Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Bill

Hannah Bardell Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 16th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

Before I became a Member of Parliament one thing I did as a volunteer was work in a homeless outreach service, spending time, usually late at night, finding people who were going to be sleeping rough that night and seeing whether we could help get them into some kind of shelter or safe place to spend the night. On one of my most memorable nights doing that, I met a lady sleeping rough on the steps of a church in Brixton. As we took her to a shelter, I asked her about her circumstances. She told me that she was married but had fled her home that night because she was frightened of staying there; because of what her partner might do to her she was frightened for her life. She felt safer sleeping rough on the steps of a closed church in a dark and frightening park in Brixton than spending a night at home under her own roof. The fact that someone could feel safer sleeping rough than in the same house or flat as their partner brought home forcefully to me the enormous and very present threat that violence from their partner is in someone’s life.

That was just one example of what we have been talking about today, the day-in, day-out abuse of women in their homes—in what should be a safe place. That abuse also affects men and children, but we know that it predominantly affects women and girls, as they make up two thirds of the victims. We are therefore rightly focusing on what can be done to help that sector of society, although we are not overlooking the fact that we should also be doing something for men under threat of violence as well, and it is right that that has been brought up in this debate.

Other Members have talked about the enormous scale of this violence in our society. I am short of time, so will not reiterate the figures of more than 1 million women subjected to domestic abuse every year in the UK. But I want to put on the record that I welcome this debate, and congratulate the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) on bringing the Bill forward and on all the work she has put in and support she has garnered. It is so important to be talking about this issue here in the UK, in Europe and the world, to shift some of the cultural norms that so often underpin domestic violence and try to change the childhood experiences that can lead to someone thinking, as an adult, that the way to solve a problem is through violence rather than any other means.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

The hon. Lady talks about scale. I have to say that since being elected I have been very shocked at the scale and severity of some of the cases that have come to me, including that of a constituent whose child was murdered by her partner and who had to change her name and move a number of times. Does the hon. Lady agree that refuges and women’s aid organisations, such as my one in West Lothian, need the Bill, to give them the legislative framework, the power and the resources to continue to do their work and up the ante?

[Helen Whately]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, and I will be supporting the Bill. On the importance of local refuges and services, I would like to mention one in my own constituency, Swale Action to End Domestic Abuse, which provides one-stop shops and drop-ins for people affected by or suffering from domestic abuse, and its success in reducing levels of repeat domestic abuse incidents in the area. Sadly, that is reducing the number of repeat incidents rather than preventing them in the first place, but it is a step forward.

We heard today a paradoxical point about progress. The increase in the levels of reporting of domestic abuse and of convictions might not seem like a good thing, but paradoxically it is a good thing and a sign of progress. [Interruption.] I think I might have run out of time, so I will sit down.

Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Bill

Hannah Bardell Excerpts

Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 24th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Whiteford]

I am flattered by my hon. Friend’s remarks, but the real thanks go to the people, some of whom are here today, who led the way and made us listen. I know that the campaign will not end here. In many ways this is a beginning for substantive change.

I also thank Emma Watson, who took time out of her busy film promotion schedule to speak out in support of the Bill to an audience that politicians find hard to reach. These issues lie close to her heart.

On reflection, it strikes me powerfully that Parliament has frequently been left playing catch-up on progress for women: from those who campaigned for women’s suffrage for more than a century before it was achieved to those trade unionists who fought for equal pay for women years before the Equal Pay Act 1970 came into force and the women who, in the 1970s, set up refuges for women fleeing domestic abuse at a time when there was absolutely no support from the state or the authorities for women experiencing violence or coercive control from an intimate partner—a time when rape within marriage was not even a crime. Every step of the way, it is citizens who have driven progressive change. Sisters have had to do it for themselves.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

I offer my huge congratulations to my hon. Friend and all those involved. Does she agree with me and Emmeline Pankhurst, who famously said:

“We are here, not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers”?

My hon. Friend is the absolute embodiment of those words.

[Dr Whiteford]

It is important that we remember our history and understand the historical process of change within which we live. I have been asked so many times over the past few months: why the Istanbul convention? Why these difficult, painful, controversial issues? Why this convoluted, complex multilateral process? The long answer is that it has the potential to make concrete improvements—at local, national and international level—to the lives of people affected by sexual and domestic violence.

In light of the Istanbul convention, and in direct response to the debates we have had in this place, I am pleased to say that my local authority, Aberdeenshire Council, is already considering how local provision might be strengthened and improved. That could and should be replicated by local authorities across the UK.

We have already seen at UK level and in the devolved Administrations a raft of new legislation, driven by the Istanbul convention, on issues such as stalking, forced marriage, human trafficking and modern slavery, all of which has taken us closer to compliance. Internationally, we can make the world a safer place for our own citizens and for others, but we now need to finish the job.

The short answer to my question—why the Istanbul convention?—is that change needs to come and change will come. Ultimately, this is about real people and real lives. I have been moved beyond measure by the truly inspirational courage of my constituent Sarah Scott, a woman from the small coastal community where I grew up. She was subjected to an exceptionally brutal rape, and she waived her right to anonymity in an attempt to prevent what happened to her from happening to anyone else.

Sarah is one of the desperately small minority of rape victims who has seen her attacker brought to justice and convicted, but during the course of the trial her medical history was used by the defence in an attempt to discredit her as a witness to her own experience. She has spoken publicly about that profound violation of her privacy and the re-traumatisation that those experiences invoked, and I can only begin to imagine the inner strength and bravery it took for her to speak out.

We have travelled some distance in this struggle, but we still have such a long way to go. We need to recognise that ratification of the Istanbul convention is a milestone in the journey to equality and justice for women, and not an end point.