Voyeurism (Offences) (No. 2) Bill

Helen Whately Excerpts

Second reading committee: House of Commons
Monday 2nd July 2018 General Committees

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Buck, and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham, who effectively brought to life how things may play out in the courtroom.

I intend to speak briefly in support of the Bill. I remember being groped on the underground aged 18. It was over in a moment, but the memory of the experience lives on. I remember feeling violated and exploited. I remember the anger, the shock and the feeling of powerlessness as the man who did it just melted away into the crowds in the station. I remember the feeling of absolute helplessness, but I think about how much worse it would have been had it happened now and involved a camera, and had there been footage that could have been shared, disseminated and sold on the extraordinary scale we have heard about.

Like other Members, I praise the hon. Member for Bath for her work and Gina Martin for her campaign, which has brought so much attention to this issue. I also praise the Minister, who has clearly listened and taken swift action.

I welcome the thoughtfulness in the Minister’s approach. She seeks a balance between effective action and clear penalties and not being too heavy-handed, particularly with young perpetrators of this offence. However, we still need to send a strong message to young people. We must bear in mind, for instance, the level of sexual harassment in schools, which I hear about particularly from sixth-formers. We have a generation who are growing up with phone cameras and, I am afraid to say, easy access to pornography online, and who face extraordinary sexual peer pressure on social media. Those things combine to create a toxic environment for young people.

In short, I welcome the Bill, both for its practical effect and for the message it sends about what is okay and what is not okay in our society.