Violence against Women and Girls

Debate between Alicia Kearns and Jess Phillips

Wednesday 27th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jess Phillips)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Mark. I thank the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) for her impassioned speech. However, I must give the biggest credit to my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) for bringing forward a debate on such an important issue. I have handled a lot of cases in my life, and have seen almost every way that the systems that are meant to protect us, such as the courts system, are used against victims in a patriarchal system. However, I have never seen a case that compares to the one that my hon. Friend spoke so bravely about, where our very democracy is used to allow a perpetrator to control. As in the case of Gisèle Pelicot, whose name has been mentioned today, it takes a huge amount of bravery to try to shift the shame elsewhere and keep speaking up. It has been a pleasure to work with my hon. Friend over the years, and long may that continue.

I am going to do something that did not always happen when I was on the other side in a debate: try to answer Members’ questions—that was not always my experience. Please bear with me if I jump around a bit. First, my hon. Friend is exactly right that we must make this issue everybody’s problem. By “everybody”—others mentioned the issue of silo Government—I mean every Government Department. I joked this morning that I was struggling to connect the issue to solar panels, but give me time.

To the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford, I say that the Conservative Government had a good track record of changing legislation, but what did not change at the same pace were the systematic processes that ensure that the legislation means something on the ground. Today we launched domestic abuse protection orders. The previous Government passed those into law, and three years after the fact, the first one was handed out this morning.

It will take a huge amount—a lot of different Departments and people having the will—to make things happen, and my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse is exactly right about that. A cross-Government strategy must not be just a piece of paper that sits on a shelf, and we say, “We’ve ticked that box.” It has to be targeted, and it has to have the will of everybody. As she said, that is what we will do. That will be out next year.

A number of people, including my hon. Friend, mentioned the concerning issue of non-contact sexual offences. Part 1 of the Angiolini review, which followed the death of Sarah Everard, made a huge number of recommendations with regard to how the police handle non-contact sexual offences. That was also mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (John Slinger). Frankly, it is not good enough, is it? It is woeful. I picked up a case just this morning, funnily enough, involving somebody sending naked images of themselves to someone—I will not use the colloquial term, even though I am sure everybody would expect me to; I am a Government Minister now.

These things have to be taken seriously. The Home Office is looking into the evidence about the escalation of non-contact sexual violence to contact sexual violence, because that evidence base does not currently exist, even though common sense would lead us all to assume it does. We need to ensure that we are continuing to work on that.

The issue of migrant women came up a number of times; my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) raised it, as did my hon. Friend the. Member for Poplar and Limehouse. Quite astutely, my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe reminded me of all the things I have said in the past on this issue. Although I now find myself in a different position, my heart is exactly in the same place. The issue of how migrant women are supported in our country is one that we are currently giving huge attention to. I do not care what stamp is in someone’s passport; if they have been abused on these shores, they deserve protection on these shores. That is what we will continue to strive for.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) is right to say that I have a special interest in Northern Ireland. That is not to say that I do not love Wales and Scotland as well, because I do, but my father, who also raised me to be a feminist, makes my loyalty to Northern Ireland a tiny bit stronger than to elsewhere.

[Alicia Kearns]

The Minister and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) may welcome the information that the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee will hold specific hearings on violence against women and girls in Northern Ireland in the next few months. I am sure we will share with them in the next few months the outcomes of those hearings.

[Jess Phillips]

Yes, I had heard that from the Chair, and I am very pleased about it. For the now finally formed Government of Northern Ireland—we were all delighted to see that happen—one of their top priorities, in not a long list for government, is violence against women and girls. I will go over in January to work with the devolved Government and the Police Service of Northern Ireland to see how we can help each other to make this issue better.

Another point to make is about women’s experiences in post-conflict areas. Lots of people have mentioned conflict zones, but the women’s experience of violence in conflict zones, and then post conflict, does not get discussed when we talk about peace treaties and what needs to be put in place to rebuild infrastructure. We must not lose sight of that either.

Staying on the theme of the international stage, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) said that this might not be my area to talk about with regard to Malala Yousafzai, so I will take this moment to shamelessly say that it is literally my area, because I am her Member of Parliament. I feel pretty proud that it was my city that took Malala in when she really needed refuge. I once had to lecture her school class about activism and how to be better activists, and this was after she had won the Nobel peace prize. That was a moment in my life that I felt slight shame in, but I hope they took something away from it.

I met with Malala recently on the very issue, as touched on by the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford and my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North, of the experiences of women in Afghanistan and the regime they are—I cannot even say “living under”—under. In fact, I met some of her people yesterday and will be continuing those conversations, and when I met with Malala herself it was with Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office Ministers, so those conversations are ongoing.

The issue of funding was mentioned by many, and my hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) mentioned a statutory duty in her comments. This links to the point about Cheshire. When my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Cheshire (Andrew Cooper) and I visited Cheshire police, we saw NHS-funded posts, probation-funded posts, police-funded posts and police and crime commissioner-funded posts sitting in a room together working tirelessly, and this goes to the point from my hon. Friend about rolling this out, as it is in London with the Metropolitan police and only two other areas. It is all well and good the Government saying, “I’m gonna have this fund and that fund”, but we will never solve this issue unless violence against women and girls is specifically mainstreamed into funding programmes in every locality, in every Department. This cannot be just a nice-to-have on International Women’s Day, and the example in Cheshire is a fantastic one, so we know it can work elsewhere. This is about the Government seeing what levers we can pull to ensure that that can happen.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Debate between Alicia Kearns and Jess Phillips

Report stage
Monday 13th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Alicia Kearns]

rose—

[Jess Phillips]

It does not seem very feminist, but I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alicia Kearns]

I rise to urge the hon. Lady to name the institutions, because this Bill is about freedom of choice and of speech. I know that if I were a 17 or 18-year-old girl choosing university again, I would actively choose not to attend colleges or universities where I knew they might force an NDA on me if I was raped.

[Jess Phillips]

I will absolutely come on to naming some of those institutions. As I said, this was found by Elle magazine, which is collecting this data, unlike the Government at the moment. The article said the student claimed this arrangement felt

“worse than the assault—Dealing with this abuse of power was far more traumatic. It was emotionally exhausting and humiliating.”

Earlier this year, the Express took a day off from talking about Princess Diana and its investigation revealed that more than 3,500 cases of assault were reported in 78 institutions in the UK in the last five years. The figure consists of confirmed cases of sexual violence and disclosures made by both staff and students pending investigation. The 135 freedom of information requests sent to every university in the UK also revealed that many do not record figures of sexual assaults, so the overall number is likely to be much higher. So it is, “Just don’t record it and then it doesn’t happen.”

In 2020, a BBC investigation found that over 300 NDAs were used by universities in student complaints between 2016 and 2020, and that almost a third of all universities in England had used such deals in these circumstances. The probe discovered that universities had paid out £1.3 million on these deals, although the true scale is thought to be much larger. The campaign Can’t Buy My Silence was started by the brilliant and formidable Zelda Perkins, once an assistant to Harvey Weinstein and someone who had an NDA imposed on her related to his crimes, and Professor Julie Macfarlane. Their campaign has survivors’ testimony reporting that NDAs had gagged them from speaking of their experiences with family or loved ones, or even their therapists. I pay tribute to them and the work they are doing alongside the Minister, whom I know speaks to them. However, like me, they agree that legislation is necessary to tackle this.

So far, 66 universities have signed the Government’s pledge. I made this speech on Second Reading and since then the Government added “looking at non-disclosure agreements” into the violence against women and girls strategy, which was published late at the end of last year. I stand here in complete respect for the Minister. She has sought to do what she can to improve the situation. She has worked with the campaigns that I have talked about to get universities signing pledges. She is working with the Office for Students to look at regulation and at what needs to happen if these things are breached. Every Member of Parliament will have had to try to get a regulator to do something about their bad cases, and we are here with universities signing “pledges”. I do not know how we are going to know whether they are breaking their pledge if people have been gagged.

So far, 66 universities have signed the Government’s pledge. That is great, but why haven’t the others? I encourage every university to do this. There are over 130 universities in the UK. What about those students? What about their right to speak out? As the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) pointed out, she would want to hear about this. I am not going to list all the universities that have not signed it, but here are some: the University of Cambridge, King’s College London, the London School of Economics, the University of Wolverhampton and the University of Sunderland. That is just to name a few. Perhaps it is taking time and perhaps they are getting around to it. I very much encourage them to do it.

Just to show the House what I am talking about, I have an example here of one of these NDAs. This is the kind of thing that students are asked to do. It is not necessarily called a non-disclosure agreement, and that is a way out of this; the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) and I often challenge organisations when they say they do not have NDAs, because we have them in our inboxes and they call them something else. They will call them a “confidentiality agreement”. In lots of cases in universities we have seen the growth of “no contact arrangements”.

I will read this agreement out—this is from the university. It says, “We recognise the sensitive nature of the allegation involved. In consideration of our duty of care to both parties, we have therefore concluded that in the interest of both parties a non-contact arrangement is required.” This young woman who had been raped was told, exactly as the person accused of raping her was told, that she had to stay out of certain places; she could not go to certain things at certain times. She was told that she, “Is not to enter the building”, that her, “Fob access will be disabled” and that she is, “Not to enter the building unless for tutorials and classes notified in advance.” She is told, “Fob access will be disabled unless we have had advance notification”—this is a rape victim being told that she has to report to a guard so that she can go to her classes. She is also told, “You are asked not to make any information about these allegations, the police investigation or the safeguarding arrangements that we have made available on any form of public media”—so she should not talk about this document. Finally, she is told, “Evidence of repeated breaches of this arrangement and/or a serious breach of conditions—entering an embargoed building or publishing material in the press—will result in your expulsion.” That is from one of the finest universities in the world.

This is about people’s silence, but not just their silence; it is about their movement, their freedom and every element of their freedom of expression being stopped. Yet there is nothing in the Bill about freedom of speech, freedom of expression or freedom to study. There is nothing that the Government are proposing to do or to put in legislation. I simply do not understand why they would not have taken this opportunity to do something.

I met the Minister last week and, as I said, I do not doubt her total and utter commitment. Incidentally, she said earlier that “legislation of this nature can spur culture change.” Yet she told me last week that legislation is not always the answer—[Interruption.] I will take the intervention, by all means. No? Okay. She also explained to me that the Office for Students is looking at regulation to, for example, take away the status of a university if it is guilty of a breach. I responded—and I say again—that the idea that a rape victim who has signed a non-disclosure agreement will take down Cambridge University is the stuff of cinematic hopeful glory. I will believe that when I see it, which everybody in this building knows will be never. Why would we want to push universities and victims into that position? Why would we not legislate to stop the use of non-disclosure agreements?