Sarah Everard

• LIKE millions of Londoners, my thoughts are with Sarah Everard’s family and loved ones at this time.

The stark and wholly unacceptable reality is that women and girls are routinely subject to abuse and violence, and often have to take an exhaustive list of precautions against this in their daily lives.

Let’s be clear. If we are to address the sheer scale of this problem, the onus needs to put upon men to change their behaviour. This is why, as a first step towards this, I am backing calls for misogyny to made a hate crime.

As a further step, the government must also introduce a domestic abusers’ register, something that the London Assembly has long been campaigning for.

What happened at the vigil in Clapham has rightly caused a great deal of concern. There are now a number of enquiries that will get to bottom of the issues.

We must now see a step change in how our society, education system, and the police tackle violence against women and girls.

MURAD QURESHI AM
Labour Londonwide Assembly Member