Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Wera Hobhouse and Ruth Edwards

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 28th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Wera Hobhouse]

I will not, because of time.

We should start sending a very strong signal today. Hate crime legislation has made a difference to religious and racial hate crime, so why should women not have the same right? Let us listen carefully to what is being said and make sure that we make progress. It would not be an entire answer, but making misogyny a hate crime would send such a powerful signal that certain attitudes that lead to harassment and later to more serious crimes are not okay, and they are not lawful.

[Ruth Edwards]

I spent last Friday evening in St Peter’s Rooms in Ruddington with a nurse, councillors, shop owners, a reiki practitioner, childcare professionals and many more members of the community. We were taking part in a training programme to help people to identify signs of domestic abuse, talk to survivors they might come across in their place of work and put them in touch with local professional services. The programme is called J9, after Janine Mundy, who was brutally murdered by her ex-husband. I think I must have taken part about 15 times now in the course, which I am delivering across the constituency with my constituent Nicola Brindley, but it never gets any easier to hear the stories of abuse suffered.

I therefore strongly welcome Lords amendment 57, which extends the time limit for prosecution for common assault or battery in domestic abuse cases. There are so many reasons why it takes time for victims to come forward. We must do everything we can to stand with them and support them when they do.

I also welcome Lords amendment 13, which clarifies the inclusion of domestic abuse and sexual offences in the serious violence duty, and Lords amendment 56, which protects women doing the most natural thing in the world: breastfeeding their child. I commend the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) for all her work in the area.

Also before the House is the issue of making misogyny a hate crime, as set out in Lords amendment 72. I fully support the intention behind the amendment, as I think every Member does, but having read the Law Commission’s report, I share some of the concerns voiced. I take very seriously the concerns raised by organisations such as Rape Crisis, which believes that adding sex or gender as a protected characteristic would further complicate the judicial process and make it harder to secure convictions.

Lords amendment 72 also carves out sexual offences and offences related to domestic abuse from the scope of prosecution as a hate crime motivated by sex or gender, because there are considerable difficulties with keeping them in. As the Law Commission’s report shows, research has shown that sex or gender-based hostility is much more likely to be identified or proven in the context of sexual violence perpetrated by strangers in public settings, particularly where it is accompanied by physical violence. Using misogyny as an aggravating factor in such cases would risk perpetuating the highly damaging myth that there is a hierarchy of sexual violence, which already does so much damage to victims whose experience is different, but whose suffering is no less.

In many crimes of violence against women and girls, such as those in cases of domestic abuse where the victim is known to the perpetrator or is in an intimate relationship with them, it may be more difficult to evidence hostility to gender, so I understand why those offences have been left outside the amendment’s scope. I understand the very strong views of Opposition Members that the amendment should be made without including them, but I worry what sort of message we would send as a Parliament if we made crimes such as domestic abuse and sexual violence—some of the most serious crimes against women and girls—exempt from an aggravating sentencing factor of misogyny. Those concerns, which have been set out by the Law Council, Rape Crisis and Women’s Aid, are the reason I cannot support the amendment.

The findings of the Law Commission, which I believe began its consultation with the expectation of supporting such a change, show why it is so important that changes to law are based on evidence so that we can focus on the most effective measures, which is why I welcome the Home Office’s public consultation on the issue of sex for rent—

Westferry Printworks Development

Debate between Wera Hobhouse and Ruth Edwards

Wednesday 24th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Edwards]

Actually, Mr Desmond says it was the Labour Mayor of London who lobbied him to reduce the affordable housing target connected with the development. Such facts do not matter to the Opposition, as they clearly have not even read the planning inspector’s documentation that is in the public domain. Instead, we are setting sail for the island of political point scoring, a tiresome voyage that we seem to go on regularly.

Perhaps the Opposition want to avoid talking about their record on affordable housing because it is not good. Under the last Labour Government, the number of first-time buyers fell by 61%. The current Labour Mayor of London has built fewer affordable homes in the whole of his first term than the previous Mayor—our Prime Minister—did in two years. Under the shadow Secretary of State’s leadership, Lambeth Council’s affordable housing completions plummeted by 68%. What a total shambles.

Conservative Members are proud of our record on housing. In the past 10 years, we have built 1.5 million homes, 460,000 of which are affordable. In this Parliament, we have pledged to build 1 million more homes.

[Wera Hobhouse]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Ruth Edwards]

I will not; I am closing. We are making the decisions that will help many more people on to the housing ladder. The Opposition seem to have nothing sensible to say on the issue. How disappointing.