UN International Day: Violence against Women

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I should like to start by congratulating the right hon. and hon. Members who secured this Back-Bench debate. It has been a phenomenal debate, and I want to echo the message from my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) that this is a cross-party issue and that we can eliminate violence against women only if we work collaboratively. What we have heard in the Chamber today has shown that that is indeed a possibility, given the conviction that we all have on this issue. My hon. Friend went on to contextualise why the debate is so important, with 3 million women a year in the UK experiencing violence. That is 27.1% of us, or almost a third. I echo the comments from other Members that that is probably an underestimate. She also rightly focused on the impact of violence against women and the ripples of horror that go out from it. She focused particularly on the impact on children and the lack of support for them, as well as the impact on the whole community. She also spoke about the lack of mental health care for those affected. My right hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) also spoke about that.

The right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) and my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) spoke powerfully about the horrifying increase in online abuse and gave clear recommendations on what needs to be done. The right hon. Member for Basingstoke also spoke about the sexual harassment of girls, and I would like to acknowledge that the work done on this by the Women and Equalities Committee has been fantastic. I hope that we get an equally strong response on this from the Government.

I am pausing before saying this, because I do not think that anyone in the Chamber will forget the speech made by the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Michelle Thomson). She spoke of “feeling surprise, then fear, then horror”. Those words described her feelings as a 14-year-old girl. We all felt that horror, and we are all sorry for her and for every other girl who experiences it. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) spoke of the shame that we should feel for allowing this to happen. She urged the Government, as so many have, to introduce proper mandatory sex and relationships education so that all children can understand that no means no, understand how to respect themselves and others and understand the difference between right and wrong.

I want to pick up on one word that my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin) used repeatedly in her speech. That word was “lucky”. She said she was lucky because she was only violently assaulted by a man. When we look at the scale of abuse, at the number of murders, which she also mentioned, and at the number of times a woman will endure domestic abuse before she reports it, perhaps she was lucky. I feel lucky that she is here in this Chamber to share her story with us and to campaign to prevent that from happening to other women.

I was pleased that the hon. Members for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) and for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) picked up on how victims were often the ones who had to change their lives, move house or change their name as a result of violence. Why do the victims of this crime, and this crime alone, have to suffer this perpetual assault and live in fear, possibly for the rest of their lives? We have to do something to address that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton broadened the subject to an international level and spoke powerfully about the fact that 88% of women in Sierra Leone have been mutilated through female genital mutilation. I agree with her point that as long as this is viewed as a cultural practice rather than child abuse and a gross violation of children, we will never eradicate it. We in this Chamber need to do all we can to stop using that cultural excuse. We need to attack it because it is child abuse. She also told the House how dangerous it is to be a woman in Afghanistan, particularly in public life. The horrors in Afghanistan are unparalleled, but we are seeing a ripple effect across the world at the moment. That is something that we all need to call out very actively.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) made an interesting speech about working with companies to help them to recognise the signs of domestic violence and to help them to intervene to prevent it. He also mentioned the international aspect of the problem, telling us that one in three women suffered violence and that one in four women suffered domestic violence in the UK. He gave us in the Chamber a duty to challenge and address that issue.

The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) talked about her Bill, which will be debated in the Chamber next Friday, and I hope that we will all support it. It demands that the Government produce a timetable for ratifying the Istanbul convention. That convention is a historic international treaty that sets legally binding standards for preventing and tackling domestic abuse. Crucially, the convention gives all survivors of domestic abuse the right to access the specialist services they need to enable them to live in safety and rebuild their lives. I hope I am not being uncharitable in wondering whether that is the block that is preventing the Government from signing the convention. I hope that they will do the right thing next Friday and give a guaranteed timetable for the ratification of the convention.

The Government should, however, be commended for doing a lot of work to prevent violence against women and girls, and I am grateful to the hon. Members for Eastleigh (Mims Davies) and for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) for drawing that work to the attention of the House. A lot of work has been done on modern slavery, and a stalking Bill has been introduced. Similarly, national and international work has been done on preventing violence against women and girls and on preventing FGM.

However, we know that domestic violence and violence against women and girls remain at pandemic levels the world over. Levels of domestic violence and violence against women in the UK have increased rapidly between 2009 and 2014, pushing up the overall levels of violent crime in the UK. Yes, a number of Members mentioned the contradictory official view that the Office for National Statistics crime statistics suggest that violent crime in England and Wales is continuing to fall, but we know from research carried out by Professor Sylvia Walby that that is because the ONS caps the number of crimes committed against an individual at five incidents per victim, even when many more offences have been recorded. When the cap is removed and the raw data are examined, the number of violent crimes increases by 60%. That increase is predominantly concentrated in violent crimes against women perpetrated by their partners and acquaintances.

As my hon. Friends have stated today, domestic violence has a higher rate of repeat victimisation than any other crime. On average, a woman will endure 35 attacks before calling the police. So, looking at the ONS data, we can deduce that 30 of those attacks will go unrecorded. I am grateful that the ONS has now agreed to stop that arbitrary capping of repeat incidents at five, and I therefore expect the next crime stats to give a much more accurate picture of the scale of violence against women and girls. Unless we have reliable data, the Government and local authorities simply cannot plan and resource the correct response. It is impossible to prioritise women’s services if they are unaware of the extent of the need. How can the Government resource the police correctly, for example, when they have no idea of what support is needed? As we have heard today, local authorities and domestic violence refuges are struggling to cope with the number of victims seeking help, and many are in crisis. When the Government have evidence of the true scale of the need, will they look to provide more specialist resources to local authorities and more resources directly to specialist services?

The Government’s national statement of expectations gives guidance on what local authorities should be providing for victims of domestic and sexual violence, but guidance alone does not ensure that every woman in need can access services. The statement says that service commissioners must have sufficient specialist support provision, including specialist BME refuges, but local authorities are facing unprecedented budget cuts, forcing commissioners to value cost per bed over quality of service. Specialist services are closing as a result. So where can a women and her children sleep on the night she leaves her violent partner if there is no refuge for her to go to? How can she rebuild her life if there are no specialist staff to counsel her and her children or support her to find a new home? The responsibility for the delivery of domestic violence services cannot simply be devolved to local authorities in a haphazard and piecemeal way. Under the current system, the Government have no way of knowing whether provision for women is adequate or targeted at the right areas. Will the Minister commit today to mapping out the existing domestic violence and sexual violence provision across the country and to correlate it with a needs assessment? Will she recognise that the sheer scale of domestic violence requires a strategic central Government response, not simply a set of expectations for local authorities? Will the Government live up to the provisions in the Istanbul convention by ratifying it so that every survivor of domestic abuse has the right to access specialist services?

I remain absolutely committed to championing the cause of prevention. Violence against women and girls is not, and never will be, inevitable. Prevention is essential if we are ever to ensure that women and girls can live free from fear and be able to determine their own life. Yet we are seeing an ever-increasing normalisation of violence, staring out of advertising boards, computer screens and the mobile phones of little girls and boys. Through exposure to online pornography from an increasingly young age and messages conveyed in the media, children are growing up believing that violence and non-consensual sex in relationships is not just normal, but to be expected. At the same time, children are being pressured by adults and other children to engage in harmful sexual behaviour, such as sharing indecent images. Children are entering adulthood unable to recognise exploitative, abusive and manipulative behaviours. Teenage girls in my constituency tell me that they expect to be abused by their boyfriends because that is what being a girlfriend is about. The Government can no longer stand by and allow that. Will the Government introduce statutory, age-appropriate sex and relationships education in schools to give children the knowledge, resilience and confidence they need to recognise abusive or coercive behaviour and to challenge or contextualise the messages about sex and relationships they receive from the media?

Violence is perpetrated against women because they are women. Women are murdered by their boyfriends, husbands, sons, fathers and uncles in the UK and around the world, because those men believe that women are to be controlled and owned. Girls’ genitals are mutilated, because it is believed that a women’s sexuality belongs to her husband. Girls are denied education and forced into marriage, because girls’ lives are valued less than boys’. They are afraid to leave the house, see their family or love their children, because they exist to please men. Women are murdered and tortured and abused at the hands of men, because this violence is structural and used to maintain male power and control. Until that is accepted across societies, Governments and institutions, we will never truly eradicate it. Until violence against women and girls is accepted as structural violence, perpetrators will still be allowed to cross- examine their victims in court, a little girl will continue to be told that he is groping her because he likes her, and girls will continue to grow up thinking that violence and manipulation are all part of being a woman. Ending violence against women and girls requires a radical, systematic societal shift in power and attitudes. It is the role of every Member of this House to live up to that.