Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to criminalise public sexual harassment.

The Government takes all forms of harassment extremely seriously.

There are a number of existing laws which make sexual harassment which occurs in a public place illegal. Depending on the circumstances of the case, these include offences within the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, the Public Order Act 1986 and the Sexual Offences Act 2003.

Our previous Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy included sexual harassment for the first time and we will be publishing a new strategy this year to help strengthen our response to these crimes.