I have spoken before about the serious and outrageous behaviour that girls from Stroud High School in my constituency reported to me. Those girls, in their distinctive school uniform, deal with completely unwanted public sexual harassment from men. There are random comments sometimes, and the comments are sometimes sexualised and are sometimes just really weird. I listened to their experiences. They took the initiative of creating a survey, so they went around their school—these are really smart kids—and they discovered, to their horror, that girls as young as nine had experienced public sexual harassment.
We have all experienced that and we have spoken about that in the Chamber. It ranges from being shouted at to comments by those who think they are being funny, to people being flashed at and far more serious incidents. We saw from the Everyone’s Invited campaign that this is prevalent among schoolgirls and schoolchildren. I started to investigate this, listening even more closely to my excellent colleagues and looking at the fantastic work that went on prior to my joining this House, and it became really obvious that things needed to change.
In Stroud, sadly, we have had a series of rapes and sexual assaults, which is totally devastating for the victims and their families. It has also completely rocked our community. This is a safe, beautiful Cotswolds town, which is similar to what my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) said about his area and the need for strong police and strong communities. We now have women who are worried about going out. We have women who are worried about going for a run during the day down our championed canal routes, because one of the attacks was in broad daylight. The Bill is not about rape—I get that—but about public sexual harassment. None the less, from speaking to the women and girls in my constituency and from listening to the experienced hon. and right hon. Members in this place, I know that, although the harassment on the streets and the trolling that is happening online daily, even hourly, to women and girls may be down to keyboard warriors being idiots, it is also fuelling physical abuse in the real world.