Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips said the new violence against women and girls plan will save lives, with steps to protect children from dangerous software and tackle misogyny
A groundbreaking ban on sick AI apps and a pledge to make it impossible for children to share nude images have been unveiled in a raft of measures to protect women and girls.
Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips told The Mirror lives will be saved by a whole society drive to tackle violence against women and girls. And Lisa Squire, whose daughter Libby was murdered by a dangerous sex offender in 2019, said there will finally be a “safety net” for young people.
Ms Phillips announced £1billion would be ploughed into measures to protect victims, with desperately-needed spending on support and safe housing. Teachers will also get specialist training in dealing with misogyny and teaching youngsters to challenge dangerous behaviour.
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Ministers vowed to make it impossible for children in the UK to take, share or view a nude image using their phones. The Government will work with tech firms to develop and roll out nudity detection filters on smartphones.
And ‘nudification’ apps – which use AI to create fake explicit images of real people – will be banned. Mrs Squire, whose 21-year-old daughter was murdered after disappearing during a night out in Hull, has campaigned for schools to step up efforts to tackle toxic misogyny.
She told The Mirror: “Until today it’s felt like nothing’s been done, but now it feels there is. There hasn’t been a safety net for young people, but now it looks like there will be.”
Asked if the move would save lives, she said: “Yes it will.” After unveiling the proposals, Ms Phillips said: “For too long, on violence against women and girls, we have treated the symptoms and not the cause. No more.
“The prevention measures we have announced today will save the lives of our next generation of girls, by steering young people away from harmful influences and addressing dangerous attitudes and behaviours head-on.”
And the Government minister added: “We will use every lever of the state to create the cultural sea change our young people so deserve.”
Roxy Longworth, who was coerced into sending intimate images of herself when she was just 13, welcomed the legislation. The pictures were shared without her consent, causing her humiliation and bullying and leading to a mental health crisis.
Roxy, who set up campaign Behind Our Screens, said: “If device controls like these had existed when I was 13, my life would have been completely different.
“I would not have been coerced, blackmailed, abused and I would have been saved the devastating humiliation and mental health crisis that followed.
“It’s so important that technology is used to protect young people, not harm them.” Grim research found more than 24million people visited nudification sites in just one month in 2023.
And 96% of sexual deepfake images were found to depict women. Technology Secretary, Liz Kendall said: “Women and girls deserve to be safe online as well as offline.
“We will not stand by while technology is weaponised to abuse, humiliate and exploit them through the creation of non-consensual sexually explicit deepfakes.”
She said people who profit from such software will feel the full force of the law. The VAWG strategy includes up to £50million of specialist funding for NHS services supporting survivors of sexual violence and abuse.
Police forces will use cutting-edge technology to bear down on rapists and abusers, with new forensic techniques to help reopen cold cases, MPs heard.
Addressing the Commons, Ms Phillips said: “Every day, 200 rapes are reported to the police and many go unreported. Behind every one of these figures is a woman or girl whose life has been shattered.
“And behind every crime lies a perpetrator who all too often gets away scot free. For too long we have accepted the statistics as simply a fact of life.
“Today, this government says no more.” Gemma Sherrington, chief executive of Refuge, said she welcomed the cross-government approach to tackling VAWG, and the work to engage boys and men in conversations about their behaviour.
But she added: “Encouraging survivors to come forward must be matched by the capacity of services to respond, yet the Strategy fails to meaningfully address the deep and ongoing underfunding of specialist support services.
“Without this vital investment, it risks directing survivors towards a system that is already stretched beyond capacity. Unless these foundations are urgently fixed, the Strategy’s ability to deliver real change will be severely constrained.”
Farah Nazeer, chief executive of Women’s Aid, branded the strategy “commendable”, but warned it could put more pressure on already-stretched services.