In his pitch to voters in March last year, Keir Starmer said he wanted to “imagine a society where violence against women is stamped out everywhere”. His government would, he pledged, halve violence against women and girls in a decade. It was a bold, simple statement, widely welcomed for its ambition.
That something has to change is not in doubt. The first national analysis of the scale of violence against women and girls (VAWG) released in July by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) estimated that 2 million women were victims of male violence every year – an epidemic so serious it amounts to a “national emergency”. VAWG crimes account for 20% of all police-recorded crime.
