It has been called a national emergency, an epidemic, and a public health crisis. Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is all of those things. In its election manifesto, the Labour party pledged to halve VAWG in a decade. Fifteen weeks since their victory, the new government has begun to announce the first steps towards reaching this target. But are the government’s plans enough to end this pervasive issue?
This violence is only increasing. In July, data released by the National Police Chiefs’ Council revealed that two million women in England and Wales are estimated to be victims of violence perpetrated by men each year, based on incidents reported. Crimes including stalking, harassment, sexual assault and domestic abuse affect one in 12 women in England and Wales, with the number of recorded offences growing by 37 per cent in the past five years. But these figures are a cautious estimate as many crimes go unreported.
This summer three women from the same family, Carol Hunt, and her daughters, Louise and Hannah, were brutally murdered in a crossbow attack in Hertfordshire. The male suspect was reported to have been in a relationship with one of the women killed. With a manhunt for the suspect dominating headlines, the incident sparked national outrage. But there are many more women murdered by men whose stories do not make the news. On average since the end of 2009, two women are killed by a man every five days in the UK. As most violence against women is perpetrated by current or former husbands or intimate partners, the majority of them are killed by men they know.
Jess Phillips, minister for safeguarding and VAWG, understands the urgency. Before becoming an MP she worked for Women’s Aid, a charity working to end domestic abuse, and for the past nine years she has stood up in the House of Commons every International Women’s Day to read out the names of women killed by men over the previous 12 months. There has been real momentum within Labour to make VAWG a “completely cross-government issue”, Phillips tells me when we meet over Zoom. She adds that it is a “very firm part of the party’s five main missions for government”.
Already, in the first few months of government, various ministers—many of them women, notes Phillips—have been in touch with her to make suggestions on how to tackle this violence. “I feel quite a lot of pressure,” she says, but “none more so than from a man, and that is Keir Starmer. He is obsessed with it [eliminating VAWG], which I suppose is nerve-wracking and helpful.”
One new policy announcement in September which marked the first step in the government’s pledge to halve VAWG, was “Raneem’s Law”, under which domestic abuse specialists will be appointed to 999 control rooms to advise officers. The legislation was named in memory of Raneem Oudeh and her mother Khaola Saleem who were murdered by Raneem’s ex-husband in 2018. Thirteen reports were made to the police about concerns for Raneem’s safety, from paramedics, neighbours and Raneem herself, but no arrests were made. On the night she was killed, she had rung 999 four times.
As a Home Office minister, says Phillips, “The thing that keeps me awake at night is [thinking about] the repeat offences, the high harm repeat offences, that I have heard so many cases of over my two-and-a-half decades working in this field.” She adds that people ringing 999 with a domestic abuse complaint should get the “right response” and “somebody who understands it” immediately. Alongside Raneem’s Law, the government is also introducing a pilot of new Domestic Abuse Protection Orders, starting in November, to give greater protection to victims. This will build on powers police already have to order abusers to not make contact with, or go within a certain distance of, their victim, but these orders will also make it a legal requirement for perpetrators to inform the police of any change in their name or address. They also give police powers to impose electronic tagging and order assessments for behaviour change programmes for perpetrators.
But here, as in other parts of the UK’s crumbling public services, Labour needs to plug the gaps already in the system, including in children’s services, services that support behaviour change for perpetrators and mental health support, says Nicole Jacobs, the Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales. Sustainable, strategic funding for domestic violence refuges is vital, too, as these are at breaking point after decades of chronic underfunding.
“Unless we actually look at those gaps and really try to address them fundamentally, any other initiative is always going to fall back—they won't necessarily fail, but they will flounder, because we're constantly building on this foundation of sand,” she tells me. The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, promised to “rebuild public services” in the budget on Wednesday, but there was no specific mention of funding for the frontline services essential to reducing levels of VAWG.
Existing legislation needs to be implemented more consistently across England and Wales’s 43 police forces, adds Jacobs.These include measures like protection orders and the disclosure scheme—the latter enables police to disclose information about a person’s history of abuse or violence to a victim or potential victim of domestic abuse. Police are already meant to be providing this support when they first hear from victims. Jacobs cites Spain as an example to emulate with their national prevention programme called ‘VioGén’’, a coherent system of recording gender-based violence, with clear steps the police must take whenever it is reported, she says.
There has been progress in Britain over the last few years, says Jacobs. There is now a greater awareness and understanding of violence against women, particularly domestic abuse, whereas in the past it was often regarded as a “private, behind-closed-doors issue”. There have been legislative improvements, too. For instance, the Domestic Abuse Act (2021) introduced a statutory definition of abuse, and defined children as victims in their own right. Though men also suffer domestic violence, women make up the vast majority of victims.
There was also a surge of momentum behind classifying misogyny as a hate crime, following the brutal murders of Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa in 2021. Twelve police forces in England and Wales already recognise misogyny as a hate crime, with Nottingham Police first introducing the policy in 2016. The force found it increased women’s confidence in the police and led to more women reporting crimes. Despite this, in February 2022 MPs’ voted against a Lords amendment to public order legislation that made misogyny a hate crime. The new Labour government may go even further. In August, the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said that a review of the UK’s counter-extremism strategy would include misogyny as a form of extremism.
Much more needs to happen, however, particularly regarding changing attitudes and prevention. Andrea Simon, director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, says investment in “quality relationships and sex education” is vital. Labour pledged in its manifesto to help schools tackle sexism and to counter the negative impact of people like Andrew Tate, a self-professed “misogynist” influencer, though this measure has been criticised as inadequate in the face of a trend of rising misogyny. Phillips admits that “this won’t be quick and it won’t be easy”, but adds that “culture has changed quicker than government has over the past decade,” especially among women. “‘Enough is enough’ isn't just a statement anymore, it is something that the women in our country are expecting to be delivered on.”
This is something, but how many more women will die in the meantime? Women whose names you won’t hear about, whose deaths might have been preventable, such as Sonia Parker, a “very friendly, generous, and kind” 51-year-old living in Kent, who was killed by her boyfriend in May this year. At the scene, the assailant admitted to officers that he repeatedly physically assaulted her out of jealousy over her use of social media.
Parker died as a result of “catastrophic injuries to her head and torso”, according to Kent Police. She was found with “69 marks to her body, internal bruising, damage to her liver and spleen, five fractured back bones and 19 fractures to her ribs and chest”. Some of the injuries, a pathologist found, had predated her death by weeks.
If you are affected by any of the issues in this article, you can call the National Domestic Abuse Helpline
This article has been amended to correct that the Domestic Abuse Protection Order pilot is not part of Raneem's Law
