This government must think Britain’s women are as thick as they are. Shabana Mahmood this week declared violence against women a “national emergency” and launched a new scheme to tackle misogyny and sexual violence which she says will halve it in a decade. And for that gargantuan task, Mahmood allocated the piddling sum of £20million.

Let’s put that into context – ministers are splashing out £570million resurrecting the Erasmus scheme which pays for thousands of British students to study abroad for a year and thousands more to come here with little or no benefit to the British people.

Part of this new scheme will train up teachers to lecture schoolboys on the perils of misogyny which is a total waste of time and money because it isn’t 11-year-old boys doing the raping and assaulting. Why isn’t Mahmood or Jess Phillips, the minister for safeguarding, looking at the root causes for rocketing sexual violence against women, a major one being the abject failure of multiculturalism.

We have certain religions here that subjugate women and treat them as second class citizens. And every day we see hordes of undocumented young men pouring into our country from alien cultures where women are seen as meat to be used and abused at will. We’ve seen these men roaming the streets of our towns and cities attacking women and girls.

Yet in its much-publicised bid to protect women, the government makes no mention of the effect mass immigration has had on violence against women, no mention of Pakistani grooming gangs. It just wants to faff around lecturing 11-year-old boys on respect and misogyny. Phillips’ predictable response to criticism is simply to say: “All cultures include misogyny.” Actually, they don’t. But why would we expect sense from Phillips who, in the last election, clung onto her seat with just 800 votes and will no doubt ignore the data to avoid losing more of the Muslim vote.

The fact is the UK is fast becoming the rape capital of Europe and that has coincided with mass uncontrolled immigration. We give asylum to known sex offenders and when they rape women here, we let them stay – how is THAT protecting women?

There were 71,227 rapes recorded in England and Wales in 2024 and just 2.7% of those – that’s just three in every 100 – ended with someone being charged. Add to that the shameful statistic that 37,000 sexual offences took more than three years to process and the fact some victims have to wait NINE years for justice!

Does that sound like a country that gives a damn about raped and abused women? And does Mahmood really think a paltry £20million is going to change anything?

Just two years ago the government’s Rape Tsar Emily Hunt, a victim herself, resigned in disgust saying she had no faith in the police commitment to investigating rape. And that’s the problem. None of us do. Nor do we have faith that if rapists and sex offenders are migrants from alien cultures they will be dealt with as they should be – then chucked out!

How can any minister in this government – especially Phillips – claim to care about women when some fought tooth and nail to block a grooming gangs inquiry?

Believe me, I want this scheme to work – and millions of abused women desperately need it to work – but it’s just a cynical PR exercise from a government desperately trying to look like it’s doing something to help women but is, yet again, looking the other way!