Domestic Abuse Bill

Apsana Begum Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 6th July 2020 Commons Chamber

New clause 15 and new clause 20 will protect children and partners in Rother Valley and across the country. The wide-ranging and detailed nature of this Bill is a clear reminder that the Government will pursue domestic abuse wherever it exists. I am pleased that so many from across this House have been working together to make sure that anything that can be ironed out in the Bill will be, to make sure that children are put at the heart of it. For that reason, I am proud to support these Government amendments to this transformative Bill.

[Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I rise to speak to amendment 35 in the absence of my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), who could not be here to contribute to this debate in person as her childcare needs mean that she has a proxy vote. I would like to express my appreciation to her for her work in tabling amendment 35.

Amendment 35 goes to the heart of so many cases of domestic abuse in that it makes the link between domestic abuse and misogyny. Violence against women and girls does not occur in a vacuum. Hostility towards women and girls generates a culture in which violence and abuse is tolerated and excused. Changing that means challenging not only individual acts of abuse but the very source that enables them. The gathering of evidence about the extent, nature and prevalence of hostility towards women and girls, and how that interplays with the experience of domestic abuse, is crucial to recognising these connections.

The amendment proposes to mandate police forces around the country to record misogyny as a hate crime where they are not ordinarily doing so. The mandatory collecting of data by police forces would help to assess how misogyny influences the experience of domestic abuse. Once we start to record the experiences of women victims by acknowledging, naming and recording the problem of male violence, male entitlement and gender bias together with women’s reported experiences, we not only start to track perpetrators but can seek to add to our understanding of the nature of violence against women in order to work on how to end it. As my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) said, for many abusers the idea of a strong, independent, successful woman is just that—an idea—but

“they do not like the reality”.—[Official Report, 2 October 2019; Vol. 664, c. 1273.]

Misogyny in the context of domestic abuse can present itself in an abuser characterising women other than his partner with sexist stereotypes and admonishing his partner to be different. An abuser may want his partner to dress and groom attractively or even modestly but then label her for doing so. Despite evidence from a number of police forces around the country about the benefits of adopting such an approach, the Government have not yet commented on whether all police forces should do so. I would welcome the Minister’s views on that.

The Law Commission is about to launch a consultation on how to include misogyny in hate crime legislation. It is right to wait for the outcome of that work, but that should not prevent the Government from gathering data that would influence the prosecution of such a crime or recognise its place in understanding violence against women. I would welcome the Minister’s views on the Government’s understanding of the role of misogyny in causing violence against women and their assessment of the impact the policy has had to date in police forces where it has been enacted, such as in Nottingham. The amendment will no doubt allow women to name their experiences and let them know they will be believed when doing so.