Laura Trott
Main Page: Laura Trott (Conservative - Sevenoaks) International Women’s Day
Laura Trott Excerpts
Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) (Con) [V]
It is a pleasure, Madam Deputy Speaker, to see you in the Chair today. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) on securing this important debate.
As the first female Member for Sevenoaks and Swanley, I was going to use my time today to talk about women in the covid recovery and the need for flexibility in the workplace. I strongly support all that my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) had to say, but I want to follow the hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) in talking about the heart-breaking case that we have seen and the developments in the past 24 hours.
What we have seen online is an outpouring of grief and of people’s stories about the harassment and violence to which they have been subject over a number of years. These terrors that we experience as we walk down the street, looking over our shoulder, clutching our keys because we are nervous that someone will come up to us, but hoping desperately that we will never have to use them are, sadly, universal experiences.
The Metropolitan Police Commissioner said yesterday that such cases are rare. Yes, thankfully, it is rare that women are abducted in this country, but the roll call from the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) is devastating. Incidents of women being harassed are nowhere near rare enough. A recent report from UN Women UK shows that almost all women—almost all women—have been sexually harassed. We must do more to address that.
The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill has arrived in the House. I am pleased that it proposes to extend the minimum term for sexual and violent offenders and the power to end automatic early release. The Government should consider ending the standard determinant sentences for rape so that the Parole Board is always involved before these perpetrators are let out into the public.
The Domestic Abuse Bill, thankfully, is progressing well through Parliament and will create a legal definition of domestic abuse to provide clarity that domestic abuse can be financial, verbal and emotional as well as physical and sexual. Critically, it is about patterns of abuse over time. More needs to be done. We have seen from the outpouring of grief, upset, worry and concern that this exhausting pattern needs to end, and I hope that the violence against women and girls strategy, which is forthcoming later this year, will look at what more we can do on police harassment and on the Crown Prosecution Service prosecuting cases. Women have a right to feel safe and it is about time that we made that a reality.