I thank the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee not just for her intervention, but for her work in this area. I agree with her, and I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response later on.
At present, if someone is a victim of cyber-flashing the avenues to seek justice are limited at best. The Indecent Displays (Control) Act 1981, which criminalises the public display of indecent matter, is little known and likely to be little used. Laws on image-based sexual abuse are not based on an understanding of power and entitlement as the factors behind sexual harassment. They focus too narrowly on perpetrator motivations and do not provide the protection of anonymity for complainants, which I think is crucial.
Cyber-flashing is not an entirely new or recent problem. I am not the first to raise the need to criminalise cyber-flashing in this place. I pay tribute to hon. Friends who have partnered with the magazine Grazia, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) who has endorsed this campaign.
Since I have started talking about making cyber-flashing an offence in its own right, I have received not just many messages of support, but countless emails and social media messages from women who have been subjected to this cruel act. I pay particular tribute to the television actor and personality, Emily Atack, who was invited to Parliament by my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) to talk about her experiences. I explained that I had sent her a message on Instagram asking to work with her on this campaign; she apologised to me, explaining that she never saw the message because her account is deluged with indecent images. I congratulate Emily, and others, for having the courage to speak out.
One field in which cyber-flashing is extremely common is online dating apps. I have been working with the app Bumble, which says that cyber-flashing is shockingly prevalent in the UK and disproportionately affects young women. According to a Bumble survey, in the past year alone 48% of millennial women said that they had been sent an unsolicited sexual image. One in four of those surveyed found that the prevalence of unsolicited lude images had got worse during the covid-19 pandemic, while one in three believed that cyber-flashing had become part and parcel of online behaviour. I do not know about you, Mr Gray, but I find that shocking. If we can agree on one thing this afternoon, it is that the unsolicited sharing of lewd images is not a part of normal courtship.
Education is one way in which we can seek to address this growing problem—making young people aware of the harm that this act can inflict on someone. This is already happening, thanks to campaign-led organisations such as Brook, which provide relationships and sex advice in schools throughout England and Wales. Its campaigners are also spending this freezing-cold Tuesday afternoon sitting on College Green with their advertising van. I encourage all Members, if they have a moment, to go and show their support for the campaign to ban cyber-flashing. I credit them for being hardy enough to stay there all afternoon.