BRADFORD West MP Naz Shah was commended by MPs on both sides of the House of Commons as she spoke from personal experience on how ideas of “honour” in black, Asian and minority ethnic communities can stop women reporting domestic abuse.

Ms Shah described how her mother was driven to kill her abusive partner because she felt she couldn’t reach out for help. The impassioned speech came during the second reading of the domestic abuse bill set to enshrine a definition of the crime in law.

Ms Shah is calling for more diverse services to make sure “that police officer, that solicitor, that judge” can understand the fear of speaking up.

The Labour MP said: “For me this is really personal because domestic abuse has shaped what I stand for and what brought me on this journey into Parliament.

“It’s brilliant that women hopefully, after this abuse bill will go through, will have services and will enshrine the definition of it in law.

“But that isn’t always the case. In some instances there are women who experienced that much abuse and the services weren’t there and they were driven to kill as a result of the abuse that they had.

“27 years ago there was such a woman who killed her partner or somebody who abused her and went to prison for 14 years and that woman was Zoora Shah. She was my mother.”

The politician recalled how, at the time, her mother didn’t tell her story because it was more “complicated” and wrapped up in the issue of honour.

Now Ms Shah wants specialist services for women of black and minority ethnic backgrounds “who understand the culture”.

In her speech, she said: “Had Zoora Shah been arrested by an officer who was non-white she might have had a different experience; had she been arrested by a woman of colour or even a woman of her background they might have got it about her experiences of abuse which drove her to kill; had she been represented by a solicitor who was of her cultural background, who was a female, she might have had a different experience; had she have been dealt with by the judge, who was of an ethnic background or understood her culture, her outcome might have been very different.”

Also during the same debate, Shipley MP Philip Davies called for equally tough sentences for male or female abusers.

The MP said it would be a “huge disservice” to victims if Parliament kept suggesting domestic violence only affects women at the hands of men.

He said: “We have a duty to treat everyone equally before the law and I hope it does not matter if the perpetrator is a man or woman they should face the full rigour of the law and whether the victim is a man or woman they should have the same safeguards.”

The Conservative backbencher said he supports the domestic abuse bill but wants it to include action against people making false claims of domestic abuse and for parent alienation – where one parent turns the child against the other parent for no reason - to be included in the definition of abuse.