The middle of the line

A couple of weeks ago, Nadine Dorries moved her Private Members’ Bill to propose a law on sex education. She made several dubious claims in the debate, and so perhaps some MPs might have been suckered into accepting her argument.

But it wouldn’t take much to see that what she’s proposing is to treat girls differently from boys – to promote the idea that if only girls were taught to say ‘no’, that under age sex would not happen. That it takes two to tango appears not to enter into the thinking.

She made claims about what appears on TV in prime time which she put into the mouth of Joan Bakewell. This was not true. The stats bear an uncanny resemblence to those produced in a US study from ten years ago, and where the definition of prime-time is later than ours (and so includes post-watershed television).

Rugby MP Mark Pawsey voted in favour. Here’s an open question to our MP – if you knew that Dorries had misled the House, would you still have voted this way, and if so why?