Will Christopher Chope block the upskirting bill again?

I represent Gina Martin, the 26-year-old who founded the campaign to make upskirting a specific sexual offence under English law. Last Friday, much to the dismay of his colleagues, Sir Christopher Chope blocked a bill in support of Gina’s campaign. When he shouted ‘object’, Chope was not then aware of the detail of the bill, the furore his decision would cause – or indeed what upskirting actually was.  

Chope has now written for The Spectator and given interviews to the Times and ITV News, as well as his constituency paper the Daily Echo. His position remains that his objection to the upskirting bill has nothing to do with its merits but is instead due to two points of principle. Firstly, Chope argued that minister Lucy Frazer’s announcement that the bill would be supported by the government effectively turned the private members’ bill into a government bill; this meant that the private members’ bill procedure should not be used.