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

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

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

I made it clear on Second Reading that I do not agree with the Istanbul convention because it is discriminatory, but at least I am up front and honest about that and about opposing the Bill and seeking to stop it going forward. That is a bit more appropriate than pretending to support something but quietly trying to fillet it to make sure it does not come into place. However, other people, including, hopefully, the promoter of the Bill, can explain their motivations when they get the opportunity to speak.

[Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

Will they get an opportunity?

[Philip Davies]

I hope they will.

Let me go through the group in order. New clause 6 refers to the recommendations by GREVIO—the Council of Europe’s Group of Experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence—and the Committee of the Parties to the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (Istanbul Convention), and would mean that those recommendations were not binding on the UK Government. The convention has a two-pillar monitoring system to ensure that all members live up to their commitments. [Interruption.]

It is interesting to note that nobody—particularly on the SNP Benches—wants to listen to the debate, which is surprising because it was exposed on Second Reading that they did not actually know what was in the Istanbul convention. You would think that they would have learned their lesson and would actually want, this time around, to learn what was in the convention—but apparently not. I am not entirely sure whether the position of the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), who is on his knees and facing the wrong way, is in order during a speech, but it is certainly not normal behaviour from him. [Interruption.] He may not be listening, but he could at least give the impression that he is interested in knowing what is going on in the debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Nusrat Ghani]

I am not sure whether my hon. Friend is referring to reported figures. Surely the point is that if women are aware that their voices will be heard and that support is available, they will come forward and report incidents of this hidden crime. Surely he can see that that is a positive thing.

[Philip Davies]

Of course I am in favour of people reporting crimes, but I am not entirely sure that we need to ratify the Istanbul convention for them to do so. We already encourage people to report crimes. If my hon. Friend wants to send a message today to every victim of violence that it is essential that they report that crime to the police, she is welcome to do so and I will endorse that message wholeheartedly. Any victim of any kind of violence, in any shape or form, irrespective of their gender, should report it to the police. It should be fully investigated and the perpetrator brought to justice and much more harshly punished than they currently are. Let that message ring out from the Chamber today, but we do not need to ratify the Istanbul convention for people to report that they have been the victim of a violent crime—we already have measures in place to deal with that.

The rollercoaster effect in Portugal that I described has also happened in Poland, which ratified the convention on 27 April 2015. It seems that the figures went up after it signed the convention, but that lately they have gone down.

There is no pattern to the figures in the countries whose ambassadors kindly sent me them, but it is important to put it on the record that they show that Sweden, Portugal and Poland clearly take the issue very seriously. I commend those countries for doing so and for laying bare their figures to me. In some cases the figures are good and in others they are not, but those countries have been open and transparent enough to share them with me so that I can share them with the House.

I worry about the countries that did not share their figures. I appreciate that I have no evidence to support this and that I am making an assertion that can be countered, but I fear and suspect that some countries did not supply me with the information because they are slightly embarrassed that the figures have gone in the wrong way since they ratified the convention. I could be wrong, but people can draw their own conclusions.

I have also seen figures from Albania and Austria. In Albania, they show an increase since ratification from 4,599 to 5,281. In Austria, the trend is the same. Its first annual report, which came out last September after the convention came into force in 2014, showed that the number of female victims of violent offences had increased from 37,546 to 37,677—so I think it is fair to say that we are not going to make a massive difference to levels of violence against women by ratifying the treaty.

After Austria ratified the Istanbul convention, the number of women murdered there went from 118 in 2014 to 165 in 2015. That seems quite a significant increase in murders against women a year after the country ratified the convention.