Digital Exploitation of Women and Girls

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Tuesday 27th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Christine Jardine (in the Chair)]

I remind Members to bob if they wish to be called to speak. I will call the Front Benchers at eight minutes past 5, so will Members please keep their speeches to about two and a half minutes each?

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Christine Jardine (in the Chair)]

Order. I am sorry, but to get everyone in we will have to go down to two minutes each.

--- Later in debate ---

[Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Preston (Sir Mark Hendrick) for securing this important debate. I speak today as the MP for Portsmouth North, but also as a former teacher, a mum of three young men and a victim of this crime.

In Portsmouth, our residents live much of their lives online for work, study, information, and socialising, but the reality for many users is worrying. In 2023-24, of the cyber-crimes reported in Portsmouth, 34% were online bullying or harassment, 30% malicious messaging, 10% stalking and 8% sexual offences. Disgustingly, that number includes 60 cases involving images of children. Most of the victims were women under the age of 45, and their perpetrators were known to them, yet only 13% reported these crimes, leaving too many to suffer in silence or to be told that their complaint did not meet the threshold.

The digital revolution has brought opportunity, but it has also brought new and relentless forms of abuse. UN Women warns that AI deepfakes, grooming and image-based abuse are escalating. The recent use of AI to generate non-consensual sexual images, as my hon. Friend the Member for Preston noted in opening this debate, shows how quickly technology can be weaponised, and how tech giants are complicit.

Let me be clear: this is not about blaming girls or young women, or boys and young men. It is about responsibility, consent and respect. It must be clear that technology does not remove consent, and anonymity does not remove accountability. Women and girls should never have to navigate fear, shame or harassment just to live their lives.

I welcome the strengthening of the law and the introduction of the long-awaited VAWG strategy. I am proud to be part of a Government who have presented it and will deliver it, but we all know that laws alone are not enough, because technology moves quickly. We need stronger enforcement, safeguarding at the source, and education for young people and their parents about respect and consent online as well as offline.

There must be joined-up Government working, taking young people, their parents and whole communities with us, so that we can change the landscape and the culture, ensure that young women and girls in Portsmouth and across the country are safe online, and give victims the confidence they need to come forward.

[Christine Jardine (in the Chair)]

Thank you very much, we managed to get everybody in. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, Marie Goldman.

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[Jess Phillips]

The hon. Lady makes an incredibly important point. She is absolutely right that we need to make sure these things are enforced. To Members who spoke about pornography, I would say that there are reasons to be cheerful about the enforcement by Ofcom. I could dance a jig because Pornhub has reported a 77% reduction in traffic since age verification stopped young people being able to access it so easily. We are in the foothills of what that legislation can do. Where pornography companies have not been undertaking age verification, Ofcom has issued £1 million fines, and changes have been made to companies’ roles in the UK, so that they meet our laws. So there are reasons to think that there is some enforcement, but I absolutely agree that we need to grapple with the agility, scale and scope of that enforcement.

I must come to the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Preston. Before I came to the debate, my colleague the Minister for victims was telling me how amazing my hon. Friend and his office have been in Preston in handling online abuse. People in our constituency offices often do not get praised for these things, but I hear that my hon. Friend has a legend working in his office.

My hon. Friend talked about the importance of education in this space, and about this being a country-wide push for change, and I could not agree more. The Government have invested in this issue, and it will be an absolutely fundamental part of the violence against women and girls strategy.

The National Centre for Violence Against Women and Girls and Public Protection will do exactly what my hon. Friend talked about, so that the good standards, for example, in Cheshire—it is not far from him, and the anti-stalking practices are amazing and world-leading—are the same for people in the west midlands and everywhere else. My hon. Friend used the example of stalking legislation and making sure there are standardised systems and standards that police forces have to live by, which will absolutely include upskilling, when policing the digital elements of these crimes, whether it is domestic abuse or online. Stalking online is as illegal as stalking in real life—just to be clear, they are the same crime.

My hon. Friend talked about the richest man in the world. I am not sure there are many people in this building who have quite such a claim against the richest man in the world as me. What happened is unacceptable, and anyone who has existed online will know about the Grok outcry.

Some hon. Members mentioned Meta glasses. If I had been in the meeting where they floated the idea of making Meta glasses, the very first thing I would have said would have been, “These are going to be used to abuse women.” Why is that not being baked into the design of such products?

One of the things the violence against women and girls strategy has absolutely committed to is working on safety by design. In the car industry, we now take safety features for granted. If we are talking about what it was like when we were kids versus now, my dad used to put us in the back of the car and purposefully go round the corners fast so that we would smack into the window. These things are not acceptable now.

We have to go on a journey with this technology. To me, a Ring doorbell is such an obvious way to stalk somebody, as is an AirTag. I see cases again and again. It does not matter what the new technologies are; perpetrators of these abuses will find a way to use them for that purpose, so we need to design in safety functions. On the issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin (Alistair Strathern) about planning, I will take that away and work with him.

The Government obviously took a strong stance—I felt pleased about this—against Grok. We can see that when we stand together and people speak up, we can make change in this area, but we need to make sustainable change. We absolutely are always looking at legislative changes. As people have said, there have been a number of those. There is the issue of Grok being added into the Online Safety Act, so that there can be accountability on that basis.

In the Crime and Policing Bill, we are also banning nudification apps. I have also had it shown to me that they do not work on men and boys, which I am glad about for men’s and boys’ sake, but if you are designing something that will nudify only women, you have a problem. I do not know who I can talk to, but there is something wrong with you. Have a word with yourself; otherwise, we will have a word with you. The ban will target firms and individuals providing and supplying tools that use AI to turn images of real people into fake nudes.

There is a raft of other legislation that we are putting through and that we hope will shift the dial. Obviously, in the violence against women and girls strategy, we have made a very clear commitment to ensuring that we make it impossible for children to take and share naked images of themselves—we will make it impossible for them to do that. My hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Lola McEvoy) and others talked about children being taken from social media and on to other platforms. I have to say that encrypted spaces are the most dangerous for child abuse imagery. But to the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire, who was talking about that, I say this: 91% of all child sexual abuse images are self-made; they are made by children themselves. People have groomed them—exploited them—to make those images. It may be their peers.

We will not stop this just by looking at the issue of new AI. There is an issue with where our children can go and who has access to them. I agree with the hon. Lady’s sentiment. We have to make sure that we get this right. Even with the 10 years of work on the Online Safety Act, and with the level of detail and, I have to say, the arguments that went into it, it still has all the gaps that we are talking about, so we need to make sure we get this right and legislate in a way that can be agile for the future. That is why I think the Government need to take the time—not too much time, I agree—to make sure we do that.

Others talked about accountability and whether anyone ever actually gets punished for these things. As part of the work we are doing in the Home Office, we are expanding the use of covert officers to address violence against women and girls, and improving the capabilities to counter and reduce the highest harms. We operate a similar system with regard to child abuse online. We are now doing that also for women and girls online, recognising the level of organised crime that is behind this. The hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) talked about people who are asleep and being filmed, like Gisèle Pelicot. These issues deserve a police force specifically looking at the covert aspect, and that is what this Government are doing.

[Christine Jardine (in the Chair)]

I call Sir Mark Hendrick to wind up the debate extremely briefly—in about 5 seconds.

Oral Answers to Questions

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Monday 5th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

The Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and the whole Government have been clear that we believe the wrong decision was made. We have asked the inspector to look at what happened in two parts: first, what happened around the match itself; and secondly, a wider look at the police role in relation to safety advisory groups and how decisions are made. We had been expecting that information before the end of the year, but it will be slightly delayed to take into account the recall of the West Midlands chief constable to appear before the Home Affairs Committee tomorrow. We need to wait and see what the inspector says, and that is what we will do. That is the right thing to do, because these things will be considered in the round.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

14. What steps she is taking to tackle hate crime.

[The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)]

This Government are determined to tackle all forms of hate crime. We have a robust legislative framework in place to respond to hate crimes that target race, religion, sexual orientation, disability and transgender identity. The Home Secretary has also commissioned an independent review of public order and hate crime legislation to ensure that it remains effective, proportionate and fit for purpose.

[Christine Jardine]

I welcome the Minister’s comments, as I welcome the Government’s violence against women and girls strategy, including the confirmation that the Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Act 2023 will commence in April. We know, however, that misogyny runs deeper, and attitudes and actions throughout society and on social media are damaging to women. As well as focusing on prevention and strategy in all these areas and tackling harassment, will the Minister outline the position on misogyny becoming a hate crime?

[Sarah Jones]

A review is being undertaken by Lord Ken Macdonald KC, who is looking at hate crime legislation in the round. I hope that the hon. Lady will understand that we want to wait for that, so that we can understand what those recommendations are before the Home Secretary makes decisions.

Maccabi Tel Aviv FC: Away Fans Ban

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Monday 24th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

I am not going to draw that conclusion today, but the hon. Gentleman can be assured that I am going to ensure that we get to the bottom of yesterday’s reporting and what happened. We often ask the police to make decisions that are almost impossible, and—here I am setting aside this particular case—we ask them to police protests in such a way that we are almost asking them to make political decisions on a day-to-day basis, which is very difficult for them. I should pay tribute to the many excellent public order police officers, who are very well trained and who work in such difficult circumstances. We ask a great deal of them, and I am grateful for the work that they do.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

After the incident with Maccabi Tel Aviv fans in Amsterdam, the Government’s independent assessor on antisemitism, Lord Mann, visited the city, did a fact-finding mission and compiled a report. It was passed to the Government in January, and to the Government and the police again in June. Can the Minister tell us what consideration, if any, was given to this report in the decision making?

[Sarah Jones]

I would very much like to talk to Lord Mann about the work that he has done, which was prior to me being in post. I will pick that up.

Oral Answers to Questions

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Monday 17th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis]

Everyone deserves to feel safe and to be able fully to participate in public and political life, free from the threat of violence or exclusion driven by hateful prejudice. We will persist in our efforts to challenge extremist narratives, disrupt the activity of radicalising groups and directly tackle the causes of radicalisation. Alongside our work to tackle extremism, the defending democracy taskforce is driving forward a whole-of-Government response to the full range of threats we face to our democracy.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

T2. I have been contacted by constituents concerned that a group calling itself Justice for Innocent Men in Scotland is allegedly harassing victims of sexual violence by undermining their anonymity. Will the Minister tell me what the UK Government are going to do to protect women across the UK from that sort of targeting and harassment?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jess Phillips)]

I thank the hon. Lady for raising this case with me, and I am happy to look into it in more detail. It is a fundamental principle that victims of sexual violence are entitled by law to anonymity, and breaching that anonymity is a crime. I am very interested to hear from her and to see how we can ensure that that is not happening.

Asylum Policy

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Monday 17th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

I think there is general agreement that we have chaos in the immigration and asylum system, and that the Government should be looking for new ways to discourage people from crossing the channel in small boats. Given what the Home Secretary has said today, though, is there a danger that the people we need to come to this country legally—people with the skills that we need to fill the employment gap, and who will keep our NHS working and work in the social care sector—will look at this country now and say, “No, I don’t want to go there”?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I disagree with the hon. Lady—there is no reason to believe that. The people who come into this country on small boats constitute about 40% of all asylum claims. About the same number of people come through a legal route—a visit visa, a work visa or a study visa—and then apply for asylum when that visa comes to an end. I hope that she will recognise that it is important that we stop that abuse of the asylum system, so that we can retain public confidence in the legal migration system that I think we can all agree this country needs.

Borders and Asylum

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We have increased illegal working arrests and raids by 50% and significantly increased the fines for employers engaged in illegal working. Further to that, the organised immigration crime domestic taskforce, which brings together policing here in the UK, is looking at the ways in which organised immigration crime networks are linked to organised crime and the exploitation of illegal workers in the UK, so it is about going after some of those employers operating bogus tactics, alongside the existing raids.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

I welcome the Home Secretary’s confirmation in her statement of the expedited visas for students, particularly those from Gaza. I wrote to both the Home Secretary and the Foreign Secretary this summer to appeal for exactly this move, and I know how welcome it will be to those students.

The Home Secretary talks about a capped work scheme. We talk a lot about the pressure on local authorities and the cost to the taxpayer. Does she not agree that if we gave asylum seekers the right to work, pay national insurance and tax and contribute, they would then be carrying their own burden, and they would no longer be a weight on the taxpayer?

[Yvette Cooper]

I welcome the campaigning the hon. Lady has done to support students in Gaza, because the situation we are seeing there is horrendous. The Foreign Secretary will shortly make a statement about the truly abominable situation in Gaza, as well as the work we are doing to get out students who have fully funded places in the UK and provide them with support.

On the hon. Lady’s question, I would say that the criminal smuggling gangs use the potential to work in the UK as a pull factor—as part of their advertising—which is a point the French Government have raised many times. The challenge with the scenario she sets out is that it would make it even easier for the criminal gangs to use that factor as part of their advertising to try to persuade people to part with their money and make an incredibly dangerous journey across the channel.

UK-France Migration: Co-operation

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Monday 14th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. There are things that the Conservatives tried and failed to deliver when they were in government that they now suddenly want to oppose. In the end, that is the hole they have got themselves into. Instead of wanting to be practical and serious about measures that can make a difference, taken step by step, they just want to oppose everything. They fail to solve the problem, and just moan about it instead.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

I welcome these important first steps announced by the Home Secretary, as well as her commitment to working with wider European partners, but what safeguards have been put in place to ensure that international law is respected and that the rights of genuine asylum seekers are protected?

[Yvette Cooper]

As the hon. Member will be aware, France is a country that abides by international law and with which we have a long history of co-operation in a whole series of areas around security and different policy issues over very many years; all of them are compliant with international law and we will continue to ensure that that is the case.

Immigration System

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Monday 12th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right. British citizens have heritage from all over the world, and people came here as part of the Windrush generation. We will shortly appoint the Windrush commissioner to ensure that Home Office standards are upheld and that that contribution, through generations, is properly recognised and respected in our country. The White Paper sets out that we will explore the international student levy. That work, which is being led by the Education Secretary, will consider how we can ensure that investment goes into supporting skills in the UK.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

The Home Secretary spoke about attracting the best and the brightest to this country. One area in which our universities do that is the medical profession. During the covid crisis and the rebuilding after it, a lot of the people on the frontline were immigrants. When she looks at the resettlement and reassurance of existing migrants, will she consider indefinite leave to remain for those who worked through that crisis?

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Member makes an important point about the contribution made by those who saved lives and cared for our loved ones during the pandemic—one of our most difficult periods. We need to respect and recognise those contributions. There will be plenty of opportunity for everyone to contribute to the consultation on changes to the earned settlement and citizenship rules.

Oral Answers to Questions

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Monday 31st March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Seema Malhotra]

I thank the hon. Member for his question. He will know that we explained when making the changes that each citizenship application will continue to be considered on a case-by-case basis, and that the Secretary of State may choose to apply discretion to grant citizenship on an exceptional basis where there has been particularly exceptional or mitigating circumstances, such as modern slavery.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

14. What steps she is taking to help tackle people smuggling.

[The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Dame Angela Eagle)]

The Government are today playing host to law enforcement counterparts from across the globe to discuss our joint response to organised immigration crime. The UK is not only hosting that summit but leading the way in its response to this appalling, evil trade, including through new powers introduced in the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, which I note the Conservative party voted against.

[Christine Jardine]

I thank the Minister for that response and welcome the increased co-operation with allies on this vital issue. It is critical that we stop the dangerous crossings, but without tackling the problem at its source, with aid to tackle famine and conflict and by providing safe legal routes, do we not risk the crisis continuing? How will the Minister work with colleagues across Government to address those factors to ensure that we tackle the crisis fully?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

The summit is dealing with source countries. We are looking at how we can co-operate with countries all the way along the routes used by smuggling gangs to ensure that the right messages, rather than very slick organised immigration gang advertising, are conveyed.

Iranian State Threats

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Tuesday 4th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

I thank the Minister for giving me advance sight of his statement. The Liberal Democrats of course welcome the steps he has outlined and recognise the existential threat that Iran now poses not only to Israel but to western democracies, including here in the UK. Last year, the head of MI5, Ken McCallum, laid bare this very serious threat—Iran and other nations such as Russia intensifying their efforts to interfere in all aspects of British life, including the 20 plots backed by the “emboldened” Iranian Government, as he described them, that MI5 has identified in the past three years.

Of course we welcome the placing of the whole Iranian state on the FIRS enhanced tier, and that will include Iran’s revolutionary guard, which is a vital part of the infrastructure that makes Iran’s Government such a threat, acting as it does with impunity, supplying terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, and contributing so much to the tension and violence across the middle east. If we are to achieve lasting peace, it is also essential to curtail the influence and threat of Iran to the west.

We welcome the review by Mr Hall that has been outlined. I am glad to hear that the Government continue to keep the list of proscribed groups under review, but I hope that a decision on the IRGC will come sooner rather than later. I would like to hear how we will strengthen sanction regimes to start tackling the influence of Iran. The measures announced today are a welcome start, but we stand ready to support sanctions, and I hope the Government will go further and faster.

I am pleased to see the Government working closely with territorial police forces across the United Kingdom to give officers at all levels the skills and confidence to identify these threats on our own shores, particularly those to communities that remain vulnerable, so I also welcome the reference to the threat faced by our Jewish communities across the country and the rising tensions on our streets. I hope the Minister can outline how his Department will work with the Community Security Trust and other groups to keep all Jewish communities safe at a time when those abroad seek to undermine our whole country. We must not let them succeed.

[Dan Jarvis]

The hon. Member is absolutely right that we must not let them succeed, and we will not. She is also completely right about the existential nature of the threat. The 20 plots that she referenced—in the threat lecture by the director general of MI5 towards the end of last year—illustrate the scale of the challenge.

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s support for the specific announcement today on FIRS and for her acknowledgment of the work that we seek to do with Mr Hall in looking carefully at the legislative framework. We keep matters relating to proscription under constant review. She is right to mention sanctions. I can assure her that we work incredibly closely with partners in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

I am grateful, as I know other Members will be, for the hon. Lady’s reference to the importance of ensuring that we work cross-party to protect Jewish communities around the country. She mentioned the Community Security Trust. It is an organisation that will be well known to Members across this House. It is incredibly professional and delivers massive value to communities right around the country, and we will continue to work closely with it.

I just want to make one further reference. I spoke earlier about the landmark nature of the National Security Act—it is a measure for which we are truly grateful. I also want to take the opportunity to acknowledge the contribution made by the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) in introducing that landmark piece of legislation—it is not forgotten.