What progress the Government have made in tackling violence against women.

My Department's report "Tackling Violence Against Women: A Cross-Government Narrative" provides a detailed summary of the progress made in this vitally important area. The Government have introduced a number of measures, including a dedicated forced marriages unit and specialist domestic violence courts. As a result of those and other measures, the number of successful prosecutions for both domestic violence and rape has increased since 2003.

I congratulate the Government on bringing more such cases to court. Provision of domestic violence outreach services is excellent in some parts of the country, but funding is patchy. Outreach can prevent violence from escalating to a point at which women, children and occasionally men are forced out of the family home and into refuges. What can the Government do to extend its provision?

The Government are considering many ways of extending outreach provision for domestic violence victims, and for women who are victims of sexual violence. We have already done so through, for instance, rape crisis centres and sexual assault referral centres, which are making great progress at present, and we hope to do more soon on the domestic violence front.

A letter that I received from the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, Bridget Prentice, acknowledges that the number of domestic violence victims has risen by 12 per cent. in the past year, from 594,000 to 664,00. She attributes the increase to better reporting, but it is quite a large increase. How much of it does the Minister think can be attributed to the 24-hour drinking that takes place nowadays?

The incidence of reporting has certainly increased. I think that women now feel more confident about coming forward, and that there are better systems to protect them. I cannot speculate on how much the increase in the number of reported cases is due to drinking, although I am sure that Ministers at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport will look into the possibility.

A range of issues are covered by the issue of violence against women. The Government estimate that about 20,000 girls in this country are at risk of genital mutilation, yet they have no national strategy. They have issued no guidance to the police on the issue since 2004, and there has not been a single prosecution under the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003. I am sure the Minister agrees that that is not acceptable. What is she going to do about it?

It is certainly not acceptable. As the right hon. Lady will know, I have spent a good deal of my life in Africa, and I have seen the results of female genital mutilation both in that continent and in this country. It is something that I abhor. I take the right hon. Lady's point about the need for a strategy, and we shall be presenting one later this year.