Thank you to everyone who wrote to me about tackling violence against women and girls.

Protecting and defending women from violence is one of the main reasons I entered politics, which is why I am immensely proud that Keir Starmer has made it his mission to halve instances of VAWG in a decade. Achieving that mission will be a hugely difficult task, but I will leave no stone unturned to banish this scourge from society.

That’s why, at last year’s Labour Party Conference, I announced in my conference speech my own plans as Shadow Attorney General to review ways in which the law continues to let women down, including a focus on stalking and whistleblower protections for women who report sexual harassment at work. And it’s also why I have been regularly challenging the government on their appalling failure to take crimes like rape and stalking seriously.

In my role as Shadow Attorney General, I am part of Labour’s crime and justice team, alongside Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and Shadow Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood – the first time all three of these roles have been held by women. Together, we have announced a number of policies that will improve the way the justice system works for victims of VAWG, including:

• Boosting the number of prosecutors to tackle the court backlogs that currently mean the average delay between a rape and the completion of the resulting criminal trial is more than 1,000 days.
• Introducing specialist rape courts to prioritise the victims of sexual violence.
• Launching a trial to allow the six best performing police forces to charge high-risk domestic abuse suspects, to ensure dangerous men are not released on bail in situations where the Crown Prosecution Service cannot making a charging decision on time.
• Giving vulnerable victims in domestic abuse, rape, and sexual assault cases the right to have specialist support advisors with them throughout the criminal justice process and beside them in court.
• Introducing lessons for boys on misogyny and respect for women and girls into the national curriculum, to bring about the cultural change that is so desperately needed, and to counter the dangerous creeping influence on young boys of online misogyny and violent pornography.

We can and must do more to ensure women are able to live their lives free from harassment, discrimination, and violence, and that when they do fall victim to such appalling crimes, the perpetrators are swiftly brought to justice. So please rest assured that I will continue to do all I can to stand up for women’s safety, whether at work, on the street, or in their homes.