MP: Law will treat rapist less harshly than vandal
MINISTERS worry more about statues than women, Labour MP Jess Phillips has claimed, while calling for misogyny to be treated as a hate crime.
As her party confirmed it would vote against the new Police Bill today, she told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge On Sunday programme: ‘In the bill there is more mention of statues than there is of women.
‘You currently get more for flytipping than you can get for stalking.
‘I think you should get more for rape than you do for defacing a statue.’
The bill, introduced after Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion protests last year, would increase the maximum penalty for damaging a statue from three months to ten years.
Ms Phillips – who last week read to MPs the names of 118 women killed by men in the UK last year – said the legislation ought to outlaw street harassment, and increase the minimum sentence for rape from five to seven years.
The government is reopening a call for evidence on violence against women after Sarah Everard’s death.
But Birmingham Yardley MP Ms Phillips said: ‘I don’t want these platitudes. I want action from a government who has an enormous majority who can stop saying thank you and being sorry and can start doing something.’
The bill would also give police power to ban demonstrations they think might have a ‘serious impact’ or be too noisy. And it would allow the home secretary to decide the definition of ‘serious’ without consulting MPs.
Human rights barrister Adam Wagner said: ‘This would put the current situation, where Covid regulations have given police too much power over free speech rights, on a permanent footing.’
Women’s minister Victoria Atkins insisted the Clapham Common vigil would not have been banned under the new bill. She told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show it was aimed at ‘the very disruptive protests we’ve seen where people have been gluing themselves to buildings and gates, and stopping people going about their business’.
Conservative rebels also claimed that civil liberties are under attack.
William Wragg, MP for Hazel Grove in Greater Manchester, called the policing of the vigil ‘shocking’. But he added: ‘It’s disproportionate laws introduced by ministers and passed by parliament which are to blame. Time to repeal them, restoring people’s freedoms.’