Have Labour set an impossible target?

In March 2023, Sir Keir Starmer travelled to Stoke-On-Trent for a speech that would define Labour’s mission on law and order.  At Vale Park, the home of Port Vale FC, the Leader of the Opposition, as he then was, set two ambitious targets. If elected, Labour would halve incidents of knife crime, and halve violence against women and girls, within a decade. 

If the announcement was intended to send a signal about the party’s priorities and its direction of travel it succeeded. But in the weeks and months that followed as the General Election loomed, there was surprisingly little scrutiny about how and why Labour had come to set such ambitious objectives. Policies were unveiled relating to the two areas, but MPs and shadow ministers were rarely challenged as to how the targets would be reached. Now they're in government those questions are rightly being asked with greater urgency. 

On violence against women and girls (often referred to as VAWG), in particular, there’s growing frustration among those working in the sector about the lack of progress towards a meaningful strategy which would set a ‘roadmap’ towards halving offences. A strategy was due to be unveiled in the spring but is now set to be published sometime this summer. In fact, the one-year anniversary of Labour’s election victory, next week, is about to pass without the public being any the wiser as to how the target will even be measured or what the baseline will be.

The Home Office has not been inactive. It’s launched a series of practical policies that could make a real difference to victims, such as new protection orders to prevent domestic abuse and stalking, legislation for a criminal offence to tackle drink spiking and a scheme to place domestic abuse specialists in police control rooms. The measures have been welcomed by charities and campaigners, but far more fundamental changes are needed if the Government is going to get anywhere near to achieving its aim.

So why has there been such a delay? Partly, it’s because the VAWG target was set prematurely (to grab attention and signal how important it was to Labour) without a clear understanding of what would be required even to get near to realising it.  When Labour came to power, therefore, a huge amount of work was needed to map the problem and work out what to do.  

At times, ministers have been diverted onto other pressing matters - the riots, last summer, and this year, calls for a public inquiry into ‘grooming gangs’. The issue surfaced in January, when it emerged that Jess Phillips, the Safeguarding Minister leading on the Violence against Women and Girls strategy, had rejected Oldham Council’s request for an inquiry, and it's only in the last fortnight that it has dropped out of the headlines, after the Government accepted the recommendations of the Casey report. I also understand there was a re-think in its approach to the strategy after the four-part Netflix drama, ‘Adolescence’, which deals with themes of misogyny, social media and male rage, was aired in March.

Another, more troubling, problem, appears to be the dearth of reliable research about how to reduce offending against women and girls on the scale the Government has promised. When Labour came to office, officials were asked to conduct an ‘evidence sprint’, to examine existing information on the topic. The findings - according to those familiar with the exercise - were not encouraging because, said one, the evidence is “shit”. Although there have been evaluations into certain projects, such as domestic abuse perpetrator programmes, little is known about effective ways to cut technology-based offending against women and girls, which is growing rapidly and has already become a significant feature in cases of stalking, harassment and coercive control. Reports of ‘cyber-flashing’, where women and girls receive unsolicited sexual images, are now commonplace, as is the sharing of intimate images without consent, while the use of deep-fake sexual imagery is expanding and has been commercialised.  Any strategy to halve violence against women and girls must include a clear plan to substantially reduce technology-based offending - but, so far, no one has identified a proven way to do it.  As for the Online Safety Act, which makes platforms responsible for dealing with illegal content, Phillips candidly said this month at the Commons Home Affairs Committee: “We do not know how it is going to play out yet.” 

The impact of prevention and education programmes, designed to encourage healthy relationships and positive attitudes towards women and girls, is highly uncertain too.  During the committee hearing, Phillips acknowledged that it was not a “well-trodden” path. “Longitudinal studies into what works in the prevention with children is at the foothills, I would say, but there is some evidence, not necessarily from the UK but elsewhere in the world,” she said.

Other experts say the key issue is funding. They argue that large-scale investment in prevention, along with support for victims, will be required, but fear there won’t be sufficient resources. They observed, correctly, that not one mention was made of violence against women and girls in the Chancellor’s Spending Review or the accompanying documents - even though it is central to the ‘Safer Streets’ strand of Labour’s ‘Plan For Change’.  Could this be because the Treasury and some government departments which would lead on prevention and support don’t see it as the priority that the Home Office does? 

That’s certainly the impression from reading the National Audit Office (NAO) review of the previous government’s efforts to combat violence against women and girls. It said: “The Home Office created a dedicated team to lead the VAWG Strategy, but it has found it challenging to get buy-in from other government departments”.  One insider claims that violence against women and girls does not get the attention it should at the Ministry of Justice because Shabana Mahmood, the Justice Secretary, is so immersed in the prisons crisis.

Phillips, however, struck a more optimistic note at the Home Affairs Committee, pointing to the Home Office’s “fierce” focus on violence against women and girls and a cross-government board, with representatives from 14 departments, that is working “collectively” to build a strategy. “Too often, because it sits as a strategic lead for the Home Office, the Home Office ends up picking up the slack for the responsibility of violence against women and girls. So making sure that other government departments are there and are part of that strategy has been really important,” she said. 

Nevertheless, the lights are flashing red. Earlier this month, 82 organisations, led by the ‘End Violence against Women Coalition’, called for a “further consultation process” around the forthcoming strategy in a worrying sign that the people who will be instrumental to delivering change and helping victims have not been listened to. Their concerns echoed those of the NAO in its scathing report about the Conservatives’ attempts to tackle violence against women and girls. The various strategies the Tories deployed had “not improved outcomes for the victims of these crimes or the safety of women and girls more widely”, said the spending watchdog.  

If the target on violence against women and girls, set by Sir Keir Starmer two years ago, is not to become an albatross around his government’s neck, Labour must learn the lessons of the previous administration's failures - and listen to those at the sharp end. It has no more time to lose.