Teachers will be trained to spot early signs of misogyny in boys and steer them away from it as part of the government’s long-awaited strategy to tackle violence against women and girls (VAWG).

Sir Keir Starmer warned “too often toxic ideas are taking hold early and going unchallenged”, with more than 40% of young men said to hold a positive view of misogynistic influencer Andrew Tate.

He has been challenged about his ideology in the past and called the concerns “garbage”.

Sir Keir’s government will formally unveil a £20m package of measures today, with £16m coming from the taxpayer and £4m from philanthropists and partners.

Teachers will also get specialist training on how to talk to pupils about issues like consent and the dangers of sharing intimate images – and all secondary school pupils in England will be taught about healthy relationships.

Such lessons will be mandatory by the end of this parliament in 2029, with schools to be chosen for a pilot scheme in 2026, which experts will be brought in to deliver.

And an online helpline will be set up for teenagers with concerns about their own behaviour in relationships.

The measures are part of the government’s strategy to halve VAWG in a decade, and the prime minister said it’s a “responsibility we owe to the next generation”.

“Every parent should be able to trust that their daughter is safe at school, online and in her relationships,” he said.

“This government is stepping in sooner – backing teachers, calling out misogyny, and intervening when warning signs appear – to stop harm before it starts.”

Department for Education-commissioned research found 70% of secondary school teachers surveyed said their school had actively dealt with sexual violence and/or harassment between children.

VAWG minister Jess Phillips told Sky News political editor Beth Rigby she had spoken to her own children about what’s normal sexual behaviour and what isn’t because she knows “what they might be exposed to”.

She said if the government does nothing to intervene, VAWG could double rather than be halved.

Jess Phillips: I’ve talked to my kids about strangulation

Read more:
Teams deployed to tackle violence ’emergency’
Domestic abuse survivors to get NHS help

The government has already announced several other measures to tackle VAWG this week, including introducing specialist rape and sexual offences investigators to every police force, better support for survivors in the NHS, and a £19m funding boost for councils to provide safe housing for domestic abuse survivors.

Investment ‘falls short’

But Dame Nicole Jacobs, the domestic abuse commissioner for England and Wales, said the commitments “do not go far enough” and schools are overburdened already.

“Today’s strategy rightly recognises the scale of this challenge and the need to address the misogynistic attitudes that underpin it, but the level of investment to achieve this falls seriously short,” she said.

Claire Waxman, the incoming victims commissioner, added: “Victim services are not an optional extra to this strategy – they must be the backbone of it.

“Without clear, sustainable investment and cross-government leadership, I am concerned we run the risk of the strategy amounting to less than the sum of its parts; a wish list of tactical measures rather than a bold, unifying strategic framework.”

There have been three strategies by three successive governments to tackle violence against women and girls (VAWG) since 2010, and one refresh.

What has been the result of these endeavours? Police chiefs in 2024 described the scale of violence against women and girls as “a national emergency” as over one million incidents were reported in 2022/3, accounting for 20% of all police recorded crime.

At least one in every 12 women will be a victim, but the number is probably higher than that, as this sort of violence is typically underreported.

You will likely know a woman who is the victim of abuse. When you look at the situation, and think of all the mums, sisters, daughters, aunts and friends, it makes you want to put your head in your hands: strategy after strategy, plan after plan, women and girls and the victims of abuse are being let down.

Today, the government will launch a new strategy, drawn up by Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, that will attempt to finally put this right.

The promise is to halve violence against women and girls in a decade after what has been, as Phillips puts it, “a catalogue of failures”.

That catalogue of failures is long.

Successive governments had “failed to deliver a genuinely whole-of-government approach”, concluded the National Audit Office (NAO) at the beginning of this year, as it detailed a string of shortcomings when it came to VAWG plans: partial implementation; failure to learn from past strategies; no oversight of government funding being used for VAWG; a focus on victim support rather than prevention; and a lack of buy-in from government departments.

Phillips, who spent her career campaigning for victims of domestic violence before becoming an MP, wants to break that chain with her new plan, which has three pillars: prevention, with a focus on boys and young men to challenge misogyny and promote healthy relationships; stopping abusers, with more efforts and power for police forces to track down abusers; and more victim support.

It is a strategy that has been delayed three times. It was first expected in the spring, then the summer, to autumn, before eventually landing 18 months into a Labour government.

The delays have drawn criticism from campaigners, frustrated they “put more lives at risk”.

Read more:
Schools will teach about healthy relationships to tackle misogyny

‘I’m going to be getting up in everybody’s business’

When I spoke to Phillips about those delays on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast, she made no apology for that: “I could have hit the deadline and missed the point.”

“I’m not really interested in a headline that says, ‘minister delivers a strategy one time’,” she said, explaining she’d had to “bang heads together” in different government departments to get buy-in and coordination (something the NAO said previous strategies lacked).

Phillips said the strategy contains a written action plan with time frames in it, as she insists the target to halve VAWG can be hit within the decade, despite the delay. There will be an inter-ministerial VAWG group to improve cross-government working.

She said: “What we have been doing is going into other government departments and building up relationships with their teams. We have VAWG-specific staff in Number 10 now. That’s never existed before. And we have been in the Department of Health. We have been in the Department of Transport. The real answer is I’m going to be getting up in everybody’s business. That’s the reason it has taken so long.”

Share

‘Women deserve to feel safer’

Strategy also focuses on men and boys

Speaking to Phillips, you cannot doubt her determination to make it a reality, and much of this strategy focuses on men and boys as well as women and girls, with a big focus on prevention and stopping abuse.

“I would be failing, we would be failing, if we didn’t try to prevent people who were already perpetrating – and stopping people becoming perpetrators in the first place,” she said.

That involves the classroom and more conversations and bringing in men and boys to make them feel they are part of this.

Risk of ‘doubling’ VAWG

When I point out to Phillips that one in four 18 to 29-year-olds had favourable views towards Andrew Tate, she was quick to make the point that three out of four don’t.

“If we don’t do something about the situation with what young people, both victims and perpetrators, are exposed to, then not only would we not halve [VAWG in a decade], but I would also be talking about the risk of doubling it,” she said.

‘I have spoken to my children in really explicit terms’

What struck me in our conversation, and as a mum of two teenagers myself, is the role Phillips said we all need to take in talking to our children about what they are being exposed to online.

Phillips points out that the age profile of perpetrators is dropping as younger people become more exposed to violent pornography.

One of the elements in the strategy is to ban strangulation in porn. Another is to have mandatory guidance in secondary schools to offer lessons on culture, increasing awareness of artificial intelligence and how pornography links to misogyny.

Phillips, who has two sons, said it’s incumbent on all of us to have those conversations with our kids about what is normal sexual behaviour and what is not.

“I have spoken to my children in really explicit terms about the things that I think they might be seeing and think as standardised in sexual practice,” she told me. “I have tried to talk to them about things like strangulation. I have said it is totally and utterly not like normal sexual behaviour because I know what they might be exposed to.”

Criticism over handling of grooming gangs

But as a campaigner around domestic violence and now a minister charged with halving VAWG, Phillips has also faced criticism over the government’s handling of grooming gangs.

Fiona Goddard, who was abused by an organised street gang in Bradford, quit her role on the victims panel in the autumn and called for the resignation of the minister over her handling of the inquiry setup, which Phillips admitted she found personally difficult.

She said: “I’m not going to lie and pretend that it’s nice when the thing that you care the most about in the world is the thing you are criticised for. And actually, when Fiona Goddard does that, I just take it. Fiona Goddard has every right to criticise me. When other people who never have done a bar’s work in this area, but want to use that to politically criticise, I think that’s cynical.

“One of the things that I think has been hardest about this process is that I am held to a different standard to literally everybody else. Now of course I should be held to a different standard because let’s be honest, Beth, I’m better than most people who’ve had my job before because of my experience.”

‘The strategy isn’t the end, it’s the beginning’

Phillips, the victim herself of a torrent of online abuse from Elon Musk over grooming gangs earlier this year, before the latest furore over the setting up of the national inquiry, now has police protection.

I wonder whether the launch of the strategy might be the moment Phillips steps back, but she’s having none of it.

“The strategy isn’t the end, it’s the beginning. There’s a lot of work to do. I would be lying if I didn’t say it didn’t have a mental toll on me, but I am not the only person doing this work, it isn’t all on me… the upside is better, it’s worth it,” she said.

The strategy Phillips is spearheading is the fourth in 15 years. After a series of false starts, Phillips insisted this time it will be different. For the sake of our women and our girls, I hope she is right.

Dozens of Labour MPs have called on the government to ensure changes to permanent residency requirements do not pull support for Hong Kongers and others on humanitarian visas.

The 34 MPs say they have “significant concerns about the potential adverse consequences” of changes announced in November to indefinite leave to remain (IRL), which allows migrants to live, work and study permanently in the UK, then acquire British citizenship.

They have written to migration minister Mike Tapp to ask him to ensure new requirements are not applied retroactively to about 200,000 Hong Kongers who were granted British National Overseas (BNO) visas from 2021 by the previous Conservative government after fleeing a crackdown by Beijing.

Of particular concern is the newly announced requirement for “upper intermediate” (B2) level of English, increased from “intermediate” (B1), and the necessity to have earned more than £12,570 a year for a minimum of three to five years before being able to apply for IRL.

The earliest Hong Kongers who came to the UK on a BNO visa will become eligible to apply for IRL from March 2026, with the MPs fearing they could be prevented from earning settled status after already waiting five years.

They said they are faced with the “prospect of an alarming scenario where a great number of BNO visa holders are locked out of attaining ILR after five years in the UK, as was promised to them when they repatriated to the UK”.

“Returning to Hong Kong is not an option for them,” the MPs warned.

They said pensioners, disabled people, young adults, those at university and homemakers will all fail to meet the minimum salary requirements, which would mean they could be denied IRL.

The MPs said the Home Office should recognise other contributions, such as volunteering, caring responsibilities or being a key worker, and should continue to recognise a degree taught in English at a UK university as meeting the proficiency in English.

‘Historic duty’

Senior Labour MP Sarah Champion, a signatory, told Sky News: “I have BNO constituents who are now hugely anxious about their immigration status.

“The confusion over who is/isn’t eligible to remain with the government’s new immigration policy is severely impacting their mental health.

“The UK has a historic duty to Hong Kong, it was right the last government created the BNO scheme; we now need to make clear that people from Hong Kong are still welcome to remain.”

Share

Briton Jimmy Lai found guilty in Hong Kong

Research conducted by Labour MP James Naish, who has just under 3,000 BNO holders in his Rushcliffe constituency and organised the letter, found if the new English requirement was rolled out rigidly, only 8% of BNO visa households would be able to fully access ILR after five years in the UK.

His research, a survey of 6,667 BNO holders, found a further 43% of BNO households would have no members of their household eligible.

The MPs also said Hong Kong pensioners in the UK have left behind HK$3.8bn (about £360m) in Hong Kong’s state pension system, which they can only access once they have settled status, and with many having planned for five years this could cause them financial difficulties.

More from Sky News:
Reaction to Trump’s angry speech
Teachers to be trained to spot misogyny

In their letter, the MPs also said all other humanitarian visa routes should be exempt from the changes, as otherwise it would “undermine the humanitarian intent” of the schemes.

Mr Naish told Sky News: “The BNO visa was created with cross-party support to offer a safe route for Hong Kongers following the crackdown on civil liberties in Hong Kong. Many families made life-changing decisions based on the clear promise of a path to settlement after five years.

“It’s essential that the small print of the government’s proposals on earned settlement reflects the government’s headline support for the BNO visa scheme.”

The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation said: “The UK must honour its obligations under the Sino-British Joint Declaration and protect Hong Kongers seeking freedom here.”