I will be brief. New Clause 20 would extend the definition of “intimate image” to include specific categories of image that may be considered intimate by particular religious or cultural groups—for example, instances of a person not wearing modesty clothing such as a hijab or niqab when they would normally do so.

As the Minister set out, legislative action on the intimate image issue has largely been taken in this Parliament. In an era in which everyone has a camera on their phone, one might have expected this to have become much more of an issue, but for some women the legislation has not gone far enough to protect them. I came across the case of a woman who was supported by the charity Ashiana in Sheffield. She is a practising Muslim who wears a hijab. She was pregnant and in an abusive relationship, and her partner was the perpetrator of her sexual exploitation. He took photos of her not wearing her hijab and used them to blackmail her. He threatened to send the images to the woman’s ex-husband and to the community. That could have put the woman, her family and her new daughter at significant risk. To deal with the immediate danger, the woman was re-housed away from the perpetrator. However, when she reported the threat to the police, nothing came of it; the threat was not taken seriously, and there was a lack of understanding of her fear. The threat that she experienced is not covered by the Bill. That is all the new clause seeks to cover.

Threats to share intimate images that, for instance, portray a Muslim woman without her hijab can and are being used as a method of blackmail and coercion. That exposes women to further domestic abuse and so-called honour-based violence. We need to find a new term for that. I hate saying “so-called honour-based violence”; it’s just violence, isn’t it? Perpetrators have been known to threaten to send photos to the men in a woman’s family, for example, and to the community. There are lots of different groups of women we often forget in broader legislation, and I seek not to have these women forgotten in this legislation.