Face Coverings (Prohibition) Bill

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Friday 28th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hollobone]

The hon. Lady will not be surprised that I disagree with those remarks. She will know, because I informed her at the time, that a couple of years ago I visited her constituency as part of a TV programme. We did our best to speak with veiled women in her high street and I have to say that it was not an easy thing to do. It further drew my attention to the difficulties that veiled women have in undertaking normal everyday human interaction with people who are not veiled, because part of the traditional British way of life is that when somebody passes somebody else in the street whom they recognise, or half-recognise, they smile, perhaps wave and say hello; it is called neighbourliness. It is difficult for somebody to do that if their face is covered and it is also difficult for somebody else to do it to them, because there is no reaction.

Frankly, I do not want to live in a country where people—whether they are men or women—are increasingly going around with their faces covered, because it will lead to a deterioration in the quality of life. It also means that those ethnic minority women, largely from Muslim backgrounds, who do not speak English will find it much more difficult to learn to speak English, and they will remain at a disadvantage when it comes to accessing public services and interacting with the normal way of life if they cannot speak English properly.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way on that point. Does he not think that the introduction of his Bill might lead to more women feeling that they are unable to leave their homes? If they are unable to leave their homes, they will be unable to attend English classes; if they are unable to attend English classes, they are less likely to integrate in the way he describes.

[Mr Hollobone]

That is an interesting intervention and one that I am, of course, happy to take seriously, but it disturbs me greatly, because if we are talking about women from communities who, if they are not allowed to wear a veil are not allowed to go out, I have to question the ethics of the cultural background that would deny women the ability to go out into a normal British high street without having their faces covered. Has it come to the point that we are saying to women, “You can’t go out of doors, because of your cultural background, unless your face is veiled”? That is abhorrent in 21st century Britain.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I say gently to the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) that he is well known for calling for the cutting of legislation and the peeling back of red tape that restricts the freedoms of the British public, so regardless of what we might think personally about the issue, I am rather surprised that he seeks to regulate in an area where regulation is unlikely to be enforceable.

If this highly illiberal Bill ever made it to the statute book, we would see an increase in the number of people with face coverings, not the decrease that the hon. Gentleman seeks. In a fundamentally British tradition, the introduction of such an illiberal law would encourage civil disobedience and an affinity with those who were seen to be targeted by the measure. In fact, I think that those completely unaffected by the legislation would deliberately don facial coverings in demonstration against this illiberal Act. I confess that when I was a student union president—only a few years ago, obviously—I would have led as many students as possible in a demonstration against such an iniquitous law. We would have donned veils, marched, and taken the consequences.

Of course, in some professions and services—for those in hospitals and police forces, or for firefighters, for example—dress codes are prescribed, but that is a very different issue from restricting personal freedom in public places. It is right that the police and other law enforcement agencies have powers to ask individuals to remove face coverings—for example, to remove balaclavas during riots. As far as I am aware, however, this new law is not being called for by the police, and to give the hon. Gentleman his due, he did not suggest that.

The Bill is careful to exempt people obscuring their faces for any activity or reason other than reasons of personal choice or religious belief. The Bill is about singling out Muslim women, telling them how to dress, and threatening them with arrest if they do not comply. In spite of the general wording of this Bill, it is clear that it is designed to target Muslim women who wear the burqa or the niqab, both of which cover the face, as a means of religious or cultural expression. It is important, therefore, that we set this debate in context. According to the 2011 census, Muslims make up just 4.8% of the population of England and Wales, and only a very small number of women in that 4.8% wear the full-face veil. In my constituency of West Ham—one of the most ethnically diverse areas of the country, and home to a large Muslim community from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Africa—there is not a significant number, and this is not a significant issue. Nationally, we are talking about a tiny minority of an already small community.

As for the issue of recognition on the streets, surely the hon. Gentleman cannot be demanding that each and every one of us should be instantly recognisable as we walk down the street. Surely he does not want us all to look up as we pass a closed circuit television camera and smile. There is a fine line between demanding facial recognition in all public places, and the realisation of a Big Brother state, and the Bill, I fear, is on the wrong side of it.

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend represents a diverse constituency, and she also represents non-Muslims. Has anyone written to her to support what the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) proposes?

[Lyn Brown]

Nobody has written to me on this issue at all, as yet.

The worst thing about the Bill is that, even if unintentionally, it targets a minority community in this country and contravenes their freedom of expression, of religion and of free speech. It creates the very divisions it purports to be removing. The Bill will have the effect, whether or not this is recognised by the hon. Member for Kettering, of imprisoning in their own homes the very women he claims he will rescue from oppression. I fear that this Bill may have been motivated in part by a misconception that Muslim women are neither politicised nor capable of making their own choices about what they wear—the Muslim women I meet in West Ham are certainly both.

Let us look at the results of the ban in France, which was implemented in April 2011. There has been only one conviction since its introduction, and I admit that I have a very different view from the hon. Gentleman about what that teaches us. An Open Society Justice Initiative report on the results of the French ban reveals that the majority of Muslim women in France who wore the veil have not stopped wearing it. Those women believe the law to be an affront to their religious rights, and since the ban came in, some have, predictably, started to wear the niqab. Thus, an otherwise law-abiding group have potentially been criminalised and, indeed, barred from participation in public life.

The report also highlights the increased mental health issues that these women face, as well as their social anxiety, their fear and their overwhelming reliance on male relatives, which they did not have before. Their movement has been heavily restricted and they now feel unable to walk freely in public, fearing abuse or attack by members of the public—and possible arrest by a policeman. Far from this law creating social cohesion in France, these women report “legitimised” Islamaphobic attacks and speak of how, in effect, in passing the law the state has sanctioned racist intolerance and abuse. That law not merely affirmed a wider prejudice against a section of the French community; it emboldened those who seek to divide society and prevent integration. Is that really the kind of society we wish to create in Britain today?

We want to build a society of tolerance, cohesion, understanding and pluralism. The state should not seek to discriminate against its own people on the basis of how they look or dress. In opposing the progress of this damaging Bill, we defend the right of women to make their own independent choices about how they dress. Although I am sure that some who wear the veil will do so in keeping with the values of their own families or relatives, it is equally true that many women wear the veil because of deeply held religious or personal convictions. I will not condone the wearing of anything under the duress of others, but we should recognise that for many Muslim women that is far from what is happening. It is a perfectly consistent position to condemn both those who force women to wear the veil and those who seek to prohibit the wearing of it.

So let us be clear: I do not believe it is for me, or indeed for this House, to decide what women should or should not wear. It is not for the state to be prescriptive on this and, least of all, to criminalise the individual choices of women. This issue is about taking away the freedom of choice from a very small portion of our community. That offends the British values that I hold dear: freedom of speech, fairness and choice.

Some recent high-profile cases have indicated the need, however, for exceptions, whereby the veil should be lifted. I am talking, for example, of the case last year at Blackfriars Crown court. I welcome the consultation on the issue of wearing the veil in some legal settings, but it is emphatically the responsibility of judges to provide this guidance, and not for this House to intervene. Of course there is a need for identification at the UK border, or in other circumstances for security reasons. That is already provided for in legislation; we do not need to add to it. The vast majority of Muslim women recognise that the needs of security are paramount in certain circumstances and are happy to remove their veil for identification. I welcome the provision of female officers in such cases so that women can comfortably remove the veil to prove their identity. All of those cases are specific, and none provides any excuse for the Government to criminalise wearing the veil in all public places and at all times.

The hon. Gentleman has suggested that he finds the veil offensive to him and to his sense of Britishness, but I do not believe it is reasonable for us to live our lives in the expectation of not being offended. I get offended by some comments from Government Members, by some humour and by all-male game show panels on TV. I get offended on an almost daily basis by something I read in the press, but I do not think I have the right not to be offended. What could be more offensive to a sense of British social cohesion than an arbitrary ban on what some choose to wear?

I remind the House of the irony that this debate takes place a scant week away from international women's day—a day that celebrates the choices and freedoms that this Bill seeks to restrict. We must understand that this is an issue not for the state but of personal identity and of the individual choices of women. We must also understand the damage that such legislation would bring.

This House has a responsibility to lead the work towards strengthening the bonds that tie communities together. It should not stoke the flames of suspicion and fear and the illogical hatred of difference that rip those communities apart.