Monica Harding

Monica Harding

Liberal Democrat — Esher and Walton

Speaking in the House of Commons on 18 December 2025

Debate

Violence against Women and Girls Strategy

Contribution

I pay tribute to the Minister for her work on violence against women and girls. I welcome what she said to my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman) about her commitment to holding tech companies to account for their behaviours. However, during the passage of the Online Safety Act, the Minister and the Victims Minister, who was also instrumental in the development of this strategy, were at the forefront of calls for a code of practice to protect women and girls online. Now they are in government, why are they not delivering on it? It is in the Government’s gift to amend the Act to make Ofcom’s guidance the code. With the best will in the world, guidance will not make any difference to social media companies’ behaviour, nor their profit-driven models, which are the source of so much misogynistic influence, which teachers are now being expected to deal with. Why are the Government afraid to use all the tools at their disposal to hold tech firms to account for their role in fuelling misogynistic behaviour?

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