The second reading of the Domestic Abuse Bill (2017-19) took place yesterday, 2 October, the final day of the annual Conservative party conference in Manchester – the day of Boris Johnson’s speech – when most Conservative MPs were still at the conference. Maybe the day was chosen because most of the criticisms of the bill could be expected to come from Conservative MPs. The indefatigable Philip Davies MP, however, was there. He was one of the recipients of our commentary on the Bill, which we recently provided to a number of MPs and peers, including Philip.

The debate lasted nearly seven hours. Almost all the 40+ designated speakers were feminist women, with stories of female victims and male victims. The Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities uttered the following lie, a claim made by many of the MPs who spoke in the debate:

Statistics show the overwhelming majority of victims of domestic violence are women, and the overwhelming majority of perpetrators are men.

Anyone watching the debate could be forgiven for thinking that male victims and female perpetrators are all but unknown.

Philip Davies’s speech came late in the session, by which point speakers were being resticted to 5 minutes. He was interrupted by Maria Miller, the chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, who showed no interest in male victims throughout the debate (she also hasn’t bothered to attend Philip Davies’s debates on International Men’s Day these past few years). The video of Philip’s contribution is here:

Elizabeth Hobson is the Director of Communications of our party. Her thoughts on the debate, and Philip’s contribution, are below: