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Violence Against Women

May I say how pleased I am to make a speech under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr. Benton? As everyone on both sides of the Chamber agrees, this is an extremely important debate. It never ceases to shock me when I look at the statistics that women in this day and age are still so far from equality and still have such a long road to travel. The result is that they suffer violence on a number of levels. The scale and complexity of the problem is vast, and we have heard some of the statistics. Three million women in Britain experience rape, domestic violence, stalking or other violence, while many millions more are dealing with abuse that they experienced in the past and many incidents are not reported at all. The British crime survey says that 45 per cent. of women will be a victim of domestic violence, sexual victimisation or stalking at least once in their lifetime—that is nearly half of all women. In its publication, "Justice for Rape Victims", the Fawcett society says:""Every 34 minutes a rape is reported to the police in the United Kingdom."" As we all know, thousands of women do not come forward, for all sorts of reasons. Violence against women cannot be a put in a neat box. We have talked about different sorts of violence, such as domestic violence, rape, sexual assault and human trafficking, but I sometimes wonder whether we will ever get to some of the reasons and the imbalances in life that give men—it is generally men—the idea that it is okay to behave towards women in a way that is not acceptable by any measure of a civilised society. There are a lot of issues around power and control, and they quite often revolve around money. The economic inequality that women face means that it is often impossible for them to get away from a situation because they fear that they will have nothing to exist on. Although there are refuges and centres for those who suffer the worst domestic violence, women often put up with it for so long that things reach a critical point and they cannot get away. The Solicitor-General and the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper) mentioned mandatory pay audits. They were the one measure in the Equality Bill that would have brought about a vast step change in equal pay, and it is a great shame that pay audits have been left voluntary. Should there be a change of Government, I fear that mandatory audits might never come to pass and that parity and equality will be set back.