Sarah Edwards

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Sir Edward. I want to thank everybody who signed the petition, as a number of Members have thanked those in their constituencies who signed it; it is incredibly important that we hear from them in this manner. I thank my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) for opening the debate and setting out so clearly the breadth of this issue and why it is so important. The Government’s landmark violence against women and girls strategy was published last December. It stressed a whole-of-society approach to prevention, in which all of us have a responsibility to call out harmful behaviours and to role-model positive behaviours. That responsibility cuts right across the public sphere: our shared spaces, our workplaces, our institutions and, of course, online. Online influencers hold a unique position in the public sphere, and their reach often goes further than that of our newspapers and broadcasters, yet their content is far less regulated. That is concerning given how social media platforms work: influencers profit financially from engagement, incentivising content that amplifies shocking images, awful videos and abuse, and that shapes the attitudes of impressionable young people. The platforms profit, too; they make huge sums of money from this. According to Government figures, in 2025, 95% of young people had heard of Andrew Tate. Ninety-five per cent—that is unbelievable. It gets worse, though, because 40% of the young men in that figure had a positive impression of this individual. This is somebody with allegations against him of sex trafficking and all manner of horrendous crimes. It is deeply concerning that the online sphere has given those young people the impression that this is a good thing and that this person is somebody to emulate or look up to. Exposure to content driven by that toxic masculinity starts very early, with 83% of teachers reporting concerns about their students holding extreme views on gender and a quarter reporting instances of misogynistic abuse in their own classrooms. I have heard from my teachers in Tamworth about how worried they are, how difficult this is to deal with, and how much the phones that many young people carry with them and have in the classroom are impacting their ability to see the world as many of us wish it really was, rather than as they are seeing it through this lens. This content is harming women and girls by normalising harmful rhetoric and behaviours, and it is harming boys by distorting their view of the world and their perception of what constitutes a healthy relationship with women and girls. As a female MP, I can attest to the sheer avalanche of abuse that I and many colleagues receive on a daily basis. Children are not born with misogynistic views; these views are learned through socialisation. Sadly, sometimes they come from parents, and sometimes from peers, but increasingly—and as we all fear—they come through exposure to the manosphere, which happens to a great extent online.