I am very pleased to support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Russell. Members may have seen recent reports in the media covering the experience of elite female athletes being subject to harassment and intimidation when doing training runs in the street. They cannot go to their athletic tracks to train at the moment because of lockdown. As has been said, this is not about wolf-whistling; it is about violence and harassment, mainly against women. If those athletes were competing in an Olympic stadium, they would be
cheered to the rafters for their success, but because they are training on the streets and are anonymous, somehow they are objectified and are easy prey.
During White Ribbon Week, I asked the Minister to accept the two year-old Law Commission’s report recommending that misogyny be made a hate crime. This is now a matter of increasing urgency. The police forces that have been adopting policies to record gender hate crimes are to be congratulated, but this needs to be adopted generally. Superintendent Andy Bennett of Avon and Somerset Police said:
“We know women are less likely to report hate crime committed by strangers in public, which could be because discrimination is normalised for many women.”
As the noble Lord, Lord Russell, said, Nottinghamshire Police was the first force in England and Wales to start recording hate crimes against women and girls. Sue Fish, the former chief constable of Nottinghamshire Police, said:
“Some of the feedback we had was that women, for the first time, described themselves as ‘walking taller’ and with their ‘heads held high’.”
According to the White Ribbon Campaign, one in five British men thinks that feminism has gone “too far”. Online misogyny can also be a gateway to wider divisions in society. A HOPE not hate report shows that some young men who interact with men’s rights activists online are on the first step to more extreme racist or far-right groups and regard more rights for anyone—such as people of colour, the LGBT community and people with disabilities—as a threat to their status. The chief executive of HOPE not hate supports this amendment. He states that misogyny is a recruiting tool for hate groups and a means to radicalise, especially among the very young. These online groups radicalise young men who go on to commit acts of aggression designed to intimidate, humiliate and control women.
Having better-quality information throughout all police forces is not just another paper exercise. It helps to increase understanding of the causes and consequences of violence against women and girls, and it gives women more confidence that their issue will be taken seriously. It may even go on to protect more women from violence and intimidation. I hope that the Minister will accept this amendment.