Protecting Children Online

Debate between Seema Malhotra and Sheila Gilmore

Wednesday 12th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

While we are all patting ourselves on the back and saying that there is widespread agreement—and there clearly is widespread agreement—we should also bear it in mind that there is a considerable campaign against the taking of steps in this direction. It has not really been represented in the House today, but it is clear from earlier debates, and from communications that we have all received, that there is another point of view which is very different. There are people who want a degree of freedom in society that can actually be damaging, and we must be prepared to have a proper debate about that as well.

The issue of freedom is very important in the history of events such as the women’s movement, but there has often been a confusion between freedom in a fairly abstract sense—for instance, the sexual liberation of the 1960s—and the effect that some material can have on, in particular, those who are vulnerable. Much of what appears on the internet and elsewhere is damaging because of the way in which it portrays women, the way in which it portrays relationships between men and women, and the way in which it allows people to see a version of human relations that is deeply damaging.

People sometimes say that such material will not be harmful to many people, but it probably will be. It is interesting that the same argument is never advanced about advertising. People do not advertise because they think that advertising does not work; they advertise because they think that advertisements influence us, and indeed we are all clearly influenced by them. We have all found ourselves going into a shop and buying something that we may not have meant to buy because we saw or heard an advertisement for it, and thought “That sounds like a good idea.” I am not suggesting that someone who stumbles across pornography, online or anywhere else, is bound to turn into a violent person, but there will be some people whose attitudes, particularly their attitudes to what is acceptable between men and women, will be affected by it.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend has made an important point about the availability of images on the internet. There are more child abuse images circulating on the internet now than ever before. As a result of freedom of information requests by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, about 26 million images were seized in two years by five local forces. Does my hon. Friend agree that the availability of such material is leading to a potential normalisation of it, and that that is one of the most important problems that we must tackle in the interests of our children today?

[Sheila Gilmore]

I agree that we should take that problem very seriously, and should take action to deal with it.

This is not only about protecting children, although that is extremely important. It is also about protecting older young people, and about protecting adults and, hopefully, changing their views. I think that if certain types of behaviour are normalised and become commonplace, they will eventually be seen as broadly acceptable, and the relationships that are portrayed between men and women will be considered not unacceptable, but something that women themselves are almost expected to accept.

I think that it is important to deal with this. I thought that it was important many years ago when groups were campaigning about, for example, pornography in magazines, but this type of pornography is pervasive in a way that even that was not. Going to buy a magazine in a shop was a more difficult transaction for many people than what we now see happening in our homes.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Seema Malhotra and Sheila Gilmore

Thursday 21st March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

This Budget comes at an unprecedented moment in our economic history, when families and businesses are looking to the Government for a change of direction and bold action to kick-start our flatlining economy. It is a time for urgency, as after three years of this Chancellor the economy is still 3% smaller than it was five years ago. However, all we got was more of the same. Unemployment in Feltham and Heston has risen by nearly l0% in the past six months; the number of young people out of work is at its highest level since March last year. During the Budget debate last year, I spoke of how there were six people chasing every job in Feltham and Heston. A year later, I am deeply concerned and saddened that I am saying the same thing again. There has been no change from this Government. This is the third successive year of less than 1% growth and the Budget is a gamble, not a plan.

Some measures are welcome. Local businesses will welcome the fuel duty freeze as well as measures to help them take on extra workers, for which Labour has been calling for some time. This is a jam tomorrow Budget, however, not one that takes action now. As John Longworth, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce commented yesterday, many of the Chancellor’s measures might come too late. Britain needs urgency, scale and delivery today. In the last quarter, net lending to businesses fell by £4.5 billion, and in the past two years, under this Chancellor, it has fallen by £28.1 billion. The reality behind those figures is that thousands of entrepreneurs and small businesses—our country’s wealth creators—are unable to access the finance they need to grow and to take on new employees. The Budget shows no signs of changing that. As the female entrepreneur Laura Tenison said on “Newsnight” last night, “I am trying to create jobs, but the Government isn’t helping.”

One nation Labour is the party for small business and enterprise. We had a regional development agenda and a legacy of which we could be proud which was dismantled by this Government and replaced with confusion. The Chancellor said yesterday that the Budget confronts our problems head on. The problem is that his judgment is the problem. A Treasury team of five men and no women has produced a Budget that did not even mention women and business. Research shows that if we had the same levels of female entrepreneurship as the US, £42 billion would be added to the economy. With more than 1 million women out of work across the UK, the Budget missed an opportunity to support female entrepreneurship. I should not have held my breath. The Government’s previous three Budgets have shown policies that have hit women the hardest. Women are paying three times as much to bring the deficit down—decisions that were made by a Cabinet with three times more men than women.

Hundreds of families in Hounslow have recently called on the Government to help mums, not millionaires. The Chancellor has ignored those calls and will go ahead with a £180 tax on new mums on the same day as millionaires will get a £100,000 tax cut. The House of Commons Library has also shown that low-paid new mums are set to lose £1,300 by the end of the first year of a child’s life, through the cuts to pregnancy support and tax credits and real-term cuts to maternity pay.

The record on housing is no better. Affordable home statistics in London have fallen off a cliff. Figures published by the Greater London authority show that 425 affordable homes were started in the first six months of the current financial year, compared with 4,659 in the previous year and more than 18,000 in 2010-11.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Does my hon. Friend agree—this is the point that I would have made to the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell), by the way—that it is a misnomer to call such homes affordable when the rents will be up to 80% of market rent? The subsidy on each of the 15,000 houses that were referred to will be £15,000, which is why the rents have to be so high. The houses will not be affordable and, what is more, they will put up the housing benefit bill.

[Seema Malhotra]

My hon. Friend makes her point extremely well. The £225 million proposed in the Budget to support “affordable” homes building is a fraction of the £4 billion that Labour would have invested.

The Government proposed change but this is more of the same. The policies of this Government have failed on jobs, on growth, on the deficit and in the lives of ordinary people. The Budget will do nothing for the 13,000 on the waiting list for a home in my constituency.

Housing Benefit (Under-occupancy Penalty)

Debate between Seema Malhotra and Sheila Gilmore

Wednesday 27th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

I want to address first the comparisons between the private and the social rented sector. As was said earlier, we are comparing apples and pears. The private rented sector is not where the majority of people intend to spend their lives. Research has shown over and over again that people see it as a transitional part of their life—they use it when they are younger and they hope to move on. It is true that in the past few years it has become more difficult for people to move on—it is difficult to get a mortgage and move into the owner-occupied sector, and there is a shortage of social rented housing. Nevertheless, people do not see the private rented sector as a long-term home.

The social rented sector provides long-term, low-rent homes. The people who live in them might have been out of work at some point in their lives, but they are often in low-paid work and want to be able to afford to do that work. The people who will be affected will often have lived in those houses for many years. Some have compared this situation with the introduction of the local housing allowance, but that was not introduced retrospectively, which is what is happening here—that was made clear in an intervention earlier.

When people live in a council house or housing association house for many years, they put in a lot, using their DIY skills, or decorating the home and making it how they want it. They have invested in that home, so to tell them that they must pay up or leave entirely ignores the investment that they have made.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I had a visit from a constituent whose daughter is disabled, has just obtained local employment and really needs routine. As my hon. Friend has said, they have made great investments in their home. They have a tiny box room that nobody could fit in, but they have been told to have a lodger—having a lodger in a home with a disabled daughter would, of course, have great risks. Does my hon. Friend agree that displacing such families is totally unfair and affects the development of those children?

[Sheila Gilmore]

That is a good example. We are talking about real people, not just apparently unused and unloved bedrooms—despite the fact that the latter appears to be the view of many people on the Government Benches. Real people will experience real harm, but I suspect that that is part of a wider view of social housing and is not entirely accidental.

Future of Town Centres and High Streets

Debate between Seema Malhotra and Sheila Gilmore

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sheila Gilmore]

Lending is clearly one part of the problem, especially in relation to starting and then expanding a business, but there must also be a market for the goods; there must be people who can come along and buy things.

The current economic climate is very difficult. No matter how many interesting ideas there are for improving the physical environment of shopping areas, if people do not have the income—and for the first time the financial position of people in work is deteriorating—we will continue to see a decline. As I have said, economic growth is key.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend believe that the Government cuts will help stimulate consumer demand and support local shops?

[Sheila Gilmore]

May I welcome my hon. Friend to the House? I do not think that cutting back in the way that cuts are being made now has been a success. We can be accused of being over-reliant on public sector employment, but we must not take that away too quickly.

Recently, some constituents of mine came to see me because their small shop had experienced a sudden downturn. That was a result of private sector, not public sector, employment factors. They had relied on people in the financial sector in Edinburgh coming into their shop to buy a newspaper or some sweets, and they were going under because that market had gone; the people they had relied on were no longer there. No matter how hard they worked and how many hours they stayed open, they could not make that business work. As I have said, economic growth is the key factor.