Where does Rishi Sunak stand on ladies’s points?

Rishi Sunak has been named the brand new chief of the Conservative occasion and the UK’s subsequent prime minister.

The former chancellor is the third prime minister to take workplace for the reason that normal election in 2019, after he received the help of 202 MPs, and rivals Boris Johnson and Penny Mordaunt each withdrew from the management race.

Mr Sunak is anticipated to journey to Buckingham Palace to satisfy with King Charles III on Tuesday (25 October), and ship his first speech as prime minister earlier than noon.

The new chief has beforehand pledged to introduce new legal guidelines to sort out violence towards ladies and ladies, which he described as a “national emergency”.

In July he promised to criminalise down-blousing and stated he’ll “hunt down and stamp out” grooming gangs.

But the place does our new prime minister actually stand on ladies’s points? Here’s what we now have realized up to now.

On abortion rights

Mr Sunak, who served because the chancellor all through the pandemic earlier than resigning from the place in July, has abstained from all main votes on abortion rights since turning into an MP in 2015.

Mr Sunak has forged only one pro-abortion vote – in April 2021, when he voted in favour of a movement to provide the Northern Ireland secretary powers to impose the commissioning of abortion providers within the nation.

Earlier this month, MPs voted to implement buffer zones outdoors abortion clinics in England and Wales. Under the proposed legislation, harrassment or obstruction of any lady attending an abortion clinic can be a legal offence, punishable with as much as six months in jail. Mr Sunak didn’t forged a vote.

On violence towards ladies

In July, Mr Sunak proposed a brand new “down-blousing offence”. He has additionally pledged to create a brand new taskforce to crack down on grooming gangs.

He stated a brand new National Crime Agency emergency taskforce would “hunt down” legal gangs.

Mr Sunak described sexual violence towards ladies and ladies is a “national emergency”.

“As a father of two girls, I want them to be able to go for a walk in the evening or to a shop at night without any fear of threat,” he stated.

“I will make it a criminal offence if you harass women by taking intimate images of them without their consent and will introduce a major crackdown on grooming gangs.

“I will not stop until we live in a society where women and girls can go about their daily lives feeling safe and secure.”

However, the End Violence Against Women Coalition stated significant change would require funding in long-term, specialist prevention work.

This consists of “public campaigns that aim to shift the attitudes that drive and underpin harmful behaviours, and delivering holistic prevention work in schools and education settings”, Deniz Ugur, deputy director of the coalition stated.

Mr Sunak has not outlined plans for public campaigns of this type.

“Currently, we know that the government has invested less than 10 per cent of the budget it has calculated is needed to deliver a new relationships and sex curriculum. This is just not good enough,” Ms Ugur stated.

Mr Sunak has not pledged to extend funding for specialist frontline providers for victims and survivors of abuse, particularly for these serving to individuals from black and ethnic minority backgrounds.

“These services are a lifeline, but without adequate resourcing many survivors face waits of over a year for life-saving support,” Ms Ugur stated.

“Recovery and healing are an essential part of justice, and the government must recognise and resource specialist services so no survivor is left without the support she needs.”

On financial coverage

Mr Sunak has not publicly acknowledged how ladies are negatively impacted by financial insurance policies or pledged to make enhancements on this space.

Research has proven that ladies are the “shock absorbers” of poverty, the UK Women’s Budget Group (WBG) stated.

As inflation continues to rise – it reached a 40-year excessive of 10.1 per cent in September – the WBG says the cost-of-living disaster will “disproportionately impact” ladies, who’re “more likely to be in debt and spend a higher proportion of their expenditure on essential goods”.

Additionally, a 2020 report by McKinsey & Co discovered that ladies’s jobs have been 1.8 instances extra susceptible through the pandemic.

Women additionally make up a lot of the public sector staff, and staff on this sector have seen their wages frozen for a lot of the final decade.

Additionally, ladies’s position in offering unpaid care for youngsters makes it more durable for them to do extra paid hours of labor.

“All of that means that women are ill-equipped to cope with the current cost-of-living crisis. We need to see recognition of this from both candidates,” the WBG stated.

“Childcare fees have increased at twice the rate of wages in the last 10 years keeping many women out of work. Promises of ‘doing more for women’ or nods towards deregulating childcare as a way of increasing affordability are not addressing the root cause of much of women’s economic inequality.

“That will only happen when policy makers begin to recognise and value the role of care and those who provide it. If the leadership candidates really want to support women, it needs to start there.”