International Men’s Day

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate, and on the powerful speech he is making. The House will have been shocked by the figures that he has just revealed. Is he confident that the Department of Health realises that this is a serious public health issue, which urgently needs to be addressed by general practitioners and hospitals up and down the land? That must be one of the main reasons why men are losing their life: it must be one of the main causes of avoidable deaths in this country. That such a large number of people should lose their life in an avoidable way is tragic, regardless of whether they are men or women.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Debates such as this are important because they highlight the problems and urge that more be done, and I also commend the Select Committee for looking into this issue.

I appreciate that the Committee’s inquiry is ongoing, but I had a look at some of the evidence that it has received so far. I was struck by, for instance, evidence from the British Transport police relating to the suicides with which they deal. They dealt with 388 fatalities in, I believe, the last year, of which 305 were suspected suicides; 81% were men and 19% were women, but this is not just a gender issue. According to the evidence, 57% of those people had a known mental health history, 22% had been reported missing, 11% had previous convictions—one person had a “suicidal” marker on the police national computer—4% were current in-patients in mental health units, and 2% were absent without leave from mental health units. Wider issues therefore need to be considered, but they are all tragic cases. It is clear that many of the people concerned had a known mental health history, but it is also clear that many did not, and we must not forget those people.

I do not want to pre-empt the Select Committee’s inquiry, but one point made in CALM’s submission is very pertinent to the debate. It said:

“Despite the evidence that the risk of suicide is disproportionate to men as a whole when compared to women, research is often gender neutral or narrowed beyond gender (e.g. by sexual orientation or age). As a result, there is no specific research carried out on men and societal and environmental factors. Broader, gender specific research could reveal hidden causes of suicide that have not yet been explored. For instance, there could be great benefit in researching the impact of testosterone reducing drugs on the rates of suicide in men, however the current lens of research funding and its gender neutral approach does not provide a platform for such research.”

I hope that the Government will take that on board. A message should go out from the House today. If anyone is feeling suicidal, we should say, “Please speak to someone. Don’t suffer alone, as too many men often do.”

I want people to be in no doubt that there are male victims of domestic violence and abuse, despite what people may think and despite the stereotypes that surround the issue. The notion that in every case of domestic violence or abuse the perpetrator is a big burly wife-beater is just that: a notion. According to a report from the Office for National Statistics, “Focus on Violent Crime and Sexual Offences”, which relates to the year ending March 2015 and was released in February of this year,

“The Crime Survey England and Wales estimates that 8.2% of women and 4.0% of men reported experiencing any type of domestic abuse in the last year (that is, partner / ex-partner abuse (non-sexual), family abuse (non-sexual) and sexual assault or stalking carried out by a current or former partner or other family member). This is equivalent to an estimated 1.3 million female victims and 600,000 male victims.”

It also confirmed that, specifically for partner abuse, 6.5% of women and 2.8% of men reported having experienced any type of partner abuse in the last year, equivalent to an estimated 1.1 million female victims and half a million male victims. The pattern is consistent at all levels of domestic violence. In other words, for every three victims of domestic abuse, two will be female and one will be male.

[Philip Davies]

I do not need to forgive the hon. Gentleman; I welcome his intervention and am grateful for that public service announcement.

According to the ManKind Initiative, 20 organisations offer refuge or safe-house provision for male victims of domestic violence in the UK. There are a total of 82 spaces in the country, of which 24 are dedicated to male domestic violence victims only. For female victims, there are nearly 400 specialist domestic violence organisations providing refuge accommodation for women in the UK, with about 4,000 spaces for over 7,000 women and children. I suspect there are not sufficient spaces for female victims of domestic violence, but if there are 4,000 spaces for female victims of domestic violence, it follows that the 24 dedicated spaces for male victims of domestic violence clearly are not enough, when men make up a third of cases of people who suffer domestic violence.

What about the Government’s recent policy announcement to spend another £20 million on providing spaces, not for domestic violence victims generally, but specifically for female victims of domestic violence? The Government must not forget male victims of domestic violence either, and must provide suitable funding for them too, because they are getting forgotten about.

It is worth pointing out that according to the ManKind Initiative, male victims are over twice as likely as women—29% compared with 12% for women—not to tell anyone about the partner abuse they are suffering. Only 10% of male victims will tell the police compared with 26% of women, only 23% will tell a person in an official position compared with 43% of women, and only 11% will tell a health professional compared with 23% of women.

[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend is making a very good point and I am sure the House will recognise that domestic violence against men is probably far more underreported than domestic violence against women, although of course all domestic violence is abhorrent. Another problem for men who have been abused is that all too often they are denied the right to see their children once the relationship breaks up, because the system is still biased—sometimes for understandable reasons, sometimes not—in favour of the woman, and this compounds the problem for vulnerable men who have been victims.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right, and we must not forget fathers in the whole issue of bringing up children. As he says, in some cases it is perfectly right that the father, because of their behaviour, is denied access to the children, but in many cases it is not, and this is a massive problem for many people and is clearly one of the causes of the high suicide rate among men. It is not something that can be swept under the carpet. We must make sure that, where appropriate, fathers are given every assistance to have access to the children.