International Women’s Day

Lord Mann Excerpts

Friday 10th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl)]

My Lords—there is an irony in that phrase—I will say a few words about the independent report on child abuse, which has had very little airing because its publicity was waylaid by a number of fantasists and their encouragers. I think I accurately observe that all of the people involved in that were men. I spent 30 days on that report and represented 30 people, a number of whom were men who had faced the most horrific abuse as children. But the vast majority of people whom I represented from my area were women.

In the 2015 election, when I went around seeking election, as one does, randomly knocking on doors, something happened with unnerving regularity. I would knock on a door, a woman would answer, thank me for my work on child abuse and say something like, “There’s something you need to know.” I have done a lot of canvassing—probably as much as anyone in the country—and I am familiar with trends on the doorstep. That was a trend—I was randomly knocking. I was well known in my area: people recognised and, clearly, sufficiently trusted me. Those cases are not in the system, and the lessons from that inquiry are not being learned—there are some huge lessons.

One thing that I immediately gleaned from that was a suspicion that the problem was hugely deeper than I was aware of. I gathered a group of young women, mainly teenagers but a few more in their very early 20s, to look at the situation anonymously—I was not there. They were asked to say what was happening and what the situation is for young women in this country. The feedback I got, in total and absolute confidence, which I would never breach—other than to generalise—is that the level of sexual assault and impropriety with young women in this country has gone up very significantly, and not from a low watermark to begin with. This is not in the public domain because none of them had taken a case even to their parents, usually, never mind to the authorities, given the trauma of doing that. They were living with this. In itself, that seems a major problem, but the growth in it is also a problem. It is obviously linked, but we are not effectively addressing it. I note the way in which young boys grow up and their interrelationship—pornography was raised previously. What they see as the norm, and indeed what girls see as an acceptable norm at the time, are a major problem, and as a society, we are doing nothing about it.

In the child abuse report, there are only a few nuggets that I think help. One is looking at what are the resource and expertise within schools. The idea that random teachers or low-grade—in terms of status—support workers can handle this is clearly nonsense. This problem is the single biggest unseen problem that we face as a country.

I have no lived experience as a woman, of course, but, looking around our generation—I am not suggesting that we started from a high-water level at all; the child abuse inquiry demonstrated many examples of that—as decision-makers, we are way off the mark in understanding how deep this problem goes, never mind what can be done to solve it. If there was one role for this Chamber, this House, it would be to set up its own special commission to look at this in a proper, deep and thorough way and to come up with more practical answers and put the spotlight on this danger. If we do not, we as a country and society will suffer very bad consequences.