As ever, you are absolutely right, Mr Deputy Speaker. There have been lots of interventions and I will try to resist the temptation to be as generous in taking them as I normally am—for a bit, at least.
Amendment 54 again addresses clause 3 and the reports on progress. The amendment says that the first annual report should be laid no later than 1 November 2017. That is interesting in itself, because what the Government are leaving in the Bill is all about before ratification, but I want to keep in post-ratification reports, and my amendments say that the first one should be from 2020 onwards—they should be done from 2020 and then every two years. That would be the effect of amendments 53 and 54.
Amendment 55 is my final amendment and it relates to when this Bill, when it becomes an Act, should come into force. The Bill says it should
“come into force on the day on which this Act receives Royal Assent”,
and the Government have amended that, but I suggest it should
“not come into force until 90% of the signatories to the Convention have ratified it and there has been a proven reduction in violence against women in 75% of the countries who have ratified the Convention.”
It seems to me to be perfectly clear that we would want to ratify the convention only if it is actually shown to work. As I made clear earlier, we do not have the evidence at the moment to support that.
Those are my amendments, and I will now touch briefly on the other ones in the group, which I can race through fairly quickly, I hope. All of the new clauses in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch
are about making sure that the Government do not apply any of the reservations. I have explained why I think the Government should apply some reservations, however, and that is why I would reject new clauses 14, 15 and 16. If I might be so bold as to say so, I think my hon. Friend’s best attempt here is new clause 18 on psychological violence and stalking. It is inconceivable that those things would not come with a criminal sanction in the UK, so in that sense we have nothing to fear from signing up to that. It might be my hon. Friend’s argument that if we were to make it clear that we would sign up to that—that we would be happy to make sure they would always have a criminal sanction—it might encourage others to do the same. I do not know whether that would work, but I would not be averse to that, and if my hon. Friend were to push new clause 18 to a vote, I would be more sympathetic to that than I would be to his other new clauses, if that is helpful to him.
The Government amendments—which the SNP has endorsed, let us not forget that—are extraordinary. I have made it clear that I am opposed to this convention, but this cosy deal shows that they do not care too much about it either. They pretend—