has shifted, action needs to be implemented.
“Stop doing more research or yet another report which never gets acted on… We want action. My advice is you need to talk to victims, you need a victim-led solution,” Louise says.
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Home Office did not lead ‘effective cross-government response’
After multiple high-profile cases of women and girls who died at the hands of abusers, the previous Conservative government introduced the Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy in 2021 and the Domestic Abuse Plan in 2022, both led by the Home Office.
However, a report by the NAO says the department did not lead an “effective cross-government response”.
Caroline Harper, who led the report, says this is partly due to the fact the Home Office “struggled to get other government departments on board”.
“There hasn’t been sufficient focus on prevention,” she adds.
She says while “supporting victims is really, really important, it would be much better if they didn’t become victims in the first place”.
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Ministerial oversight group ‘only met four times in three years’
The report highlights a ministerial oversight group responsible for setting out the strategy “only met four times in three years”.
The prevalence of sexual assault against women aged 16 to 59 in England and Wales was 4.3% in 2023-24, up from 3.4% in 2009-10, the NAO said.
In that same period, incidents of rape and sexual assault against women and girls recorded by police rose from 34,000 to 123,000, although the NAO said this could partly be explained by improved recording of such crimes.
Past focus ‘not on measuring outcomes’
Isabelle Younane, head of external affairs at the Women’s Aid charity, says: “We really do welcome the intention of government and the strategy of ensuring a strong focus is on prevention and cross-government working.”
However, she adds: “We have not yet seen this translate into meaningful outcomes for women and girls on the ground.”
Ms Younane says in the past the focus has been on “measuring activities and whether those activities had been completed, not on measuring outcomes”.
A Home Office spokesperson highlighted that the NAO report looked at the “previous government’s work” and its “failure to deliver systemic change to deal with these devastating crimes”.
“We are delivering a step-change in the government’s response, as we work to deliver our unprecedented manifesto commitment to halve violence against women and girls in a decade,” they added.
* Not her actual name.
