Tag Archives: ending violence against women and girls

Mark Valladares

16 April 2026 – the press releases

By Mark Valladares | Thu 16th April 2026 - 11:05 pm
  • Chamberlain: Peach ballot key to holding SNP to account on secrecy and broken promises
  • Vote to cut the cost of living urges Scot Lib Dem leader
  • Scottish Lib Dems lay out manifesto plans to tackle violence against women
  • Greene: Tory downfall due to Findlay and Badenoch’s leadership

Chamberlain: Peach ballot key to holding SNP to account on secrecy and broken promises

Speaking ahead of the SNP’s manifesto launch, Scottish Liberal Democrat deputy leader and campaign chair Wendy Chamberlain MP has urged Scots to use their peach ballot paper to …

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Mark Valladares

17 October 2025 – today’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Fri 17th October 2025 - 10:30 pm
  • Number of serious childbirth injuries spikes by over a fifth
  • Lib Dems winners of by-elections Super Thursday, sweeping the board in once true blue Surrey as Conservative council tries to delay elections again
  • Farron: No Govt change on family farm tax is a “kick in the teeth” to farmers
  • Chamberlain to set out plans to tackle violence against women and girls

Number of serious childbirth injuries spikes by over a fifth

The number of third and fourth degree perineal tears following child birth has spiked dramatically since 2021 with the injuries now affecting almost 3% of all births.

The data found that, as of 2024, almost 29 in every 1,000 births now results in a serious perineal tear, up from 23.5 in 2021, the first full year of comparable data. That is a rise of more than a fifth. The number has risen every year between the comparable years since that data began to be recorded. Throughout 2024 there were 7,995 third or fourth degree tears reported.

The research also revealed that the number of readmissions following childbirth has risen on last year, with more than 5% of all childbirths resulting in one with more than 14,000 reported in 2024.

It comes as previous Liberal Democrat research has also found that the number of maternal deaths has also risen from 209 in 2015-17 to 254 in 2021-23. The NHS has faced a £27 billion bill for maternity failings over recent years, far more than the health service’s £18 billion budget for newborns over that period.

In April the government announced cuts to the national Service Development Funding (SDF) for maternity services from £95m in 2024-25 to just £2m in 2025-26. The fund had been introduced following the Ockenden Review into maternity services at Shrewsbury and Telford to improve the quality of maternity care.

The Liberal Democrats said the figures were “heartbreaking” as more mothers had to endure these traumatic births. The party has called on the Government to immediately implement all of the actions from the Ockenden report into maternity care and to reverse the cuts to the SDF.

Liberal Democrat Health Spokesperson Helen Morgan MP said:

Behind these figures are heartbreaking stories of women suffering unimaginable trauma at a moment that should be full of joy.

The Conservatives neglect of maternity services was unforgivable, putting mothers and babies under threat, but Labour risks kicking action on this problem into the long grass. We of course need to understand why these awful injuries are on the rise but the Government’s inquiry cannot be used as a shield against taking meaningful action now.

It is unacceptable that, while so many women die or are injured by poor maternity care, the Government raided the key ring-fenced fund for improving maternity services. Their promises to improve safety will ring hollow until they change course.

If the Government is serious about ending the disaster unfolding on our maternity wards, they must reverse these cuts at once, support our hard-working NHS teams, and implement every measure in the Ockenden Review without delay.

Lib Dems winners of by-elections Super Thursday, sweeping the board in once true blue Surrey as Conservative council tries to delay elections again

  • Party wins 7 out of 10 council by-elections this week, including all 6 out of 6 in Surrey.
  • Wins include Caterham in East Surrey constituency, held by Claire Coutinho, Shadow Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, as Ed Davey says “what remains of the Blue Wall is crumbling away.”
  • ⁠Lib Dems also gain from Labour in Preston, beating Reform to the win.
  • ⁠Conservatives in Surrey looking to delay elections again in bid to remain in power for another year.

The Liberal Democrats have won the most by-elections on what has been dubbed ‘Super Thursday’, winning 7 out of the 10 council seats up. The wins came in Surrey but also in Preston, Lancashire, where the party gained from Labour, beating Reform to the win.

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Caron Lindsay

Call to end “racist weaponisation” of violence against women and girls

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 23rd August 2025 - 12:30 pm

The End Violence against Women and Girls coalition has called for an end to the “racist weaponisation” of violence against women and girls to further an anti migrant agenda:

Over recent weeks, people claiming to care about the “safety of women and children” have left families, women and children living in temporary asylum accommodation afraid to leave their front door. They follow in the footsteps of the rioters who used the appalling murder of three young girls as an excuse to bring violence to our streets; with targeted attacks against migrant, minoritised and Muslim communities. That two out of five of those arrested for that disorder themselves had police histories of domestic abuse illustrates not only the pervasiveness of gender-based violence but the disingenuous nature of many of those who claim to have the interests of women and children at heart. Meanwhile, members of Parliament freely share false statistics about the nationality of perpetrators. Government ministers have even endorsed some of this summer’s demonstrators as having ‘legitimate’ concerns, which risks normalising and enabling the spreading of racist narratives by the far-right.

Not only do these falsehoods fail to keep women safe, they serve as a racist distraction that actively impedes the urgent work of addressing gender-based violence. Myths and misconceptions about sexual violence act as a barrier to justice for survivors. Spreading an inaccurate picture of VAWG in the UK allows the people – overwhelmingly men, from all walks of life – who harm women and girls to hide behind racial stereotypes and scapegoating. Meanwhile, hostile immigration policies propped up by this misinformation put many of the most marginalised women and survivors in the UK – racialised, migrant, refugee and asylum-seeking women – at even greater risk of harm, destitution, homelessness, exploitation and criminalisation.

We have seen this sort of thing happen before when the right, many of whom have never lifted a finger to do anything for women’s rights in their lives, use women’s safety to demonise and target trans people. Of course that sort of behaviour was never going to stop there.

Andrea Simon the Director of the End Violence against Women coalition said:

The far-right has long exploited the cause of ending violence against women and girls to promote a racist, white supremacist agenda. These attacks against migrant and racialised communities are appalling and do nothing to improve women and girls’ autonomy, rights and freedoms. What’s more, they ignore the reality that most violence against women and girls is perpetrated by someone known to them.

The fight to end gender-based violence and uphold migrant rights are connected, as they rely on a world in which everyone’s human rights are respected. Political leaders must change course and play a positive role in working to build a better world for all.

On the same theme, Glamour magazine has interviews with three women from places where there have been riots and protests allegedly aimed at protecting women. All three reject the premise of these demonstrations. Theresa, from Wath-on-Dearne says:

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The Voice

Wera Hobhouse: We need to do more to tackle violence against women and girls

By The Voice | Sun 6th March 2022 - 2:00 pm

This week, Lib Dem Women and Equalities Spokesperson Wera Hobhouse spoke in a parliamentary debate on preventing violence against women and girls. She spoke about the need for age appropriate sex education to help tackle sexual harassment in schools, the need for local authorities to be given sufficient funding to help victims of sexual violence and domestic abuse, the failure of the criminal justice system in this area and the need to make misogyny a hate crime.

She said:

It is a real pleasure and privilege to speak in this debate. We have talked about this issue many times, and I could not agree more with the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) that the time for talking should be over and we need to see a lot more action.

I want to praise the organisations in Bath that are working on tackling violence against women and girls: the Southside project, which supports families affected by domestic violence and abuse; Somerset and Avon Rape and Sexual Abuse Support, or SARSAS, a specialist support service for women and girls who have experienced any form of sexual violence at any point in their lives; and Voices, a survivor-led charity supporting those living with and beyond domestic abuse to recover from their trauma, which redoubled its efforts during the pandemic to make sure that no one was forgotten. I was delighted to recognise Voices with the first Best of Bath award last year.

But we should not leave it to charities to tackle violence against women and girls. We must do a lot more not only to support survivors but to prevent the terrible violence from occurring in the first place. We absolutely need to improve police training so that victims and survivors are properly supported. Many crimes do not even enter the criminal justice system. Over 600,000 women are sexually assaulted each year, but only one in six of those assaults is reported to the police. We must give women and girls the reassurance that their concerns are taken seriously whenever they report crimes of assault or domestic abuse.

I would like to add something to the motion before us today. Supporting victims of violence and sexual abuse begins at a local level. The Government must support local authorities to perform this vital task by giving them the duty and funding to provide accommodation for survivors of abuse. Our criminal justice system is failing women. It takes an incredible amount of bravery to not only report sexual abuse but then to relive that trauma in the courts. To add insult to injury, 1.6% of reported rapes lead to a charge. I need to repeat that: 1.6% of reported rapes lead to a charge. We are letting survivors down; it is shocking. We absolutely need better training and more resources for prosecutors and judges to punish perpetrators and deliver the justice that victims and survivors so desperately need.

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Caron Lindsay

Beatrice Wishart challenges media on reporting violence against women and girls

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 28th November 2021 - 11:24 am

Thursday was White Ribbon Day, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. At Holyrood MSPs paused for a minutes silence to remember those women murdered by men over this past year.

Later there was a debate on ways to eradicate men’s violence against women. Beatrice Wishart, our MSP for Shetland, who has a long record of helping women who have suffered domestic abuse made a brilliant speech in which she called for a Commission to look at ways of ending men’s violence against women in all its forms. She drew attention to the way the media reports violence against women, often victim shaming and she talked particularly about how they talk about this awful practice of “spiking”, drugging someone’s drink in order to assault them.

You can watch her speech here. The text is below:

I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests. I am a trustee of Shetland Women’s Aid.

I, too, pay tribute to Scottish Women’s Aid, Rape Crisis Scotland and other services and individuals across Scotland for the good work that they do, not just on international day for the elimination of violence against women, but every day. It is worth saying again that 2021 marks the 30th anniversary of the global 16 days of activism campaign. It has been 30 years, and, each year, the debate exchanges statistics that are unacceptable and horrific, as Pam Duncan-Glancy stated.

The World Health Organisation estimates that about one in three women worldwide will, in their lifetime, be subjected to

“either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence.”

It is a major public health problem and a violation of women’s human rights, and we know that Covid has impacted on women’s equality progress across the globe.

Earlier this year, Jess Phillips MP, the UK shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding, read out the names of the 118 women who had been killed in the preceding year and in whose case a man had been convicted or charged as the primary perpetrator. It took her a little over four minutes and the list did not include the names of the women referenced in the motion, who were tragically killed after March this year.

The number of domestic abuse incidents reported by Police Scotland has risen for the fourth year in a row, with one in four women in Scotland experiencing domestic abuse in their lifetime. Domestic violence is a plague that not only affects women but impacts whole households. Children are tragically caught in it, too. It was seeing the lifelong impact of domestic abuse on children and the financial abuse of women that drew me into my voluntary trustee role.

I know that all speakers in the debate are striving to ensure that women and girls across the globe and closer to home can live their lives free from fear. Scottish Liberal Democrats have previously called for—and we do so again—the establishment of the new commission to look at ways of preventing men’s violence against women and girls in all its forms, to ensure a co-ordinated approach across all levels of government. Along with providing increased training for those who work in education and on the front line in public authorities, we can work together to build better public understanding of the drivers behind violence against women and take action to eradicate it.

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