Rishi: I’ll make women safer

Sunak’s £435m to beef up CCTV, street lighting and sex offence prosecutions in crime-busting Budget this Wednesday

CHANCELLOR Rishi Sunak will announce a £435million crime-fighting package in this week’s combined Budget and Spending Review – with a particular emphasis on tackling violence against women.

In his statement to MPs on Wednesday, Mr Sunak is expected to say that he has earmarked £355 million for measures such as improved street lighting and better CCTV, with a further £80million going to the Crown Prosecution Service.

In an acknowledgement of the national revulsion over the murder of Sarah Everard, who was kidnapped, raped and murdered by serving Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens, the Chancellor expects the CPS to devote a significant proportion of the extra funds to improving its response to cases of sexual violence.

It also coincides with rising alarm over the number of cases around the country of women being drugged after being spiked by injection or through having their drinks tampered with in nightclubs.

Exact details of the funding were still being thrashed out with Justice Secretary Dominic Raab this weekend, with Mr Raab understood to be the last Cabinet Minister to reach agreement with the Chancellor over the final Spending Review settlement.

While justice and local government are both devolved areas, the Scottish Government will receive a cash boost as a result of the Chancellor’s spending on CCTV and street lighting. And the SNP will be under pressure to match his commitment to making the streets safer for women, when Finance Secretary Kate Forbes delivers her Budget in December.

The most contentious part of the Budget has already been announced – a £12 billion rise in National Insurance to fund social care in England and help the NHS recover from the pandemic. The 1.25p in the pound increase, which takes effect from April, has unsettled many Tory backbenchers who regard it as ‘unconservative’. The NHS already accounts for 8 per cent of GDP, up from 3 per cent in the 1950s.

Former Tory Cabinet Minister David Davis today raises dire fears that Mr Sunak will drive the economy ‘onto the rocks’.

Writing in today’s Mail on Sunday, opposite, Mr Davis casts doubt on the Chancellor’s ‘Thatcherite’ credentials. The former Brexit Secretary also says the Treasury under Mr Sunak is ‘too concerned with image over substance’, and that hiking taxes now to pay for Covid debt risks ‘stoking a cost-ofliving crisis’.

Mr Davis writes: ‘The way to deal with such debt levels is to do exactly what we did after the war – issue the modern-day equivalent of “war bonds”, to be repaid over 50 years or more. Once we have dealt with the debt, we can set about balancing the books, but by tax cuts – not tax increases.’

Allies of Mr Sunak say that his room for manoeuvre has been severely restricted by the billions he had to borrow to protect the economy during the pandemic, along with inflationary pressures in the economy due to factors such as higher energy prices.

The Bank of England has cut its GDP forecasts for the third quarter by one percentage point to 2 per cent, and now expects inflation to rise above 4 per cent.

With national debt running at almost 100 per cent of GDP, the highest since 1963, Mr Sunak is already paying £9billion in interest every month on borrowing – a sum which will rocket if interest rates rise from their record low of 0.1 per cent. However, he was given some extra wriggle room after Government borrowing fell to £21.8billion in September, from £28.8billion in the same month a year earlier, a larger fall than expected.

The new money to tackle crime will include a rise in funding to help victims to £185million, an 85 per cent increase since 2020, while £50 million will go towards the Safer Streets Fund for CCTV and improved street lighting.

The fund also helps local authorities and police forces to pioneer new crime prevention strategies.

The CPS will be expected to improve the way it deals with rape cases by increasing prosecution numbers, helping restore victims’ confidence, and improving their collaboration with the police.

The funding will also be used to help the CPS prosecute additional cases brought into the system by the Government’s commitment to

recruit 20,000 extra police officers.

National revulsion over Sarah Everard’s murder

Mr Sunak said: ‘We should all feel safe, whether walking our streets, staying at home or going out for the evening – but this is sometimes not the case, especially for young women. That is why we’re committing hundreds of millions of pounds

CPS expected to increase prosecutions for rape

to change this, from boosting investment in better CCTV and street lighting, to better home security and support for repeat victims.’

Labour last night called for VAT on domestic energy bills to be scrapped over the winter to alleviate a cost of living crisis.