Rishi Sunak speaks of safety fears for daughter

Rishi Sunak has spoken of his fears for his daughter's safety on her walk to school following a number of crimes against women and girls.

The PM said "events of the last year showed us that so many women and girls have not felt as safe as they should."

He mentioned the case of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel shot in her home earlier this year in Liverpool.

"I want to make sure that my kids and everyone else can walk around safely," the PM said.

He said in the past he and "many of us men" had taken safety "for granted".

"So tackling that and making it safer for people is something that's just personally quite important to me."

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The prime minister said his eldest child had wanted to walk to her primary school by herself when she turned 11, adding this had been the reason why his family had previously moved out of their Downing Street flat and closer to her school before he resigned as chancellor.

He said: "It brings it home to you as a parent and again over the summer the awful things that we read about with the young girl Olivia [Pratt-Korbel], which we'll all remember.

"I want to make sure that my kids and everyone else can walk around safely.

"That's what any parent wants for their children."

On tackling crime, he said people in disadvantaged backgrounds were more likely to be affected by crime and he wanted to "deliver for those people" by putting more police officers on the street.

In 2019 the government pledged to recruit 20,000 additional police officers in England and Wales by March 2023, in an attempt to reverse cuts since 2010, which had seen the number fall by about 19,000.

Labour has accused the government of "taking an axe to the vital services that are there to protect us all".

Pushed on whether the number of people in prison should be higher, Mr Sunak said this was a "logical consequence of catching more criminals" and the government was building 10,000 more prison places over the next few years.

He said he was not particularly comfortable with prison numbers going up, but the funding was in place to have the capacity to do it.

Mr Sunak was speaking to reporters while flying to Bali last Sunday, for his first G20 summit since becoming prime minister.

Asked about life back in Downing Street, he said moving back into the flat the family lived in when he was chancellor above No 10 had made the transition "easier than it otherwise might have been".