Oral Answers to Questions

Wera Hobhouse Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

By the end of this month, there will be 3,000 extra officers across our communities in our neighbourhoods and 13,000 by the end of Parliament. An extra £2 billion has gone into policing in the last two Budgets, including over £700 million extra this year that our police forces can use. That is a 4.5% cash increase and a 2.3% real-terms increase. We will invest, but we will also reform, because the problem with policing is that it has been unproductive. We need to make sure our officers are not behind desks, like they were under the last Government, but in our neighbourhoods fighting crime.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

9. What assessment she has made of the adequacy of existing legal frameworks in relation to the non-consensual filming of women in public.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jess Phillips)]

Sadly, as technology becomes entwined in our day-to-day lives, we recognise the threat that tech-enabled harm poses, which is why the violence against women and girls strategy sets out how we are seeking to tackle it. I am pleased to say that, from 1 April, measures under the Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Act 2023 will come into force, making it an offence to film where the intent is to cause harassment, alarm or distress because of the victim’s sex.

[Wera Hobhouse]

Secretly filmed videos of women on nights out have been viewed more than 3 billion times over the last three years, and the videos are often accompanied by vile, degrading comments. These videos have real victims, but they sit in a legal grey area between voyeurism and harassment, so there is very little that the police can currently do. Will the Minister discuss this legal grey area with me, and possibly look at strengthening the law?

[Jess Phillips]

I am more than happy to discuss the issue with the hon. Lady. I spent this morning in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology with the violence against women and girls sector and Ofcom to look at some of those gaps that she has identified. We will do whatever we can, but absolutely, where it is harassment and is in the public realm, it should be covered by the public sex-based harassment law, but I am more than happy to meet her.