Criminal Justice System: Capacity

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank the hon. Member for his questions. I am very aware of the number of places in our prison estate, and we had a particularly difficult moment before the last bank holiday, in August, when we came down to fewer than 100. However, as a result of the measures we have taken on SDS40, there is now some space and some capacity in our prison system. It is important that we use this opportunity also to bear down on the remand population and to deal with the Crown court backlog.

This is a delicate balancing exercise, and it is one that I will personally be keeping a close eye on and keeping under review. However, I think that the measure we have announced is ultimately the right one, because it helps us with our prison capacity challenges. As a result, we will have the prison places where we need them—in the reception prisons—and we can start moving people out to other parts of the estate, which is not possible until cases are heard. I am confident that we have the capacity in the magistrates courts to deal with the additional workload. Again, I will be keeping that under review.

The hon. Member is right: 80% of offenders are actually reoffenders. This country has a real problem with failing to rehabilitate offenders, and our record on reducing reoffending is not as strong as it should be. Prison has a place, and it is really important that people who break our laws are properly punished. That is necessary for the public to maintain confidence in our system and for law-abiding citizens to feel that there are consequences when our laws are broken. There is no doubt in my mind that punishment and prison are important, but they go hand in hand with rehabilitation. I do not think there is a choice to be made between punishment and rehabilitation—they are two sides of the same coin, and we have to have both. This Government are determined to have a better track record on both punishment and rehabilitation compared with anything that has gone on in the previous 14 years.

Let me gently say that it is not the case that magistrates courts send more people to prison. Following the previous change the courts were able to run through cases faster, and because the previous Government had not created capacity in the prison estate, the pressure on prison places became acute and the measure had to be dropped back to six months—the shadow Lord Chancellor might wish to offer further comments on that. That is what happened and what I expect to happen again.

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

It is fascinating and powerful to hear the plans to deal with the backlog in the courts. I know that all our constituents will be grateful for the Lord Chancellor’s work. I have a constituent who was the victim of an aggravated burglary that involved multiple men coming to her house with machetes in 2021. Finally, last week at Snaresbrook Crown court, a date for the trial of the gentlemen accused of this crime was set for October 2026. The Lord Chancellor will recognise and share the concern of my constituent. As she says, justice delayed is justice denied. What comfort can she give my constituent that such matters will be expedited as a result of her work?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I am very sorry to hear about the experience of my hon. Friend’s constituent. I have many such instances of unacceptable delays for hearing cases in my own constituency caseload. I hope that the measures that I have announced today will begin to ease some of that pressure, because making this change will free up around 2,000 sitting days in the Crown court. This Government have funded an additional 500 beyond the concordat process agreement that was reached by the previous Government in June. I am determined to make more progress in dealing with the Crown court backlog so that constituents such as my hon. Friend’s do not have to wait so many years for their cases to be heard and, ultimately, for justice to be done.

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Friday 24th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I absolutely agree with everything that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West has said about the questions that still need to be answered. One point that I want to raise concerns Sir Robert Francis and the engagement that will take place in the next few weeks. Legal representation is needed so that people can engage fully with that process and ensure that they are feeding in the issues about tariffs, which have caused a great deal of concern and worry. We also need to get on with providing psychological services in England. We have them in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but we now need them in England, and I hope the Minister will take that message back. The other key issue is that of support payments.

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

I want to associate myself with everything that has been said about infected blood. I also want to call to the attention of this House the cross-party working on Lords amendment 45, particularly by Baroness Morgan, Baroness Finn, Baroness Brinton, Baroness Thornton, Lord Ponsonby and Lord Russell, to protect victims of malicious harassment.

I thank the Minister and his team; he knows that this has been an issue that many of us have been vexed about because we have been victims of it ourselves. He has been patient, and he recognised that we could not simply say, “This won’t happen again,” and that we needed to put something into law. In that sense, I pay tribute to all the lawyers and experts on stalking who have assisted us, and we cannot let the Bill go through this place without acknowledging the work of the victims’ commissioner for London, Claire Waxman, who is sat in the Gallery this afternoon and who has tirelessly fought for victims legislation.

I have a few questions about Lords amendment 45— I would not be taking part in the debate if I did not. The amendment is about stopping harassment. At the moment, even if somebody who makes malicious complaints is convicted, it is not clear to many data controllers that because the records have been created by a process of malice, they should be deleted. As a consequence, victims find themselves being pursued based on those records, and the amendment would give people a direct right to request a deletion.

The Minister will know there is a concern that some of the exemptions could be broad. Will he commit to giving clarity on when those exemptions cannot be used for malicious complaints, as was done in the other House, and to giving protection to victims who are targeted in this way? Many of us in the public realm will be targeted; we have an election coming up, and we know that this will happen. Many of us want to face public scrutiny, but our families should not have to pay for the price for it, which is what so often happens with these records. Could the Minister commit to providing formal guidance?

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 4th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion]

I start by thanking the Minister. He has worked cross party, particularly with me, to turn what was a good, well-intended Bill into something much better, although there is still a lot further to go. I am delighted that the Government have accepted my argument that a victim does not have to report a crime to access support through the victims code, and therefore I will not press amendment 8.

There are victims who are not explicitly listed, but who need recognition. That would be provided through my amendments 5, 6, 157 and 158. When the definition of child sexual exploitation was introduced in 2009, it genuinely transformed services and people’s understanding. We now need the same for both adult sexual exploitation and child criminal exploitation. It is bizarre to me that, as soon as someone turns 18, sexual exploitation is seen as their making poor lifestyle choices, rather than as grooming, coercion and abuse. Likewise, child criminal exploitation is often unrecognised and the child is seen as a perpetrator. At the very least, I hope the Minister will ensure that there are statutory definitions of those crimes in guidance.

Amendment 7 relates to children whose parents are paedophiles. We need to ensure that those children are treated as secondary victims, in the same way that children born of rape will be once the Bill passes. I urge the Minister to consider rolling out a specialist type of IDVA, as Lincolnshire police are doing so brilliantly. Amendments 19 to 23 would ensure that there is also guidance for all specialist community-based services.

Elder abuse is often under-reported. Hourglass states that the elderly require specialist support due to the nature of the abuse, which often targets their finances, and because they are often digitally excluded. My new clause 6 would require the Government to carry out an assessment of specialist support services across the country to end the postcode lottery.

Amendments 4, 17 and 18 would include stalking in the Bill. Given that there were 1.5 million stalking victims in 2021, it is imperative that they have advocates. The Suzy Lamplugh Trust has shown that victims not supported by advocates have a one in 1,000 chance of their perpetrator being convicted, compared with one in four if they have a stalking advocate.

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

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case for stalking advocates. Does she also agree that now is the time for a stalking register, to stop this crime in its tracks?

[Sarah Champion]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, who I know has tabled amendments on that point. We need to do much more about stalking.

One in five referrals through the national referral mechanism in 2022 were for a British child. It is essential that we get the support for that group of victims right and that we improve support for all victims of modern slavery, which is why I have tabled amendment 16, supported by the Centre for Social Justice. Clause 12 is positive, but as drafted it will fail to fully meet the needs of victims and survivors. Amendment 149 seeks to address that.

Another concern is that the Bill will not fully support all migrant victims, especially those facing domestic abuse. Many victims and survivors with insecure immigration status do not report to the police for fear that their information will be passed to immigration enforcement. And that fear is not unfounded: the Domestic Abuse Commissioner recently published Home Office data showing that every single police force in England and Wales had shared data of a victim of domestic abuse with immigration enforcement over a three-year period. To protect migrant victims and survivors, as well as the general public, we need to implement a data-sharing firewall that bans statutory services from sharing the data of a victim with the Home Office. My new clause 36 seeks to do that.

I have worked with Southall Black Sisters to develop new clause 8 so that all those with no recourse to public funds can be guaranteed access to support. The Government must extend the domestic violence indefinite leave to remain and the destitution domestic violence concession model for those on partner and spousal visas to all migrant victims of domestic abuse, regardless of their immigration status.

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[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

Order. I am afraid that after the next speaker there will still be 10 people waiting to speak. We have to finish this section of proceedings at 8.50 pm in order to allow for the wind-up, so, after the next speech, the limit will be three minutes.

[Stella Creasy]

I associate myself with the amendments in the names of the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller), my right hon. Friends the Members for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) and for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) and, of course, my incomparable hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion). In the time available to me, I will focus on the three amendments that I have tabled to flag issues with the Government.

Amendment 147 is about vicarious trauma. We are in a perverse situation right now—the Minister knows this—where we have to hope that a victim dies if we are to access support for our communities when traumatic things such as stabbings happen. I hope that the Minister will change that so that every child can be supported.

Amendment 148 is about overseas victims. It would simply restore the right that our constituents had when we were members of the European Union to have their rights as a victim upheld if they or a family member were a victim of crime overseas. I hope that the Minister will look at the victims’ rights directive, because so many people experience that.

New clause 32 is about a victim’s rights in relation to data. I was not sure that I would be able to table the new clause, because the court case that it refers was heard last Thursday. A year ago, a man started emailing my office with his concerns about my politics and the issues that I was working on. Like all Members when we get correspondence from non-constituents, I read the emails and filed them but did not respond. I was then called by my local social services because that man had decided that, because he disagreed with my views, I was not a fit mother for my children. He had reported me, an investigation had taken place, and while it cleared me, my children and I now have a social services record. When I went to the police about the matter, they said that he had a right to express his opinions in that way. I challenged it because, due to my work on stalking, I understood that somebody who could use a malicious report to harm someone was clearly dangerous. When I came forward, further reports came out revealing that this man had continued his campaign of harassment.

I am deeply grateful for the cross-party support for new clause 32, because although that man has now been convicted of harassment, his ability to target my family continues because the record continues. At present, there is no way of removing from someone’s record a clearly malicious and false accusation made to a third-party organisation. In tabling the new clause, I recognised that it is not just those of us in the public eye who may be targeted in this way; in many cases of stalking, we see people who fixate and use reporting mechanisms to damage their victims.

I have had no support or help from Parliament or anybody within the parliamentary process for my welfare or that of my children, but now I want to stand up for everybody who has been through this process. I ask the Minister to look at this, because victims of clearly malicious reports must have the opportunity to have the record corrected. Too often, people will say, “There is no smoke without fire.” I want to stand up for safeguarding —it is clearly a very important process—but if a court recognises that a report is malicious and a victim is being targeted but we cannot act to remove that report, the harassment will continue.

[Sarah Champion]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for using a personal case to speak so powerfully. I know that she does so from a position of wanting to change things for people who do not have the platform that she has. I commend her for that.

[Stella Creasy]

I thank my hon. Friend for that, and yes, the new clause would go much further than tackling the abuse of people in the public eye. I hope that, in other legislation, we will look seriously at what we can do about those who target our families and staff members as a way of intimidating us, because that is not free speech; it is a way of silencing people.

In tabling the new clause, I hoped also to speak up for those who have been targeted through third-party organisations. I know that there are colleagues in the other place who wish to take up that matter up. I hope that cross-party support continues and that the Minister will consider the proposals, which have already secured the support of London’s Victims’ Commissioner. I apologise to the House for not being able to bring them forward before, but I hope that Members can understand why.

I hope that we send a message today. Many of us do not block people, and many of us engage in robust parliamentary debate, but surely there is a line not to be crossed. That line is our children, our family and our staff, who do not ask to be put in harm’s way but will be if we do not act to protect our democracy and protect ourselves from those who would seek to use third-party mechanisms to abuse.

Abortion: Offences against the Person Act

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Thursday 15th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

My right hon. Friend will appreciate that I am not going to comment directly on this case and the judgment involved, but I refer him to the answer I gave some moments ago in respect of that decision: this was debated and the House expressed its view.

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

I start by joining the Minister in expressing our condolences to the people of Nottingham. I had the honour of meeting Grace O’Malley-Kumar when she and her father were part of the vaccination effort in my local community. She was a wonderful young woman who clearly had a very bright future ahead of her.

The 67 prosecutions in the last 10 years under this legislation and the conviction that we have seen in England and Wales show that it is not a theoretical issue to consider whether women in England and Wales have a legal right to an abortion. They do not have a situation where they are exempted from prosecution. The situation is completely different in Northern Ireland, where this House voted to implement a human rights approach and give women in Northern Ireland a human right—something the Minister himself did not oppose when it came before this House. Has he had any legal advice on the inequality in the ability of women within the UK to exercise their human right to choose what happens to their bodies?

Victims and Prisoners Bill

Stella Creasy Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 15th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

There is real and clear merit in what my right hon. Friend says. Plainly, we cannot have a situation in which people can, at the stroke of a pen, evade liability for their abhorrent crimes. I look forward to discussing that important matter with him and my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher) in due course.

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

The Secretary of State is making a powerful case on the role of a public advocate, which many of us support. We recognise that there may be more than one victim when traumatic events happen, so does he accept that it is right that the Bill also deals with strengthening support? In my community, a 16-year-old boy was murdered 10 days ago. The entire school community is traumatised. Getting them support, and recognising that his friends, as well as his family, are victims in this instance, is critical. Will he meet me and other campaigners to discuss that issue?

[Alex Chalk]

How could I not? I would be delighted to meet the hon. Lady on that important issue.

Let me turn now to the measures on prisoners and parole—part 3 of the Bill. The first duty of any Government is to protect the public, including from those who have betrayed trust, robbed innocence and shattered lives. Victims want to know that the person who has harmed them, their families and friends will not inflict that pain on anyone else. Indeed, I heard that strong message from Denise Fergus when I spoke with her recently. One thing that I found profoundly moving is that, notwithstanding her own private grief, one of her principal motivations is to ensure that others do not suffer in the same way.

Overwhelmingly, the Parole Board does its difficult job well, taking care to scrutinise the cases coming before it for release decisions. Over 99% of prisoners authorised for release by the Parole Board do not go on to commit a so-called serious further offence, but occasionally things go wrong, and when they do, the implications for public confidence can be very grave. John Worboys, the black cab rapist, and Colin Pitchfork, who raped two schoolgirls, were both assessed as being safe to leave prison, only for Colin Pitchfork to have to be recalled shortly afterwards and the Worboys decision to be overturned on appeal. Such cases are rare, but they are unacceptable. The public must have confidence that murderers, rapists and terrorists will be kept behind bars for as long as necessary to keep the public safe.

We have already made changes to improve safety and increase transparency. The most serious offenders now face robust tests to prove they are safe to move into open prisons, and some parole hearings can now take place in public so that victims and the public can see with their own eyes how decisions are made and why.

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

It is a genuine pleasure to take part in the debate, which is increasingly becoming an example of this place at its best. We are all sharing our own experiences and concerns. I pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Burton (Kate Kniveton); to the esteemed expert, my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion); to my hon. Friends the Members for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) and for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), who are no longer in their places; and to the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher), who spoke before me.

We all bring with us a determination because, having waited so long for a piece of legislation that was explicitly about victims and their experiences, we really want to get it right. After all, for many of us, that is our day-to-day work as MPs. We all remember the first time that we read those emails, had that phone call or met that resident, and the meetings in which you feel a burning sense of injustice by the end of the conversation—tears flow, and you and your team need to take some time out to recover from what you have heard. It is privilege to meet the people we meet as MPs, because we cannot understand how they have been able to carry on, let alone champion such causes.

I have to say I was a little frustrated by some of the earlier conversation. It felt so much—I hesitate to use this phrase—like victim blaming, because we talk about wanting victims to fit our systems. The victims I have had the privilege to work with as an MP for 13 years are no wallflowers; they are people who have been wronged, and they need to be recognised as people who have none the less done their damnedest to speak up for themselves or for somebody they love who has had a traumatic experience. I agree with the hon. Member for Bolsover about the Casey report, and I fear there are issues within the CPS too. Therefore, when we look at this legislation, we are looking not to find ways to make more victims come forward, but to recognise that, for too long, the systems and institutions we had set up supposedly to speak for these people have been found wanting, and they need to change.

Let me try to add something different to the Minister’s inbox, although I agree with many of the points that have been raised cross-party. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham that this is absolutely a cross-party thing. I want to raise five points—I know that a list of five might seem frightening, but I promise to be quick—about what it is to be a victim; when something happens to a family member overseas; third-party harassment; the legal rights of victims; and the issue of IDVAs, ISVAs and advocates more generally.

Let me start with the concept of what a victim is. The Minister is hearing loud and clear from many of us our concern that setting out that a victim is only somebody who engages with the justice system might make sense in a process way, but it does not make sense in a person way—it does not make sense for the people we deal with. It would preclude people who experience antisocial behaviour, which is a blight on the lives of everybody in our communities. That often fills up a huge amount of our inboxes, and understandably so, as people tear their hair out over the fact that behaviour that stops them living their lives is not being addressed.

Another area where we need to be clearer about victims and victimisation is what happens when traumatic events happen to communities, and I note that we are recognising that now in the concept of a public advocate. We are long overdue a public advocate, and I pay tribute again to my right hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), who is not here, for what she said; it was incredibly powerful, and it is absolutely right that we have public advocates. If we recognise that the trauma that comes from a severe crime can ripple through somewhere, it is right that we do not say that it is only when people speak up that we recognise that impact.

In my community, four people were raped—one of them was murdered—and I think about the impact that that had on the community. We fought for eight years for justice for Michelle Samaraweera. Her killer was not found until we fought and fought for him to be brought back from India. I think about the community at Kelmscott school, which lost one of its 16-year-old members 10 days ago. That community is grieving and traumatised, and we need to get it help and support. That is something we want to be able to build in from the start, because it helps the investigative process, but it also helps to address what has happened. That is absolutely critical.

It is absolutely welcome that we have talked about an advocate in major investigations, but there is a risk that we end up with a very narrow definition of a victim within a local community, which would be to the detriment of understanding how crimes affect people. I am pleased the Secretary of State said he would sit down with me and some of the campaigners and others working with the traumatised, victimised communities dealing with this epidemic of youth violence. There is merit, particularly when we are talking about serious harm, in taking a victim-led approach and in understanding that communities can be victims of crimes and how that might then influence the work we do.

The second area I would urge the Minister to think again about and that I would add to his inbox is when people are victims of crimes overseas and particularly when murders happen overseas. I have a phenomenal woman in my community called Sharon Matthews, whose beautiful son Tyrell was murdered brutally in Malia in 2013. We are still seeking to secure justice against the killers, and I can say “killers” because they were convicted in a Greek court, although they are here in the United Kingdom and have reoffended, so another family have lost a family member. Sharon faced a system that did not understand how to help her, and anybody who has ever dealt with a case involving someone who has been murdered or faced serious violence overseas, whether or not they were on holiday, will know how frustrating it is to deal with a different legal system and about the importance or otherwise of the victim in different jurisdictions. They will also know that that inconsistency is an injustice.

Let me be clear about some of the challenges that we have faced in supporting Sharon and her family through this. There was the idea that there would be a cap on the financial support available to the family. If someone is trying to get over to a foreign country to be at a trial, that is clearly a problem. There was no support for the witnesses to travel and give evidence. There was no support for us when we were trying to get video evidence involved to manage the costs. There was a horrific situation last year when, yet again in a retrial situation, the victim’s family and the witnesses were in the same hotel as the perpetrators’ families—clearly, a high-risk scenario. [Interruption.] I see that the hon. Member for Bolsover is shocked. Nobody was thinking about that family as victims, because this had all happened out of sight.

The victim in this instance was British, as are the perpetrators. A wider challenge for me in looking at the legislation is how we hold the police and the CPS to account when things to do with overseas violence lead to a possible risk here in the UK. Sharon’s case has been an absolute testament to her, as a mother, turning her grief into a determination to achieve justice for Tyrell, and she will always have my support in that fight.

I am absolutely shocked at how victims of crimes are treated. At one point Sharon was told she was not the victim, because the victim was Tyrell and therefore she was not entitled to any support. We have to change that because, sadly, this is an increasingly common experience. She got a letter—my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham touched on something similar—from the court saying that her son’s killer had been allowed to go on holiday, even though he had been convicted of a knife crime. Because they had decided to suspend his sentence for two weeks he could go on that lovely holiday, where he was then part of killing Tyrell. That is just one chink of the injustice that she has faced simply because the crime took place overseas. Again, the victims code and Victim’s Commissioner need to understand these issues.

The third issue I want to raise is third-party harassment —I have recently experienced this myself—and organisations using third-party organisations to harass victims of crime. We see this particularly in domestic abuse courts. We see this with the family courts. My hon. Friends the Members for Poplar and Limehouse and for Birmingham, Yardley powerfully set out the need to act. The idea that somebody would kill the mother of their children and then have access is incredible. It does not have to be about death. If we prove that someone is involved in domestic abuse, this does not have to go through other courts, so that they can be re-victimised time and time again through third-party organisations.

My own experience was with the use of social services to try to target and harass. Again, that is a loophole where there is no criminal offence that can be used to protect safeguarding and make sure that we stop those people who use these institutions to try and target people, or indeed to join up those experiences. When I challenged the police about my experience and the fact that they wanted to use a community resolution, I was told that it would be nice if, as a victim, I agreed with what they wanted to do, but it did not matter. There has to be a process whereby the victim’s voice is heard, and heard loudly, and that voice must be supported wherever a perpetrator might use a different institution to cause harm, particularly if they use third-party institutions for malice.

Fourthly, there is the issue of legal protections. It is a welcome win to recognise that asking for someone’s medical records should be allowed only in very exceptional, very specific circumstances. At this point, I would not be doing her justice if I did not call for Claire Waxman not only to be recognised as the Victims’ Commissioner but, frankly, to be knighted for the work she has done. She shows so clearly the power of having somebody to hold organisations to account, but she has found that extremely frustrating. Her own work on compliance showed that only 11% of victims were being made aware of their right to criminal injury compensation, and only 25% knew of the victims code at all. Claire’s work shows us powerfully why this cannot just be about the idea that, somehow, sunlight is a disinfectant—that, somehow, if we publish data about who is not supporting victims and who is not doing what we would ask of them—that will be enough to lead to change. The honest truth is that we have had the evidence—indeed, MPs’ casework provides the evidence.

We have all dealt with these challenges for years and years. So I join others in this place in asking Ministers to go further and to give teeth to this legislation, and not just to have publications. They should bring back the independent victims champions and make them a requirement for all police and crime commissioners, as Claire has so powerfully advocated, but also give those agencies real powers to hold people to account not just in a generic sense but in a specific sense. The sad truth is that we know how difficult that will be even if there are powers.

We have to give the Victims’ Commissioners the ability to do something. There have to be legally defined rights. There has to be a system to tackle non-compliance that goes further than just a spreadsheet and a dataset. We are all sick of seeing those letters of apology and of having those meetings where people say, “Let us try to learn the lessons”, when we can see those lessons happening time and time again.

Finally, I join everybody who is a fan of what IDVAs and ISVAs can do, and I have seen it in many cases. Sadly, she is not in her place, but I wish to draw something to the attention of the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller). I am pleased for her that she has such coverage of IDVAs and ISVAs, but the SafeLives survey shows that in only 74% of areas in this country do we have enough people doing those roles. I agree that we risk inadvertently restricting what they can cover. I pay tribute to and thank Laura Richards, who did huge amounts of work bringing forward the domestic abuse, stalking and harassment risk assessment and making the arguments around stalking and the stalking register. We need to go much further in understanding how that crime is being prosecuted.

IDVAs and ISVAs show the role of direct day-to-day advocacy, particularly when dealing with a crime where there are vulnerable people. I ask the Minister to think about this. When it comes to violence outside the home and people at risk of gang violence, we have seen how difficult it is to get people to be able to give evidence and to come forward. The lesson from IDVAs and ISVAs is that we should be rolling out systems of advocacy to help those vulnerable victims and to give people someone to guide them through that process on a range of crimes. We are dealing with an epidemic of youth crime. I can think of many cases in my local community where witnesses and victims have been terrified to come forward and terrified to go to court. They are often seen as potential perpetrators in their own right and not given that advocacy. I urge the Minister, rather than restricting what role an IDVA or ISVA plays, to think about independent advocates generally and how we might be able to use them to make sure that we get the prosecutions, the support for courts and the joining up of services that people need.

I also put on record my support for what was said by the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage). I note that the Corston review was in 2007. That gave us huge lessons about what we could do to reform prisons to support the very few women in prisons and to deal with the issues that might lead to women ending up in prisons. That review is long overdue implementation. I also support what the right hon. Member for Basingstoke said about NDAs.

There is so much here that could be done, because there is so much that needs to be done. I hope that the Minister will take in good spirit many of us adding to his inbox and wanting to see those things happen. We fear it may not be just another eight or nine years before we get a Bill to get it right; if we do not get this right, there may not be another one within our lifetimes. We have those conversations in our community with those people dealing with crime, those people who are survivors and those people who are grieving, and across this House we owe it to every one of them to do what it takes to get it right. The Minister will have my support if he does that, but he will also have my challenge if he does not.

Legal Rights to Access Abortion

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

Again, that is a valid point that we can debate and discuss today. Does the policy being enshrined in a Bill of Rights actually work? Is that the political lever that is necessary? I do not necessarily believe that that is the case.

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

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. I am very interested to hear what she has to say next. It is not the Opposition who are bringing forward a Bill of Rights, or claiming to do so—I am sure we will get into the issue of whether or not the legislation presented does represent that—but the concept of a Bill of Rights has been brought into British politics. It is absolutely right that we discuss what should be enshrined in that legislation and whether that includes a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion, which many of us feel is a human rights issue. It is that piece of legislation—I know she is about to start the debate —that means we need to have this conversation.

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

I thank my hon. Friend for her comments. It is the Bill of Rights that is being discussed and brought forward that triggered Caitlin into wanting to protect women in this country, whether that happens or not. That is what I wish to discuss.

Abortion in Great Britain is still a criminal offence; the Abortion Act 1967 simply made abortion legal in certain, fixed circumstances. It is a product of its time, enacted in part to ensure that women no longer suffered serious health problems, or even death, because they were too afraid to seek medical help after an abortion. It is therefore ironic that its requirements, designed to pass Parliament more than half a century ago, risk women’s health. As we know, the Abortion Act requires that two doctors approve each request for a termination—a legal requirement that serves no clinical or safety purpose and often delays the process, despite abortion being safer the earlier that it is performed.

The fact that abortion continues to sit in criminal law has a chilling effect on medical practice and the willingness of doctors to authorise abortions. In a conversation earlier with a dear colleague, we discussed whether we actually knew somebody who was unable to access these services. Through conversations that I have had, I have found that there are such cases—that is what we need to discuss and look at.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I agree with the hon. Lady. It is a very dangerous parliamentary and legal practice for anyone to try to achieve their aims by piggybacking them on a Bill that is designed to deal with a completely different eventuality.

As we know, the law as it stands effectively allows abortion on demand. We have a record 200,000-plus abortions per year in this country—perhaps one in four pregnancies. That is beyond doubt, and in reality every woman who wants to have an abortion can attain one. We do not need to include it in a Bill of Rights; instead, we need to look at how the state has failed so many women that they feel abortion is the only option available to them, and to look at alternative modes of support. There is no real appetite to make abortion a right, aside from a vocal minority and various lobby groups, including the abortion providers themselves.

A right to abortion would be a very strange thing indeed. It would be the only right that we would regret using, and the only right that we would, ideally, actively seek to minimise. Nobody thinks that abortion is a good thing and wants more abortions—they may think it is necessary in certain circumstances, but it is not the sort of right that we want to extend. That stands in contrast to other fundamental rights that we do not seek to minimise, including freedom of speech, freedom of association and the right to privacy, to name a few. We cherish and value those rights and want to enframe them in a Bill of Rights. I hope that colleagues who want to drag this Bill to a very different place rethink their plans.

[Stella Creasy]

The right hon. Gentleman is being very generous in giving way. Could he clarify something for me? He talks passionately about the human right of freedom of speech, and I agree with him; I feel very strongly about defending it, and I notice that this Bill of Rights talks about protecting that right from interference. Can he explain how that is different from interfering in somebody’s womb, which is what the human right to have an abortion would address? Why is it that this legislation is right to protect one right, but not to protect another right? Why is it right that this legislation would bring in judges and give direction to courts on one issue, but not another issue?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

That is an interesting point, but is the freedom to have an abortion at 24 weeks rather than 22 weeks the kind of fundamental right that we believe should be protected in a Bill of Rights? This is a matter for argument. A Bill of Rights is an unbelievably blunt instrument to deal with this particularly sensitive issue. I say to the hon. Lady that if any of us are dissatisfied with this law—and there are probably more Government Members than Opposition Members who are dissatisfied with the present law—we at least have to come to Parliament and convince our colleagues to change the law. I do not believe, and nor do many other people, that the Bill of Rights is the right way to do it.

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I hope that this important debate will generate light, not heat—perhaps in the past we have had too few such debates. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) in setting that out so powerfully and making that argument. I also congratulate Caitlin on her incredibly powerful petition, which I think reflects the growing view—indeed, it is the majority view among women in this country—that in the 21st century, their right to healthcare needs to be not just protected but clarified.

Let me start by stating something that it is important for us all to recognise. When you ban abortion, you don’t stop abortion; you simply stop access to safe abortion. When we talk about having a human right to abortion, the alternative is not no abortion—it is unsafe abortion. There is no pro-life perspective on this. There are only those who recognise the need to ensure safe access in order to save lives by preventing those unsafe abortions, and those who are more comfortable with the risks that may come from not offering such a service.

Secondly, let me provide some clarification. I do not believe that the Government have put before us—perhaps the Minister will tell us whether alternative wording will be brought forward—a Bill of Rights, because it does not lay out a set of rights. I am sure that the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) will regale us with his stories about the American constitution—I am sure that he is more of a scholar on that than I am—but that sets out a series of rights. This Bill does not do that. As the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) very clearly stated, it sets out which place of law should be supreme. That is a different argument from that on whether there are laws to protect our rights. Let us be very clear: we are talking not about a Bill of Rights, but about a Bill of clarity about where rights rest and who has the right to interpret them.

I wish to disappoint the right hon. Member for Gainsborough: we are still part of the European Court of Human Rights. We might have left the European Union but the European Court of Human Rights still applies in the UK. Some of us agree with Winston Churchill that that is quite a good thing and we should uphold it. Indeed, I believe that that is the Government’s current view.

Let us also put to bed the idea that passing a Bill of Rights—or a Bill clarifying where rights are being determined—would somehow mean that a particular right would be subject to judicial intervention and other rights would not. All rights set out in this piece of legislation would be subject to the courts, just like freedom of speech and the rights of those people seeking asylum in our country. Abortion would be no different in this legislation. It would simply be another right where we clarified where the balance of rights—

[Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con)]

Does the hon. Member agree that is very little disagreement on the right to protect freedom of speech? On the right to protect freedom of expression and freedom of religion, people can practice whatever they want. Does she agree, however, that the subject of abortion is much more nuanced? There are some people who would never take away a woman’s right for an abortion, but it is not a black and white issue and therefore cannot be compared to the right to freedom of speech, expression or religion. It simply cannot be compared to that.

[Stella Creasy]

I disagree with the hon. Lady, and I invite her to talk to campaigners in my community who feel very passionately about where the line about the right to religious freedom is drawn, or the right to freedom of speech. Those are not uncontested subjects. We all passionately believe that human rights are important, but how they are applied and what they mean in practice can often be a very different thing. I argue that a woman’s right to choose is something that the majority of people in this country—multiple public opinion surveys now back this up—believe should be a right for women. Right now, it is not a right for women. A woman does not have the right to choose to have an abortion in this country—we need to be very clear about that, because that is where this debate is coming from.

It is also why I agree with the right hon. Member for Gainsborough when he says that this should be a parliamentary matter. That is exactly what the petition is calling on us to do, as are those conversations about whether or not the Bill should include that. I simply say to the right hon. Gentleman that I do not know who in this place he means to be a hijacker, but I have never believed that the role of the Opposition is to sit on the sidelines for five years, cheering on the Government’s work. The role of the Opposition is to make progress on the issues that we are concerned about. If we can make progress on this very issue, I wager it will make a difference in many ways that he has not yet realised.

We do not have the right to an abortion. Even those women seeking abortions do not have a right to an abortion. They have to secure the support of two doctors who have to act in good faith to agree that a woman should have an abortion because the alternative would cause her mental distress or a physical threat to her life. That is not a right.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

I am interested to hear what the hon. Lady thinks the effect would be of having a general right to abortion in statute, because that would not set aside the provisions of the existing statute. Judges would be constrained by statute law. They cannot set it aside. It would merely be gesture politics.

[Stella Creasy]

I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman raises that question, because he need not look far for an exact example of what does happen we have a human right to an abortion. Let us be clear: it is women in England, Scotland and Wales in this nation state who do not have the right to an abortion. Women in Northern Ireland do. We now have legislation on our statute book that directly gives women in Northern Ireland a human right to an abortion, which means—

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

Without an Act.

[Stella Creasy]

Well, there was an Act. The right hon. Gentleman is shouting—I guess he missed out on the debates we had on this issue in 2019, when this place did indeed pass legislation. That is a very interesting mechanism for this Bill of Rights. It is why this Bill could be the right vehicle and why a human rights perspective is important. Those of us who believe the time has come to say that abortion is healthcare and to remove the criminal element recognise that removing the criminal element requires us to replace it with an alternative foundation for those rights. Those of us who believe we should make abortion a human right in this country argue that a human rights perspective should be that alternative. We see Northern Ireland, where that has now happened, as an opportunity to learn from that.

Let me preface my statement by saying that just because we have a human right to abortion in Northern Ireland does not mean, as yet, that we have satisfactory legal, local and safe abortion services. Those who are hostile to abortion have used their position to prevent access. However, what is different and so powerful about having that human rights approach is that it is the Secretary of State who has to drive change in Northern Ireland, because he has to defend the human rights of women in Northern Ireland as a reflection of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women protocol.

[Chris Green]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Stella Creasy]

I will happily give way, but before I do, I will just clarify for the hon. Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) that changing the foundation of that legislation would not change the regulations as to whether sex-selective abortion would ever be legal or the time limits. It would simply be about the fundamental principle. Right now, his female constituents do not have a right to an abortion. They may be able to go and request one, but somebody else makes that decision.

[Chris Green]

I think the hon. Lady does clarify the point to a certain extent, but in that clarification she also highlights that some people—women, families—choose to have a sex-selective abortion, which is in contrast to the argument being made about abortion necessarily always being about healthcare. There are other factors as well.

[Stella Creasy]

I gently say to the hon. Gentleman that if he is dealing with families where that is a possibility, prosecuting a woman who is being asked to have a sex-selective abortion, rather than supporting her or recognising what is happening, is not the way forward. The cases set out so powerfully by my hon. Friend the Member for Gower show why decriminalisation is a very live issue. Although it is the 21st century, this country is still prosecuting women for having miscarriages and threatening them with investigation for a healthcare issue. Rather than recognising what other pressures might be in their lives and supporting them, we are criminalising those women, as women were criminalised in the 1800s with the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. I wager that the hon. Gentleman would not want to be on the side of arguing that a piece of legislation that put abortion at the same level as setting fire to this place or indeed murder would be the right way forward.

Right now, the penalty under that legislation is lifetime imprisonment. There may be some people who are comfortable with that, but many of us, who believe that when a woman is seeking healthcare, she deserves our support, compassion and tolerance, are not. For those of us who believe that we should be equals under the law, the question is whether the hon. Gentleman would accept being denied the basic right to decide what happens to his body in a particular circumstance, and for that decision to be taken by two other people who could give him that option only if they agreed that he would go mad or lose his life if he did not have it. I wager that he would not find that acceptable if it was perhaps about having a vasectomy.

[Ian Paisley]

Under the new dispensation that the hon. Member is arguing for, how would she propose to deal with, say, a very difficult case, such as the one brought to prosecution, namely that of Sarah Catt? The judge in that case said that it was not involuntary manslaughter or indeed an offence save murder. How would the hon. Member propose to deal under the new dispensation with a difficult case that the law would ultimately throw up?

--- Later in debate ---

[Stella Creasy]

The hon. Gentleman suggests that difficult cases are the unique preserve of abortion provision; there are difficult cases when it comes to freedom of speech and people’s motivation. What I do recognise is that right now there are women on trial for having a miscarriage or potentially being accused of seeking an abortion perhaps when they were further along in their pregnancy than they realised, and it is not right to see these cases as criminal matters when we are talking about a healthcare provision, in which case what we need to do is set out an alternative foundation for the law.

Many of us recognise that the Bill of Rights is not a good piece of legislation and that the things that it does will not achieve the outcomes that the Government hope for. However, it opens the door to a conversation about what rights women in this country should have. If the Government are determined that nobody from Europe should interfere with somebody’s freedom of speech, why do they deny the role of protecting women’s wombs from being interfered with and why not let women choose for themselves whether or not to have an abortion?

We would not be unique in making that choice; countless nations around the world already do it. Indeed, in the current criminal basis for abortion access, we are behind other countries such as Russia, Australia, South Africa, Vietnam, Germany and Argentina. Countries such as Canada have explicitly classified abortion as a human right; lawmakers in France have just agreed to write it into their constitution. Belgium, Denmark and Sweden are also considering constitutional amendments—

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Stella Creasy]

I will just finish my sentence, if I may. I am desperate to hear what the right hon. Gentleman has to say, but I want to be very clear that this is a debate that is happening around the world.

Roe v. Wade was the spark that reaffirmed that that fire needed to burn, because many of us have known that, even though we have access to abortion in this country, that access is not secure; it can be challenged. Indeed, I have spent 12 years in this place listening to people chipping away at that access and using the fact that abortion is not a legal right to do so.

The right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) and I are on different sides of this debate. I would love to hear why he believes he has a right to choose for a woman what happens to her body.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I would quite like to ask my own question, if the hon. Lady will forgive me. If the right to abortion is so restrictive in this country, why do we have one of the highest abortion rates in the world?

[Stella Creasy]

I did not say that it was restrictive; I said that it was patchy, because it is patchy. What we understand is that those who live in rural areas find it much harder to find the two doctors required to secure an abortion, and that is one of the reasons why many of us have fought for telemedicine to help with that process and to ensure that during the pandemic women’s rights were not left behind.

The right hon. Gentleman misses a fundamental point—a woman should be able to choose what happens to her body. If we have a Bill of Rights, surely it sets out those most fundamental basic rights.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Stella Creasy]

I was coming to a close, but I will happily take the right hon. Gentleman’s question.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

The answer to the question that the hon. Lady asked my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) is that we take this caveat to an absolute right because there has to be a balance of rights, and there is another life involved in the question of abortion. That is why we constrain it by the proper means of parliamentary legislation, rather than handing that decision to an unaccountable judge.

[Stella Creasy]

On this side, I hope to hand that decision to a very accountable woman, because I trust women to make the right choices for their own bodies. When the right hon. Member says “we”, I hope he is not talking about men, because the majority of men and women across this country recognise that they should trust each other to make these very difficult, sensitive decisions, and not deny women that basic human right.

If the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) wishes to look at the example of Northern Ireland—from what he says, I suspect he has not done so yet—he will see that adding a human rights foundation to the legislation does not remove any of the regulations around time limits, any of the importance placed on medical professionals or any of the safety requirements, nor does it introduce sex selection. It sets a foundation that is based in healthcare, not criminal legislation, and—crucially, for many of us—in equality. Were we to say that the right hon. Member could not have basic bodily autonomy, I would venture that he would be as furious and concerned about what that meant for him as we are about what it means for women.

The previous Justice Secretary and the current Justice Secretary have both argued that we do not need to include the right to abortion in the Bill of Rights because that right is settled, but Conservative Members have just shown that it is not; this is a very live debate. It is absolutely right that our constituents have an opportunity to lobby us and that Parliament has an opportunity to look at where we can make progress.

The decision to overturn Roe v. Wade caused shockwaves, but it also highlighted the fact that that right was written into the legislation in terms of liberty and privacy, not as a basic human right. Including abortion in our legislation, as set out in the petition, would write it in as a basic human right. Many of us do not agree with the Government’s piece of legislation; nevertheless, we will not be deterred from seeing how we can make progress to defend and uphold these rights, because what Roe v. Wade teaches us is that we cannot be complacent. Indeed, when we have a Government who, as part of an international conference, chose to remove a commitment to the human rights of women around the developing world to access sexual and reproductive services, I know that that concern is merited.

Will the Minister clarify why the sauce is good for the goose, but not for the gander? Why do we have a piece of legislation that will set limits on interference in free speech and on deportations, but the Government can somehow say it would be wrong for the courts to be involved in upholding a woman’s right to choose?

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a powerful speech, although I fundamentally disagree with most of her points. For clarity, will she explain at what point she feels the unborn child gains human rights? Is it at 16 weeks, 24 weeks, 28 weeks—or never, until it is born?

[Stella Creasy]

I recognise the debate that the hon. Gentleman is trying to tempt me into. I have no problem with our existing legislation, except the fact that it is rooted in a criminal foundation. For me, decriminalisation is of paramount importance and urgency. My point is simply that when we remove the criminal foundation from which all abortion legislation follows, we create a lacuna. I am arguing that entering human rights into that lacuna, as we have done in Northern Ireland, is the right thing to do, because I wish my constituents in Walthamstow to have the same rights as women in Belfast; and right now they do not.

The Bill of Rights—and, I would wager, this petition—is about the 21st century and how those rights are exercised. That does not mean that we would not have controls on how abortion is accessed or that there would not be a right to discussion about time limits; it means that there would not be criminal prosecutions—not just of the women, but of the doctors and medical people involved—and that the legislation would come from a healthcare perspective. We do not have these debates when it comes to vasectomies or ankle injuries, yet somehow when it comes to a woman’s body we have determined, as the right hon. Member for New Forest West has said, that Parliament should be involved.

[Caroline Ansell (Eastbourne) (Con)]

Did the hon. Lady really compare a vasectomy with an abortion? Does she see those procedures of equal and like standing, when one involves, as has been described by other Members, a second life, and she herself recognises that there is a point during a pregnancy at which those rights are conferred on the unborn?

[Stella Creasy]

The hon. Member should turn the question around. Why does she believe that it is acceptable for men to be able to choose to have a vasectomy, but a woman cannot choose what happens to her own body? Why do we deny women choice over their bodies, but we do not deny men? Forgive me, but I did biology at school, so I know that there are often two people involved in the creation of a baby. Surely we should hold men equally accountable, yet somehow we do not deny men rights to their bodies and bodily autonomy.

I will come to a conclusion, because I know that Members who have different views from mine wish to make their points. My point is simply thus: to argue that the Bill of Rights is the wrong vehicle for the right to abortion is to miss the point, because this right does not yet exist for women across Scotland, Wales and England. It does exist in Northern Ireland, and if we trust women in Northern Ireland, we should trust women in England, Scotland and Wales. If we recognise a human right in one part of the United Kingdom, surely we should recognise it in all.

I do not wish to be called a hijacker; I think that is slightly disrespectful towards parliamentary democracy. I recognise that there are people here who will never agree with a woman’s right to choose, and I believe they should be honest about that, because it would not matter whether it was a Bill of Rights, this Bill of Rights or any piece of legislation—they would not support it. But for those of us who do support women and who do recognise that the case for decriminalisation is long overdue, we have a responsibility to set out what comes next. I believe it is a human rights proposal, and I believe that all our constituents would benefit from that perspective and that approach to a healthcare issue. I hope that the Minister will clarify why this piece of legislation is acceptable for some freedoms and some rights, and whether the Government do not believe that a woman has a right to an abortion. If she does have a right to choose an abortion, they need to legislate for it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Scott Benton]

The point I was trying to make was that, in practice, decriminalisation means no specific law regulating abortion up until birth. That is the problem we are grappling with.

[Stella Creasy]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Scott Benton]

If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I shall make some progress. She spoke for just over 20 minutes. I will take an intervention at a later point.

The EU median time limit for abortion is 12 weeks. Since the point at which a baby is viable outside the womb is now closer to 22 weeks, far from discarding our time limits, it is clear that we should look to reduce them.

Briefly, I will turn to same-sex selective abortion, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) alluded. Unfortunately, there is growing evidence for, and first-hand testimony of, women in this country who have been coerced by their partner or family into obtaining a sex-selective abortion. That disproportionately targets baby girls. As regressive as that may seem, sex-selective abortion would become entirely permissible under the decriminalisation that some would like to see. We must think about the message that that sends to women and girls, the chief victims of such an abhorrent practice. Allowing sex-selective abortion does not empower or advance women’s rights; we need to show girls that we will not allow sex-selective discrimination, because they contribute to and are valued by society every bit as much as boys.

[Scott Benton]

I thank the hon. Lady for her contribution. I think she is merging two very different matters. I reiterate my point: decriminalisation in effect allows abortion up until any point.

[Stella Creasy]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Scott Benton]

If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I will make some progress.

[Stella Creasy]

On a point of order, Sir Charles. The Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2020 set out incredibly clearly what the requirements are—

[Sir Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Order. That is not a point of order. The hon. Gentleman is perfectly entitled not to take interventions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Paisley]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point.

In 2022, there were double the number of abortions in Northern Ireland than there were in the previous year. The number doubles each year, and will continue to double, because of the very liberal legislation that is now in place in Northern Ireland. The hon. Member for Blackpool South (Scott Benton) put on the record that one in four of all pregnancies in the United Kingdom end in abortion. In England and Wales, abortions can take place up to the extreme limit of six months, whereas the European median time limit is three months. We need to have a debate about why we have an extreme time limit and why some people wish to drive it even further, to the point of birth, as a right. I just think that is wrong.

We certainly need to have a debate about why there is so much abortion in the United Kingdom. To go back to the point made by the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), why are second and third-time pregnancies leading to abortion? Why are older women having abortions? Those questions need to be asked. It cannot all be ectopic, it cannot all be rape, it cannot all be incest and it cannot all be miscarriage.

[Stella Creasy]

rose—

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Paisley]

I understand the hon. Member’s point, but of course there are two sets of DNA, two bloodstreams, two lives and two heartbeats. It is more than just the woman’s body. While I accept that women have a very difficult choice to make and are sometimes put in a horrible position by irresponsible and selfish men, women are sometimes talked out of the choice to protect a life. I have seen and heard it, and I want to make sure that there is a choice to allow the life to flourish and to grow, and that there are other opportunities beyond the womb. That is something that we should of course be dwelling on.

[Stella Creasy]

The hon. Gentleman and I have debated this issue in many different ways, and I know he does not mean to sound like he is suggesting that it is okay if a man tells a woman that she has to have the baby but not okay if he supports her choice to have an abortion. That would be the corollary of what he is saying.

Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that when it comes to legalisation in Northern Ireland, we did not just have decriminalisation and we did not just take away the Offences Against the Person Act 1861? We also brought in laws to regulate how a woman can access an abortion. There is no late-term abortion or sex selection in Northern Ireland. The Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2020 cover precisely those issues, so it is not that enshrining a human rights perspective leads to no regulation; it removes the criminal element of our old regulation and allows us to have these debates.

[Ian Paisley]

Of course, the issue is that the hon. Member cannot say that there is no late termination, because she does not know; she cannot say that there is no sex selection, because she cannot know. The law now masks that and does not allow us to know that, because it is a right to have it as of a right, not because there is a reason. That is the issue. Indeed, I know it is an issue that the hon. Member would like to have here—I know she would like to have termination right up to the point of birth, for whatever reason. It is an issue—

[Stella Creasy]

That is a misrepresentation.

[Ian Paisley]

Maybe the hon. Member does not want it right up to the point of birth, but she certainly wants the most liberal interpretation of the law that is possible. We will disagree on that, but the attempt to silence people from having the conversation on this matter is of course morally wrong. I hope we never get to that position.

I said that I wanted to touch on the issue of decriminalisation, because that has been an important point in this debate and there are difficult cases. Of course, we are talking about such a small number, which was touched on earlier: 17 cases in seven or eight years, I think, in the United Kingdom. Yes, it was difficult for the 17 people who have been questioned on this matter, and more difficult for the two people who have been charged.

Let us deal with one of the cases in which a charge was brought: that of Sarah Catt in 2010. The examples of women who were prosecuted following late-term abortions include Sarah Catt in 2010, who took abortion pills at a 38 or 39-week gestation and then buried the body of the child. The judge in the case said that

“all right-thinking people would consider this more serious than involuntary manslaughter or indeed any offence save murder.”

The judge also said that no remorse was detected. How would that case be dealt with under a new dispensation where there is no criminalisation? Would we create a gap in the law that would allow for people to, quite frankly, get away with murder? That is the unfortunate circumstance.

We also have circumstances in which men wrongly try to enforce or encourage an abortion on a partner who is pregnant by hiding tablets, by putting tablets into a drink to spike it, or by trying to encourage them to have a miscarriage and forcing that. With decriminalisation, how would a clever lawyer get those people off that particular charge? It would happen.

We could enter into this new dispensation of a rights base—putting this into the Bill of Rights in the United Kingdom—that would be abhorrent in terms of the law, because there are people who, unfortunately, do commit criminal offences and do commit them around pregnant women, and there are women who are pregnant and commit such offences, and the law should try to deal with it. Yes, the law should deal with it sensitively, but it should deal with it proportionately. I think 17 cases in seven years is proportionate, given that we have about 900,000 pregnancies in the United Kingdom annually.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The viable point is one that my right hon. Friend admits he cannot define, but there is a clear point of conception where there is a new genetic entity. It is unbelievably clear and straightforward. To say that there is some later date—it may be 21, 22 or 24 weeks—is not the heart of the argument. The heart of the argument is actually that this new life started at the point of conception. The tragedy is the 214,869 lives lost last year.

[Stella Creasy]

The right hon. Gentleman is being very generous with his time. Given the train of thought he is coming up with, would he support the right of women to choose to have an abortion were they a victim of rape or incest?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I think the destruction of life is wrong. I do not believe that we should say that a new life should be destroyed. I do not believe that that is the right of the state. I do not believe we can put it into a Bill of Rights, even if we were the United States and had a Bill of Rights of the same constitutional standing as theirs. The hon. Member for North Antrim is right. He said that Bills of Rights are usually about protecting and preserving and ensuring that people are able to get on with their life. This is about destroying life. This is the cult of death. It is the great tragedy of abortion, and it is considered normal.

The extraordinarily high number of babies that are destroyed is something that should sadden us all to the depths of our souls. The idea that we would protect something that is so wrong and ignores that second life, and that we should say that it is an absolute right on par with free elections, seems to me to be an absolute tragedy. I think this petition misfires. I think it is wrong constitutionally and much more wrong morally, because it prefers death to life.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Edward Argar)]

It is a pleasure to be back in the Ministry of Justice after an absence of three and a half years, and to return to issues that I dealt with when I was last a Minister there. I pay tribute to and thank the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) and the Petitions Committee, both for bringing this debate before us and, as other right hon. and hon. Members have said, for the very measured and thoughtful tone in which the hon. Lady made her opening remarks. Indeed, I am grateful to all Members for their attendance and contributions.

I am always conscious in debates of this sort that I am speaking as a Minister and necessarily reflecting the position of His Majesty’s Government rather than my personal views. I will always seek to tread that line carefully.

I congratulate the creator of this petition, Caitlin, whom I had the pleasure of being introduced to this afternoon, on what she has done, and the 150,000 people who have signed it. There are different views; we have heard them expressed in this Chamber. She and those who signed the petition have done us all a service, through the Petitions Committee, in allowing this issue to be debated today. It is an issue on which there are strong views in the country and among our constituents—and indeed among right hon. and hon. Members. The views are strongly and sincerely held, and it is right that all views be listened to with care and respect in this place.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) set out very clearly his perspective, and the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) set out hers. We also heard my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) and my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce). They all gave very different perspectives on the issue, but they are all important perspectives, reflecting different strands of opinion in our country. It is right that this Chamber, this House, hears those different perspectives and debates them properly.

Let me emphasise at the outset that the Government are committed to ensuring access to safe, regulated abortion. All women in England and Wales have access to regulated abortion services on the NHS under our current laws, including taking both abortion pills at home where eligible. I gently say that it is important that right hon. and hon. Members show a degree of caution in interpreting the motivation behind Members’ votes on some of the issues that we have talked about. In some cases, they will have voted against, for example, the changes around abortion at home for reasons reflecting the process by which the changes were made, and their preference for a medical review and the Secretary of State taking the decision. Those people may then have voted in favour of buffer zones around abortion clinics. We need to be careful, and perhaps not go down the route that some websites and online platforms go down of extrapolating from a particular vote what the Member must think about the whole issue. Votes in this House, as all Members know, are often on complex, detailed questions, and complex procedural or constitutional points. We need to be cautious in those interpretations.

Access to abortion in England and Wales has been settled in law by Parliament, and we do not intend to change that. It takes nothing away from our commitment to ensuring access to safe, regulated abortion to say that the Government do not intend to include a right to abortion in the Bill of Rights. I will set out why we do not consider that the appropriate approach. We have heard different reasons; indeed, right hon. and hon. Members have spoken strongly in favour of changes while recognising that the Bill may not be the best mechanism for them.

The petition references the recent judgment of the Supreme Court of the United States in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organisation, in which the court overruled its own 1973 judgment in Roe v. Wade, which found that the US constitution confers a right to have an abortion. While I hesitate to stray into US politics, I understand and appreciate the concern that the ruling has given rise to around the world. We have heard it expressed, and see an element of it in the genesis of the petition. My first point in response to the petition is that the context in the United Kingdom is very different from that in the United States. What has happened in the United States does not affect how abortions can and do occur in the UK. Indeed, we seek to avoid finding ourselves in a potentially analogous situation to that of the US.

I was going to make a point about the different historical evolution of the concept of a Bill of Rights in the American context and in the English or United Kingdom context, but my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) has done so rather more eloquently, and probably with a degree more erudition and knowledge, than I would have. However, it is worth highlighting the different democratic and legislative traditions of our two countries. In the United States, the Bill of Rights is essentially an amendment and adjunct to the constitution, which is the founding document of the United States. In this country, we had the 1689 Bill of Rights, alluded to by my right hon. Friend, but we also have the parliamentary tradition, and the very clear protocol that no Parliament may bind its successors. We are therefore looking at two very different things.

Once again, we need a degree of caution about conflating our Bill of Rights, and how our legislation works, with —for want of a better way of putting it—the inalienable constitutional rights conferred by the US constitution and Bill of Rights. [Interruption.] Did the hon. Member for Walthamstow want to intervene on that point?

[Stella Creasy]

indicated dissent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Edward Argar]

I am very grateful, Sir Charles. It is my intention to sit down sooner than that to give the hon. Member for Gower plenty of time for her remarks.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton for her point. The issue I was going to raise with the Secretary of State was the very specific point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke, which was about the delay in bringing forward that action plan that had been spoken about prior to the pandemic. I will ensure that he is made aware of this debate and the transcript of it. I encourage any Member from either side of the House to take the time to read the transcript of the debate because there have been very thoughtful speeches on both sides of the debate.

The Government believe that it is right the position on abortion remains something that is settled by legislatures and by elected Members of this House, as it is now, without necessitating the creation of a specific right. My right hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) is correct in shorthand, if I may—I am not sure if shorthand is necessarily one of his fortes or natural styles—but he is right when he highlights what the Bill of Rights is about. It is about clarifying the balance of rights and the balance between the executive, legislature and the courts, and ensuring we update that framework in a way that reflects the current circumstances and ensures that it remains effective. As this debate has demonstrated, it is the legislature, rather than the courts, that is directly accountable to our citizens and to the very strong views that our constituents have on this matter on both sides of the debate.

We continue to take action to ensure access to safe, legal abortion. For example, on 30 August, following the vote in the House, new provisions came into force that permit home use of both pills for early medical abortion on a permanent basis for women in England and Wales. On 24 October, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland announced that the UK Government will be commissioning abortion services for Northern Ireland, recognising as he did that it is “unacceptable” that women are still travelling to the rest of the UK to access healthcare to which they are legally entitled following the decision by this Parliament. Including a specific right to abortion in the Bill of Rights would, we fear, mean that challenges involving courts could potentially be brought in measuring the compatibility of that legislation with this specific new right. It risks taking us down the route of moving debate around abortion from Parliament to the courtroom. I know that hon. Members may take a different interpretation of that.

[Stella Creasy]

Will the Minister give way?

[Edward Argar]

I did promise the hon. Lady and I will honour that promise. I may regret it but I will honour it.

[Stella Creasy]

I note that we have not yet had a satisfactory answer to the question posed by the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) about why it is acceptable that our constituents in Walthamstow and Basingstoke face a criminal foundation in securing an abortion they do not have a right to, but women in Northern Ireland have a human rights foundation to that healthcare. I just challenge his point that, if we were to include these rights in this Bill of Rights, it would somehow lead to litigation. He will of course note that there is already repeated litigation about abortion rights and the balance of rights around abortion anyway. Why is abortion any different from freedom of speech? He will recognise that people have very strong views about the application of freedom of speech, so much so that this Government have introduced its own Bill on freedom of speech in higher education, for example. Why is it that, when it comes to women’s rights, these matters are considered complicated and can only be dealt with by judges, but when it comes to freedom of speech, for example, we accept that there should be a parliamentary process and a piece of legislation whereby these matters can be resolved?

[Edward Argar]

There are two points in there. I will address the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke more explicitly than I did previously. We have been clear throughout this that the decision taken in Northern Ireland was a decision by this House. It is open to the House, if it wishes, to change the position in respect to England or Wales. We do not believe that is something the Government should do. We believe it is, as ever, a matter of conscience for individual Members.

What happened in the case of Northern Ireland reflected the vote of the House on a particular amendment. I will not use the word “hijacking” because I think that right hon. and hon. Members are entirely able to use the procedures of this House to advance the causes that they or their constituents wish to promote. That is how the rules and Standing Orders of this House are written. I may or may not be happy with that on occasions, but it is a legitimate use of the Standing Orders of the House of Commons if something is within scope.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 28th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

I acknowledge some of the problems with the amendment that the hon. and learned Lady sets out. I think it is Women’s Aid that rejected the amendment and said that it would do more harm than good on the basis that she outlined: it is not specific about targeting crimes against women in particular.

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

I would like to correct the record, because that is not what Women’s Aid has said.

The Minister highlighted the issue of a carve-out as being the reason why the Government do not believe in adding sex or gender to ensure that any perpetrator who attacks a woman or someone they believe to be a woman can be captured by the offences in question. I think we would all agree that is important, but he argues that the carve-out is not the right thing to do. Does he also make the same argument then that it is tokenistic to carve out offences based on racial or religious hatred, which we already do in our legislation? We have carve-outs. Stephen Lawrence’s killers were not prosecuted for a hate crime, but we recognise the hate behind it. Why does he think that women do not deserve the same protection?

[Kit Malthouse]

I had hoped to avoid the approach that the hon. Lady takes. Of course we believe that women deserve strong protection—we absolutely do—but all I can say to the hon. Lady is that the Law Commission, in looking at the evidence over a three-year period and consulting widely across the sector and society more generally, found that the additional complexity was likely to make it harder to prosecute these crimes. I ask her to reflect on the fact that in proceedings in this House, she put her name to an amendment compelling the Government to adopt the Law Commission’s proposals in full. I am not sure why she has now reversed that position, but I hope she appreciates that we are as dedicated to and interested in the safety of women as she is.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kit Malthouse]

The Law Commission report is unequivocal about the dangers that it may present. The hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) is shaking her head, but the report’s conclusion says:

“We recommend that sex or gender should not be added as a protected characteristic for the purposes of aggravated offences and enhanced sentencing.”

That is the specific recommendation in the report. The Law Commission has much greater and more skilled legal minds than mine, and other groups do not support the amendment.

I realise that the issue is of great importance to hon. Members, and we must all reflect on the feelings of insecurity that women and girls feel in the public realm, but we are being told by the experts—by the Law Commission—that the measure is likely to do more damage than good. That is not necessarily a substitute for us not doing anything and I have outlined what more we may do, but the point is that we have to listen to the experts. To be honest, I am quite surprised that a party led by a former Director of Public Prosecutions would seek to ignore the Law Commission.

[Stella Creasy]

I would like to correct the record, because the Minister seemed to suggest that I was against what the Law Commission has said. He is asking all hon. Members whether they have read it so it is worth checking whether he has, because it says that there is a case for there being offences motivated by misogyny—for example, stirring up incitement or public sexual harassment. Those of us who have constituents such as Muslim women who get attacked in the street for being both Muslim and a woman recognise that misogyny is about not just sex but power, so we need offences to tackle that.

Does the Minister recognise that if the Law Commission is saying that there are offences motivated by misogyny, the risk of not including it as an aggravating factor is that we could end up in a whack-a-mole situation? For example, we could end up saying, “In these cases of incitement, what is incitement? In these cases, what might be sexual harassment?” It would be simpler to include it and it would recognise what the police are telling us. I stress that the police are telling us that they want this data and they want the courts to back them. They want misogyny to be treated in the same way as racial or religious hatred, because they see it driving crimes on our streets. I am pleased to hear that he is concerned for women, but women have had concern for donkey’s years. What we now want is action.

[Kit Malthouse]

I can appreciate the hon. Lady’s requirement for action. As I say, action is what we are trying to put in place. To be clear, again, we are not saying that the fact that we are declining to make this Lords amendment means that we should not do anything. As I said to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon, there are further offences that we need to consider.

In fact, the Law Commission’s report went further and said that if we were to introduce that offence, it would complement other work on offences that may be coming forward, such as cyber-flashing, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) has raised several times in the House; rape threats; and intimate image abuse. There are several areas where we need to consider interlocking offences, and that work will take time beyond this Bill to get right. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North urged us, we are committed to adopting both recommendations of the Law Commission, and that is exactly the work that we intend to do in the months to come.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Jones]

The aim of the amendment is to try to make misogyny a hate crime in whatever form it comes, and to be as inclusive as possible in that definition.

[Stella Creasy]

Does my hon. Friend agree that given that “gender” is defined in legislation—indeed, the Government rather helpfully defined it in their consultation document, so we have a definition of “gender”—it is therefore important that we focus on perpetrators? The point behind hate crime is that I could be a victim of antisemitic abuse whether I am Jewish or not. It is about the motivation of the perpetrator. By recognising that sex or gender can motivate hostility based on misogyny, we are ensuring that no perpetrator could have a defence where they demean a victim, and no perpetrator can avoid that hostility being reported because somebody wants to put them in the trans box rather than in the misogyny box. The amendment is inclusive, but it ensures that it protects women, whether they were born or become one, using definitions that already exist in law.

[Joanna Cherry]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Nokes]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is in our schools that those calls are strongest, which means that young women in their school uniforms are being significantly impacted. They feel scared to walk home alone. They are given advice to stay to well-lit areas, to ensure that they walk in areas with CCTV and to be careful on public transport. Yet again, we are saying, “Girls, be careful,” and not, “Men, don’t do it.” That is why I feel so strongly about specific legislation on public sexual harassment that empowers women to point at behaviours and say, “That is a crime.”

[Stella Creasy]

I completely agree with everything that the right hon. Member said. It is frustrating as always that, yet again, we are asking women to think about how they keep themselves safe rather than thinking how we stop the perpetrators, let alone the focus being somehow on street lighting, as if these incidents happen only in certain places and spaces. She talks about public sexual harassment. One of the challenges, as the Law Commission admits—I have met and talked to the Law Commission about this—is that not all harassment motivated by misogyny is sexual. I go back to the Muslim women targeted to have their hijabs torn off and disabled women, who are targeted in particular. How can we expand our understanding of how misogyny is driving crimes if we think it is only about sex? Does she agree that we need to find a way to recognise that broader concept of harassment, abuse and incitement, as the Law Commission said should happen but did not come up with legislation?

[Caroline Nokes]

The hon. Lady makes an important and powerful point. It is imperative that we look at this issue not just in terms of sexual harassment. I apologise for detaining hon. Members a moment longer than I intended, but I want to highlight the case of a constituent who came to see me. She was 23-years-old and had a job in Waitrose pushing trolleys around the car park. She said, “I hate lunch time.” That seemed an odd comment to make, so I asked, “Is it particularly busy at lunch time?” She said, “No. It’s when the white van men turn up.” She told a tale of how, in the depths of winter, when wearing a beanie hat, a puffer coat and a mask—it was at the height of covid—a man walked up to her, put his hands either side of her face and said, “You’re too beautiful to be doing this job.” I have spoken to colleagues in this place who are eminent lawyers— they know much better than me what is criminal and what is not—and asked them, “Where’s the crime?” Not one of them could come up with an actual crime for that. The hon. Lady is therefore right: that was not sex-based; it was just harassment in the same way as we see people stood outside abortion clinics hurling abuse at people going to access those services. We must ensure that abuse directed at women on the grounds of their gender or sex is tackled, and tackled effectively.

The Women and Equalities Committee is about to do an enormous piece of work about the cultures that underpin this problem and hopes to come up with recommendations that the Government will listen to and act on. We want to see legislation that makes women feel safer because they can point at behaviours and say, “That is a specific crime,” that allows perpetrators to look at behaviours and think, “Actually, I shouldn’t do that—I might get in trouble,” and that allows the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to look at behaviours and think, “There’s the crime.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I think, listening objectively to today’s debate, there is an enormous level of agreement on both sides of the House that there is a job of work to be done to protect women against abuse, and that there are different options for how we might achieve that. That is the point at debate: what we do, not whether we need to do something. That is really important to acknowledge. I thank my right hon. Friend the Minister for his opening explanation of the resistance particularly to amendment 72, and I commend my near neighbour in Hampshire, my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, for her excellent and impassioned speech on why we need to do more.

The Lords amendments show that more can be done. Lords amendments 13 and 57 show that the Government can continue to be pressed to do more on these important issues. I am glad to see that they are doing more to extend serious violence duties to include domestic abuse and sex offenders. Lords amendment 57 extending the time limit in the way that it does will significantly help. The real issue is, if we want to tackle the issue of sexual harassment and the abuse of women, how do we do that most effectively? I think Amendment 72 has been looked at in detail by the Law Commission, which has been looking at the issues since 2018. There is, I am afraid to say, widespread support for the Government’s thesis that this is not the right way to tackle the problem.

The Law Commission is very clear that there is demonstrable need for additional law when it comes to supporting and protecting women and girls, and that there is more than ample evidence of the harm that is done. Its real concern is how we tackle this in practice. We have to listen very carefully; otherwise, we risk undoing the good work that has been done. The need for additional law is not under debate; it is the form that that law takes. Sometimes we just have to take a moment, and I think that this is a case in point. We cannot just say, “Something must be done.” We have to ensure that we are doing the right thing. We have to accept the role of the Law Commission in helping us to make law that works in practice. It does not see misogyny being a hate crime as the way to solve the problem that has been so eloquently outlined by hon. Members on both sides of the House. Its concern is not because of a lack of understanding of the problem; it is whether the change that is being proposed will work in practice.

Although I listened very carefully to the interventions of the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), it concerns me that the solution that is being put forward involves carve-outs for domestic violence and sexual offences, which could in a way suggest, or give people ammunition to say, that those issues are not as connected with misogyny as I am frankly sure that most Members of this House would agree that they are. The concern is not about being able to prove that a crime was motivated by hostility to gender—a point made by the CPS and Rape Crisis. In particular, Rape Crisis said that such an approach would make trials even more complex—an issue brought out by an hon. Member earlier. I also fear trial juries being asked to navigate questions around gender-based hate crime, which frankly we in this House find very difficult to navigate our minds around—all of this leaving people very confused.

I really hope that the Minister, although he may not be able to go much further today, can very shortly tell us much more about what he will be doing on issues that the Women and Equalities Committee has been looking at for more than five years. We did Select Committee reports on sexual harassment in schools back in 2015, in universities, in public spaces, online and in the workplace. This is not a new issue; this has been an issue looked at not only by the Law Commission but by the Select Committee for well over six or seven years. It would be disappointing if the Government were coming back now to say that they will be taking further the idea of public sexual harassment, as if it were a new notion that had just emerged from the ether. It is something that many of us have been looking at, and calling for it to be tackled more effectively, for a number of years.

Perhaps my right hon. Friend the Minister can, when he sums up, indicate in a little more detail how he intends to take forward what I think will be a sensible way of trying to tackle the issue that has been so eloquently talked about in today’s debate. Adding sex or gender into hate crime law may not be the way to tackle things, but there is extensive evidence of how the harm disproportionately impacts women, especially online. The Government have a VAWG strategy, and today they are launching a communications strategy, but too many of us still see deficits in the law when it comes to sexual harassment. There needs to be more focus on prevention by demonstrating across the board that sexual harassment towards women, in the same way that my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North talked about, is a crime that is utterly unacceptable whenever it occurs, at any stage of our lives. Until we get to that stage, all of us will be calling on the Government to take more action.

[Stella Creasy]

I will start, because I have had an unintended hiatus from being in the Chamber as a result of having to breastfeed a child, by welcoming the Government’s commitment to amendment 56. It is a cross-party amendment, and I pay tribute to Lord Pannick and Baroness Hayman for the work that they did in the House of Lords on it, my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith), who also led on it, and above all to Julia Cooper, who was a much braver woman than me. I experienced someone taking a photograph of me breastfeeding my child without my permission. She did too, but she challenged the person and went to the police. The police said that there was no protection for her. She started a petition. She took that voice and has turned it into this legislation. We should all be grateful for a woman like that, who stood up.

What Julia faced is what we are also here tonight to talk about on amendment 72. I certainly hope that the Minister, who has come to the debate rather late but I appreciate has come with a deep concern for women’s rights, has been talking to his colleague Lord Wolfson, whose argument against making it illegal to photograph without her consent a woman who was breastfeeding was that a man might be taking pornographic photographs of his wife on a beach and accidentally catch a woman breastfeeding in his camera lens, and that would be terrible. Of course, many of us think for some time about that husband’s discussions with his wife before we think that that is a realistic example.

Time and again on the Bill, we are told that, when it comes to women’s safety, matters are complex. It is put in the “too difficult” box. The trouble for Ministers tonight is that next week will be the anniversary of the murder of Sarah Everard. Since Sarah was murdered, we have had more deaths: the murders of Bibaa and Nicole, and of Sabina. In my constituency, I hear countless stories of violence against women. It is the fierce urgency of now that drives this piece of work. I am sure that the Minister is aware, because he has been asking us repeatedly whether we have read the report of the Law Commission, of its provenance. I was on the upskirting Bill, and the Government agreed to commit to the recommendation of the Law Commission as a result of an amendment that we tabled then, recognising that there were crimes driven by misogyny, and that that was putting women at risk.

It was time to turn the debate around—to stop telling women to keep themselves safe and providing money for lighting, because somehow it is about where they go running, and to start saying that this is about the perpetrators, and holding them to account for what they do. The challenge before the Minister is Lords amendment 72, which, again, is another cross-party effort. I pay tribute to Baroness Newlove, who is a goddess in my mind for her determination to speak up for victims, and Lord Russell, as well as my colleagues on the Government Benches who have been working to look at these issues. We are listening to the police. We are listening to the quarter of police forces that already record sex or gender when it motivates crimes, to help them catch the perpetrators. They recognise that it helps. It helps them to develop the patterns of behaviour.

I gently say to the Minister that when he says the problem is that women do not report, he needs to ask himself, as the policing Minister, not why women are not reporting, but why they do not feel they can come forward to report. It is not about the women; it is about the reporting. It is about the response they get. My colleague, the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), is absolutely right when she says that everybody knows a victim and everybody probably knows a perpetrator. Many women will have experienced sexual harassment. They will have experienced abuse online, offline and in our daily lives to such an extent that it infuses what we do: the flinch when we come out of a tube station to make sure there is nobody behind us; carrying our keys in our hands; worrying about what our daughter is wearing; and hoping that our son is not one of those people who does it.

The truth for the Minister is that the police are telling us, “Actually, we have a clear policy that helps us to identify people early on.” He is right when he talks about patterns of escalation. Many perpetrators start with what people might think of as lower-level offences. I have to tell the Minister that I have always said I will stop campaigning on this issue when I go to the wedding where the bride gets up and says, “Well, he followed me down the street demanding I get in the back of the van because he wanted to grope me and I thought it was the most romantic thing ever.” It does not happen. What does happen is that that is the daily experience for women across the country and the truth is that the Bill does not offer anything to resolve that. It does not offer anything to back the police, when they say to us that they want to capture that data.

I understand the concern raised about the carve-out and I will come on to that specifically, but we should be very clear that the first thing the amendment would do is record all that data, including domestic abuse and rape, as misogynistic, because it would help to form a pattern. When we talk to the police in the areas where they are recording it, it is not, frankly, the catcalling that people are reporting. It is serious sexual assault, violence against women, rape and abuse, because they have the confidence that the police are going to recognise it for what it is, which is serious violence.

I also say to the Minister gently that he might want to correct the record, because the Law Commission did not look at this very proposal. This proposal is based on the Bertin amendment. The Bertin amendment carves out a definition of serious sexual violence which we did not have, so by its very definition the Law Commission could not have looked at it to consider whether or not it addresses that concern. It is not that we should not record data where crimes are misogynistically motivated, but how we deal with them in sentencing. Carving these offences out does not mean that they are not misogynistic; it means we ensure that the already pitiful sentencing regime does not go any lower.

There is something crucial in the amendment about how it works with the police and the courts, and what the police are telling us in the areas where they are doing this. I see Government Members who have police who are doing it. The police want the courts to back them. They are gathering the data and using it to track perpetrators, finding them early on in their offending careers before we get to the points that people are talking about in the press. They want the courts to back them, just as they back them when it comes to hatred of someone’s skin colour or their religion.

Twenty or 30 years ago, when I was a young woman—a long time ago—there was a culture where things were said on TV and things that people said that we would now rightly recognise as racist or as religious hatred. Hate crime legislation does not just target perpetrators, but cultures. Most of all it changes the culture within the police, because the police forces that are doing this are talking about the mindset change among their members. As a Member for a local community where women have been ignored by the Met police for years, I have to say that that mindset change is something we should all desperately want, so we can recognise the danger when somebody starts following women and how that might escalate. We have all seen it in those reporting histories.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Miller]

I am listening very closely to what the hon. Lady is saying, but the Law Commission was very clear in saying that this would make matters so much more complex, and it worries about how that would affect securing the sort of convictions that I know the hon. Lady and I want to see.

[Stella Creasy]

I hope the right hon. Member will understand what I am saying. The Law Commission did not look at this amendment, which has learned from the Bertin amendment. [Interruption.] She shakes her head, but the Bertin amendment, which sets out explicitly the offences we would carve out, did not exist during the time of its work. One argument the Law Commission made was with regard to the difficulty of carving those offences out. The amendment builds on where a carve-out can be made.

[Kit Malthouse]

rose—

[Stella Creasy]

I will happily give way to the Minister. I hope he is not going to tell me again to read the Law Commission review.

[Kit Malthouse]

This is an important issue and I am grateful to the hon. Lady, but I just wanted to point out to her that the Law Commission said in its consultation paper that it thought it might be possible to overcome the challenges involved in excluding certain violence against women and girls contexts and there would still be value in including sex or gender within hate crime laws for the remaining criminal contexts. It specifically considered the notion of carve-outs. However, following further reflection and analysis, and with the benefit of detailed and thoughtful consultation responses, it now believes that all the possible models to do so create more problems than they solve. So the Law Commission did look specifically at this model of carve-outs, and indeed it specifically considered the option of the full recognition of sex or gender in aggravated offences, with enhanced sentences on the same basis as for other recognised characteristics.

[Stella Creasy]

I am sorry, but the Minister is conflating two different things here. The Law Commission did not look at the Bertin amendment. What it looked at was whether one might inadvertently downgrade sentencing for rape or domestic abuse by including it within this hierarchy. That is why, for example, Rape Crisis was concerned about a generalist clause. I am sure the Minister has spoken to Rape Crisis since the Law Commission’s report was made. I certainly have. I talked to it about this amendment, and it has been much more positive about it. I hope, if the Minister is quoting Rape Crisis, that he will listen to it when it says that it recognises what is being tried here.

I am not here to say that the Lords amendment is perfect, but I am here to say the because there are other crimes that could be motivated by misogyny, which it is right to recognise within sentencing and to treat as serious—for example, exposure, cyber-flashing, assault or blackmail targeted at disabled women; we see a lot of that in the evidence base—that means that we should dismiss this entirely and say, “Well, we won’t do this at all,” is yet again to ask women to wait for something that will never come. That is the challenge we have here.

The Minister wants to say, “Let’s not politicise it.” I agree. I extend my hand to him to say let us work together to get this right, but let us recognise that misogyny is driving crimes and that the Law Commission has said that. Its arguments were technical ones about how to do the drafting, not about the principle. I hope that the Minister would acknowledge that, because he cannot both argue—

[Kit Malthouse]

I have said that specifically.

[Stella Creasy]

That is not what the Minister has said, but I am pleased to hear him say that—[Interruption.] Great. Wonderful—consensus is breaking out, but consensus will not deal with the fact that women right now are at risk and are being harmed. This proposal is helping to improve conviction rates and to track perpetrators in the areas where it is operating.

The Minister will be aware that an amendment to the Bill that became the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 was withdrawn in the other place because Ministers committed to making sure that all police forces would do the reporting, but they have not. We can agree that the reporting is necessary, but it is not sufficient to give the police the backing that they need or to say, “This is about street lighting”. We have to look at how we tackle violence against women and at why and how we could have a carve-out to make this work. That is essentially what an incitement offence would do—

[Kit Malthouse]

rose—

[Stella Creasy]

I will happily give way to the Minister; I can see him shaking his head and I am keen to hear his male voice about my experience of violence.

[Kit Malthouse]

I am sorry, but the hon. Lady seems determined to have a fight about this and I really do not want one. She keeps referring to street lighting, but that is one of a suite of things that we need to do generally in the public realm regarding safety. For clarity, I of course acknowledge that there are offences that are motivated by misogyny—I say that clearly, as I did in my opening speech—but this requires a number of approaches and solutions. We are merely saying that the evidence that the Law Commission and other groups put before us is that this particular approach is likely to cause more harm than good. We have committed to look at the other areas that it has highlighted, particularly the crimes that are motivated by misogyny, which I read out from its report. I reassure hon. Members that we are duty-bound to respond to the Law Commission’s report in six months, and we will do so.

[Stella Creasy]

I hope that the Minister will forgive me if I mention that there are, I think, more than 17 Law Commission reports that have been published since 2010 that the Government have not responded to and acted on—and that is just to look at the Law Commission. He also keeps saying that the Law Commission has looked at this proposal. No—the Law Commission looked at including sex or gender in all instances. It then looked at whether it was possible to have a carve-out, but we did not have the Bertin amendment, which specifically identified the offences in question and helped to shape this Lords amendment.

The Minister has said that he does not want to have a fight about this. Well, he is going to have one, because he is opposing the proposal and not coming up with any alternatives. He is not saying, for example, “We will introduce a proposal in the other place that addresses these issues” or that he will listen not just to all the chief constables across the country who have said that they want to see this happen, but to the organisations that have. Seeing as he is obsessed with major organisations, let us run through them: the Fawcett Society; Citizens UK; Refuge; Stonewall; HOPE not hate; Dimensions; Tell MAMA; the Jo Cox Foundation; and Safe & the City. Many of us have been talking to people who have expressed concerns to identify what those are and learn from them; that is where this amendment has come from.

The Minister will use the Government majority to vote this Lords amendment down, to say that violence against women is a complicated issue and that there are other approaches, and he will wait patiently and in fear that, yet again, there will be another moment as there was a year ago. The trouble is that, for us as women, waiting in fear is our daily experience, because we do not see things changing any time soon. We see the evidence base from Nottinghamshire and from the Met police. We want to know why there is a postcode lottery when it comes to the police taking violence against women seriously. We want to know why our courts want to exclude sex or gender from the protected characteristics that we rightly recognise when crimes are motivated by a hatred of somebody just for who they are, and we will tackle that.

People made many of these arguments 20 years ago on recognising racially and religiously motivated abuse. We now, rightly, all benefit from the protection and the freedom that has been given to people, so that they do not have to live in fear that they will be attacked just because of the colour of their skin or their religious identity. The Minister’s problem is that he says that he listens to and knows women and that he understands this area, but if he understands it at all, he should listen to the suffragettes, who told us that it was “deeds not words” that matter. All we have heard tonight is words.

This proposal is backed by the police. Opposition Members and many Government Members want to back the police and want to see the courts back up the police. If he does not accept this amendment, the Minister has the time and the opportunity in the Lords to come up with an alternative. He will have my support and that of the Cross Benchers to make that happen. However, if he continues to ignore women, to say that he understands the challenge and to blame them for not coming forward and reporting things—[Interruption.] He is right to shake his head, but he can probably go home without looking over his shoulder. Many of us cannot.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Stella Creasy Excerpts

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

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

In any legislation, any of us on any of these Benches can always find some good, and this legislation is no different. For example, there are the measures on providing protection from being abused by adults in positions of trust and the measures on dangerous driving, as well as the increase in sentences for those who assault our emergency workers. However, this legislation is a curate’s egg, and what little good there is in it is overwhelmed and infected by the bad. It breaches the covenant between us in Parliament and the public about the consent that is part of a free, fair and equal society.

All of us recognise that it is time for some reform of how public order is managed in this country. The scenes of chaos that we saw on Saturday are a clear embodiment of that. The trust between the police and women, particularly in London, has been broken—trust that many communities have not had in the police for some time—but this legislation will do little to heal those relationships.

I will be honest: I have a long list of things that cause me “severe annoyance”. Some, Members may agree with; many, they probably would not. However, I pity the commanding officer trying to enforce this legislation if it becomes law and trying to explain decisions around severe annoyance. The legislation is simply unworkable. I am also ashamed to be part of a Parliament that is seeking to demonise a minority community in the measures being brought forward around Gypsy and Traveller communities—measures, indeed, that the police themselves have said they do not wish to see.

The public have to be able to tell us when we are getting something wrong. Sometimes that message is noisy and messy, but it is important that we do not seek to silence it no matter how uncomfortable it might make us feel. This legislation seeks to do that.

The Bill also breaches that covenant between us and the public by what it does not contain. The hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke) does not quite understand the concern that there is no mention of women, but plenty of mention of statues. At a time when we are all concerned about the lack of action over tackling violence against women, this legislation could have been the perfect vehicle for the Government to implement the Law Commission’s recommendations on making misogyny a hate crime, but those are measures are absent. It could also have been an opportunity for the Government to recognise when they are at fault in the courts. Let me give just two examples. For the past three years, the Government have been found at fault by the courts on how they treat bereaved parents in this country and on how they treat victims of domestic violence who have a sanctuary room—they charge them the bedroom tax—but no measures have been brought forward. What respect for the courts does that show from a Government who are now seeking to reform those areas?

Human rights mean little if they cannot be actioned and if they are not upheld, even when it goes against what appears to be the Government’s interests. I urge the Government to use this legislative time for something more constructive, to work across the House, to recognise the concerns over violence against women and to uphold all our rights. We shall all regret it if they do not.

Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill [Lords]

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Committee stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 17th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Robert Neill]

That is an interesting point and I would like to see what the Government can come up to deal with that, but I am not convinced that it needs to be in the Bill. I do, though, think that the Government need to look at it, not least because under the existing legislation that is retained there is, very properly, the ability to take conduct into account when dealing with financial matters. To me, that is where conduct ought to be relevant, rather than in proving the fact of an irretrievable breakdown. That is the way I would look at it.

I know that the Minister is particularly alert to these matters, and I hope he will want to think about how we can have greater access to early legal advice for people. Legal aid may be one route for that, but there may be other means that we can use to supplement it. One of the things that was said when we withdrew legal aid from family cases was that many more will go to mediation; that never happened, and the reality is that that is because lawyers are normally the gateway to mediation. Unless someone has some form of legal assistance to go to a lawyer in the first place, they are not going to end up moving into mediation, which is where we want people to be. That is where I am in agreement with the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), but I hope that there is another means of achieving what he is looking for in a proportionate way.

I hope I have set out why I think Members will resist the amendments—not because they are not serious issues, nor because every one of us does not want to try get the Bill into the best possible condition, but because they would muddy the waters of the Bill and, in fact, would undermine it in a number of important respects by adding back in much of the confrontational process, and they would cause delay when delay is many people’s biggest concern. In particular, some of the technicalities of the amendments would actually strengthen the arm of the spouse who wants to exert influence on the petitioner either not to proceed with the divorce or, even worse, to settle for an unsatisfactory financial arrangement or an unsatisfactory arrangement for the children.

I do not see how, whatever their intention, amendments that have the practical result of strengthening the hand of the party who is putting pressure on someone at a time like that are in the public interest. For those reasons, I hope very much that the House will not accept the amendments but will take on board some of the legitimate points made by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) and by the shadow Minister, which I think would chime with many people throughout the House, about how best we give people support at such a difficult period in anyone’s life.

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

First, I associate myself with the comments from my colleague and good friend on the Front Bench, my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), who gave us a clear outline of where the Labour party and the Opposition are on the amendments that have been tabled.

I rise to speak in particular to new clause 9 and to ask the Ministers to consider the financial status of children. I also associate myself with the comments from Members from all parties about the importance of supporting people with marriage, because it is obviously an issue for people to access support.

New clause 9 speaks to the conversation that we appear to want to have as a House. We should talk about marriage, and we should talk about how marriage and divorce are seen in public policy making, because there are ramifications, and there are ramifications that go far beyond the straightforward question of whether and how people can get married.

I wish to start with a wonderful quote that struck me very strongly:

“People stay married because they want to, not because the doors are locked.”

Those words were said by a gentleman who had a 50-year marriage: the great actor Paul Newman. Many of us are aware of Paul Newman’s marriage to Joanne Newman, which was celebrated throughout Hollywood—perhaps an area to which the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) would not look for marriage guidance, and I probably agree with her about that. Nevertheless, when we think about our role as parliamentarians in law, it is worth reflecting that even Paul Newman was married to somebody else when he met Joanne Newman and had three children.

The reality is that sometimes relationships do not work out, and sometimes people choose not to use marriage as a way of cementing their relationship. In the 21st century, it is right that, when we look at legislating on marriage and divorce, we ask ourselves what the consequences of any changes we might make will be for people’s real lives. It is right that we never lose sight of what really matters here, which is the people we represent and their families and day-to-day lives, and what the consequences would be. Indeed, it was Nietzsche who said that it was

“not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”

An environment is created when we say that we are either standing up for or detracting from marriage, because forcing people to stay unhappy or, as some are suggesting with this Bill, making divorce easier and therefore traducing the concept of marriage, misses out something fundamental about this legislation and about how we treat marriage within the legislative process. That is where new clause 9 is coming from.

New clause 9 seeks to take up the test that the hon. Member for Congleton set out in her amendments. She suggested that people will marry less and cohabit more and that somehow, therefore, we need to act against that. My point in tabling this new clause, with the support of my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North, who feels strongly about this too, is that we can lose sight of what really matters here and, in particular, lose sight of the consequences for children. I would wager that the hon. Member for Congleton and I may have differences of opinion on many things, but we would agree that children should matter and that we should never legislate in this place without thinking through the consequences for children.

The challenge here, and the reason why I tabled new clause 9, is that the way in which marriage it is portrayed in our legislative process, in particular how it is explicitly referenced when it comes to benefits, has consequences. It has very real consequences for the destitution of children. I agree with the hon. Member for Congleton that marriage breakdown is hard on children, but imagine a child who loses a parent and how awful that must be for that child. The trouble here is the way in which we think about marriage has consequences for children who are already facing the trauma of having lost a parent.

I hope that new clause 9 is actually a relatively straightforward piece of work, because there is a hangover from the Beveridge report, which sought to support widows, particularly widowed women who lost their husbands and, therefore, were having to look after children after losing the family income. The challenge for this piece of legislation, because I know Dame Rosie would say, “Well, this is a separate issue,” is that when we change the way in which we talk about marriage—or when we change the way in which we talk about divorce, because this will affect the children of divorced parents, too—the knock-on consequences may have severe financial effects for children. If we do not give them a voice in this process, we miss a trick. New clause 9 asks us to do precisely that.

Although the hon. Member for Congleton and I may have different views on marriage, we would find common cause in saying, “Well, actually, we should look and see whether this is going to affect that group of children,” because right now we know that the way the law is cast does affect those children. It affects thousands of people in this country who are already facing the trauma of losing a family member, whether through terminal illness or through sudden death, and who suddenly find that they are not entitled to support because of the marital status of their parents,

The widows legislation was in the Beveridge report, and it was updated in 2001 to take in fathers—some hon. Members will be pleased to hear that, and I would agree that we should not discriminate between fathers and mothers. Having worked on this issue for a number of years, with some fantastic organisations such as the Child Poverty Action Group, the Grieving Parents Support Network, and Widowed & Young, I have heard some horrific stories about families and the impact of the changes upon them.

Crucially, this is based on national insurance contributions. That is why when we change access to marriage or change the rules around divorce, it has a knock-on effect on this particular piece of welfare policy. There are few other areas of policy that I can see that have such an explicit connection to marriage and divorce. The benefit is specifically not available—this is written into law—to partners who were not married or who were divorced. In earlier incarnations, it was also not eligible to parents whose partner was in prison— I am not quite sure why that was—or if the parent marries or cohabits. It was changed again in 2017 to the bereavement support allowance, and it was altered to shorten the amount of time that a family might be eligible to it, not to recognise the families who may miss out.

However, those are the very families about which I am sure the hon. Member for Congleton would say, “Well, actually, they should be getting married, and what we should be doing is having legislation that encourages and promotes marriage.” The challenge that I have here is that unless we recognise that people may choose for their own private reasons not to marry or may be in the process of getting married, we hit those families when we change the law on marriage and divorce. We are talking about a not inconsequential sum of money. Over the course of 18 months it adds up to £10,000, so we can see immediately that for families who lose a parent and a breadwinner, whether through terminal illness, which might have already caused problems for their finances, or through sudden death, the loss of £10,000 on top of the loss of a partner is a huge cataclysmic shock to them and their family. The reality is that in modern Britain one in five parents are raising children who cannot claim this benefit if their partner dies. That is about 2,000 families a year, which is about 3,500 children in total.

Some 49% of cohabiting couples believe that being in a cohabiting relationship gives them legal rights, which obviously is incorrect. The Bill will reinforce some of those challenges. Crucially, that number rises if they have children: 55% of cohabiting couples believe erroneously that, were the worst happen, they would still have the same right as if they had been married to that support which they have, after all, paid for with their national insurance contributions. I think that is why the Government have lost several court cases on this issue, yet we have not seen any progress being made. I believe we have not seen any progress being made because of the idea, to which the Bill speaks, that somehow we must cement marriage to the exclusion of all other concerns within our public policy-making process.

In August 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that denying the widowed parent’s allowance to unmarried parents was incompatible with human rights legislation. In February this year, the High Court ruled that denying the new bereavement support allowance to bereaved parents was also incompatible. Every day that we delay resolving this situation, recognising that how we talk about and legislate on marriage has practical implications for families who face the trauma of losing a parent, there are more children in this position. Indeed, in the current circumstances where people cannot have marriages unless in extreme circumstances—it is only recently that we have seen that—we face the vision of families losing someone to this awful virus and then discovering that they are in a financial crisis moment because they cannot get the support that they reasonably thought they were entitled to, because their family member had paid their national insurance contribution.

Other countries, which have strong feelings and strong legislation on marriage and divorce, have treated the matter differently. Other member states of the Council of Europe and Canada either pay a survivor’s pension direct to the partner or pay what is called an orphan’s pension to the child. They explicitly say, “However strongly we may feel that we want to promote marriage and however strongly we may feel that divorce in itself should not be something that the state is propagating, we do not punish the child for the decisions of the parent. We do not push the child into financial destitution. Whenever we change the law on marriage or divorce, we seek to put the child at the heart of the decisions we make.” If the Minister wishes, he can read the stories of women like Laura Rudd or Joanna Niemeyer from my community in my constituency, or the examples raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North, about the human consequences of talking about marriage and divorce to the exclusion of all concerned, for children who may have to deal with the aftermath.

If my new clause is about anything, it is about understanding the true effect of everything that we are doing. The Minister may say to me, “Well, it would not just cover bereavement support payments.” That is true. We would probably have to look at the married couple’s allowance, which is our previous attempt to promote, encourage and sustain the concept of marriage. I am very mindful that that is not claimed by the vast majority of people who are entitled to it. This is a small change to protect bereaved families. We are not talking about hundreds of thousands of people: a few thousand people every year could be covered by it. If only 1.7 million of the 4.2 million families who are entitled to the married couple’s allowance claim it—one question the review could consider is whether the ways in which the Minister is changing access to marriage and divorce might affect that—then the £20 million we estimate it would cost to put this right could come from that budget and we would not be asking little children who face the loss of a parent to deal with a double financial blow because their parents were not married. After all, when their parents are alive we recognise their relationship in the tax credit system. It is a hangover from a previous era in how we dealt with benefits and marriage. It is right, when we are looking at legislation on marriage, to ask whether there will be a further consequence.

I ask the Minister—I recognise that he may say the Bill is not the right place for this debate—not to forget those children in this debate.

Will he go to the Department for Work and Pensions and say, “It’s been two years since the courts said that this was a human rights breach. That’s thousands more children who have been left out and left in destitution, who have missed out on that money, which their families need at a crucial, vulnerable time”? Whether their parents would choose not to get married because the law is changed to make it easier to get divorced, or whether that would not make any difference, they deserve to be heard in this place, they deserve an answer, and they deserve our support. It is never right to tell a child that the sins of the father should be prosecuted on them, and yet by default the way we treat marriage in public policy will do that to these children.

Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill [Lords]

Stella Creasy Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 8th June 2020 Commons Chamber

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

I rise to join my colleagues on the Front Bench in supporting the Bill, which recognises the tragedy that happens when a relationship breaks down. The last thing anybody wants is for the state to be a barrier to people being able to move forward from that. I also rise on behalf of a small number of young people—indeed, Ministers could be advocates for them—who are those affected by their parents’ status of divorce, and the way that we see marriage within broader public policy making. We do not often get legislation on marriage, so I hope the Minister will forgive me for taking the opportunity to make this plea when discussing the Bill. He talked about sending signals. I think we are quick to jump to send signals to the parents and we must not, at the expense of the children, damage the children’s lives.

I am talking about, in particular, the group of children who may not only face their parents becoming divorced but then might also lose a parent—and, in particular, their entitlement to support under our current system through the bereavement support system. There are 2,000 families every single year who face the horror of losing a parent, whether through a terminal illness or a sudden death. Indeed, in our current circumstances, there may be families right now who are facing this situation through the horror of the virus that has taken over this country. Those families discover that because of their status under our current legislation, they are not entitled to support, so the children face destitution.

Many of us will have seen these families in our constituencies, given the 3.5 million people who choose to have children and decide not to get married. I know that marriage is something people feel very strongly about in this debate. There are also families where, when the parent gets divorced, those same entitlements are lost to the child. We are unusual as a country in attaching the entitlement to support to the parent rather than the child. When we talk tonight about the financial situation that divorce might create and how we might support families, I ask Ministers please not to forget these children and not to forget the opportunity that we might have through this Bill to learn from other countries which have what they call orphans’ pensions.

Five families every single day find, when a family member dies, that their child cannot seek to benefit from the entitlements built up through the state pension. It is the same for children of divorced parents if a divorced parent dies; the child loses that entitlement. I think of families such as the family of Laura Rudd. She was not married to her partner, who went out for a jog and did not come home, and her son Noah has been left destitute as a result. Children in my constituency also face that experience.

It would be very easy simply to reflect that when we want to support marriage we do that with the parents—with the consenting adults—but the way in which our financial system works serves to penalise children for the choices that their parents may make. I know from listening to this debate that that is not the intention of Ministers, but it is the outcome of the way in which we see marriage, and thereby the laws around divorce.

Ministers talk about supporting families, so will the Secretary of State work on this with his colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions? Will he use the opportunity of legislation that looks at divorce, families and the entitlements that parents might have with their children and not miss the chance to right a historical wrong? Indeed, when he talks to his colleagues in the DWP, they will tell him of legal cases—human rights cases—that have recognised the discrimination as a result of bereavement support allowance against children of parents who are not married, or who have divorced. The Government have been asked to address this issue for over a year now, and yet we have not had a resolution to it. That is because of the way in which we construct marriage within our public policy making.

This Bill will help to support people in that terrible moment when they find that their relationship cannot continue any longer. That is a tragedy for all concerned. It is a tragedy whether people have spent many years together and decided not to marry, or have married and decided that their marriage should break down. But in all of this, we all have a concern for the children. It surely cannot be the intention of any decent Government to put into destitution children who suffer through no fault of their own the double tragedy of a parent dying and a relationship breaking up. I therefore ask Ministers: please do not miss this opportunity finally to do something about bereavement support allowance and to make sure that we support every child in every family so that no child is penalised for the choices of their parents.