International Women’s Day

John Grady Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[John Grady (Glasgow East) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Gorton and Denton (Hannah Spencer) for a profound speech. She used the phrase “our humanity is the same”, and there is a profound truth in that. We in this House must recognise that there are people who disagree with that and want to tear us apart. I have a diverse constituency, which covers many different races, faiths and differences of views, and I treasure that diversity, because I believe our humanity is the same. We in this House must be very careful to fight against those who want to shatter that, tear us apart and take us significantly back in time.

Our humanity is the same as that of the women and girls mentioned by my friend, the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain), an office bearer on the APPG on Afghan women and girls. We must do much more to support women and girls in Afghanistan, and we must look afresh at things like international law to criminalise the mistreatment of women and girls to such evil degrees.

The Minister rightly mentioned the fight by trade unionists for equal pay. The first socialist in my family was my great auntie Nellie, who in the ’30s led equal pay strikes in the liquorice factories in Pontefract and became friends with Barbara Castle, who was, of course, responsible for the Equal Pay Act 1970. We should all be very angry about the fact that there is still considerable structural inequality of pay, and women now are paid less than men.

Our fight for equality now, which I believe is shared by us all, and which we must all share, faces new and much more dangerous threats, and we must redouble our efforts. We should not just be angry about that; we are legislators, so we must legislate and then see that legislation acted on. Otherwise, the future for women and girls—my daughter and the other children in my constituency and around the world—will become bleaker, instead of our seeing progress.

I want to speak about domestic abuse. One in 4 women in the UK will experience domestic abuse in their lifetime. When I work with survivors in Glasgow East, I see how housing instability in particular is a barrier to my constituents fleeing abuse. I am dismayed at the lack of support provided by the housing sector in Scotland to survivors, who do not receive trauma-informed care and are not supported into safe, settled homes; instead, I have met women who, after suffering terrifying sexual violence, are forced into social housing in awful conditions and then face months of unknown male workmen coming into their new home. The social landlords are aware that the women in question have suffered. They should not have to ask for female workpeople to come to work in their homes—it should be a matter of course.

Women in my seat wait months for house transfers, meaning that their abusers know exactly where they live. A particular legal problem is when women are not included on the tenancy agreement for their rented home, which means they do not have legal rights to stay in their home and, when their relationship comes to an end, those women face eviction and homelessness. That is why the Scottish Parliament passed part 2 of the Domestic Abuse (Protection) (Scotland) Act 2021, giving social landlords powers to transfer tenancies from abusers to survivors.

Almost five years after that Act was passed, however, we are still waiting for it to be made legally enforceable by the Scottish Government. I have been pressing the Scottish Government on the issue. In January, I wrote to the press about this disgraceful delay, and the next day the Scottish Government announced they would finally bring the provisions into force.

Despite the five-year delay, social landlords have had no formal guidance from the Scottish Government on how the provisions will operate in practice. They do not know how the courts or police will approach this, but it is essential for social landlords, and a poorly thought-out implementation will put survivors at further risk. I have raised these concerns with the SNP Government and am still awaiting a response.

There are organisations that do fantastic work to ensure housing stability for survivors. The Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance provides the infrastructure, training and monitoring necessary for social landlords to recognise and tackle domestic abuse, and it works very well in England. Just north of here, Islington council has worked very successfully with DAHA and significantly improved the outcomes for survivors of domestic abuse. In Glasgow, social landlords need help and support to make the improvements that they must make, and social landlords do recognise the importance of this.

I am determined to see survivors of domestic abuse get much better help and support, so I have asked social landlords to meet with DAHA. I am pleased that Wheatley and Govanhill housing associations and the Scottish Housing Regulator have expressed an interest in learning more and are willing to meet with DAHA. In agreeing to do so, they are demonstrating their commitment to supporting survivors of domestic abuse. I encourage others to do the same. We must do much, much better in Scotland for the survivors of domestic abuse, and I am determined to continue to work hard on this.

I wish to speak about one other topic. I am very proud of one of my local charities, Scottish Sports Futures, which does great work with young people in my seat. In particular, it encourages young women to speak up about their experience of violence against women and girls. That means that the young men in the charity’s programmes learn how to treat women as their equals and with respect. I cannot praise Scottish Sports Futures enough for working on this and giving those young women a voice.

Several of those young women in the programmes spoke with bravery about this at the charity’s annual awards event last week. A young woman from Barrowfield, in my constituency, spoke courageously about violence against women and girls, and the issue of youth violence more generally, which has had a profound impact on girls in my constituency, particularly following the killing there two years ago of a young boy, called Kory McCrimmon—his family faced their grief, by the way, with profound dignity and courage. I am proud of all my young constituents.

Politics is a matter of morals, and this is a moral issue. My moral obligation as their Member of Parliament is to do everything within my power to tackle violence against women and girls.