International Women’s Day: Language in Politics

Dawn Butler Excerpts

Thursday 29th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton). I always say that we will know we have reached true equality in this place when we have as many rubbish women as we do rubbish men. [Laughter.]

The Home Office Minister should be ashamed of how he attacked an Opposition Member of Parliament during the previous statement. I hope that she raises a point of order, because we are talking about the language in this place and we should all be setting an example. We saw at the weekend the language used by the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson), the right hon. and learned Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman) and the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss)—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I just remind the hon. Lady that if she is referring to Members, I hope she has notified them that she intended to do so.

[Dawn Butler]

I have not notified them, Madam Deputy Speaker; I have just been so angry about this. I will withdraw naming them. I thank the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) for calling out the language used by those on both sides of the House.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) is no longer in her place. When she read out her list, it was heartbreaking, and when we saw the family members stand, it broke all of our hearts. The media are failing women and, as legislators, we are too, because that list should be getting shorter every year and it is not getting shorter.

In the short time I have today, I wish to mention three things that we can do as legislators to help stop the killing and abuse of women. I wish to thank Level Up and Glamour magazine for their tireless campaigning in this area. I also thank the Minister for Women, the hon. Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), for the productive discussions we have had on language changes to the Independent Press Standards Organisation code. It is important that we have cross-party discussions on that, because we are talking about the safety of women. It is a shame that those changes have not happened yet. I feel that the Minister understands their importance, but I sometimes think there is a barrier stopping her from making them happen. I do not know who or what the barrier is, but I feel that she understands the importance of the changes. The second thing we need to do is put in place 10 days’ paid domestic violence leave. The third thing we need to do is ensure funding for refuges.

Let me start by discussing the IPSO code. The way the press reports is often inaccurate and undignified, and prioritises sensationalist headlines over responsible reporting. That approach needs to be replaced with responsible reporting that tackles the root of domestic abuse and the dynamics of power and control. We need to end victim blaming. By doing that, we will save lives. We need to improve and strengthen clause 4 of the code. As Level Up has said, clause 4 deals with:

“Intrusion into grief or shock”.

The clause states:

“In cases involving personal grief or shock, enquiries and approaches must be made with sympathy and discretion and publication handled sensitively. These provisions should not restrict the right to report legal proceedings.”

Level Up says:

“Given the academic research on the negative impact of romantic framings and the known damage caused to victims’ families, Level Up recommends the Editors’ Code Committee introduce a subclause to the effect of:

‘In cases where a person has been killed by a partner or former partner, care should be taken not to use language which could frame the killing as an act of ‘love’, or which could be construed to blame the victim for their death.’”

That amendment needs to be made to the code with urgent effect. We cannot say that this is voluntary; it has to be enshrined in the code.

One in four women experience domestic abuse in their lifetime. I am sure that all the women in the Chamber today have suffered some kind of domestic abuse or unwanted attention in their lifetime. Every three days a woman is killed by a partner or ex-partner. None of those deaths have come out of the blue. Criminologists have established that when a woman is murdered by a partner, it marks the end of a sustained period of coercive control. Abuse does not end when the relationship ends. In fact, the time when women are most vulnerable is when they leave a relationship. The moment someone leaves an abusive relationship is the moment of greatest risk. I urge the Minister to urge the Government to look into a domestic abuse policy requiring employers to provide up to 10 days’ paid leave, as enacted in the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand. By granting victims paid leave, those 10 days will save lives. As legislators, there is no greater honour than passing legislation that saves lives.

To conclude, the third of my asks is for extra money for refuges. The Women’s Aid “Domestic Abuse Report 2024” states that £189 million should be ringfenced for women’s refuge services. Almost 50% of organisations have said that they are operating without funding, so they are saving lives but they are not being paid for it. Some 79% of people using refuges use food banks and 62.5% of survivors are unable to leave their abusers because they cannot afford to.

Level Up has an acronym: AIDA. A is for accountability: murder is not a loss of control, but the responsibility of the perpetrator. I is for image: centre images of victims, not perpetrators, and do not place their images side by side; and use official photos that have been provided by the police or the family, not social media. D is for dignity: a victim’s children, family and friends will read the coverage many times. They will be in grief and shock. Avoid sensationalising language, invasive or graphic details. Dead women cannot protect their families. Finally, A is for accuracy: name the crime for what it is—fatal domestic abuse, not a horror or a tragedy perpetrated by a monster or unknown evil. Use statistics from the Office for National Statistics for context on how many other women have been killed. Gender-based violence is a national and not a personal problem. It is not an isolated incident and many women are being killed each year.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dawn Butler]

Is my hon. Friend as disappointed as I am about the failure of some Members of Parliament to call out Islamophobia?

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. I have been very disappointed by that, as I would have been about any case of prejudiced or racist language that does not consider what a Member or politician has said or done but instead suggests that their appearance, faith, ethnicity or gender is what should be focused on. We surely need to move beyond that as Members of this House.

We also need to move beyond that in the online world, about which we have heard a number of powerful speeches. We need a more powerful regime than that in the Online Safety Act 2023. My hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) set out powerfully why change is needed there and how it can be achieved. I think that everyone in the Chamber was disgusted to hear the misogynistic abuse that has been directed towards one of the most formidable campaigners in the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris). The right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) also set out clearly the need to prevent abuse from becoming the norm in online political debate and discussion.

Of course, in ensuring that the language we use does not prevent women’s participation in our politics, we also need to ensure, as we look towards International Women’s Day next week, that our politics delivers on the representation of women more broadly, and on the issues of concern to women. It is possible to achieve parity between men and women on these green Benches; it is possible to have a gender-balanced parliamentary party and a gender-balanced shadow Cabinet and Front-Bench team. My party has achieved that, and I hope that other parties will seek to achieve it in future, because, sadly, we are far from that. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Workington (Mark Jenkinson) mentions leadership from a sedentary position, quite rightly. I believe that leadership was mentioned earlier in the debate, but he was not there for it. The debate has shown that women’s leadership is alive and kicking on all sides of the House, and I am very pleased to see that, but we need more action. That is why we believe that we should enact section 106 of the Equality Act 2010—so that all political parties publish data on the diversity of their candidates, including how many women they have standing for office.

Perhaps because the motion before us today focuses particularly on the issue of language, there has been less reference to incredible women in our society, but we did have a focus on some of them. We heard from the right hon. Member for Basingstoke about those involved in medicine, particularly gynaecology, and from the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) about the absolute legend who is Mary Earps, who has inspired so many girls and women in sport. Those advances should not be forgotten, but neither should the need for more action to deliver greater women’s equality in society. Unfortunately, we are moving backwards in some areas—we have heard about a number of them this afternoon. Reference has been made to the gender pay gap; at the current rate, it will take 41 years to completely close that gap. I do not know how many Members in the Chamber today expect to still be in the House in 2064. I hope everyone has a long and healthy career ahead, but that is surely too long for women to wait to get the equal pay we desperately need.

Of course, we have also discussed the appalling epidemic of violence against women and girls in our country. This debate follows the discussion about part 1 of the Angiolini review of the truly appalling events leading up to the murder of Sarah Everard. As she has done eight times previously, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), read out the names of the many women who have been murdered, and of course spoke about unnamed women as well. We heard some appalling examples from my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi), who spoke about her constituents. There is surely a very clear need for action when we see, for example, that only 1.5% of recorded rapes lead to a charge, and that rates of prosecution for domestic violence are falling, and also the kind of press treatment of victims that my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) set out so clearly.

We also see the desperate need for action on women’s health—we have not had time to discuss that issue today —and action for women in the workplace. We need to deliver that change. There is a need for legislative alterations, and as we have heard today, there is a need for a change in the tenor of debate, so that we are always promoting women in our politics and they are never put off it because of divisive language.