Lesbian Visibility Week

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

It is a real privilege to speak in this debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) on securing it and on her excellent opening speech. I also thank our fantastic ally, our hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler), for all that she does—for the pertinent points she makes about supporting the whole LGBT community and for all the work she has done in standing up for trans people. I must not forget our hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle), an outstanding champion who, long before many of us were in Parliament, was flying the flag in what was a very lonely place at the time.

It was also a real privilege to attend the event on Monday that my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow organised and to meet Linda Riley, the publisher of Diva, and Professor Sue Sanders, the co-founder of LGBT History Month. Just to be among such people is such an honour for someone like me. Thinking back to 30 years ago, Diva was quite a lifeline for people as isolated as we were in south-west Wales, perhaps not knowing anyone quite like us and certainly not wanting to be open about ourselves because we were worried about society’s reaction.

At the time of section 28, I was in a relationship with another woman, both of us were teachers and this was very inhibiting. As I have previously said in this Chamber and in Westminster Hall, it was a very difficult time—a time when it was not easy to challenge the homophobic bullying that was going on then and which still goes on now. I thank all those who were braver than I was and came out sooner than I did.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I apologise to the House for intervening, but I have to go with my wife to celebrate her 17 years as chancellor of the University of Hull.

The hon. Lady is rightly talking about the bullying and the fear she experienced. There has been some of that more recently. I started to become conscious of some of the issues when Kathleen Stock was being bullied mercilessly in Sussex. We ought to be careful. If I were to make a speech in this debate, I would say that two of the greatest events I have been to were the LGB Alliance conference meetings, which were picketed by people who seemed to hate the people inside. They would not come inside to listen; they were shouting outside. That kind of attitude has echoes of what speakers today have talked about.

[Dame Nia Griffith]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central has said, there is real need to approach these things in a calm and appropriate way, and to respect everybody’s different ways of manifesting their humanity.

What for me is very telling is the fact that I came out when my relationship broke up. It is almost impossible to hide grief. It is ironic that, having spent a considerable period not being open and trying not to make it obvious that we were in a relationship, it was when we did not “need” that hidden approach any more that I came out. It is incredibly difficult to explain to people why you are in such a state of grief if you do not explain the relationship. What was interesting about that was not only the reaction of very supportive friends, which was great, but finding that some people had never guessed; I was quite shocked and surprised by that. It was strange to realise that we were more hidden than we understood, because people did not see lesbians. That shows the importance of Lesbian Visibility Week.

Perhaps because society is so male-dominated and women are marginalised in many respects, or perhaps because women are more likely to be seen doing things together, holding hands or going on holiday with other women, we were not even noticed. One of the important aspects of raising lesbian visibility is enabling people to be their natural selves and enabling other people to recognise that. Of course that has meant over the years that women were perhaps not the subject of homophobic legislation. In many ways, it reflected the role of women as society was then and that women were very marginalised and not seen. That is perhaps part of the wider picture of where women were.

There have been workplace stereotypes: women have to dress in a certain way and behave in a certain way towards heterosexual men, or they are expected to do so. When they do not, be that as lesbians or as heterosexual women, it can be interpreted negatively, which has often held lesbian women back over the years. It is a form of discrimination and stereotyping that has had pernicious results.

It is not enough for us to hope that attitudes can change. Hope is not enough. We all have a responsibility to challenge, and to use our legislative powers to strengthen our challenging through legislation. We were proud, as a Labour Government from 1997 to 2010, to do a number of important things that helped LGBT rights, including ending the ban on LGBT people serving in our armed forces, ending discrimination against lesbian and gay partners for immigration purposes, and giving LGBT individuals and couples the right to adopt children. Of course, we scrapped section 28, which was very important for people like me, but we also banned discrimination in the workplace and in vocational training with the introduction of the Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003.

We also included homophobia in the definition of hate crimes. Sadly, we have seen a rise in hate crimes in recent years, to which I draw the Government’s attention. In particular, I ask that more should be done to tackle homophobic, including transphobic, hate crime.

Of course, we created civil partnerships and awarded statutory rights to fertility treatment for lesbians on the NHS but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow said, there is a long way to go on equal and fair access. I hope the Minister has listened to what she said today, and to what she said to the Deputy Prime Minister yesterday, and I hope progress can be made on this sooner rather than later.

Although we have made progress, we know that, in many respects, there is a lot to do to stop attitudes regressing in this country but also internationally. Women are hardly noticed or recognised in many countries and, if they are, they are certainly not allowed to be in same- sex relationships.

Again, I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate. With others in this House, I hope I can play my part in securing greater lesbian visibility.

Covid-19: Response and Excess Deaths

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Thursday 18th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stringer]

The hon. Gentleman has made his point. I do not believe in conspiracies. I do believe that, from time to time, one gets a view, both in professions and outside professions, that pushes judgments in one particular direction. I believe there is one point on which we can reach a consensus in the debate: Government Ministers said that the vaccines were 100% safe—it was particularly egregious when that was said about children— but no vaccine or treatment, as right hon. and hon. Members have said, is 100% safe. I think it was a mistake to say those things.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman has made a sensible, serious point. Ministers here and in other countries knew that when they set up the global vaccines study. For those who want to know about this afterwards—not during the debate—BMJ article reference 2024;384:q488 looks at some rare side effects and acknowledges some of the other side effects. But those who start saying we should not have had the vaccines are wrong, and those who think that anyone believes any treatment is completely safe are wrong as well.

[Graham Stringer]

I am not familiar with that particular paper, but I agree with the hon. Gentleman that nothing is ever 100% safe and vaccines have an overall benefit. I am vaccinated against covid, as I have been vaccinated against many things over my lifetime. Vaccines have made the health of this country, and countries around the world that can afford vaccines, much better over many years.

Budget Resolutions

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

It is interesting to follow the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry). I was waiting to hear how the experiment with higher taxation is going. I invite the SNP to publish the figures showing how many of the top 10 philanthropists in Scotland five years ago are still paying tax in Scotland, and how the top 10 individual taxpayers in Scotland five years ago are doing now. [Interruption.] It is an example. SNP Members do not like having questions put to them, but there we are.

When the Leader of the Opposition started speaking, it sounded to begin with as though it was his Health spokesman who was speaking. I also reflected on the journey of the Leader of the Opposition over the last few years. In 2017 and 2019—within the memory of the House—he wanted his right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) to be Prime Minister. When there was a vacancy to succeed the right hon. Member for Islington North as the leader of the Labour party, the candidate who was closest to him was the person who is now the Leader of the Opposition. His journey over the last couple of years in changing his views, or his approach, is quite significant.

I think people can believe that the Labour party wants to change. For example, in the other Worthing constituency—I represent two thirds of the town—none of the local councillors was judged suitable to be put on the shortlist for selection as the parliamentary candidate. That shows central power in the hands of the Leader of the Opposition and his national executive. I think most people will have found that surprising. Had I been one of the Labour councillors told I could not apply, I would have been pretty upset.

The reaction I have received from my constituents to the financial statement and the Budget has come down to one particular point. Someone said, “Could there please be a change on the level of pension pot that requires financial advice?” When it was introduced in 2015, the level was £30,000. My constituent, who has a pension pot of £32,500, has been quoted £7,000 for advice on how to realise that relatively small pension pot. I ask Treasury Ministers to consider whether in the Finance Bill they could lift that figure to £40,000 or £50,000, so that people who want to gather up a small part of their defined-benefit pension can use it.

The second reaction that I had from a constituent was that, since Labour took control of Worthing Borough Council, two thirds of the reserves have gone within two years. People are worrying whether the council can remain solvent. If that is a test of what Labour might do in government, it is a pretty good reason to follow the Chancellor and the Prime Minister, and to re-elect us so that we can go on trying to raise the levels of productivity and growth, reform and develop public services, and get more people into work, with higher tax revenues and preferably lower rates of tax.

The Chancellor announced changes to the penalties on child benefit. I go back far enough to remember when most of the value of child benefit came in the child tax allowance. Children cannot work. If I had a dependent pensioner in my household, an income would come with them. Any family who have a child under working age ought to be able to get that kind of support, so that over a family’s lifecycle they receive support when they need it and pay back in when they are more able to work. I hope that we can move to a stage where the child benefit penalty goes completely. There is no philosophical or economic justification for it. It was an error, and I hope that I voted against it when it came in.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

You didn’t.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I probably did, you know. I am that sort of person.

There are many things on the environmental side that I will not go into due to the limitations on time. I hope that the proposed district heating scheme, which the Government want to be one of their flagship projects, supported by local authorities, can go ahead. There is a problem with the cost of lane rental to put hot pipes under our roads, but we need to give serious attention to how we get major investment so that nearly all our homes come off burning hydrocarbons, whether it is gas or the like, and get on to solar heating or heat pumps—either air or ground source heating. That will require major effort, especially for residential leasehold properties.

The Chancellor announced more money for more free schools. I hope that one of them will be the special educational needs and disabilities school proposed in Worthing, on the new Durrington estate. Nearly one child in five in West Sussex has some kind of statement or need They deserve specialist support. It is good for them, and good for the other children. I hope that we will get an announcement on that very soon. Having said that, I welcome the Government’s plans. Those who say that Labour would take us back to square one are exactly right.

Horizon: Compensation and Convictions

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Monday 8th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I call the Father of the House.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I refer my hon. Friend the Minister to the article in The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice by M. R. McGuire and K. Renaud, entitled “Harm, injustice & technology: Reflections on the UK’s subpostmasters’ case”.

First, page 444 shows the graph of the prosecutions, which rose from 10 in 1997 to nearly 80 in 2001. The people responsible should have noticed that we were not going to get ordinary, decent people—sub-postmistresses and sub-postmasters—suddenly going crooked on that scale. Secondly, the article talks about the bugs that were named after the sub-post offices where they were discovered: the Dalmellington bug and the Callendar Square bug.

I also refer my hon. Friend the Minister to the article in The Sun about my constituent Cheryl Shaw, who gave up in 2008. Having lost £400 week after week, she brought in the Post Office investigators, who claimed that they could not find anything to explain what was happening. She had to sell out, she lost her home and she took on work as a carer. She is illustrative of those who were convicted and those who gave up before they were prosecuted.

Many people now believe that the Horizon system was set up for one purpose and adapted to another, for which it did not work. When people started entering things twice, there was apparently a loss where the Post Office did not actually lose any money. If the Post Office did not lose any money, how could people have been properly prosecuted? The titanic error was the belief in technology.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank my hon. Friend for his questions. I totally agree that people should be held responsible where, following an inquiry and investigation, they are shown to have wilfully neglected their duties. He raises an important point about the courts’ attitude towards computer and technology-based evidence. My right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor is looking at that issue too, it having been brought to his attention by Paul Marshall, one of the leading barristers involved in this scandal.

I am sorry to hear about my hon. Friend’s constituent, Mrs Shaw. I take it that she will have applied to the Horizon shortfall scheme, which should compensate people like her. If my hon. Friend would like any help or assistance to make sure that has happened, either for himself or for Mrs Shaw, I am very happy to provide it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Thursday 20th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

My question is about the regulation of charities, following on from the question asked by the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry). Does my right hon. Friend the Minister read Private Eye? If he does, he will have seen the saga of the Actors’ Benevolent Fund, where it appears that the people who did right have been put out and the people who did wrong, over and over again, have been supported by the Charity Commission. Could he say to the Charity Commission that people in Parliament are watching this with some surprise?

[Stuart Andrew]

Of course the Charity Commission is an independent body, but I have regular meetings with it. I am not a regular reader of Private Eye, but I will make sure that I seek out that article ahead of my next meeting with the Charity Commission.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Father of the House.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I speak as a supporter of WATCH, the Women and the Church group. The Church Commissioners should understand that either the Church of England gets rid of what ought to have been temporary exemptions from the Equality Act 2010 or Parliament will do that for it. Does my hon. Friend understand that other MPs who are interested in full equality for women would like to meet the Church Commissioners before we consider what other action we might take?

[Andrew Selous]

I have very clearly heard what my hon. Friend the Father of the House and indeed the very respected Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) have just said. The Church will have heard that as well and we are of course available for meetings at any time.

Legislative Definition of Sex

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Monday 12th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I have learned a lot from most of the speeches, especially the last one. Anyone who has missed the annual reading of the list of women killed by men should attend it.

I am indebted to two authors. One is Helen Joyce, who wrote the book “Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality”. People are mistaken if they think that those of us speaking in favour of clarity in the law are in any sense transphobic, or that any word or sentence in this book is that.

The second book is by Kathleen Stock, who was a professor at the University of Sussex, the county that my constituency is in. She wrote “Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism”. I first became conscious of her dilemmas when I read a remark by a man called Liam Hackett, who accused her publicly of being a “dangerous extremist”. There is not a sentence in the book that can be regarded as transphobic.

Liam Hackett was given an honorary degree by the University of Sussex in his 20s. He created and ran—and, as far as I know, still does—an anti-bullying charity called Ditch the Label, yet he is publicly a bully of a fine academic who should be supported, not condemned. I could, of course, have brought along one of J. K. Rowling’s books too, but in five minutes I cannot give a full literary review.

Chapter 8 at the end of Kathleen Stock’s book is called “A Better Activism in Future”. She recommends being more non-binary; that people stop changing the subject when these discussions come up; being more intersectional; and having less theory, and more data—or, to expand on that, she says:

“Use less academic (high) theory, more academic data”.

She gives a whole list of issues on which we ought to have information.

Kathleen Stock was writing her book when the questions were being created for the 2021 census, which brought in something on trans identity. The question was written in such a way that the place where there seemed to be most trans people was east London, but the question was misunderstood. It is ludicrous that although we search for data, we cannot have proper data.

First, we ought to recognise that no one I know is transphobic. Secondly, having gender questions matters. Discussing trans issues matters. When sex and gender clash, sex should be dominant.

I end with two examples that are well known to everybody. Why should a cyclist who is the 500th fastest in his age group or category be allowed to declare themselves a woman, and win a women’s cycling race? There is no justification for that. There never was, and there never will be.

The second issue, as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) pointed out, is that in prisons, hospitals and refuges, and when it comes to personal care, people should have the opportunity for, and an expectation of, same-sex services.

For most things, of course, sex does not matter; it does not come into it. My pronouns—the ones I normally use—are you, we, I. We do not have to go around saying, “I am he and him” the whole time. I answer to “Hi!” or any loud cry.

I hope that this debate will help to illuminate the fact that Parliament is taking the issue seriously. One or two people who have intervened have given the impression that those who speak as I do are in some way against trans people. That is not so.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Thursday 11th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Father of the House.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

May I say to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that I am not upset? Her description of this change of approach is useful, and it meets many of the criticisms of the unamended Bill. I hope it is successful, and I hope people on both sides of the House and in industry make sure we keep the right bits and drop the bits that are useless.

[Kemi Badenoch]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. We are taking an approach that works for everybody, not just for a particular group. We have to do what is right for business, we have to do what is right for consumers and we have to do what is right for the entire country. I voted to leave, and this is exactly the sort of reform I thought we would make when we left the European Union. I am very pleased to be able to take this through the House.

International Women’s Day

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Thursday 9th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

If my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend do not mind, I will make some progress, because at the moment my speech has been entirely interventions.

I am glad to see the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) in her place because I want to talk about abortion. It is very important that we in this place—the mother of Parliaments, this advanced democracy—challenge ourselves about whether the laws we have are really fit for purpose, particularly when on things such as abortion we are quite good at lecturing the rest of the world. My fundamental view is that our abortion law is currently not safe. The most important thing we can do in this place is make sure that our laws do no harm. I have said this before in this House, but the law we have regulating abortions—the Abortion Act 1967—is older than me. I have not worn too well, but, frankly, that has worn even worse. It is in desperate need of reform. I am afraid that while we treat this as an issue of conscience, we are failing women, because that law predates medical abortion. It deals with a situation where the only terminations women could have were surgical, which, as we all know, are more dangerous, and the law is drawn up on that basis, which is why it relies on two doctors having to certify that the procedure is necessary. Do we really need two doctors now, when we have the availability of medical abortion? I just do not think it is necessary.

Back in the 1990s, when Kenneth Clarke was Secretary of State for Health—so we are going back a long way—the abortion law was amended at that point to enable abortions to take place in settings different from the licensed establishments that the state approves of. However, it took until the pandemic for that to be made a reality, and the reality made was not the one intended at the time the law was passed in the 1990s. It recognised that we now had medical abortion, which could be administered safely by pill, and the whole idea, when Ken Clarke accepted that amendment, was that we would be able to access abortions in places such as family planning clinics and places of beauty, instead of the stigmatised list of places that have to be regulated by the Secretary of State. That, by the way, has made sure that our abortions are a monopoly service provided by two providers in the independent sector; they are very rarely done by the NHS. Earlier this week, we discussed the Public Order Bill and the whole issue of protest, but would there really be so much protest if abortion services were more embedded in our established national health service, instead of being shunted away into the back streets somewhere, which makes them a target?

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

It is worth remembering that an early Conservative woman Member of Parliament, Margaret Thatcher, in 1967 both voted to decriminalise male homosexual acts and stayed up all night to help get David Steel’s Abortion Bill through the House of Commons.

Can I put it to my hon. Friend that, given that it is now so common and that there are over 200,000 abortions a year in this country—it takes two to tango, so that is 400,000 people contributing, some perhaps more than once, but not many—we ought to make it easier? People who decide that having an abortion is appropriate, should be able to do it easily and safely, without embarrassment.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

That is exactly the point that I was coming on to make. I absolutely respect why Members of this House have ideological objections to abortion and why they will always vote to restrict it. However, the fact is that abortion is an established right in this country, and it is our obligation to ensure that those laws are safe and that women can access abortion as early as possible in their pregnancies. That is actually the most important thing and the safest thing, and that is why they must be much more readily available.

Let me make a point to the Front Bench—which I fear will fall on deaf ears, just because we continue to see this as an issue of conscience, rather than of safety—that this is something that really ought to be reviewed. I would suggest to the Minister that we have, in our women’s health ambassador, Lesley Regan, someone who, as a former head of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, is eminently qualified to undertake a review, perhaps not to make recommendations, but to just highlight how the current abortion law is not fit for purpose, so that we can properly review how we might improve it.

The way in which the Abortion Act is established is not encouraging a healthy debate about the issue either—on both sides, I might add. That is the starting frame of reference, so we end up in this ridiculous debate about time limits. Ultimately, we just need to get away from that and think about it as a health procedure. When that Act was passed back in 1967, it was a radical and empowering measure that advanced women’s rights, but here we are, more than 50 years later, and we need to take a good look at it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

It is a huge pleasure and privilege to speak in this debate. There have been some fantastic and powerful speeches by right hon. and hon. Members. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller), who opened the debate. I have fond memories of us trekking down the corridor to the former Speaker’s office to advocate for baby and parental leave for Members of this House, to try to take this place forward. It is right, as other Members have said, that female parliamentarians often work cross-party to achieve progress. It is not the Punch and Judy show that folks see on the television week in, week out.

I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) for her incredibly moving speech. It has become a grim tradition, it is fair to say, that every year she discharges her duty of reading the names of women who have been killed by violent men. That is incredibly important.

One of those names was a constituent of mine, Aimee Cannon. Her mother, Wendy Cannon, is here with us today in the Gallery. I want to share the details of what happened to Aimee. I stress that these are Wendy’s own words, and we are privileged that she is willing to share them with us through me, her Member of Parliament.

On 5 May last year, Wendy and her husband were enjoying a Friday night. It felt like any other typical Friday night as they began thinking about the weekend. Wendy had been communicating with their daughter, Aimee, via WhatsApp. Aimee had been telling them how much she was looking forward to work the next day. Aimee worked at a beauty salon. She had plans to celebrate at a birthday party that weekend, and she was also going to help out at a charity fundraising event for a children’s hospice. In spite of her own challenges—anorexia, self-harming, domestic abuse and addiction—she wanted to help others. She had a big heart. That was Aimee.

On Saturday her parents became worried about Aimee’s lack of contact. Aimee’s father went to her house and found her dead with multiple injuries. The police described the attack as a brutal and sustained attack. Aimee would have been frightened, in pain, alone and dying in a place that she should have felt safe in. Aimee was only 26 years old, and she had so much to live for and so much to give.

Aimee’s parents and their grandchildren’s lives will never be the same again. Aimee’s mum Wendy told me that they stagger from day to day in a dark maze of grief, lost in a legal system that they do not understand. They have one question: how many more women have to die before we recognise that gender violence is now becoming an epidemic in our society?

I am incredibly proud of and grateful to Aimee’s parents for their courage and bravery in sharing Aimee’s story, and for allowing me to share it today. When Wendy first came to see us to get support, we sat together and she told me about Aimee. And we cried—a lot. Wendy said to me this morning when she came to Parliament that she had heard the Prime Minister’s legitimate concerns about his daughter’s safety while walking to school. She said that she hears that—but imagine how she feels.

The challenges that Aimee faced in her life are, sadly, shared by many women across the UK. I have spoken before of women from my constituency, Kirsty Maxwell and Julie Pearson, who were both killed abroad at the hands of violent men. It was their untimely and tragic deaths that led my team and me to start our work on deaths abroad and consular assistance. There are so many other women we could talk about, though some are very often missed off our lists, forgotten about or unnamed.

We are privileged to be here and in this position as female parliamentarians. I am in this place because of generations of women who have come before me, who fought for our right to vote, to get paid equally and to get treated fairly, and who fought for real progress at their own expense, both professionally and personally. In fact, yesterday I had the privilege of taking some of the WASPI women—from the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign—to the suffragette broom cupboard, a little-known shrine for those feminists among us. On the night of the 1911 census, Emily Wilding Davison hid herself in that cupboard so that she could record it as her address, in the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft. Her census form gives the postal address as:

“Found hiding in crypt of Westminster Hall”,

and the pencilled note on the bottom left gives the date, “3/4/11 Since Saturday”. Emily was arrested on nine occasions, went on hunger strike seven times and was force-fed on 49 occasions. She died after being hit by King George V’s horse at the 1913 Derby when she walked on to the track during the race, sacrificing herself so that we can be here today.

There was something almost prophetic about showing those incredible women, who have faced such injustice, that place where another great woman suffered and sacrificed to make her point.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

Emily Wilding Davison taught for a time in Worthing, which gives me a constituency link. I think her view was that if she could not vote, she was not a person and therefore she should not be recorded by the census. I do not think that she aimed to be recorded as being in Westminster; she just wanted to hide here.

[Hannah Bardell]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that providing that incredibly helpful education.

As we walked past the statue of Falkland, to which suffragette and activist Margery Humes chained herself, one of the WASPI women told me that they should have brought their own chains. It is a brutal and harsh reality that more than a century later, we have women facing similar injustice who have to fight way past retirement age and who are dying before they get the justice to which they are entitled.

I am reminded that it is Endometriosis Awareness and Action Month. My co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on endometriosis, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), and I have been to a number of events and briefings this week, as we do throughout the year, to talk about, discuss and campaign for better diagnosis, support and funding for research and treatment for those who suffer from such a brutal and life-limiting disease.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anna Firth]

I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. It is so encouraging to know that those points have been reiterated in one of the highest commissions on the status of women, and it is extremely good to know that Iran has finally been taken off that commission. No such regime anywhere in the world has a place on any commission concerned with women’s right. I thank her for reminding us of that.

We are so lucky that we can stand for public office. Although I am privileged to be the first woman to have been elected as the MP for Southend West, I am not the first female MP for Southend. Of course, Lady Iveagh represented that seat between 1927 and 1935, so I have a proud tradition behind me. We have so much further to go, as we all know. Just 31% of MPs are women, and since 1918, more than 100 years ago, only 561 women—not even an entire Parliament—have been elected. I say to any women who are thinking of coming into public office, particularly if they are in Southend West: “I want to hear from you, and I would be delighted to speak to you.”

I am delighted that in Southend West, we have plenty of women putting themselves forward for election in May. I wish the very best of luck to Councillor Meg Davidson, Councillor Lesley Salter and—we hope—soon-to-be councillor, Cheryll Gardiner. I will be on the streets of Southend knocking on doors to support them, supported by the indefatigable deputy chairman Judith Suttling, who is still pounding the streets in her 80s and setting me a daunting and energetic example.

I will use the time that I have to celebrate the incredible work that women do in my Southend West community. I, alongside our local paper, the Southend Echo, will soon launch a new community champion scheme in Southend to highlight our unsung and hidden heroes. The first hero is not unsung or hidden, however. She will be none other than our one and only Jill Allen-King OBE, who has spent her life standing up for people who live with blindness and visual impairments.

For those who do not know Jill’s story, she lost her sight on her wedding day, aged just 24. Instead of collapsing in a well of despair, she got out there and has spent her entire life bringing to our community things that we now take for granted. Tactile paving—the little bumps on the pavement that we all see whenever we cross the road—is down to Jill Allen-King, as are the wheelchair-level buttons in buses, and she has done lots to get access to public spaces for therapy dogs. She has attracted the attention of well-known names, including Paul O’Grady and Michael Ball. Of course, she has her OBE, but this year, she has the Pride of Britain lifetime achievement award. Despite her blindness, she has been busy teaching Ashley Banjo from Diversity to do the cha-cha-cha.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

Just to demonstrate that I have been around for a time, in 1986, when I became the junior Transport Minister, with responsibility for mobility for disabled people, Jill Allen-King took me for a walk around Westminster, helped to put in the first tactile surfaces just outside the Palace of Westminster, and gave much other good advice. Please give her my best wishes.

[Anna Firth]

I thank my hon. Friend—I will absolutely pass that on.

There are so many wonderful women in Southend West whom I want to celebrate, so—in great Sir David fashion— I will now rattle through a whole list. First, the incredible Riz Awan at Citizens Advice Southend is a support for so many people across our community. She took over as chief executive as the covid pandemic was starting, and she kept the centre open to assist people in one of the most difficult of times. Also at Citizens Advice Southend is the award-winning Emily Coombes, who was recognised as a rising star by the Young Energy Professionals.

I pay tribute to Jackie Mullan, chief executive officer of the SEN Trust Southend. Jackie set up that amazing organisation to support people with learning difficulties throughout our local community, and she is a huge inspiration. I would also like to mention Rachael, a constituent of mine who came to see me in this place only a few weeks ago. She has led an amazing battle to raise awareness of functional neurological disorder.

We also have great role models in our Southend schools. Thirteen of our headteachers are women, showing that woman can, of course, take on such positions of responsibility and leadership.