Violence against Women and Girls Strategy

Gurinder Singh Josan Excerpts

Thursday 18th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips]

A nine-year-old looking at any pornography on any social media site or any site in the UK is illegal. If there are instances of that, they should be reported. We saw a case recently of a pornography site not having age verification. It was fined £1 million by Ofcom and asked to put age verification in place. Those sites will be blocked in the UK if that is not the case. Such measures are already in place, but I ask the hon. Lady to get her schools to report those particular issues, which we will raise with Ofcom. It is important to say that misogyny existed before the internet—tackling misogyny has had to be done for quite a long time. I absolutely agree that we need to support teachers because of what young people are seeing, both inside and outside schools, and the strategy deals with that.

[Gurinder Singh Josan (Smethwick) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister and all those in Government who worked so hard on this strategy. The shadow Minister, through her rhetoric, does her best to demonise whole communities, but the Minister is right to recognise that abuse occurs in all communities. However, she will be aware of the need to be sensitive to cultural differences experienced by women and girls from different communities. The Minister has already recognised the value of by-and-for organisations working to provide culturally sensitive support for women and girls, and I trust that that support for those organisations will continue, but one area where progress needs to be made is in relation to honour-based abuse. Will the Minister commit to support calls from Karma Nirvana and around 60 other organisations, including Sikh Women’s Aid, for a statuary definition of honour-based abuse, to recognise honour as an aggravating factor in criminal sentencing, and to require multi-agency guidance to identify honour-based abuse?

[Jess Phillips]

I am very happy to say that coming up with a statutory definition of honour-based abuse, and working on statutory guidance with the organisations that my hon. Friend has identified, are very much in the strategy. I am very proud to do that, because we absolutely need cultural sensitivity in the services we provide, and we need to listen to the voices of the women in those services. It is an honour to work with those organisations, and I will continue to do so.