Hansard

Politics is a life that we choose because we think that we can do some good. More than that, it is because we think that our opinions and views about life should shape the world that we live in. We think that they could help those who feel left behind or forgotten, or who are struggling, and give them a voice and a belief that their opinions also count. Yes, we are all here in the chamber because we are in the business of doing good.

What an ideal—and what an absolute joke in the eyes of the Scottish Conservative Party. For 10 years, the Tory Government at Westminster has slashed at our valued social security system in a deliberate act of sabotage. The question that I would have put to Ruth Davidson if she had bothered to take any interventions is a question of judgment. She should tell us why rape victims have to pay the price of the deficit while the Tories give tax cuts to the richest people in our society.

The disabled, the poor, the ill and the carers of our society have all been victims of Tory austerity. Not content with that, the Tories have now turned their grasping, grubbing, miserly attention to the tax credits system—one of Labour’s finest achievements. Is there no end to the Tories’ desire to ensure that those with the least have even less? As the casual victims of that clawing meanness, women who have two children but who have had a third as a result of a rape are now at the mercy of the harsh diktats of a Government that is intent on dismantling the vital safety net of benefits.

A woman must either admit to being raped and to having a child born of that physically, mentally and emotionally scarring crime, and get the financial help that she needs, or she must go without. Without a doubt, the Tories’ family cap is arbitrary and unfair, and the rape clause that accompanies it is utterly horrific and abhorrent.

I look across the chamber at Ruth Davidson, Jackson Carlaw and others, many of whom I know have not always agreed with decisions that their own party has taken in Westminster in the past. Yet not one of those so-called different, detoxified Tories will speak out against this latest abomination. Not one will stand up and say that asking rape victims to declare on a form that their child was the result of an appalling crime is just wrong. What is worse is that they even try to defend it.

There is nothing fluffy about David Mundell—a man who cannot answer when asked on radio whether he feels comfortable asking rape victims to fill in such a form. He then has the brass neck to accuse those of us who abhor the rape clause of playing politics with people’s vulnerability and misery.

There is nothing brave about tank-driving Ruth Davidson when she fails to tackle her own Government on this appalling issue and hides behind a spokesman for days.

Here is someone who is brave. I have a letter from a woman who wrote to me to tell her story about her rape and how this barbaric policy would have affected her. I have her permission to read it in full; I have removed only the references to the child’s gender and age. The Tories may not want to listen to me, but they surely cannot ignore her. The letter says:

“Four years ago, one of my closest friends—someone I trusted—raped me.

It happened once. I used emergency contraception but still fell pregnant.

For lots of reasons I decided I couldn’t terminate the pregnancy and went on to have a baby.

The speculation about the father was awful. I accepted that I would be labelled sexually promiscuous as a result; I was prepared for that.

I expected—and received—horrendous treatment from my husband’s family; I was prepared for that.

I was prepared for the financial hardship, having just been made redundant; I was as prepared as I could be for life as a single parent.

What I wasn’t prepared for was the impact the labelling would have on my three existing children, born into wedlock and brought up in a stable family home.

I wasn’t prepared for the shame I would feel.

I wasn’t prepared for the fear of anyone finding out and refusing to believe me.

I wasn’t prepared for the feeling that suicide was the only way out.

I certainly wasn’t prepared for the amount of hatred and resentment I would have for my own child.

Years on and I have a happy, healthy child. They are worshipped, not just by me but by my extended family and even better my husband, a brave and loving man.

My child doesn’t know where they came from and if I have anything to do with it, they never will.

Nobody knows, aside from me, my husband and the mental health nurse who helped me through this living hell.

Though far from perfect and with challenges of its own, I hope the secrecy will give them the chance to live as close to a normal life as possible.

There have been so many pleas to take legal action or to widen the circle of trust to allow those who love me to provide support during the difficult times, but this is a risk I could never take; my need to protect my children from the truth came above all other considerations.

The wider the circle of midwives, consultants, family, the less chance I had of protecting myself and my children from the permanent and damaging stigma attached to rape.

I claimed Tax Credits from birth to eleven months old; the hand up I needed when I was at my most vulnerable to allow me to re-stabilise my family.

Tax Credits kept our heads above water, a buffer between us and the food bank; for that I am eternally grateful.

There is no way I could complete that awful form of shame, no matter what the consequences.

Looking back, that really could have been the thing that tipped me completely over the edge; the difference between surviving to tell the tale and not.”

That is the reality of the Tory rape clause, or the “awful form of shame”, as the letter writer puts it. That is the burden that this Tory Government wants to put on victims of rape because it does not want to pay for more than two children in a poor family.

It is an absolutely sickening state of affairs, but it is not the author of that letter or any other rape victim who should feel shame; it is those on the Tory benches here and in Westminster who refuse to act. I urge every single Tory MSP to stop and think about the ordeal that they are asking women to go through. Oppose this clause and finally do some good.

I move amendment S5M-05282.1, to leave out from “supports those” to “Pensions” and insert:

“further condemns any government that forces women to relive a horrific event in their lives to access social security for a third child; notes the many organisations that have called for a reverse of the two-child cap, including the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which states that these changes will result in an additional 200,000 children in the UK being pushed into poverty; supports those third sector and healthcare organisations that will not be third party assessors on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions, and condemns the pressure being put on them to carry out a procedure for which many will not be trained”.