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

Pete Wishart Excerpts

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

[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.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

indicated dissent.

[Philip Davies]

He is not. We are very grateful to him for clarifying that he is not interested in the debate. There is no wonder the SNP is so authoritarian.

The Istanbul convention has a two-pillar monitoring system to ensure that all members live up to their commitments. The aim is

“to assess and improve the implementation of the Convention by Parties.”

We therefore have two groups: GREVIO, which is initially composed of 10 members and which will subsequently be enlarged to 15 members when the 25th country has ratified the convention, and a political body—the Committee of the Parties—which is composed of representatives of the parties to the Istanbul convention.

The last thing we need is another group from a supranational body that is set up to make it look as if that body is doing something on issues but that just becomes a talking shop. It is not the implementation of the Istanbul convention that will make any real difference to levels of violence generally—and certainly not to levels of violence against women—but harsher sentencing of perpetrators. The idea that having a group of experts pontificating about how well or badly something has been implemented will make any material difference to the levels of violence in the UK is for the birds.

GREVIO’s task is to monitor implementation, and it may adopt general recommendations on themes and concepts of the convention. The Committee of the Parties follows up on GREVIO reports and conclusions, and adopts recommendations to the parties concerned.

There are different procedures that these two bodies can use to monitor each country’s implementation, such as a country-by-country evaluation procedure whereby GREVIO considers evidence submitted by the relevant countries. Should it find the evidence insufficient, it has the power to organise country visits and fact-finding missions.