Ms Stella Creasy
MP for Walthamstow · Labour (Co-op) · United Kingdom
“I thank the Foreign Secretary for his clear-sighted commitment not only to talk about a two-state solution, but to actually try to act to achieve it, as the only foundation of a safe Israel and a free Palestine.”
“Could he reassure the House that we will not acquiesce and bend to such pressure, and that the only action that could ever be acceptable to us to make us contemplate reversing this ban would be a halt on the E1 development and a permanent end to settler violence?”
“I start by paying tribute to the new Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), for all the work she did on the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee on these issues. I know that she will do a brilliant job in this role.”
“I do not really understand the technology, but I know that he does, and I understand and share his fear accordingly. We come here today to debate this Bill because we all know that trust is a bygone issue in our politics.”
“We would welcome her having that conversation, which might be more illuminating than whether she is concerned about Zach Goldmsith’s leaflets. I add my support to the amendments tabled by my hon.”
“From today, if we do not take a stand with this Bill to tackle the ways that money has infiltrated our politics, the risk is that they will think we are acting in the interests of our own back pockets.”
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“We should recognise that legislation with holes in it will inevitably return to us. It is in that spirit that I have tabled my new clause and amendment, which are about the context in which this crime takes place, and I am proud to see the support for them from across the House. Let me be very clear that treating misogyny as something we should tackle is not about flirting. It is not about banter. It is not about telling all men that they are rapists. It is not even about new crimes. We cannot apply a hate crime tariff to something that is not already a hate crime. It is about something that has become so widespread that we treat it as a fact of life—but only for 51% of our population. Across the UK, a huge majority—85%—of young women and nearly half of all women report experiencing sexual harassment in public places.”
“I want to put on record my tremendous respect for the very hard work done by Gina Martin to get this legislation before Parliament and by the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse). It is a testament to the power of a good argument whose time has come. All these women are right that we should not wait around for this legislation, but we should make sure that it works. I also want to put on record my support for the work that the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) has done, and for her amendments and the case she is making. I will be voting for the Bill and supporting it wholeheartedly, but I will also be supporting all efforts to improve it, because I do not believe that those two things are incompatible. We should never let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
“We would not allow that for any other form of crime, so why do we allow it when it comes to men who harass women?”
“Let me give the Minister some examples of the things we are talking about—the responses the women I have mentioned got back when they reported these crimes. In particular, in response to the woman followed down the street by a man demanding that she get into his car and threatening her with his behaviour when she tried to say no, the police said that the “behaviour is only threatening, abusive, or insulting if the person…intended it to be so, or if he was aware…that it was so. The comments about his believing it to be a prank and being blown out of proportion would make that difficult to achieve.” Let us think about that for a moment: the experience of the victim of this behaviour—their fear, their terror—means nothing because the man just said, “I was kidding”.”
“As ever, I agree with much of what the right hon. Lady says. I think we need to say that the bigger thing she is talking about is misogyny. There are men out there who are hostile towards women and act accordingly. As a result, 51% of our population experiences harassment and a particular type of crime. At the moment, we cannot name, recognise and differentiate it, and therefore say, as we do with racially or religiously targeted hatred, that there is a premium on it. That is what the amendments would achieve. This is also about what drives police behaviour, because if something is a crime, the evidence about it of course needs to be gathered. I have to admit to my honest frustration, as the first female MP for Walthamstow, where a number of people have tried to report their experience.”
“I hesitate to say that the hon. Gentleman was not listening to what I said, but this was what the police said. Such a case will never get to a point at which a jury or somebody looks at the evidence base because we do not have a commitment to recording and recognising misogyny. Such a commitment would mean that the police would record and recognise it in the same way as racial or religious hatred. Before this case got to the test that the hon. Gentleman is setting, the police said that they would not investigate it further. The challenge facing women across this country is that we do not take this seriously: 66% of women have changed their behaviour to try to avoid street harassment as the police are not taking it seriously.”
“I completely agree. This is the point about changing the mindset. Let me reassure the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) that where police forces, particularly in Nottingham, have started to record misogyny as a hate crime—this is not a new idea—it is transforming the experience of women not just when it comes to street harassment, but when it comes to violence against women in total.”
“I will happily give way to a Nottingham MP and then to the right hon. Gentleman, but then I really must make some progress, because I am conscious that other Members want to speak.”
“I desperately apologise to the people of Nottinghamshire for forgetting the “Shire”—I am not a fan of “The Lord of the Rings”. I hope the right hon. Lady will forgive me.”
“I understand the point that my colleague is making, but women in this country have suffered from this chicken-and-egg syndrome for too long. The idea is that because the offence exists, somehow it will be taken seriously, but the bitter reality of women’s experience shows that that is not the case. New clause 1 is designed to amend the guidance that is given to the police in recognition of that fact. The existence of specific offences has driven change, as amendment 7 is designed to do. I do not disagree with my colleague, but unless we get the proposed measure in the legislation, the way in which the police deal with the problem will not change quickly enough to give the women of today the freedom to walk on the streets, as he does, without being frightened.”
“I accept that amendment 7 is not a perfect amendment because it covers only upskirting, but upskirting is a classic example of an offence that happens within the context of misogyny. It is motivated by misogyny.”
“There is already a framework that Ministers can use. The Crown Prosecution Service and the police already define cases involving hostility as “any…offence that is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by hostility or prejudice.” The CPS does not have a legal definition of hostility; it uses the everyday understanding of the word. We all understand and recognise misogyny when we talk about ill will, spite, contempt, prejudice, unfriendliness, antagonism, resentment and dislike. We seek to echo existing protections and to put the protections that we offer someone for their religious or ethnic background in a position of parity with those that we offer them for their sex background.”
“As ever, my hon. Friend is on the money about the importance of a victim-centred approach. We know from Nottingham— [ Interruption. ] I do apologise; I meant Nottinghamshire—sorry, Frodo. We know from those examples that recognition of the multiple kinds of intersectional hostility that women may face has been a powerfully positive experience, particularly for women from black and ethnic minority backgrounds. Internationally, this is not a new idea. Spain, Croatia, Sweden, Estonia, Italy, Belgium and France all recognise gender and misogyny as a basis for hate crime. We are talking about replicating our current model for racial and religious hatred, and saying that we should be able to recognise similar hostility in the sentencing of particular crimes. We should be able to recognise the hate as it is.”
“We required new legislation to extend such protections to disability and transgender identity.”
“It is almost as though the hon. Gentleman read my mind—he is right. The data shows us that 15% of young girls say that they are being groped, and there might be somebody behind that and we want to record where it is happening. Clearly, this is not just about how people use mobile phones in the modern world. It is about the hatred towards women that exists among a small group of men in our society, and the damage that that is doing to our society as a whole. I have said clearly that we would not press the amendments if we could have a meaningful and properly funded Law Commission review into all hate crime, including misogyny, looking at both existing and new legislation. I do not think that that is a lot to ask. I know that the Law Commission is open to looking at the matter and that it recognises the importance of new legislation.”
“There is only one person who can stop this legislation, and that is the gentleman sitting opposite—the Secretary of State—but I know that he does not want to do that. I know that he can hear a reasonable request to review all hate crime, and to look at new and existing legislation to get it right for the 21st century so that we can protect everyone from being targeted just for being who they are. I will tell him, though, that we will not keep waiting. We will not keep being frightened. We will not keep being hassled for going about our daily lives. Please, do not tell women to put up with this because you find it difficult. Let us get on and make 21st century laws to stop it.”
“I have yet to meet a couple who have said that they met because he followed her down the street demanding that she get in the car with him. It is about how we make this a country where everybody is free. I am really done with all the whataboutery and all the opposition to this. It is not really a lot to ask for, is it? We would like to be able to walk around this country free from fear. We would like those who target women in a hostile way to be held to account. We would like the harassment to stop. I am fed up with being told that there have been private briefings saying that somehow this issue is too controversial—too difficult—and that we are going to delay legislation. This is 2018. This is not Gilead. It is not about all men, but it is about some men.”
“Yet as a society why is it we have allowed women and even our daughters and granddaughters to dress even more suggestively than was the case generations ago that must be giving rise to fantasies…out there?” Under your eye, Sir, if you have been watching. May you be blessed. Another man wrote to me to say that I am abusing my position “to push for Misandry to be juxtaposed with her Misogyny.” and to “target the bloke-hating females of the species” because I am a “a nasty feminist ‘I’m Offended’ snowflake whinger hell bent on emasculating male society.” The vast majority of men in this Chamber and in our society do not want to be associated with that bile, but they do want to make sure that people are safe, and that is what this is really all about. It is not about flirting or banter.”
“The Law Commission review could look into all that, but let us be clear that it is not men who are trying to report this crime on a regular basis. It is not men who are experiencing this regularly. It is not men who are being targeted in this way. It is not men who we say are worthy of protection at work, but not if they dare to go out at night. Let us engage in all the whataboutery that we want to, but do not tell me that women’s experiences do not matter. When people argue against these proposals, they are saying that, on that basis, the existing protected characteristics are not that important—that there is a limit to how far they want equality to go. I have had that in some of the comments I have received about this issue. A gentleman wrote to me today to say: “Obviously this is a law to prevent perverts’ fantasies.”
“The proposal in the new clause has the support of Refuge; the Southall Black Sisters; Stonewall; Citizens UK, which has been doing fantastic work campaigning on this issue in Nottinghamshire; the Fawcett Society; Tell MAMA; Dimensions, which works with people with disabilities; Solace Women’s Aid; and Respond, which works with children and adults with learning disabilities. There is a whole panoply of people who recognise that hate is holding our society back and that it is right that we make sure that that does not happen. Right now, we say that if a woman is targeted in her workplace, we know who is wrong, but as soon as she steps outside, we do not know what happens. New clause 1 is about that gap in our legislation. I know that some people—not just on Twitter—are going to ask about men. The “What about the men?”—the misandry point.”
“Absolutely. I would love it if all police forces, including the Metropolitan police—I know that the Mayor of London is looking into this issue—could learn from Nottinghamshire police and the other four forces that are acting, but I also recognise that the police are asking Parliament to offer guidance on these issues, and that is what we can do today. If we change the law and offer women new protections from hatred, we will send a clear message to women that they can report these crimes, and a clear message to the police that they should not only record them, but do something about them. I am pleased that the Law Commission is open to reviewing this issue, and I am pleased to hear from those who work with people who deal with hate crime on a daily basis.”
“I feel the need to stand up for the members of the Committee, having been a member of it myself, and to reflect that the discussions we had in Committee about treating misogyny as a hate crime did not receive Front-Bench support. That made me, as a Back-Bench Member scrutinising the Bill, reflect on what more could be done to win that argument. It is not always a good thing to be told no.”
“I thank the Minister for listening. For the first time, we are now saying as a country that misogyny is not a part of life or something that should be tolerated but something we are going to tackle. Her commitment to the Law Commission review of all forms of hate crime, including misogyny, and the need for new and existing resources to fund it, is really welcome and a positive reflection of what this place can achieve. We have just sent a message to every young woman in this country that we are on their side. On that basis, I am very happy to withdraw the amendment. I look forward to working with the Minister and the Law Commission review in taking this forward. Clause, by leave, withdrawn.”
“Everybody in this House agrees that the crimes being talked about are abhorrent and that there is a desperate need for justice, but no straw man should conceal the fact that that should never come at the loss of our principled opposition to the death penalty. If the Minister is so confident that this is the correct decision, will he publish the legal advice that he and other Ministers have had that confirms they do not even need to ask the question for this country? On that point, he says that the Prime Minister is aware of this decision. Does she agree?”
“The Minister says that we should not believe the press reports that we have seen, so can he settle this matter once and for all? Did the Chief Whip also call other MPs and ask them to break the pair alongside the right hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis)? Because if he did, that is not a mistake, it is a policy. I say to the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) that this does matter, because if the public cannot trust the Government to organise themselves, how can they trust them to organise a country?”
“The Minister confirms that there is now an ongoing police investigation as a result of this report. Does she not therefore think it is right that all those who could potentially be part of that police investigation recuse themselves from Government until it is concluded? Surely law-makers should not be law-breakers.”
“Will the Minister talk us through how that would be proven? The concern for many of us is that by not taking out the differences of purpose for the actual offender, we will create a difficult investigatory chain. Will she explain how, if she keeps the requirements around purpose in the Bill, she would expect the police and courts to prove that third-party sexual gratification was part of the process?”
“For clarity, the Minister set out that if we were dealing with someone who had taken the photos not for their own sexual gratification but perhaps to make money from them, we would need to prove third-party sexual gratification. Will she explain how she expects that to be proven, as opposed to the sexual gratification of the original offender?”
“This is a very interesting conversation. The only person who has mentioned how consent might influence such a decision was the Minister, in a very narrow context. The hon. Gentleman’s comments are all about the offender. If this is a victim-centred Bill, it does not matter whether somebody was having a laugh or was sexually gratified. It matters whether the person whose photo was taken said, “Yes.” Where does that come in his hierarchy?”
“When we start to include particular categories, we take the conversation away from whether a woman such as Gina Martin, or a man who had a camera put up his kilt, said, “No,” or, when they found out what had happened, said, “That was not something I consented to.” Instead, we start quibbling about the motivations of the perpetrator. We all want to ensure that victims come first in the law.”
“The amendments address a concern that many of us have and that, if I am honest, the hon. Gentleman set out very well in how he talked about the crime and how he believes, given his experience as a criminal barrister, the legislation would be enacted. He did not at any point, even when I prompted him, say that the courts would consider the fact that the victim said, “No, I didn’t consent to this.” The concern about setting out specific motivations is that it takes the power away from the victim to be the one who defines what happened, and that it is wrong.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairwomanship, Ms Buck, this fine Thursday morning. I rise partly in response to the hon. Member for Cheltenham. I apologise for being unable to listen to the second set of evidence. The Committee will have to forgive me; I am afraid I had a rather unpleasant medical emergency. Members will be pleased to see that I am back on my feet and trying to respond. The amendments matter because of a couple of concerns that I want to put on the record. I understand the case set out by the hon. Member for Cheltenham from his experience. Let us take it as a given that everybody on the Committee wants the legislation to pass and be as good as it can be. The challenge and the difference is about whether it will meet that second test.”
“It is not necessarily about humiliation or distress. Again, setting bars for what has to be proved would create an environment that none of us want.”
“The risk of setting out the motivations is that we create loopholes and take the focus away from consent. He and I agree that consent should be the primary focus. Saying it is taken as read is not the same as making it the primary, defining factor. The right hon. Member for Basingstoke has been brilliant about identifying some of the challenges. By removing these requirements, we take the focus back to the victim. I worry, and I suspect that other Committee members worry too, that there will be a case in which somebody says, “It wasn’t for sexual gratification; I was making money, but doing so to entertain.” That is the world we live in now. We have voyeurism for the sake of voyeurism. There is no sexual element to it; there is simply the pleasure of seeing somebody else in an awkward position.”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but he and I disagree on that. By putting in notions about the motivation of the offence, we automatically start queering the conversation away from that very simple point—whether we can prove that the person consented—and we start saying, “Hang on a minute; was it about sexual gratification?” or, “Hang on a minute; can we prove it’s a third, or indeed a fourth, party?” If only this was about pornographic websites. We live in a culture in which people will take such pictures and engage in that behaviour not just to humiliate, but to entertain. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is a regular reader of Heat magazine, and magazines such as Closer. He will have seen such pictures being used to entertain.”
“There is a risk that we are sending a message from this place that our focus is going to be all about the ins and outs of motivation, rather than on saying that, in 2018, consent and equality are what matters in our legislation and we will introduce legislation accordingly.”
“The risk for all of us is that we create a loophole in the legislation, where people quibble about whether it was entertaining or not, rather than ask the simple question: did she say yes? Did she say she was happy for it to happen, because it was something she was doing for her career, or whatever? I wager him that we would have a case where we would have that kind of discussion, and ask him to think what it would be like for the victim in that circumstance to have motivation pored over in court, rather than the simple question of whether she said yes or no. We are not pushing these amendments to a vote today, but we have to recognise that there is a risk that there could be a loophole.”
“We are going to come on to some of the broader questions underpinning the offence. The sad truth is that this is not the first time that people have tried to humiliate, and to humiliate mainly women. This is not the first time that there has been a sense of entitlement to see, to judge and to talk about the privacy of a woman’s body. Do I have confidence that there would be people on the jury who would think, “Well, fair play”? Sadly, that is the society that we live in and we are making legislation in that society. I wish I could be with the hon. Gentleman in having confidence that in the 21st century people would recognise that treating women as pieces of meat for their entertainment is no longer acceptable, but, sadly, both case law and modern society tell us that we still have a long way to go.”
“(4B) The facts referred to in subsection (4A) are— (a) if, at the time of committing the offence, or immediately before or after doing so, the offender demonstrates towards the victim of the offence hostility based on the victim having (or being presumed to have) a particular sex characteristic, or (b) if the offence is motivated (wholly or partly) by hostility towards persons of who share a particular sex characteristic based on them sharing that characteristic. (4C) For the purposes of subsection (4B), ‘sex characteristic’ means the protected characteristic of sex in section 11 of the Equality Act 2010.” This amendment ensures that if the crime is motivated by misogyny then that will be considered by a court as an aggravating factor when considering the seriousness of the crime for the purposes of sentencing.”
“I beg to move amendment 6, in clause 1, page 2, line 13, at end insert— “(4A) Where a court is considering for the purposes of sentencing the seriousness of an offence under this section, and either or both of the facts in subsection (4B) are true, the court— (a) must treat the fact mentioned in subsection (4B) as an aggravating factor (that is to say, a factor that increases the seriousness of an offence), and (b) must state in open court that the offence is so aggravated.”
“One of the frustrations for me as a Back Bencher is how few opportunities we get to make any real progress on issues such as this, so I am interested to hear what the Minister has to say. Has the Ministry of Justice been looking at these issues and the evidence from Nottingham on how treating misogyny as a hate crime has driven change in how issues such as upskirting are dealt with? I am really interested to hear what the Minister thinks we can do, if we do not accept these proposals, to make it explicit that, if somebody targets women in this way and shows that hostility, the courts should be able to take that into consideration. There should be a requirement to have the evidence to be able to make that case.”
“I recognise these proposals might not be the right way to address the problem, but we cannot avoid this debate and this inequality any more, because it is upskirting this week, but it will be something else next week. Misogyny is pervasive in our society and I would wager it is on the rise, because we live in a society where people think somehow we have equality. Every time I say that, all the men in the room look quizzical and all the woman roll their eyes, because we know how much further we have to go. These proposals highlight a simple point about this legislation, which is that it fits a symptom of a bigger challenge, and if we can target the bigger challenge, we can make real progress.”
“But we would have no evidence for that because at the moment we do not systematically record this to enable us to say that that has been a particular offence. I appreciate this element is new, and I understand people’s concerns about whether we should get into it in this Bill, but I say to the Minister that we have not had any opportunities and these debates have been around for some time. If she were to say to, “We are going to review this, because there is an anomaly here where we protect characteristics in other parts of legislation, but we do not protect characteristics in the court,” I would happily work with her and go away and look at this.”
“Member for Cheltenham might argue that the courts might well be able to take into account harassment, but they cannot if there is no evidence and if the police have not built up a profile of, for example, the Dapper Laughs character—the person who has taken photos and encouraged people to take photos of women in compromising positions, not because they particularly find that sexually appealing, but because it is simply funny for them. Why is that funny? Because it is about power. It is actually about the power to control and define what is important about that person by taking that photo. By taking away their mind, their voice or whatever they might say, and making it simply about their body, it is a power play and not sexual.”
“First and foremost, they would put on par the ability of courts to take into account where there was evidence of hostility towards somebody as a result of their sex-protected characteristic. That is the legislation from the Equality Act. It is simply about equality. For Members who are not necessarily convinced on the argument about misogyny, this is simply about parity. The new clause would encourage the police to do what I hope they will do today voluntarily: start collecting evidence for the purposes of being able to prosecute. The hon.”
“I recognised in the earlier amendments that the concept of consent should be the primary motivation as to whether somebody is found guilty of upskirting, and I also recognise the issue is not just about upskirting, but this is the legislation in front of us. As I have explained to the Minister, my purpose in tabling these proposals is to push these votes because we get so few opportunities to try to make legislation that really gets to the root cause of the problem. My fear is that even if we tackle upskirting, and even if new technology is created, the causes remain. The harassment, the inequality and the violence that women then face as a result will continue. These proposals would do two things.”
“I hope that, today, the national police chiefs will look at the evidence from Nottingham and recognise that recording street harassment, including upskirting, as a form of hate crime and using that to drive how they identify where it happens, whether there are particular times that it happens and what that means for their policing priorities, will lead to a step change—not just as we have seen in Nottingham, but in every city, in every community. I am sure Members have all heard the stories about this happening. I tabled these proposals to reflect the fact that this should happen after somebody has been found guilty.”
“In the same way, women who try to report harassment or upskirting have faced an uphill battle with the police, and that has come across in the evidence. We do not yet see hate against women as something that we have to say is on a par with racial hate and religious hate, so when women come forward to report such crimes, very often they get dismissed. Indeed, in some of the testimony, people talked about the police saying, “I’ll just delete it. It’s not that big a deal.” I can tell the Committee it is a big deal while we live in a society where we do not treat women and men equally, and we do not treat them equally under the law.”
“Our legislation and our way of dealing with those crimes have not moved with recognising the cause, so we treat the symptoms. We come up with individual offences. We do not send the message that the issue is equality under the law. While we have the protections in the Equality Act, which are mirrored in amendment 6, they do not make a difference in court. Some people will tell us, and I want to be clear that this is about sentencing when somebody has been proven to have done such a thing, that the courts could take account of them, but if somebody is targeting women—it does not have to be ethnic minority women, because then we could use the racially aggravated offence—we need to say that that is unacceptable in 2018.”
“They build on the evidence we have from Nottingham that where misogyny is treated as a hate crime—that includes instances of upskirting—that has started to change the experience of victims when they report these crimes, and indeed the mindset of the police and the CPS in dealing with them. That goes back to the question that the hon. Member for Cheltenham asked me. He seemed surprised that I would query that experience, but the honest truth is that for most women the experience of trying to report sexual harassment and of trying to say, “My body is not here to entertain you; it is here for me,” is very hard. Day in, day out, women in this country face a barrage of harassment and abuse, and upskirting is just one element of that.”