I congratulate the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) on securing this very important debate. She has my absolute and full support.
The Istanbul convention is historic, as has been said. It is the first international treaty that legally defines violence against women: a violation of human rights and a form of discrimination against women. I believe that this is absolutely the right time for this Government to ratify the convention. It is overdue, but this is a historic time: our Prime Minister is a woman; our Home Secretary is a woman; and a woman is bringing in this Bill. It is indeed a good time to bring this forward.
I applaud the Government for signing up to the convention four years ago. The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton), said this month that the Government are complying with every single aspect of the convention. I applaud the fact that this Government have extra-territorial jurisdiction over female genital mutilation and forced marriage, about which I have spoken previously.
Ratifying the convention is important for my constituents so that the Government are aligned with what is going on at the ground level in all our constituencies. Amazing work is being done in my Twickenham constituency, but it was only through my work as a local councillor and now an MP in the area that I realised how appalling the challenge is. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) said, this is a huge challenge for our society, and I know it is a huge challenge for Twickenham.
On average, the police are called out in my borough two to three times every night for domestic violence. A few months back, I spent a Saturday night/Sunday morning shift with the police, and even though I knew the statistics I was horrified by what I saw. That afternoon, I had been knocking on doors down one of our prettiest streets in Twickenham—I had spoken to many people that Saturday—yet that night and in the early hours of Sunday morning, I was in the police van after a serious incident of domestic violence. I did not know whether I had spoken that afternoon either to the victim or to somebody who had committed violence. There was absolutely no way I could have known that. I realised that, given that MPs tend to knock on doors on every street, we might be meeting someone who is either a victim or a perpetrator of this crime on every street.
I had a constituency meeting with police, charities and the Greater London Authority to talk about what we could do in our area. It was chilling to hear from one of the police officers when he said that in this borough “we are more unsafe in our own homes than we are on the streets”.