Jerome Mayhew

This is not my first International Women’s Day debate, but each one presents a fantastic opportunity to learn about the exceptional women who have made our history and to be reminded, as though I need it, that many of those exceptional women are in the Chamber today. My contribution for Norfolk is Elizabeth Fry. I am particularly proud of her, because she happens to be my five times great aunt—that is as close as I get to real commitment and fame, I am afraid. In the early 19th century, she was horrified by the conditions in prisons. She visited Newgate prison and instead of walking on by, she took action. She funded prison schools for the children who were incarcerated along with their mothers in those days; she taught employment skills; she promoted rehabilitation as a concept, which was new at that stage; and she developed a wider movement for reform. In 1818, Elizabeth Fry was the first woman ever to give evidence to a House of Commons inquiry. Directly because of her campaigning work, we have the Gaols Act 1823 and the Prisons Act 1835, which were the beginning of the end of the truly terrible conditions of the 18th century. We talk now about violence against women and girls, but that is not new. In her personal diaries, she expressly discussed the need to protect female prisoners from rape and sexual exploitation. I recognise that things have improved beyond recognition from those days, and we should celebrate that today and at other times, but too much remains the same. Under the last Government, new offences of stalking, non-fatal strangulation, coercive control and public sexual harassment were introduced. The fact that that new legislation was needed demonstrates our corporate failure to change attitudes. Those conditions would have been familiar to Elizabeth Fry back in the 1820s. Our work is not about legislation, because that is not the solution. Legislation deals with and treats symptoms, but the problem is the generational transfer of attitudes, I am sorry to say, typically from father to son. It is our work to challenge those generational attitudes. I do not often agree with the hon. Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler), but on this I stand shoulder to shoulder with her.