Speeches by Owen.

“I thank the PAC for allowing me to guest today. My question was around significant barriers. You have already talked about a lot of those. Nicole, you talked about data, funding and a lack of co‑ordinated response. Farah, you said about refuge spaces and transparency. Professor, you talked about prevention, particularl…”

“Sir Matthew, what concrete examples can you give to victims to show that things will improve?”

“Professor, you touched upon tech. How do you see VAWG evolving, particularly when it comes to the space of non-consensual intimate image abuse? What is illegal is still up for debate. The new Government have prescribed that the creation of NCII is illegal, but the possession of it is not. When we, on the Women and Equa…”

“Professor, this is about the data and the work they have done in Australia for the last 10 years. You said that they had not seen any improvements. Was that because the numbers of reported incidents of VAWG had stayed the same or had gone up? Was that largely because there was trust in the system, or was it that there …”

“What is the measure of success for those new implementations and those new measures?”

“When you say “assessments”, will that include not just data‑driven assessment but also victim experience?”

“Richard, can I come back to money, please? It is really great that we are hearing that violence against women and girls is a priority, a mission. We are seeing this cross-departmental working that we have heard about, and Ministers are actually meeting, which is great. Do you have any plans to submit a joint spending r…”

“If I am getting this right, it is even more than a joint bid. It is going to be a mission-led bid.”

“When it comes to spending on violence against women and girls, the Home Office itself had trouble tracking previous money and the effectiveness of that spend. How confident are you that you have the processes and the relationships in place between the Departments to ensure that the same does not happen again, just with…”

“Co-ordination is really key. Who is ultimately responsible for the finances and the effectiveness of that? Is it the individual Departments themselves, or does it still sit with the Home Office?”

“You have talked about a shift in accountability. What is that shift going to be? It cannot just be to here, and it cannot just be after the fact.”

“We have seen this happen in previous iterations. How confident are you that the funding other Departments are allocated for VAWG and the VAWG strategy will actually be staying within the VAWG remit?”

“This is a very different way of working, so it is really important that we can understand this. What happens if one of those Departments is not fulfilling its obligation and its commitments?”

“What looks like progress? We know that there is a huge amount of underreporting when it comes to violence against women and girls, particularly for rape, because of the lack of convictions. What would progress look like within those 10 years? Will it go up? Will it then come down? Are you expecting it to go up? If you …”

“I was going to talk about how you measure the progress against the ambition to halve VAWG in a decade, given the fact that you have so many gaps in data already. I do not know who is best to answer this one.”

“Will tech-enabled VAWG be included in your measures of progress?”

“Would non-consensual intimate image abuse be included?”

“There is just one other issue around the crime survey data. Are we in danger of just focusing on women and ignoring the experience of girls, given that it does not include under-16s?”

“An area where a lot of under-16s spend their time is online. We heard from the pre-panel that the age that young people are witnessing sexual violence and rape online is now 11 to 20. That is the key age group where they are likely to witness it, but also to be victims of it. What is DSIT doing to try to improve the Go…”

“One area that you mentioned is non-consensual intimate image abuse. The threat of sharing or sharing has been made illegal and the creation is also now illegal, but possession is not. What was the Department’s thinking on that? How does that fit with the mission of violence against women and girls?”