Tessa Munt

This is absolutely not about me. All I would say is that I am an example of how you can come through and do something, but my God I have been frustrated watching the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, which eventually turned into Professor Jay’s recommendations, about which absolutely nothing was done for some time. We need to proceed and make sure that all 20 of those recommendations, and Baroness Casey’s recommendations, are implemented. I am aware that the Government are doing stuff, but they are never fast enough, and this just needs to happen. I feel very strongly that we need to train all the people I mentioned, including the judges, the teachers and the police—crikey, the police!—so that they understand what coercive control is. They also need to recognise what can be done to challenge what is colloquially referred to as the “manosphere”. Two or three weeks ago, I met a young woman and two of her friends, and she complained about the fact that boys in her school—she was young—had said to her that she could not tell them what to do because she was a girl. This has to stop, because it just feeds this whole thing. Women have been down-trodden for many, many years. Now we are brave enough to speak out, and we have to make sure that those who are in authority have the ability to tell us because they understand, not ask us because we do. I want to make certain that we have that compulsory training in place. We need to challenge toxic masculinity. I recognise that it is triggering to everybody when this stuff comes up, but I hope above all hopes that you are able to sleep with a little more peace tonight.