Sexual Harassment and Violence in Schools

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Third Report of the Women and Equalities Committee, Session 2016-17, on Sexual harassment and sexual violence in schools, HC 91; recognises that peer-on-peer sexual abuse is a significant issue affecting a large number of children and young people in schools, particularly girls; notes that the Committee found that data collection on instances of such abuse is inadequate and that too often schools fail to recognise, record and report sexual harassment and sexual violence; and calls on the Government to ensure that revised, specific guidance for schools on preventing and responding to sexual harassment and sexual violence is put in place before the end of the current academic year.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for its support in holding this debate and pay tribute to members of the Women and Equalities Committee, and our incredible team of Clerks and special advisers who work so diligently in support of everything that we do to make such inquiries possible. I am speaking today along with the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), who is also a member of the Committee. We are delighted to have this opportunity to look in more detail at the report that we produced well over a year ago.

There could never be a more timely debate. Parliament might not be a typical workplace, but we have a clear duty to tackle sexual harassment and sexual abuse, to have the right support so that victims can come forward without fear, and to act swiftly on the evidence that is presented. If Parliament cannot get it right, what example are we setting the rest of the country? There has been a wide range of allegations—some with evidence and some without—but the country will be watching how we handle them. We need to get it right, and blaming the victims or those who speak out is never right. Sexual harassment was never acceptable, but with record numbers of women in work and record numbers of women in this place—although still not enough—it is becoming more possible for voices to be heard. It is right that changes are made quickly to put in place the support systems that are currently lacking, and it is right that changes could well have been made within days. So why on earth do we find it so difficult to get the same swift action to protect children in our schools when the evidence is so clear, strong and compelling?

Sexual harassment and abuse are not only workplace problems. The scale of the problem among children in schools was set out by the Committee well over a year ago. Two in three girls under the age of 21 have experienced sexual harassment according to the Girlguiding “Girls’ Attitudes Survey”. In our evidence sessions, colleagues heard about children grabbing breasts, pinging bras, lifting skirts and bottom pinching—all those things are a routine part of daily life for schoolgirls in this country today. In 2015, a BBC freedom of information request that was sent to all UK police forces found that more than 5,500 alleged sex crimes, 4,000 sexual assaults and 600 rapes had been reported in UK schools in the previous three years, with at least one in five offences being conducted by children on children.

The new evidence that really triggered the Committee’s desire to call for another debate today was collected by “Panorama” from 38 police forces. Its work in October showed a 71% increase in peer-on-peer abuse in schools over the last three years. More than 7,800 cases were reported in 2016 alone, and the police tell us that that is just the tip of the iceberg. A 2013 joint inspectorate study of young sex offenders found evidence in half of cases of previous worrying sexualised behaviour that was not identified at the time, or that was disbelieved or minimised by professionals and families. In going unnoticed, the problem is doing yet more harm, and the harm does not stop at the school gates. The evidence suggests that the levels of sexual harassment that we see in schools continues through to universities and then into the workplace. More than two thirds of female students report being victims of sexual harassment at university. The most recent data on sexual harassment in the workplace comes from BBC Radio 5 Live through a ComRes poll, in which more than half of women said they had experienced sexual harassment at work or in school.

Why am I having to stand here using data from the BBC, “Panorama” and FOI requests? Why are we not collecting such data routinely so that Members of Parliament can hold the Government to account? Governments of every hue have decided not to collect the data, and that needs to change.

When we look at the data, which is very difficult to get hold of, we find that three quarters of reports that are made to the police about children abusing other children at school lead to no further action at all. Children tell us that sexual assaults and harassment are written off by some teaching staff as just banter, despite the safeguarding responsibilities that are already in place. Just as sexual harassment and assault are not acceptable in this place, they should not be acceptable in schools, universities and colleges around the country.

We are holding this debate to check what progress the Government are making in responding to the Select Committee report, which is well over a year old. In the light of new evidence from Girlguiding and “Panorama”, we can see that the situation is certainly no better.

I want to take this opportunity to examine something that we did not touch on a great deal in the report, although it was referred to by parents. Sexual harassment is not new in the workplace and it is certainly not new in schools, as many hon. Members will recognise from their own school days, but what has changed is the fact that most children in this country now have tablets and smartphones at a very early age. Extreme pornography websites, social media and digital communications are all readily accessible to anybody with a tablet or smartphone. We have given our children access to the world through that technology, but without the rules and regulations that they see in almost every other aspect of their daily life. We have allowed the exponential growth of the ownership of these devices without asking any questions at all.

Perhaps we should not be surprised that Ofcom research shows that many people who look for a fact on Google think that only facts on Google can be true. They cannot believe that any data on there would not be completely accurate. That is what we are dealing with. Half of three-year-olds and 75% of 11-year-olds use a tablet. That is Ofcom’s data, not mine.

We could pick on any number of areas of criminal activity that come out of that high level of connectivity. We could talk about online peer-on-peer abuse among children, cyber-stalking, the posting of child abuse images or sexting, but let us stick with one area: extreme pornography. Again, we know the facts. Two in three 15-year-olds have seen online pornography. One in four 10-year-olds has seen online pornography. For those children, that is often the way they find out what a loving relationship looks like.

As well us updating the House on the work that is being done in response to the Select Committee report, will the Minister, who I know takes an extremely deep interest in these matters and is committed, like the Committee, to finding solutions, update us on what measures the Government are taking to tackle the role of online media in fuelling the sort of sexual harassment and sexually abusive behaviour that is becoming so prevalent in our schools?

Parents have told us that they understand their responsibility in this area, but they expect their children to be kept safe when they are at school. Parents have contacted the Committee about this, and I have spoken to two parents this week who have endured particularly harrowing difficulties. For obvious reasons, I will not use their names and I will anonymise their contributions, but I felt that the House should be aware of the very real damage this sexually abusive behaviour is having on our children today. Mrs X told me about the rape of her six-year-old daughter at school by a male classmate, which was simply dismissed by teachers as “playful activity”. There was no central recording of these incidents because of the age of the other child—under the age of criminal responsibility—and certainly no support for the victim as a result. Mrs X would like school guidance that specifically states that children, no matter how young they are, should be protected in the same way as we might protect an adult who had been through a rape or sexual assault, as her daughter had, and that victims should never face the prospect of having to go to school again with those who have abused or even raped them. That would require the Government to act to ensure that primary and secondary schools adhere to that in their school placements.

The daughter of the second parent I spoke to was also raped at school. That parent described how girls as young as 12 encouraged each other to sext their peer group—that means they would be sending sexual images of themselves by mobile phone, which is a criminal offence. He also described how they were encouraged to have anal sex by their classmates. What was his observation as a father? He said:

“they have no idea they are experiencing sexual abuse…if their first frame of reference is viewing extreme pornography then spanking and being given a dog collar to wear around their neck isn’t to them out of the norm”.

So why do schools find this so difficult to deal with? Some are reporting the crimes, but some, particularly primary schools, are dealing with an area they never have before. Is the law clear? Do teachers understand their responsibilities? Sexual harassment is defined in law in the Equality Act 2010, but how many teachers have been asked to look at that, given that it talks about adults and adult workplaces?

Our Select Committee report advocated a whole-school approach to creating a culture of respect and responsibility; that all incidents should be recorded and reported, and that they should be looked at in detail by Ofsted; that sex and relationships education should be compulsory for all school-age children; and that the guidance given to schools should be urgently updated.

Parents need to be aware of the consequences of putting their children online, and we should be considering age restrictions on tablets and smartphones. After all, it is not that long ago that we thought smoking did not cause us harm, but now we know a lot better. I applaud the Government’s work on restricting underage people’s access to pornography sites and encouraging parental blocks, but we know that as fast as the Government implement their plans, a way around them will be found. “Unblock in school” advertises to children a product called X-VPN, which allows access to blocked sites when at school, so it has got around that problem already. Multinational corporations generating significant profits in the UK are causing harm to our children, so why are we not already putting in place levies so that they pay for the harm they are creating?

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Good point!

[Mrs Miller]

Thank you.

I applaud the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport for putting forward a Green Paper on ways in which this situation might be improved, but I fear that these suggestions are long overdue. We need solutions, and they need to be designed into the products that we give to our children, not retrofitted as an afterthought.

What has happened so far? The Government’s response to our report was very positive. We are pleased that it is now in law that children have to be given compulsory SRE, but what has actually changed in our schools? Nothing. To revise the guidance, the Government have set up an advisory group, but it has met only twice—why is there not more urgency?

Since our most recent evidence session with him, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Equalities has confirmed to me in writing that 124 schools have been judged to have ineffective safeguarding measures and are therefore inadequate. However, we still do not know how many schools are rated so poorly because of how they deal with sexual harassment.

Although sex and relationships education is now compulsory in law, we are told that even when the statutory guidance is issued—we are still awaiting a consultation on that—it will take a full academic year to come into force. How come we can act here in Parliament in a matter of days, yet it takes a full year to put in place safeguards for our children? The House needs to know how many legal cases the Department for Education is dealing with that relate to children who have been sexually harassed or abused, or worse, while still at school.

One year on, very little has changed for children in our schools, other than that they now perhaps feel more confident about speaking out and not being ridiculed. Schools already have clear responsibilities to keep our children safe, but those 7,866 reported cases of abuse in 2016 suggest that the way in which schools are handling this problem does not work. If we can change things here in a matter of days, why can we not do the same thing for children? If we tackle sexual harassment and abuse early on, teach children about healthy relationships and respect, and properly regulate social media and digital communications, we may be able to start to tackle the root causes of the sort of sexual harassment that we see is so prevalent in wider society today. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

It is a real honour to both follow and work with the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller). She has outlined exactly where the problems exist, what the Select Committee found and the areas in which we still have so much progress to make.

I have worked in this area, including by delivering sex and relationships education in schools, for many years. I have written programmes for the Home Office in the past. In my career I have dealt with hundreds, if not thousands, of cases of rape and sexual violence against adults and children. As the right hon. Member for Basingstoke outlined, the cases are horrendous, and the cases in which children are involved hurt even more.

I am a resilient human being in this subject area; I have been trained and I know what I am talking about. This week, in this place, I find my resilience at its lowest ebb, because I feel like nothing is changing. I feel as if all the things the Select Committee heard about the need for boys and men to be included completely in SRE programmes, about gendered attitudes, about who we can and cannot trust, about the processes that should exist in schools but simply do not seem to—all those things are every single reason why what we have heard about happening here in the past few weeks happens.

We have an opportunity to change things. I have to keep believing that we have an opportunity to change the culture of our schools, Parliament and industries, because after this week it feels a little bit like I should give up having this same conversation. I will rally—do not worry—but the fact is that every single argument that has been made about this place could be applied to our schools at the moment. There is not a clear process in place for the harrowing peer-on-peer abuse that we have heard about, which should be called child abuse—that is what it is.

On the Committee, we heard from parents whose children had been left in the same classroom as their perpetrator. The complaint was not just how harrowing that is, but the fact that there is no guidance: there is no process to tell us what to do. What is so galling about that—and what has been so galling about some of the situations in this place this week—is that, if it were a teacher who had committed, or been accused of committing, some of these crimes against a child, there would be a clear process to follow. Again, I find the parallel to here painful in that there is no process and no threshold for this place and the people who work in it.

[Helen Goodman]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Jess Phillips]

I have been told that, because so many Members wish to speak, I should not take interventions. I am very sorry about that.

I say to the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills, who I know cares deeply both about the culture here and the culture in our schools, that getting SRE right does not need to take the length of time proposed. This is not something new; it exists in schools, but is patchy. I also say that, just like here, the advisory group on sexual violence and sexual harassment, which the Government have got on board to help with this, does not have any sexual violence academics, frontline specialists, or sexual violence organisations working on it. I fear that that means we are missing some of the very vital information that is needed to get this right in the future to make sure that we are not prejudiced and do not treat any of this like banter—like something that is just part of a culture that we must accept.

The length of time spent on the issue was, unfortunately, interrupted by the election. We will have to chalk that up to experience. I cannot bear to think that, in a year’s time, we will be having the same debate because the process will not have changed in schools, SRE will not be being delivered compulsorily, and specialist agencies will not have been lined up to swoop in when schools rightly need help—schools are not specialists just as not all of us are specialists in this building. I leave that with the Minister and say that we must act.