My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, who would have been presenting this amendment and making the argument for it—which is why on Report the precursor to this amendment became known as the Newlove amendment —is today receiving, rightly, yet another honorary degree to add to her rather large handful of them, and thoroughly deserved it is. However, she is here in spirit and if we were still able to vote virtually, she would be voting in favour.
This Amendment 72B in Motion D1 is a response to the rejection by another place of that amendment, which, in essence, argued that we should make misogyny a hate crime. The debate about misogyny—what it is and what we should do about it—was discussed at length in the passage of the Domestic Abuse Bill last spring. One result of that debate was that, in return for particular amendments not being pressed, as the Minister indicated, Her Majesty’s Government agreed almost exactly one year ago—which is also the anniversary of the murder of Sarah Everard—at the Dispatch Box to mandate all police forces in England and Wales to undertake a trial period of recording misogynistic hate crimes. That undertaking was given with an undertaking that it would begin in autumn 2021—not 2022, not 2023, not 2024 but autumn 2021. Noble Lords will not be surprised to hear that I will be returning to that subject later.
To summarise what happened in another place the other week, I will use the words of the Minister, Kit Malthouse, to summarise the Government’s view:
“On the misogyny issue, I commend the motivation behind the set of amendments that we are sadly declining. We understand people’s genuine concern about the safety of women and girls in the public sector”—
I suspect that when one is at the Dispatch Box one occasionally says things that when you read them do not make complete sense. I do not think he meant only women and girls in the public sector; I think he meant women and girls in general in public—
“and indeed we share it. We are determined to make significant inroads in this area … we cannot in all conscience support an amendment that the Law Commission and other large groups interested in this area believe runs the risk of damaging the cause of women’s safety. That puts an obligation on us to bring forward alternatives that will do something positive for women’s safety. That battle is under way, and we commit to doing exactly that.”—[Official Report, Commons, 28/2/22; col. 786.]
So today the battle recommences.
I am very glad to see the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, in her place, because I would like to recommend that all noble Lords who have not had the opportunity to do so read her report Misogyny: A Human Rights Issue, published last week by the Scottish Government. It recommends a much more proactive and focused approach to this problem than we are at the moment able to consider in England and Wales.
The working group underneath the noble Baroness agreed on a definition of misogyny to help focus its investigations and recommendations. I think it is worth reading it out for your Lordships, because it encapsulates pretty accurately what it is that we are talking about when we talk about misogyny—because, depending on who you talk to, you might get different definitions. The definition used by the group led by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, is:
“Misogyny is a way of thinking that upholds the primary status of men and a sense of male entitlement, while subordinating women and limiting their power and freedom. Conduct based on this thinking can include a range of abusive and controlling behaviours including rape, sexual offences, harassment and bullying, and domestic abuse.”
Motion D1 is designed to focus on two key areas. First, it is a direct response to Minister Kit Malthouse’s undertaking to bring forward alternatives: we decided to bring forward our own alternative, which reinforces the commitment to ask all police forces across England and Wales to record misogynistic hate crimes. It also addresses the category of public order offences, ensuring that stronger sentences are handed down when an offence is motivated by hostility towards the sex or gender of the victim. This would allow the police and courts to take stronger action against gateway offences, which may lead on to serious violent or sexual offences if they are not properly addressed at an early stage. By bringing the treatment of these offences into line with the approach taken to racially or religiously aggravated public order offences, this amendment would enable the courts to raise the maximum sentence, allowing a range of factors to continue to be considered such as the degree of culpability and the degree of damage to the victim.
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Secondly, this amendment is an opportunity to call Her Majesty’s Government to account for their failure, thus far, to deliver on the undertaking made a year ago to bring in England and Wales-wide recording of misogynistic crimes. At a meeting with the Minister and some of his advisers last week, for which I am most grateful, the experience was perplexing and somewhat frustrating. This initiative appears to be going at the pace of the slowest and most reluctant police force. In true British fashion, each force is currently reinventing the wheel in its own image and doing its own thing. Each force has different computer and database systems, most of them woefully out of date, which are incapable of talking to one another and, in some cases, to systems within the same police force.
This is not new news. It has been known for many years. Before the undertaking was given, there should have been a proper assessment of the degree of probability of it coming to pass and coming to pass in a timely manner. To commit that it would happen by last autumn was courageous and perhaps a touch foolhardy, with the benefit of hindsight. This is despite the NPCC itself being in favour of this initiative. My observation from my background in the private sector is that there appears to be a woeful lack of ownership for delivering this and lamentable project management. As I said at that meeting, if this was happening in the private sector—speaking as an ex-headhunter—had my firm been chosen, I would expect to have quite a lot of searches out to replace some of the people responsible for the initial phases of this project.
One year on since that commitment was given, 100 more women have died in this country at the hands of men. Each week brings new revelations of unacceptable behaviours and attitudes. Today, 22 March 2022, is no exception. In a newspaper that I do not normally read, because it is rather dangerously left-wing, the Daily Telegraph, a journalist called Cara McGoogan has today written about misogyny in police forces. This is in preparation for a documentary that will be on Radio 4 this evening, which is called, for reasons many of us will understand, given comments by various police forces, “Bad Apples”. For this documentary, she spoke to a dozen female serving or ex-police officers:
“They have told me male cops aren’t just assaulting members of the public—but also their own. They describe being the target of misogyny from their colleagues along a spectrum from sexist banter to bullying, domestic abuse and sexual assault, including rape.
Shockingly, they also describe a pattern in which it’s female officers who are forced out after they report this behaviour”.
Sue Fish, formerly the chief constable of Nottinghamshire Police, which in 2016 was the first police force to introduce the recording of misogynistic crime, was interviewed by this journalist:
“Within minutes of us meeting at her home in the East Midlands, she’s in tears as she tells me about the two times she was sexually assaulted by different senior colleagues—in around 1993 and 2007—one of whom was a superintendent … She didn’t report the first incident because she didn’t think anyone would believe her … Sue reported the second incident to her boss, who said it wasn’t a surprise from that officer. The officer remained in his position.”
Is it any surprise that the initiative committed to by Her Majesty’s Government one year ago is mired in obfuscation, evasion, an apparent unwillingness to
take responsibility and arguments about database compatibility, when all the while more women die, week in and week out? There is perhaps a connection between the slow pace at which this initiative is proceeding and some of the attitudes evidenced in the documentary that will be on Radio 4 this evening.
This amendment asks the Government to give serious consideration to the alternative that we put forward and, at the very least, to come forward with a clear and concrete statement of intent. I am grateful for what the Minister has indicated the Government are willing to undertake. I hope that that undertaking, when it is delivered in April or May, will be taken with the degree of purpose, organisation, resourcing and ownership that is sadly needed.
Once and for all, we need to demonstrate that the recording of misogynistic crimes across England and Wales will happen. We want to know who will make it happen, how it will happen and—although it probably will not happen—when it will happen. It would be nice to know whether it will happen at a slightly faster rate than our R&R programme, because if it is anything like that I will not be around by the time these crimes are recorded. We have a sort of chicken and egg situation: we need to have reliable data about the incidence of these crimes and behaviours in order to inform the debate about how we can best create specific laws to try to address this. We cannot do one without the other. That is why I beg to move.