Boris Johnson has blocked proposals for a new crime of street harassment despite it being backed by Priti Patel, the Government’s independent adviser on tackling violence against women and girls has suggested.

       Nimco Ali, a close friend of the Prime Minister and his wife Carrie Johnson, said her plan for a new offence had suffered “pushback” within Government despite the Home Secretary being “very much behind” her campaign.

       Calls for a new offence of street harassment such as wolf-whistling, catcalling, pestering people or making lewd comments intensified in the wake of the murder of Sarah Everard, who was abducted and raped while walking home in south London last year.

       It has been backed by the Law Commission which last December urged the Government to consider making public sexual harassment and inciting hatred against women to be made criminal offences as part of an overhaul of laws to protect women and girls against violence.

       Patel 'very much behind' campaign but others 'saying no'

       Speaking on the BBC’s Political Thinking with Nick Robinson, she said Ms Patel was "very much behind" her campaign but "then you meet other people saying no".

       "It's been frustrating and it's been disappointing," she added, claiming she had received "pushback" from other parts of the Government.

       Asked if this had come from the prime minister's advisers, she replied that the source had been "a lot closer than that", adding people would be able to interpret "my silence".

       Ms Ali said failing to make street harassment a crime meant "that we are actually corroding society and we are allowing young women to be subjected to lived experiences which are going to have a massive detriment to their health on a day-to-day basis".

       Ms Ali also said the UK Government was "falling behind on being a global leader" on women's rights.

       When she was appointed as an adviser, Ms Ali said more needed to be done to curb violence against women.

       She helped Ms Patel draw up a strategy, published in July 2021, to "ensure women and girls are safe everywhere".

       Mr Robinson asked Ms Ali was whether the "energy" to defend women and girls had dissipated.

       "No, it hasn't gone," she said.

       "Just because it's not in the mainstream media at the moment, it doesn't mean that the home secretary and also the minister for women's safety, Rachel Maclean, are not committed to this."

       Opponents of street harassment claim that there are other offences such as public order acts that can be used by police to prosecute people who abuse women in public.

       Interviewed ahead of the Tory conference last October, Mr Johnson dismissed calls for misogyny to be made a hate crime.

       “What I am saying is that there is abundant statute that is not being properly enforced. That’s what we need to focus on. I am talking about domestic violence, I am talking about rape, I am talking about harassment,” he said.

       “There is plenty of law about harassment and it is not being properly enforced. That’s what the police need to be doing. They need to be taking women’s complaints seriously.”