BASINGTOKE’S MP Maria Miller has said that there is a greater need to protect women and girls as she calls for an end to intimate image abuse.

Speaking to the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee Maria Miller said that women’s safety online needs to be addressed.

She said: “Now all of us in this room probably have different things we want the bill to address and that is part of what the government is trying to do by focusing it so sharply on social media regulation.

“I would argue though that in doing that they are producing something which will disappoint many people who need to see the law strengthened.”

She said that intimate abuse is one of the worst ways to abuse online.

An intimate image is a picture or recording in which a person is nude, partially nude or engaged in explicit sexual activity that was made in circumstances that gave rise to an expectation of privacy.

She added: “Intimate image abuse has got to be one of the most vile ways in which you can abuse somebody online."

Maria Miller recently partnered with Grazia alongside Emily Atack and MP Jess Phillips to make the sending of unsolicited explicit images illegal in the UK.

With the Online Safety Bill due to be published by the Government later this year, Grazia launched a new petition to ensure that ‘cyberflashing’ is included in the new legislation and women are protected.

Maria added: “Whether you are a man or a woman, whether you are gay or are straight, whether your married or not.

“Having a sexually explicit image of yourself put into the general public is horrendous.”

She said it can “devastate people’s lives”.

She added: “There is technology which has been designed to take pictures of women in this room and make them appear as if they are naked, not men just women.”

She said that if this is not addressed then “a major issue will be missed”.