UN Women

Helen Grant Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)]

Ending violence against women is a priority for UN Women, and it is this issue that I would like to speak about today. My first experience of domestic violence came when I was about 10 years old. My mother had been inspired by Erin Pizzey and, with some other women, helped to set up the very first women’s refuge in Carlisle, where we lived at the time. I remember going to the refuge with my mother sometimes. I would sit at a big old brown table, pretending to be getting on with my homework, but really I was watching her work. I would see her surrounded by people who were truly in need.

Before becoming an MP, I was a practising solicitor for 23 years. I should declare an interest, in that my firm looked after around 13,000 clients in the south London, Surrey and west Kent area, many of them needy and vulnerable victims or children. Every year we sought hundreds of non-molestation orders and occupation orders under the Family Law Act 1996. I remain very proud of the work that my staff still do and of the contribution that the practice makes to community safety in the area.

For me, domestic violence is a scourge. It does not discriminate; it permeates age, race, class and gender, although 75% of victims are women. The youngest person for whom I had to obtain an order was a little baby; the oldest person was a 90-year-old woman who was being abused by her alcoholic son. I have had many multi-millionaires in my office seeking protection. I have also had many young girls who had literally nothing to call their own.

Domestic violence crushes self-confidence and self-esteem, which are the prerequisites for aspiration, motivation, success and the ultimate goal of social mobility. One of the most disturbing statistics—one that continues to haunt me, and one that my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) also mentioned—is that two women in this country die every week because of domestic violence. From a zero tolerance point of view, I think that things are better now than they were in the ’70s. There is a wide range of laws and support organisations in this country to protect victims, but there are still some major problems: problems with implementing our laws and with eligibility for legal aid; no recourse to public funds; not enough done on prevention; and ongoing scepticism greeting women and children when they report violence.

Scepticism in our society is the reason we still hear comments such as “Why didn’t she leave him?”, or “She probably wound him up.” Such comments reveal an underlying suspicion that somehow the woman is to blame or is responsible for the violence inflicted on her. We know that there is no excuse for violence, but society desperately needs to understand that message too. The message needs to start at schools, with our young people. We need to talk to them about respecting themselves and respecting others, and about gender equality and empowerment.

Recent NSPCC research found that one in four girls, some as young as 13, had been hit and slapped by their boyfriends. That is absolutely terrible. It is awful because it is creating a breeding ground for abusers and for the abused. Domestic violence is abhorrent and inexcusable. Every time I hear about a bad incident, it makes me wonder what sort of world we are living in, and how we can improve it. A big part of the answer is that we need a seismic change in attitudes and behaviour, as well as an acceptance that our rules, laws and regulations are not going to fix the problem on their own. I hope that UN Women, with its ability to mobilise, advocate, co-ordinate and champion, will be a global catalyst for much-needed change.

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[Mr MacShane]

I agree with the hon. Lady. That figure of 4,000 was produced by one report last autumn and has been fairly comprehensively rubbished by many experts in the field. We do not know the figures. Our former colleague, Anthony Steen, the chairman of the Human Trafficking Centre, has said that he has spoken to senior police officers who know of 2,300 brothels in London. He said:

“They reckoned that 80 per cent of those working there were from abroad, and they estimated that 4,000 were trafficked. And that was just in London. My view is that the national figure is probably in excess of 10,000.”

After a long campaign for which I pay tribute to a collection of women Ministers, including the then Home Secretary and Attorney-General, some of whom are still with us and some of whom are now outside the House, the previous Government made a small amendment to criminal legislation saying that it is a crime to pay for sex with a woman who has been trafficked or coerced. To my knowledge, however, there has not been a single prosecution for that crime so far. We have been able to curtail kerb crawling by taking photographs of kerb crawlers’ cars, publishing their registration numbers and in some cases putting them in front of magistrates. That is the only language that abusers of sex slave trafficked women understand.

Some of our newspapers have adverts in the back for massage parlours and brothels.

[Mrs Grant]

rose—

[Mr MacShane]

I was not going to take another intervention because of this funny rule we have, but the hon. Lady made such a wonderful speech, so how could I refuse?

[Mrs Grant]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman and will keep my intervention short. Will he say a little more about the fact that many of those who are trafficked are very young children and that young women leaving the care system are also involved—not just immigrants?

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[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

I very much welcome the fact that we are having this debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) and others on their tenacity in pressing the case for it with the Backbench Business Committee.

I should like to focus my remarks on one specific aspect of the violence and injustice done to women in our world—I am afraid that it is not a comfortable one for the House—which is the terrible practice of female genital mutilation. This is a practice that the United Nations has stated it wishes to end within a generation. I am sure that UN Women will be taking the lead on this work, but it is a mighty task that Ms Bachelet and her team will take on. The World Health Organisation estimates that between 100 million and 140 million girls and women worldwide have been subjected to such mutilation. The practice is most prevalent in western, eastern and north-eastern regions of Africa, some countries in Asia and the middle east. The cutting is often practised on girls as young as 12 or 13, often precipitating their dropping out of school and not carrying on with their education. Education, as we have all agreed throughout this debate, is one of the essential keys to greater equality, dignity and progress for women.

I am grateful to VSO for its briefing on this issue and for drawing my attention to the Orchid Project, which is run by a former VSO volunteer, Julia Lalla-Maharajh. That organisation has a simple vision—a world free from female genital cutting. Interestingly, one of its key findings has been that, difficult though it is, trying to avoid judgment and blame when working alongside communities in the developing world has been more helpful for them in trying to effect change from the grass roots up. Whatever laws are passed against FGM in some countries, in reality they are unenforceable if it is culturally embedded locally and supported by civic and religious leaders. There is a vital need to work from the bottom up. I understand that the Department for International Development has found that this is consistently true locally.

[Mrs Grant]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the lack of prosecutions under the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 is a major and very worrying problem?

[Jane Ellison]

I certainly do agree, because this is happening not only in the developing world but here in our country—in this city and in my constituency.

In the developing world, trying to ensure that girls are able to take educational and economic opportunities is absolutely vital, and challenging social norms by having locally led solutions is proving more effective. One of the findings has been that more educated and less poor girls will grow up to be women who are less likely to subject their own daughters to this procedure.

My hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) drew our attention to the fact that this terrible practice is a problem not just in the developing world, but that it is also a problem for many countries in the developed world. Here in London, the number of reported cases of FGM has risen in recent years. These awful procedures are happening in this city, and in other UK cities as well. A clinic at a major London teaching hospital sees about 350 such women and girls a year, often with horrible complications. The Metropolitan police have intervened in more than 120 cases since 2008, but despite this practice having been illegal for many years, as we have heard, there has been not one prosecution. The police often put this down to the problems of trying to get people to give evidence in very difficult situations and not being sure that they can secure such a prosecution if they bring it to court.

While refraining from judgment may be more likely to effect change in the developing world, we cannot refrain from judgment when such mutilation is happening in our own country. We have to be clear and robust in saying that it is a crime in our country, and that no excuses can be offered. The Met have been very clear about this.

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[Mrs Grant]

Does my hon. Friend agree that better and more affordable child care is also part of the process, in that it enables women to get out of the home and back into the work force as wealth creators, entrepreneurs and taxpayers?

[Mary Macleod]

I agree entirely; that is a very good point.

In conclusion, I want to talk about violence against women—another subject that is extremely close to my heart, first, because it is a major issue for me in Hounslow in my constituency and, secondly, because Refuge was set up in Chiswick in my constituency. My hon. Friends the Members for Epping Forest and for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) have discussed this subject very well and have laid out some of the major issues that we face. There have been more than 1 million female victims of domestic abuse in England and Wales in the last year. That is a huge figure. We need to talk about the problem more, and to try to speak to the next generation in schools and elsewhere to convey that domestic violence is completely unacceptable.