Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Melanie Onn

Monday 28th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

My hon. Friend has rather demonstrated the paradox in age legislation in our country. I take some comfort from the fact that marriages under the age of 18 are on the decline in this country. We know that that is sadly not the case elsewhere in the world, but I am happy to work with her and other Members from across the House on this difficult and thorny but important topic.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

9. What assessment has been made of the effectiveness of place-based crime prevention strategies.

Domestic Abuse

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Melanie Onn

Tuesday 16th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank the hon. Lady for raising this matter. This is an example of the non-legislative measures that we are running alongside the Bill itself. There are wonderful organisations including the Employers’ Initiative on Domestic Abuse and Hestia that the Government have funded to help on exactly this point. It is in everyone’s interests to help identify people in the workforce who may be suffering from abuse so that employers can give them time off to attend hospital appointments and perhaps to help them to set up bank accounts so that they can siphon off part of their salary and so on. It is everybody’s businesses, and it is through these initiatives that I think we will make some real change.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

Can the Minister confirm that the Bill will consider social housing allocation and prioritisation policies to ensure that domestic abuse, including financial coercion, is taken into consideration and recognised when it comes to rehousing and debt management?

[Victoria Atkins]

The hon. Lady raises a very important point, and it was a pleasure to visit a refuge in her constituency. We are very much looking at social housing as part of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government consultation. In fact, part of the Bill already deals with secure tenancies. It is a careful balancing act to ensure that we are looking at the issue on a needs basis, but I am happy to take on board the hon. Lady’s point about ensuring that victims and children get the housing they need.

Forgive me for not having raised this matter before, but there has been a lot of talk about change in mindset and awareness. Where possible, we would like the victim and children to stay in their home and the perpetrator to leave. That is where we are coming from. That is our primary aim, but of course we recognise that there will be circumstances where the victim must flee for her or his own safety.

Serious Violence Strategy

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Melanie Onn

Tuesday 22nd May 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)]

Let me begin by saying that Manchester is a city that is very close to my heart. I grew up in Lancashire, and it was the big city that we used to visit on a Saturday to do our shopping, go to the cinema and go to concerts. I know that, across the House, we share the sorrow of the people of Manchester. We are in awe of their strength, and we give thanks for the extraordinary bravery of the emergency services and all the members of the public who ran towards danger on that terrible night to help others. Manchester is a magnificent city with great people, and their response on that night is a mark of how great its community is.

Let me now turn to the very serious debate that we have had today. I am pleased that it was called for by Members across the House, and, as a Minister, I am pleased that the Government provided time for it, because the topic is so serious. We have heard from colleagues on both sides of the House about the way in which it has affected their constituents personally. I will begin my response by identifying a couple of points on which I hope we can all agree.

One point on which I hope we can all agree is that we all want this to stop. Another is that we owe it to our constituents, to the victims of serious violence and to the families who are grieving, to put aside party politics and work together to stop it. That point was made forcefully and powerfully by the hon. Members for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) and for West Ham (Lyn Brown), and also by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes). His speech showed that—contrary to suggestions made by one or two Members—even colleagues with constituents in rural counties a million miles from the urban hotspots can feel powerfully about this issue, and care about it.

I am very pleased that the Mayor of London and Members on both sides of the House—including the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) and the hon. Member for Streatham (Chuka Umunna)—as well as police and crime commissioners, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, the director general of the National Crime Agency, people who head charities, local government representatives and Ministers across the Government are joining those in the serious violence taskforce to implement the more than 60 commitments in the serious violence strategy. At the first meeting of the taskforce last month, the firm intention of everyone was to act. It is not a talking shop but a place for action, and it is gratifying that—I sense—such an approach has the support of the House today.

The most important part of my role as the Minister responsible for crime, safeguarding and vulnerability is meeting and listening to the victims of crime and grieving families. I am constantly amazed at the strength and dignity of people who are in the most trying of circumstances. It does not matter whether the incident happened a few months ago or years ago; the impact on those families is still painful to behold. I know that Members in all parts of the House have seen it for themselves in their constituencies.

It is a privilege to sit and listen to the families’ stories, to hear about their loved ones and to reflect on their views as to what more can, and must, be done. Indeed, some are somehow able to find the wherewithal to use their experiences to help others. I am thinking in particular of Ben Kinsella’s family. The pain the parents have felt over the years since Ben’s death is palpable, yet the family have put that emotional energy into setting up the Ben Kinsella Trust centre in Finsbury, which I cannot recommend highly enough to Members to visit. It is particularly effective at addressing themes that have been raised today, such as reaching out to young people from primary school age through to late teens in an age-appropriate manner. I will not give away the impact of a visit, but the most powerful part is where the horrendous impact of such murders on family members and the friends of those lost is made very clear. That is a theme that has been raised by colleagues across the House today; the effect of these murders is not restricted to the family unit but is also felt by friends and communities.

I thank every Member who has spoken today, particularly those who spoke so movingly of the experience in their constituencies. I am bound to mention the contribution made by the hon. Member for West Ham, whose constituency, sadly, features too often in our conversations in this regard. When talking about one victim, she used a phrase that struck me: “His father’s heart broke in my arms.” That sums up the feeling hon. Members have brought into the Chamber this afternoon and points to the much wider impact this has had nationally.

It is vital that we listen to the young people themselves. I agree completely with colleagues across the House who have said that, and it is why I and other Ministers visit charities across the country to listen to young people and the people who work with them; I am sure not every teenager wishes to spend their afternoon off school receiving a visit from a Home Office Minister, but certainly their youth workers do appreciate the chance to talk to us.

I visited Safer London in east London and I was so inspired by a video it showed me of one of the young people it had worked with, Reuben, that I invited him, other former gang members and members of the charity into the House of Commons. I hope colleagues will recall that I invited everyone across the House to come a couple of months ago to the event we held on the Terrace. It is important that young people are not only listened to but feel they are being listened to. It is important to hear from young people such as Reuben, who might live just a few miles down the river; I asked him if he or his friends had ever been to this part of town or to the House of Commons, knowing what the answer was likely to be, and he said that it felt like a different country and it was inconceivable that they would make that journey. This is the first of what I hope will be regular events where colleagues across the House can listen to young people here, to understand for themselves what we should be doing and what more they expect of us.

This reaching out and listening is exactly what Home Office officials did when commissioned by the then Home Secretary a year ago to draw together a strategy to deal with serious violence, because they could see the way the statistics were going. Home Office officials have reached out to the police, local authorities, charities, youth workers, teachers and healthcare providers to ask for their ideas and thoughts on what can be done to stem this flow of violence.

The serious violence strategy that has been published, which hon. Members have been kind enough to review and give their thoughts on today, has four pillars. We are looking not just at law enforcement, important though that is, but at the causes of serious violence and what can be done to tackle it. That is why we are committing £40 million to be invested to support initiatives to tackle serious violence. This will focus on early intervention and prevention and on the root causes of the violence. It will look to help young people before they go down the wrong path, encouraging them to make positive choices and to live productive lives away from violence. It will tackle head on some of the theories about why these crimes occur, and explore the reasons behind the violence, including the links to drugs and gangs.

[Melanie Onn]

I thank the Minister for giving way, because I forgot to mention something in my speech. Two years ago, I asked a question about Grimsby being included in a list of local authority areas that would benefit from the strategy discussed in the “Ending gang violence and exploitation” paper. Can she tell us what has happened to that paper and that strategy?

[Victoria Atkins]

I can certainly help the hon. Lady with the “Ending gang violence and exploitation” strategy. It is one of the strategies on which the serious violence strategy has been built. I do not pretend that we are inventing the wheel for the first time here; we are building on work that has been done over the years, and “Ending gang violence and exploitation” is one of those strands of work. We have an inter-ministerial group, and I am delighted to see my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General, sitting here next to me tonight, because he is one of the Ministers in that group, which I chair. It brings all the relevant Ministers into the room and challenges them to deliver for their Departments in terms of tackling these types of crime. We are now refocusing the group to deal with serious violence, because county lines and other factors have developed. I am hoping that I might get a little assistance specifically about Grimsby, but if I do not, I will write to the hon. Lady about that. I am afraid that I cannot flick through my file and find the answer in time now.

I am delighted—“delighted” is the wrong word; I am pleased—that Members across the House have understood the terrible impact that county lines is having on criminal statistics and on people living day to day in our constituencies. I hope that those who attended the debate on county lines in Westminster Hall several months ago will forgive me for repeating this powerful line from a police officer who has done a lot of work on county lines gangs. She said:

“They are stealing our children.”

That sums it up for me.

The right hon. Member for Tottenham, who I look forward to working with on the serious violence strategy, spoke powerfully about the role of serious organised crime, and I agree with him. I used to prosecute serious organised crime, and I am very alert to it. We would say that county lines is serious organised crime. That is our mindset. It is at the heart of the serious violence document. He made a point about wider serious organised crime groups, and various nationalities have been mentioned today. The National Crime Agency leads on those crime groups and on county lines investigations, because county lines is a national crime. We will also be producing the serious organised crime strategy in due course, in which—believe you me—this will be looked at. Please do not think for a moment that we have ignored serious organised crime; we have not. We have put it at the heart of the strategy, because we consider it to be part of it.

Misogyny as a Hate Crime

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Melanie Onn

Wednesday 7th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Women (Victoria Atkins)]

I thank the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) for calling the debate, particularly as tomorrow we celebrate International Women’s Day, when I hope the House will have a long, thorough debate on the issues facing women—not just in this country, but across the world. One thing that, sadly, too few women across the world have is the right to participate in democratic processes. Today, we have seen how valuable the democratic processes of our country are. I hope very much that Back Benchers and those of us on the Front Benches do everything we can to safeguard the principles of democracy in this great country. [Interruption.] It appears that I am in stereo as well.

I am also feeling a little bit rebellious. Pretty much for the first time on Sunday, I went on a march—I am not a frequent participant: the March4Women. We were joined by up to 10,000 supporters, and we took over the streets, perhaps in a way that the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) would have liked. It was an incredible experience to feel that energy and positivity, but sadly some of the women and men on the march also felt anger about some of the issues we have been discussing today. Against that backdrop, I congratulate the hon. Member for Great Grimsby on securing this debate, and other hon. Members on participating. I hope that this will lead to a continuation of such debates over the year—this year of all years.

The hon. Lady used one phrase that very much stuck in my mind: she described the abuse faced by girls and women in the street or workplace as “the wallpaper of their lives”. I hope that we will get to a stage—sooner, rather than later—when that is no longer the case. The Government are clear that any crimes that target women, whether sexual offences, domestic abuse, or any other forms of abuse, are completely unacceptable and out of step with where we are as a society in 2018.

Since 2010 the Government have done more than ever to tackle these crimes, pledging £100 million over four years to support our ending violence against women and girls strategy, and committing to publish a landmark draft domestic abuse Bill. I hope that Members will use their networks to ensure a good response to the consultation when it is launched, and I am sure some of these issues will be raised during it. We play a leading role in the world in our response to violence against women and girls. We have introduced new offences for coercive and controlling behaviour, stalking, forced marriage and female genital mutilation. We have banned revenge porn, and only last month the Sentencing Council announced increased sentences for domestic abuse, in recognition of the seriousness of such crimes.

Sadly, we know that women and girls face harassment and abuse all too often, and understandably people are calling for action. This involves not just women and girls, but men as well: I feel obliged to remind Members, in the heat of this issue and debate, that most men behave with decency, propriety and respect towards women. However, they are not the men we are worrying about in this debate, and today we want to focus on those who fall outside the majority and treat women in a disrespectful or abusive way.

[Melanie Onn]

I entirely support what the Minister is saying, and I feel strongly that men have a critical role in setting a positive example for young men who are growing up. I went running with my son, and someone in a van decided to beep as they drove past and shout something out of the window. My son was confused by that, and wanted to know what it was all about. I did not know where to start—I do not want to introduce the idea that such things are a common form of behaviour. The Minister is right in what she says, and I applaud her for setting it out so clearly.

[Victoria Atkins]

Indeed, and sometimes men can be the best feminists of all. My little boy is growing up thinking that of course women are Members of Parliament, and of course they are Prime Ministers, because that is what he understands at the moment. The value of men in this debate is important and we all have supportive male colleagues. If we are honest, none of us—or very few of us—could do the amazing job of representing our constituencies in the House of Commons without support networks. Those networks could be male, female or whatever, but we need people behind us—our family and friends—to support us in this role. Men have a vital role in this debate.

Let me turn to current hate crime provisions; if I may, I will be quite detailed in my response on the law because we must take this issue step by step. Currently, specific hate crime provisions, including aggravated and incitement offences, and aggravated sentence uplift, are for offences that target race, religion, sexual orientation, disability and transgender identity. Hate crimes are motivated by hostility or prejudice against a person on the basis of one or more of those five strands. It is a fundamental aspect of the legislation that those motivations can be proven to demonstrate the hate element, including where that leads to sentences being increased.

At the moment we have no clear evidence to show the extent to which the range of crimes committed against women and girls are specifically motivated by misogyny, which is defined as

“the dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women.”

The police pilots that have been mentioned in this debate are of great interest to the Government. As the hon. Member for Great Grimsby said, there are pilot areas across the country, including in Nottinghamshire, where it has been led by Sue Fish, the former chief constable of Nottinghamshire police. That approach has been used to help give women confidence to come forward to the police to report incidents, and to raise the priority of investigations and enhance support offered to women and girls. There has been positive early feedback from women and girls, and those who support them, which is why the National Police Chiefs’ Council is gathering more data on those local initiatives. We will ask the police to feed back on the results of any pilots such as that in Nottinghamshire in recording misogyny as a hate crime.

However, we must be careful about creating laws that would inadvertently conflict with principles of equality. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) is no longer in his place, but he raised a point about misandry. Under the Equalities Act 2010, certainly in the workplace we must balance the issue of equality. For example, our laws on religious hate crime provide equal protection for people of all faiths and of none. Equality of protection is a crucial element of ensuring public support for hate crime legislation. In other words, if we were to have hate crime in relation to gender, we would have to think carefully about whether that would apply to the entire population or just to half of it.

[Melanie Onn]

Rather than considering the barriers, I strongly request that the route to overcoming potential obstacles requires the intent of securing misogyny as an extension to the categorisations as its ultimate aim. Although issues may present themselves, I am sure the Minister has flexed her intellectual muscles on more complex issues than this, and I hope she will apply similar rigour to achieving something that fundamentally could be really positive for our society.

[Victoria Atkins]

Very much so. I am setting out these points because one’s instinctive reaction might be, “Yeah, let’s go for it”. But we must be mindful of unintended and inadvertent consequences. I wonder whether hate crime legislation is definitively the best way to treat these crimes. Women are not a minority, and I would be hesitant to put us forward as one.

Perhaps I am a little more robust in the way that I would like this abuse and harassment to be treated. Within equalities legislation, it is being a minority covered by the five strands that causes something to fall under hate crime legislation. [Interruption.] I see that the hon. Member for Walthamstow is perched on her seat.

[Victoria Atkins]

I am so glad that the hon. Lady clarified that. I was not for a moment suggesting that women themselves must be more robust in the way they deal with such things. That is not my intention. I am saying that we as a society should be more robust.

It comes down to attitudes—something that has been raised a great deal in the debate. I am treading carefully at the moment with respect to equalities legislation because, as far as inserting anything into the current hate crime provisions is concerned, there are legal wrangles that we have to consider. We want to ensure that any changes that we make in the law to reflect the abuse in question would not have any impact on the five protected strands—of religion, and so on.

[Melanie Onn]

I thank the Minister for being generous in taking interventions. Does her concern about including misogyny in the legislative framework call into question the existing extensions, and what police forces are doing?

[Victoria Atkins]

No. At the moment we do not have any clear evidence and, as I have said, we welcome the evidence from the pilot projects. However, the practical legislative steps are what we must put our mind to—as we are doing. I am flagging them up as issues that we shall have to settle one way or another.

For example, there are high rates of under-reporting of the existing five strands of hate crime. We would not want to remove the focus from them, because we want to encourage more people to report that they have been abused racially or because of their religion. Perhaps the best way I can sum up our position is to say that the Government are listening.

There have been calls from both sides of the Chamber for a change in attitudes. When I practised at the criminal Bar, I used to say that by the time things have got to court the harm has been done, and it would be much better if they did not happen in the first place. We all need to challenge the attitudes that normalise or excuse the abuse and harassment of women. We have had examples today of the abuse that colleagues have, sadly, faced in their professional lives. I commend their calling out those instances of abuse. Perhaps I may say that I constantly admire the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) for the beautiful necklaces that she always wears, and I do not understand why anyone would feel they had reason to make any criticism about that.

The Government Equalities Office is taking forward a programme of work to identify and challenge harmful social norms, ensuring that men and boys are included in the conversation as well as women. We need to ensure that all children grow up understanding that we should all be treated with respect, and not abused on the basis of gender, race or religion, and so on. Working with the Advertising Association, we have provided teachers and parents with resources to improve primary school children’s resilience with respect to harmful gender stereotypes. In addition, following on from the successful “This is abuse” campaign—and it was successful in teaching people about what constitutes an abusive relationship and what should be normal and acceptable in a loving relationship—the Home Office and the Government Equalities Office have provided £3 million in the past year to develop and run a new “Disrespect NoBody” campaign, to tackle abuse within teenage relationships and encourage teens to rethink their views on violence, controlling behaviour and the meaning of consent in relationships.

Modern life can impinge on those matters as well, in the form of sexting and so on. We are also engaging with young people on questions of respect and equality to prevent such behaviour in the first place. That is why we have committed to making relationships education mandatory in all primary schools, and relationships and sex education mandatory in all primary schools from September next year.