Keir Starmer speaks to Women's Aid about tackling violence against women and girls

I've been working with many people in this room on this for 15 years or more and I come at it not just as the ex-director of public prosecutions not just as an MP but as a dad and as a human being as leader of the labor party and wanting to take the labor party into government I want you to work with us shape what we're doing

keep pushing us to go further because I think this is absolutely Central to the change that we need to see in our country the work that women did do and the help and support that they give people like me survivors that have been through horrendous abusive relationships which by the way even when you leave your abuser it doesn't stop you have to dress yourself you have

to basically start believing in yourself again when you've been so traumatized and everything's been taken away from you women's Aid have just been such a safe place for me we need a whole system approach we need transformational change doing a bit of policy here some piecemeal announcements there are not going to solve the problem so we need a full societal response what is a full societal

challenge unless you properly resource the criminal justice system unless you're actually investing in training investing in leadership investing in betting thinking about the culture thinking about sentencing unless you look at that all together you're just going to get tiny tinkering around the edges I think we need really strong champions in government can't do it in one silo you know it's going to be joined up with

education we need to be talking to boys and young men about Behavior about culture it needs to go you know into the health environment as well it needs to be spread across different departments but the most important thing is leadership and some sort of sense that we're going to do something about this and you would get that absolute drive from an incoming labor government