- Thursday, March 06, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
British prime minister Rishi Sunak has expressed fears over his daughter’s safety on her walk to school, thanks to the growing number of crimes against women and girls in the country.
The 42-year-old leader, who has two girls with Akshata Murty, said during a conversation with reporters this week that his elder daughter Krishna wants more independence but the growing number of crimes, including the recent murder of a nine-year-old student in Liverpool, leaves the father in him concerned.
“My eldest is at the age where she is wanting to walk places by herself and that’s why we were not in that flat in Downing Street in that last term when I was chancellor,” Sunak said.
Krishna, 11, had hoped to start walking to school for her final term of primary school but the freedom seemed not possible.
The prime minister, who succeeded Liz Truss to take office in October, said he had been disturbed by a number of criminal activities over the summer.
“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, which we’ll all remember,” he said.
Olivia Pratt-Korbel was mistakenly shot dead by a masked gunman in Liverpool in August.
Sunak also said that he was determined to reduce crime, including being prepared to increase jail places and putting more criminals behind bars.
“I want to make sure that my kids and everyone else can walk around safely. That’s what any parent wants for their children … in the past I’ve taken [safety] for granted – and many of us as men have. The events of the last year showed us that so many women and girls have not felt as safe as they should.
“So tackling that and making it safer for people is something that’s just personally quite important to me,” Sunak said, The Guardian reported.
“It’s often people who are in parts of the country that may feel that they’ve been looked over in the past, or that are from more disadvantaged backgrounds that crime impacts the most.
“I want to deliver for those people. Putting more police officers on the street to reduce neighbourhood crime is incredibly important to me.”
But the prime minister said he was okay with the prospect of more people going to prison, which, according to him, was “a logical consequence of catching more criminals … if you put more police officers on the street and you tackle more crime, you’re going to end up with more people in jail”, The Guardian added.
