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

Debate between Roberta Blackman-Woods and Eilidh Whiteford

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

[Dr Whiteford]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We also need to understand the dynamic of control and abuse that feeds those shocking statistics.

[Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on making such progress with this important and very necessary Bill. Does she agree that it is important that people have faith in parliamentarians to carry out their monitoring role once the convention is implemented and that the actions of the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) do not help?

[Dr Whiteford]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady. I will address scrutiny in a bit.

There are few issues that unite this House, but there is a compelling degree of unanimity on the need to ratify the Istanbul convention and the need to do more to prevent and combat gender-based violence, which is reflected in the cross-party support for the Bill and the willingness of Members from all parties to work together to achieve the progressive change that people in our communities want to see.

However, the hon. Member for Shipley has done me one favour with his amendments by giving me an opportunity that I might not otherwise have had on Report to clear up some fairly basic misunderstandings about the Istanbul convention—not least what it actually says and does—and some fundamental misconceptions about the gendered dynamics of sexual violence and domestic abuse.

First, clause 3 of article 4 of the Istanbul convention explicitly states that

“the provisions of this Convention by the Parties, in particular measures to protect the rights of victims, shall be secured without discrimination on any ground such as sex, gender, race, colour, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, association with a national minority, property, birth, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, state of health, disability, marital status, migrant or refugee status, or other status.”

It is unambiguous: the Istanbul convention provisions apply to women, men, trans and non-binary people alike, and regardless of any other characteristic. It is comprehensive and clear.

Interestingly, an organisation such as Stay Brave, which advocates specifically for male, trans and non-binary victims of sexual and domestic violence, and which would not have in the past claimed adherence to any feminist agenda, supports the Istanbul convention and wants to see it ratified, because it recognises that the convention will help all victims. As its chief executive said in a blog published yesterday, it recognises that:

“The focus on ending violence against women is important, because it recognises the global pandemic of injustice. Gender inequality…creates a world where power, money and strength become motivators for systemic violence.”

The chief executive officer of another men’s organisation, David Bartlett of the White Ribbon Campaign, yesterday also urged all MPs who care about ending violence and promoting gender equality to vote in favour of the Bill today.

That is why the hon. Member for Shipley is simply wrong to suggest that this can ever be understood as a gender-neutral issue, and why the points he has made in the past about men being left out and this not being about them cannot be taken seriously. All of us are agreed that all sexual violence and all domestic violence is serious, regardless of the gender of the victim or of the perpetrator, and regardless of any other characteristic —end of.

Implementation of the 1995 and 2011 Pension Acts

Debate between Roberta Blackman-Woods and Eilidh Whiteford

Tuesday 11th October 2016 Commons Chamber

Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)

- Hansard - - Excerpts

I rise to present these stylishly presented petitions on behalf of residents of the Banff and Buchan constituency and the Gordon constituency in the same terms as the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South, with 568 and 123 signatories respectively.

The Petition of residents of Banff and Buchan.

[P001759]

The Petition of residents of Gordon.

[P001758]

Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)

- Hansard -

I rise to present this petition on behalf of the wonderful WASPI campaigners and 455 residents of Durham city on the same basis as my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South. I have been advised that I need to declare an interest because I fall into the relevant age group.

The Petition of residents of Durham.

[P001761]

Higher Education Policy

Debate between Roberta Blackman-Woods and Eilidh Whiteford

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

The Government are purposefully and quite unprecedentedly shifting the burden of the costs of university tuition from the public purse on to the shoulders of individual graduates, moving away from the assumption that both society and the student should bear the costs of university education. It is notable that the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), who is not in his place, simply refused to engage with that point when he spoke earlier.

The Business Secretary announced to Members in Parliament that a fee cap of somewhere between £6,000 and £9,000 would be introduced, and that fees would be £9,000 only in exceptional circumstances—that £9,000 would be an exception, not the rule. The announcement was much repeated elsewhere, but we know that, of those universities that had made their plans public by last week, the average fees will be £8,678.36—so just marginally less than that £9,000 figure.

We also have to bury the myth that students will pay less under the Government’s proposals. It is true that monthly outgoings, in some circumstances and for some students, might be less, but graduates will pay back their loans for much longer and at an interest rate that has not been fully determined. This is despite the fact that the independent Office for Budget Responsibility said in November and reiterated more recently that increasing tuition fees and funding student loans in 2015-16 will require the Government to borrow £10.7 billion, compared with the £4.1 billion that they borrowed in 2010-11, a point that was excellently made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith).

In the context of such sharply rising fees, it is worth looking at some international comparisons. What is happening elsewhere in higher education? A recent article in The Economist on American fees reported that annual tuition and fees averaged £1,639 at two-year colleges, £4,595 at public four-year colleges for in-state students and £7,246 at public four-year schools for out-of-state students—all substantially less than the fees proposed for students in this country.

The situation gets worse if we look at Canada.

[Dr Whiteford]

I remind the hon. Lady that she does not have to look so far from home to find students who do not have to pay fees, because education is an investment in their future.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

Indeed. The hon. Lady makes an excellent point; we should always refer to what is happening in the devolved Administrations as well.

In 2007-08, the fees in the Canadian system were £2,866 and in Australia they were £2,600. What has been proposed for this country is absolutely out of line with our competitor countries across the board. According to quite a conservative estimate, the debt that a student will accrue, if they have to pay the £9,000 maximum and then accommodation and living expenses, could amount to about £48,000. If they then went on to do a master’s and a PhD, the student could come out with a debt of £70,000-plus. That is extraordinary.