Caroline Nokes
MP for Romsey and Southampton North · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order. He will be conscious that there are in the region of 15 more Members wishing to speak in this debate, and we have not yet heard from the Minister, so I am not minded to accept a closure motion at this point.”
“(3) For paragraph (3A) substitute— “(3A) The returning officer shall also provide each polling station with such equipment as is necessary to ensure that relevant persons are able to vote independently and in secret, including— (a) tactile equipment that enables the voter to navigate the ballot paper and accurately mark their chosen candi…”
“(2) During the period commencing 30 minutes before the time appointed for the taking of a poll at an election, and ending 30 minutes after the close of the said poll, a person shall not, in or in the curtilage of a polling station or in any place within 50 metres of such station, for the purpose of promoting the interest of a political pa…”
“New clause 97— Power of Electoral Commission to require disclosure from financial institutions — “In Schedule 19B of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (investigatory powers of Commission), after paragraph 1 insert— “Power to require disclosure from financial institutions 1A(1) The Commission may give a disclosure n…”
“() In paragraph 6 of schedule 6 (Donations from impermissible donors), after “section 54(1)(a)” insert— “or section 55B.” (8) In Schedule 20, in Table after Section 56(3) or (4) (failure to return donations) On summary conviction: statutory maximum or 6 months On indictment: fine or 1 year” Insert— Section 55A(8) (cap on donations) On sum…”
“(2) The specified elections for the purposes of subsection (1) are— (a) UK parliamentary elections, and (b) local government elections in England and Wales.”
The complete record
Every one of 5,486 lines we hold for Caroline Nokes, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 30 of 110.
“With all their cases, there was a common theme: even though they had secured a conviction against their perpetrator, their non-consensual content continues to circulate on the internet. Despite relentless work by organisations, such as the Revenge Porn Helpline, to report the content and get it taken down, there is no legal obligation for platforms to remove it.”
“It does not give Ofcom the teeth it needs to effectively tackle the fast-spreading, uncontrollable virus that is non-consensual intimate image abuse. It does not force platforms to remove harmful content in its entirety, or require internet service providers to block access to it. In short, it does not make the content itself illegal. The sharing of it is illegal but, even if there is a criminal conviction, the content itself is not regarded as illegal content. Last week, the Women and Equalities Committee heard from a number of survivors of non-consensual intimate image abuse. In sharing their experiences with us, they have spoken of the catastrophic damage the abuse has had on their lives, confidence and relationships. They told us of their fear of applying for jobs, meeting new people or daring to have any social media presence at all.”
“I was not aware that the Opposition were planning to support it, so I thank him for that. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to pay close attention to what I and other members of my Select Committee will say about the amendment. I recognise that the amendment comes at the eleventh hour, on Report, for which I apologise to my hon. Friend. The reason for that is specifically because of the evidence the Committee heard last week, both in private and in public, from victims of revenge porn. I welcome the changes that have been brought in under the Online Safety Act to support victims of non-consensual intimate image abuse. However, from the evidence we heard, it is clear that the legislation, in its current form, does not go far enough.”
“I rise to speak to amendment 160, tabled in my name and supported by members of the Women and Equalities Committee, and other colleagues across the House. I will endeavour to be as brief as I can and I reassure everybody that the amendment is on the order paper for today. I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for her comments on deepfakes. There has been a problem: someone like Taylor Swift can get a deepfake made using their image taken down very quickly, but for ordinary women, or indeed men, from across the UK, who are not famous and do not have a platform, it is very difficult to get deepfake imagery removed. I welcome the steps the Government are taking on that. I thank the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), for his comments about the amendment.”
“Those are the reasons why my Committee has tabled this amendment and why we urge Members to support it and give it serious consideration. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to make some comments from the Dispatch Box that might indicate how the MOJ can incorporate such provisions into existing law. If the message coming back to me is that the content is already illegal, I must say that it is not. We must find better ways of getting it down from online platforms.”
“When someone applies to the authority, expecting or hoping for some small nugget of compensation—a message in effect that they are a victim, they can put the blame and shame to one side, and they have been a victim of a criminal act—that is not even there for them. I have no doubt that is because the list of violent criminal offences was dreamt up many moons ago and intimate image abuse simply has not been added to it. It should be added to the list. As I said earlier, for a woman, or indeed a man, who has had their intimate images put online, circulated freely and proliferated all over the place, that is like digital rape. It is a rape that continues day after day, to be brutally honest, with no end in sight.”
“Thousands and thousands of the Operation Makedom images still proliferate online and nothing can be done about that because the content itself is not illegal. It remains online and accessible for people in the UK, despite that 32-year prison sentence. That cannot be right. We will be letting down the victims of that abuse, and all other cases of non-consensual intimate image abuse, if we fail to act. My final point to the Minister is that we also heard about the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority and the fact that intimate image abuse is not on its list as a violent crime.”
“Georgia made the point repeatedly that what happened was like “a house fire”, because when the images went up they spread very quickly. The solution was to get them taken down as quickly as possible so that they would not proliferate. The Committee described it as being like a virus that spreads out of control. The issue is not just about Georgia Harrison or famous women who have a platform they can use to ensure their voice is heard. We also heard from an anonymous victim of Operation Makedom. In that case, the perpetrator had many thousands of victims. He received a 32-year prison sentence, but that young woman is too afraid to have any sort of social media presence because she is terrified that her image will be seen and put through reverse image searches so she will be identified as a victim.”
“In order to do that, we need to make the content illegal. It is important to note that intimate imagery does not just refer to photos and videos that are sexually explicit. Indeed, as we heard from David Wright, chief executive of South West Grid for Learning, which runs the Revenge Porn Helpline, within certain countries and cultures, being photographed with an arm around somebody or being filmed without a hijab can have catastrophic implications for a woman. That is why it is so important that any legislative change uses the term “intimate”, not “sexual”, when referring to non-consensual content. Last week, we heard evidence from Georgia Harrison, who famously was the victim of revenge porn perpetrated by her then partner, Stephen Bear, who later received a criminal conviction for his actions and was sent to prison.”
“It would place duties on platforms to remove it, and require internet service providers to block access to non-compliant sites and platforms, including those hosted outside the UK. That is precisely the way in which child sexual abuse material is handled. Children cannot provide consent and the adults in these images have not provided their consent for them to be taken, shared or both, so why should the content be treated so differently? Indeed, when the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) put it to my hon. Friend the Minister during her recent appearance before my Committee, that adult content should be handled in the same way as child sexual abuse material, via a registry to identify, classify and therefore allow for the removal of non-consensual intimate images, the Minister said it would be “a very good idea”.”
“My right hon. Friend’s point is exactly right that the issue is consent. In my view, when images are non-consensual, they should be regarded in the same way as if the individual had been digitally raped. There are also many thousands of cases where a conviction has not been achieved or even sought, where the victim just wants the content taken down or blocked. They too are being denied that peace of mind due to gaps in the current legislative framework. The amendment calls for non-consensual intimate photographs or film to be added to the list of “priority offences” in the Online Safety Act, thus making it “priority illegal content”. The amendment would ensure that non-consensual content, regardless of whether or not a conviction had been achieved, would be, by its non-consensual intimate nature, illegal.”
“I appreciate that my hon. Friend is seeking to give me an assurance from the Dispatch Box, but it is perhaps not quite as fulsome as I would wish. She says that the priority offences register can be reviewed. It would be very helpful if we had a specific timescale by which the measures could be added. That would give reassurance to all victims that such images will be made illegal in their in own right, and that Ofcom and internet service providers will work together to take them down. We already have the criminal offence, so the perpetrators can go to prison, but the victims want the images—the repeat offence—to be removed from the internet.”
“My hon. Friend takes domestic abuse very seriously, but is she aware that perpetrators all too frequently seek to use the civil courts to perpetrate further abuse of their victims, often with the support of legal aid and often using “experts” with no relevant qualifications to make accusations of, for instance, parental alienation or child grooming? Can she please reassure me that the Government are taking this matter seriously, to ensure that perpetrators do not continue to use our courts system to retraumatise their victims?”
“I would like to hear a commitment from the Minister that, while he is in this role, he will do his utmost to eliminate the gender bias that we still see in medical research.”
“We have to do more to ensure greater awareness not just in the Chamber today, but out in our ICBs and GP surgeries, so that the sufferers who are presenting for the first time do not get ridiculed or labelled as hysterical women, but actually get the help that they need. We cannot have a situation where our constituents are avoiding the people they need to turn to for help. As I have said, there is bias that we have to overcome. There is a gap in research funding. Only £8 million has been spent on ME research over the last 10 years, which is simply disproportionate to the number of sufferers—it should be several times that figure—and we still know less about every aspect of female biology than we do about male biology.”
“We need to see not just the interim version but the final plan, and we need it to be delivered. We need it to be rolled out into every trust and integrated care board. We need it to be effective for our constituents, which brings me on to my next point: my constituent. I was contacted by a mother, Elaine. The point she made in her email was that she wants her voice and the voice of her daughter to be heard. Her daughter was a high achiever, training to be a dancer. She had already secured 5 A-levels when she was struck down with ME. The words that she used are heartbreaking. She has been stigmatised, gaslighted and ridiculed. As a result, she now avoids doctors. She avoids going to get the very help that she needs because she fears that her condition will lead to ridicule. That is simply not acceptable in a 21st-century health system.”
“We know that they are five times more likely to suffer than their male counterparts. I say to the Minister, very gently—an unusual stance for me—that we have to do more about the bias that exists in medical research and clinical trials. We have to stop the situation, which prevails to this day, where too often conditions suffered by women are portrayed as them being simply hysterical. ME is a serious condition. It is not all in the mind, as my constituents have been told on too many occasions. We need to ensure not only more investment into research to find the causes of ME and hopefully more effective treatments—and of course, the holy grail, a cure—but research focused on the women who need it. I welcome the cross-Government delivery plan that was set in train by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove, but we need to see it.”
“My right hon. Friend taken a new approach, and my constituents certainly wish to extend their thanks to him for that. I always say that I am blessed with constituents in Romsey and Southampton North who are not only articulate and willing to share their views with me, but in many instances are often experts as well. Professor Sir Stephen Holgate contacted me ahead of the debate to make the pertinent point that, for sufferers of ME, many of whom have been bedbound for years, surely I could spend an hour of my time raising their plight in this Chamber. I am certainly very pleased to do so. He highlighted, as did the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson), the well-established sex bias among sufferers of ME. Of the 17,000 sufferers recently surveyed, women made up 83.5% of the respondents.”
“It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Dame Siobhain. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sir Sajid Javid) on his leadership on this issue. We know that he started the train of getting work done on ME when he was Health Secretary. Too often in this place, we move on from Departments and never speak of them again, but he has not. He has championed the cause of the sufferers of ME, and indeed their families, with real vigour. It seems bizarre in this place to refer to long covid with a welcome message, but long covid has shone a spotlight back on ME. We know that it is a post-viral condition, but we do not know why. The number of sufferers of long covid has given us an opportunity to look again at ME. Hopefully, in this place some of us will begin to understand more and broaden our knowledge of the condition.”
“The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to condemn the Iranian Government’s violent crackdown on protests led by women and youth, support democratic movements in Iran and put pressure on the Iranian regime to stop the repression . And the petitioners remain, etc. ] [P002969]”
“Following is the full text of the petition: [ The petition of residents of the United Kingdom , Declares that in response to protests and anti-regime uprisings led by women and youth throughout Iran, Iranian repressive forces have opened fire on protestors; notes that more than 750 protestors have been killed including 83 women and 75 children, as well as more than 30,000 protestors arrested; further notes that Amnesty International has reported that child detainees have been subjected to horrific torture, including beatings, flogging, electric shocks, rape and other sexual violence; further declares that the regime’s deliberate poisoning of schoolgirls across Iran is to take revenge on young girls for participating in demonstrations, with the number of executions increased to over 400 this year; further notes that the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran has categorised the atrocities during the uprising as Crimes Against Humanity; and further declares opposition to the killings and arrests of protestors, and support for the Iranian people’s uprising to achieve democracy and freedom .”
“I present this petition on the popular uprising in Iran on behalf of residents of Southampton North who wish to protest against the violent repression of women and young people in Iran by the Iranian regime. More than 500 of my constituents have also signed an associated petition. These petitions note that the atrocities committed have been categorised as crimes against humanity by the UN special rapporteur. The petitioners “therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to condemn the Iranian Government’s violent crackdown on protests led by women and youth, support democratic movements in Iran and put pressure on the Iranian regime to stop the repression.”
“A constituent who has cerebral palsy has been in touch with me this afternoon to outline how he currently uses PIP. It gives him the freedom to live independently and work full time, as he uses it to buy mobility aides such as hoists and wheelchairs. His concern is that any changes to PIP might push those costs on to the NHS and reduce his flexibility to choose what to spend the money on and when. He does not want to be pushed into a cycle of renewal that may be too rapid and therefore cost the NHS more money. What reassurance can my right hon. Friend give that this consultation will enable those sorts of concerns to be highlighted and that, in the long term, it will give more choice and not restrict my constituent’s freedom?”
“Might there be any crossover, with young people having access to some sort of interim service before the age of 25, and will more funds be committed so that we do not continue to see what all of us will face in our constituencies: the horror of young people being unable to access child and adolescent mental health services before they turn 18 and become reliant on adult mental health care?”
“Dr Cass’s observations about violent and degrading pornography are chilling, and we know of the impact that is having not just on young girls but on all our young people. Her recommendations also include significant and specific references to expanded services and follow-through services for 17 to 25-year-olds. What concerns has my right hon. Friend about the capacity for that, and about the possible impact on other areas of healthcare? We know that the transition from children’s services to adult services can be problematic in the case of a wide range of services, not least for those suffering from body dysmorphia or eating disorders.”
“I welcome the Secretary of State’s comments and his emphasis that this is a complex matter—of course it is. However, the WASPI women have been waiting five years for the outcome of the ombudsman’s report. In his report and subsequent to it, when he wrote to various Select Committee Chairs from across the House, he gently encouraged us to keep a weather eye on how quickly the Government come forward with a solution. I recognise that this is an interim update, but I gently press my right hon. Friend: the WASPI women have been waiting five years for the ombudsman and they will not want to wait for a Select Committee inquiry into this report in order to see action from the Government.”
“Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland mentioned, too often we are deemed hysterical as opposed to actually ill. My final comment to the DHSC is: please, can we make sure that the impetus on the women’s health strategy is maintained and kept up, and that we do not allow it to become about just reproductive health? It has to include the whole of women’s health to make sure that we are being treated fairly.”
“There is no silver bullet, but what we require in this place is a real drive from the Department to make sure it is thinking about including migraine in all of its health strategies. I stand here as the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, and I was really struck by the fact that women are more than twice as likely as men to suffer from migraine. If we look around this Chamber today, it appears, as ever, that it is a male problem. We cannot allow things like the women’s health strategy, which is crucial, and which I welcome, to be about stereotypical women’s conditions. We also have to have a thread that weaves through the fact that in almost every health condition, women are under-represented in research and in how it is treated. As my hon.”
“We need to reflect that stress can be a phenomenal trigger of migraine, and we therefore need to be much more holistic in the way we approach it and think about how we manage our lives. If my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) was here, she would undoubtedly be making a pitch for a new Government Department for wellbeing, and that approach could sit very firmly in that. If we address the mental health challenges around stress, we can also address the challenges of migraine. I do not pretend that we can address all of them—there is clearly a crucial and important role for medication, which needs to be much more widely available. I finish with the thought that this is a complex, difficult subject.”
“Most of all, she wants the stigma to be beaten down so that she never again has to explain to an employer what a migraine is, and that it is not just a headache. It was fascinating to hear the tales of the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) and my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (David Duguid), who cannot be here, about not only their migraine experiences, but watching a child suffer from them. As I said, I blame my father for my migraines, and my daughter blames me for hers. There is clearly quite a significant genetic link to suffering. We need to have much more research and investigation into not only the condition more widely, but some of the specifics we have heard in this debate.”
“Friend the Member for South Staffordshire, who is sitting next to me, is a former Chief Whip, and he would no doubt have been absolutely delighted if I had gone through entire spells of not being able to speak. I am sure the current Chief Whip would also be very happy if I lost the power of speech. But it is absolutely terrifying, and has a profound impact. I resort to expensive treatments that are socially stigmatised. Everybody assumes that it is vanity—I prefer to use the phrase, “Two birds, one stone.” The impact those have means that I can live my life, but it is not a choice available to very many people. That is the stark reality. As Monica would tell us, she wants the new CGRP medications to be more easily available. She wants them to be available in every NHS trust so that there is no postcode lottery.”
“It appears to add up to a phenomenal £20,000—just to ensure that I can stand in this place, talk relatively coherently and, at times, make sense. I remember vividly being sat in the Tea Room and not being able to think of the right word. I thought, “Well, that’s fine. We all get a little bit of brain fog when you get to my age,” but it was not that, and it got worse and worse. The longer I sat there, it was not just that I could not think of the right word; I could not think of any word, and then I found that I had been sat in the Tea Room silent for about half an hour because I could not actually speak. As I mentioned, my right hon.”
“The one thing that everyone expects a Minister to do at the Dispatch Box is to answer a question immediately, wittily and with facts tripping off the tongue instantly. When I was taking beta blockers, I found that I simply could not do that. I would stand there and feel dull, detached and as if I was not really in the room. I stopped taking beta blockers and resorted to a type of medication that is hugely stigmatised. Botox is approved by NICE for migraine and is, for me, incredibly effective, but it is incredibly expensive because I cannot get it on the NHS. I was frantically tapping on my phone—I was not sending messages; I was using the calculator—to work out how much I might have spent on Botox over the past 15 or so years.”
“As we have heard, there is no one silver bullet; some medications will work for some people, and some will work for others. It is almost a process of trial and error, with someone going three months with a medication that they know is not working—going through the different steps and jumping through the hoops—so that they can demonstrate that it has not worked and then move on to the next stage of medication. I want to talk briefly about the stigma and how some of us are too embarrassed and ashamed to talk about this issue. I remember taking beta blockers for migraines when I was a Minister, so let me talk about the side effects of beta blockers and how impactful they are. When I stood at the Dispatch Box, beta blockers made me feel stupid, slow and dull.”
“I was quite surprised to hear from only one constituent ahead of the debate, but I want to focus on her story, because many of the issues have been highlighted today. She has suffered from migraines for 30 years—30 years in which it has impacted every single job she has had. Not a single employer has understood that this is not just a headache, but something utterly debilitating, and that she will not be able to attend work or function normally. As a result, she has had extreme difficulties with her employers. Her ask of me is that I advocate to the Minister—and I do so now—that we should perhaps look at considering migraine as a disability, because, to be frank, it absolutely is. My constituent also talked at length about exactly the point my hon. Friend highlighted about medications.”
“That is the challenge for children: they do not understand and they cannot process that this is something that, if they lie down quietly and take their medications, they may get through. It impacts their education and their entire childhood because they become anxious, as my hon. Friend detailed. They become anxious and worry endlessly about when the next one will come. Of course, as we know, stress can trigger migraines, so the sheer act of worrying about the next migraine can in fact trigger one. My evening with the Migraine Trust talking to those chronic migraine sufferers was incredibly eye-opening and made me absolutely determined to redouble my efforts to tackle the lack of knowledge and the stigma that surrounds migraine.”
“They were telling me about the food and drink they avoided rigorously, because they could identify each individual trigger that would perhaps set off a period when they would have a migraine literally every single day for days on end. It was eye-opening for me, because I thought I understood migraine after the first attack I had when I was about 10 years old. We should not focus exclusively on our own experiences, but I remember my first attack to this day. I blame my father—I blame him for many things—because he took me to McDonald’s when I was 10 years old. The blue light in those McDonald’s in the early 1980s—I can remember where this McDonald’s was; it was in Southend—triggered a migraine in me that day, and I did not understand what was happening to me.”
“When I agreed to host an event for the Migraine Trust, I thought I understood migraine and recognised the symptoms and impacts and how sufferers endure the most horrible events in their lives. That was right up until I spoke to some of the sufferers who were there that evening. We have focused on the one in seven people—the 10,000—in each of our constituencies who suffer from migraines, but I was particularly struck by the chronic migraine sufferers who were there that evening. They are triggered endlessly by such a radical thing as light, and they were having to stand in that room with dark glasses on and with ear plugs in to avoid noise.”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison) on having secured this important debate. I am going to be a little bit cheeky: it is always a privilege and a delight to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Gavin Williamson, but I have absolutely no memory of him advocating radical and bold behaviour from the Dispatch Box when he was Chief Whip—in fact, quite the opposite. Migraine treatment is a serious subject. In November last year, I was privileged to host an event for the Migraine Trust. My hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland did an incredible job of setting out the history of migraine and explaining in detail the challenges that sufferers face.”
“The issue is not just the gender pay gap; there is also the gender pension gap, the lack of women on boards, and the importance of making sure that we have a pipeline of talented women at every level. Yesterday, I was with the community interest company, Women on Boards, and its clear message to the Minister is, “Please can we have more action and fewer initiatives, to ensure that we make real progress in getting women in our companies, at every level?”.”
“When Members of Parliament deal with HMRC on constituency casework, it now tries to push us into using the telephone rather than email. Can the Financial Secretary assure me that vulnerable people will still be able to use telephone services? Will he comment on the contradiction between how Members of Parliament and the public are dealt with by HMRC?”
“The Women and Equalities Committee, which is currently carrying out an inquiry on the rights of older people, this week met Independent Age and a range of stakeholders in Andover. They made the point that older people need to be able to access all services on the telephone, as people who are disabled or have a visual impairment find online services difficult. To be able to communicate effectively, people who are hard of hearing need websites with a British Sign Language overlay. Independent Age and the stakeholders I met were horrified at yesterday’s announcement on the closure of the helpline. What consultation has there been with my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Mims Davies), in her expanded role as Minister for Disabled People, on the potential impact of these changes?”
“We know that the Cabinet Office is often focused on making sure that procurement contracts go to small and medium-sized enterprises, but can my hon. Friend tell me what work is being done to make sure that female-led businesses get a chance at those contracts?”
“My right hon. Friend will, like me, have constituents whose water is supplied by Southern Water. After two weeks of obfuscation, reassurance and denial by the company that there has been any pollution incident at Fullerton wastewater works in my constituency, we heard from the Environment Agency yesterday that there has been a significant pollution incident of a level that would be hazardous to human health. Will she help me by providing Government time for a debate about whether Southern Water remains a fit and proper company to be managing water resources in our region? She will know as well as I do that it is not simply wastewater that it cannot cope with; it is not any good at supplying drinking water either.”
“Last week, my Committee heard from Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stuart Cundy, a man who has taken on a really difficult job, overturning those stones in the Metropolitan police and turning up at 1,600 instances of officers with at least one allegation of a sexual offence or domestic violence—1,600. Can my right hon. Friend give us an assurance today that he will give more power to Stuart Cundy’s elbow, so that we get rid of these individuals from our police service?”
“I would like to associate myself with the remarks of others—my thoughts are also with the Everard family. This report tells us that the environment did nothing—nothing—to discourage Couzens’ misogynistic view of women. We know that not every flasher becomes a rapist, but we also know that every rapist starts somewhere. I respectfully say to my right hon. Friend that, of course, there have been good changes with regard to criminal justice and longer sentences for the most violent and the most serious offences, but that is too late. We have to intervene in the offending journey.”
“Members: “Hear, hear.”] We need to make sure that we have protections against them as well. There is the question.”
“My right hon. Friend is absolutely right that this is about defending democracy, but I am very concerned when we start talking about risk. The shadow spokesman, the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) spoke about having to have the right protections in the right place at the right time. We know that women, people of colour and LGBTQ Members will be at most risk, but none of us could have predicted that a man who was most famous for campaigning to make Southend a city, and Jo Cox, who spoke in her maiden speech about our having more in common, would be the individuals targeted. I urge some caution, particularly when it comes to hustings and to the involvement of weird conspiracy theorists in politics who openly incite division, whether out on the street, in our constituency surgeries or in this House. [Hon.”
“We are still struggling to obtain equal pay and to see the gender pension gap shrink. On today of all days, when we have heard about horrific abuse and the measures that have had to be put in place to protect Members of this place, what has been really striking is that colleagues have spoken not about the abuse they face, but about the abuse their family faces. Our families feel it. I know that the abuse is bad on social media, despite “block”, “mute” and “delete” being my best friends. My daughter will send me a text message that just says, “Are you okay?”. That is how I know that it is bad out there.”
“Of course, when she won sports personality of the year, The Sun was the first one out there to talk not about her brilliant prowess, but about the fact that we could see her knickers through her dress. I would like to talk about Taylor Swift, who was Time magazine’s “person of the year” for a second time, and who has a monthly reach of 100 million people on Spotify. It is an absolutely incredible achievement. We cannot talk about Taylor Swift without also having to talk about Kanye West and his efforts to silence her, criticise her and, indeed, use her in his music. I would like to talk about Claudia Goldin, the solo female winner of the Nobel prize for economics—the first time there has been a solo female winner. Of course, she was studying the obstacles that women face in obtaining equal pay, because we are still there.”