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Violence Against Women

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in this debate and I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, on introducing a subject that unites the whole House. I am particularly pleased to take part in the debate because I do not see among the names of those who will speak any of the filibusteros who emulate Cato the Younger in deciding that the best way of obstructing the proceedings of the House is to talk on and on. This is a time-limited debate and, because on the whole women are more sensible than men, I expect that it will be as courteous as we have come to expect. Among those who are speaking are the noble Baronesses, Lady Greengross and Lady Howe of Idlicote, both of whom took part in the historic debate that took part on 26 January 2007, when this House united in seeking to obtain civil protection against forced marriage. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, was not able to be here for that, but she of course had played an important role in developing the work of the Forced Marriage Unit and its guidelines, and in her absence the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton of Upholland, stretched the limits of ministerial collective responsibility in encouraging me in a Private Member's Bill and eventually in persuading the Prime Minister Tony Blair to reverse himself and support the Bill, which became law. I will deal with one matter that is raised in the Motion, which is about reform of the law, and suggest ways in which this country could use the Forced Marriage Act as a model for export within Europe and especially in the Indian subcontinent. The problems of domestic violence are of course not unique to any one country or religion, race or ethnic group. Because some of the aspects of domestic violence, such as the sexual grooming of young girls, children and so forth, have recently been linked with a particular section of the community, and because the right honourable Jack Straw has chosen to come out and say that this is a particular problem involving young Pakistani men, I want to emphasise that it is important not to indulge in ethnic or religious stereotypes. The problem of violence against women is an ancient problem that afflicts all societies, cultures and religions. You do not have to look to any one to stigmatise them. It is important that that should be said. Forced marriage is only one example—a gross one—of domestic violence at its worst. Forced marriage is a crime. It is not labelled as such but it is a crime when it leads to murder, kidnapping, abduction and offences against the person of one kind and another. I agreed with the previous Government—I am sure the present Government agree as well—that criminal law is not the best way of tackling problems of domestic violence unless one can prove a case to a jury to a criminal standard of proof, which is very hard to do. In this House, we managed eventually to persuade the Government and the other House to deal with it through civil protection instead of relying entirely on the criminal law. The advantage of civil protection and family law is that it does not involve any public dishonouring of families. It does not lead to victims being permanently separated from their families. It can be dealt with protectively and not punitively. It should diminish the problems by acting as a deterrent through contempt of court for those who violate the forced marriage protection orders. In this country, we have established a radical, new, innovative piece of legislation of which this House in particular should be proud. I also think that the Forced Marriage Unit guidelines are now superb and I commend them to any noble Lords who have not seen them. They are detailed, practical, well directed and have grown out of the work that was done by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland. The problem is that these issues transcend national boundaries. They cannot be settled in any one country. They require co-operation across frontiers and mutual assistance by governments, judges and legislators. At the moment within the Council of Europe—the 47 countries from Ireland in the west to Azerbaijan in the east—work is being done on a domestic violence convention. I am sure that the British Government are playing their part in that. My problem with the convention is that it emphasises criminal sanctions too much and does not sufficiently focus on the need for civil protection. I do not expect the Minister to respond to any of this today but I hope that those who are engaged in negotiating that convention will explain to our European partners the need for civil measures and not mainly a reliance on criminal ones. Within Europe we ought to be able to get not uniform but compatible civil protection measures in all 47 countries. That should be our aim under an umbrella convention. That is one bit. The other is to do with places such as the Indian subcontinent. Many of those involved in the problems of forced marriage and honour crimes are, because of the history of migration to this country, connected with India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. It is really important that we work with those countries' governments and judges to get matching legislation so that if, for example, a young girl or boy is taken to one of those countries fraudulently in order to be given a partner that they must marry, there are measures in those countries that allow them to co-operate with the authorities in this country to get the victim protected and back to this country. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, managed to arrange a judicial protocol with the then Chief Justice of Pakistan, which you will find in a leaflet in the Foreign Office. Yet when I mentioned this to a Pakistani lawyer friend, she said that the trouble is that that initiative has never been put into legislation in Pakistan and has been treated as illegal. If that is the case, it is really important to persuade the Governments of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh and anyone else connected with the problem—but especially those countries because they are our good friends and neighbours in this area—to legislate, with legislation similar to ours. I am sure it can be done. It just requires some political will and initiative to do it. This ought to be, without being imperial, a major export. I hope that that part of reform will be taken seriously by this Government.