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Women, Justice and Gender Equality

The hon. Lady is right. Sex is not just a casual leisure activity, because the outcomes are so long term and serious. The emotional relationships that attach to that are very important and should be stressed. Girls need to know that they are the ones who will have to bear the brunt of the outcome. Boys often disappear into the ether, and women—we multi-tasking women—carry the consequences. Girls need to plan their lives with regard to how, when and with whom they will have children. A young woman recently attended my advice surgery. She had been in an unsuitable partnership, from which she had a 10-year-old child. Her violent, drug-taking ex-partner had access to her daughter. She had gone to court to ask whether that drug-taking partner could be prevented from taking her daughter in a car when he had access, because she felt that that would be unsafe. The judge took the view that provided that the man undertook not to take drugs for 24 hours before he had access, the child would be perfectly safe. I do not know how that could possibly be monitored—the judge was of the opinion that the man’s mother could monitor him on the day before he had access. A lot more thought needs to go into the decisions that come out of courts. It is certainly important that both parents should have access to children, but in the interests of child welfare, a child should not be driven around in a car by a drug-taking father just so he can access his right to his child. Very early sexual activity can lead to, for example, chlamydia. Girls are often blissfully unaware that they have that infection until much later in life. When they have settled down, married and want to start a family, they find that they cannot do so and that the damage has already been done, and they need to be warned about such things. The biggest effect on equality of opportunity for girls is proper sex education, because it affects their quality of life, employment opportunities and career development.