International Women�s Day

Polly Billington Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Natalie Fleet (Bolsover) (Lab)]

It is an honour to be here today as the first MP to represent Bolsover who is a woman. [Hon. Members: �Hear, hear!�] Thank you. I am surrounded by fantastic women not only here, but in Bolsover�women who run businesses and nurture our next generation, such as foster carer Sonja Dayson in Creswell, women who inspire us as community leaders, such as Helen Marriott of Pinxton scouts, with nearly four decades of dedication, and women who support charities to thrive and fight to make a difference with tenacity, like Edwina Cant of Bolsover Woodlands Enterprise. I will spend this week celebrating them all and more.

Today I want to talk about the hidden issues that affect us women�too often our private burden. If we look at the last Parliament, the BBC was discussed more often than childcare. Fishing was five times more likely to be mentioned than menopause. This historic House, which women died to get us into, spent more time discussing football than rape.

My daughter�she is brave and wonderful�tells me, �Mum, every time you talk about rape, every time you say the word, I bristle. Please do not stop.� My baby�my little baby�is about to start big school. The data tells me that while she is there, she will witness sexual harassment and potentially be sent dick pics, and there is nothing that I can do to protect her from that.

This is not a class or age thing; it does not matter how far we go back. It is an accepted part of the story of Mary Queen of Scots that the nobles chose among themselves who was going to rape her with the intention of impregnating her. Yet we still do not accept that that happens in the UK. Ten births happen every day from rape. There is no charity to support those women and no advice on the NHS website. The men can access those children at any time they like. Every single one of us has either been raped or knows someone who has been raped. Rape is a part of our story as women, yet it is a part that we do not tell.

I want to tell you about rape and being an MP. Rape threats are an accepted part of the job. I thank the Minister for speaking up about this disgusting truth. I am the 690th woman MP. Rape Crisis estimates that a quarter of women have been raped or sexually assaulted. If we apply that data to MPs, that means that 172 of us have been raped, and half of them�86 woman MPs�will have been raped more than once. Statistically, 28 of them will have reported it. Given a miracle, or on an optimistic day, one could have led to a conviction�at the very best.

[Ms Polly Billington (East Thanet) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way during her extremely powerful speech. Will she remind everybody of the importance not only of the fact of rape, but of prosecuting and convicting the perpetrators of those rapes, so that we remember that this is not simply about a passive violence against women and girls, but about identifying the causes and the people who do those crimes?

[Natalie Fleet]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention.

I am proud to be part of a Government who have set out an unprecedented ambition to halve violence against women and girls, but what I want us to think about on this day is how we tell our story. I have spoken publicly about giving birth after being the victim of statutory rape, and I am sick of being told I am brave. I do not want to be brave; I want it to be expected that we tell our truth. Courage calls to courage everywhere. Let us make it normal to talk about rape�in workplaces, in kitchens, with friends. Instead of bristling, let us talk about it like we talk about football; let us talk to our boys about consent and celebrate the men who are our allies. Most importantly, listen to her, support her and, for God�s sake, believe her. If you are one of the colleagues, friends or constituents who have told me about your rape, I ask you to tell each other. You will be surprised how many people believe you and then share their story with you, too.

I am the very proud nana of a beautiful granddaughter. She is four weeks old and named after one of the suffragettes who helped me to get here today. I genuinely believe that if we are brave now and make speaking out the norm, we can have a world in which she tells her grandchildren about the fact that they did it and we hid it. I want that to be the part that her grandchildren do not believe. There is a lot to do and it can feel overwhelming, but let us put our arms around each other and use our power to force that shame to change sides.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rosie Wrighting]

I thank my hon. Friend for those really kind comments. The things I see on my screen also translate to real life. When I walk back to my flat tonight, I will not have my headphones on, so I can hear if someone is following me. When I go out with my friends, I will not put my drink down, because I am worried I might be spiked. When a man asks for my number on the tube, all I am thinking is how I can let him down gently, because I am worried how he might take it if I say no.

[Ms Billington]

I would just like to remark, in support of my hon. Friend�s observations about the experience of being a female Member of Parliament, that as candidates we were advised by a bunch of white men about security by this place. We looked at each other, we female candidates, and observed that almost everything they were suggesting that we do��Walk in the light. Don�t have your headphones on. Be careful where you stand on a platform��was basically the advice we had been given by our mothers at the age of 12.

[Rosie Wrighting]

Yes, I absolutely agree. I am sad to say that that advice was not new to us. Those, sadly, are things that we have had to learn just through our own experiences. I also put on the record my admiration for colleagues across this House from ethnic minority backgrounds and the LGBTQ+ community and for female Members who have disabilities, because they fight a fight I cannot even imagine.

I am surrounded, though, by many great male colleagues in this place, and I know that we cannot accelerate action or uplift or empower young women without also engaging young men. We have to be clear that we cannot tackle violence against women and girls without supporting young men at this vital point. My constituency is not unique in having women who have been killed by a family member or partner, and I want to take a moment to mention a horrific case of Anju Asok, who was a well-loved nurse in Kettering. She was killed alongside her two children in December 2022 by her husband. Anju went to work every day to look after others and support our vital public services, but when she needed support the most, she was let down.

We have so much more to do to make women feel safe at work, walking down the street, and even in our own homes. I know that Members across this House will continue to work together to make sure that we can accelerate that action.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Polly Billington (East Thanet) (Lab)]

Last Saturday, women from across East Thanet came together for a conference on tackling violence against women and girls. They gave their testimony on what they most want to see improved: public services, in particular mental health provision; the quality of policing; the lack of reliable, affordable, safe public transport; and safety in the workplace and in the streets. Those issues were all brought up time and time again.

[Natalie Fleet]

Women are over-represented in informal and vulnerable employment. Does my hon. Friend agree that the protections afforded in the Employment Rights Bill are really important for those women?

[Ms Billington]

It is indeed true. It was powerful to see people talking about the strength of increased representation in the workplace by trade unions, giving them greater protections.

Housing, housing and housing�my hon. Friend the Minister will recognise that it is key for the kind of security and safety that people, women in particular, require.

We spend a lot of time on International Women�s Day talking about the importance of opportunity, because it has been restricted over centuries and we celebrate the smashing of glass ceilings every day. Whether it is because of legislation, a lack of rights, or culture, women�s access to opportunity has been limited. I will, however, give the House a particular example that was raised at the conference by Oasis, our local domestic abuse service. It pointed out that, because in Thanet we have a particularly high level of youth unemployment at about 10% and a high level of young people not in education, employment or training, young women are being �encouraged�, meaning forced, by their �boyfriends�, meaning soon-to-be pimps, to set up their own OnlyFans account to secure income.

We need to remember that that is why we need confidence in the law, to ensure we are all safe: security in the home; security in the community; and security for our country. The violence against women and girls conference I hosted brought those issues to the surface. Given the increasingly unsafe and unpredictable world in which we live, this is becoming only more important. It is in that context that I pay tribute to the Government and their commitment to increase spending on the defence of our country. Security and safety are not just personal, but based in the community and throughout our country.

However, we need to acknowledge the crucial role of aid in increasing security here and abroad, including for women in the UK and elsewhere. For women across the globe, international aid has been a lifeline, and has given them both the security and the access to opportunities that otherwise they were unlikely to have had. I understand that we are having to make difficult decisions, and I absolutely support increasing defence spending. I simply wish to remind the House of the role of international aid and its impact on women across the globe. We know that 30% of the people who come across the channel on small boats are women and children, and aid can reduce that number. If those women have security and opportunity at home, why would they undertake that dangerous journey?

I finish my remarks in my constituency again. Claire Knights would have been my constituent if she had lived, but she was killed while walking her dog on the beach in Minnis bay in August 2023. Last week, her killer was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison. However, it is important to note that he escaped arrest for upskirting the day before her attack.

We will hear the names of the women who have been killed at the hands of men this year from my hon. Friend the Minister. Making those women visible is important, and is part of the struggle to eradicate the violence against and hatred of women.

Church of England: Safeguarding

Polly Billington Excerpts

Monday 3rd March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Luke Myer]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend, who is a real champion for her constituent and all her constituents. Sadly, the case that she has outlined is all too familiar and like many other cases across the country.

We owe it to the survivors and others who have endured physical, emotional and spiritual abuse to highlight the serious shortcomings in the Church’s safeguarding structures. Too often, while instances of abuse may have lasted moments, the Church’s processes for investigating and reviewing these cases have been painfully slow, frustrated and needlessly complex. It cannot be right that the systems intended to support survivors often further traumatised them.

I, too, have been told stories of those who tragically have taken their own lives in the view that their perpetrators will never face justice. Survivors tell me of feeling trapped in a seemingly endless cycle of uncertainty and distress. One told me that they will not feel fully comfortable while this issue is

“kept within the walls of the Church.”

[Ms Polly Billington (East Thanet) (Lab)]

I appreciate my hon. Friend’s efforts in getting the debate held. I have previously raised in the House the possibility of holding the Church of England accountable to the public through being subject to the strictures of the Freedom of Information Act. I was advised that that was unsuitable because it is technically not a public body, and yet it is an institution and part of the fabric of this country.

It is unconscionable for people who use and revere this institution to find that they are not safe in it, that instead it protects its own—it protects perpetrators—and that the people right at the top use the excuse of legal constructions or institutional formations to justify not pursuing these situations. Does my hon. Friend agree that as legislators we must argue for greater transparency in the Church of England, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said about other public bodies?

[Luke Myer]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Marsha De Cordova]

My hon. Friend will not be surprised to hear that I agree with her 100%.

These failures are not new. As my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland highlighted, before the Makin review there was the independent inquiry into child sex abuse. Over the past nine years, there have been multiple reviews into safeguarding abuses in the Church of England—multiple reviews with multiple recommendations, I might add. There have been some positive steps and changes, and I commend the work of the national safeguarding team and many people in our local parishes and dioceses around the country, who have all been working incredibly hard, but I think we can collectively agree that more needs to be done. Victims and survivors have been waiting for too long. We have come to a point where both Parliament and the public need to see the Church fully committed to change.

We have to ensure that safeguarding is transparent, accountable, consistent in its approach to disclosures of abuse, and trusted by the public, congregations, clergy and, most importantly, victims and survivors. That is why, at the General Synod in February, during my maiden speech, I made clear my support for the Church’s safeguarding operations to be wholly independent of the Church. That was the approach put forward by the Church’s lead bishop for safeguarding, Joanne Grenfell, and it was known as model 4. That approach would have created independent safeguarding operations, an independent complaints process, an independent scrutiny function and independent audits. It was supported by Professor Alexis Jay, who was the author of the report “The Future of Church Safeguarding”, known as the Jay review, and by local clergy in my constituency of Battersea. They made it clear to me that, while they are getting on with the day-to-day work of the Church, serving and supporting their local community on the frontline, they want to see the Church as an institution show some humility. Like me, they do not think that the Church should mark its own homework.

It was therefore a huge disappointment to me that the Synod chose not to back a wholly independent model of safeguarding. Instead, it opted for the creation of an external scrutiny body to examine the Church’s safeguarding practices. That approach was known as model 3, and it will see the transfer of most of the functions currently delivered by the Church’s national safeguarding team, except policy development, to an external employer.

Although model 3 includes looking at some of the practicalities of creating a fully independent safeguarding body to take on all the Church’s safeguarding work, I do not believe that that was the approach that needed to be taken, as I have outlined. It is vital, however, that the work is taken up with urgency and at pace. At present, there are no clear deadlines and no clear plan for taking the work forward. I believe we need to see a clear plan if we are to give victims and survivors, and the public, hope that the Church will really transform its approach to safeguarding, and the safety of those who are part of it.

It was right that the Synod voted to

“lament and repent of the failure of the Church to be welcoming to victims and survivors and the harm they have experienced and continue to experience in the life of the Church”,

but we need to remember that keeping people safe and ensuring accountability is the best way to honour victims and survivors of abuse. Some are probably watching today’s debate; some may even be here in person. They will be listening, and they will know better than any of us that there is still a long way to go. The Church must treat its work on independent safeguarding operations as a matter of urgency. We need no more blocking; we just need action, because action will speak louder than any words that any of us say here today.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland for his commitment to seeing this change through. He should be commended for his relentlessness in ensuring that this place has the opportunity to debate the issue. This is one of the first Adjournment debates on an issue that affects the Church, and it is important that many hon. Members have chosen to be in the Chamber, to contribute and to raise such important issues.

As I said when the Makin report was published in November last year, this has to be a watershed moment for the Church to transform both its culture and its safeguarding structures. Unless that happens, what will happen to the Church? Many of us here are Christians and followers of Jesus, so we want to see the Church change. The Church is a voice for the voiceless, as many of us know, and I hope I will not find myself in this Chamber in a year or two repeating the same sentiment.

[Ms Billington]

We are talking not just about changing attitudes and culture, but about changing safeguarding structures. While power is held by a small number of people who are refusing to let go of that power, it is becoming increasingly apparent that it is impossible to change that culture, so the structures of the Church itself need to change.

[Marsha De Cordova]

My hon. Friend has also been using her voice to speak up on this issue. We need to focus on the matter at hand: safeguarding in the Church of England. We have seen the recommendations in the Makin review and in all the previous reviews, so my question is: if change does not happen now, then when will it happen?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jess Phillips)]

First, I thank everybody who has spoken in the debate. I give special mention to my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Luke Myer) for the passionate and detailed manner in which he took the House through the issues. The stories of victims that we have heard today are harrowing, not just in the facts of their abuse, but in the ignorance and the shutdown described by my hon. Friend and by Mr X’s constituency MP, the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett), which I suppose is the issue that compounds it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Jonathan Davies) talked about this being an issue faced in many institutions. The Church of England or any other religious institution is not alone in having faced safeguarding issues and problems over the years, but it is how we react to that safeguarding challenge and what we put in place that matters. It is not for the Government to tell the Church of England how to have its processes—the Synod is there to do that. When my hon. Friend was listing institutions that had faced safeguarding issues, one that was not listed was this institution. I recall—many of the people here today were here then—that one of the things we did here, which people like me fought for, was to put in an independent process to oversee issues of sexual abuse and violence within this institution.

Safeguarding is rightly the responsibility of all, and I am grateful for the important contributions made today. I welcome the opportunity to talk about the Government’s approach to safeguarding. Let me be clear that I cannot tell the Synod what it has to do, but I condemn the acts of psychological, emotional and physical and sexual abuse against both adults and children, including where those occur in religious settings or contexts. As with every case of abuse, my thoughts are first and foremost with the victims and survivors.

[Ms Billington]

I understand what the Minister is saying. However, we have a situation where the institution is compounding that abuse, by the way that it is protecting the people in power or the people in power are protecting the perpetrators, thereby further hurting victims. I understand that the Minister cannot tell the Church of England how to conduct its safeguarding. However, will she please acknowledge that its failure to conduct proper safeguarding is compounding that abuse and is something that the Church of England has a duty to correct?

[Jess Phillips]

I gladly agree with my hon. Friend. What I know from years working on the frontline with victims of historical and current abuses—it is usually sexual abuse that I am talking about in this particular instance—is that victims tell me that what happened to them was horrendous, but what continued to happen to them because of failures by institutions to act was worse. It is a longer, more traumatic experience.

Whether this involves our court systems, our policing systems, our local authorities or—as in this instance—the Church, we have opportunities, as those who take a role in safeguarding, to do the right thing. It is not always easy to do the right thing straightaway and to make everything perfect, and I do not think anyone is asking for that. However, it is important for the processes that are put in place—and we have to do this as a nation, let alone what the Church has to do—to ensure that even if the outcome is not perfect, for justice is not always served, the procedure that people go through does not cause further harm. That should be the bare minimum that victims can expect. We are committed to tackling all forms of abuse against children wherever they occur, including the despicable crime of child sexual abuse.

Small Boat Crossings

Polly Billington Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Ms Polly Billington (East Thanet) (Lab)]

The gangs that run this vile trade care only for their profits, not for the lives that they put at risk. Will the Minister reassure the House and my constituents in East Thanet that the border security command will do everything to break the evil smuggling gangs and bring the ringleaders to justice?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Yes; the point of the increase in operational co-operation across borders is that if we cannot bring people to justice in our jurisdiction, we can ensure that information is swapped in real time, so that they can be brought to justice in other jurisdictions. There will be a step change in that kind of international co-operation, which will deliver results.