Tackling violence against women and girls (VAWG) will be treated as seriously as crackdowns on terror and organised crime, Labour has vowed, as the party unveiled its long-delayed strategy on the issue.
Promising to make women and girls “safe at last”, safeguarding minister Jess Phillips vowed that “change is coming”.
She said it will take “all of society to step up and end the epidemic of abuse and violence that shames our country”, adding: “The challenge is great, but I have never felt more confident that we can rise to it than I do today”.
But campaigners say the strategy does not go far enough, with children’s commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza saying she is “deeply concerned” the strategy does not do enough to protect girls under 16s, while Refuge said the funding contained in the strategy is just a “drop in the ocean”.
Meanwhile, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch faced criticism after saying the strategy was too focused on young boys and too influenced by the Netflix drama Adolescence, instead calling for people from “cultures that don’t respect women” to be removed from the UK.
Ms Phillips said the strategy is backed by £1bn over the next three years, which includes £480m already confirmed in local government budgets and £550m across the Ministry of Justice budget. An extra £19m will be invested for support in safe accommodation, the Home Office minister announced on Thursday – a figure that Refuge said is simply not enough.
The key measures unveiled in the VAWG plan include:
- Every police force in England and Wales will have a specialist rape and sexual offences team by 2029
- New forensic technology will be used to track down rapists and sex offenders
- A crackdown on deepfake abuse online, including the banning of ‘nudification’ tools
- All secondary schools in England will teach students about healthy relationships
- A £19m funding boost will be handed to councils to provide safe housing for domestic abuse survivors
Ms Phillips also said that new forensic technology will be used to track down rapists and sex offenders, with police forces using “the same data-driven approach to tracking offenders that we apply to terrorists and serious organised criminals”.
Giving a statement to the Commons, the safeguarding minister pledged to make the UK “one of the hardest places for children to access harmful content and misogynistic influences online”, saying that so-called “nudification” tools, which allow users to strip clothes from those in photographs, will be banned.
The government will also work with tech companies to make it impossible for children to take, view or share nude images through “nudity detection filters”.
Other measures include new interventions in schools when pupils display “harmful” behaviour, changes to the curriculum and new training for staff.
However, campaigners say more needs to be done and called for more funding to be poured into the issue.
Children’s commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza said she is “deeply concerned” the strategy does not do enough to protect girls under 16.
She said the strategy is an “important step in our shared ambition to end violence against women and girls”, praising the plan to ban nudification tools and the focus on education.
But she added: “I remain deeply concerned that too much of this strategy will only protect girls who are 16 or over.
“We need robust data measures to see if the strategy is working, but this cannot be at the expense of listening and responding to the risks facing every girl from a young age.”
Meanwhile Refuge welcomed a number of the measures unveiled, saying that with “sustained accountability, this approach has potential to deliver the lasting, systemic change that women and girls deserve”, the charity also warned that the strategy fails to address the “deep and ongoing underfunding of specialist support services”.
Gemma Sherrington, CEO of Refuge, added: “Without this vital investment, it risks directing survivors towards a system that is already stretched beyond capacity.
“Unless these foundations are urgently fixed, the strategy’s ability to deliver real change will be severely constrained.”
She continued: “While the government’s commitment of an additional £19 million for safe accommodation over the next three years is welcome, it represents only a drop in the ocean compared to the number of survivors for whom safe housing could be the difference between life and death.”
Women’s Aid said while additional funding for safe accommodation and other specialist services is “welcome”, they argued the government “needs to go much further, including through ring-fenced investment in services run by and for Black and minoritised women and dedicated support for child victims”.
But the organisation praised the government’s “ambitious commitment to halving violence against women and girls (VAWG) in the next decade”, saying they are “pleased to see the emphasis the strategy places on long-term prevention”.
Under Labour’s latest initiative, all secondary schools in England will teach students about healthy relationships, following concerns about the impact of self-described “misogynistic” influencers who appeal to young men by pushing an agenda characterised by toxic masculinity.
A new helpline will also be set up for teenagers to get help with concerns about their own behaviour in relationships.
Ms Phillips said: “This strategy does something that none before it ever has. Until now, responsibility for tackling violence against women and girls has been left to only the crime-fighting departments, working so often in isolated ways.
“Providing support that is vital, but often too late to truly change the story. This strategy is different.”
But Mrs Badenoch posted to social media: “It’s not 11-year-old boys who are committing violence against women and girls. We need to get people who have come from cultures that don’t respect women out of our country! Not all cultures are equally valid”.
She also called for more police on the streets and the deportation of “all foreign criminals”, saying: “Pretending a few extra lessons in school will fix this is complete nonsense. Labour need to stop watching Adolescence and get real.”
But Ghadah Alnasseri, the co-executive director at Imkaan, a charity that tackles violence against women from ethnic minority backgrounds, accused the Tory leader of “dangerous” rhetoric, telling the Guardian: “It’s deeply inaccurate, it’s misinformation and it’s spreading racism.
“We know of charities which have had to remove their signs so they are not attacked, where women have to seek help through back doors. This kind of language is really problematic.”
Andrea Simon, the director of End Violence Against Women coalition, added that gender based violence was “not an imported problem”.