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Violence Against Women

I thank the hon. Member for Croydon, Central (Mr. Pelling) for his generous remarks. I speak as the chair of the all-party group on prostitution and the global sex trade, and as a secretary of the all-party group on domestic violence, and I am the only person in this Chamber at the moment who was able to participate in yesterday's debate on trafficking. I think that there is some important read-across between that debate and this one. I believe that everyone who has contributed to this debate agrees that tackling violence against women is of massive importance in reducing violent crime, and that we must focus on it in a way that was not sufficiently done in ancient years. My right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George), led us back to those ancient years, and we remember the victims of those times. I was honoured this year to be given an Emma Humphreys award for the work that I have done in tackling prostitution. The award recognises organisations and individuals who work to tackle violence against women. I had the privilege of winning it because of my work to ensure that men who pay for sex from women who have been forced to prostitute themselves are criminalised, and I would like to honour the Solicitor-General for contributing to that work. I believe that it makes an important contribution. The Government's strategy is great, but let us be clear: we have done a lot but there is a lot left to do. I want to focus on the "left to do". Hon. Members have focused on prevention. I share the view that education is a critical part of prevention, but we need to start before people are born. One of the most important ways to prevent domestic violence is for every pregnant woman to be asked at antenatal appointments whether she has ever been a victim of domestic violence. The Daily Mail and others will claim that that is nanny-stating, but there is compelling evidence that a woman is more likely to reveal her status as a victim at that time than at any other. One can then put in place the kind of support procedures that she needs to protect herself and her future child from domestic violence. I strongly urge the Solicitor-General to speak with her colleagues in the Department of Health to ensure that that becomes the norm rather than the exception. Such action is taken in my area, but not in many others. I also urge the Solicitor-General to ensure that section 14 of the Policing and Crime Act 2009, which criminalises men who pay for sex, stops being the secret piece of law that it is at present. We must have proper publicity in every male lavatory and so on asking, "Are you certain that someone who you are thinking of paying for sex has chosen to do it? If you have any reason not to know, you will be prosecuted." I do not think that there has been sufficient publicity about that. I would like to echo remarks by other Members about the valuable Sojourner pilot project for women who are subject to immigration control and are victims of domestic violence. My anxiety is that it provides for only eight weeks' support, and in many cases, frankly, there is not competent legal immigration advice available to women during that period. One of the simple ways that the Solicitor-General could make a real difference to the effectiveness of the pilot is by guaranteeing good-quality legal advice for that group of women at that point. I hope that that the pilot project will be extended. There is another issue that I would like to raise in respect of the interaction between immigration law and violence against women. In my constituency there is a young woman who has temporary immigration status because she was admitted in conjunction with her mother. She had two years' stay in the first instance, which will lead to settlement if her mother's marriage, which one imagines has been going on for some 18 years because that is how old the daughter is, persists during those two years. Her father is trying to force her to marry her cousin in Bangladesh and she is being protected by the forced marriage unit, but there is no mechanism to sort out her immigration status. She has no income, but to get settlement she has to pay a fee although she has no access to money for that. The bending of the rules put in place for victims of domestic violence is not available for women in her position. Frankly, the Home Office is doing its normal Home Office stupid in this case. I urge the Solicitor-General to take up that case and raise with the Home Office the need for victims of violence to receive not only legal advice, but the kind of resources that women often do not have. They do not have money that is needed to make the Home Office do the things that they need. The response that people receive is: "Oh, this is not a proper application, because it was not accompanied by the fee that we require. It's therefore an improper application and we're therefore bound to refuse it in law." That is what I mean by Home Office stupid. If the Solicitor-General intervened, we might get a little less of that. I have spoken frequently about rape conviction rates. I praise the Solicitor-General's police force in Cleveland, which has the best conviction rates in the country because it has a decent strategy on a range of sexual violence issues, including prostitution. However, in some ways, I was disappointed by her explanation of how rape conviction rates are counted. In most cases of rape, although not in every case, the victim is able to identify the perpetrator. That is true in, say, street robbery, but not true in many areas of crime, such as burglary, car crime, and so on. It is therefore logical to count the statistics in that way. I am afraid that I was depressed by the Independent Police Complaints Commission report into Warboys, because it showed that still there persists, even among specialist police officers, insufficient sensitivity to the experience of the victim of rape and an insufficient determination to treat rape as a major violent crime that must be investigated. I hope that the Solicitor-General will ensure that that attitude leads to penalties for those who were responsible for that case and that such attitudes are driven out of the force. I am really looking forward to the Stern report. Vivien Stern is an excellent woman and I am sure that she will do a good job. However, one thing that other hon. and right hon. Members have discussed—and it is true—is the importance of supporting rape victims to enable them to go through the court procedure to get a conviction. In that regard, independent sexual violence advisers are critical. I represent an area that has one of the 27 domestic violence courts, which make a real difference, but I have noticed a trend for the police to scoop up the money for ISVAs. I am anxious about that, because it is better to have an independent sexual violence adviser who is from the voluntary sector and separate from the police. I urge the Solicitor-General to try to find mechanisms to stop this trend, which does not recognise the brilliance that the voluntary sector is capable of—the police can be brilliant in other ways—and which is often lacking in other sectors. The brilliance of the voluntary sector is not sufficiently recognised in commissioning refuges. I am deeply concerned that some local authorities are putting out to tender refuge provision in their area, with contracts being won by big housing associations that offer a 9 to 5 answer, and a service in which men supervise women, but in which there are no mechanisms in place to ensure that the great vision of those women who created the refuge system is protected. I urge the Solicitor-General to speak to colleagues to ensure that the significant contribution of the voluntary sector, is properly protected, not just with words but by putting in place mechanisms that prevent such local authority stupid commissioning of services. Finally, I should like to mention the case of Rancheva, recently decided by the European Court of Human Rights. She was a young woman who went from Russia to Cyprus on an artiste's visa to perform in what she believed was burlesque or something like that. She tried to leave the club within three days of arrival—it is clear that it was, in effect, a club for sexual exploitation—and days later she was found dead beneath the balcony of her flat. The judgment in that case included the following statement:""The Court considers that the spectrum of safeguards set out in national legislation must be adequate to ensure the practical and effective protection of the rights of victims or potential victims of trafficking. Accordingly, in addition to criminal law measures"" directed at""traffickers, article 4 requires member States to put in place adequate measures regulating businesses often used as a cover for human trafficking."" The Solicitor-General mentioned voluntary efforts to reduce the number of advertisements in local newspapers. That court judgment gives our Government a responsibility to prevent the acceptance of such advertisements by law, because it says clearly:""Article 4 requires member States to put in place adequate measures regulating businesses often used as a cover for human trafficking"." There are no regulations preventing such advertisements, which are used as a cover for trafficking.