Suzy Lamplugh Trust Statement on VAWG National Emergency

Today, the National Police Chief’s Council (NPCC) and College of Policing declared violence perpetrated by men a national emergency. Whilst we welcome this report, and the due attention it brings to the nature and scale of these crimes, we are sadly not shocked by reports that violence against women and girls (VAWG) is an epidemic in the UK. This report echoes findings from the Strategic Threat Risk Assessment (STRA) published by the NPCC in May 2023 which officially classed VAWG as a national threat alongside terrorism. One year on from this classification, we are yet to see decisive governmental action to prevent VAWG crimes, and a severely lacking criminal justice response, with reporting today suggesting that the crisis is deepening.  

We, alongside partners in the VAWG sector, are all too aware of the barriers victims of VAWG crimes face when accessing support. Specialist VAWG services are critically under-funded, with victims facing a postcode lottery for support, and the vast majority of victims that choose to pursue a criminal justice outcome failing to receive a conviction for their perpetrator. We welcome commitments from the new Government to halve all VAWG crimes in the next decade, yet this report is another crucial reminder of the importance that they deliver on this promise and publish detail of how they will achieve this.  

In the year ending March 2023 there were 1.6 million victims of stalking. Despite the focus on stalking behaviours in this report, we are frustrated to see stalking perpetrated by an ex-intimate partner subsumed within domestic abuse data within the NPCC data. Stalking is a crime characterised by fixation and obsession and can have a devastating psychological impact on victims. Many cases that come through to the National Stalking Helpline have been ongoing for over a decade. It is therefore vital that stalking is recognised as a crime in and of itself, to ensure the true scale of the crime is captured and responded to accordingly.  

Interim CEO Emma Lingley-Clark says, “It is vital that stalking is treated with the gravity it deserves, yet once again we see half of stalking crimes subsumed within domestic abuse in new NPCC data. This comes alongside a report published today by the London Victims’ Commissioner that spotlights the scale of stalking in London and inadequate response from the criminal justice system. We demand that all official data disaggregates stalking from other VAWG crimes so that the true national scale of stalking is understood and treated. We also urge the new Government to ensure that this evidence is translated into meaningful action to improve criminal justice response and invest in prevention, to ensure that victims of stalking do not continue to face this epidemic alone”.