‘If there’s ever a best time to make misogyny a hate crime, surely 2022 is it’ – Caroline Nokes

Tory MP Caroline Nokes, chair of the Women and Equalities Committee in Parliament, says the government needs to crack on and criminalise public sexual harassment

If ever there seemed an appropriate time to make misogyny a hate crime then surely 2022 was it?

We have seen a terrible rise in domestic abuse and violence throughout the pandemic.

Reports of drink spiking and needle spiking are at epidemic levels, especially it seems in university towns and cities.

Victims of abuse have set up sites like #Everyone’sInvited, and organisations from the Girl Guides to the Soroptimists report both an experience and fear of public sexual abuse on our streets.

There have been numerous, high profile, rapes and murders of women, and yet prosecutions and convictions for rape remain at an all time low.

And the Metropolitan Police are reeling from the shame of the behaviours of Officers at Charing Cross, and worse, much much worse.

Make no mistake, these are gendered crimes.

Of course, men can be victims too, of all of the above vile crimes.

But the vast majority of these offences are perpetrated by men against women, and that has left women afraid.

So surely, now is the time to make misogyny a hate crime, just like racism.

But, and it is a massive but, the experts in the Law Commission have said no, that it would make it harder to prosecute domestic abuse and other crimes against women.

Is that what we want? When rape prosecutions are already so woefully low?

I am not one of those politicians who thinks we have had enough of experts, far from it. I recognise the limitations of my own knowledge, and the Law Commission was specifically asked to review misogyny as a hate crime.

Their conclusions, published in December last year were very clear, that certain violence against women and girls (VAWG) offences were not suitable for inclusion in the wider hate crime framework, a view supported by Rape Crisis England.

However, in arguing that sex or gender should not be added as a protected characteristic for the purposes of aggravated offences and enhanced sentencing the Law Commission added an essential caveat.

They believe that the more targeted offence of public sexual harassment should be introduced, to address some of the issues highlighted as part of the hate crime review.

I do not believe the Government can pick and choose, you either agree with the Law Commission’s recommendations in their entirety (I do) or reject them entirely, you cannot have it both ways.

So having Baroness Newlove’s amendment to the Police Crime Sentencing and Courts Bill, they need to crack on and make PSH a crime, sending a powerful message to women and girls that they are on their side, and to perpetrators that they are not just a nuisance, they’re criminals.