Oral Answers to Questions

Caroline Voaden Excerpts

Monday 29th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Member raises an important point. I have talked to Plymouth MPs over many years about the terrible incidents that Plymouth has had to endure, the impact on the community, and the importance of learning lessons to prevent future violence. We will continue to work with Plymouth, and I am sure that the safeguarding Minister will be happy to talk to her further about this. We need to ensure both prevention and a strong and robust response from law enforcement.

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

I applaud the new Government’s mission to halve violence against women and girls. In my previous role as the chief executive of Devon Rape Crisis, I learned how insidious widespread access to pornography among our children and young people is, and how damaging it is to both boys and girls. Could the Secretary of State assure me that the Department for Education will be involved in this mission, with a widespread education programme in all schools across the country about how dangerous pornography is? Will she commit to working with internet companies to further tighten up safeguards, in order to create a fail-safe mechanism, so that our young people cannot access this vile pornography?

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Member may know that a review on pornography was established under the Conservative Government. That is due to report in the autumn, and we look forward to its conclusions. Let me take the opportunity to say that we will work with anyone on tackling violence against women and girls. Far too little has been done for too long, and we have inherited a legacy of far too much damage, but we want to pull everyone together to tackle this terrible crime.