Where is the violence against women and girls strategy? |
There was a revealing moment in today’s Liaison Committee session with Keir Starmer where the Prime Minister was asked about violence against women and girls. The government’s VAWG strategy is ‘due’ this week – in fact, it has been ‘due’ since the summer – and Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood did the Sunday morning broadcast round heralding it yesterday. But when Home Affairs Committee chair Karen Bradley asked Starmer about the strategy itself, he still couldn’t say when it would actually be published. All he would say was that it would come out ‘as soon as possible’, adding: ‘I was in Downing Street when we brought together all the various bodies that are helping, working with us on that, the week before last, and so now we are looking at very shortly in the future.’ That ‘very shortly in the future’ sounds more like the kind of thing a journalist behind on their column might tell a comment editor, rather than a prime minister whose home secretary has already given interviews about a major and overdue strategy.
Bradley complained that given Mahmood had been ‘talking about things that would be in the strategy, I........