The Times - UK (2022-04-30)

the times | Saturday April 30 2022 2GM 9

News

A Tory peer said he intervened to stop

a man watching “abusive, disgusting”

pornography on the London Under-

ground at 8am and urged the govern-

ment to limit access to explicit material.

Lord Bethell of Romford said that he

was “blown away” that the man seemed

surprised to be told he was doing

anything wrong by watching hardcore

material in public.

He said that ministers should consid-

er restricting pornography in its Online

Safety Bill, arguing that increasing

numbers of men were “ruining their

lives” through porn addiction.

Bethell, a former health minister,

said that he was on his morning com-

mute on the Tube and saw a man two

seats away who was “clearly watching

pornography in front of everyone,

including a lot of school children”.

He told Toda y on BBC Radio 4: “I

leant over to him and said, ‘Excuse me,

mate, that’s really not cool.’ And we had

an exchange and he put his phone away.

And I was just blown away by this

moment, that he had no sense of

boundaries about what he was doing.

He’d lost all sense of what was

appropriate and inappropriate.”

Bethell said that he “wondered how

someone could be so unwell, and so

addicted to that material that they got

to that place” and argued that a report-

ed rise in people watching pornography

in public was a symptom of the “mental

health crisis in this country”.

There are increasing numbers of

men who are “getting a sexual hit from

watching pornography, and who have

become addicted to this horrible

disgusting content and simply don’t

know how to stop,” he said.

The ubiquity of pornography created

a “danger that it’s become normalised”,

Extreme porn on the Tube to work

Chris Smyth Whitehall Editor Bethell added, pointing out that fellow

passengers had not intervened. “Lots of

people were seeing him doing it and just

thought it was like watching drama, but

watching pornography is not like

watching drama. It is a sexual act. And

the material itself is often extremely

abusive.”

Parliament is considering a bill which

the government argues will protect

children and vulnerable adults by

cracking down on illegal material. It

also requires companies to have

policies to deal with content that

ministers judge “legal but harmful”.

Bethell said the bill should consider

tightening rules on pornography. “We

really need to think very carefully

about access to this,” he said.

“Online material is extremely addic-

tive. And a lot of people’s lives I think

are being ruined, because they are

going down a path of addiction that is

going to damage their personal rela-

tionships... we need to look at this

much, much more closely.”

Paula Hall, a relationship therapist,

said that porn addiction was “getting

worse and worse and undoubtedly

that’s because of technology”. She told

Toda y that “the more somebody gets

caught up in the addictive compulsive

behaviours, the worse impulse control

becomes... we know that the part of the

brain that’s responsible for impulse

control actually becomes weaker and

weaker as the pathways for addiction

become stronger and stronger”.

There is often a “psychological lack

of self-awareness”, she said. “I can

imagine that man on the Tube just

thinking ‘Oh, gosh, yes, I suppose it is

inappropriate, isn’t it?’ And it just not

having crossed his mind that it is

inappropriate, because so often with

addictive behaviours, it just becomes

habitual, it just becomes what you do.”

Ban an ‘overreaction’

Government insiders have

dismissed calls for a law banning

the viewing of pornography in

public places as an overreaction

(Matt Dathan writes).

As the law stands it is not illegal

to watch pornography in public

unless doing so includes another

crime, such as causing a

disturbance or harassing someone.

There are no plans to outlaw

people watching pornography in

public despite a crackdown on

doing so in other settings.

The Online Safety Bill will require

social media companies to ensure

that no child on their platforms is

exposed to pornography.

New laws will also criminalise

people for so-called revenge porn,

which has been used by jilted lovers

to seek retribution against former

partners by distributing or

publishing nude footage of them.

There is nothing in the legislation

or the government’s strategy to

combat violence against women

and girls that seeks to stop people

watching pornography on trains,

buses or other public places.

In 2018, the women’s and

equalities committee called on the

government to impose a ban.

Margot James, who was the digital

minister, said she would consider it,

but along with other proposed laws

it was shelved because of the

parliamentary stalemate caused by

arguments over Brexit.

A government source said that

there were no plans to revive the

idea. “It would be a rather knee jerk

response,” the source said.

The Conservative Party is institution-

ally sexist, a senior Tory MP has said as

she revealed she has been subject to

misogynistic smears and poisonous

briefings for speaking out.

Caroline Nokes, the chairwoman of

the women and equalities committee,

said there was a culture of “male enti-

tlement” in the party. Nokes said she

had long been subject to “misogynistic

nicknames and smears” from col-

leagues and suggested that the party

was like an “old boys club”.

She told The Times: “I am as tough as

they come. I genuinely do not care

when pathetic little men who want to

make themselves feel more important

... choose to use misogynistic nick-
names and smears to damage me.
“The thing that worries me is that it
would hurt, upset and damage a less
robust individual. If it’s OK to
have a crack at me, the logic
would be it’s also OK to level that
smear and hideous belittling at
other colleagues.”
Nokes said she had been
briefed against for speaking
out after two women told a
meeting of the 2022 group,
which campaigns for gender
equality in the Conservative
Party, that they had seen a
Tory MP watching porno-
graphy on his phone in the
Commons.
A succession of senior Tory
women have spoken out about

Caroline Nokes said

she had been given

sexist nicknames

wife insists

News

Tory party is run like an

old boys club, claims MP

Steven Swinford Political Editor their experiences. Anne-Marie Trevel-

yan, the trade secretary, said a male MP

pinned her “against a wall” and made

sexual advances. She said she had been

at the “sharp end” of misogyny from

colleagues “many times over”. Male

MPs should behave as if their daughter

were in the room, she added.

Nokes said the Conservative Party

had to recognise that it had a problem.

“I know that male colleagues have

been wandering the corridors of West-

minster blaming me for leaking it,

blaming me for speaking out as if this is

something that would best be brushed

under the carpet,” she said. “By speak-

ing out we will be attacked. I absolutely

think there is an institutional

issue that needs to be

addressed. It is institutional

sexism and many don’t

recognise it as a problem.

“There’s a sense of

women in parliament

being tolerated rather

than valued. There are

women in the party

who have amazing at-

tributes which get

ignored. It still very

much feels like it’s run

by an old boys club.”

Nokes said that

women at the meet-

ing were horrified to

hear claims of the

Tory watching porn. She added that

Chris Heaton-Harris, the chief whip,

was at the meeting.

She suggested that the Tory party

had suffered because it had not had a

female whip. An MP at the meeting told

of her difficulty to get slipped, or

excused from attending a vote, while

she was breastfeeding.

“I’ve no doubt the chief would hit

back and say that the purpose of the

whips office is to make sure that the

government’s business is secured,”

Nokes said. “But you won’t secure the

government’s business long term if you

lose the goodwill of colleagues and if

you aren’t supporting new parents.”

She said women in parliament faced

constant “micro-aggression”. She told

how a colleague was compared to a

prostitute for wearing a leather skirt.

She said: “These are micro-aggres-

sions. If you were to take them as indi-

vidual incidents they don’t sound that

big a deal. But when you start rolling

them together the behaviour towards

female MPs is an ongoing problem.”

Analysis by Times Radio has found

the Conservatives have put forward

only eight female ministers for the

morning broadcast rounds since the

start of the year. In the same period the

party has sent out 85 men.

Labour, by contrast, has put forward

49 men and 45 women.

Several senior Tories — Priti Patel,

the home secretary, Nadine Dorries,

the culture secretary, and Suella Brav-

erman, the attorney-general — have

not been offered for interview once.

EU membership in 2011 helped to

snuff out chances of rapid elevation,

although in 2014 he was appointed a

parliamentary private secretary, or

junior aide, to John Hayes, then a

junior transport minister.

Parish wielded significant

influence in Brussels, where he was

at one point the only British

committee chairman. Contrary to

his low profile in Westminster,

Parish was seen as an enthusiastic

self-promoter in Brussels.

After it was claimed that MEPs

produced 190,000 tonnes of carbon

dioxide by decamping monthly to

Strasbourg, Parish drove a hybrid

car there to campaign against the

Strasbourg sitting. When the

government refused to launch an

inquiry into the foot-and-mouth

outbreak, Parish, despite significant

opposition, set up a temporary

committee in the European

parliament to investigate instead.

David Miliband, then Tony Blair’s

environment secretary, is said to

have labelled Parish a rottweiler.

In a historical quirk, Parish’s ten

years in Brussels, which came to an

end in 2009, overlapped exactly

with those of Heaton-Harris, the

man who suspended him yesterday

and was the chief whip of the Tories

in the European parliament.

Parish’s political career began in

1983, when he was elected a

councillor on Sedgemoor district

council in Somerset. From 1989 to

1995, he was the council’s deputy

leader and from 1989-93, he also sat

on Somerset county council.

Parish had left school at 16 to

work on the family farm until his

political career began. Friends said

the claim would hit Sue especially

hard. They have a son, Jonathan,

and a daughter, Harriet, and two

grandchildren. “They’re always seen

together around parliament and at

events,” a source said.

Sue, a former teacher, is

employed as a secretary by Parish.

In his maiden speech in 2010,

Parish said: “I want to pay a quick

tribute to my wife, who is sitting up

in the gallery. Not only do I pay

tribute to the fact that she has put

up with me for almost 30 years, but

I thank her for helping me through

my political career, and I hope that

that will continue.”

Neil Parish is the

chairman of the

environment, food

and rural affairs

select committee