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I was invited to hear the prime minister, Keir Starmer, set out his plan for change today.
Six months into government, he set out Labour’s priorities: kickstarting economic growth, building an NHS fit for the future, safer streets, breaking down barriers to opportunity, and making Britain a clean energy superpower.
He talked about building 1.5m new homes, investing in our NHS, ensuring children get the start in life that they need and deserve, and announced 150 new infrastructure projects – all welcome and much-needed commitments.
But he had nothing to say about violence against women and girls (VAWG). Nothing to say about adult survivors of rape now waiting 710 days on average from the point of complaint to proceedings being concluded.
Nothing to say about the 1 in 4 women raped or sexually assaulted since the age of 16, or the 1 in 6 children sexually abused – usually by someone they know and trust.
'The economy improving won't stop rape'
Rape and sexual abuse can happen to anyone. It doesn’t matter if you’re in work or out, if you’re an adult or a child, a refugee or asylum seeker, homeless or housed, sick or well, working class or not.
So if the economy improves, that won’t stop rape. And if they build an NHS and restore dignity and care to patients, that won’t stop rape. And if we move to clean energy, and improve social mobility, that won’t stop rape. None of these things will stop rape.
Under their commitment to ‘safer streets’, Labour *have* set an ambition to halve VAWG in a decade. Leaving the problematic framing of ‘safer streets’ aside for a moment, we still have no sense of how that can be achieved.
And in the context of the third sector not being exempt from national insurance hikes translating into a real-term pay cut in our member centres’ grants, and less money being allocated out to police and crime commissioners, and chronic and acute underfunding for decades, our member centres face unimaginably difficult choices: increase their waitlists? Lose staff? Close down altogether?
'I wonder what the government would like us to say to her'
One centre manager said to me recently that they’ve always held everything together. Now, she said, she’s at the point of not knowing what to do anymore, or how to continue. Half of our centres were already anticipating making cuts earlier this year, and a third were at risk of closure.
We celebrated 50 years of the Rape Crisis movement in England and Wales this year. When I gave my speech at our national conference last month, I asked every person in the room to applaud themselves for the movement they've built, for the services they run, and for the fact that, every day, they help women and children in their deepest distress and most acute trauma. And give them a safe space to begin to think about rebuilding their lives in the aftermath of rape and sexual abuse.
A survivor asked us once, when discussing her appalling experience of the criminal justice system, "Was I not worth it? Did I not matter?".
I wonder what the government would like us to say to her. Or to the 14,000 survivors on centre waiting lists.
Because, right now, it doesn’t feel like our member centres or the survivors they support are on anyone’s priority list.
Ciara Bergman, CEO, Rape Crisis England & Wales