Responding to data revealing that incidents of upskirting have been reported to the police at a rate of almost one a day since it became a specific sexual offence, Liberal Democrat MP Wera Hobhouse, who originally proposed the Bill, said: “This horrifying statistic serves to show how necessary a change in the law was. Victims across the UK were failing to get justice and perpetrators of the crime were walking free.
“The change to make upskirting a specific sexual offence has not only given protection to victims and punishment to offenders, but it has shown how widespread the crime is.
“The Conservative government must now do everything it can to prevent sexual offences from happening in the first place, such as through better sex and relationship education in schools, as the fight against upskirting is clearly far from over.”