King’s Speech

Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge Excerpts

Tuesday 19th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge (Con)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to speak in the debate on the humble Address, and I congratulate all noble Lords on their excellent maiden speeches.

I warmly welcome the Government’s renewed commitment to tackling violence against women and girls and to ensuring that women can participate fully and equally in our society. I declare an interest as receiving pro bono legal advice from Mishcon de Reya on image-based sexual abuse, and as a member of the advisory board for Arãya Ventures, a venture capital company.

Noble Lords will know that I have long raised concerns about the rise of tech-facilitated abuse, which continues to disproportionately target women and girls. Against that backdrop, I was disappointed by the lack of online safety provisions in the humble Address. I fear that, once again, your Lordships House may find itself compelled to strengthen protections through ad hoc amendments to other legislation.

I was also saddened by the recent resignations from the Government of Jess Phillips MP and Alex Davies-Jones MP, with whom I worked on my previous amendments during their time as Ministers. It is troubling to read in Jess Phillips’s letter of the intransigence in government to delivering meaningful change in tackling VAWG. The Minister, in his opening remarks, stated that the Government stood up to X to stop the spread of intimate deepfakes on the platform. Noble Lords will remember that in the last Parliament, this House had to push the Government to include these essential provisions in the data Act to criminalise the creation and requesting of sexually explicit images without consent. These protections were then sat on by the Government for over seven months, and were enacted only in the face of the large-scale abuse of women who would have had criminal recourse had the Government enacted the available law sooner. This is not good enough. The Government must heed Jess Phillips’s warning and use this new parliamentary Session to act at pace if we are to tackle violence against women and girls.

On the issue of tech-facilitated abuse, I believe there is unity across this House in recognising the seriousness and urgency of the challenge before us. The pace of technological change is accelerating rapidly—from chatbots being weaponised to harm and abuse children, to AI-enabled glasses covertly filming women without their consent, to the continuing and deeply concerning rise in intimate image abuse. The revenge porn helpline has reported that image-based sexual abuse has increased by one-third compared to this time last year. These threats are evolving at speed, and we cannot afford complacency. I hope that the Government will adopt a more proactive and forward-looking approach to addressing these harms so that women and girls may live and engage online free from abuse and intimidation.

As the Government advance their growth agenda, it is vital that women are central to that vision for the future. We must ensure that young girls are encouraged and supported into STEM education and careers, so that the AI future we are building reflects the diversity of the society it is intended to serve. Women in Tech reports that, as of 2026, women comprise only 29% of the UK technology workforce, 19% of core engineering roles and just 13% of cyber security positions. If women are absent from the development and deployment of these technologies, we risk embedding inequality in the foundations of our digital future.