Joani Reid MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 9 Dec 2025 · Pornography and violence against women · Hansard source

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  I rise to present a petition in the same terms as the hon. Member for Reigate (Rebecca Paul). It is a petition calling for stronger action on online pornography, which fuels violence against women and girls. As we approach the end of the United Nations’ 16 days of activism, we are reminded of just how pervasive online pornography is, and how it is shaping attitudes towards women and girls. Its production relies on coercion, and violent portrayals of women are treated as routine. This normalisation is fuelling misogyny and contributing to a culture in which sexual violence against women and girls is minimised. Following is the full text of the petition: [ The petition of residents of the United Kingdom, Declares that pornography use is fuelling sexual violence; violence against women is prolific in mainstream pornography; and sexual coercion is inherent to the commercial production of pornography. The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to extend safeguards applied to pornography offline to pornography distributed online; and to legally require all pornography websites accessed from the UK to verify the age and permission of every individual featured on their platform—and give performers the right to withdraw their consent at any time to the continued publication of pornography in which they appear. And the petitioners remain, etc.] [P003145]

• 2 Dec 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  Nobody is more pessimistic about Scotland’s future than the SNP. John Swinney has been working extremely hard the past couple of days to ensure that no inappropriate celebrations are held. One of his complaints, covered in the press today, is that Labour is cutting energy bills by only £150, with that doubling for the poorest households. But we on the Government Benches are not pessimistic when it comes to Scotland’s future—we are optimistic, and we are backing that optimism with cold, hard cash. Some £10 billion of additional funding for Scotland has been announced since the Labour party took office last July. That money is available because in the United Kingdom, we pool resources and we share strength. That money could be used to improve our schools—once our greatest pride, they have slid down the international league tables. That money, coming from a Labour Budget, could be used to deliver significant improvements in the NHS, and yet under the SNP, waiting times keep on rising. That money could be used to tackle crime, something that is needed given the alarming rise in violence.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  I could not agree more. More than that, the SNP needs to deliver on promise after promise that it has made about the NHS while absolutely failing to deliver any improvements, despite the fact that Scotland has been given a record settlement. The money is out there, but under the tired and wired SNP, the ideas to use it effectively are not. It is my belief that Labour’s victory in Scotland’s general election rested on the support of three core groups. The first were young families and couples paying their first mortgage. I have met hundreds of such families on the doorstep in East Kilbride, Strathaven and across our villages. I know that the past 18 months have been tough, but we are now delivering for those families; mortgage costs are down and wages are up, and the Budget brings new action to cut fuel bills by between £150 and £300 a year. Our second key group of supporters were people who are in work but rely on benefits to help to pay their bills. For 14 years, they were soft targets for austerity and denounced by right wingers as scroungers. Despite many of them working every hour they could, they increasingly struggled to support themselves and their families, and many were desperate for help to arrive—and help has now arrived. I am proud to support this redistributive Budget and proud to back a Government who do things like twice announcing substantial increases in the minimum wage, abolishing the two-child benefit cap, with the despicable rape clause, and legislating for a real-terms increase in universal credit. The last measure alone will directly benefit 450,000 households in Scotland. The third group who voted for us back in July last year were those aged between 18 and 24—the hundreds of thousands of young people whom the SNP Government have completely ignored. They are not the ones living in Glasgow’s west end or Edinburgh’s Morningside, who do not look to further education colleges to give them the training and skills that they need to get on in life. Here I admit that the news is mixed, because yes, a UK Government can invest directly in Grangemouth to lead the way in bringing in the skills needed for the clean energy future, or back Inchgreen dry dock to help access to defence-related jobs—both are happening thanks to this Budget—but no Budget can change the SNP’s policy of starving FE colleges of money or doing everything it can to block the renewal of Scotland’s nuclear fleet. To change any of that, we need to get Anas Sarwar into Bute House as the First Minister next May, and it is our belief that we can see that happen. That is our final piece of optimism for Scotland.

• 26 Nov 2025 · New Nuclear Sites · Hansard source

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  Since my election I have met with many employers, both local and national, which have expressed—to put it in parliamentary terms—frustration at the SNP’s no-nuclear policy. This is stopping my constituents from getting access to high-quality jobs and it is preventing investment. Does the Secretary of State agree that this is a political choice that is actively stopping Scotland receiving good-quality jobs and investment?

• 24 Nov 2025 · Maccabi Tel Aviv FC: Away Fans Ban · Hansard source

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  As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group against antisemitism, I know that with British Jewish communities facing an unprecedented rise in antisemitic attacks and hatred of Jews being spread with impunity online, many Jews are fearful that the events in Birmingham are just the first step towards excluding them from British public life. There can be no doubt that there are many people in this country who would be only too happy for that to happen. Is the Minister able to take this opportunity to make clear to Israelis coming to the UK to take part in our cultural, sporting and academic activities that they will be treated just as we treat any other visitor coming from any other friendly country?

• 3 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Recent reports show that Babcock is having to recruit hundreds of overseas welders because of a skills shortage in Scotland. This is the direct result of decades of under-investment in further education and skills in Scotland. Can the Minister outline what the UK Government can do to ensure that my constituents can access the apprenticeships and skills that defence jobs depend on?

• 21 Oct 2025 · Rape Gangs: National Statutory Inquiry · Hansard source

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  The Minister has made it clear that women and girls were failed by every institution, and it is a positive step that the failure has now been acknowledged by Government and that the acknowledgment is leading to action after years of inaction. But in Scotland we have had absolutely no acknowledgment or action. What advice would the Minister give me and others across Scotland who are becoming increasingly angry that the Scottish Government are doing all they can not just to block an investigation, but to block any kind of independent scrutiny or case review of organised child exploitation?

• 3 Sept 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  The Minister will know that the rise of platforms such as OnlyFans has led to the mainstream commercialisation of women’s bodies. Does she agree that if we are to tackle violence against women and girls, we must look at pornography prostitution? Will she commit to working with colleagues in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to ensure that that is included in the violence against women and girls strategy?

• 2 Sept 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls: Pornography Prostitution · Hansard source

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  Let me take the opportunity to congratulate my hon. Friend on the work that she did with other members of the APPG to get the Government to make that commitment around strangulation. Yes, I think it should extend to those categories as well. We have to tackle pornography that normalises and glamourises child abuse. It is not niche; we know from the work that we have done and through the Bertin review that, on Pornhub, incest porn is a main category. It is absolutely repugnant and should be tackled through Government intervention. The impact extends into the behaviours of children and young people: eight in 10 children have seen violent pornography by the age of 18. Increasingly, children’s first exposure to sex is not a healthy relationship but online abuse marketed as entertainment.

• 2 Sept 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls: Pornography Prostitution · Hansard source

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  Again, I agree with my hon. Friend’s point. I am delighted that the Government have brought forward plans to ban strangulation in pornography, but there is a whole host of behaviours within pornography that we know affect real-life abuse.

• 2 Sept 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls: Pornography Prostitution · Hansard source

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  What my hon. Friend describes is the Nordic model, which I fully support and hope to see implemented in this country some time in the future. Ash Regan, a Member of the Scottish Parliament, brought forward a private Member’s Bill there that made a serious attempt at trying to implement that way of doing things. We should modernise the system and appreciate that vulnerable women should not be criminalised—those who create the demand should. Ultimately, we must be clear about the principle. For too long, it is the women who have paid the price while the men who purchase and the corporations that profit walk free. We need to turn that around. As survivors in Sweden put it: “It feels like redemption.” This is not about prudishness; it is about confronting violence and exploitation in plain sight. Pornography prostitution is not a career and is not harmless entertainment. It is abuse—filmed, monetised and uploaded.

• 2 Sept 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls: Pornography Prostitution · Hansard source

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  I have one sentence left. OnlyFans is not a success story; it is a pimping empire built on the pain of women and children.

• 2 Sept 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls: Pornography Prostitution · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered the impact of pornography prostitution on violence against women and girls. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I begin by thanking two organisations that have been hugely helpful in preparing for today’s debate: UK Feminista, which provides the secretariat for the all-party parliamentary group on commercial sexual exploitation, and the Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation—CEASE—and particularly Gemma Kelly, its head of policy. Let me set out from the beginning precisely what I mean by pornography prostitution. It is the fusion of the pornography industry and the sex trade into one system. It is the buying, selling and consumption of sexual access to women, livestreamed, or filmed and uploaded, and monetised as entertainment. It is seen by many as a new and booming industry. I disagree: it is commercialised abuse, repackaged and sold as entertainment. It is a form of violence against women and girls. Nowhere is that clearer than on OnlyFans, a UK-based company that has now become the global giant of online sexual exploitation. Last year, it generated $6.6 billion in revenue. It markets itself as a harmless subscription platform but, in reality, it is the largest pimping empire in the world today. I want to focus on three areas where OnlyFans is enabling violence against women and girls.

• 2 Sept 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls: Pornography Prostitution · Hansard source

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  We have recently seen a step forward in the age verification process but, as we know, parents cannot be omnipresent, particularly online. Companies such as Facebook, Meta and Instagram are allowing pornographic content to be pushed and used within algorithms, and it is completely unforgivable. Yes, I completely agree with my hon. Friend. The academic Dr Elly Hanson talks about a parasitic ecosystem, which refers exactly to what my hon. Friend mentioned: OnlyFans feeds off mainstream social media platforms, where sexualised clips are pushed to children by algorithms, which pushes them on to their sites. Teenagers are bombarded with adverts and the grooming is blatant. Children have reported seeing OnlyFans content creators appearing alongside exam revision ads on their feed, the content of which was so graphic when I looked at it in preparation for this debate that I cannot bring myself to quote it. Children are being pushed this content, and it is being normalised. It is not a bug in the system; it is the business model. One child said, “The amount of porn and fights I get on twitter is just horrible.” The result of all this is that girls report feeling coerced to imitate what boys expect, and boys describe being desensitised, seeing violence and degradation as normal. Doctors link the 40% rise in non-fatal strangulation during sex to pornography consumption. As a result, as we have already mentioned, the Government have announced that the depiction of strangulation in pornography will be banned, in a move to protect women and girls from violence. CEASE’s report “Profits Before People” makes clear that pornography is harmful not just for those in it but for society. It grooms boys to perpetrate violence and grooms girls to accept it. It is not a fringe issue; it is a public health crisis. Let me briefly address an argument sometimes presented by so-called progressive voices, particularly on the left, who claim that they are advocating for the rights of sex workers. Let me be clear: what they are really doing is prioritising a tiny minority of privileged individuals—people like Bonnie Blue—who pursue this work out of commercial choice rather than desperation. In doing so they ignore, and in fact further marginalise, the vast majority of women trapped in cycles of abuse, violence and poverty. Elevating the voices of those who profit from glamorising exploitation is not progressive; it is regressive, and it fundamentally betrays the women, girls and children who are suffering. I ask those who support Bonnie Blue, Lily Phillips and other successful porn prostitutes: are you really content to ignore women who are raped on camera, and coerced and trafficked then disregarded, simply because a tiny minority can make millions from the same system? To celebrate them is to turn a blind eye to the abuse of thousands of others. The truth is simple: they do not represent the vast majority who engage in this activity. Those women have no voice, and if we are to claim to be on the side of progress, it is their voices, not the voices of those who glamorise abuse, that we must hear. We must face facts. OnlyFans is not a neutral digital platform company. It is a profiteer of exploitation. We cannot regulate it in the same way that we do Facebook or Instagram. It requires tougher and targeted measures. First, we need transparency. OnlyFans must prove that its 4.6 million creators are all over 18 and have consented to their content. It must also allow independent child protection and trafficking agencies behind its paywall. Secondly, we must protect children online. Ofcom’s current child protection codes are not strong enough. It must ban algorithms that feed sexual content to children. The wider tech sector is critical in this.

• 2 Sept 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls: Pornography Prostitution · Hansard source

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  I completely agree with the hon. Lady. Social media companies should not be allowed to push pornography and sexual content to under-18s, and they should be banned from doing so. The wider tech industry is crucial to this issue—it is not just OnlyFans. It should not be allowed to profit from directing children towards pornography. If it does not comply, economic levers could be considered. If OnlyFans refuses to reform, it could face a levy on profits to fund services for survivors and education for young people. We should learn from Sweden. On 1 July this year, Sweden became the first country to criminalise the purchase of sex online. The OnlyFans law sends a clear message that buying exploitation is not a digital game; it is a crime. The UK could look seriously at following that path. However, I appreciate that much work needs to be done before we reach that point. We must acknowledge that the prostitution laws in our country remain rooted in Victorian values and were designed in a different age.

• 2 Sept 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls: Pornography Prostitution · Hansard source

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  I agree. I think that age verification is hugely important in tackling children’s exposure to pornography. It is not just on those websites; it is found on mainstream websites as well, and I think that is something that we need to look at in the next regulations under the Online Safety Act 2023. As I said, OnlyFans is the largest pimping empire in the world. It is a playground for child sexual abuse and exploitation. Harm and coercion are suffered by women who become so-called content creators, and there is a wider societal and cultural impact, particularly on children and young people. I begin with the most damning evidence: OnlyFans claims to have a zero-tolerance approach to child abuse, yet Reuters has documented at least 30 criminal cases between 2019 and 2024 in the United States alone involving child sexual abuse material on the platform, including hundreds of videos and images, some depicting extreme abuse. In one horrific case, the graphic abuse of a 16-year-old girl was monetised for more than a year before it was taken down, and that was only after Reuters started asking questions. We should be under no illusion: OnlyFans is not a safe platform for consenting adults to express and enjoy themselves. As one survivor put it, “A whole company has made money off of my biggest trauma”. The truth is that all that is just the tip of the iceberg, because OnlyFans hides content behind millions of individual paywalls, and there is no meaningful way for independent investigators, charities, or even law enforcement to monitor the full scale of the abuse. That is not transparency; it is secrecy by design. Ofcom fined OnlyFans for providing misleading information about age verification. While the company claims to set a global standard, the reality is stark. It has no meaningful age verification in the vast majority of the more than 100 countries in which it operates. How many of the 500,000 new users signing up every day are children? We do not know because OnlyFans will not say. OnlyFans likes to boast that every video is reviewed by a human moderator, but the figures just do not add up. Last month alone, 62 million pieces of content were uploaded. Independent experts have said that it would take tens of thousands of moderators to review it all, but OnlyFans employs just a few dozen staff. It outsources the rest to Poland and Ukraine, behind non-disclosure agreements, with no transparency. When the company tells us it has zero tolerance for abuse, we must ask: zero tolerance or zero credibility? The evidence suggests the latter. It is not a British success story; it is the British export of the abuse of children to the world. The second reality is that OnlyFans is not the empowering feminist fairytale that its marketing suggests. It claims to give women financial freedom, but the facts tell another story: 73% of the profits go to the top 10% of creators, and the average woman makes just £4 a month. That is not liberation; it is a lottery in which a handful at the top get rich and millions of others are driven to push their boundaries further and further to survive. As one former content creator described it, “I wasn’t there. I was doing things like a robot.” Another said, “When you’re making an OnlyFans, you are gambling…Betting that your clients are strangers who don’t cross into your real world.” She said it was the worst thing that ever happened to her when she discovered that the man who had paid her over $10,000 over a two-year period for her explicit videos was not a stranger but her uncle. Research by Talita, an organisation in Sweden that supports women out of prostitution, pornography and trafficking, found that almost all women drawn into online pornography had suffered childhood trauma: 96% reported abuse, 88% sexual abuse, and 79% physical abuse. Predators deliberately target vulnerability. Women do not wake up one day just wanting to make porn. As one survivor put it, “At first I told myself, I’ll just sell a foot photo. And before you know it, you’re drawn in step by step.”

• 2 Sept 2025 · Violence against Women and Girls: Pornography Prostitution · Hansard source

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  I completely agree. I hope—and this is a point that I am sure the Minister will respond to later in the debate—that there is a section within the strategy to address these issues. That could possibly be advanced as a result of collaboration between the Home Office and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. I was talking about the abuse that women who are involved in online pornography have suffered: 56% were physically assaulted as a result of their online pornography, and 65% raped. No other industry in Britain would be allowed to operate with those statistics. Meanwhile, OnlyFans executives pay themselves handsomely and its owner reportedly takes home £1.3 million a day. That is the price of women’s pain. But the harm extends well beyond women directly exploited. Its cultural impact is shaping the attitudes and behaviours of an entire generation.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Knife Crime · Hansard source

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  20. What steps her Department is taking to tackle knife crime.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Knife Crime · Hansard source

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  Six weeks ago, Kayden Moy, a 16-year-old boy from East Kilbride in my constituency, was stabbed to death, leaving his family bereft and a community—my community—in grief. Since Kayden’s tragic death, I have received multiple videos and images of local youths posing while wielding machetes in their own homes, but the police claim that they are powerless to take any action whatever. Does the Minister agree that much more needs to be done to stop the very real glamourisation of knife crime online, and to prevent social media from being a breeding ground for youth violence?

• 23 Jun 2025 · UK Modern Industrial Strategy · Hansard source

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  I welcome this ambitious industrial strategy and commend the Secretary of State on the long-term thinking, which is something we did not see under the previous Government. East Kilbride in my constituency, Scotland’s first new town, was born out of an effective post-war industrial strategy, but over recent years my constituents have been given false hope by both the SNP and Tory Governments, with big promises and little delivery. Will the Secretary of State give my constituents reassurance that this time, the strategy will deliver and we will get growth and jobs?

• 16 Jun 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report · Hansard source

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  I strongly welcome the Home Secretary’s announcement of an inquiry and its commitment to survivors. It is absolutely right that the inquiry focuses on local areas where we know that survivors have been failed by the authorities that were supposed to protect them, but it is also essential that we draw lessons for the whole UK. Earlier this year, Professor Alexis Jay from the University of Strathclyde warned the Home Affairs Committee that Scotland is not immune to the kind of organised abuse that we have witnessed elsewhere in the UK. Scotland’s victims and survivors deserve the same assurances on accountability and robust safeguarding measures as anywhere else in the UK, so will the Home Secretary actively seek engagement with the Scottish Government, and offer them support and advice to ensure that they wholeheartedly implement the Jay recommendations effectively?

• 11 Jun 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q11. The Prime Minister and Members across the House will have witnessed the spectacular victory for Davy Russell and Scottish Labour at the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election. My constituents are sick of SNP failure and they voted for change: change for their NHS, for their schools and for Scotland. Has the Prime Minister seen the calls from within the SNP for John Swinney to resign? Does he agree with me that a leader who has only ever lost elections to the Labour party should stay put?

• 10 Jun 2025 · Prostitution and Sex Trafficking: Demand · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for bringing this crucial debate to Westminster Hall today. I wonder whether she has noticed the private Members’ Bill tabled by Ash Regan of the Scottish Parliament, which looks to do exactly what she has described by decriminalising the sale of sex. Would she like to congratulate Ash Regan and wish her luck with her Bill?

• 25 Apr 2025 · Devolution (Immigration) (Scotland) Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

• 25 Apr 2025 · Devolution (Immigration) (Scotland) Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman is mischaracterising what I said—we are not talking about absolute figures. Yes, the figures have risen, but they are disproportionately lower than for the rest of the UK. Once I find it, if the hon. Gentleman will let me, I will quote directly from the National Records of Scotland.