Upskirting Bill blocked by Sir Christopher Chope

[NonnoMum]

Anyone as outraged as i am that just one single white male member of the establishment can block a bill making upskirting illegal?
Who, in their right mind, would think that putting a camera up a girl or woman's skirt to take photos of her genitals or underwear, without her consent, is an acceptable thing to do?
And could anyone with more parliamentary and or legal experience than me explain how this happened???

OK - so there is another thread about this. Couldn't find it earlier.

Anyone can block a private member's bill which is one of the many reasons they are so difficult to get through.

I havent seen an explanation, perhaps either he thinks private member's bills are an abuse of parliament or he thinks that the offence is covered by existing legislation.

He has a majority - a MAJORITY - of 25000 voters.

He's one nasty bastard.

How the hell someone can think that taking photos like that is ok is beyond me. Fucking pervert.

I've lost the other thread!! Can anyone re-direct me!!!

Absolutely awful and there's no excuse for it. But then his entire conduct amd voting record is disgraceful and he's been hiding in plain sight for far too long. I'm glad his nastiness has come to the public's attention now. Hopefully the opposition will be able to use this against him at the next election to get him ousted.

From what I understand he blocks most bills as he thinks all bills should go through much more scrutiny first. So I don’t think we should be too hasty here. Even if he is a Tory

FFS. I hope this man is happy with himself and that is what his Parliamentary career will be remembered for.

Ousted?? He was elected in 1997, and has steadily increased his majority ever since. Christchurch voters presumably like him.

I like the suggestion on twitter that upskirting now be called ‘choping.’

I saw this on the bbc website and was initially furious. I still am, however the above poster is right- apparently he is famous for challenging bills that are too loosely worded, opaque or just not very well expressed. It’s not the end of the road for this bill- I think it’s back up for debate in July. If he’s contesting it on grounds that it needs to be more finely calibrated, then I will v reluctantly have to give him a pass. However, if he’s just a wanker, my initial fury stands.

He really is an odious shit.

I don't much care if he's blocking it for procedural reasons, unless he's planning to now introduce a similar bill via his preferred method. If you yourself aren't doing anything about a problem then the least you can do is get out of the way while someone else does.

On behalf of all the decent males in the country, may I say that we are just as appalled and disgusted at this practice as you ladies, and we are equally enraged that this so called representative of our society should have taken it upon himself to deliberately stall the progress of this very important legislation.
He has scuppered a whole range of bills which were designed to improve the lives of many in society, and yet people still vote for him. This defies any sensible reasoning, especially mine.

Eternal optimist here. So would he at least block any private members bill on self ID I realise he’s probably just an arse but I like to try and put a positive spin on things

He does this to all Private Members Bills apparently? He appears to disagree with them in principle?

Well that's nice. Why is his opinion on that more important than vital legislation getting passed?

He also blocked the bill making it an offence to harm a service animal. Tabled because of a police dog who was stabbed six times during a robbery I think and it looks even more unlikely that that one will get passed.

Get the fossil deselected.

Email the Conservative party chairman Brandon Lewis with your concerns:

[email protected]

Surely there is no point in a PMB system if someone who disagrees with them can just object to any of them any number of times? He thinks that legislation shouldn't be decided on a Friday afternoon with hardly any MPs present? OK, but then why have PMBs if they won't get through simply because someone doesn't agree with the PMB system? It's pointless.

He’s trending on Twitter, people are outraged.

I’ve emailed him. (And managed not to add “why are you such a cunt?)

His email is

[email protected]

I saw the video of his objection on Twitter.

There's always gotta be ONE man to fuck it all up.

"Surely there is no point in a PMB system if someone who disagrees with them can just object to any of them any number of times? "

Not exactly, there are three kinds of Private Members Bills - ballots, 10 minute rule, and Presentation. With the latter there essentially won't be any time to debate the bill so you would not expect most such legislation to ever get passed, as it wouldn't have been discussed in Parliament (it could happen if it had been previously debated but not passed).

Hence the 'object' procedure. This doesn't apply to debated ballot bills.

Good to see that this has been headlining the news tonight and the condemnation is universal!
Hopefully this means the bill will be back in parliament shortly.