Anna Sabine MP: speeches

Speeches

• 24 Mar 2026 · Women’s Safety in Rural Areas · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree with the hon. Member. I will talk about lighting in due course. In her book “Invisible Women”, Caroline Criado-Perez documents how the built environment has historically been designed around a default that is male, and how data on street use, transport planning and public space has been gathered without disaggregating by sex. The result is infrastructure that works reasonably well for men and imposes a hidden cost of time, money, anxiety and constrained freedom on women. That cost is not inevitable. It is a design choice, and it can be designed out. Women are four times more likely to experience sexual assault than men, and more than twice as likely to experience stalking. Many such offences happen not in the home but in public spaces—on paths, at bus stops, in car parks and on the routes between places. They happen disproportionately in spaces that are poorly lit, poorly overlooked and poorly served by transport. The consequences extend far beyond the incidents themselves. Girls’ loss of freedom in public space is directly and measurably linked to poor mental health. Women who feel unsafe curtail their physical activity, social lives and working patterns. Violence against women and girls costs hundreds of lives a year, alongside widespread and serious harm that ripples outwards into health services, the economy and the fabric of communities. To circle back to my opening point, we know what works, but the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government seems determined not to implement it. On 16 December 2025, the Government published the revised national planning policy framework, and just two days later they published their violence against women and girls strategy, rightly declaring VAWG a national emergency and committing to a whole-of-society approach to prevention. Those two documents should have been in conversation with each other, but they were not. The revised NPPF contains no reference whatsoever to women, girls, gendered safety or violence against women in the built environment—not one. Chapter 8, on promoting healthy and safe communities, discusses safety, health and crime, but does so in entirely gender-blind terms, despite overwhelming evidence that safety is not experienced equally by all people in all spaces. A chapter about healthy and safe communities which does not acknowledge that safety is not experienced equally is not, with respect, a chapter about healthy and safe communities. It is a chapter about healthy and safe communities for some people. In January I wrote to both the Minister for Housing and Planning and the Minister for Safeguarding to raise the issue directly. I have yet to receive a substantive response from either of them, but when The Guardian asked MHCLG for comment, the response received was frankly jaw-dropping. MHCLG said: “The NPPF is a planning document. It sets out guidelines for housebuilding and planning in England. The VAWG strategy is about protecting women and girls from violence and misogyny.” The Department said it was “unclear as to why anyone would expect the two things to be combined”. That tells us that, alarmingly, the people responsible for designing our spaces and places apparently do not understand, despite huge bodies of evidence, why planning with women in mind might be relevant or useful. That raises serious concerns not just about the policy position but about the Department’s basic understanding of the relationship between planning and women’s lives. What makes that omission particularly hard to defend is that it was not an accident. The previous Government explicitly raised this issue in the 2022 NPPF consultation, asking whether greater emphasis should be placed on making women and girls feel safe in public places. Responses were received, but nothing changed in the December 2025 revision, under the current Government. I want to be precise about that means: MHCLG was asked whether it should do better on this issue, received evidence it should and chose not to act. That is not an oversight; it is a decision. International best practice in gender-responsive planning is really well established: clear sight lines and natural surveillance; active street frontages that keep eyes on the street; thoughtful lighting design—not simply more but better lights, placed in the right locations; and safe, well-connected public transport routes that do not leave women stranded after dark. Make Space for Girls, the UK campaign that has done forensic and compelling work on how public space is designed for teenagers, has shown that the spaces we build for young people—the parks, play areas and recreational spaces—are overwhelmingly designed with boys in mind. The default is a multi-use games area: a hard, caged, male-dominated space that girls report, in study after study, feeling excluded from and unsafe in. Girls do not lack interest in outdoor space; they lack outdoor spaces that were designed with them in mind. The consequence is that girls retreat indoors earlier, exercise less and lose the freedom of movement that is so fundamental to adolescent development and mental health. This is not a minor amenity issue; it is a public health issue—and it starts with planning. The principles are well established, but without explicit inclusion in national policy, they remain optional. As a result, women’s safety in public space is a postcode lottery—and nowhere is that lottery more consequential than in rural areas where the baseline is already so much lower. The omission also creates a tension with the Government’s international commitments. UK infrastructure policy is explicitly aligned with the UN’s sustainable development goals, including SDG 5.2, on eliminating violence against women and girls, and SDG 11.7, on safe and inclusive public spaces explicitly for women and girls. The NPPF discusses the safety and design quality of green space at length, but does not mention either of those commitments. A further tension is emerging that I do not think has received sufficient attention—the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) alluded to it. Nature recovery and biodiversity policies are rightly being pursued with increasing ambition, with green corridors, rewilded verges and, in some cases, reduced lighting to support wildlife. Those are good objectives, but in some instances they are pursued without adequate consideration of what they mean for women’s safety. A dark, overgrown footpath may be an excellent habitat, but it may also be a route that women no longer feel able to use. We should not have to choose between environmental policy and women’s safety. Without gender-responsive planning guidance, that tension will not be managed; it will simply produce worse outcomes by default. The NPPF is not a neutral document; it is a statement of priorities, and right now it does not include women’s safety among them.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Women’s Safety in Rural Areas · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. We need an infrastructure-first approach that also has women and girls’ safety in mind. I hope with all sincerity that the MHCLG’s official view is not the one that was set out by whoever gave that comment to T he Guardian . I hope the Labour Government aspire not just to match but to exceed the standards of the previous Government when it comes to the safety and wellbeing of women. I also hope the Minister will commit today to taking steps towards putting VAWG at the heart of the NPPF. That would have a genuinely transformative effect on women’s lives in the UK. Along with a series of experts in urban design and planning, I am calling on the Government to commission an independent review—a serious, systematic review of violence against women and girls and the built environment. It must be a review with teeth that establishes an authoritative evidence base, that examines the structural gaps between the VAWG strategy and planning policy, and that produces recommendations that require developers and planners to treat women’s safety as a fundamental component of design, not an optional extra. I am sure the Minister will be pleased that all this is included in a second letter that I will send to him today. Alongside that, I urge the Government to take the following specific steps without delay: to amend the NPPF to explicitly require the consideration of women and girls’ safety, particularly in chapters 8 and 12, so that local authorities have a clear national mandate to act; to update the national design guide and national model design code to include substantive guidance on designing for women’s safety, drawing on the international best practice that already exists and is well evidenced; to require major developments to demonstrate how they contribute to SDGs 5.2 and 11.7—commitments the Government have already made on the world stage; and to introduce gender impact assessments for large-scale developments as a standard part of the planning process. I also urge the Government to look seriously at gender budgeting as a tool for local authorities when they design streets, parks and public spaces. Gender budgeting does not mean ringfencing money for women; it means asking at the point of allocation, “Who benefits from this spending? Is the distribution equitable?” Vienna, Helsinki and Seoul have all used gender budgeting in the design of public space to reveal and correct the systemic underfunding of spaces that women and girls actually use. It is a practical, evidence-based mechanism, and it is entirely compatible with the fiscal constraints that local authorities are operating under. We should be using it here. Finally, I hope the Minister will ensure that MHCLG is formally integrated into cross-Government delivery of the VAWG strategy. A whole-of-society approach that excludes the Department responsible for shaping the physical environment is not, in any meaningful sense, a whole-of-society approach—it is a strategy with a very large hole in it. The Government’s ambition to halve violence against women and girls within a decade is genuinely welcome, but ambition without structural delivery mechanisms will not achieve it. Right now, the NPPF—the primary lever for shaping how this country is built—contains nothing that would materially help to deliver it. That gap must be addressed if the strategy is to be credible. The women who responded to my survey in Frome and East Somerset were not asking for the extraordinary. They were not asking for anything that other countries have not already delivered. They were asking to walk home safely, to go for a run, to catch a bus without calculating the risk, and to move through their own communities with the same unconsidered freedom that most men take entirely for granted. This is not a radical demand; it is a basic one, and the tools to deliver it in planning policy, design guidance and cross-Government strategy are well within our grasp. I urge the Minister to act. The evidence is there, the need is clear, and the gap in policy is glaring and, as I have shown today, entirely without justification. Let us work together to close it.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Women’s Safety in Rural Areas · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for his constructive response. It always seems to me that the Government are blessed with many feisty and brilliant female politicians trying to make sure that VAWG is rightly pushed up the political agenda. Given that we live in an environment that historically has been largely designed by and for men, I feel quite strongly that if we can manage to get a mention of the safety and wellbeing of women and girls into the NPPF it will genuinely make a difference to the way in which local authorities and other bodies treat planning, and consider it as a group. There is often a joke that it feels as if a little more attention is paid to bats’ wellbeing than to women and girls’ wellbeing. I would love for that to change. I thank everyone who has taken part in the debate, and I thank the Minister for his comments. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the impact of planning on women’s safety in rural areas.

• 12 Feb 2026 · Rural Mobile Connectivity · Hansard source

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  I very much thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) for bringing forward this debate on a subject she knows so much about and on which she is such a passionate campaigner. Rural areas are too often the last in the queue when it comes to decent mobile internet connectivity. I certainly receive many emails—although not as many as I probably would if they were better connected—as well as calls and letters from constituents who tell me how woeful mobile connectivity is in parts of Frome and East Somerset. One elderly constituent told me how anxious she is that she or her husband will suffer a fall and have no way to contact the emergency services as their home has no mobile signal. The Liberal Democrats believe that mobile coverage is a basic utility that is as essential these days as running water. People need mobile connectivity when they are travelling, working, running businesses or responding to emergencies. Yet for too long, Government targets have not been ambitious enough, and have been based on connecting households directly rather than on geographical coverage. The Government claim to have reached 95% of geographical broadband coverage, but residents in rural areas tell a very different story, and the problem lies in how coverage is measured. A constituent wrote to me about persistent signal blackspots throughout the village of Rode. He told me he no longer expects to receive any mobile signal at his home. Ofcom’s mobile coverage checker suggests he should have a strong outdoor signal from every provider, but his experience proves otherwise. This is why we support a nationwide programme to install hyperfast fibre optic broadband across the UK, with a particular focus on connecting rural areas. Ofcom’s capability to understand coverage relies on measurements based on grids of 100 metres by 100 metres, which means that vast swathes of rural areas are underserved in areas such as Rode. More accurate techniques based on smaller grids would offer better coverage pictures to allow for targeted support. Rural businesses are crying out for better connectivity. A survey by the Countryside Alliance found that 85% of rural businesses cited their connectivity as poor but manageable, with 80% saying better-quality connectivity would be the single largest improvement to their business. In Midsomer Norton, a fairly sizeable market town in my constituency, Zen Rebel Studios has long struggled with poor mobile signal and inadequate broadband. Mobile reception inside its premises is extremely limited, and despite being only a few metres off the high street, it has been unable to secure an extension of the fibre network. As a result, only a handful of people using its café can currently use its wi-fi at any one time before the system crashes, which is simply not sustainable for a modern business. This really matters for productivity. Rural areas are 18% less productive than the national average. Closing this gap would be worth up to £43 billion in England alone, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs in areas too often blighted by underemployment. Some rural stakeholders have complained about a lack of transparency about where coverage improvements will be delivered. Ultimately, it is up to the mobile network operators to decide where to deploy coverage. The Government and Ofcom do not have legal powers to force them to build masts in specific locations. However, when the hon. Member for Rhondda and Ogmore (Chris Bryant) served as Minister for Data Protection and Telecoms, he convened a working group with MPs and mobile providers to explore how to accelerate mast installation and improve rural mobile coverage. Unfortunately, this has not yet been restarted under the current Minister, who I hope will consider reinstating it. I want to conclude by raising something that has not yet come up, but which is a consequence of rural connectivity failure that goes beyond economics or inconvenience. I have a constituent who, after leaving a long-term coercively controlling relationship, experienced sustained cyber-intrusion by his former partner over several days. He reported it to the police and obtained a crime number, but his abuser retained sole control of the broadband account for the home in which he was living. As the coercive controller was the named bill payer, my constituent could not take over the account. His former partner explicitly refused to release it, even when requested to do so during separation proceedings. Here is where the absence of mobile coverage becomes critical: there is zero mobile signal at my constituent’s property. In fact, that goes for the whole village. Broadband was therefore his only means of communication. His abuser controlled whether he could make a telephone call, access support services or even work. Through locked devices connected to the network, my constituent remained vulnerable to surveillance. A private security sweep, costing £5,000, discovered that his TV sound bar had been configured as a listening device. He had to live with his wi-fi turned off, activating it only when absolutely necessary, leaving him feeling desperately vulnerable and unable call for help during the moments it was on. My constituent contacted his broadband provider four times and, while staff were compassionate and escalated the situation, there was no safeguarding protocol available to them and no mechanism to transfer control. His former partner continued controlling his internet access and which devices could connect. Currently, broadband is regulated as a consumer contract and not as essential infrastructure; while an energy supplier would have had to recognise domestic abuse and allow an account transfer, telecommunications providers face no such duty. When reviewing rural connectivity policy, will the Minister also consider requiring telecoms providers to have such safeguarding mechanisms, and will they ensure that where police evidence documents abuse, broadband control can be transferred to the person at risk? I am sure that the Minister hears similar frustrations from his own constituents as we have heard today, and I hope he recognises how urgently these issues need addressing. If we are serious about protecting people, supporting rural communities and enabling economic growth, we must treat digital access as the essential service it has become.

• 14 Oct 2025 · Reducing Energy Bills · Hansard source

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  In my constituency of Frome and East Somerset, approximately 10% of households use oil central heating, compared with 5% nationally. Given the high volatility of oil prices, that places my constituents in a particularly difficult position as we approach the winter months. Will the Minister confirm what measures will be taken to ensure that homes that are reliant on oil heating can be heated more affordably, so that my constituents do not have to suffer unnecessarily?

• 14 Oct 2025 · Reducing Energy Bills · Hansard source

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  22. What steps he is taking to reduce energy bills.