Violence against Women and Girls Strategy

Caroline Voaden Excerpts

Thursday 18th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady and pay tribute to Sharon Holland, who I have met a number of times, who campaigns fiercely on behalf of her daughter, Chloe. Suicide is a fundamental part of the strategy with regard to how we end domestic-related deaths and femicide, to call it what it is. A number of different things appear in the strategy, such as how well our domestic abuse risk assessments look for mental ill health; often, assessments are looking for instances of homicide rather than suicide. On the issue of manslaughter, my hon. Friend the Victims Minister has empowered the Law Commission to undertake a review of that exact thing, and we await its findings.

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

I welcome the strategy, and I commend the Minister for her tireless work supporting victims and trying to reduce violence against women and girls. I welcome the cross-governmental approach and the focus on prevention and public health promotion.

We know that boys as young as nine or 10 are being spoon-fed hardcore violent pornography on social media, even when they are not looking for it. Access to that type of content leads to violent sexual acts being normalised and the way that they view relationships with women becoming warped. The head of a boys’ school that has completely banned mobile phones from its estate has spoken powerfully to me about the effect of being able to have conversations with boys before they start seeing that content online.

While schools are a part of the answer, asking teachers to combat the tidal wave of indoctrination, radicalisation and normalisation that these algorithms are causing is unrealistic: those misogynistic, violent attitudes must be stopped at source. As part of this work, what action will the Government take to ensure that social media companies comply with the Online Safety Act 2023, to make Ofcom guidance statutory, and to push her colleagues across Government to legislate to get smart phones and their misogynistic content out of our schools?

[Jess Phillips]

A nine-year-old looking at any pornography on any social media site or any site in the UK is illegal. If there are instances of that, they should be reported. We saw a case recently of a pornography site not having age verification. It was fined £1 million by Ofcom and asked to put age verification in place. Those sites will be blocked in the UK if that is not the case. Such measures are already in place, but I ask the hon. Lady to get her schools to report those particular issues, which we will raise with Ofcom. It is important to say that misogyny existed before the internet—tackling misogyny has had to be done for quite a long time. I absolutely agree that we need to support teachers because of what young people are seeing, both inside and outside schools, and the strategy deals with that.