Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Bill

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Siobhan Baillie

2nd reading
Friday 9th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes]

My hon. Friend is making the important and powerful point that we must never ever forget that there is, uncomfortable though we may find it, a pyramid of offending. Although not every flasher becomes a rapist, every rapist has started somewhere, and public sexual harassment can be the somewhere. Does she agree that that is one of the many reasons why we have to make sure that it is stamped out at source?

[Siobhan Baillie]

I completely agree with my right hon. Friend. That is why I get so frustrated when people dismiss this as unnecessary, going too far, or too heavy-handed. It is a very short hop, skip and jump from someone shouting obscenities or being rude to a woman on the street to being rude in their own home, if that is their mentality. We have to make that connection and we have to keep making it strongly.

When we had those rare horrendous incidents in Stroud, the advice that was immediately given was for women. They were told, “Change your behaviour. Change your clothes.” It was exactly as the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) said. It was also, “Don’t wear your headphones. Think a little bit more about where you’re going to walk”. Where do I want to walk in a beautiful Cotswolds market town? I want to walk everywhere. I do not want my thought processes to be about whether I will get attacked on any given day.

But Stroud fought back. This is a very spirited place, very politically bouncy, as anyone who follows politics will know, and my inbox is very bouncy, too. Anybody who thought that they would get away with attacking women and girls or being rude to them on the streets in my area was very, very wrong. We have all banded together to make changes, which is why I am so much in support of what my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells is doing. Our voices are being reinforced, although it is not just about our voices: in all of our constituencies, we have Government support for a very important Bill.

I have led a successful campaign, which the Government have now supported, to change the law and reduce anonymous online abuse, which, as I said, is completely connected to the real world. Hundreds of people in Stroud have marched, on a number of occasions now, specifically on these issues. Our police and crime commissioner, Chris Nelson, and our police have joined those marches. That is a really important step. Our PCC has made tackling violence against women and girls a focus of his work. The hon. Member for Walthamstow was talking about police forces that were ahead of the curve; Gloucestershire is one of them and I am very proud of it for that, although the police have a lot more work to do. We held a public meeting about these issues, and even though we have been reporting hate crimes and public harassment for much longer than other forces, women were standing up saying that they still did not feel comfortable going to the police. There is an awful lot of work to do, and I know that the Gloucestershire constabulary understand that.

Two fabulous constituents, Nikki Owen and Sydney-Anne McAllister—I met Sydney quite recently—have launched a pressure group called This Ends Now. They want to change the law and the media, and they are challenging both to do better, particularly on language. Where there is a rape, it should be reported in the media as a rape, not as a sexual assault, and it should not be played down in any way, shape or form. I believe that committed women in my patch will be pleased to see what we are trying to do today.

I encourage all Members of the House to look up the work of the Holly Gazzard Trust, which was set up by a family who were devastated by the loss of their daughter. They have gone on to campaign on domestic abuse and to really change the lives of many other families, and they are front and centre in supporting and fighting for women and girls in Gloucestershire.

We also have Chrissie Lowery, who is winning awards all over the place. Following the rapes and other incidents I have mentioned, and the rise of concern among our school girls about public sexual harassment, she took up the baton and created the Safe Space campaign, which Stagecoach, the police and lots of local businesses are now on board with. After an incident in a very dark, dingy, scary tunnel, Chrissie took the initiative of getting some amazing artists together, and we painted the tunnel, which sounds very simple. My daughter and I went down, and we put butterflies on the wall of this horrendously dark tunnel; it is now a beautiful open space that people are comfortable going down during the day, and we are looking at having lighting and CCTV at night. These efforts are small acts of kindness, but they will all join up to make a difference.

Gloucestershire police have created something called the Flare app, which is being rolled out to other forces. It allows people to put in the details of places they are worried about in the Stroud district and creates a heat map, so the police know to go to specific points of concern and the council can come in and do work on things such as CCTV. It is really innovative, and we can probably do more with it, but 3,000 people have downloaded it, so it is going pretty well for a new piece of kit.

Given that my community and constituents have done so much legwork—there are more examples, but I will not go on and on—it is right that we in this place constantly review the law. Following the advice from bodies such as the Law Commission—where very learned people have spent a lot of time investigating this issue—my right hon. Friend’s Bill assists us in doing that. We are creating a new law that deals with intentionally harassing or seeking to cause alarm, which is a gap in the legislation that we have in this place, so I welcome the Bill.

However, it is right that there is a balance in what we are trying to do and in what happens should somebody be pulled up for sexual harassment, so I welcome the explanation of what will and will not result in imprisonment. The headlines and challenges that we have seen—that someone will be sent to prison because they wolf-whistled—are immediately dismissive. It is therefore right that we are clear about what the Bill does and does not do and about how we have sought to strike a balance. The test is the intention to cause distress. Where somebody is being a plonker, that is a very different test—we could deal with plonkers in other ways. This intention to cause distress is a serious test, which will hopefully lead to prosecutions in the right places and then to deterrence, so that we can start to change society and culture.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Siobhan Baillie

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 28th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

As a woman who is perennially in a hurry and terribly impatient, I will ensure that my contribution is blissfully short. There is much in the Bill that I feel encouraged about. As hon. Members might expect, as Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, I will focus specifically on those areas that affect women.

Inevitably, I will always say to the Government that they have missed opportunities, that they have not gone far enough and that more could have been done. I very much feel that the Bill could have done more, but I very much welcome the amendment on voyeurism and breastfeeding, which was put forward by the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and has been accepted by the Government. That is a step in the right direction for women. I also welcome Government amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendment 70 on spiking. I am the first to acknowledge that spiking is not necessarily a gendered crime, but in many instances it is, and we know that young women in particular fall victim to it. Although there are concerns around spiking for robbery, for other forms of violence and abuse and, indeed, in some cases, just for entertainment, a massive proportion of it is about taking sexual advantage—usually of women.

As hon. Members might expect—it was inevitable—I turn to amendment 72 on misogyny. Consistency is important, so I have always said that I would accept and welcome what the Law Commission recommended in its review. However, if we are to go to its recommendations on misogyny and the complications that it rightly highlighted—this is an incredibly difficult area—we should also look at public sexual harassment, which it has also said should be a specific crime.

I started by saying that I am a woman in a hurry, and I am. I welcome my right hon. Friend the Minister’s comments on what the Government are planning to do on public sexual harassment, but this feels like a missed opportunity. I look for confirmation on whether the specific legislative vehicle—this looks very much like one—will be the victims Bill or something tailored to PSH, because this absolutely matters. If we are to start tackling the cultures that underpin violence against women, we must look at the cultures that mean that some men think it is okay to harass women on the street and on public transport.

[Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)]

Girls from Stroud High School got me into their school to talk about the public sexual harassment that they receive—often daily and often in their school uniforms—which is outrageous. Under the “Everyone’s Invited” campaign, many schoolgirls—and schoolboys as well—have reported exactly what they experience. Does my right hon. Friend agree that while the comments that we have heard from the Minister are incredibly positive, we must recognise that the calls for such changes come not just from this place or from adults but from young girls everywhere who are experiencing really tough times?

[Caroline Nokes]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is in our schools that those calls are strongest, which means that young women in their school uniforms are being significantly impacted. They feel scared to walk home alone. They are given advice to stay to well-lit areas, to ensure that they walk in areas with CCTV and to be careful on public transport. Yet again, we are saying, “Girls, be careful,” and not, “Men, don’t do it.” That is why I feel so strongly about specific legislation on public sexual harassment that empowers women to point at behaviours and say, “That is a crime.”