‘DAVIDSON’S REPUTATION RUINED BY RAPE CLAUSE’
RUTH Davidson has been accused of “abrogating her responsibility to the women of Scotland” by failing to speak out against the UK Government’s ‘rape clause’ and warned that her reputation could be damaged ‘beyond redemption’. The Scots Tory leader faced a blistering attack last night from a leading women’s rights campaigner for backing the rule where a woman has to prove a third child was conceived as a result of rape to be exempt from a two-child tax credit cap. Renowned psychologist Dr Mairead Tagg – an expert in male violence who worked with Women’s Aid for two decades – said Davidson risked destroying her reputation by failing to use her influence to persuade the Prime Minister to drop the policy.
Davidson supports the exemptions the UK Government has put in place on restrictions to child tax credits, and said she wants to see ministers “implement them in the most compassionate way possible”. However, Tagg said the clause would leave rape victims “humiliated, degraded and feeling like they were abused all over again” by subjecting them to questioning.
Tagg also said the rule would stigmatise children, adding: “What child wants to have the stigma of being identified as the result of rape? It’s a despicable policy.” Tagg said Davidson was taking a “despicable position” by failing to join with Nicola Sturgeon and Kezia Dugdale in opposing the clause. She said: “Ruth Davidson has a responsibility to the women of Scotland to stand up for their dignity and human rights. It’s an abrogation of her responsibility to not stand against this appalling cruelty.
“It was so heartening to see men as well as women at a demonstration in Glasgow on this issue. But Ruth Davidson has unequivocally let down down both men and women. She has a personal responsibility in line with her duties to speak out and she has let us all down.”
However, Tagg said Davidson still had time to reconsider her stance and state her opposition to the rape clause. “It’s not too late and I’d respect her so much more if she said had listened to people and had changed her mind,” she said. “You can’t stand up for something so inhuman without losing a lot of credibility and if she doesn’t alter her position that reputation will be [damaged] beyond redemption.”
In a veiled swipe at Davidson, Sandy Brindley, national co-ordinator of Rape Crisis Scotland, said she was “disappointed” by the lack of cross-party opposition to the clause. Brindley said all politicians should “do all they can to get Westminster to reverse the policy”. Brindley stopped short of directly criticising Davidson, but said: “It’s an acute issue of harm to rape survivors and is a harmful policy.”
Last night, women politicians at Westminster and Holyrood stepped up their attacks on the clause. SNP MSP Gillian Martin accused Davidson of acting as Theresa May’s “mouthpiece” in Scotland by defending the rule, adding: “It’s time for Ruth Davidson to find her conscience and oppose this shocking and inhumane treatment of women and children.” SNP MP Alison Thewliss has now written to Davidson asking her to explain her remarks that the policy could be delivered in a sensitive manner.
She said: “I have been seeking information on how the two-child policy and the rape clause will be administered from the UK government for 21 months now with no answers... The UK Government has railroaded this cruel policy through Parliament with minimal scrutiny. It must be halted right now.”
In response, a Scottish Conservative spokesperson said: “The Scottish Conservatives support these exemptions but we also believe there is an obligation on the Government to ensure that these cases are dealt with all due care and attention.”
WHEN Theresa May signed off on the measure to exempt victims of rape from the government’s cap on the number of children eligible for benefits, did she realise that she was alienating one of the most organised and vociferous groups in Scottish politics, the women’s movement? As a woman herself, you’d have thought she might. The “rape clause”, as it is now universally known, has appalled women – and men – of all political backgrounds.
Press coverage of the eight-page form that raped mothers must complete has been hugely damaging to the Scottish Conservative campaign in the local elections in May. No politician can risk being on the wrong side of rape – however indirectly. Indeed, it is beginning to look as if the clause has halted the Scottish Tory revival in Scotland, at least for the time being, as the Scottish Tory leader, Ruth Davidson, continues to tie herself in moral contradictions on the issue. On any level, the “vile” rape clause is an abomination. The idea of compelling victims of rape to revisit the experience and compile evidence in order to claim benefits is simply inhumane, not least to the children so identified. It is also unworkable. It will require bureaucrats to adjudicate on sensitive issues like marital rape and coercive control – issues they aren’t trained to deal with. Judges find it difficult enough to give guidance on these issues, so the idea of social security jobsworths assessing rape evidence is abhorrent. The measure looks like a reversion to the ruthless approach to social policy which earned the Conservatives the soubriquet “the nasty party”. But Ruth Davidson was supposed to represent a fresh break with crusty Tory tradition. She is in a gay relationship and has been assumed to be in favour of women’s rights. That reputation all but evaporated over the past week as she initially attempted to defend the rape clause, and then tried to blame the Scottish Government for not reversing it – even though it is a UK policy on which the Scottish Parliament has no legislative authority.
When the rape clause row first broke, on the eve of its implementation earlier this month, Davidson tried to avoid all mention of it. Then last week her spokesman issued a belated statement on her behalf endorsing the two-child cap, claiming that Labour in Westminster had not opposed it, and promising to give women the help of “experienced third-party professionals” when claiming an exemption on grounds of rape. This only inflamed the row.
The Scottish Labour Party leader, Kezia Dugdale, fulminated against the “disgusting” and “barbaric” policy. In an extraordinary and rare show of cross-party unity during an election campaign, she even congratulated the SNP MP, Alison Thewliss, for her “tireless campaigning” on this “horrifically cruel and uncaring policy”. As the Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron
Such has been the demonisation of benefit claimants that these measures no longer generate much public opposition
weighed in against the Tories on his visit to Scotland last week, the Tories realised that the issue was now a political firestorm. Something had to be done. Unfortunately, what they did poured petrol on the flames.
In her first substantive interview on the issue, Davidson tried to turn the tables on the Scottish Government, claiming it could reverse the policy if it wished. “At Holyrood we have the power to create new benefits,” she said. “If the Scottish Government believes this to be of such importance, it can act.” This is, of course, a ridiculous proposal. The Scottish Government has some new welfare powers, but it emphatically does not have the power to reverse the Universal Credit policy of which the two-child cap is a part. It could perhaps try to compensate the victims by raising money though Scotland’s new income tax policies, to give additional money to families with more than two children. But that does not reverse the policy, which is a Westminster one.
Davidson’s subsequent accusation of “grotesque hypocrisy” against Nicola Sturgeon for not favouring this approach rebounded. It drew attention to the fact that Davidson is a supporter of the policy for which she was now calling on the Scottish Government to reverse. Her discomfort at this contradiction was palpable. I don’t think anyone believes that she privately supports the rape clause, but she clearly had no choice but to defend it.
Her predicament rather vindicated the controversial claim made by the SNP’s Edinburgh group leader Frank Ross, who said that the Scottish Tories weren’t really “Scottish” because they had to accept the policy agenda of the UK Conservative and Unionist Party. Ruth Davidson has criticised her own party’s policies before – and, of course, she voted Remain in the EU referendum – but during an election it would be political suicide to actively challenge a central plank of the UK Government’s welfare reforms, especially when the Tory party’s main message in the election is to stick with the Union and therefore Westminster policy.
RAPE is only one dimension of the two-child cap. It is extraordinary for the UK Government to be dictating how many children families should have. In the past this would have been condemned by many as victimising the innocent: the third child does not ask to be born, and yet is being penalised for coming up wrongly in the numbers game. It is perhaps a measure of how intolerant we have become as a society that this only became politically “weaponised” because of the rape clause. Such has been the demonisation of benefit claimants that these measures no longer generate much public opposition.
Yet welfare recipients in and out of work are getting a very rough deal as the UK Government works through George Osborne’s £12 billion programme of cuts to the social security budget. The four-year, working-age benefit freeze was not eased in the last Budget as many seem to believe. This means Jobseeker’s Allowance, Employment and Support Allowance, Income Support, Housing Benefit, Universal Credit, Child Tax Credits, Working Tax Credits and Child Benefit are all being cut in real terms. As inflation rockets in food and fuel prices, this could cause very real hardship.
Disabled people are facing the loss of benefits if they can’t prove their inability to perform “work-related activity”, whatever that is. This may not generate such lurid headlines as the rape clause, but it represents humiliation for thousands of people with disabilities. Young people are also being hit as they lose the right to housing benefits. Universal Credit itself will lead to families losing over £1,000 each a year by 2020, according to the Resolution Foundation.
The UK Conservatives should rightly be taken to task for these policies, which apply in Scotland as elsewhere in the UK. However, there is a longer-term problem here for the Scottish Government. It is rightly outraged at the suggestion it should be held responsible for the rape clause. But over the years, demand will build for it to start using its tax-raising powers to mitigate many Tory benefit reforms, as it has already with the bedroom tax. Politics is the language of priorities and eventually Nicola Sturgeon is going to have to decide whether she gives priority to compensating rape victims with children. But in the meantime, it is Ruth Davidson who is rightly in the moral firing line, and likely to stay there.