Tories come under fire as Scottish Parliament debates so-called 'rape clause'

Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale, in the main chamber of the Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh, during the debate against the UK Government's so-called "rape clause" for tax credits. (Jane Barlow/PA Wire)

TORY MSPs have been urged to heed the “heart-breaking” testimony of a victim and oppose the UK Government’s so-called “rape clause”.

Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale made the plea as she read the Holyrood chamber a letter from a woman who would have been affected by the controversial clause.

The policy, which limits tax credits to two children with an exemption for women who have conceived as a result of rape, was introduced in April as part of wider welfare reforms.

Defending the move, Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson warned against “wilful” misrepresentation of the process for claiming an exemption which she said could cause “fear and alarm”. During her speech Ms Davidson refused to take any interventions from members in the chamber, prompting a great deal of unrest.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, in the main chamber of the Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh, during the debate against the UK Government's so-called "rape clause" for tax credits. (Jane Barlow/PA Wire) — First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, in the main chamber of the Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh, during the debate against the UK Government’s so-called “rape clause” for tax credits. (Jane Barlow/PA Wire)

Speaking in a debate on the issue brought by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, Ms Dugdale branded the policy “utterly horrific and abhorrent”.

MSPs listened in silence as Ms Dugdale read the woman’s account of her ordeal after she was raped by a friend four years ago and went on to have the baby.

In the letter, she told of how the “need to protect my children from the truth came above all other considerations” to avoid “the permanent and damaging stigma attached to rape”.

The letter said: “I claimed tax credits from birth to eleven months old; the hand-up I needed when I was at my most vulnerable to allow me to re-stabilise my family.

“Tax credits kept our heads above water, a buffer between us and the food bank, for that I am eternally grateful.

“There is no way I could complete that awful form of shame, no matter what the consequences.

“Looking back, that really could have been the thing that tipped me completely over the edge; the difference between surviving to tell the tale and not.”

Ms Dugdale said: “This heart-breaking letter from a rape victim exposes the reality of the Tory rape clause. Or the ‘awful form of shame’, as she puts it.

“That is the burden this Tory government wants to put on victims of rape because it doesn’t want to pay for more than two children in a poor family. It is an absolutely sickening state of affairs.

“It’s not the author of that letter, or any other rape victim, who should feel shame. It is those on the Tory benches here and in Westminster who refuse to act who should feel shame.”

She added: “There is nothing brave about tank-driving Ruth Davidson when she fails to tackle her own government on this appalling issue and hides behind a spokesperson for days.

“I urge every single Tory MSP to stop and think about the ordeal you are asking women to go through. Oppose this clause and finally do some good.”

Ms Sturgeon’s motion to Holyrood said the Scottish Parliament was “fundamentally opposed” to the measure and called on the UK Government to “urgently change its position and remove the two-child cap and therefore scrap the ‘rape clause”‘.