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Call for Liverpool to adopt
a City wide strategy to end violence against women and girls
THE Women's Equality Party candidate
for Metro Mayor challenged fellow candidate Steve Rotheram to address
Liverpool's extremely high rates of violence against women and girls.
Tabitha Morton, who is campaigning to end violence against women and girls
across the Liverpool City region, said it was time the other mayoral candidates
committed to a City wide strategy. "Since March 2016 when the government
launched its strategy to end violence against women and girls, all major cities
in the country have produced their own regional strategies. This includes
Manchester, Sheffield, Bradford, Bristol and Oxford and almost all London
boroughs, but not the Liverpool City region. It is not an issue our policy
makers are unaware of: this is simply a lack of political will. Joe Anderson and
the other Labour led Councils seem to be too busy with other things. Liverpool
has the highest rates of reported domestic violence in the UK, and of very high
risk domestic abuse incidents. This tells us that violence against women and
girls is at epidemic levels in our region, and that is why we need a holistic
strategy to end it. These are some of the worst human rights violations of our
time." said Tabitha Morton.
Morton added that Liverpool's strategy should be based on best practises and
developed in close collaboration with local organisations that work with victims
and survivors of male violence. Tabitha Morton added that:- "Violence against women and girls is both a cause and a consequence of
women's inequality. Services that help women survivors
have been hit particularly hard by government cuts and women are being turned
away from live saving support. This has to stop. The funding model is broken and the Women's
Equality Party is calling for an end to competitive tendering as it does not
meet the needs of women who are suffering or have survived male violence." |
