Hansard

As Fiona McLeod reminded us, great progress has been made in the years of the Scottish Parliament on our response to violence against women. That was reinforced for me yesterday when I looked back at a debate that I took part in in the Westminster Parliament in July 1993. In it, I criticised the Scottish Office—as it was at the time—for a campaign that tried to persuade women to change their behaviour rather than challenging men.

Over the past 16 years of this Parliament, we have had a lot of cross-party consensus on the issue and there has been a lot of continuity of policy between the previous Administration and the current one. Throughout, there has been gender-based analysis of the issue, recognition that the problem is a very serious one that is prevalent and has been hidden away for too long, acceptance that it is overwhelmingly perpetuated by men and experienced by women and an awareness that it is rooted in persistent gender inequalities and that, therefore, action on violence against women must include action on a lot of other issues such as unequal pay, gender segregation, the objectification of women and so on.

I welcome “Equally Safe: Scotland’s strategy for preventing and eradicating violence against women and girls”, which was published in June 2014, and the four workstreams that have flowed from it—albeit belatedly, but let us not worry about that today. The capacity and capability workstream is really interesting and important because it addresses how we improve capacity and capability across statutory services such as health, education, housing, social work and so on. That is an issue that people have tried to address over the years.

I will give an interesting example. I am really impressed by a great campaign by the nursing society of Glasgow Caledonian University. I think that its blog will go live tomorrow, which is the first day of its 16-day campaign. It has been doing a lot of work, led by Louisa Power, the aim of which is to empower the next generation of nurses to support a vulnerable group of patients that they come across frequently in their day-to-day work and to have courageous conversations and confront the issue in order to help those patients, who are overwhelmingly women. I congratulate the nursing society on that work, which is a model for other initiatives that could take place across the public sector.

Another important workstream is on primary prevention, which has been discussed in many of the debates on the subject over the years, including the one in 1993 at Westminster. In that debate, I praised the Zero Tolerance campaign, and indeed I initiated a debate on its twentieth anniversary. It led the way, but there are lots of other examples.

Christina McKelvie and I, as co-conveners of the cross-party group on men’s violence against women and children, will be hosting an interesting event next week, which members are welcome to attend if they can get to Parliament at 6 pm on Friday 4 December. Rape Crisis Scotland has been doing work on prevention and, crucially, working with young people and involving them. Interested as I am in all the work that we will see then, members will understand that I am particularly interested in four short films that have been made by students at Leith academy, in which they raise issues of consent, sexual violence and so on. Involving young people in preventative work is another important aspect.

The third workstream, which Christine Grahame talked about at length, is justice. That is on our agenda in Parliament through consideration of the Abusive Behaviour and Sexual Harm (Scotland) Bill. We know about the revenge porn issue, and I pay tribute to Christina McKelvie for her work on that, and about the statutory aggravation where domestic abuse is a component of the offence, which Christine Grahame spoke about. In addition, a non-harassment order will be allowed if someone is mentally unfit to stand trial. I think that I discussed that issue in the corresponding debate last year, mentioning the very high-profile individual who highlighted the problem in relation to her experiences.

Still to come—there is some disappointment that it is not in the bill, although we understand the reasons for that—is a specific offence of domestic abuse, which the overwhelming majority of people who responded to the consultation wanted because domestic abuse often involves a pattern of abusive and coercive behaviour, and that is not necessary reflected in any of the disposals that are available. I imagine that that important new offence will be legislated for early in the next session of Parliament.

It is right to pay tribute, as other members have done, to all the groups that have led in this field. I will quote a couple of sentences, on another couple of issues, from a statement by Engender, Rape Crisis Scotland, Scottish Women’s Aid, the Scottish Women’s Convention, White Ribbon Scotland, the Women’s Support Project and Zero Tolerance, which are all national organisations. In their statement welcoming “Equally Safe”, they say:

“It is also important that the strategy explicitly acknowledges the impact of violence on all women and girls in Scotland and the different risk factors that may affect diverse groups of women and girls and their experiences of and vulnerability to violence. We look forward to the detail of this in the forthcoming action plan. In particular, we feel that refugee and asylum seeking women, and women with insecure immigration status more broadly, should be explicitly recognised in strategic work to tackle and prevent violence against women and girls in Scotland.”

The issue of refugees is obviously topical at the moment, and the response to refugees needs to be gendered as well, not least because of the sexual violence that may have been experienced by some if not many of them. There is also the persistent issue of those whose immigration status means that they have no recourse to public funds. I am told that local authorities and, indeed, the Scottish Government are taking a hard line on that. I know that there may be legal reasons for that, but let us allow some of our great national and local organisations that work with women who are suffering violence to give some support to those women.

There are also many local groups. I pay tribute to Edinburgh Women’s Aid, the Edinburgh Women’s Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre and Shakti Women’s Aid. They provide local services that include refuge provision. With the demise of the supporting people money, funding is under pressure and another issue needs to be raised. Edinburgh Women’s Aid and Shakti currently have an 18-month contract with the council, after which the service will be put out to tender. I was most concerned to hear that, and I am glad that Scottish Women’s Aid is developing guidance on that with COSLA. They are making it clear that tendering for those services is inappropriate and is not required by European legislation. I hope that that is taken on board by the council in Edinburgh and elsewhere.

My time is just about up, so my final point is on an issue that has come up on more than one occasion in the cross-party group. We would like the UK Government, in the first instance, and perhaps the Scottish Government to sign up to the Istanbul convention. Various members have drawn attention to the fact that violence against women is an international problem, and the Istanbul convention is a European convention that we should sign up to. There is also the wider international agenda that was highlighted by the Beijing declaration, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, and there is an international campaign during the 16 days, the theme of which this year is the relationship between militarism and the right to education in situations of violent conflict. Christina McKelvie spoke eloquently about that. We are part of a great international movement because, tragically, violence against women is a big international problem.

Without patting ourselves on the back too much, we should acknowledge that the Scottish Parliament has made progress, but let us concentrate on what remains to be done.