Violence against Women and Girls

Alex Brewer Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Alex Brewer (North East Hampshire) (LD)]

Nine years ago or thereabouts, I was sitting in a courtroom supporting victims of domestic abuse. I saw at first hand how our systems of justice were failing women and girls when they were at their most vulnerable. That was my first motivation to enter politics, and it is a privilege to stand here and speak today, in this Chamber, in honour of all the women and girls who have faced abuse, violence, misogyny, harassment, stalking, spiking, non-consensual image abuse and everyday sexism.

Violence against women and girls is systemic. It transcends constituency boundaries and national borders, and it is embedded in a global culture of discrimination and inequality that is even present in this House. I have heard casual sexism roll off the tongue as a female MP’s domestic context was used as a reason she should not progress. To those who believe that feminism has gone too far or that equality is here, I say this: the evidence shows otherwise.

As if all the shocking statistics we have heard so far were not enough, here are some more. There is still a 13% gender pay gap. Some 41% of women provide unpaid care for children, grandchildren, older people or people with a disability, compared with 25% of men. Despite significant progress, we still do not have a Parliament that is representative of society with 50% women. This inequality manifests itself in discrimination across our systems, which just do not work for women. Our society still sees femininity as “less than”, and too much violence is tolerated.

Some 3,000 crimes of violence against women and girls are recorded every day, and that is just a tiny part of the story. We have heard already about the number of women murdered every week by a partner or ex-partner, a figure that has not changed in decades. At least one in four women has been raped or sexually assaulted since the age of 16, and hundreds of thousands of crimes against women and girls every year have an online element. Given the fear and shame around reporting, it is certain that in reality, the figure is significantly higher. A woman in a domestic abuse situation will experience an average of 35 assaults before calling the police. We are not talking about a few isolated incidents; 2.3 million people aged 16 years and over experienced domestic abuse in the year ending March 2024. Those numbers seem abstract, but they represent real women, real children and real lives.

That violence is enabled by a bedrock of inequality and a culture of disbelief. The experiences of women and girls are ignored, deprioritised and doubted. The Jay report on child sexual exploitation—yes, the same report on which the former Government took no action—found in 2022 that individuals and institutions often thought children were lying when they tried to disclose what was being done to them, and found that victims were frequently blamed for their own sexual abuse. We are not beyond the days of saying, “She was asking for it.”

That disbelief has consequences for abusers. Last year, fewer than three in 100 rapes recorded by the police resulted in someone being charged in the same year. The Government must do what the previous Government did not: tackle violence against women and girls head-on. I support the Government’s ambition to halve violence against women and girls in a decade. It is a bold aim, but a vast undertaking. To achieve it, we must have cultural and legislative change. We have the opportunity in this House to create laws that not only protect women and girls, but effect significant cultural shifts. Passing the Domestic Abuse (Aggravated Offences) Bill, introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Josh Babarinde), would enable domestic abuse to be considered an aggravating factor in assault cases. That would distinguish it from other offences, and its severity and gravity could be understood more clearly. The Bill would exclude domestic violence perpetrators from schemes for early release from prison, and protect survivors of domestic abuse.

In a survey conducted for a Crown Prosecution Service report on prosecution of rape and sexual offenses, 92% of CPS staff agreed that current court backlogs inhibit the prosecution of rape and serious sexual assault. The Government must address these backlogs, improve safety for women in the justice system, and fully support the staff who are working daily to support victims of trauma and abuse. Training of those who work with victims is of the utmost importance, but has not been prioritised.

From my previous work supporting victims, and from my casework, I know that victims of domestic violence have had their and their advocate’s safety compromised because details have been shared with an abuser by someone working in the statutory services. All reports and information surrounding domestic abuse must be handled with exceptional sensitivity. That highlights the need for more specialist training, not just for our police forces—that will be welcomed—but in social services. The majority of cases in children’s social care involve domestic abuse, but the training done on it as part of social work qualification is insufficient.

We must ensure that funding for services supporting survivors of domestic abuse is sufficient and secure. Charities that provide refuge and community services for victims inherently require long-term decisions and planning, but are frequently left with one-year funding agreements and one-off grants that limit their capacity to operate effectively.

What about the men? I was pleased to see that a debate on paternity leave was extremely well attended by male MPs, who clearly wanted more time with their children. I am also pleased to see so many men supporting this debate. Unpaid caring work is still disproportionately done by women, but men are also disadvantaged, as valuable time with loved ones is lost. Our culture maintains an imbalance in expectations and opportunity for both men and women. The UK’s two weeks of statutory paternity leave lags far behind the entitlement in most advanced economies, and I call on the Government to make improvements to all parental leave, so that parents in every family have the opportunity to bond with their children in those first crucial months.

Financial independence is a significant factor in women being able to leave an abusive partner, so for both men and women, we need to tackle the gender pay gap. We also need to tackle paternity leave, pay for carers, violence and issues with the criminal justice system, so that we stop seeing femininity as “less than”. We must tackle all aspects of inequality that underpin violence against women and girls for justice to become a reality.