division_name: Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill &#8212; Clause 7 - Duties to collaborate and plan to prevent and reduce serious violence
motion: <p class="indent" pid="a758.1/2" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;We recognise that many people may disagree with our conclusion and find it difficult to understand given the prevalence of sex and gender-based violence and abuse&#8230;our recommendations have been decided&#8230;on the strength of the evidence and policy considerations before us.&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="a759.3/2" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;We recommend that sex or gender should not be added as a protected characteristic for the purposes of aggravated offences and enhanced sentencing.&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="a760.1/2" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;Rape prosecutions are already at an all-time low, and we believe adding sex/gender as a protected characteristic would further complicate the judicial process and make it even harder to secure convictions.&#8221;?</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="a765.7/8" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;obtain, record and publish all reasonably available data,&#8221;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="a778.1/2" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;prove more harmful than helpful, both to victims of violence against women and girls, and also to efforts to tackle hate crime more broadly&#8221;&#8212;</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="a778.1/5" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;It might be practically difficult to prove a sex or gender-based aggravation in the context of VAWG crimes that usually take place in private&#8221;.</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="a778.1/7" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;We are particularly concerned about the potential for this to make some sexual offence prosecutions more difficult&#8221;.</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="a782.0/4" pwmotiontext="yes">&#8220;the motivation of hostility is much more likely to apply to stranger perpetrators, and here we see the hate crime framework as propping up harmful myths about violence against women.&#8221;</p>