International Women’s Day

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Friday 6th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble sisters the Ministers on securing this debate and thank my noble friend Lady Gale in particular, among so many others, for years of doughty campaigning, not least for ensuring that this is an annual occurrence. I of course congratulate all today’s fine maidens—what an auspicious beginning in the House.

There are so many issues worthy of discussion, but I repeat my plea of many years for the enforcement of equal pay law not to be left, as currently in statute, to women workers themselves.

Five years on from Sarah Everard’s kidnap, rape and murder, and while too many wealthy and powerful men hope that the latest terrifying war will provide convenient distraction from the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking and abuse scandal, I wish to use my remaining time to remember the late Virginia Roberts Giuffre. Having read her memoir, Nobody’s Girl, I commend it to everyone in your Lordships’ House. Goodness me, it is a very hard—as well as a compelling—read. It is a remarkable testament to rights, justice and action, and to human courage, resilience and solidarity. But it is also about crimes of incredibly cruelty against girls and women on an industrial scale, under the gaze, and even with the complicity, of some of the most wealthy and powerful people in the world. It is that very wealth and power that led to so much complicity, denialism and silencing, not just by the most active perpetrators but on the part of all the venal quislings and hangers-on in their orbit.

Virginia writes:

“Don’t be fooled by those in Epstein’s circle who say they didn’t know what Epstein was doing. Anyone who spent any significant amount of time with Epstein saw him touching girls in ways you wouldn’t want a creepy old man touching your daughter. They can say they didn’t know he was raping children. But they were not blind. Not to mention the fact that many prominent people were still associating with him years after his convictions. Epstein offered many of the men in his circle sex with the females he and Ghislaine Maxwell trafficked, both girls and women. I know because I lived it. But even the men who did not partake of the favors Epstein offered could see the naked photos on his walls, and the naked girls on his islands or by his swimming pools. Epstein not only did not hide what was happening; he took a certain glee in making people watch”.


She continues:

“Each one of us can make positive change. I truly believe that. I hope for a world in which predators are punished, not protected; victims are treated with compassion, not shamed; and powerful people face the same consequences as anyone else … Imagining it is the first step. In my mind, I hold a picture of a girl reaching out for help and easily finding it. I picture a woman, too, who—having come to terms with her childhood pain—feels that it’s within her power to take action against those who hurt her”.


I imagine that, too.