“We warmly welcome the new Labour government and are heartened to see a diverse Cabinet and front bench team which includes specialists in the issues of violence against women and girls and domestic abuse.
We are encouraged by the ambitious pledge in the Labour manifesto to halve violence against women and girls in a decade. We are particularly pleased to see the commitment to “use every government tool available to target perpetrators and address the root causes of abuse and violence” and to see this is a key cross government priority. This gives us hope that real change is possible.
As the UK charity stopping perpetrators of domestic abuse, we are keen to work in partnership with Ministers to achieve this aim. Many of the issues are set out in our pre-election manifesto Stopping Domestic Abuse where we identify 4 key asks:
Fund specialist services in every area
Prioritise data and evidence
Make justice work
Focus on prevention
Alongside high levels of ambition and leadership that works across government, we also need to see a radical scale up of funding for both the specialist voluntary sector and the state response to perpetrators that matches the size of the problem.
To achieve its bold pledge to have violence against women, the new government will first need to gain a clear understanding of the number that needs to be halved – and that means collecting data on perpetrators and evidence on what works to stop them.
We believe it is possible for the state response to be radically better, for lives to be saved and for the wellbeing of survivors to be significantly improved. But this requires an overhaul of state systems, many of which have for too long failed to stop perpetrators – or even try to.
Finally, we believe wholeheartedly that prevention is better than cure. We want to see a grown-up approach which is truly multi-agency, cross-government and focused on social change which prevents abuse before it starts.
We urge Ministers to ensure that stopping perpetrators of domestic abuse remains high on the agenda and look forward to working with the new government as it puts its plans into action.”
