International Women’s Day

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Thursday 9th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) for opening the debate and for all her work for women over the years. I share her comments about celebrating our wonderful women parliamentarians and all their achievements. It is very good to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Madam Deputy Speaker, and our excellent female Clerks at the Table, too.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) will read out the list of UK women killed this year, which is truly heartbreaking and a reminder of the dangers that women and girls face in our country. Three years ago, my constituent Libby Squire was on that list. She was a young woman studying at Hull University whose life was taken in 2019 by a predatory man who had been prowling the streets of Hull looking for a victim. But Libby’s murder was not an out-of-the-blue attack: in the 16 months before Libby’s rape and murder, the perpetrator had committed a string of sexually motivated offences, including indecent exposure, masturbating in public, spying on women through their windows and stealing sex toys and underwear.

Very sadly, we know that the behaviour of men who expose themselves is devastatingly everyday, common and normalised. When I asked women MPs earlier this week about their experiences of men indecently exposing themselves, everyone had a story, whether it had happened outside their sixth-form college, on public transport or on the way to school. Just today I received a letter from an 80-year-old woman who recalls being a victim of indecent exposure when she was 18. She still lives, 62 years later, with the impact of that assault.

We found out at Libby’s killer’s trial that many of his earlier crimes had not been reported to the police. Why was that? It was because victims often feel that they will not be taken seriously by the police and that reporting will not actually trigger any action. We know that these crimes are committed by predators and can be a precursor to more extreme violent behaviour. We ignore these warning signs—these red flags—at our peril.

Earlier this week, Wayne Couzens was sentenced to 19 months for indecent exposure, having committed a string of non-contact sexual offences in the years before his arrest. One of those incidents, when he exposed himself to staff at a McDonalds drive-through, happened just days before he kidnapped, raped and murdered Sarah Everard. In handing down the sentence, Mrs Justice May reported that Wayne Couzens’s ability to commit these deeds with impunity only

“strengthened…the dangerous belief in his invincibility”.

Very sadly, as with Libby’s murderer, the offences escalated.

A review of evidence from 2014 found that a quarter of men who exposed themselves went on to reoffend, with as many as 10% going on to commit serious sexual offences.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

Is it not true that most people underestimate what an assault on a woman is like? It is really only when it happens to you that you understand the impact. It is so important that we listen to the women who have been through an assault and understand the trauma that it has caused them.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

Absolutely. I am very grateful for that intervention. I think every woman in this Chamber or watching this debate will fully understand the impact that it can have.

I return to the statistics. Since 2018, almost 250 men found guilty of indecent exposure have subsequently been found guilty of rape. Indecent exposure and non-contact sexual offences are gateway crimes that are still not taken seriously enough. In the years since her daughter’s murder, Libby’s mum, the formidable Lisa Squire, has fought to raise the importance of reporting these “low-level” sexual offences. She has been working with Humberside police on the Libby campaign to urge women always to report them to the police. Her call on women is, “These offences are not trivial. They are not harmless. If you are the victim, please report it to the police. It could save another woman’s life.” She has already managed, alongside Humberside police, to reach 17,000 young people in the Humberside area. She is also working with the Metropolitan police and Thames Valley police. I spoke to Lisa this morning; she is a formidable woman, and I have no doubt at all that we will see change because of the work that she is doing.

Of course, reporting is not the only hurdle. This week, we heard from one of Couzens’s victims, who said in her impact statement:

“Four months after you exposed yourself to me, you raped and murdered an innocent woman. There were opportunities to identify you and they were not taken. I did not feel that, when I reported your crime, it was taken as seriously as I felt that it should have been.”

If women are to report crimes, they must have faith that they will be believed and respected, that action will be taken, and that, most importantly, the police themselves are not a danger.

A recent analysis found that of the 10,000 indecent exposure cases logged by police in 2020, only 600 reached court. That is simply not enough. I have tabled amendments to Home Office Bills to try to tackle the issue, but sadly the Government did not accept them. I met Home Office Ministers, with Lisa Squire, to talk about what more the Government could do. As Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, I raised the issue directly with the previous Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel).

I believe that the Government must do much more about tackling violence against women and girls. The Prime Minister declared this to be a national emergency back in November, but he did not make it one of his top five priorities. Why not make it the sixth priority? If this Government will not accept this as a national emergency, I hope that the next will. Indecent exposure is not a minor crime—we know that it is frequently a stepping stone to escalating violence against women by predatory men—and perpetrators, although pathetic, are not harmless; they are often very dangerous. We must take this issue far more seriously, doing so for Libby, for Sarah, and for all the women taken from us. Just like women down the years fighting for a cause—the suffragettes, the Bow match girls, the Ford Dagenham equal pay strikers, and Hull’s own headscarf revolutionaries—we will persevere and we will see change.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

That is exactly the point that I was coming on to make. I absolutely respect why Members of this House have ideological objections to abortion and why they will always vote to restrict it. However, the fact is that abortion is an established right in this country, and it is our obligation to ensure that those laws are safe and that women can access abortion as early as possible in their pregnancies. That is actually the most important thing and the safest thing, and that is why they must be much more readily available.

Let me make a point to the Front Bench—which I fear will fall on deaf ears, just because we continue to see this as an issue of conscience, rather than of safety—that this is something that really ought to be reviewed. I would suggest to the Minister that we have, in our women’s health ambassador, Lesley Regan, someone who, as a former head of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, is eminently qualified to undertake a review, perhaps not to make recommendations, but to just highlight how the current abortion law is not fit for purpose, so that we can properly review how we might improve it.

The way in which the Abortion Act is established is not encouraging a healthy debate about the issue either—on both sides, I might add. That is the starting frame of reference, so we end up in this ridiculous debate about time limits. Ultimately, we just need to get away from that and think about it as a health procedure. When that Act was passed back in 1967, it was a radical and empowering measure that advanced women’s rights, but here we are, more than 50 years later, and we need to take a good look at it.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I will give way to the right hon. Lady, because I know that she has very passionate and informed views on this, and has done so much on this issue.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. I am so pleased to hear her make this speech. What is even more worrying is that, while the 1967 Act is more than 50 years old, it is of course underpinned by the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, which is a Victorian piece of legislation that says that abortion is a criminal offence. Really, until we decriminalise abortion and treat it as a healthcare matter, we really will not get rid of the stigma. That seems to be the thing that we need to do in this country—decriminalise it and treat it as a healthcare matter—which I think the hon. Lady is supportive of.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

Absolutely. It must be treated as a healthcare matter. However, on the point that the right hon. Lady raises about the 1861 Act, I looked into that when I was a Minister, to see how many convictions there were, and, to be honest, we still need to have some kind of protection maintaining the criminality of abortion where there could be coercion involved. Again, these are issues that are still crimes against the woman.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way again, and I will be very quick, but decriminalisation does not mean deregulation. Of course, all the healthcare laws that apply to our clinicians, nurses and everybody else would still need to apply, so things such as coercion absolutely would be regulated for and treated as an offence. However, the underlying issue of women being criminalised in that Offences Against the Person Act has to go.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I think the fact that the right hon. Lady and I are having a ding-dong about this, while we actually want the same outcome, illustrates just how badly that debate has taken place, because of the bookends of the 1861 Act and the 1967 Act. Again, it comes back to us all wanting better outcomes and a safe system for women. That should be our starting point, not those two pieces of legislation. We can probably strengthen the protections for women regarding coercion if we look at it in that way.

As usual, I like to use this speech to challenge ourselves about what we are not getting right for women. But I have not got until midnight on Sunday, so I will have to be a bit more limited in what I am able to tackle. However, I am pleased to have been able to say what I have about abortion today.

I also want to come back to the point, which the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North made in her speech, about indecent exposure. I absolutely amplify her overall argument. To be honest, flashing is not seen as a crime. It has been totally normalised. I heard on the radio, just this week, that as many as 50% of women have been victims of that crime. I cannot emphasise enough that sexual violence is something that escalates, so the moment that some things are tolerated, that behaviour will only increase. Wayne Couzens is perhaps the best example of that.

This is where I come back to equality laws and advances that are meant to empower women. I want to talk about the whole issue of contraception. Yes, it has given women the opportunity to take control of their fertility and enjoy their sexuality, and all the rest of it, but it has also generated a culture in which men feel even more entitled, and where girls are feeling more and more forced to become sexualised beings, earlier perhaps than they are ready to. That is why I feel very strongly that we need to keep our safe spaces.