Leading organisations have criticised the development of the government\u2019s flagship violence against women and girls strategy, calling the process chaotic, haphazard and \u201cworse than under the Tories\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ministers are gearing up for a policy announcement blitz before the publication of the long-awaited plan next week.<\/p>\n
Important voices in the violence against women and girls (VAWG) sector have privately accused ministers of sidelining first-hand expertise and expressed concern that the strategy will not be sufficiently radical to achieve the government\u2019s flagship manifesto promise to halve the rate of VAWG in the UK in a decade.<\/p>\n
Initially expected in spring, the VAWG strategy was delayed until summer and then autumn.<\/p>\n
On Friday it emerged that schoolboys would be the target of the strategy, which the BBC reported would be built around the pillars of preventing radicalisation of young men, stopping abusers and supporting victims.<\/p>\n
But multiple sources from organisations working in the VAWG sector said they had felt sidelined during the devising of the strategy.<\/p>\n
One figure in the sector, comparing the past 18 months with the process before the strategy produced in 2019 by the Conservative government, said: \u201cIt is worse than under the Tories. In fact, we were so much better off under the Tories, you could get a meeting, they engaged with you. This whole process has been incredibly haphazard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another figure in the sector noted that after the murder of Sarah Everard, the Conservative government reopened a public consultation. \u201cWe saw more senior ministers and had more contact with the secretary of state under the last government,\u201d they said. \u201cMinisters like Alex Davies-Jones and Jess Phillips<\/a> have clearly worked hard on this, but it feels the machine has worked against them.\u201d<\/p>\n Further concern is that the publication of the strategy, which is expected just before parliament closes for the Christmas recess, will be lost. \u201cThey\u2019ve had 18 months and now they\u2019re scrabbling around in the last week of parliament. It just feels like an afterthought,\u201d said one source. \u201cIt hasn\u2019t felt like it\u2019s been a properly considered process where they\u2019ve really sought the expertise in a considered way. It\u2019s been slightly haphazard.\u201d<\/p>\n On Tuesday Karen Bradley, the chair of the home affairs committee, wrote to Phillips and Davies-Jones<\/a> to complain that \u201cthere has been poor engagement and transparency with VAWG stakeholders throughout the development of the VAWG strategy\u201d. She noted that the VAWG advisory board \u2013 which contained experts to guide policy \u2013 had met only twice in person and once online and its role had been limited.<\/p>\n Andrea Simon, the director of the End Violence Against Women and Girls coalition, said there had been positive moves from the government, including \u00a3550m of funding for victim support<\/a>, and proposed law changes to improve the fair treatment of victims in rape trials<\/a> and ban depictions of strangulation in pornography<\/a>. She called on the government to commit to a monitoring and evaluation structure for the strategy, to ensure accountability.<\/p>\n \u201cWithout that, the government will potentially fall foul of the lack of oversight we\u2019ve seen in previous, underresourced strategies,\u201d she said. \u201cThere has been a lot of rhetoric about commitment to halving VAWG through a cross-government approach, but that won\u2019t stand up unless they are willing to be open, transparent, and bring in external scrutiny.\u201d<\/p>\n While stories were emerging about the strategy in the press, a different figure said a full document had not been shared with even a small number of trusted parties. \u201cYou have to ask how a cross-governmental, strong strategy is being built if none of the experts are at the table,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n Karen Ingala Smith, a co-founder of the Femicide Census, said it was \u201cdisappointed\u201d not to have been invited to join the VAWG advisory board, adding that the two wider meetings she or her co-founder, Clarrie O\u2019Callaghan, had attended felt like \u201cbox-ticking\u201d exercises.<\/p>\n \u201cIt felt like it wouldn\u2019t have mattered what we said, it wasn\u2019t going to make any difference to what was written,\u201d she said. \u201cIt felt perfunctory and tokenistic.\u201d<\/p>\n For the past decade the Femicide Census has provided Phillips with the names of all women killed by men over a year for her to read out in parliament near International Women\u2019s Day<\/a>. The VAWG minister told the Guardian last year that ending the \u201cscourge of femicide\u201d<\/a> would be a \u201cfundamental part\u201d of the government\u2019s promise to drastically reduce violence against women and girls. \u201cBut it has been quiet since then, and we are concerned that promise will be watered down,\u201d said Ingala Smith.<\/p>\n The Home Office has been approached for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leading organisations have criticised the development of the government\u2019s flagship violence against women and girls strategy, calling the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312583,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-312582","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}