Hansard

In closing for Scottish Labour, I share the sentiment that has been expressed in the debate and I add my voice to other members’ voices.

Not only is violence against women sadly still a major concern in 2021, but it appears to be getting worse in Scotland and around the world. If anyone imagines that it is becoming a thing of the past, they are sorely mistaken. The cabinet secretary and Meghan Gallacher opened by mentioning the shocking statistics, from the UK and around the world, and others across the chamber emphasised them. This is a pandemic.

We know that in the UK this year at least 126 women have been killed by men, or that a man is the principal suspect in their death. How can we look at those numbers and think that there is not a serious problem in our society with the way in which men view and treat women? Whether it is domestic violence, sexual harassment or rampant misogyny, women continue to be the target of far too many men’s terrible behaviour and aggression. I agree with Maggie Chapman that if we cannot understand how serious that is and address the root cause, we do not deserve to be standing here. A big step towards addressing that root cause is exposing those parts of our society that apologise for and normalise the violence. Many of them are key parts of our establishment and seem to think that they are immune to the problem. Michelle Thomson, Pam Duncan-Glancy, Pauline McNeill and Mercedes Villalba talked about that.

There could not be any greater example of the dangers that women face across the UK than the terrible murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer, who used his authority to subdue and kidnap her. In the wake of that event, women naturally felt particularly vulnerable and angry. Yet at a peaceful vigil to remember Sarah and to protest the police’s failings in London, officers pinned down and arrested many protesters under Covid regulations. To even consider that a normal or rational thing to do is evidence of stone age thinking by supposed pillars of our society. It was done by the very service that is there to protect us, to women who were responding to one of the police’s own killing a young woman. Who has been held responsible? The Metropolitan Police commissioner continues to be in post, despite those events, while some of the women at the protest have been made out to be criminals. How am I supposed to tell young people in my region—or, indeed, my own daughter—that this is a safe country for women, when that is the headline news and that is the police response? Something needs to change, and it needs to change quickly.

Often the institutional response to what I and many other women regularly see is minimal, to say the least. We have heard from others that Rape Crisis Scotland has highlighted how Police Scotland’s responses to rape allegations are riddled with poor communications, outdated attitudes, and lengthy and unclear proceedings that leave survivors feeling isolated and anxious. Is it any wonder that so few women come forward and report those crimes?

Another issue mentioned during the debate, which is part of the same problem, is the fact that women now feel that they have to boycott clubs and bars up and down the country in response to serious concerns about increases in drink spiking. For years, those concerns have been met only with public relations campaigns and awareness-raising approaches, but how many people are convicted of spiking drinks, or of similar activities, in Scotland—a charge known as “drugging”? Over the past three years, where there is data available, the answer is that no one has been charged, so either all those women are making up the problem or the crime is not being detected at all. If that many men were saying that they had fallen victim to spiking, I wonder whether the statistics would be the same.

Every woman who is a victim of violence must be treated equally and fairly by an establishment that understands, or at least seeks to begin to understand, what they have gone through. That begins with accepting that it is a serious problem that we do not have under control. It means direct engagement with grassroots organisations, health and recovery charities and, as Pam Gosal rightly said, right across, and sensitive to, all our communities. It requires institutions such as the police to open their eyes and ears to what is going on.

I thank Jim Fairlie for his comments about men joining in with the debate and I thank Neil Gray, Jim Fairlie and Alexander Stewart for their excellent and thoroughly worthwhile contributions. We needed to hear them. We need to deal with the sorts of attitudes that we expose young men to, and that encourage a culture of entitlement instead of one of respect—a point that was raised by the cabinet secretary. If we can approach the problem as both a criminal justice issue, and as a societal issue that is mixed in with the way in which some men think it is acceptable to behave, we can begin to tackle it. Until then, it will just be more PR stunts and not enough serious change.

I finish by repeating what Pauline McNeill said: if we want things to change, we need to be brave. All of us need to be brave.