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

Kate Green Excerpts

Committee Debate: House of Commons
Wednesday 1st February 2017 Public Bill Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sarah Newton)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mrs Main. I welcome the tone and spirit with which my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan opened this debate, and the opportunity to continue our work together. I am grateful to all hon. Members who have given up their time this afternoon; it is a pivotal day in Parliament, not just because we are talking about this very important Bill, but because of the debate in the Chamber, and I am grateful to those who have prioritised being in this Committee Room. It underlines the cross-party support for what we are doing.

We remain absolutely committed to ratifying the Istanbul convention. Combating violence against women and girls remains a top priority for the Government; the Prime Minister has made that absolutely clear, as have the Home Secretary and I. Since we signed the convention in 2012, the UK has made significant progress towards ratification. In most respects, we are already compliant with the convention’s requirements or we go further than them. We have put a range of measures in place to tackle VAWG—violence against women and girls—including criminalising forced marriage; allowing women to request information on their partner’s criminal history; introducing new laws on stalking and female genital mutilation; rolling out domestic violence protection orders; and introducing new domestic abuse offences.

We know that there is more to do. Last March, we published our new cross-Government VAWG strategy, which sets out our ambition that by the end of this Parliament no victim of abuse will be turned away from the support they need. To support that, we have increased funding, pledging £80 million through to 2020. We recently published a national statement of expectations, to set out what local commissioners need to put in place to ensure that their response to VAWG is effective; new guidance on domestic homicide reviews; and a new domestic abuse statistical tool and data set. We have announced our intention to introduce a new stalking protection order.

We are making progress, but before we ratify the convention we must ensure that the UK is fully compliant with it. There remains just one outstanding issue relating to extraterritorial jurisdiction, which I will call ETJ today for the purposes of brevity, that we have to address. Article 44 requires that all signatories take the necessary legislative measures to establish ETJ over any offence established in accordance with the convention. The UK already exercises ETJ in relation to many serious offences, including forced marriage, FGM and sexual offences against children. However, there are some VAWG offences to which it does not yet apply. Introducing ETJ for the remaining offences requires primary legislation and, as my colleagues at the Ministry of Justice have highlighted to Parliament, the Government will seek to legislate as soon as time allows.

In addition, Northern Ireland and Scotland also need to legislate on ETJ. We therefore need to allow sufficient time for their respective Governments to do that. We realise the importance of getting on with this matter. We liaise regularly with the devolved Administrations on VAWG and I have been in touch with my counterparts about the Bill. MOJ officials have also had informal contact with their counterparts about the ETJ requirements of article 44 and we will continue to liaise closely with the devolved Administrations on this issue. I am sure that all hon. Members know that, at the moment, that is quite challenging for Northern Ireland, given the situation there, but that does not diminish our commitment. Nevertheless, it means that we must be realistic about the amount of time that we need to spend on this issue.

On Second Reading, the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service made it clear that the Government supported the Bill in principle but that further consideration of the detail was needed. We have now had time to consider the Bill in detail and our intention is to propose amendments on Report. I would like to take this opportunity to set out the direction of, and rationale behind, those amendments.

Clause 1 would require the Government to take “all reasonable steps” necessary to ratify the convention

“as soon as reasonably practicable”.

The Government fully support the aim behind the clause, which is to ensure that we deliver on our commitment to ratify the convention. However, as Members will appreciate, because one of the steps that we and the devolved Administrations need to take will require primary legislation to introduce ETJ, there is a danger that the clause could be interpreted as imposing a duty on the Government to legislate. In effect, that would pre-empt the will of Parliament. Much as the Government always want to get our own way in Parliament, we cannot take that for granted. We must acknowledge the democratic processes that need to happen in Parliament.

Therefore, we will table an amendment to remove clause 1, while ensuring that the spirit behind it is captured by the remaining clauses. Once again, I would like to put on the record the Government’s commitment to ratifying the convention. The proposed removal of the clause does not change that in any way, shape or form.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I apologise if this is a stupid question, but I would be grateful for the Minister’s answer to it. I understand what she says about the will of Parliament. However, if this legislation were passed with the wording in the Bill, as tabled, would that not mean Parliament had expressed its will?

[Sarah Newton]

I have discussed this matter a great deal with the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan, who is promoting the Bill, and taken a lot of advice from expert parliamentary draftsmen. We just want to make sure that there is absolutely no confusion in what we are attempting to do. When the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston has the opportunity to read the amendments—of course, there will be further opportunities to discuss the Bill on Report—I think she will see that in no way, shape or form are we diminishing the commitment that the Bill seeks to place on the Government to ratify the convention. We have been crystal clear: we want to ratify the convention. It is just a question of using the appropriate language to make sure that we put the matter beyond doubt.

We fully support the requirements of clause 2. It would introduce a requirement on the Government to lay a report, setting out the steps to be taken to enable the UK to ratify the convention and the timescale for doing that. However, we have concerns about the four-week timescale. The Committee will recognise the need to ensure that a more proportionate timeframe is in place, given that in order to set out when we intend to ratify, we need to be clear about the likely timescales for putting in place the necessary legislation on ETJ. We need a proper amount of time to have our discussions with the devolved Administrations so that we can give a realistic timeframe.