Pledge to halve violence against women is ‘ambitious’, Yvette Cooper admits

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Laying out a string of reforms to overhaul policing at an annual summit with police chiefs on Tuesday, Yvette Cooper said policing is at a “critical juncture” with many forces “buckling under the strain”. “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.” open image in gallery Home Secretary Yvette Cooper set out her plans for police reform on Tuesday Other government priorities which will be tracked in the overhaul include halving knife crime in a decade and rebuilding neighbourhood policing. Gavin Stephens, chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, told the conference “policing needs to change” as he said the reforms are a once a generation opportunity to transform forces. open image in gallery Chair of the National Police Chief’s Council Gavin Stephens said ‘policing needs to change’ “I see this less as return to league tables and more a look ahead to what is the really great stuff that’s happening in policing, how we identify it quickly and how we get spread amongst everybody else,” Mr Stephens told reporters.