Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Sarah Owen Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading - Day 2
Tuesday 16th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab) [V]]

Much of what has been said about the Bill goes to show just how divisive it is. Rather than seeking to make people feel safer, to work with communities, and to bring peace and cohesion to neighbourhoods, the Bill has been designed to divide us. We know that this mess of a Bill has some good things in it, such as strengthening the work done by my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) on protecting the protectors, and I declare an interest as a former GMB officer, previously working with the brave ambulance worker Sarah Kelly to protect emergency workers such as her from assault.

The Bill also includes dangerously discriminatory measures for Traveller communities, and silencing our right to protest in support of causes that we hold dear. Labour was born out of the trade union movement—out of the working classes protesting for better pay and rights. We should never forget the power of protest, but with all the will in the world, and with all the opposition to it, the Bill will sadly pass. I did not come to Parliament to sit in opposition; I came to Parliament to put Labour values into action. A Labour Government would be making very different choices, but for now the Tories have free rein for their politics of division.

Just as disturbing as what is in the Bill is what is not included. Taking all politics out of it, fundamentally the Bill should be about making people safer. When 97% of women have been sexually harassed, and there are 233 rapes a day and 80,000 a year, with prosecution rates at an all-time low—about 1,000 this year—we have to ask who is made safer by the Bill. There is not one mention of women in it.

If the Government’s answer to making the country safer is delivering tougher sentences for attacking a statue than for raping a person, they have entirely the wrong priorities. If the Home Secretary really wants to make people safer, she should fund refuges, clear the court backlog, support victims throughout the entire process, and rid our streets and institutions of the misogyny that is a breeding ground for violence against women and girls.

I welcome the amendments from the Labour Front Bench on street harassment and seeking to bring much-needed measures to include the safety of women and girls in the Bill. Any woman will say that sexual harassment is not just something that she worries about in the dark; it is something that she risk-assesses in every part of her life, including at work. That is why I intend to table an amendment that criminalises sexual harassment in the workplace. What we have currently are workplaces across industries and sectors effectively policing themselves, and this is failing. It fails victims of sexual harassment every single day. If I were robbed on the street and the robber was caught, he would end up behind bars, but if I were robbed of my earnings, forced out of my job by a man who sexually harassed me, he would do that without fear of any time behind bars. That is not right. Other countries have made sexual harassment a criminal act and it is time for the UK to do the same. In the names of Sarah Everard, Shukri Abdi, Blessing Olusegun, Bibaa Henry, Nicole Smallman and all the thousands of women who have suffered at the hands of male violence: enough. We deserve better than this. We deserve to be safe.