Alistair Strathern

The recent horrific stories about Grok and other AI-enabled abuse have highlighted a trend with which far too many women are very familiar. The online world, for all its benefits, has also brought new opportunities for them to experience exactly the same degrading abuse that they are all too familiar with in day-to-day life. There are three really important lessons for us all to take from the Grok case. First, given the platform's consistent inability to act on its own before being pushed, we need to continue to be proactive in taking on tech firms. Secondly, the fact that we were able to deliver such fantastic action so quickly teaches us that when tools can be delivered robustly and with confidence, change is possible. Thanks to the brave testimony of many women, many of whom knew that in speaking up they would be making themselves targets for abuse, we were able to drive robust action from Ofcom and get X to back down. Thirdly, if we are to continue to keep pace with developing risk factors, we need to find quicker ways to legislate. The Online Safety Act 2023, for all its strengths, took far too long. We have to get comfortable with more principles-based legislation or secondary legislation options to ensure finally that we can do far better to keep women and children safe online. Across Government, we need to make sure that our own services cannot be used to enable people to perpetuate abuse. I have been working with one woman who, having escaped domestic abuse and relocated to my constituency, now finds herself unable to reject a simple planning application because, in doing so, the local authority requires her to be comfortable publishing her full name and address online. This important democratic right cannot be denied to women fleeing domestic abuse, of all people. I welcome the chance to talk further with the Minister, after this debate, about what wider work we can do across Government to put this right and to ensure that none of our services, online or offline, are enabling women to be anything other than safe in their homes and thriving in their lives.