Child-like Sexual Abuse Dolls (Offences) Bill

Debate between Munira Wilson and Alicia Kearns

Committee stage
Wednesday 21st October 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Munira Wilson]

I thank the Members who spoke for their very kind and generous words to me. I thank the hon. Member for Lowestoft for her campaigning on this issue. She has come under a lot of significant personal abuse for her work on protecting women and girls from violence. I thank her for that work and strongly support her comments. Although the amendment she would have liked to make—on digital child-like sexual abuse dolls and chatbots, as she laid out so clearly—was out of scope, I very much hope that the Minister will find ways of taking that forward. As the hon. Member said, the ban on sexualising chatbots that the Government announced was targeted specifically at what children access; here, we are talking about adults accessing physical dolls. But we know that the online world is developing at pace so, as the Government are looking to introduce all sorts of legislation in this area, I ask the Minister to look to capture, as broadly as possible, all the horrendous activities that are going on.

I thank the official Opposition for their strong support for the Bill. To pick up on a point made by the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford, the argument sometimes made against criminalising these dolls is that they stop people abusing real children. What a misconception that is. I spoke to an amazing organisation in Australia called Collective Shout, which was involved in bringing forward the legislation there. They gave me a horrendous example in Australia of a man who was picked up importing a child-like sex doll. They went to his home, and they found not only a second child-like sex doll and all sorts of child sexual abuse imagery on his devices, but also a lockable sound-proof room that he had created in his house, and some maps. He had based himself close to a nursery and quite clearly had the intention of kidnapping children and doing I dread to think what to them, in a lockable room that could not be accessed by anyone, from which children’s cries could not be heard.

That gives us an idea of the intentions of the sorts of people who use these things. I know that UK police enforcement authorities are working on other examples, but I am not able to share them because they are live cases.

[Alicia Kearns]

I thank the hon. Member for making that point. She is essentially giving the National Crime Agency and police forces across the country an additional reason to enter the homes of potential offenders and those who are planning a crime. It is absolutely vital that we move to prevention in this area, because the reality is that there are too many children and adults across this country whose lives have been forever harmed by this. It is something they will live with for ever. The hon. Member is not just tackling a doll but providing a preventive power to go in and catch people before they escalate, and she is therefore protecting children. I thank her ever so much for doing so.

[Munira Wilson]

Absolutely; I completely agree. The hon. Member also made the point about resources. When DS Kat Knock, who I mentioned in my speech, came to London from Cheshire with a couple of these vile objects for me to look at, a couple of officers from the Met police joined that meeting. I talked to them about the fact that the number of police officers who track and monitor those on sex offender registers has not gone up in recent years, while the number of offenders on the register has gone up—particularly with the early release scheme. That workload is increasing all the time, so we have to resource it properly. I hope that the Government will consider that. I know that everyone is demanding more money and we are fiscally constrained, but this is a really important area, especially when we are talking about protecting children and adding these offences to the statute book. This needs to be resourced properly.

To respond to the hon. Member for South West Devon, line 24 of the Bill says that a defence for a person who might be charged with an offence is that they

“did not keep it for an unreasonable time.”

I am confident that, if a member of the public finds one of these dolls in a public place and reports it, there would be a strong case for defence in that they were not in possession of it for use themselves.

On the points about files for 3D printing and tools to adapt dolls, I know that the Minister is committed to following that up. I am also very happy to work with officials to follow up with colleagues and address those issues, and to make amendments on Report if necessary.

I close by thanking everybody again. I think we are looking at the first Friday in February for Report and Third Reading, and we will hopefully get the Bill to the other place as soon possible in order then to get it in statute. I am very grateful for everybody’s strong support.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Question put, That the Bill be reported without amendment.

Bill to be reported, without amendment.

Mental Health Provision (Children and Young People) Bill

Debate between Munira Wilson and Alicia Kearns

Friday 18th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Munira Wilson]

I could not agree more. If children are not happy and well in themselves they will not thrive. There is plenty of data and research to show that children who are unwell mentally do not do as well in their GCSEs and A-levels, as well as in their social lives, so it is key.

[Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)]

I could not agree more with the hon. Lady. Over the last two and a half years it has been devastating to see the impact of the pandemic on children’s health. We should never again lock our children out of their schools and we must ensure that we protect them against the appalling pandemic of abuse that we have seen in our households. I recognise that we need to do more for children and their mental health, and I see that in my local secondary schools. I apologise, however, because I am struggling to understand how the proposal would differ from the quarterly dashboard already published by the Department of Health and Social Care that, as I understand it, already presents such data.

[Munira Wilson]

The dashboard does not go into the level of detail required in the Bill. I will come on to the different bits of data that the Bill would require to be published, especially on waiting times. That is not particularly transparent, although the Children’s Commissioner requests some of that data on an annual basis. On the dashboard, the spending figures that are reported are not always accurate, which is why there have been a lot of independent audits. That is why I want to put it on to a statutory footing, to give some weight to it and to try to drive up the quality, so that we have that transparency and accountability.

When young people are not seen in a timely manner, often their condition deteriorates and then they have to be re-referred and go to the back of the queue. The data on waiting times from referral to assessment and from assessment to treatment by area are not routinely and easily available. My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) and I have had a long-running battle locally to try to access some of that data, because our case loads on children’s mental health are so high.

Every year, the Children’s Commissioner uses her statutory powers to request information from NHS Digital on referrals, waiting times and spending. The waiting times reporting in that analysis uses a proxy measure of two contacts, even though for a variety of reasons that can be misleading. We should not have to rely on the Children’s Commissioner’s requests, which may not always continue, nor should we have to rely on proxy measures.

Additionally, as the Children’s Commissioner makes clear in her report, the data she is able to access and publish, some of which comes from the dashboard that the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) referred to, is limited to the NHS and does not include the spending or activity in schools and local authorities, even though those services, as we have heard, are an important part of the vast and complex patchwork of mental health provision for our children and young people. We need a holistic picture.