Sexual Harassment and Violence in Schools

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) for securing this debate. I want to add my voice to the voices of those who have stressed to the Minister the urgency of making this happen. As my hon. Friend pointed out, we are possibly going to be in the invidious position whereby in a year’s time MPs could have more protection, more guidance and more systems and processes than the young people in our schools.

I am what I would call an inbetweener feminist, in that I am in between the generation who first got involved in political campaigning on equality and those who now have to deal with the consequences of the internet. I hear the points that the right hon. Member for Basingstoke has made, and I too see the impact on our society. As an inbetweener feminist, I also know what is coming next. Let us be blunt about what has happened in the past couple of weeks in our society, not just here in the UK but around the world. There has been a wake-up call; we have all said, “Me too.” But we know that the backlash will come. We will hear, “It was just a knee—it was a misunderstanding.” What happened will be minimised, with women being told they did not really experience the thing they know they experienced. I say to the Minister that if one positive thing comes out of this time in our society, let it be that we make sure the next generation will not be the same as our generation, finding ways to tell women to cope with these kinds of behaviour rather than changing them. The backlash will come, because this is about power. It is about the power to control what young women’s worth is, and young men’s too. We have to change the culture. Yes, we need legislation, and yes, we need training.

I see this in my own constituency. In recent weeks, I dealt with a mum who came to see me because her daughter was assaulted on a school trip by one of her peers. Her peer did not deny it, and the school did not inform the parent. The perpetrator was excluded from the school for a day and then let back in. Our schools and governing bodies are crying out for help to get this right. Why do we expect them, like our Members of Parliament, to be any different from the rest of our unequal society in not understanding how to deal with the power used to abuse and to harass? I want to put on record my gratitude to the right hon. Member for Basingstoke for saying that this is not just about our schools, because it is also about our universities and making sure that every young person can learn free from fear. Nor is it just about the impact of the internet: these kinds of behaviours have been going on for generations.

As the Minister will know, we had an opportunity to deal with this in the Bill that became the Children and Social Work Act 2017 when we highlighted the need to make sure that we updated the guidance on what schools should do if reports of sexual harassment and abuse were brought forward. Her predecessor promised us that that that would happen imminently. I recognise, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley pointed out, that the general election got in the way, but it is out of the way now. We need both that guidance and the sex and relationships education consultation now, because this is happening in our schools, colleges and universities, as it is happening in our wider society, now.

We can do something about this. If the Minister wants to fast-track the necessary legislation through a Statutory Instrument Committee, I will personally volunteer to be on that Committee to back her. If she needs help to take on the people who say, “It’s complicated”, I will be there with her. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley, I do not want to be here in a year’s time hearing about the need for more paperwork and listening to more people telling us that it is a complicated issue—because in our hearts we know it is not. We know that our young men are picking up ideas that are not about the future that we want for them, and that our young women are living in fear, finding ways to avoid the hands and the catcalls while soaking up the YouTube culture. We know that we are seeing that in our society as well.

Right now, this place is not full of role models. Right now, we are not role models if we do not act on this, because we can see that it is happening and we know what we can do about it. We know that there are experts out there. We know that our teachers are crying out for support to be able to deal with it. There is no reason to delay, not even by a few weeks or a day. We could all do something about it. I congratulate the Women and Equalities Committee—long may it keep raising this. Frankly, though, I wish that we did not have to keep raising it. I do not know what else it is going to take before we recognise that failing to act is damaging everyone in our society.