Specialist teams and online investigators deployed across England and Wales to tackle ‘national emergency’ of violence against women and girls

Specialist investigation teams for rape and sexual offences are to be created across England and Wales as the Home Secretary declares violence against women and girls a “national emergency”.

Shabana Mahmood said the dedicated units will be in place across every force by 2029 as part of Labour’s violence against women and girls (VAWG) strategy due to be launched later this week.

The use of Domestic Abuse Protection Orders (DAPOs), which had been trialled in several areas, will also be rolled out across England and Wales. They are designed to target abusers by imposing curfews, electronic tags and exclusion zones.

The orders cover all forms of domestic abuse, including economic abuse, coercive and controlling behaviour, stalking and ‘honour’-based abuse. Breaching the terms can carry a prison term of up to 5 years.

Nearly £2m will also be spent funding a network of officers to target offenders operating within the online space.

Teams will use covert and intelligence techniques to tackle violence against women and girls via apps and websites.

A similar undercover network funded by the Home Office to examine child sexual abuse has arrested over 1,700 perpetrators.

Abuse is ‘national emergency’

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said in a statement: “This government has declared violence against women and girls a national emergency.

“For too long, these crimes have been considered a fact of life. That’s not good enough. We will halve it in a decade.

“Today we announce a range of measures to bear down on abusers, stopping them in their tracks. Rapists, sex offenders and abusers will have nowhere to hide.”

The target to halve violence against women and girls in a decade is a Labour manifesto pledge.

The government said the measures build on existing policy, including facial recognition technology to identify offenders, improving protections for stalking victims, making strangulation a criminal offence and establishing domestic abuse specialists in 999 control rooms.

Read more from Sky News:
Demands for violence and abuse reforms
Women still feel unsafe on streets
Minister ‘clarifies’ violence strategy

Labour has ‘failed women’

But the Conservatives said Labour had “failed women” and “broken its promises” by delaying the publication of the violence against women and girls strategy.

Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Philp, said that Labour “shrinks from uncomfortable truths, voting against tougher sentences and presiding over falling sex-offender convictions. At every turn, Labour has failed women.”