People call me the sex MP but we need to be educating

Image caption, MP Samantha Niblett has launched officially launched her campaign, calling for lifelong sex educationByGeorgia Roberts, Derby political reporter and Asha Patel, East MidlandsPublished10 minutes agoWhen Samantha Niblett launched the Yes Sex Please, We're British! campaign earlier this year, it did not take long for the jokes and criticism to start flying - and for her to be given a new nickname."Now in times gone by, being referred to as a 'sex MP' would've been something quite sleazy and seedy.

But thankfully, and hopefully, I'm helping to change that," the Labour MP for South Derbyshire says.The campaign was begun to push education around consent, respect and healthy relationships, with the aim of preventing abuse and violence.The MP wants to remove the stigma around sex, and says the backlash and ridicule she has received in response to her campaign - including from sections of her own party - is "half the reason" for running it.

A launch event for the campaign, dubbed "summer of sex", was held in London this week and later in autumn, Niblett will display a number of sex toys and sex education aids in Parliament. Image source, SuppliedImage caption, Niblett (right), launched her campaign alongside sex educator Cindy Gallop (middle) and Lucy Litwick, the CEO of Coco De Mer in LondonThe Crime Survey for England and Wales found, for the year ending March 2025, that about 15.9% of people aged 16 or over (7.

7 million people) had experienced sexual assault since the age of 16.Of those, 1.9 million were victims of rape, and 1.

8 million of rape victims were females, according to figures published by the Office for National Statistics.Campaigners have long been calling to improve sex education in England. In 2017, the Local Government Association (LGA) said the lack of sex and relationships education in some of the country's secondary schools was creating a "ticking sexual health time bomb".

Another Labour MP, Alistair Strathern, has been calling for the government to make relationships and sex education mandatory for 16 to 18-year-olds. He introduced the Relationships and Sex Education (Further Education Sector) Bill to Parliament in June.That followed a petition by the survivor-led campaign group Make It Mandatory, which called for sex education to be mandated to 18 and gathered more than 106,000 signatures.

Niblett has partnered with sex educator Cindy Gallop, who wants to steer people from pornography as sex education.In a TED conference, Gallop previously said access to online pornography, combined with a "society that is reluctant to talk about sex", had led to pornography becoming the "default sex education".Image source, SuppliedImage caption, The campaign launch event was held at John Lewis in Oxford StreetNiblett hopes the launch will "silence some critics, or at least make them think again".

Some of those critics Niblett shares the same side of the Commons with. She says earlier this year, she was asked not to do media by some in the Labour administration.Asked on the BBC's Politics Live programme in April whether he thought the campaign was a good idea, fellow Labour MP Tom Hayes said he commended his colleague for taking it forward.

However, he added: "I represent Bournemouth East, which is a coastal town, and may be used to a bit of seaside racy joking, but I don't think my pensioners want to talk dirty - I think they want to talk defence."And for me it's not about a summer of sex, it's about an all-year-round, round-the-clock focus on the cost of living."Liberal Democrat MP for Frome and East Somerset, Anna Sabine, said while her constituents "might be interested" in the topic, she believed they would "much rather" she was talking about potholes and the cost of living.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch also criticised the campaign during a session of Prime Minister's Questions earlier this year.Badenoch said: "What are they [Labour] doing? "They're promoting sex toys in Parliament.

It gives a whole new meaning to 'fiddling while Rome burns'."'It's absolutely political' "I think if some of my colleagues - who should be some of the most progressive MPs that there are - are finding it amusing, then I look forward to seeing the goodness that will come off the back of the campaign," Niblett says. And Niblett says while the matter of sex education and destigmatising sex is "absolutely political", it's not party political.

She says: "I would be doing this no matter what party I was sitting in, and I really hope the campaign itself is not diminished because people want to use it as a weapon to make it party political."It is absolutely political. There are things that we need to do within the system to offer better sex education and support that can only really happen from the top down from the government."

The MP is calling for "lifelong sex education" and says she hopes to target the Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care with her campaign.The campaign will also aim t