WANTED: George Osborne, for failing to protect domestic violence services
Thursday, March 17, 2016
Print your own posters below!
Yesterday, ahead of George Osborne’s Budget announcement, these posters appeared all over London.
George Osborn is STILL WANTED. Yesterday he failed to deliver a long term economic plan for women’s safety. By promising not to ring-fence any area of local government funding, Osborne ensured that funding for domestic violence services – in particular specialist services – will not be protected.
And according to Women’s Aid, the inadequate £12m promised to “women’s charities”, does not adequately address the funding crisis into to which Osborn has plunged the sector, in particular specialist BME services and refuges. Refuges all over the country are closing. A woman’s ability to flee life-threatening violence still depends on her postcode. And we’ve just learned that yet another refuge is set to close its doors in the next two weeks, all due to George Osborne failing to nationally ringfence domestic violence funding, as we demanded.
While giving high earners and corporations a significant tax break, Osborne turned his back on the two women a week murdered by a current or former partner. His announcements also put disabled women, already 2-3 times more likely to experience domestic violence, at greater risk. Women are not safe if funding for services is not secure. His budget promised to secure the future for the “next generation”; in reality it forces us back into a time before refuges existed.
Here’s the posters from our campaign in downloadable form.
