That the Grand Committee takes note of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, laid before the House on 17 May.
Relevant document: 2nd Report from the International Agreements Committee (special attention drawn to the instrument)
My Lords, in moving this take-note debate, I say first on a personal level how welcome it is, as we will hear shortly from the Government, for the Government to praise and table for ratification anything containing the word “Europe”, in particular something emanating from the Council of Europe.
There cannot be a single Brit, let alone Member of your Lordships’ House, who does not feel justifiably proud of the role our country played in the creation and work of the Council of Europe in promoting human rights across a continent previously divided by wars and the denial of human rights. I always feel a particular affinity with the council, because it was created in the year of my birth—although I think it has aged rather better than I have—and because of my father’s role as, literally, a foot soldier in the war, the outcome of which led to the determination never again to allow basic human rights to be trampled by the very state whose purpose should be to protect all its citizens. It is for this reason—besides keeping an eye on rogue states—that an international body is needed, since, sadly, we cannot always rely on Governments to respect this most fundamental duty. It is thus right that Russia has, since March, been removed from the Council of Europe.
I also say, on my behalf and not on behalf of the committee, which has not discussed this, how wrong it is for this Government to introduce legislation, a so-called Bill of Rights, that would actually diminish rights and potentially breach our obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights. Claiming to be above the law of civilised nations not just threatens our citizens but harms our standing on the world stage.
But that was a personal statement. I turn to the Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence. First, I thank the members of the committee for their work on this. Two of them—the noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister, and the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich—will speak shortly. I pay particular tribute to our legal adviser, Alex Horne, and our very able and capable clerk, Jennifer Martin-Kohlmorgen, who happens to be in the Room today, albeit wearing another hat. We are delighted that she is here and for all the work she does for our committee.
My Lords, it has been just over 10 years since the UK signed the convention, and I welcome the Government’s announcement that it should finally be ratified by the end of July this year. I thank the Home Secretary, the many Ministers across government who have been involved, and Nimco Ali, the independent government adviser on tackling violence against women and girls, for getting us to this position. I join the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, for her tenacious work in pushing the Government to ratification.
I also take this opportunity to commend President Zelensky of Ukraine. Despite everything that is happening in his country, last Tuesday he signed into law a Bill ratifying the Istanbul convention. As he said when signing:
“Its main content is simple, but extremely important. It is a commitment to protect women from violence and various forms of discrimination.”
Like the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and, no doubt, other noble Lords, I have questions about the reservations on Articles 44 and 59. My noble friend the Minister will have seen the correspondence from 80 organisations working with and for women, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, referred. There are concerns that placing these reservations, particularly on Article 59, risks the creation of a two-tier system, whereby migrant women are given a lesser status and fewer protections from violence, and that it may reinforce the power of the perpetrators and increase the risk faced by migrant survivors—all this while migrant women survivors already face additional obstacles to accessing support and justice.
I understand that the Government’s position on Article 59 is under review, pending the results of the pilot. I would welcome an update from my noble friend the Minister on this review, as well as a response to the argument that the pilot has no clear link with the article in question.
My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, for securing this Motion for debate and for the work of her committee. I also welcome and strongly support her personal statement in relation to Europe and the rule of law. It is of course deeply shocking that we face such appalling conflict in Europe once again. We are already discovering how especially vulnerable women and girls are in conflict. Rape is, yet again, being used as a weapon of war.
We signed up to the Istanbul convention in 2012, yet it has taken a decade for the UK to ratify it. It is astonishing how long that has taken. Why did it take so long? The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, was very gentle here, maybe as the chair of her committee. After all, in 2012 we had a very successful conference on preventing violence against women in conflict led by the then Foreign Secretary, the noble Lord, Lord Hague. In our development programmes, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, indicated, we have fought long and hard to protect women against violence. The Home Secretary says that we have most of what the convention says in UK law anyway. So why the delay?
How can anyone doubt the importance of this issue? We know that economically in most of the world, if not all, women are and long have been second-class citizens, which has contributed to a sense that violence against women is acceptable. I recall that, when I was in DfID, we supported research carried out by the South African Medical Research Council into how to counter violence against women. The Medical Research Council in the United Kingdom might not have seen this as within its own scope, but the South African equivalent rightly identified that it could not combat HIV/AIDs effectively when, for example, simply getting married was a risk factor for women, if it did not counter entrenched views of the inferiority of women, and acceptance and even condoning of violence against them.
It has long been held that maybe one-third of women globally have been or are subject to violence. Given the difficulty of eliciting accurate information, it is likely that that figure is higher. The research funded with the South African Medical Research Council in a neighbouring state reported that around 80% of women reported that they had suffered violence. That is striking. But what I found even more striking was that over 60% of men surveyed agreed that they had meted out such violence against their female partners. That means that they and their society saw this as acceptable. If you were to undertake such a survey in the United Kingdom, I am sure the numbers would be lower because of shame on both sides.
My Lords, I welcome this important debate, as protecting women and girls from violence and abuse should and must be a key priority for government. We know that the impact of violence against women and girls not only causes unimaginable suffering to victims subjected to the crimes, but the existence of any violence against women and girls further causes deep social issues for our economy, health service and criminal justice system. Therefore, doing what we can to eradicate these heinous crimes remains everyone’s business. I thank my colleagues on the Select Committee and particularly our chairman, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, for the work that they have done in preparing the report—and, indeed, the Government for getting us to the point of ratification of the Istanbul convention, even if, as the noble Baroness said, it has taken some time.
The work in this area of the Secretary of State for the Home Office and her team has been admirable, but there is still a lot more that can and must be done. I particularly welcome the Government’s decision to make tackling violence against women and girls a strategic policing requirement, and the subsequent way in which police forces across the UK have risen to the challenges and now proactively engage with their communities on this vital subject. I have seen a plethora of good examples locally, by which chief constables have undertaken major operational changes in how they now prioritise the eradication of violence against women and girls. While it is entirely reprehensible and will remain a stain on the conscience of the UK that it has taken so long, with a number of high-profile cases to get us to this point, we are now at least moving in the right direction.
The latest actions by government, including the Home Secretary’s recent launch of the Enough campaign and how we are putting victims first, demonstrate that this Government are rightly moving further than the convention requires and undertaking encouraging work to prioritise making women and girls safer, not only across our country but overseas through the work of the FCDO on the ground and the NGOs and aid programmes we sponsor.
My Lords, I welcome the report from the International Agreements Committee on the Istanbul convention. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Hayter on her chairing of the committee, and the committee members on producing such an excellent report. The report highlights the main points and the reservations the Government wish to use to enable the ratification of the Istanbul convention. I will concentrate on Article 59.
The Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Act 2017, which my noble friend Lady Hayter mentioned, was a Private Member’s Bill that started in the House of Commons and which I took through the House of Lords. It required the Government to publish an annual report to Parliament on progress made towards ratification. The first report was published in April 2017, and there have since been five annual reports. Does the Minister expect the 2021 report to be the last annual report and, if so, will there be a report on the progress made on the reservations? When will those reservations be removed?
In paragraph 12, the committee makes it clear that it does not see
“any justification for the reservation”
relating to Article 59. In paragraph 13 it makes several points, calling on the Government
“to justify the exclusion and set out … the criteria that will be used for … measuring the success of the Support for Migrant Victims Scheme pilot”.
It also asks what timetable will be used to withdraw the reservations.
The Minister will no doubt be aware of the letter from more than 80 organisations calling for the convention to be ratified, including Article 59, as those organisations feel so strongly about this matter. What can the Minister say about how progress will be made? It has already taken the Government 10 long years since signing the convention in 2012.
4:18 pm
The Earl of Sandwich (CB)
My Lords, as a member of the IAC I too support the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter. The nub of this important issue, as has been said, is the delay in ratification because of the unwillingness of the Government to explain these reservations, especially that relating to Article 59 on migrant workers. The case has been very well made just now. However, I am confident that the Minister will have an interim explanation today and I expect it to be about Immigration Rules and Home Office funding, because we have heard that before. Despite this, I doubt that the reservation on the whole of Article 59 will be lifted soon or even at all. HMG seem to have no difficulty in ratifying it straightaway, I think implying that the reservations, which will be valid for five years, will be there for some time.
The name Istanbul conjures up happy memories for me, especially the opening of the first Bosphorus bridge, symbolising Turkey’s connection with Europe, nearly 50 years ago in October 1973. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, who is also a member of our committee, was present as a delegate to the North Atlantic Assembly and I was a very junior press officer. We were in no hurry then to bring Turkey, including the whole of Anatolia, into Europe, and the EU is still resisting Turkey’s application today.
None the less, engagement with the EU led to a number of policies that might have pleased Atatürk, one being the Council of Europe’s Istanbul convention, which Turkey was the first to sign and ratify. It has since withdrawn from it on spurious grounds. Family values were cited, connected to fears of gay rights. Poland has followed and others may. But, as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, only a few days ago Ukraine became the 36th nation to ratify the convention—lighting a beacon of hope in a so-called democratic world that seems to be back-tracking on the rights of women. Unfortunately, President Erdoğan is not Atatürk and, while he has co-operated with Europe on defence and refugees, the last few years have witnessed the brutal suppression of opposition and other domestic policies unlikely to bring Turkey closer to European membership. Istanbul is no longer the model of this convention that we would like it to be.
The noble Baroness, Lady Williams, who is unable to be here today, would remember from many previous debates on Bills that some of us were concerned about the status of migrant workers. We had all heard horror stories from Kalayaan, the non-governmental organisation concerned with migrant workers, and other reputable NGOs of women trapped in slavery by their employers without any means of escape. As the Home Office knows well, Kalayaan is a highly respected charity that has long campaigned against the tied visa, which binds migrant workers to their employer and in many cases forces them into an abusive relationship—precisely what this convention is designed to avoid.
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, for this debate, and her committee for its report. I also pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, for her tireless work to ensure that this convention was ratified.
This has been a thorough and important debate. I cannot remember how many times, led by the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, we asked the Government: “When are you going to ratify the Istanbul convention?”, and now, as we have heard, they are going to ratify it only partly.
As other noble Lords have said, the UK signed the convention—a legally binding instrument providing a comprehensive framework to counter violence against women and girls—in 2012, and it has taken almost a decade to ratify it. The provisions contained in the convention are there for a reason. The reservation affecting migrant women effectively excludes domestically abused migrant women dependent on their abuser for UK residence—who, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, said, are particularly vulnerable—from the full protection that the convention provides for other victims of domestic abuse. “If I leave my abuser I may be deported” is a dilemma that no woman should have to face.
The question the Government need to answer is: why? The Government may be concerned about claims for leave to remain based on false claims of domestic abuse, but the answer is to have mechanisms in place to ensure that claims are investigated and verified, not to exclude genuine victims from protection. In any case, the convention requires the granting of an autonomous residence permit for such victims only in the event of particularly difficult circumstances. As we have heard from the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayter, Lady Sugg and Lady Gale, more than 80 organisations have signed a letter to the Home Secretary objecting to this reservation, which comes on top of migrant victims of domestic abuse being excluded from the protections in the Domestic Abuse Act. The Istanbul convention is all about equality and non-discrimination. I thank the End Violence Against Women Coalition for its briefing on this.
My Lords, it is a pleasure and a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Paddick. I agree with all his remarks, which he made with his usual competence. I also congratulate my noble friend Lady Hayter on bringing this Motion before us today and on her chairing of the International Agreements Committee, and I thank all the Members who have spoken. My noble friend does this Room and indeed our country a great service by ensuring that this is debated, because this is a hugely important document. I want to say something more about some of the broader points made within the document as well as the reservations that her committee have pointed to. I congratulate her on that and agree absolutely with all that she said. She pointed to the work of my noble friend Lady Gale who has continually demanded that this is ratified. Although it has taken 10 years, one wonders what the timescale would have been had she not shown such tenacity.
Of course, that is true of many other members of this Committee. I was struck by many of the comments that were made. The noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, talked about the current situation, and I will come back to that, because we should look at the context within which we are discussing this.
I must say as a man that it was important that the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, referred in particular to statistics about men in South Africa. She said that the figures would obviously be much higher than those on the attitudes of men in this country, but there is a challenge to men in our country in respect to all this, and she was right to point that out.
The noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister, was right on the overseas territories and dependencies. It would be interesting to hear from the Minister why they are excluded and whether that is an exclusion for ever or for a period of time, whatever that might be.
The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, reminded us of the irony of the fact that Turkey recently withdrew from the Istanbul convention. The irony is not lost on us at all. I also appreciate the other remarks that he made.
4:43 pm
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I will say two things on the convention: one very positive and one rather more negative, I am afraid. I will start on the positive. We are delighted that, 10 years on from the very month when the Government signed the convention, they have finally tabled it for ratification—not a moment too soon. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Gale, who has done probably more than anyone else in the House to keep pressure on the Government to make this move. It was she who sponsored what became the Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Act 2017, requiring the Government to keep returning to explain why they had failed to ratify the deal. Perhaps, as someone who has known my noble friend Lady Gale for many a long year, I should have warned the Government never to take her on. Whenever she wants something, believe me, she gets it.
The reason why she pushed for earlier ratification was because the convention is good for women. It is about preventing violence, protecting women via training, safe custody or similar, prosecuting perpetrators, supporting victims and eliminating discrimination. What is not to like?
The International Agreements Committee welcomes ratification, even though it is a little late. But—it is a big but, and the negative that I must raise—the committee is deeply concerned about the reservation that the Government have added, to the detriment, as we see it, of the rights of migrant women. The exception the Government want affects a particular group of vulnerable victims of domestic abuse: those whose immigration status relies on that of their partner, in cases where it is the partner who is the perpetrator. These women have no independent right to reside here, and are thus faced with an unenviable choice: stay with the perpetrator—“Sleeping with the Enemy” is the film that comes to mind—and be able to remain in the country, or leave the perpetrator and lose her residency status. That is a choice that no woman should have to make; it is one the convention says she should not have to make, but our Government are opting out of the provision which would grant such victims the ability to get residency rights in certain circumstances.
The Government have given no reason for this opt-out. Indeed, they are close to misleading the House by saying that they are opting out because they are awaiting the results of a pilot, due this week, on the provision of support for migrant women victims. Although access to, for example, a refuge, might be important, what is much more important—and affects many more people—is that they could have to leave the country and perhaps leave their children, because leaving their partner means that they lose their right to live here.
As we know, it is only a minority of domestic abuse victims who need a refuge; many will simply move away from their partner to friends, family or to rent somewhere themselves. But for this group of abused women, even if they have the friends, family or resources to leave their partner, they risk deportation for the very act of leaving. This reinforces the power of the perpetrator and increases the risk faced by migrant victims. It flies in the face of the advice and expertise of the specialist led-by-and-for black and minority women’s organisations. More than 80 such organisations wrote to the Home Secretary about denying Article 59 protection, which would otherwise require the UK to grant residence to victims whose immigration status depended on their abusive partner, in certain circumstances.
The reservation flies in the face of the spirit of the convention, which is based on the principles of equality and non-discrimination. The opt-out cannot be right. Not only have the Government failed to explain why this protection is not needed for this group of victims but they have given no indication of when they will review or lift the reservation, or on what grounds they would refuse to lift it. We welcome the Minister filling this unenviable position at very short notice. I hope that he will have had time to find some good reasons to give the Committee when he comes to reply.
I raise one further point about the Government’s second reservation, or opt-out. The convention states that signatories may not apply a dual criminality requirement for certain offences, including sexual violence, forced marriage, female genital mutilation and forced abortion and sterilisation. However, the Government are entering a reservation which would retain the dual criminality requirement for sexual violence, forced abortion and sterilisation. The Explanatory Memorandum gives no explanation as to why these should remain subject to dual criminality, beyond the statement, which does not really make sense, that they tend to be crimes elsewhere. Again, could the Minister explain why the Government have selected these particular issues for such a carve-out?
I stress that, for the moment, we welcome that the Government signed this ground-breaking convention and that it is now being brought before us for ratification. However, we are at a loss as to why the Government should further lower their standing in the international community with this reservation, which is, of course, known to all the signatories. It will be very evident that they are failing to stand up for a particular group of migrant women suffering domestic violence. I beg to move.
The reservation on Article 44 would appear to mean that women who are subjected to some offences abroad by a UK resident who is not a UK national will not be able to seek prosecution in the UK unless those offences are also crimes in the country where they happened. This appears to leave open a loophole that will prevent women securing justice. I would be interested in my noble friend the Minister’s explanation as to why this reservation should remain.
My second area of questions relates to the purpose of the convention to promote international co-operation with a view to eliminating violence against women and domestic violence. The UK has a proud history of working with international partners on ending violence against women and girls, including the then Department for International Development’s ground-breaking What Works to Prevent Violence programme, which I am pleased to hear will continue in some form.
Many of us are looking forward to the FCDO’s women and girls strategy. Can my noble friend the Minister tell us when this will be published? Given the role that the UK has played previously to end violence against women and girls around the world, I very much welcome the Foreign Secretary’s commitment to restore funding to women and girls to pre-cuts levels. We have been given a figure of £745 million for this, which is significantly less than the total amount spent on principal and significant investment in gender equality that was cut. Can my noble friend the Minister explain how this figure was reached? I appreciate that these issues are outside his department, so I would be happy for him to follow up in writing.
The Istanbul convention is the first instrument in Europe to set legally binding standards specifically to prevent gender-based violence, protect victims of violence and punish perpetrators. In these troubling times, when we are seeing the frightening rollback of the rights of women and girls in the United States, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the prevention, protection and punishment that the convention provides are more important than ever.
My noble friend will be well aware of the scale of violence against women in this country, and that those rates greatly increased during the pandemic. The UK needs a long-term, practical and targeted approach to ending violence against women in all its forms, and the Istanbul convention offers such an approach. I very much welcome the Government’s move to ratify the convention, and I look forward to my noble friend the Minister’s response.
Making clear that violence against women and girls is seen as absolutely unacceptable has to be the first step in protection. As we have heard, the Istanbul convention was created to help to prevent and combat such violence. Amnesty International calls it “the gold standard” and states that it
“can save the lives of millions of women and girls.”
That we are not ratifying it in its entirety implies that we do not think the UK can or should reach that gold standard.
The convention sets out minimum standards for Governments in Europe on prevention, protection and prosecution of violence against women and domestic violence. It includes obligations for states to set up protection and support services to respond to violence against women, such as an adequate number of shelters, rape crisis centres, free 24/7 helplines, and psychological counselling and medical care for survivors of violence. It also calls on the authorities to ensure education on gender equality, sexuality and healthy relationships. Michael Gove’s misplaced acceptance of the arguments of those who resisted sex education in schools as promoting sex among underage children—a policy that was finally reversed much later, and which might have helped protect some girls who are now protesting about #MeToo—stood in the way of ratifying this treaty earlier. Yet Ireland felt able to ratify it in 2019.
The treaty offers protection to all women and girls without discrimination, to ensure no one is left behind. That is in line with our also signing up to the sustainable development goals, which apply in the United Kingdom as much as they do in the poorest countries globally.
The convention has specific provisions for refugee and migrant women and girls, as we have heard, introducing the possibility of granting migrant women who are survivors of domestic violence an autonomous residence permit when their residence status depends on that of their abusive partner. It also requests Governments to recognise gender-based violence against women as a form of persecution within the meaning of the 1951 refugee convention. One can see why this particular Home Secretary might have been wary. What is more, the convention recognises that at the heart of things there is inequality, and that Governments should therefore put in place measures to change attitudes that result in individuals and societies condoning or accepting violence against women.
There have been allegations that the convention undermines the notion of the “traditional family”. Parliaments in Slovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria have argued that they should not need to ratify the convention. As many will know, Turkey has actually pulled out of it, saying that it is
“incompatible with Turkey’s social and family values.”
Were we really wanting to align ourselves with such positions? Yet we have made two reservations to our ratification of the treaty, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, has explained. She has outlined very clearly the view of the Select Committee. I am very glad that the committee has examined what is happening here.
On dual criminality, the Government accept that crimes such as FGM or forced marriage can be subject to UK law, even if they are not illegal in the country where these are carried out. How can the Home Secretary seem to conclude, for example, that rape should not be included here? Precisely which forms of violence against women and girls do we approve of? In relation to the migrant victims’ scheme, she says that it is under review. They have had long enough to consider this, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, made clear. Again, are we designating certain women as second-class and saying that what happens to migrant women does not matter? The Select Committee concludes that it does not see a justification for the reservation in relation to women migrants. The noble Baroness explained very clearly why it concluded this. Is the Home Secretary really saying that she has no concern for migrants who have been or are subject to domestic violence?
At the request particularly of my noble friend Lady Hamwee, who would have liked to have contributed today but was unable to do so, can the Minister tell me, possibly afterwards, what representations the office of Nicole Jacobs, the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, has made on the UK’s ratification of the Istanbul convention, including on any exclusions?
There was never a justification for the delay in ratifying the convention, and it is astonishing that after a decade of foot-dragging, the Government now wish to have these exclusions. They are totally incompatible with our signature to the SDGs, and the position we have taken in our overseas programmes, if nothing else. I am glad that we are finally ratifying the convention, and pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, and all the others who fought for this for so long. I look forward to the Minister’s full response, in a letter if necessary.
Other noble Lords have discussed—and I am sure others will follow—the reservations to be made by the Government in the ratification of the treaty. Instead of providing replication on the topic of the reservations, I want to use this opportunity to seek clarity from my noble friend the Minister on the process of extending the ratification of the treaty to the Crown dependencies and British Overseas Territories. If my understanding is correct, the provisions of the treaty will not extend to the Crown dependencies and overseas territories at this time.
I understand that Her Majesty’s Government have informed all Crown dependencies and overseas territories that it is the UK Government’s intention to ratify the Istanbul convention by the end of July. Of course, I respect the self-governing status of the overseas territories, but can my noble friend the Minister please update the Grand Committee on, first, what action the Government have taken or will take to promote the convention to the Crown dependencies and overseas territories; secondly, whether the Government have undertaken any analysis of whether the internal laws of the Crown dependencies and British Overseas Territories are currently compliant with the treaty; and, thirdly, what work the Government are undertaking to encourage our friends to begin the consultation processes so that, if desired, they can have the treaty extended to them?
I welcome the Government’s intention to ratify this treaty and commend Her Majesty’s Government for the work that has been and will continue to be done as we unite to prevent, combat and eradicate all forms of violence against women and girls.
While the ratification is a huge step forward, it is a shame that the Government’s approach to it includes opting out of life-saving support and protection for migrant women. Article 59 provides a lifeline for migrant women survivors, as it requires member states to grant residence to victims whose immigration status depends on an abusive partner. The decision to make a reservation is extremely concerning, as it denies migrant women survivors life-saving support. It means that migrant women who need the protection of the convention will be excluded from it. This goes against the spirit of the convention, which is firmly based on the principles of equality and non-discrimination.
There is much evidence about the need for Article 59 to provide vital support for migrant women experiencing violence. This evidence, provided by numerous specialist women’s organisations during the passage of the Domestic Abuse Act, clearly established the gap in support for migrant victims of domestic abuse whose residency relates to their abuser and who have no recourse to public funds.
Despite the 10 years the Government have taken for ratification, they have stated that they do not want to delay based on the pilot scheme and the evidence it will produce, and have decided to ratify by applying a reservation to the whole of Article 59. It is interesting to note that the advice and expertise of the specialist women’s organisations make it clear that ratification without reservations does not need to be dependent on the findings of the pilot scheme evaluation.
Over the years, I have asked numerous Oral and Written Questions, taken part in debates asking the Government when the Istanbul convention would be ratified and taken a Private Member’s Bill, which I referred to earlier, though your Lordships’ House. At long last we have an answer, and the Government have said that by 31 July they will ratify the convention with certain reservations. But this might not be the end of me asking questions, as I am sure noble Peers will want to know when these reservations will be withdrawn.
Once again, I give my thanks to the committee and our excellent chair, my noble friend Lady Hayter, for producing the report highlighting many points of concern. I am grateful to the IC Change campaigning organisation and the Southall Black Sisters for their advice, support and briefings over many years, as they campaigned to ensure that the Government ratify the Istanbul convention. Let us hope we have as little delay as possible to enable full ratification. I, like many others, look forward to that day.
Recognising all this has been the Conservative Party—we must not sound surprised—under the noble Lord, Lord Hague, and other Foreign Office Ministers, including the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, who all developed a strong policy of contesting violence against women and girls in foreign and domestic affairs. Other Peers, such as the noble Baronesses, Lady Sugg, Lady Helic and Lady Hodgson, have been involved more recently.
The present Conservative Government have campaigned to eliminate violence against women and girls of any kind, whether in the United Kingdom or elsewhere, yet the convention is 10 years old and is still unratified by us. So, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, said, this short debate is primarily to probe the Home Office’s real intentions towards the dependence of migrant workers should they face domestic violence. It seems that instead of crossing the road to help them, we will be passing by on the other side. I fear that instead of correcting this apparent injustice, the Government will find it more convenient to leave it exactly as it is. As our report says, we cannot understand why the Government hesitate to allow councils to offer the protection of the convention to migrant workers who are unavoidably dependent on the residency of their spouse or partner.
The Government will say that they are awaiting the outcome of a pilot scheme to provide for migrant victims of domestic abuse, but, as the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, said, it is unclear how this support is dependent on agreeing to provide autonomous residence permits to migrant women in the circumstances set out in the convention. It is a mark of the standing of Southall Black Sisters that the Government chose that organisation for the pilot.
Similarly, under a separate reservation, UK residents who are not UK nationals may not face prosecution in the UK for certain crimes of sexual violence committed abroad, such as marital rape, and any UK resident may not be prosecuted in the UK for forced abortion and sterilisation crimes committed abroad. The convention says a dual criminality requirement for these and other offences may not apply, but the UK Government, through this reservation, are applying the dual criminality requirement that offending behaviour is a criminal offence in the country where it happened and in the UK.
I accept that it is usual practice not to prosecute someone for doing something in another country for which they could not be prosecuted in that country, but the convention sets out where it is necessary to disapply that practice in order to protect women and girls from violence. The Government give an example to justify this reservation of a German national having sex with a 15 year-old partner, since the age of consent in Germany is 14. We have a Crown Prosecution Service—an independent prosecuting authority—that decides on the basis of the likelihood of conviction and whether it is in the public interest to prosecute. Just like the investigation into whether the domestic abuse of a migrant victim is genuine before applying the convention and providing an autonomous residence permit, the CPS would fully consider all the facts before deciding whether a prosecution is in the public interest.
Those resident in the UK are under an obligation to know what the UK accepts as legally permissible, and the UK is entitled to require those who want to live in the UK to abide by our laws if they wish to remain resident. Again, this part of the convention is there for a very good reason; there are safeguards, and therefore there is no good reason for the Government’s reservation. If the Government do not think that these provisions should be part of the convention, why do they not propose amendments to the convention, rather than saying that the UK is a special case where parts of the convention will not apply?
As the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, said, part of the purpose of the convention is to promote and encourage international co-operation. How will the Government’s reservations affect the UK’s ability to encourage other countries to tackle violence against women and girls? The statistics so powerfully quoted by my noble friend Lady Northover show how much work still needs to be done to change attitudes and cultures towards women and girls internationally, as well as at home.
We strongly support the ratification of the convention in full.
I was a member of the Council of Europe for two and a half years, and I agree very much with my noble friend Lady Hayter’s remarks on the importance of the work that it does and on the continuing confusion that it is somehow the EU and we have left all that. It is important to note the way the Council of Europe was set up and how it was set up to establish human rights, not as a politically expedient measure that you decide at a particular moment in time whether you agree or not, but as a universal standard that applies throughout time. That is the standard that we should remember—that a human right is a human right. It is not a politically expedient thing to adhere to when it suits; it should absolutely be at the core of everything that we do. The Council of Europe has done a tremendous job over a huge period of time.
We are pleased that the Government have decided to ratify this. The Motion before us asks us to take note of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence. Quite rightly, the Committee has focused on some of the reservations that the Government have expressed and their criticisms of it. I join my noble friend Lady Hayter and the Committee in the criticisms that have been made of the Government in asking them to justify why there are these two particular reservations, with respect in particular to Article 59, on migrant workers, and Article 44.
This is a massive document. Let us remember, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, pointed out to us, that as we debate and discuss this take-note Motion, we still have a situation in which rape prosecutions are at the lowest level ever, as far as I am aware, and up to two women victims of domestic violence are killed every week. I could quote huge numbers of other statistics, which we would all abhor. As much as it is about the reservations, my question is: how will the Government, in taking note of this convention, use it as a springboard for further action?
There is law after law. I am sure that some of the noble Lords here are more diligent than I am. I did not read every relevant law on every single page, but there are certainly a huge number of laws relevant to protecting women and ending domestic abuse and sexual violence—yet in our society they are still real problems. How will the passing and taking note of this, with or without those reservations, improve the situation? The Government need to set out and explain, not only through plans, new strategies and taking note of documents, how this will make a difference. Why will this be the document that, in 10 years, we will say was the watershed moment when this was implemented in a way that meant that some of the disgraceful things we see, debate and discuss in our Parliament are coming to an end?
I use one example: Chapter III of the convention, on prevention. The online Bill is a massive opportunity for the Government that cannot be missed. My noble friend Lady Hayter and others will be familiar with this, with either their children or their grandchildren: the wild west that operates online, in particular for girls at school, is an outrage. It cannot be legal or right. This document says we have to prevent it. It says all the right things. The Minister will agree that we have to do something. It is not a party-political point or a smart point to make in a debate. It is a disgrace and a scandal that as a society, a state and a Parliament we cannot get hold of what girls at school in particular—not exclusively; it affects some boys—have to deal with. I use this as one example; there are many other examples in our society. I will not be explicit about it, because noble Lords know the sorts of photographs and images they are routinely sent and the sorts of victimisation and bullying they experience as a result of that.
Why will taking note of this convention make a difference? When I listen to debates on online safety, everybody agrees but nobody is sure whether it will work. The starting point is to be honest about how bad it is. Amanda Spielman’s report on this was absolutely damning. I do not want it for my children, my grandchildren or anybody else’s. This debate is an opportunity not to say to the Government, “You wicked Government; you’re not doing anything”, but to ask what as a Parliament and as a country we are going to do about the fact that our young girls at school are exposed to things they should not be exposed to. It has to stop. How are we going to do that? Debating this convention gives us another opportunity to act as a springboard to do something about that.
The Government want to enact the prevention chapter to which I have referred and many of the others in the convention, but I ask the Minister how they are going to move them from paper to policy to practice. How will we know, in five, 10 or 15 years, whether this has worked? How will the Government measure, understand and know that?
My noble friend Lady Hayter and the committee, with their knowledge and experience, have pointed out these reservations. I will make one or two more points on them before concluding. Paragraph 12 of the International Agreements Committee report say that there will be a reservation on
“the obligation to provide autonomous residence permits to migrant women whose residency depends on that of their spouse or partner and who have been victims of domestic abuse”.
I cannot imagine what the consequences of that will be. Somebody who is a victim of domestic abuse whose residency depends on the status of the abuser will be denied legal residence because we have a reservation on this Council of Europe protocol. As my noble friend Lady Hayter said, how on earth can that be right? It flies in the face of common decency.
I do not know what the legal position is but, if somebody had come to me when I was a Member of Parliament and said, “I have been abused by so-and-so. He has a criminal record for it and I have nowhere to go. The Home Office is now pursuing me because I have no residency. The law says I should go back to them”, what should I have done? Was I supposed to have said, “Go back to your abuser. Go and live in their house”? I ask the Minister what on earth the abused victim is supposed to do. The legal position is brilliantly phrased in the document, but I would not tell a human being walking around to go back to their abuser. Would the Minister? Would anybody? I would not, so what are they supposed to do? Yet we have a reservation against granting them any sort of residency status. I do not understand it.
The committee asked for a more detailed explanation on the Government’s second reservation on dual criminality and Article 44. No doubt the Minister will come forward with that.
To conclude, I say to my noble friend Lady Hayter, to her committee and to all who contributed that this should have an audience of millions of people in this country, who would see the universal standards being asked of us and the attempts that the Government and all Governments have made to try to improve the situation. The frank reality is that we have made progress, but progress has been slow and is, in many cases, still shocking. How will this make a difference?
I am not a cynic and am always positive, so my hope, expectation and belief is that this will help us to move forward. The Government need to be a bit clearer about their implementation plan, how they are going to answer some of the real questions that people have raised and why this will make a difference to the real problems that all of us see in our society. They simply cannot be acceptable now, let alone in the future.