Dominic Raab says misogyny is wrong even if it is ‘a woman against a man’

Dominic Raab has appeared to suggest misogyny can be “a woman against a man”.

The Justice secretary was arguing it should not hate crime in the wake of the Sarah Everard murder, but then seemed confused about what the word actually meant.

Pressed on BBC Breakfast about whether misogyny should be a hate crime, he said “misogyny is absolutely wrong, whether it’s a man against a woman or a woman against a man”.

Presenter Sally Nugent challenged Mr Raab’s remarks: “You said misogyny is absolutely wrong whether it’s a man against a woman or a woman against a man – is that what you meant to say?”

Lord Chancellor Dominic Raab during the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester.

He explained: “What I meant was, if we are talking about things below the level of public order offences of harassment, intimidation, which are rightly criminalised – if we are talking about, effectively, insults with a sexist basis, I don’t think that criminalising those sorts of things will deal with the problem that we have got at the heart of the Sarah Everard case.

"Just criminalising insulting language – even if it’s misogynistic – does not deal with the intimidation, the violence and the much higher level of offence and damage and harm that we really ought to be laser-like focused in on.”

Misogyny is hatred aimed specifically against women, and campaigners are now pushing for it to be criminalised.

Mr Raab, who has previously said he isn’t a feminist, also suggested statistics showing 1.4 per cent of alleged rapes are prosecuted were “skewed”.

He explained: “If you look at the normal way that people measure the conviction rate – as a proportion of the number of prosecutions that are launched – actually once you get to court, there is more or less around a 70 per cent chance of conviction.

“The challenge we’ve got is the reporting of cases, through to the preparation of the file that goes to the CPS and then the decision to prosecute.

"The critical thing is getting the cases to trial with the evidence to secure that conviction.”

Labour MP Jess Phillips responded on Twitter, saying: “Give me strength. Not sure why I'd be surprised he's got form of knowing the square root of naff all.”