PM ‘blocked’ street harassment offence, claims Carrie’s friend

AN INDEPENDENT adviser and friend of Boris Johnson and his wife Carrie has appeared to suggest that the Prime Minister blocked a new offence of street harassment.

Nimco Ali, the Home Office’s independent adviser on tackling violence against women, said her plan for a new crime had suffered “pushback” within Government despite the Home Secretary being “very much behind” it.

Calls for a new offence of street harassment such as wolf-whistling, catcalling, pestering people or making lewd comments intensified in the wake of the murder of Sarah Everard, who was abducted and raped while walking home in south London last year.

It has been backed by the Law Commission, which last December urged the Government to consider making public sexual harassment and inciting hatred against women to be made crimes as part of an overhaul of laws to protect women and girls from violence.

In an interview on the BBC’S Political Thinking with Nick Robinson, she said Ms Patel was “very much behind” her campaign but “then you meet other people saying no”.

“It’s been frustrating and it’s been disappointing,” she added, claiming she had received “pushback” from other parts of the Government.

Asked if this had come from the Prime Minister’s advisers, she replied that the source had been “a lot closer than that”, adding that people would be able to interpret “my silence”.

Ms Ali later tweeted that she “did not blame him for this” and Downing Street said the Government was still considering how a “specific offence” could tackle the concerns Ms Ali had outlined.

Ms Ali had told the BBC that failing to make street harassment a crime meant “that we are actually corroding society and we are allowing young women to be subjected to lived experiences, which are going to have a massive detriment to their health on a day-to-day basis”.

Ms Ali also said the UK Government was “falling behind on being a global leader” on women’s rights.

When she was appointed as an adviser, Ms Ali said more needed to be done to curb violence against women.

It is understood the Government is willing to consider a new offence of street harassment but only if other laws – such as public order or harassment acts – fail to tackle the problem.

Asked at the Tory conference last year about making misogyny a hate crime, Mr Johnson said: “There is plenty of law about harassment and it is not being properly enforced.”

‘We are allowing women to be subjected to experiences that will have a massive detriment to their health’