UN International Day: Violence against Women

Eilidh Whiteford Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

Today’s debate marks the UN International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. “Elimination” is an ambitious word, but what we have heard today makes it very clear that we need to be ambitious and determined if we are to tackle the epidemic of violence against women that is blighting so many lives.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) on leading the debate so comprehensively, and commend the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) for the ongoing work of her Committee to promote and advance progress in this area.

We have heard from many speakers the recognition that violence against women is a global human rights abuse, but it is a pervasive and systemic human rights abuse and it affects women in all our communities and all over our world. It is rooted in, and compounded by, gender inequality; Scottish Women’s Aid is fond of saying it is a cause and a consequence of violence against women.

We have heard today that one in three women will experience domestic abuse or sexual violence in their lifetime, but that is probably a conservative estimate. I want to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West (Michelle Thomson) for her enormous courage in talking openly about things that have been so unspeakable for so long. Breaking the silence—as she and other Members today, including the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin), have done—is incredibly powerful. I hope their frankness, wisdom and strength will help other women—women who are recovering from sexual violence, women who at the moment do not know whether their lives will get back on track or ever be the same again. I hope what we have heard today helps women to go forward with strength, and makes the future different for the next generation of women.

Members have made reference today to the fact that this morning I published my private Member’s Bill that would require the Government to set out a timetable to ratify the Council of Europe convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, better known as the Istanbul convention. It would also strengthen reporting requirements so that MPs would have better opportunities to scrutinise the implementation of the convention on an ongoing basis. I hope the Government will support my Bill and that Members will come to the debate a week on Friday, and push forward something all of us want to see happen.

The Istanbul convention has local, national and transnational dimensions and its implementation has the potential to make a real difference to women’s lives. Scottish Women Aid has described the Istanbul convention as

“quite simply the best piece of international policy and practice for eliminating violence against women that exists, setting minimum standards for Government responses to victims and survivors of gender based violence...It is a blueprint for how we move from small change at the margins, services that are picking up too few people, too late, to a system that is designed to end domestic abuse and violence against women.”

The Istanbul convention offers a powerful vehicle for countries across Europe, and beyond, to prevent and combat violence against women. The UK has played a prominent role for many years in responding to the challenge, and was involved in the development of the convention and the negotiations surrounding it. However, although the UK signed the Istanbul convention back in June 2012, it is still to ratify the treaty. The Government have consistently said that they want to ratify and intend to do so, but we have reached a hiatus. The process has stalled and the Istanbul convention has now been languishing on the backburner for over four and a half years. My Bill is an attempt to shift the logjam and give the Government the impetus they need to take the final steps to bring the UK into compliance.

There are a number of areas in which the UK Government need to legislate to bring domestic legislation into compliance with article 44 of the treaty, and there is the need for legislative change or legislative consent in Scotland and Northern Ireland, but I hope the Government will use the opportunity of my private Member’s Bill to shift this logjam and ratify the convention while they have the opportunity to do so.

I want to join other Members in paying tribute to the IcChange campaign for its work. I have also been very grateful for the support from Members on both sides of this House and from every part of the UK for that process. Given all the comments today from Members—not least the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) saying, “Come on, we can do this; let’s just do it”—I hope we are now on a fast track to making this a reality.

I have been working with women’s organisations from across the UK in connection with my Bill. I was invited by Solace Women’s Aid to visit one of its refuges here in London, which I did yesterday. I met five women and eight children currently staying in the refuge and the staff who support them. There were many things to reflect on from my visit, including overwhelmingly how vulnerable some women are when they leave an abusive situation and how precarious their lives can be for some time afterwards.

My visit brought it home to me that the problems associated with the shortage of affordable housing—which is of course very acute in London, but is also a reality in all parts of the UK—are magnified and compounded for women trying to move on from refuge accommodation and make a fresh start. Women who have left home with their children in what they stand up in have a really hard road ahead. For their own safety, they often need to leave their own community, moving away from any support networks they have.

I met a wee boy in the refuge yesterday. He was nine years old and he bears the physical scars of his father’s violence; I do not think it is possible to know what invisible scars he may carry. However, he wanted to show me his Lego. He had built an aeroplane, which he was very pleased to tell me he had designed himself, but his masterpiece, which he was showing off with pride, was a house—a house made out of Lego. At present, his family is all sleeping in one room in a refuge, but he dreams of a home some day. Yet his mum told me how hard it was to find a house for her and her children, when she is still looking after a toddler and does not have a job. She also talked about experiencing racism in her search for housing and more generally, and this focused my mind on the fact that domestic violence is one of the major causes of homelessness right across the UK. In Scotland, domestic violence is the third most common reason for a homelessness application. Some 73% of applications are made by women, and more than a third of those are women with children.

This does make me wonder, too, how many women might stay in violent and dangerous situations because they have nowhere else to go and fear the consequences of uprooting their families, unsettling their children and taking them out of school. Women who do leave their home to escape violence find that they may have to move repeatedly before finding a stable home, with all the upheaval that entails, and there is no doubt in my mind that that inhibits women from seeking safety for themselves and their children.

Gender-based violence affects women of all social and economic backgrounds, all ages, all ethnicities and all religions, but we know that some women are at greater risk: poorer women, younger women, disabled women, and women from minorities. In this respect, we see gender inequality compounded by other forms of structural disadvantage, and I saw that at first hand yesterday.

Several Members have talked about the cultural and traditional aspects of violence against women. I have talked a lot about the Istanbul convention today and in recent weeks and it is a very powerful legal instrument, but it is also important to remember that we have work to do to bring about changes in attitudes and beliefs. The hon. Member for Feltham and Heston touched on this, as did the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) when she was highlighting traditional practices such as FGM at home and abroad.

I attended an inter-faith event held along the Corridor in the House of Lords earlier this week. Representatives of many of the major religions in the UK attended. It is important that we bring those dimensions into the debate, because culture is often held up as a justification for certain forms of gender-based violence, but cultures can, and do, change, and religious leaders have a special responsibility and opportunity to influence deep-seated attitudes, values and beliefs that are often foundational to people’s identities and the lives they go on to lead. So I was encouraged by meeting those people from several faith traditions who are taking these issues very seriously and working within their own faith communities to move things forward.

One of the things the women in the refuge said to me yesterday was that women need to help women. It is clear from looking around at the gender balance of those in the Chamber today that women take these issues very seriously. Our bodies are on the frontline; our psychological health and our very selves are often on the frontline in this battle. All of us are affected by gender-based violence, and some of us are affected in very personal ways, as we have heard today. Far too many of us continue to experience one form or another of gender-based violence.

Sexual violence is grounded in the abuse of power, yet each and every one of us in this place is incredibly powerful: we are women with a voice; we are women with a platform; we are people entrusted to speak on behalf of others. Surely our greatest testament would be for us to use that power to eradicate violence against women. I hope women right across this House—and men, too, who want to stand in solidarity with us—will join us in a fight to make these statements not just words, so that when we talk about the elimination of violence against women, we mean it, and we end it once and for all.