Budget to address violence against women and girls will be spent, the minister promises

Money assigned to address violence against women and girls (Vawg) will be spent, said a minister, after a report found a previous subsistence and failures in the last leadership of the Ministry of Interior on the subject.

The government’s efforts in recent years have not improved the results for the victims and the Ministry of Interior, the main department in charge of the work to address it, “currently does not lead an effective response from the National Audit Office (NAO).

According to the conservatives, the Interior Ministry had “historically injured” its own budget assigned to the Vawg strategy on an average of 15%, said the expense guard dog.

Vawg is a “significant and growing problem” that affects one in 12 women, Nao said.

A key promise of Labor when the party arrived in the government last summer was half Vawg in the next decade.

The NAO said that to meet this objective, the Interior Ministry “will need to lead a coordinated response from the entire system that addresses Vawg causes.”

The Minister of Police, Dame Diana Johnson, said that the current government has a “approach to the entire system” that also analyzes preventive measures and addressing the criminal justice system and delays in court.

She told the Good Morning of ITV Great Britain: “This is a type of full approach throughout society. It cannot be only for the police, and … one of the criticisms in the report of the National Audit Office was that the Interior Ministry was basically doing this on its own.

“They were not spending their budget.

“We are adopting a very different approach, this is throughout the system.

“We want to spend the money that is available on this really important issue.”

The Secretary of the Interior and Domestic Violence and the Minister of Salvaguardia Jess Phillips will establish a complete strategy in the spring to meet the objective of the Labor.

While the Ministry of Interior under the conservatives created a dedicated team to lead its Vawg 2021 strategy, the Nao said met up to a year after launch.

A ministerial supervision group for the strategy “only met four times in three years,” added the NAO.

The prevalence of sexual aggression against women aged 16 to 59 in England and Wales was 4.3% in 2023-24, compared to 3.4% in 2009-10, NAO said.

In that same period, incidents of sexual violation and aggression against women and girls registered by the police increased from 34,000 to 123,000, although the NAO said this could be partly explained by a better record of such crimes.

Nao’s report raised questions about funds, saying that compared to the 2021 illegal drug strategy, there was no review of prepared joint expenses with respect to the VAWG strategy, and pointed out that the Ministry of the Historic Interior stressed in this area.

The Guardian dog declared: “Our analysis suggests that other government departments spent at least £ 979 million between 2021-22 and 2023-24.

“The Interior Ministry has historically underlined its own budget assigned to the Vawg strategy, in an average of 15% between 2021-22 and 2023-24”.

The Secretary of the Interior of the Shadow, Chris Philp, defended the record of the conservatives, telling Sky News: “It is something that the last government took incredibly seriously.

“According to successive interior, a complete initiative called the underground operation was established with the police, and in reality working with academics to discover the best way to identify the perpetrators of a particular violation and sexual aggression and take them to justice to increase The condemnation rate. . “

He said there was an “intergovernmental working group” that analyzed the response of the justice system to violation, serious sexual assault and violence against women and girls, and there was “a succession of protection ministers that were really committed to this”.

According to the National Police Chiefs Council, Operation Sotelia was “developed in response to national concern about violation investigation and serious crimes of sexual assault (…) and the growing epidemic that is violence against women and girls. “

The body says that the program helps support forces with the vision of “academic experts” and “professional knowledge.”

Gareth Davies, Chief of the NAO, said: “Government’s efforts to address violence against women and girls have not yet improved the results for victims of these crimes.

“The lack of an effective and intergovernmental approach and a limited understanding of what works to help reduce these crimes means that the Ministry of Interior cannot be sure that the government is doing the best that can keep women and girls safe .

“The new government has established an ambitious objective to reduce violence against women and girls in the next decade. A well -informed and implemented cross response is needed effectively, which addresses both the causes and the consequences of these crimes. “

A spokesman from the Ministry of Interior said that the report had analyzed the “failure of the previous government to deliver a systemic change”, and promised labor is “to deliver a change of passage in the government’s response.”

They added: “In the last six months, we have not lost time to take measures to better protect the victims and chase the perpetrators. This includes the launch of new orders for the protection of domestic abuse, begin the deployment of domestic abuse specialists in 999 control rooms, strengthen the police response to increase and harassment, and be a pioneer in a truly intergoverning approach to address these problems.

“We will not stop until we have a system that protects the victims, support their journey to justice and make the perpetrators accounts.”