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

Lucy Frazer Excerpts

Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 24th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I do not intend to deviate too much from the matter in hand, but he raises an interesting point about what might be the driving force behind that. I think the point he is getting at is that he thinks the levels and nature of immigration into Sweden might have been a contributory factor—a point made by President Trump last week. There may well be truth in that. I do not know; I did not ask the ambassador for any assessment on that. All we do know is that ratifying the Istanbul convention has not led to a decrease in violence against women in Sweden, and so all the people claiming that that is what is going to happen might want to think again.

[Lucy Frazer (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Is it possible that in a country that cares about a particular form of violence people might be more willing to report that violence, and so figures might go up rather than down?

[Philip Davies]

It is a no-fail measure, isn’t it? If the level of violence goes down, it is because of the Istanbul convention; if it goes up, it is because the Istanbul convention has helped levels of reporting. It cannot fail: whatever the figures it is a winner. I commend my hon. and learned Friend greatly for that line. She will almost certainly be made a Government Minister very soon. With such aplomb at the Dispatch Box with which to explain away any difficult figures in her Department, I suspect she will make a very fine Minister in short order.



My hon. and learned Friend may well be right. Unfortunately, the situation in Portugal is not quite the same as that in Sweden, so her thesis slightly falls down. Portugal ratified the convention a bit earlier than Sweden, since when the numbers have been like a rollercoaster: they have gone down, then up, then down again. I am not entirely sure how that can be explained away on the basis of increased awareness.

It is fair to say that, to any independent observer, the figures indicate that ratification does not make a blind bit of difference to levels of violence against women. I am very happy for other hon. Members to put their own gloss or spin on why the figures have gone up and down; I am just looking at them as someone who is interested in the statistics.