Where was Starmer’s ‘milestone’ target to reduce violence against women and girls?

It is deeply disappointing that the prime minister, or indeed any of his ministers, failed to include in the “plan for change” any interim “milestone” target to reduce violence against women and girls. Abigail Ampofo, the interim CEO of Refuge, The Independent’s partner charity for the Brick by Brick project, pleads for a rethink: “Refuge welcomed the government’s pledge to halve violence against women and girls within the next decade, but were left disappointed. Last week’s ONS data confirms that male violence against women and girls remains at horrifically high levels, with around 1.6 million women experiencing domestic abuse in the year ending March 2024. The home secretary Yvette Cooper explains: “We’re working at the moment to work out how you measure overall violence against women and girls, how you look at domestic abuse, how you look at stalking, how you look at sexual offences, so that we can have that measure and so that we can see across the country what progress is being made.” This rather suggests that, if anything, the pledge on violence against women and girls needs to be judged by a variety of measures, so far as they can be relied upon, rather than one particular statistic.