Public Order Bill

Fay Jones Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 18th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Stella Creasy]

I would not deign to comment on or set out Conservative principles, although I have the free speech to do so, but I share the hon. Gentleman’s recognition that this is about balancing rights. This is an omission from the Bill because it is such a specific issue. Let me be clear: PSPOs are not working and new clause 11 is very tightly drawn about abortion clinics themselves. At 28 weeks pregnant. I was subject to sustained campaigns in my town centre. People put up pictures of my head next to dead babies. They told my constituents to stop me and they incited anger and intimidation. This would not be covered by the new clause. That is the free speech debate that we might want to have another day. Perhaps if those protesters had thrown a can of tomato soup at me, the police might not have seen it as a “both sides now” conversation. This is something different. These women have not put themselves up for debate and I understand that. As a public figure, I have put myself up for debate. Obviously, I had not put my unborn child up for debate, which is what those protesters felt that they could do.

This is about when a woman wants to access an abortion. The new clause specifies abortion clinics. It is no more broad than that, because this is a very specific problem. The challenge in this place is that we can dance on the head of a pin having theoretical debates, but it is our constituents who see the reality. They see the people shouting at these women. They see the women who are frightened, scared and vulnerable, who just want to make a decision in peace—who just want to go about their business.

That is why this amendment has such support from across the House, from among the royal colleges, and from among those who work with women and campaigners, particularly organisations such as the British Medical Association and the Fawcett Society. It is also why there have been so many emails pouring into our inbox. A person does not have to be a supporter of abortion to think that, at that point, we probably need to protect that person. A person does need to be a supporter of abortion to think that, if something is stopping women or is designed to deter them at a point when they have made a decision to have an abortion, we need to step in and not leave it to local authorities to find the money to cover the court costs, or even for that to be part of the decision they are making.

I understand that the Minister will talk against this measure. He needs to explain why, when 50 clinics have been targeted, only five have managed to get PSPOs. The current legislation is not satisfactory in dealing with that balance. It leaves it to chance and creates a postcode lottery of the protection that people recognise is required—whether or not they support abortion and whether or not they think about free speech.

I ask the Minister to listen to women. Women in their droves are asking for this protection for their sisters who are making this decision. They should not be shouted at when they are accessing it. Let them make that decision in privacy. If we consider abortion to be a human right, do not ask them to run a gauntlet to get one, which is what is happening now. I hope that colleagues across the House will recognise the thought, care and attention that has gone into this new clause, the widespread support across the House for acting and for not leaving it to local authorities to have to deal with these issues, and the fact that the abortion debate must continue, but that there is a time and a place for it.

Let me turn now to new clauses 13 and 14, which, again, I hope will have cross-party support. They reflect a concern that we need to tackle the experience of women on our streets, and, in particular, the fact that 24,000 women a day experience street harassment in this country. For too long that has become normalised. For too long, we have taught young girls ways to minimise their exposure rather than challenging those people who do it. For too long, we have asked the questions, “Did you have your headphones on?” “Were you wearing a short skirt?” What did you say when that person said that?” We do that rather than recognising this as a form of harassment.

I welcomed the words of the Prime Minister when she said that violence against women and girls does not have to be inevitable. She said:

“Women should be able to walk the streets without fear of harm, and perpetrators must expect to be punished.”

She also said:

“It is the responsibility of all political leaders, including us in Westminster and the Mayor of London, to do more.”

I know that the Mayor of London wants to do more because I have been working with him for many years on the campaign to learn from our police forces who treat misogyny as a form of hate crime and use that to identify the perpetrators of these crimes. I know, too, that there is support across the House for doing that. There is no other crime that happens on such a scale on a daily basis where we have not made progress. I welcome the fact that there is agreement in this place that we need to tackle street harassment. As ever, when it comes to upholding a woman’s rights and freedoms and basic ability to go about her daily business, the challenge today is that it goes on the backburner when something else turns up. It is something that we will get round to eventually. It is something that is terribly complicated, when shouting at statues is not.

I ask the Minister today to commit to joining all of us in saying, “Enough is enough, and we will legislate and legislate promptly.” We should not be at a point in 2022 going into 2023 where thousands of women are still experiencing street harassment. Over their lifetime, seven in 10 women will experience sexual harassment in public. It is clear that those who engage in these behaviours often escalate to further and more serious crimes. Recognising sexual harassment and tackling it, which is what the police forces who are treating misogyny as a form of hate crime have been able to do, offers us valuable lessons about how we can move forward.

I recognise what the Law Commission said, and I recognise that the debate has moved on, but having a standalone offence, which identifies where women are being targeted for street harassment, would help us to gather the data and send that very powerful message that no woman should have to look behind her or carry her keys in her hand just because she wants to go out and buy a pint of milk. That is a daily experience.

[Fay Jones (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)]

My concern about street harassment is that it could be too broad. I am particularly concerned about the rising prevalence of cyber flashing, and I very much urge the Government to pursue their intention to make that a criminal offence through the Online Safety Bill. Does the hon. Lady agree that we are at risk of going too broad and too shallow and not focusing on individual crimes such as cyber flashing?

[Stella Creasy]

I agree that cyber flashing is an issue that needs to be addressed, but I caution the hon. Lady to understand the importance of recognising where harassment is targeted at women; it does not have to be sexual to be harassment. There is a risk here that we deny the experience of women from minority communities of the multiple ways in which they are harassed. A couple of years ago, a gentleman was going around my community targeting Muslim women, pulling off their hijabs. That was both Islamophobic and misogynistic—he was not targeting Muslim men. Yet, under our current hate crime framework, we ask the victims to pick a particular box to tick to identify a crime. The evidence from the areas of the country where they are using this approach shows that where we have that understanding of how misogyny motivates crime, we see the victim as a whole and victims themselves have much more confidence to come forward. I recognise the hon. Lady’s concern about being specific in law, but there is a really important issue for all of us not to focus purely on sexual behaviour, but to recognise what is driving these crimes: it is power, entitlement and privilege that some men have—it is mainly men who do this—to target women for crimes.

New clause 13 looks at intentional harassment. New clause 14, which I hope the Minister will address in his comments, looks at foreseeable harassment. That is a really critical issue and why it is so important to get these new clauses accepted to help change the culture. If the harassment is foreseeable, it is recognising that there should be no defence, such as, “I thought she would enjoy being groped by me.” “I thought she would like it if I followed her down the road.” “I thought that she would find it flattering.” In 2022, we should not be breeding a generation of men who think that that is acceptable. I promise the Minister that I will stop campaigning on these issues when I go to a wedding and the bride gets up and says, “He tried to get me in the back of a van. I thought that it was the most fantastic thing ever and I immediately had to get to know this man.” That does not happen, but that is often an everyday experience for many women in this country—to be followed, to be targeted and to be hassled.

Finding ways to recognise that in law and not give someone the defence of saying, “I don’t know why she was upset by what I said” is what new clause 14 does. The Minister may tell me that he has better ideas. I know the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) has an important Bill coming up. What all of us are looking for is a commitment to act promptly and not to leave this for another five or 10 years—the Law Commission review dates back to the heady days of 2016—and also to not give people a defence that women themselves are being difficult by wanting simply to go about their freedoms and not be hassled.