Domestic Abuse: Defence Personnel

As I mentioned earlier, we are moving forward with our women and girls taskforce to drive progress on the Government’s commitment to halve violence against women and girls in a decade. Last year, we launched the Ministry of Defence’s domestic abuse action plan and trained more than 700 service police in specialist domestic abuse and coercive control training, and now everybody in the military—every man and woman across the armed forces—goes through unacceptable sexual behaviour training.

According to King’s College London, one in 10 of our armed forces personnel is a survivor of domestic abuse, but, because there is no specific offence of domestic abuse in the law, the Ministry of Justice has confirmed that it cannot comprehensively identify perpetrators, and cannot therefore comprehensively rehabilitate them and keep victims and survivors safe. Will the Minister join me and colleagues across the House in campaigning for a specific offence of domestic abuse in the law so that we can better protect our armed forces personnel from domestic abuse?

It is completely clear to me that any sort of domestic abuse in any way, shape or form in the armed forces is completely unacceptable. If we can help to address and track some of that through the armed forces, it will make it far easier to deal with and ensure rehabilitation. I will take this conversation on after these questions.