Labour MP Jess Phillips took more than five minutes to read a list of women killed over the past 12 months where the perpetrator or suspect was a man.
Before entering the Commons chamber on Thursday, she had to add another name to the list in pen – that of Helen Harrison, who was found dead in Yorkshire on Sunday.
Bereaved families, including the newly formed group Killed Women, reacted angrily to the fact that just three male MPs were present for the reading of the names a day after International Women’s Day.
Julie Devey, a co-founder of Killed Women, said she and other families in the group had stood as the names were read out to show solidarity to the women killed, and their families.
“It was very hard to listen to,” said Devey, whose daughter Poppy Devey Waterhouse was stabbed 49 times by her ex-boyfriend in 2018. “And I’m very emotional listening to each of those names knowing what the families now face. And [there were] hardly any politicians there, and three men. So that says a lot, doesn’t it?”
Phillips read out the names of 109 UK women killed by men or where a man is the principal suspect. The youngest victim read out by Phillips was 15; the oldest 92.
She thanked Karen Ingala Smith for her work with Counting Dead Women, which records the names of women killed, where the perpetrator or suspect is a man, and the Femicide Census, saying Ingala Smith fought “every day for killed women to be an issue of major public concern”.
This year a spokesperson for the Femicide Census said that for the first time they had contacted every MP where a female constituent had been killed and had a “handful of supportive replies”, but noted: “We observed that the small numbers listening to Jess read out their names in the chamber has not changed from this year to the last.”
The shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding said the time for “warm words” was over, and implored the government to release the “long overdue” sentencing review into domestic homicide. Clare Wade KC was appointed to undertake the review in September 2021. It was originally due for completion in December 2021, but is yet to be published.
“The families of the killed Women Campaign who join us here today would want me to make clear that lessons are not being learned,” said Phillips. “Warm words are no longer enough. We honour these women not by reading out their names, not by doing any of the promises that happen in this place. We honour them with deeds, not with words.”
Phillips paid tribute to the work of Ingala Smith and the families fighting for change. “These amazing campaigners have made sure that killed women are no longer just a name recorded in a local newspaper. They have made sure the issue of femicide and all the failings that lead to an increased risk of a national priority for the people of Britain,” she said.
Ingala Smith said police still often refered to the killing of women as isolated incidents, which minimised the “extent of femicide in the UK and the systemic nature of men’s fatal violence against women”
“Every year over 100 women are killed by men in the UK, in fact of the cases we know, on average a woman is killed by a man every 2.6 days,” she said.
“[The list] should be seen as a roll call of state failure because whilst every man must be held accountable for the violence he chooses to commit, the state could do so much more to end men’s violence against women.”
