Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence

Lord Coaker Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure and a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Paddick. I agree with all his remarks, which he made with his usual competence. I also congratulate my noble friend Lady Hayter on bringing this Motion before us today and on her chairing of the International Agreements Committee, and I thank all the Members who have spoken. My noble friend does this Room and indeed our country a great service by ensuring that this is debated, because this is a hugely important document. I want to say something more about some of the broader points made within the document as well as the reservations that her committee have pointed to. I congratulate her on that and agree absolutely with all that she said. She pointed to the work of my noble friend Lady Gale who has continually demanded that this is ratified. Although it has taken 10 years, one wonders what the timescale would have been had she not shown such tenacity.

Of course, that is true of many other members of this Committee. I was struck by many of the comments that were made. The noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, talked about the current situation, and I will come back to that, because we should look at the context within which we are discussing this.

I must say as a man that it was important that the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, referred in particular to statistics about men in South Africa. She said that the figures would obviously be much higher than those on the attitudes of men in this country, but there is a challenge to men in our country in respect to all this, and she was right to point that out.

The noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister, was right on the overseas territories and dependencies. It would be interesting to hear from the Minister why they are excluded and whether that is an exclusion for ever or for a period of time, whatever that might be.

The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, reminded us of the irony of the fact that Turkey recently withdrew from the Istanbul convention. The irony is not lost on us at all. I also appreciate the other remarks that he made.

I was a member of the Council of Europe for two and a half years, and I agree very much with my noble friend Lady Hayter’s remarks on the importance of the work that it does and on the continuing confusion that it is somehow the EU and we have left all that. It is important to note the way the Council of Europe was set up and how it was set up to establish human rights, not as a politically expedient measure that you decide at a particular moment in time whether you agree or not, but as a universal standard that applies throughout time. That is the standard that we should remember—that a human right is a human right. It is not a politically expedient thing to adhere to when it suits; it should absolutely be at the core of everything that we do. The Council of Europe has done a tremendous job over a huge period of time.

We are pleased that the Government have decided to ratify this. The Motion before us asks us to take note of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence. Quite rightly, the Committee has focused on some of the reservations that the Government have expressed and their criticisms of it. I join my noble friend Lady Hayter and the Committee in the criticisms that have been made of the Government in asking them to justify why there are these two particular reservations, with respect in particular to Article 59, on migrant workers, and Article 44.

This is a massive document. Let us remember, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, pointed out to us, that as we debate and discuss this take-note Motion, we still have a situation in which rape prosecutions are at the lowest level ever, as far as I am aware, and up to two women victims of domestic violence are killed every week. I could quote huge numbers of other statistics, which we would all abhor. As much as it is about the reservations, my question is: how will the Government, in taking note of this convention, use it as a springboard for further action?

There is law after law. I am sure that some of the noble Lords here are more diligent than I am. I did not read every relevant law on every single page, but there are certainly a huge number of laws relevant to protecting women and ending domestic abuse and sexual violence—yet in our society they are still real problems. How will the passing and taking note of this, with or without those reservations, improve the situation? The Government need to set out and explain, not only through plans, new strategies and taking note of documents, how this will make a difference. Why will this be the document that, in 10 years, we will say was the watershed moment when this was implemented in a way that meant that some of the disgraceful things we see, debate and discuss in our Parliament are coming to an end?

I use one example: Chapter III of the convention, on prevention. The online Bill is a massive opportunity for the Government that cannot be missed. My noble friend Lady Hayter and others will be familiar with this, with either their children or their grandchildren: the wild west that operates online, in particular for girls at school, is an outrage. It cannot be legal or right. This document says we have to prevent it. It says all the right things. The Minister will agree that we have to do something. It is not a party-political point or a smart point to make in a debate. It is a disgrace and a scandal that as a society, a state and a Parliament we cannot get hold of what girls at school in particular—not exclusively; it affects some boys—have to deal with. I use this as one example; there are many other examples in our society. I will not be explicit about it, because noble Lords know the sorts of photographs and images they are routinely sent and the sorts of victimisation and bullying they experience as a result of that.

Why will taking note of this convention make a difference? When I listen to debates on online safety, everybody agrees but nobody is sure whether it will work. The starting point is to be honest about how bad it is. Amanda Spielman’s report on this was absolutely damning. I do not want it for my children, my grandchildren or anybody else’s. This debate is an opportunity not to say to the Government, “You wicked Government; you’re not doing anything”, but to ask what as a Parliament and as a country we are going to do about the fact that our young girls at school are exposed to things they should not be exposed to. It has to stop. How are we going to do that? Debating this convention gives us another opportunity to act as a springboard to do something about that.

The Government want to enact the prevention chapter to which I have referred and many of the others in the convention, but I ask the Minister how they are going to move them from paper to policy to practice. How will we know, in five, 10 or 15 years, whether this has worked? How will the Government measure, understand and know that?

My noble friend Lady Hayter and the committee, with their knowledge and experience, have pointed out these reservations. I will make one or two more points on them before concluding. Paragraph 12 of the International Agreements Committee report say that there will be a reservation on

“the obligation to provide autonomous residence permits to migrant women whose residency depends on that of their spouse or partner and who have been victims of domestic abuse”.

I cannot imagine what the consequences of that will be. Somebody who is a victim of domestic abuse whose residency depends on the status of the abuser will be denied legal residence because we have a reservation on this Council of Europe protocol. As my noble friend Lady Hayter said, how on earth can that be right? It flies in the face of common decency.

I do not know what the legal position is but, if somebody had come to me when I was a Member of Parliament and said, “I have been abused by so-and-so. He has a criminal record for it and I have nowhere to go. The Home Office is now pursuing me because I have no residency. The law says I should go back to them”, what should I have done? Was I supposed to have said, “Go back to your abuser. Go and live in their house”? I ask the Minister what on earth the abused victim is supposed to do. The legal position is brilliantly phrased in the document, but I would not tell a human being walking around to go back to their abuser. Would the Minister? Would anybody? I would not, so what are they supposed to do? Yet we have a reservation against granting them any sort of residency status. I do not understand it.

The committee asked for a more detailed explanation on the Government’s second reservation on dual criminality and Article 44. No doubt the Minister will come forward with that.

To conclude, I say to my noble friend Lady Hayter, to her committee and to all who contributed that this should have an audience of millions of people in this country, who would see the universal standards being asked of us and the attempts that the Government and all Governments have made to try to improve the situation. The frank reality is that we have made progress, but progress has been slow and is, in many cases, still shocking. How will this make a difference?

I am not a cynic and am always positive, so my hope, expectation and belief is that this will help us to move forward. The Government need to be a bit clearer about their implementation plan, how they are going to answer some of the real questions that people have raised and why this will make a difference to the real problems that all of us see in our society. They simply cannot be acceptable now, let alone in the future.