Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-02-24
Topic: Law and Crime
Philip Andrew Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): I will try not to be distracted by my hon. Friend too many times. As I think you will appreciate, Mr Deputy Speaker, I have been trying to crack on through my amendments, but there are 47 new clauses and amendments in this group and they take some wading through. However, I have been racing through them. I will leave the Minister to answer my hon. Friend’s point when she speaks Amendment 49 is about a report—we are still laying a report—about the measures taken by the Government to comply with the Istanbul convention to "protect and assist victims of violence against women and domestic violence" At the end of that, my amendment would insert "and produce a breakdown of government spending on victims of violence and domestic violence for both men and women." I do not see why anyone would want to oppose the Government having to produce a breakdown of how much they are spending on victims of violence and domestic violence, broken down by men and women. Men are nearly twice as likely as women to be the victim of a violent crime—1.3% of women interviewed for the crime survey reported being victims of violence in 2014-15, compared with 2.4% of men. When it comes to the most serious cases, according to the crime survey for England and Wales, women accounted for 36% of recorded homicide victims in 2015-16, whereas men accounted for 64%, yet so far the provisions we have here apply only to women. Therefore, it is important that the Government make clear what provisions they have for the victims of violent crime, whether they be men or women. I hope that the Government will agree to publish that information, and, if not, explain why they object to it so much Amendment 50 addresses the next bit of clause 3, which is about the report showing what the Government are doing to "promote international co-operation against these forms of violence" At the end of all that, I have inserted that they should also "provide statistics showing international comparison on levels of violence against women and men" I do not intend to repeat myself, but I spoke earlier about the information I have managed to acquire from different ambassadors. If we ask the Government to show what they are doing and then to show what other countries who have ratified the convention are doing, that will give us a good idea of how we are doing compared with other countries. Surely that is a meaningful comparison that we would want to look at. At the moment, the Government can offer us no meaningful comparisons to show how we are doing in comparison with other countries. I do not know why they would be afraid of doing that; surely they would want to make sure they were doing better than other countries. My amendment would give them the opportunity to do that and to highlight their record against that of other countries. Perhaps that would level everybody’s standards upwards, rather than them just being at the lowest possible common denominator Amendment 51 relates to the report on the measures the Government are taking in providing "support and assistance to organisations and law enforcement agencies to co-operate in order to adopt an integrated approach to eliminating violence against women and domestic violence." At the end of that, I have added "and to include the names of these organisations" It is important that the Government should make it clear, as part of this reporting strategy, what support and assistance they are giving and to which organisations they are giving that support. Then we can scrutinise whether or not they are the right organisations It might well be that there are other organisations out there—perhaps small organisations in local communities that the Government have not come across—that we can champion and say, "You don’t seem to be giving any money to these organisations. How about giving them a cut of the funding available?" I do not know what would be lost by the transparency of knowing which organisations the Government were funding.