Now No10 gets behind 888 line for lone women
PM backs new service to protect the vulnerable
PLANS for an 888 emergency phone number to protect lone women were welcomed by Downing Street last night.
BT has offered to develop a ‘walk me home’ service in the wake of the outrage at the murder of Sarah Everard.
And in a major boost for the plans, the Prime Minister’s spokesman yesterday revealed Whitehall officials will consider the proposals ‘very carefully’.
‘We welcome this sort of innovation and joint working with the private sector as we need a whole of society approach in tackling violence against women and girls,’ the spokesman said.
BT, which has run the 999 service for 84 years, said the mobile phone app would allow the vulnerable to have their journeys tracked, triggering an alert if they failed to reach home in time. They could also use it to summon police if they felt threatened.
The 888 plan was proposed by Philip Jansen, BT’s chief executive, in a letter to Home Secretary Priti Patel last week.
He told her the service could be up and running by Christ‘If
‘Could deter male violence’
NEW PHONE LIFELINE FOR LONE WOMEN
mas, costing between £50million and £100million to develop. Mr Jansen said yesterday that he had been in contact with Miss Patel, who was ‘very supportive’ of the proposal and wanted to ‘think through’ how it could work.
The Police Federation warned any such a system should ensure that stretched police forces were not bombarded with a wave of alerts.
Officials would also have to consider the privacy implications of rolling out a mass tracking service linked to the emergency services.
Mr Jansen responded to criticism of the proposal by insisting that it could deter male violence toward women. He said:
it would stop one attack, one murder, one abduction, I think it’s worth it.’
The businessman said he understood criticism that the plan could be seen as putting the onus on women to protect themselves rather than tackling wider social issues.
But he insisted it would be a ‘small contribution to [tackling] this major problem’.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘Let’s not forget it’s an opt-in voluntary service. Unfortunately, as I said before, the Sarah Everard case is totally horrific, but it’s rare.
‘But what’s really common and is happening every single day up and down the country, is individuals – often women but not always – and boys and girls are fearful, anxious and worried. Therefore having a very simple app which is nationwide and easy to use I think is a good idea.’
The BT boss said he had put together a small team to develop the app, which would then go through extensive testing and research. The non-profit service would see users download a mobile phone app and enter their home address and other favourite destinations.
Before a journey they would call or text 888 – or initiate the app – giving an estimate of how many minutes they expected to take. The journey would be tracked by the phone’s GPS system, with the app sending a message to check the user had reached home. A failure to respond would trigger calls to emergency contacts and, finally, to the police.
After the Daily Mail revealed the plan last week, Miss Patel said it was ‘exactly the kind of innovative scheme which would be good to get going as soon as we can’.
But Jamie Klinger of Reclaim the Streets, a group that campaigns for women’s safety, said the idea was ‘fandangled’. She told the Today programme: ‘By the time I dial 888 that I am being threatened, I am dead.’
The Suzy Lamplugh Trust, which supports victims of stalking, said that potential funding for the scheme should instead be diverted to existing specialist services.
Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner wrote on Twitter: ‘How about the Government actually tackles male violence instead?’
‘Get going as soon as we can’