King’s Speech

Baroness Gohir Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gohir (CB)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the Ministers on their new roles and their maiden speeches today. I look forward to asking them many questions. I will focus my contribution on violence against black, Asian and minority-ethnic women. I declare my interest as CEO of Muslim Women’s Network UK.

I welcome the Government’s bold pledge to halve violence against women and girls. However, to be successful they will need to tackle the radicalisation of boys into extreme misogyny by online male toxic influencers, which is a problem in every community. How will the Government tackle this? To be successful, they will also need tailored approaches to different communities according to their needs.

I welcome efforts to date on tackling FGM, forced marriage and honour-based violence, but when it comes to minority-ethnic communities I notice that there is a greater tendency to focus on abuses linked to cultural practices. What is actually killing women is domestic abuse, but that does not get the same attention in minority-ethnic communities. In fact, when it comes to domestic homicides, minority-ethnic women are overrepresented by 22%. So I urge the Government to hold a public consultation to uncover the contributing factors to this overrepresentation and come up with recommendations across government departments and services. I also urge the Government to think about a legal definition of spiritual abuse. I will be holding a round-table meeting in September with minority-ethnic groups and I urge the Government to send policy advisers to that meeting to listen to what women have to say.

I turn my attention to hate crime. I was disappointed not to see this in His Majesty’s Speech, given that hate crime has been going up for over a decade now. But I shall focus my comments more on Muslim women. Police data actually shows that the vast majority of perpetrators are white males, so I consider this a form of gender-based violence, yet this type of hate crime tends not to be included in violence against women and girls strategies. I urge the Government to consider putting it in.

The Labour manifesto talks about improving the way that Islamophobia is monitored. I welcome that, but what action will the Government take to tackle anti-Muslim prejudice? For example, will they engage with Muslim communities and groups around the country and engage with Muslim women? That is something that the previous Government did not do. Instead, from 2011 they focused on funding one project, Tell MAMA, which is now given £1 million a year even though Muslim communities do not have trust and confidence in that project any more. There are concerns over transparency, governance, how funding is being spent and the quality of the data.

I was so concerned that I asked the previous Government 31 questions, which were not answered. That caused me a lot of anxiety, and I hope that the new Government will answer those questions. In fact, recently, an academic, Dr Nafeez Ahmed, tried to write articles about my concerns. The project spent a lot of money hiring Mishcon de Reya, which has expensive lawyers, to try to block the articles. Thankfully, that was not successful. I think I am on to something and that we need to look into this very deeply and carefully. What are they hiding? Could it be the inflation-busting pay rise of the CEO? That went from £77,000 to £93,000, which is a 21% pay rise.

I urge the Government to review this expenditure of public funding, to talk to Muslim communities around the country and to set up alternative hate-crime reporting hubs within communities. I am more than happy to support the Government to engage with and to speak to affected communities, in particular Muslim women.