Jim Shannon

Half an hour; I was hoping it might be 28 minutes. I am not going to speak for 28 minutes; I will try to keep my contribution as succinct and focused as possible. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Wishart and I thank the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine) for setting the scene incredibly well. This subject has to be discussed and highlighted, and the debate has given us the opportunity to do that. This matter strikes at the very heart of the safety, dignity and privacy of our citizens, and most notably the protection of women and girls in our communities. We stand at a crossroads where technological innovation is outpacing our moral and legal safeguards. If we do not act, the consequences will continue to be felt by the most vulnerable on our streets. Other Members have made that point incredibly clear and I thank them for that. Let us look first at the scale of what we are dealing with. We are not talking about a niche gadget or a far-off futuristic concept as some may think. The figures are stark. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of these smart glasses have already been sold right here in the United Kingdom. They are flooding the market, and they are sitting on the faces of everyday passers-by—people we do not know. Although many people wear them innocently, we cannot blind ourselves to the reality that these devices are a powerful tool of surveillance, masquerading as ordinary eyewear. As we rightly focus our efforts on eradicating violence against women and girls, we must recognise how this technology changes the very nature of harassment, stalking and intimidation. That is not just my observation; the UK’s leading domestic abuse charities are also sounding the alarm, and they are clear in what they say. Refuge has given the example of perpetrators weaponising these gadgets to covertly track and film survivors—the hon. Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello) clearly illustrated that—which has contributed to a horrifying 62% spike in tech-facilitated abuse. Furthermore, Women’s Aid has forcefully stated that pairing these glasses with AI facial recognition threatens the very safety of all women and girls and hands a digital toolkit to stalkers who want to identify and track strangers in real time without their knowledge. For a woman walking down the street, the fear of being targeted is already a daily reality, but now the horror of upskirting is being magnified by technology that is completely hands-free and virtually invisible. A person could commit an act of visual violation without ever holding a phone, leaving the victim entirely unaware that her privacy, her dignity and her body have been captured and digitised.