International Women’s Day

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Thursday 2nd March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to speak in such an important debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) on securing it, and thank her for her ongoing commitment to women’s equality. Her passion and dedication to women, and particularly to ending domestic violence, is second to none. This House is definitely a better place for having her in it, and I am grateful for her contributions.

Before I first came here I had been blessed, because my previous careers were first in the arts and then in healthcare, which are professions dominated by women. It was therefore quite a shock to come into this place, not just because of the small number of women here, but because our voices are very rarely heard. I came into Parliament to give a voice to those who do not have one, so I was quite surprised to find that our voices were shouted over, and that we were belittled, called hysterical or not engaged with at all. That is something that we have to change, and it is why I am so grateful for debates such as this one.

As a result of that, it is important that I give over most of my time to reinforcing the sisters in this place and giving their voices an extra platform. I start with the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), who proposed—perhaps half-seriously—quotas for ministerial appointments. I am grateful to her for talking about the revenge porn helpline. It is superb that the Government have introduced lots of great legislation on that, but the cash needs to follow the policy. She was right to say that domestic violence is not just physical violence.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) made an incredibly upsetting and powerful speech, which was very appropriate for this Chamber. I hope that we can debate the issue that she raised further. She championed Yazidi women, who are being persecuted, bought, sold, raped, exploited and commodified by Daesh. We need to do more to stop this barbaric form of slavery. I urge the Government to do all they can to prevent it.

The hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan) was right to give us the history of women’s roles in the armed forces and to explain how far we have come. I am grateful to other Members who raised the impact on families.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) spoke about her constituent Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who is imprisoned in Iran and suffering extreme ill health. The Iranian Government are breaching the Bangkok rules that they have signed up to. There are half a million women in prisons worldwide. I also want to raise the fact that Holloway prison is being sold off, which is likely to put pressure on women. I do not think that prisons are the right place for women. The number of women I have met in my constituency who have been imprisoned for evading the TV licence, or for stealing nappies because they could not afford them, shows that there is something very wrong with the system.

The hon. Member for Wealden (Nusrat Ghani) did a good job of giving us the history of women’s rights and women’s interventions that brought her to this place. I am particularly grateful to her for welcoming all young women and girls into politics, and for telling them that if they come here, we will support them. The hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) highlighted the great women who inspired her. It is right that we pay our respects to the women who give us the power to keep going and who inspire us to believe that we can do this.

The hon. Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) has been doing some superb campaigning around child exploitation. She is right to say that we often talk about violence as being gender-neutral, but a lot of it is not. We need to call out gendered violence and name it for what it is.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) gave another powerful speech. It frustrates me that it is down to us to correct history and draw attention to the fact that in 1888, the match women, led by just five remarkable women, changed history. They effectively created the labour movement. The match ladies were—I steal this phrase from my hon. Friend—the spark that started the trade union movement, and yet there is no memorial for them. English Heritage needs to listen, and I support my hon. Friend’s campaign. I do not just want a blue plaque; I want a statue. It is only right.

The hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond) talked about the gender pay gap. It is so frustrating that we consistently have to go back to the gender pay gap, and to the obstacles that prevent us from closing it as quickly as we would all like. I am grateful to her for raising the issues that prevent women from returning to work and make it much more difficult for them to reach their full economic potential. How lovely it was of the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) to talk about mothers and boys. She highlighted the importance of inspiring them by demonstrating equality in public life.

I am grateful to have the voice of the honorary sister, my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore), here. I make a lot of speeches about gendered violence and gender inequality, and I tend to speak to rooms full of women. I am looking forward to the day when debates in the Chamber about women are attended 50:50 by men and women. My hon. Friend was right to highlight great local women and to say that men have a duty to combat abuses against women. He was also right to highlight the fact that 12 weeks on, he is still waiting for a response to his questions.

We welcome the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney). It was interesting to hear her put a personal spin on the complex balance between parenting and working—one that is not helped by this Chamber, but one with which we in this Chamber have a duty, legally, to help other women. In the contribution of the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows), I loved the line: “Don’t argue with your father. Just know that you’re right.” Unfortunately, some of us did not get the follow-on sentence; I am grateful to her mother for saying that. I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving living examples of progress. Sometimes, it feels as though we are making achingly slow progress, so I thank her for showing us that progress is being made.

The hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) highlighted the fact that only 7.9% of rapes result in successful prosecutions. I commend her for the work that she is doing to try to address that. She is campaigning for changes in the attitude of the police and in the processes of justice. We must, as she rightly says, address culture and not just legislation.

My hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) is a great campaigner, particularly around the fact that two women a week are murdered by their partners. I am grateful to her for drawing attention to the impact on children, the broader family and the community. So often their voices are not heard, and there is usually no support for the people who need it the most. I am also grateful to her for raising the fact that funding for refuges is decreasing all the time. It is concerning that because of the funding cuts, local authorities are now using generic providers rather than giving vital specialist support. I agree that the provision of refuges should be done with statutory, central Government funding, rather than being a duty that falls to local authorities.

Finally, I echo the voice of the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Ms Ahmed-Sheikh), who saluted all the women—particularly, but not exclusively, those in this Chamber—who have, over the last year, had the courage to come forward and use the horrors that they have experienced to try to change legislation and attitudes.

International Women’s Day first emerged from the activities of labour movements at the start of the 20th century. Its roots can be traced back to 1908, when 15,000 women marched through New York City demanding voting rights, better pay and shorter working hours. I can only see it as a sign that this year’s International Women’s Day falls on the same day as the spring Budget, and I urge the Government and the Minister to make sure that this Budget works for women.