John Slinger

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) for her assiduous campaigning and for bringing this important issue to the Chamber. This is a problem suffered by women but caused by men—not all men, of course—and men must be the main part of the solution. Women’s spaces are being constricted. Women are forced to take exercise in more public places and to avoid footpaths and canal towpaths, and parents of daughters will have had those conversations with them. However, when they move into those more public places, which are better lit and supposedly safer, they face intimidation, catcalling and the like. That is a total outrage, as my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Anna Dixon) said. If it were happening to men, I can assure Members that it would be dealt with very rapidly. Women are adapting their behaviour, but it is men’s behaviour and attitudes that need adapting, confronting, changing and—yes—on occasion prosecuting. Many men and boys do not even know they are doing anything wrong, but they are intimidating women, and shrinking their status and freedom as citizens. We therefore need a multifaceted approach, and that of course is what the Government are taking through their VAWG strategy, encompassing education, public education, police and criminal justice system work, and more. This is clearly not something that can be prosecuted out of existence, but part of the challenge is to defeat the defeatism, and more can and is being done. If we mention catcalling, people instinctively say, “That can’t be dealt with; How could you prosecute it?” However, as we heard in relation to the Jog On campaign, it is possible for police to take action. I want to touch briefly on the work of Warwickshire police in Rugby. They have a safer neighbourhood team that carries out VAWG walks; an enhanced policing initiative on Friday and Saturday nights that promotes Ask for Angela; and Project Vigilant, in which officers are trained to detect predatory behaviour. They have also set up a working group that looks at surveys from the parkrun and walking groups to get data so that they can work out whether they would like to carry out an operation similar to the Jog On operation carried out by Surrey police. They also do a lot of education in schools. We need to ensure that there are no no-go areas for women and girls in our society, and to commit to work more to tackle the misogynistic, predatory behaviour of some men and boys. They need to be the people who feel worried and intimidated when they go into public spaces—or any other spaces—with the attitudes we have talked about and perpetuate them.