Recently the Association of Chief Police Officers urged the UK government to set up a domestic violence register of 25,000 serial offenders. This is one of a series of proposals made by the Association of Chief Police Officers for a Home Office review on how to deal with violence against women and girls.

Police Chiefs estimate that there are some 25,000 offenders responsible for two or more acts of domestic violence in Wales and England and the review concluded that these attackers need to be tracked more effectively and placed on a register.

I welcome the recommendations made by the Association of Chief Police Officers and support their calls to create a domestic abuse register. We now need to see a positive response from the UK government and for these recommendations to be taken seriously so that they can be included in the wider strategy. Although I welcome these recommendations, there is a lot more that needs be done to prevent these crimes from happening in the first place. We need to educate people and improve and challenge their perceptions and attitudes towards gender inequality. We need to make people understand that domestic abuse is unacceptable. It is a serious matter of concern that almost three-quarters of women who suffer domestic abuse do not report the incidents to the police at all. If somebody is a persistent offender we need to ask why that is, obviously that person is not being dealt with effectively in the first place. We need the UK government to take a proper look at the current situation and not ignore this extremely serious issue.