Gender Based Violence: Sentencing

Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is a national emergency. For too long, we have treated it as a fact of life. This Government will not accept that, which is why we have committed to halving VAWG in a decade. We will deploy the full power of the state in the largest crackdown on VAWG in British history. We have published our VAWG Strategy: ‘Freedom from Violence and Abuse: a cross-government strategy to build a safer society for women and girls’, which sets out our plan to do just that.

Parliament has provided a comprehensive framework of offences with robust maximum penalties which already cover extreme acts of violence and assault. For example, offences such as causing grievous bodily harm with intent, rape and assault by penetration each carry maximum penalties of life imprisonment. These penalties reflect the gravity with which such offending is treated.

Sentencing guidelines are developed and reviewed by the independent Sentencing Council for England and Wales, in fulfilment of its statutory duties under the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. The guidelines are designed to increase consistency and transparency in sentencing.

The Council must consult on all its draft guidelines and secure the consent of the Lady Chief Justice and Lord Chancellor before issuing them for use by the courts. In practice, the Council’s consultations run for three months and are open to all members of the public to respond. The Council selects its priorities for guidelines production and revision based on published criteria (see https://sentencingcouncil.org.uk/about-us/about-the-sentencing-council/our-criteria-for-developing-or-revising-guidelines/).

The Council has issued comprehensive guidelines on assault offences (which were reviewed in 2021), as well as guidelines on sexual offences (reviewed in 2018, with some updates to those guidelines following in 2022). Under various guidelines the vulnerability of the victim may aggravate offending or result in an assessment of higher culpability for the offender, increasing the seriousness of the offence.

Under section 124 of the 2009 Act, either the Lord Chancellor or the Court of Appeal can request that the Council consider producing or updating guidelines, but the Council is not obliged to agree to any such requests. It is also open to individuals to approach the Council to ask that it produce or revise guidelines.

Through the Crime and Policing Act 2026, we have introduced a statutory aggravating factor for grooming behaviour in the sentencing of child sexual offences, to ensure that sentences fully reflect this awful behaviour. This factor has also been reflected in sentencing guidelines.