Violence against Women and Girls

Ben Obese-Jecty Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

We have heard many moving and personal accounts this afternoon from Members addressing the scourge of violence against women and girls. It is crucial that we continue to shed heat and light on this horrendous abuse—not just the horrific stories that make the news, but the hidden harms that we do not hear about. In 2024, domestic abuse-related crimes represented 15.8% of all offences recorded by police, with nearly three quarters of those victims being female.

The incident that I wish to highlight involves a young woman who was violently attacked outside a nightclub. The man who was her attacker was also her boyfriend at the time. By his own admission, the young man said he had only pushed her and she fell to the ground and was hurt. Court records subsequently revealed that he had repeatedly kicked her, “around four times”. It was reported in the Daily Mail that the attack was stopped only when two doormen dragged the attacker away from the young woman and then called the police. The man was arrested and charged with assault. The Times reported that he had initially denied the charge, maintaining his innocence, which meant that both his victim and witnesses were forced to relive the attack by giving statements to the police ahead of going to trial. The young woman herself was left with both injuries and lasting mental scars.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, the victim’s mother described how it had taken

“two security guards to pull him off her”.

She explained how he had

“left marks on her body”

from the violence of the assault, going on to describe her daughter’s attacker as “a monster” and stating:

“There is no way he should be an MP in the House of Commons representing people.”

As of July, that young woman’s attacker sits on these green Benches as a Member of Parliament. His constituents were made aware of the crime only when the story was reported in the Daily Mail on 12 July. After the story broke, the Member referred to it as a “teenage indiscretion” —even as recently as last weekend, during a fractious Sky News interview.

While the Member maintains that the assault was nothing more than an argument followed by a push where his former girlfriend

“fell over and…was hurt”,

the extract from the Chelmsford Crown court records relating to the conviction explains why the judge awarded a custodial sentence, stating that

“the sentence was not suspended in light of the serious nature of the offence”.

It states that the offence “requires immediate punishment”, and that a pre-sentence report indicated a

“lack of willingness to comply”

before the man eventually submitted a late guilty plea.

I find it incredible that a Member of this House has a conviction for a violent assault on a young woman, his own partner, receiving an immediate custodial sentence for it. In a previous interview with Sky News, there was a refusal from the very top of the Reform party to acknowledge that female constituents who might have suffered domestic abuse or violence might be uncomfortable with having an MP who had been convicted of attacking a woman. The party leader stated in November that the Member “wasn’t vetted at all”, but in July a party spokesman was quoted in the Daily Mail as saying that the party knew about the conviction because the Member had been

“entirely honest with us when he applied to become our candidate”.

On-the-record comments from the party leader and the party spokesman appear to contradict one another completely in respect of what was known. The Reform party appears to have knowingly put up a candidate with a conviction for attacking a woman—a party that does not believe that violence against women and girls should be taken seriously if the perpetrator is one of their own. We in this House, constituents and the wider public deserve to know precisely what Reform knew about this conviction; what they were told, when they were told it, and what they chose to disclose in subsequent statements to the media.

I believe in the rehabilitation of offenders—I believe that the justice system needs to be rehabilitative in order to reduce the rate of recidivism, and that those who have served their sentences should be free to move on with their lives—but I also believe that being sentenced for such a heinous crime should mean forfeiting some of the privileges that those of us who have never attacked a woman are granted. One such privilege is being a Member of Parliament. If the conviction in question had been related to a sexual offence, would it have been accepted here so comfortably?

Justice should not mean that victims are forced to see those convicted of attacking them being elected as Members of this House because there was no requirement to disclose their past. The Government have pledged to halve violence against women and girls in a decade, and to provide victims with better support. The presence of a Member of Parliament with a conviction for violently assaulting a woman has never been acknowledged in this House, let alone addressed. Any debate in the House on the subject of violence against women and girls should address the convicted criminal already in our midst. As this Government shape their legislative agenda, I ask the Minister to consider whether it is time to introduce legislation that bars those who have served a custodial sentence for violence against women and girls from standing as a Member of Parliament.