MPs listen in shocked silence as Jess Phillips reads list of women killed by men
Jess Phillips #JessPhillips
MPs sat in silence as they heard Jess Phillips read out a long list of women who have been killed by men in the last year.
In what has become a grim annual event to mark International Women’s Day, the Labour MP read out more than 110 names in a bid to help ensure “the scale of male violence against women can be known”.
Deputy Speaker Eleanor Laing temporarily suspended the time limit on members’ speeches – and the rule which normally prohibits the reading of lists – in order to allow Ms Phillips to complete the shocking roll call.
Ms Phillips said: “In this place we count what we care about. We count vaccines done, we count the number of people on benefits, we rule or oppose based on a count. And we obsessively track that data. We love to count data about our own popularity.
“However we don’t currently count dead women. No current study is done into the patterns every year and the data of victims who are killed, die by suicide or die suddenly.
“Dead women is a thing that we’ve all just accepted as part of our daily lives. Dead women is just one of those things.
“Killed women are not vanishingly rare. Killed women are common.”
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After reading the list, Ms Phillips added: “Her name rings out across all our media. We have all prayed that the name of Sarah Everard would never be on any list. Let’s pray every day and work every day to make sure nobody’s name ends up on this list again.”
Conservative former minister Maria Miller opened the Commons debate by paying a tribute to Sarah Everard.
Mrs Miller told MPs: “I want to start by sending my thoughts and prayers to the family and friends of Sarah Everard who are going through such a painful time.
“Her abduction has sent shockwaves across the UK. Sarah did everything to avoid danger and, let’s be very clear, women are not the problem here.
“But for many women this news story will bring back memories of threatening situations they have found themselves in through no fault of their own; being sexually harassed on the streets, walking home from meeting friends, anonymous threats of physical violence on social media, sexually assaulted in plain sight in rush hour on public transport on the way to work.”
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She added: “Many choose not to talk about this, choose not to report it for fear of not being believed or taken seriously – but the research shows these sorts of events are parts of women’s everyday life and that is why what happened to Sarah Everard feels so very close to home.”
Mrs Miller added: “We should not accept a culture of violence towards women, we should not be complicit in covering it up and we need to give women effective mechanisms to report what happens, to expose the scale of the problem, to call it out publicly and to punish those who perpetrate this culture of fear.”
But Labour former minister and Mother of the House Harriet Harman criticised Dame Cressida Dick’s comments on Ms Everard’s disappearance.
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Ms Harman said: “This International Women’s Day debate comes in the shadow of the menace of male violence against women.”
She continued: “Women will find no reassurance at all in the Metropolitan Commissioner’s statement that, and I quote, ‘it is extremely rare for a woman to be abducted off the street’.
“Women know abduction and murder is just the worst end of a spectrum of everyday male threat to women. When the police advise women don’t go out at night on their own, women ask why do they have to be subjected to an informal curfew?”
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She added: “It is not women who are the problem here, it is men, and the criminal justice system fails women and lets men off the hook. Whether it is rape or whether it is domestic homicide, women are judged and blamed.”
Ms Harman added: “So, let’s hear no more false reassurances, let’s have action. Next Monday we are going to be debating in this House the Police Crime Sentencing and Courts Bill – that is the chance for this Government to banish the culture of male excuses from the criminal justice system and instead of blaming women, start protecting them.”
The list in full