My Lords, first, I wish to take a moment to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, for taking this Bill through the House and for the very constructive conversation that we had this week about it. I single out for special praise the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans. It is always nice to hear men contribute to a debate that is mainly about women. I say at this juncture that the Government have given their full backing to the Bill and we wholly support its aim of ensuring that we deliver on our commitment to ratify the Istanbul convention.
We all recognise that violence is still far too prevalent in our society today, and that women still face a much higher risk of gender-based violence than men. Physical, sexual and domestic abuse affect women disproportionately: that is the stark reality, I am afraid. We also know that many of these crimes remain unreported—we talked about that at Question Time yesterday or the day before—leaving victims to suffer in silence and perpetrators escaping justice.
Our commitment to ratifying the Istanbul convention not only shows how seriously this Government are taking their responsibility to ensure that all victims are
supported and that perpetrators are brought to justice but also our ongoing commitment to strengthening international co-operation in this field, which is vital.
This Government have put prevention at the heart of our approach. We have significantly strengthened the law since we first published our first call to end violence against women and girls—VAWG—strategy in 2010, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans pointed out. We have criminalised forced marriage and breach of a forced marriage protection order in England and Wales. The right reverend Prelate made an interesting point about forced marriage and girls being taken out of the UK for this reason. The joint Home Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office Forced Marriage Unit provides support and advice to victims, those at risk and professionals. The FMU’s most recent statistics were published yesterday and show that in 2016 advice or support was provided in 1,428 cases; 371 of those, or 26%, involved under-18s. The unit handled cases relating to 60—