Baroness Harman
Main Page: Baroness Harman (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Harman's debates with the Home Office
(6 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberOrder. Thirty-five years, three months and nine days after the Peckham by-election, which sent her to this place, I call Harriet Harman.
Thank you, Mr Speaker. May I commend the right hon. Lady for her assertion that although as women, inside and outside the House, we have made tremendous progress, we still have so much further to go?
May I also say that I fully support the Government’s move to ask the Law Commission to consider the case for making it an offence to threaten and abuse parliamentary candidates? This is about misogynists seeking to silence women who dare to speak out—it is particularly virulent against younger women and black women. Voters have the right to choose whoever they want, man or woman, to represent them, and once that representative is elected to Parliament it is their right and duty to be able to get on with the job without being subjected to intimidation, threats or violence. This is about our democracy, so I hope Members in all parts of the House will give it their full support.
I thank the right hon. and learned Lady for her comments, and I am full of admiration for the work that she did in government to promote the role and the importance of women’s working lives. That goes absolutely to the core of the argument for wanting more women MPs and more women in government, because only then do we get government’s application to and attention on the improvements that need to take place. I thank her for her support in this area and I completely share her view—this is an attack on women; it is a sexist attack. We have seen an escalation of it over the past few years. It is not good enough for people to say, as some do, “You’re in politics. You must accept it.” We do not accept it. We will take action to stop it, and we will push for cultural change.