Creasy: New breastfeeding law is “a small thing, but it’s an important thing”

Labour’s Stella Creasy has welcomed a proposed change to the law around women breastfeeding in public, describing it as “a small thing, but it’s an important thing, for people who are just trying to do something completely natural”.

Following an announcement by Dominic Raab on Monday that the government will amend the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill to make it an offence to take a photo of a woman breastfeeding in public without their consent, Creasy recounted her own experience of being recorded while feeding her daughter on a train.

“I have a shawl I wear to make it more discreet because of my own personal preference to do it that way, but I looked up in horror to see a man filming or taking pictures of me, and he clearly thought it was hilarious. It was mortifying and humiliating,” she told i today.

“I fled. He’d clocked that I’d seen him and knew what he was doing, and it seemed to only make him laugh more. He knew it was causing me distress.”

The incident involving the Walthamstow MP took place in 2020, after parliament had passed the Voyeurism Act 2019. But the legislation only bans photographing the genitals or buttocks and did not criminalise taking photos of the upper body.

Creasy subsequently started the ‘Stop the Breast Pest’ campaign, which gathered both cross-party and cross-generational support, and activists have welcomed the decision by ministers to prohibit the practice this week.

“If you look at data, there is a lot of evidence that mothers feel uncomfortable about the attitudes of other people and fear of being photographed. Those are factors,” Creasy said this afternoon.

“Feeding a baby is not a sexual act, and motherhood shouldn’t have to be a struggle like this. This is a small thing, but it’s an important thing, for people who are just trying to do something completely natural.”

The change, to be included as an amendment to the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill, will create a new offence of “recording images of, or otherwise observing, breastfeeding without consent or a reasonable belief as to consent”.

To be found guilty, the perpetrator “must be acting for the purpose of obtaining sexual gratification or of humiliating, alarming or distressing the victim”. Labour’s Yvette Cooper has welcomed the move, saying she is “delighted”.

The Shadow Home Secretary described it as a “victory for breastfeeding mothers”, adding: “It will provide the reassurance that we can breastfeed in public without strangers freely photographing and filming us as they wish. The law is on their side, the law is going to protect them and I am so pleased.”

Cooper also welcomed another confirmed amendment to the government bill, announced by Raab alongside the new breastfeeding law, that will extend the six-month time limit on prosecuting common assault in domestic abuse cases.