State Mobilizes Full Force Against VAWG

With permission, Madame Deputy Speaker, I will make a statement on the publication of the government's strategy to tackle Violence Against Women and Girls.

But before I do, let's start with the facts.

Last year, 1 in every 8 women was a victim of domestic abuse, stalking or sexual assault.

Every day, 200 rapes are reported to the police, and many go unreported.

Behind every one of these figures, is a woman or girl whose life has been shattered.

And behind every crime lies a perpetrator who all too often gets away scot-free.

For too long, we have accepted these statistics as simply a fact of life.

Today, this government says: no more.

We are calling violence against women and girls the national emergency that it is.

We are committing to halve these horrific crimes within a decade.

And today, we publish the strategy that sets us on that journey.

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.

It deploys the full power of the state across national government and local government.

It draws on the experiences of victims and the power of the third sector to transform our approach to these crimes:

In our schools, our police forces, from housing to healthcare, on our streets and behind closed doors, online and offline.

This strategy is designed to deliver three goals:

Firstly, preventing boys and men from ever becoming abusers in the first place.

Secondly, bearing down on perpetrators so those who have offended do not do so again.

And finally, supporting victims so that they get justice when they seek it, and the closure that they deserve.

I will start with how we stop the violence before it starts.

Because of the proliferation of content with the potential to poison young minds, the needs have never been greater.

Our strategy tackles radicalisation and confronts concerning behaviour long before it spirals into abuse or violence.

Education is undoubtedly key.

We must empower teachers to challenge harmful attitudes and act before they escalate.

To do so, we will invest £20 million to tackle harmful attitudes in young people

Our universal pledge is to fundamentally change how relationships, consent and attitudes can be embedded through education.

This means changing the curriculum, developing teacher and external provider training on healthy relationships and consent.

We will also develop targeted programmes for those starting to exhibit harmful behaviours - piloting interventions in schools, focusing in and managing the risk where abusive behaviours are already starting to show.

We will provide parents and frontline professionals with the support and training they need to spot the warning signs of misogyny and act on them.  

We will also make the UK one of the hardest places for children to access harmful content and misogynistic influences online.

We must help our parents protect their children from harmful, poisonous content.

We will ban 'nudification' tools which currently enable users to strip clothes and produce intimate images without the consent of those depicted.

And we will work with technology companies to make it impossible for children in the UK to take, share or view nude images through nudity detection filters.

First and foremost, our goal must be to stop these crimes from ever happening.

And that means stopping anyone from ever becoming a perpetrator.

But it also means bearing down on those who do commit these awful crimes.

In this strategy, we set out significant new powers and tools to pursue these dangerous individuals.

Today, police performance varies from force to force - with more than two thirds of rape cases seeing the victim withdraw support in some police force areas.

For that reason, by 2029, every police force in England and Wales will have a specialist rape and sexual offences team, mirroring the approach taken by the Metropolitan Police.

We will also ensure police forces use the same data-driven approach to tracking offenders that we apply to terrorists and serious organised criminals.

New forensic technology will be used to track down rapists and sex offenders, allowing us to reopen cold cases and bring offenders to justice many years after they thought they had got away with it.

We will ramp up our efforts to take perpetrators off our streets.

And we will pursue them online too.

Following the approach long applied to disrupting child sex abusers and acknowledging that violence against women and girls is increasingly happening online.

We will deploy covert officers online, to disrupt offending and bring criminals to justice.

We must also do more to break the cycle of offending.

Through the Drive Project, we're investing £53 million in ensuring high-risk, high-harm domestic abusers are subject to intensive case management arrangements.

And we will also roll out Domestic Abuse Protection Orders across England and Wales.

Crucially, they can be applied for by a police officer or a court - criminal or family.

And, unlike other orders, they do not rely on the victim to act.

In the pilot locations alone, 1,000 victims have already been protected in this way.

Now, many more will be.  

Where crimes are committed, it is essential that we help those who have suffered get the justice they deserve and as much closure as ever can be possible.

I have spent most of my working life with victims of these crimes, and their voices have informed every decision that we have taken.

We will be backing this strategy with over £1 billion in victims funding.

This includes over half a billion pounds for victims' services and another half a billion pounds providing safe housing for victims of abuse as they escape their abusers.

As part of this investment, we will support vital victims' helplines.

We will set up new services to connect victims with specialist help through their GP.

And provide up to £50 million pounds for therapeutic support for child victims of sexual abuse.

In the short time I have today, I have only touched on a fraction of the measures in this strategy.

One that signals, in its entirety, a transformation in the government's response.

A government that is rising to the challenge of a national emergency that we face.

But Madame Deputy Speaker, before I finish, I would like to take the opportunity to thank all of those who have helped get us to this point.

I am particularly grateful to my counterpart, the Victims Minister in the Ministry of Justice, in her integral role in developing this strategy; as well as to the Home Secretary; her predecessor, now Foreign Secretary; the Deputy Prime Minister; and last, but absolutely by no means least, Prime Minister and the team at Number 10. They have stepped up to the plate with leadership and ambition, and I thank them all.

I would also like to thank all of those across government, in different departments, who I may have been slightly annoying towards at times, but have stepped up admirably, from the National Health Service to police forces.

To all of my colleagues sat beside me on the front bench today, they have worked incredibly hard.

And the incredible dedication of the third sector who have long, rightly, called for the government to do more.

Most important of all, I would like to thank the victims of these awful crimes.

Those I have met and worked with for many years, whose bravery and determination have and always will inspire me, and kept me going through what seems like a very long career, when it too often felt like change was impossible.

Without their support, this strategy would have been impossible.

It is, above all else, for them.

Madame Deputy Speaker, may I end by imploring those here, and far beyond these walls.

This strategy is more than a document.

It is a call from a government that recognises this as a national emergency, a government that is willing to back up its words with action.

Ending violence against women and girls is the work of us all.

Those who might spot a young boy at risk of turning down a darker path.

Those who might see troubling signs of behaviour in their friends.

Or perhaps even themselves.

It will take all of society to step up and end the epidemic of abuse and violence that shames our country.

The challenge is great,

But I have never felt more confident that we can rise to it than I do today.

Because change is coming.

We can make women and girls safe, at last.

And I commend this statement to the House.