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

Andrew Smith Excerpts

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

[Dr Whiteford]

I agree entirely that this is an extremely urgent issue. Nobody can use the excuse of parliamentary time any more, given the way that business has been collapsing in recent weeks. There is plenty of parliamentary time; what we need is political will. I hope that my Bill will be a step along that road and give us the opportunity to examine this in more detail and to push the Government to follow up their words with actions. They have said consistently that they want and intend to ratify the convention, but we have reached a hiatus, the process has stalled and the convention has now been languishing on the backburner for over four and a half years, which is far longer than Council of Europe conventions usually take to ratify. The Bill is an attempt to shift the logjam and give the Government the impetus they need to take the final steps to bring the UK into compliance.

[Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)]

I, too, congratulate the hon. Lady on her Bill. This is a vital matter. What does she think is holding the Government back from ratifying the convention?

[Dr Whiteford]

I have some theories, and I hope to come to those in due course, but at the end of the day a lack of political will holds these things back. The fact that so many Members are here on the Friday before we break for Christmas shows that many people recognise how critical this is.

As Members will see, this is a short and straightforward Bill that would require the Government to provide a clear timetable for ratification within four weeks of Royal Assent and require the Home Secretary to come to Parliament annually to report on our compliance with the convention. This would afford Members across the House better opportunity to scrutinise the Government’s record and plans for tackling violence against women. Ratification needs to be more than a tick-box exercise. It is a challenge for us all, as legislators and policymakers, to make sure that it works in practice to improve women’s lives. Strengthening parliamentary accountability would also improve our compliance with article 70 of the convention.

I want to turn to those areas where the UK is not yet fully compliant with the convention. The main sticking point appears to be article 44, which makes provision for countries to establish jurisdiction over an offence committed by one of their nationals outwith their territory. I am told by learned friends that extraterritorial jurisdiction can be a tricky legal area—parliamentary Clerks and civil servants visibly blanch when those magic words are spoken—but the UK already exercises extraterritorial jurisdiction in relation to dozens of serious offences in a wide range of areas, including in several relevant to the convention, such as forced marriage, trafficking, female genital mutilation and sexual offences against children. There are still a number of offences, however, including rape, sexual assault and domestic abuse, where it does not yet apply and where compliance would require changes to domestic law.

Moreover, some of those offences relate to areas of devolved responsibility in Scotland and Northern Ireland, so UK Ministers would need to work with Ministers in Holyrood and Stormont to secure the necessary legislative changes in the Scottish Parliament and Northern Irish Assembly, or agree legislative consent motions. I am pleased to say that the Scottish Government have signalled their willingness to push this forward, and I have been heartened by the support for the convention and my Bill from Northern Irish MPs across the political spectrum.

I want us to be clear about the difference that ratification would make and why it matters. A few weeks ago, the hon. Member for Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker) raised in Prime Minister’s Question Time the case of a constituent of his who—it is alleged—was raped by another British national outside the UK. If we had already ratified the Istanbul convention and integrated the provisions in article 44 into domestic legislation, the authorities here could have investigated and prosecuted that crime, and crimes like it.

Another example is that the women’s organisation the Southall Black Sisters has been working tirelessly to highlight the circumstances surrounding the death of Seeta Kaur, a UK citizen whose family believe was the victim of a so-called honour killing in India. The UK already has extraterritorial jurisdiction over the crime of murder, but the contested circumstances of Seeta’s death have made it difficult for her family to get the police here involved, even though they claim there is evidence that a serious crime was planned in the UK. Again, ratification of the convention would strengthen the law to provide unambiguous protection for those at risk of honour-based violence.

The Istanbul convention would offer significantly enhanced protection to women who spend time working overseas and those who work for airlines or on cruise ships. Many women travel abroad in the course of their professional lives, but if, for example, a colleague sexually assaults or rapes them in a country where the law is weak, they may have little or no redress. Workplace harassment policies are not designed to deal with criminal violence, nor should they be. We need to give our police and our courts the authority to hold UK nationals and habitual residents accountable for behaviour abroad that would constitute a serious crime at home.

We already exercise these powers in relation to child sex offences, but not sexual offences against adult women. We exercise extraterritorial jurisdiction in relation to terrorist offences, but not to those terrorised behind closed doors. It is important that we send a strong signal that crimes such as rape, sexual assault and domestic abuse committed by UK nationals will be taken seriously wherever they occur in the world. The key point is that the very existence of extraterritorial jurisdiction and the possibility of sanction will act as a powerful deterrent and help end the impunity with which some of the most violent perpetrators evade justice. These people should have nowhere to hide.

The Government need to take the Istanbul convention out of the bottom drawer, where it has been filed for far too long in a pile marked “too complicated, too difficult, too low a priority,” and we need to work together, across the House, across Departments and across the devolved Administrations to move things forward.