Reflections from Labour Party Conference 2025

Reflections from Labour Party Conference 2025

We had the privilege of taking part in several Labour Party Conference fringe events with colleagues from the violence against women and girls sector this year as part of a ‘VAWG takeover’ ¹ . 

Our contribution to these discussions is often to highlight the costs of VAWG and the benefits of investing in specialist services (with ringfenced funding for ‘by and for’ services) to support victim survivors, work with perpetrators, and work in schools and other settings to prevent it. When the lifetime costs of sexual violence reported in one year alone reach over £400bn tackling male violence is not just a moral imperative it’s an economic one ² . 

We also make the links between women’s economic situation, their vulnerability to male violence and their ability to escape and rebuild their lives.

Those furthest from the labour market and financial inclusion are more likely to be targeted by perpetrators of violence and abuse and face higher barriers to fleeing and rebuilding their lives. 

Disabled women face lower rates of employment and lower pay than non-Disabled women and are twice as likely to experience domestic abuse ³ . Migrant women with no recourse to public funds (so unable to access most public services and social security) are often dependent on their partners for their immigration status and are three times more likely to be subjected to VAWG ¹ . As we heard from Southall Black Sisters, Latin American Women’s Rights and Women for Refugee Women, migrant women also face the threat of immigration enforcement if they report their abuse and perpetrators often wield their immigration status over them as a means of abuse. 

Ensuring women have financial autonomy and access to independent incomes is crucial protection from male violence and for their ability to rebuild having survived it. There are two routes for doing so: the labour market and social security. Removing barriers to the labour market for women includes many of the important measures in the Employment Rights Bill such as guaranteeing weekly hours and tackling pregnancy and maternity discrimination. The expansion of childcare is also a welcome measure, though needs to be funded properly and widened to include all children – and mothers – so that those in training or education are included, as well as mothers piecing their lives back together post-separation. 

It also means designing a social security system that recognises unpaid care and women’s circumstances. That requires protecting some payments that are not means tested by household income (which assumes resources are shared equally) such as PIP, carer’s allowance, and contributory benefits. And not excluding groups of women from accessing support when they need it most. 

As other experts on our panels highlighted, too many of our systems currently enable abuse through poor design and lack of understanding – the child maintenance system, local housing departments, debt services, social media platforms, immigration enforcement and, as devastatingly described by Claire Throssell whose two sons were murdered by their father ⁴ , family courts. 

The Government has a herculean but necessary task to meet its promise of halving violence against women and girls in a decade and rebuild public services – and public trust – in the face of challenging global economic headwinds.

We await the new (delayed) VAWG strategy along with the child poverty strategy ahead of the autumn budget, which must be truly cross-government and centre the most marginalised women and children. 

But the current signals the Government is sending are troubling. Their responses to the electoral threats of Reform’s rising popularity may have helped them unite against a common enemy at Party Conference, and the Prime Minister’s conference speech rejecting racism was welcome. But we heard little to counter the weaponisation of VAWG by the far right to attack migrant and Black and minoritised communities. The reality is that the most dangerous place for women and children in the UK is their home, because the vast majority of domestic abuse, sexual violence and other forms of VAWG are committed by the men in women’s lives; whatever their race or ethnicity or class. 

Furthermore, the Prime Minister’s government’s plans on immigration undermine his message.

What does it mean to ‘contribute’ to society if your capacity for contribution has been robbed by violent men in your home country, on route to safety or in an asylum hotel as is the reality for too many refugee women? 

Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ conference speech reiterated the Government’s growth mission as the route for improving living standards, and using capital investment to achieve that growth. Indeed, when they came to power, she changed the Government’s fiscal framework to support the investment. That fiscal framework which allows capital spending also requires all revenue spending, known as ‘day to day’ spending, to be met by tax revenues by the end of this parliament. And that rule has led to speculation that government spending will be over receipts by some tens of billions. Which leaves little room for manoeuvre for things like the VAWG and child poverty strategy, or for spending on local government and social care which are key for gender equality and for improving our living standards. 

This matters because the deterioration in living standards is part of what is driving people to seek radical alternatives to what’s on offer. Capital investment is sorely needed, but it takes time to build housing and transport links and meanwhile the cost of living is still too high for too many people. We have long argued that some spending on the care sectors should be classified as investment, because it returns to the economy in direct job creation and in reducing unpaid care enabling more women to work or work more hours resulting in higher taxes and greater spending power. 

Likewise, spending on VAWG services reduces the prevalence of VAWG and supports victim survivors, including children, to live safe lives and increase their engagement with education and work in the short and long term. It also reduces spend on other public services like policing, health services and housing. 

It is no accident that Reform’s three communication pillars are family, community, country.

These speak to people’s fears and experiences of things deteriorating as a result of austerity, the pandemic and the cost of living crisis.

But while families do need support to manage rising costs and balance paid and unpaid work, the solutions offered by Reform to date would only widen inequality, including gender inequality.  Which is why it is not enough to promise a decade of renewal without immediate measures to support families and narrow inequalities.

It is clear that the global economic context has changed since the Chancellor wrote her fiscal rules. It is time to reconsider those rules for the world we find ourselves in now and to ensure they don’t hinder the Government’s other key missions.

The personal passion and commitment I heard from Ministers and MPs at the VAWG rally on Tuesday evening at conference was inspiring.

But in more than one of the events I joined the question around the government’s target to halve VAWG was raised – which half?

The Government has an opportunity to clarify that no woman or child will be excluded from its mission when it publishes its strategy this autumn, backed by funding that recognises the need for and value of ending male violence against women and children.