Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

I am delighted to be speaking in this debate, but I am also angry that I am having to speak in this debate. I am angry that the Opposition have had to call the debate, because the House has not been given the Government time it should be given to address this issue.

This shows my age, but 30 years ago I was on the streets campaigning and marching with other women for reclaiming the streets. I am just heartbroken that I feel our streets are less safe for women and girls than they were 30 years ago. I am just angry that we are still having to talk about this issue and that we are not making any progress, or enough progress, on this issue.

I recently spoke to someone who did not want to report their rape. They just did not want to go through the system: they did not want to talk about it and they did not feel that the system would be on their side if they did. How many others are there? If I know just some people who face this, we know that it is goes on across the country. I have also spoken to a constituent who did report it—she went to hospital—but had to relive and retell her story again and again, and she found that more traumatising than the criminal act that started it. I have also spoken to constituents who, when they reported a rape, went to the police, but then had their phones taken off them, and they found that that was traumatising in itself. They could not contact people they wanted to contact, and their phones were taken for a very long time. The whole system seems to be stacked against the victims of rape, instead of against the criminals—the male criminals—who are perpetrating it.



I would like to thank the Law Centres Network, which regularly gives free advice to my constituents in Putney, Roehampton and Southfields, and to those at Citizens Advice Wandsworth, who are on the side of people who go to them.

It is shameful that this epidemic still exists across the UK. Under this Government, to be honest, a safe space has been created for rapists and attackers. Too many male criminals are being let off and too many victims are being let down. The Minister outlined the scale of the Government’s action, and I welcome all the new proposals being made and all the new strategies, but I just do not think they go far enough.

I would like to have heard more targets, such as for the charge rate for rape, of a certain number by a certain time. I would like to have heard of specialist rape courts being set up, with a number of judges, recorders and advocates being put into the system to be really sure that it will make a difference. The overwhelming majority of rape victims do not see justice. As we have heard many times, and this should be said again and again, the charge rate for rape has plummeted to just 1.3%, down from 5.9% in 2016. It is just outrageous, and we need to have some actual targets for that if we are to see any change. It is clear that more specialist support is needed, so will the Government today back Labour’s plans to increase the number of RASSO units for each police force? Every police force should have one.

The Government have finally added violence against women and girls to the strategic policing requirement. I have had conversations with my own borough commander about the difference that will make in the police force, but it seems very late. I welcome it, but Labour has been calling for it for months and years, and far more is needed to crack down on dangerous male perpetrators and to support victims. I want to ask the Minister why this action has taken so long. Why, when the Government have been in power for 12 years, has it taken this long to get not very far at all, and what is actually going to change?

Talking of delays, the perpetrators strategy is due by the end of April, so the Government now have two months, and Opposition Members are awaiting it. Can the Minister give us an actual date for its publication, or will we have to wait longer for that one as well?

This House is at its best when we work together and put aside our party differences. In that spirit, Labour has published an entire green paper with serious, sensible, common-sense measures to end violence against women and girls. To be honest, however, this is a whole-society issue. It is just a symptom of the misogyny that we have throughout our society. When women have lower social and economic status, it is what we see; we must do far more to tackle the whole issue.

Will the Government now commit to working more with us to implement these important proposals, so that in a year’s time we do not see the same figures and the same results, with the same number of sixth-formers raising this issue with me when I go around schools as a real concern day by day? Fear on our streets means that women have to change the way they live every single day. I do not want to come back here in a year’s, two years’ or three years’ time and see the same thing. We must see change.

I know I speak for every woman in the country when I say that we have had enough. It is time to turn the balance of power in this epidemic on its head: to stop the whole criminal justice process being traumatising, to fast-track justice, to bring male perpetrators to justice and to make our streets safer. I want to live in a country where we have reclaimed the streets and the internet, where the power lies with the victims of violence against women and girls and the number of those violent incidents is going down, and where criminals have nowhere left to hide.