Sexual Harassment and Violence in Schools

Lord Mann Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

I praise the work of the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) and of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips). As I have been listening to them over a period of quite some time, I have learned a lot of important things.

The issue raised here today is, without question, the highest on the agenda for the country. There is so much ignorance about the scale of the problem. The problem has been made worse by social media—by the extent of our exposure to it and the fact that people are now exposed to things that they were not exposed to before. People use it now for communicating with each other.

We are talking about an epidemic of abusive sexual photographs of girls being circulated on a daily basis around schools. Schools and teachers have no idea what to do about the problem as they have not been trained, and Ofsted has no criteria for dealing with it. Even if all of that was in place, the law in relation to the social media companies in this country must be fundamentally changed. The exemption from publishers’ liability must be removed, because if the system has been breached, it allows people or organisations to take legal action, exactly as they can in the print media. That exemption, which came from the United States at the beginning of the internet industry, is quite fundamental to our ability to do something about social media. In essence, we are powerless across the world and in this country when it comes to that issue.

I will not repeat what the previous two speakers said about systems of reporting, but my experience is exactly the same. There is confusion, a lack of clarity, a lack of confidence in the system and a critical lack of training for key professionals. Those are fundamental issues. Some schools have got it and are good exemplars, but the vast majority are pretty clueless. That means that significant sexual offences—the routine, daily offences and the life-transforming ones that wreck the lives of the girls who are attacked—are possibly not even recorded. The details cannot be passed from one headteacher to another or to a governing body, so no one knows anything because there is no system in place.

There is meant to be good practice in higher education with consent training in universities. That training on understanding consent is quite profoundly needed for men and boys, and for girls and women. But it is not compulsory; no register is kept. People choose not to go—guess which people. Making that training compulsory in universities, schools and in education for 16 to 18-year-olds would mean more debate and dialogue about how it is done, and would make it far easier to spread examples of best practice. That would have a huge impact. We men in here should also have that compulsory training. It should be a requirement for sitting as Member of Parliament.

Finally—and the Minister has been helpful and active on this issue—people are saying that, even for 16 to 18-year-olds, some aspects are taught and the rest is not, even some of the basic stuff. From my experience, there is literally nothing in place in sports academies for 16 to 18-year-olds, not even the legal safeguarding requirements.

I get very depressed by the numbers of people—usually of women—who come to see me, and I find out what happened to them at school. Their parents do not know; they have no idea whatever. These women will not have reported to the police the fact that they have been raped. The volume is so incredibly profound that we have an epidemic in this country. If we do not act, we are responsible. We have that power. Therefore, the entire Parliament should be in here. I very much encourage those who have taken a lead to keep doing so and to kick the rest of us into action.