Stopping Violence Against Women and Girls

Chair: Jess Brown-Fuller MP; Aide: Cllr Nick da Costa (Chair, FCC); Hall Aide: Charley Hasted

Motion as passed by Conference

Submitted by: Liberal Democrat Women 
Mover: Donna Harris 
Summation: Marie Goldman MP (Spokesperson for Women and Equalities)

Conference notes that:

1. Misogyny has evolved in the digital age, with the rise of the ‘manosphere’ and ‘incel culture’ spreading hateful ideologies linked to real-world violence.
2. Over one in ten women in England have experienced online violence, rising to 25 per cent among women aged 16–24 and 35 per cent among LGBT+ women.
3. Ethnic minority women are disproportionately targeted, with black women 84 per cent more likely than white women to be mentioned in abusive tweets.
4. A quarter of girls have been called degrading names online, and one in five have received unwanted images.
5. Nearly three-quarters of Generation Z have encountered misogynistic content online, with over half exposed at least weekly.
6. Generative AI has enabled the creation of non-consensual sexually explicit deepfakes and child sexual abuse material, including via tools such as X’s chatbot Grok.
7. The worrying rise in covert filming of women and girls, with footage often shared online for profit and engagement - a trend further enabled by smartglasses, with one analysis finding 60% of covert point-of-view Instagram content contained behaviour amounting to harassment.

Conference further notes that:

1. Women and girls still experience disproportionately high levels of online abuse, stalking, intimate image abuse and technology-facilitated violence, despite the introduction of the Online Safety Act 2023, the Victims and Courts Bill 2026 and the Crime and Policing Act 2026.
2. Ofcom's A Safer Life Online for Women and Girls guidance, published in November 2025, sets out voluntary measures for platforms, with no review due before 2027.
3. The Government’s Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) strategy, published in December 2025, includes commitments to tackle online harms by 2029.
4. Seven in 10 women believe that current legislation is ineffective at tackling VAWG online.

Conference believes that:

1. Everyone, regardless of identity, has the right to live a life free from fear and violence.
2. VAWG is a national emergency and tackling it must be a priority at all levels of government.
3. Effective action on VAWG must recognise the distinct experiences of minority women.
4. The Labour Government, like its Conservative predecessors, is failing adequately to tackle online harms against women and girls.
5. The law must keep pace with emerging technologies and evolving forms of abuse to protect women and girls.

Conference reaffirms the Liberal Democrats’ commitment to tackling VAWG in all its forms.

Conference calls on the Government to:

1. Immediately bring into force all relevant sections of the Victims and Courts Bill 2026 and the Crime and Policing Act 2026.
2. Urgently review the Online Safety Act to ensure that Ofcom uses its enforcement powers earlier, as a first, not a last, resort to hold platforms to account.
3. Make Ofcom’s guidance on VAWG an enforceable code of practice with real consequences for failure to comply.
4. Deliver all commitments on online harms in the VAWG Strategy without delay.
5. Require platforms to publish regular assessments of their role in facilitating misogynistic abuse and the steps taken to mitigate it.
6. Reinvest fines levied under the Online Safety Act into digital literacy, healthy relationships and online genderbased violence prevention education.
7. Extend police charging powers for lower-level VAWG offences, including online stalking, technology-facilitated domestic abuse and harassment, to speed up charging decisions and reduce victim disengagement.
8. Tighten voyeurism laws to make clear that sexualised, covert filming (including using smartglasses) and posting footage online, sometimes for profit, is a criminal offence, and force platforms to take this content down immediately.
9. Introduce a statutory duty on manufacturers to equip smartglasses with a visible indicator when recording and make it a criminal offence to disable, obscure, remove, or otherwise tamper with that indicator, or to manufacture, supply, or advertise any product or service designed to do so.

Applicability: Federal except for 1. and 7. which are England and Wales

Motion prior to amendment

Submitted by: Liberal Democrat Women 
Mover: Donna Harris 
Summation: Marie Goldman MP (Spokesperson for Women and Equalities)

Conference notes that:

1. Misogyny has evolved in the digital age, with the rise of the ‘manosphere’ and ‘incel culture’ spreading hateful ideologies linked to real-world violence.
2. Over one in ten women in England have experienced online violence, rising to 25 per cent among women aged 16–24 and 35 per cent among LGBT+ women.
3. Ethnic minority women are disproportionately targeted, with black women 84 per cent more likely than white women to be mentioned in abusive tweets.
4. A quarter of girls have been called degrading names online, and one in five have received unwanted images.
5. Nearly three-quarters of Generation Z have encountered misogynistic content online, with over half exposed at least weekly.
6. Generative AI has enabled the creation of non-consensual sexually explicit deepfakes and child sexual abuse material, including via tools such as X’s chatbot Grok.

Conference further notes that:

1. Women and girls still experience disproportionately high levels of online abuse, stalking, intimate image abuse and technology-facilitated violence, despite the introduction of the Online Safety Act 2023, the Victims and Courts Bill 2026 and the Crime and Policing Act 2026.
2. Ofcom's A Safer Life Online for Women and Girls guidance, published in November 2025, sets out voluntary measures for platforms, with no review due before 2027.
3. The Government’s Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) strategy, published in December 2025, includes commitments to tackle online harms by 2029.
4. Seven in 10 women believe that current legislation is ineffective at tackling VAWG online.

Conference believes that:

1. Everyone, regardless of identity, has the right to live a life free from fear and violence.
2. VAWG is a national emergency and tackling it must be a priority at all levels of government.
3. Effective action on VAWG must recognise the distinct experiences of minority women.
4. The Labour Government, like its Conservative predecessors, is failing adequately to tackle online harms against women and girls.
5. The law must keep pace with emerging technologies and evolving forms of abuse to protect women and girls.

Conference reaffirms the Liberal Democrats’ commitment to tackling VAWG in all its forms.

Conference calls on the Government to:

1. Immediately bring into force all relevant sections of the Victims and Courts Bill 2026 and the Crime and Policing Act 2026.
2. Urgently review the Online Safety Act to ensure that Ofcom uses its enforcement powers earlier, as a first, not a last, resort to hold platforms to account.
3. Make Ofcom’s guidance on VAWG an enforceable code of practice with real consequences for failure to comply.
4. Deliver all commitments on online harms in the VAWG Strategy without delay.
5. Require platforms to publish regular assessments of their role in facilitating misogynistic abuse and the steps taken to mitigate it.
6. Reinvest fines levied under the Online Safety Act into digital literacy, healthy relationships and online genderbased violence prevention education.
7. Extend police charging powers for lower-level VAWG offences, including online stalking, technology-facilitated domestic abuse and harassment, to speed up charging decisions and reduce victim disengagement.

Applicability: Federal except for 1. and 7. which are England and Wales

Amendment One

PASSED 

Submitted by: 11 members
Mover: Wera Hobhouse MP
Summation: Anna Sabine MP

After line 18 insert new G.:  

1. The worrying rise in covert filming of women and girls, with footage often shared online for profit and engagement - a trend further enabled by smartglasses, with one analysis finding 60% of covert point-of-view Instagram content contained behaviour amounting to harassment.

After line 67 insert new 8. and 9.: 

1. Tighten voyeurism laws to make clear that sexualised, covert filming (including using smartglasses) and posting footage online, sometimes for profit, is a criminal offence, and force platforms to take this content down immediately.
2. Introduce a statutory duty on manufacturers to equip smartglasses with a visible indicator when recording and make it a criminal offence to disable, obscure, remove, or otherwise tamper with that indicator, or to manufacture, supply, or advertise any product or service designed to do so.

Amendment Two

PASSED

Submitted by: Young Liberals
Mover: Sarah Anderson
Summation: Elin Kingston

After line 44 insert new F.: 

1. Providers of Generative AI systems and online platforms must take responsibility for preventing their services from enabling the creation or distribution of non-consensual sexually explicit content.

After line 67 insert new 8. and 9.:  

1. Require providers of generative AI image and video tools to undertake continuous abusability testing starting pre-release and take any reasonable safety-by-design steps to prevent their systems being used to create non-consensual sexually explicit content.
2. Require AI providers to attach, and online platforms to preserve and display, durable and interoperable provenance information on AIgenerated or edited sexually explicit content, with deliberate tampering being considered an aggravating factor in sentencing for related offences.