Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Eilidh Whiteford

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 16th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Whiteford]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. We know that these crimes are terribly under-reported. Some of the organisations that work with victims and survivors estimate that as many as 90% of the women who use their services have not reported the crimes to the police, so, yes, we need to let people know that it is okay to speak up, that it is safe to do so and that support will be available. Until we do that, people will not come forward in the numbers the problem demands.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

We do not have to look as far as Sudan for examples of countries that have not ratified, and do not intend to ratify, the convention. One example is Germany. Last new year’s eve, there was the most appalling violence against women, but Germany has not even signed, let alone ratified, the convention.

[Dr Whiteford]

I am really very surprised that the hon. Gentleman thinks we should follow the example of Germany on this issue.

I would like to thank sincerely hon. Members from all parties who have made the effort to be here today, giving up the last constituency Friday before Christmas and, in some cases, rearranging long-standing diary commitments. As well as Scottish National MPs, Labour, Tory, Liberal Democrat, Plaid Cymru, Social Democratic and Labour, Democratic Unionist, Green and independent MPs have signalled their support. In particular, I want to thank the hon. Members for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) and for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) and the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) for their advice and help, as well as Ministers who have been willing to meet me for discussions ahead of the Bill. I am hopeful that a united voice from Parliament today can bring ratification significantly closer.

I want to acknowledge a number of women on whose expertise on the Istanbul convention I have relied in bringing forward this Bill. I have been lucky to have a formidably erudite team of advisers from all parts of the UK, and in no particular order I would like to thank Lisa Gormley, Marsha Scott, Hillary Fisher, Gemma Lindfield, Cris McCurley, Maria Bjarnadottir, Emma Ritch, Evelyn Fraser, Liz Law and Jackie Jones for all their assistance and invaluable insights. I want to thank my brilliant assistant Nathan Sparling who, in his own words, has been amazing.

I pay special tribute, too, to the women behind the IC Change campaign for their relentless determination to get the Istanbul convention on the statute book. They have been truly inspiring. Robyn Boosey, Rebecca Bunce and Rachel Nye run the IC Change campaign in their spare time on an entirely voluntary basis, co-ordinating with professional and non-professional women’s organisations and campaign groups all over the UK. They have been doing an incredible job, and I know they will not give up until they have achieved their goal.

Ratification of the Istanbul convention is not an end in itself; we need to see it as a platform for ongoing progress. Often the critics of international multilateral processes will point out that a treaty is just a piece of paper and that setting out rights and duties in international law does not necessarily give them effect—and, of course, that is sometimes demonstrably true. We must not let that happen here, because although the Istanbul convention is a solid foundation and a secure base camp, we still have a mountain to climb. We need to remember the scale of the problem and the magnitude of the task. We need to use this convention to measure progress and bank the gains. We need to use its robust monitoring, data collection and reporting mechanisms to drive sustained reductions in violence over the medium and longer term. The dynamic nature of the key articles of the Istanbul convention will be crucial to developing the policies and services that will deliver progress, along with the changes in attitudes and behaviour that will end the scourge of gender-based violence.

Lastly, I believe that ratification of the Istanbul convention is important because of its symbolism and the message it sends to women everywhere about our dignity, our right to equality and our right to live lives free of sexual and domestic violence. The powerful symbolism of the convention matters, because it reinforces the confidence of women in ourselves and in the moral force of our long struggle for equality. I believe very passionately that we can end violence against women; no one is saying it is easy or that it will happen overnight, but ratification of the Istanbul convention takes us a big step closer, and I ask Members to support my Bill today.

Housing Supply (London)

Debate between Christopher Chope and Eilidh Whiteford

Wednesday 15th July 2015 Westminster Hall

[Dr Whiteford]

I absolutely agree, and I am pleased that the hon. Lady has been able to make her point, albeit quite late in the debate. It highlights the fact that the Help to Buy schemes introduced by the Government will not even touch this problem, because even with those schemes, people are completely out of reach of the market. That takes us back to the point made earlier. It is easier now for someone to have a house in London that they do not live in than it is to have one that they do. In fact, they could probably live off the proceeds of the house in London, if they could get a foothold in the market. We need a housing mix that includes affordable homes not only for the people who have historically lived in the area, but for those who work here in normally paid jobs, whether in the private or public sector.

As hon. Members know, housing is a devolved matter in Scotland. We have property hotspots too and inflated property prices in some parts of the country. We have also experienced a shortage of supply of affordable homes, over getting on for 30 years, and we have inherited a legacy of depleted public housing stock—

[Mr Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Order. This debate is about housing supply in London. I hope that the hon. Lady will keep her remarks confined to that issue.

[Dr Whiteford]

I absolutely will, Mr Chope, but I think it is very important for us to understand that some of the ways we have tackled the underlying problems in Scotland might have lessons that are well worth sharing in other parts of the country. The way we have tried to tackle them is very simple: we have tried to build more houses, and our completion rates across all sectors—both private and public—have been much higher. The fundamental problem here is that we are not building enough affordable homes for people. The completion rates in Scotland across the private and the public sectors have been much higher. It is worth making that point because in London the situation is completely out of control and there are very real challenges for any Government in trying to put that right.

A key point raised today, as touched on by the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), is the issue of selling off housing association stock. It seems to me to be utterly insane. I cannot believe that any Government, with any sanity, would even attempt to do that, because if there is already a shortage of affordable housing, my goodness, why on earth would we sell off what we have? Hon. Members have made it clear during this debate that the money for which people will essentially be getting a free house could be so much better invested.

Earlier this week, I met the National Housing Federation, which was clear that it could build four houses for the giveaway that one tenant gets. Let us make absolutely no mistake about what will happen to those houses in a very short space of time: they will be sold off to tenants and, within a few years, they will end up back in the private rented sector at exorbitant rents. People will not be able to live in the houses if they are on decent salaries, and if they are on lower salaries, they will be pushing up the benefits bill yet further by having to be supported in their housing costs. The proposal does not address the underlying shortage because it does not build more houses and that money is simply not being reinvested. I wonder how many MPs are renting, in the private sector, homes that were once local authority or housing association homes that have been hived off into the private sector and are now being let at market rents that only MPs and other very privileged people can afford.

The Budget last week was terrible for housing. The point has been made about the changes to social rents. Of course, there are pros and cons to that, but one of the big problems is that it will disincentivise investment by housing association providers here in London. The National Housing Federation said in its initial analysis that it expected 27,000 fewer houses to be built because of the changes announced last week. That seems to be compounding the problem, not addressing it. We also need to look at whether people will be disincentivised from investing at all. The NHF told me that it already knows of one housing association that has cancelled a planned house building project on the back of last week’s Budget.

I cannot but agree with Shelter, which said that last Wednesday was

“a bad budget day for housing and those struggling with housing costs…Only if you invest in affordable homes by rebalancing investment and having a housing strategy that recognises house building, rents, benefits, and homelessness are part of the same problem, can you permanently bring down the welfare bill. If you just slash and burn benefits in the hope people in genuine need will miraculously find well paid jobs, cheaper homes or fewer children, you’re unlikely to succeed in anything but making more people homeless.”

I do not think that problem is more acute in any part of the UK than here in London, where people are often working in low-paid, service-level jobs, but are having to make long commutes into work because housing is now increasingly out of reach.

We know that if we invest in affordable housing, we can tackle the problem at its roots—that we can tackle not just the symptoms of the problem, but the underlying problem. The UK Government need to boost their funding for affordable housing throughout the UK, but I urge them to be much more ambitious. I noted Government Members’ scepticism towards the points made about selling off the housing stock, but we have heard very little about actually building new houses, and the Government’s ambitions for that are woeful. They need to be building 100,000 houses every year because of the lack of supply, and London is at the heart of that. Londoners would benefit from that, and those in average-wage or low-paid jobs would gain a great deal from it, but investment in housing would transform the lives of many people throughout the UK, and that work has to start here.