‘I strongly believe that misogyny should be considered a hate crime’
Future Generations Commissioner Sophie Howe:
FUTURE Generations Commissioner Sophie Howe has revealed she has warned a number of public bodies that she would be prepared to “name and shame” them for not acting in a way that respects the piece of legislation that underpins her role.
The Well-being of Future Generations Act – steered through the National Assembly by the late Carl Sargeant – places a duty on the Welsh public sector to always bear in mind the impact of their decisions on Wales and its future citizens.
Some have criticised the Act’s aims as vague and intangible, but Ms Howe is clear about their value.
Speaking on the latest Martin Shipton Meets podcast, she said: “I don’t have powers to stop things happening, and I can’t force people to do things. I suppose the most stick-like power within the legislation is the power of review. I can review a public body or a collection of public bodies on a particular issue and I can make recommendations coming from those reviews which public bodies have a duty to follow unless they can outline an alternative course of action with reasons why they can’t follow those recommendations.”
Asked how many times she’d done that, Ms Howe said: “I’ve threatened those review powers on a number of occasions behind the scenes. Fortunately the public bodies concerned have worked with me to get us to the same place. I’m not at all afraid of using those review powers when necessary, but I do think... in the early days it’s important for us to try to break down some of the things that stop the Act from happening, build up the understanding out there among the people who are trying to implement it... and where I need to, to be challenging more robustly.
“The strapline that I’ve been thinking about in the last month or so as we’ve approached the second anniversary of the legislation is that Elvis song A Little Less Conversation, a Little More Action Please, and I will be looking to use my powers as Commissioner to, in the right way, drive that action.”
One of Ms Howe’s most high-profile interventions has been at the public inquiry into the proposed M4 relief road, where she suggested that the case put forward for the road by the Welsh Government was not compatible with the principles of the Act.
Asked whether many businessfocused people might regard her as a bit of a nuisance, she said: “That may be the case, but in all sectors we need to change the way that we’re thinking.
“We can’t just think within our own sector or our own silo. When I think about economy versus environment, yes, we all want more good-quality decent jobs, but there are no jobs on a dead planet. It’s really important that we’re thinking of these things holistically. I think we need to recognise that a bit more.”
In her previous role as Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner for South Wales, Ms Howe oversaw the force’s changing approach to domestic violence.
Asked why it remained such a big problem, she said: “I think it’s to do with the fact that we perhaps haven’t tackled gender stereotypes and lowlevel harassment.
“Women regularly encounter catcalling and those sort of things on the street. That’s not an offence. If that sort of abuse was racist abuse or targeted at someone with a disability, it would be classed as a hate crime.
“I strongly believe that misogyny should be considered a hate crime, because I think when you allow that lower-level behaviour to become the norm, you’re setting your starting point for what becomes acceptable at a much [lower] level and then it’s easy to escalate into behaviour which is completely unacceptable because it’s perceived as normalised.”
Describing the changes undertaken within the police service, she said: “70% of what police are dealing with now is around vulnerability, not around crime. We need to reflect on that in the changing nature of policing and in terms of broader public services.
“How do we respond to that sort of vulnerability – those complex problems and issues that are going on in people’s lives, so that they’re not ending up in the criminal justice system or in our hospitals or care homes?”
In the context of violence against women, she said police forces had become more victim-centred: “Certainly everything is not perfect, and all police forces have a long way to go.
“But some of the questions I started asking [included] if we know that a woman – it’s not always women, but more often than not the victim is a woman – has experienced on average 36 incidents of domestic abuse before she even reports it to the police, that means that we need to be working with other people to identify what’s going on and to provide support way before she’s experienced 36 incidents.
“And that means that response may need to be outside the police service. It’s more likely to be GPs. It could be things like how do you skill up hairdressers in terms of those conversations that people are having and how you might be able to help and support them and direct them to get help elsewhere.”
Ms Howe said “quite a bit” of money had also been invested in programmes for midwives to spot domestic abuse which had resulted in a big increase in referrals.
The number of referrals has risen sharply since the time she started the job from three or four per year from GPs to a total of 172 in a couple of years.
“That means, I hope, that those 172 victims have not experienced 36 incidents before being referred, but that their issues are being spotted at a much earlier point,” she said.
Ms Howe confirmed that on important sporting days there was evidence of a spike in domestic violence: “It’s not clear whether the link is the sporting event, or the fact that more alcohol is consumed around sporting events.”
In the South Wales Police area, known perpetrators are likely to receive a warning visit in the run-up to such events.
Ms Howe said: “There’s no silver bullet to tackling violence against women, and it’s very complex when the victim herself doesn’t recognise the abuse they’re suffering or for a range of complicated reasons can’t leave that relationship.”
In 2015 Ms Howe made an unsuccessful bid to become Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Cardiff North. Does she still harbour political ambitions?
“No. For some period of time I was a politician in rehabilitation and I remain someone who has aspirations in terms of trying to change the way that we do things here in Wales, to make things better and more fit for the future.
“I think I’ve got lots of opportunities to do that outside of the political sphere and I certainly don’t have those party-political aspirations, but I have aspirations in the way we do policy here in Wales, and I hope I can make some contribution to changing that.”
Asked how she responded to criticism that she had got her job because she was some kind of Labour stooge, she said: “I think I would say ‘look at the things I have done previously’.
“It would be difficult for a Labour stooge to get a job through an appointments process done by a cross-party panel of AMs who scored me and whoever the other candidates were as well.”