{"id":142734,"date":"2018-06-18T11:55:52","date_gmt":"2018-06-18T11:55:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/upskirting-row-mps-office-targeted-in-pants-protest\/"},"modified":"2018-06-18T11:55:52","modified_gmt":"2018-06-18T11:55:52","slug":"upskirting-row-mps-office-targeted-in-pants-protest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/upskirting-row-mps-office-targeted-in-pants-protest\/","title":{"rendered":"Upskirting row: MP&#8217;s office targeted in &#8216;pants protest&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure>                                  <img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Image of pants and other underwear on Sir Christopher Chope&#039;s office door - supplied to PA by fellow MP Caroline Lucas\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/320\/cpsprodpb\/17CF9\/production\/_102092579_mediaitem102092578.jpg\"\/>Image copyright                  PA                                                    <\/figure>\n<p class=\"caps\">Anger over a Conservative MP&#039;s decision to block a bill to make &quot;upskirting&quot; a criminal offence has manifested itself in an unusual way in Parliament.<\/p>\n<p>The entrance to Sir Christopher Chope&#039;s Commons office has been decorated with women&#039;s pants in an apparent protest by Commons staff against his actions.<\/p>\n<p>The MP told LBC Radio he backed a new law but it must be &quot;properly debated&quot;. <\/p>\n<p>Downing Street has said the government will bring forward its own legislation, to be debated before the end of July.<\/p>\n<p>Had Friday&#039;s law - proposed by Lib Dem Wera Hobhouse - passed, someone secretly taking a photo up a woman&#039;s skirt could have faced up to two years in prison.<\/p>\n<p>Defending his objections, Sir Christopher said he had been &quot;sticking up for the right&quot; of Parliament to examine proposed new laws and he was glad ministers were committed to bringing forward their own legislation.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I was a victim of &#039;upskirting&#039; - but I&#039;m fighting back<\/li>\n<li>Speaker calls for private members&#039; bills rethink<\/li>\n<li>May &#039;disappointed&#039; at upskirting law block<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The Christchurch MP has insisted he is not &quot;a dinosaur&quot;. But senior Tories have made their displeasure known, with Prime Minister Theresa May saying she was &quot;disappointed&quot; one of her own MPs had prevented the bill from progressing. <\/p>\n<figure>                                                                                                       Image copyright                  UK Parliament<figcaption>Image caption                                      Sir Christopher said he was delighted the government was bringing forward its own legislation                              <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Sir Christopher told LBC that he had been &quot;not familiar&quot; with what upskirting was before Lib Dem MP Wera Hobhouse had tabled a private member&#039;s bill to make it a specific criminal offence.<\/p>\n<p>But he had now spoken to Gina Martin, a victim of upskirting who has campaigned for action and she &quot;understood fully the reasons&quot; why he had objected.<\/p>\n<figure>             <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/images\/ic\/720x405\/p06bc03q.jpg\"\/>Media playback is unsupported on your device<figcaption>Media captionTheresa May was asked why she had recommended Sir Christopher Chope for a knighthood <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Sir Christopher has been criticised in the past for effectively stopping private member&#039;s bills that would have posthumously pardoned World War Two code-breaker Alan Turing for his 1952 conviction for homosexual activity and scrapped hospital parking charges for carers. <\/p>\n<p>He said he had acted as a &quot;matter of principle&quot; as the measures concerned had been set for approval at second reading - a crucial stage of the parliamentary process - without any debate.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Any new law needs to be debated,&quot; he said. &quot;We don&#039;t have legislation by decree - that is what they have in Putin&#039;s Russia or Erdogan&#039;s Turkey. <\/p>\n<p>&quot;What is our defence against legislation by decree? It is our Parliament and the right of backbenchers to insist government should explain itself and be held to account.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I think it is the moral duty of MPs to stand up for freedom and democracy and not to say just because there seems to be a lot of support for something, it does not need to be questioned.&quot;<\/p>\n<figure>             <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/images\/ic\/720x405\/p06b651s.jpg\"\/>Media playback is unsupported on your device<figcaption>Media captionHear MPs shout: &quot;Shame,&quot; after Sir Christopher objects to the bill<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Mrs Hobhouse&#039;s bill was expected to sail through the Commons on Friday, but parliamentary rules mean it required only one MP to shout: &quot;Object,&quot; to block its progress.<\/p>\n<p>She has urged Sir Christopher to apologise. <\/p>\n<p>Former Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said arguments about parliamentary procedure could not be used to &quot;explain away this reputation-damaging episode&quot;. <\/p>\n<p>Writing in Conservative Home, she said she and most others in the party had been &quot;appalled&quot; by his behaviour.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;It proves to everyone beyond the Westminster bubble that the work so many of us are engaged in, and have supported - to bring the Conservative Party into the modern era - remains uncompleted,&quot; she wrote. <\/p>\n<p><strong>What is the current law?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>There is no law specifically naming and banning upskirting in England and Wales - victims and police are currently able to pursue only offences of outraging public decency or as a crime of voyeurism<\/li>\n<li>Upskirting has been an offence in Scotland since 2010, when it was listed under the broadened definition of voyeurism<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What are the limitations of the current situation in England and Wales?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Voyeurism applies only to filming actions taking place in private<\/li>\n<li>Outraging public decency usually requires someone to have witnessed the action, but upskirting is often unobserved<\/li>\n<li>Unlike with other sexual offences, people don&#039;t have an automatic right to anonymity<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What does the new law propose?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>As well as carrying a maximum two-year sentence, it would also allow, in the most serious cases, those convicted to be placed on the sex offenders register<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image copyright PA Anger over a Conservative MP&#039;s decision to block a bill to make &quot;upskirting&quot; a criminal offence has manifested itself in an unusual way in Parliament. The entrance<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":142735,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}