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

David T C Davies Excerpts

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

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

I want to say a huge thank you to the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) for introducing this Bill. Four years after the signing of the Istanbul convention we are here today to try to push the Government to ratify. That is long overdue,

I want to say, too—I intend to say a few uncharacteristic things—that I know how much the Government care about this issue. Long before I was elected to this place I worked very closely with Home Office officials, some of whom I know are here today. I worked with the Home Office under the then Home Secretary, now the Prime Minister, for years, and I never saw anything that led me to believe they had anything but commitment to improving legislation in the area of domestic violence and sexual violence. In practical terms, when things had to be delivered—that costs money and falls under the Department for Communities and Local Government’s auspices—things did tend to break down. But in legislative terms, the Modern Slavery Act 2015, the measures against coercive control and other steps let me know that there was that commitment, regardless of all the things that divide us—and, my gosh, I could talk out a debate on how many things divide us, but I like to sleep at night and was raised properly.

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

May I also put on record my support for this Bill, and for what the hon. Lady is saying? Does she agree that it is not enough just to pass legislation? We must also enforce it, which has been somewhat lacking over the last few years?

[Jess Phillips]

I entirely agree. What we tend to do in this building is pave the way with great intentions and great legislation—we have some of the best legislation on domestic violence in the world—but then open an enormous door into an empty room. It is very difficult for our police forces to enforce certain issues. That is not because they do not have the legislative framework; it because of a whole series of other reasons.

We all have to work together, a bit like yesterday in the social care statement, in every conversation in this place about the NHS. We need to work together to make this happen. I hope those on the Conservative Benches do not take offence at what I am about to say, but in a spirit of total pragmatism I would dance with the devil to make women and children safer; I will do anything.

I came to this place to bang my fists on this side of the table, because I got sick of banging them on the other side. I know the Government care about this, and I know that if they were perhaps not distracted by other things the ratification of the Istanbul convention would probably have easily passed. I say to those on the Conservative Benches that the stumbling blocks over compulsory personal, social, health and economic education and talking to young people about consent and the ratification of the Istanbul convention are a real threat to what is not a bad record in this area; it is a pretty good record. But the record on the allocation of funding needs a lot of work—all the refuges in my constituency are threatened at present.

If I was not here and had not won my seat, I would today be surrounded by piles and piles of presents given by the local community to the refuge. My desk used to become like a fort, and we would have to organise parties to get the presents wrapped, in order to give out thousands and thousands of gifts to the women and children who lived in the refuge every year. We would always throw a party. It might not seem like it to those who have never worked in the field, but it was one of the happiest times of the year. One of the reasons it was so happy was that everybody—the chief executive of the organisation, the commissioner from the council, the cleaner in the refuge, the children in the refuge—rolled up their sleeves to achieve something together. We would all make the sausage rolls, and the women would be running in and out of their flats with plates of different food, so that we could all spend Christmas together knowing that there is a huge amount of solidarity in the world for victims of domestic violence.

One of the main underpinnings of the Istanbul convention is the idea that we all work together—that we need multiple agencies genuinely working together across the world to improve things for victims of domestic violence.