When 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.

The 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”.

Niblett 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’.”

“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 to raise awareness about life stages such as childbirth, the menopause, stress and erectile dysfunction, as well as other health conditions.

Niblett has also recently become chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sex and Reproductive Health, allowing her regular contact with experts in the field as well as sexual violence campaigners to help guide her campaign.

The MP told the BBC that talking about sex toys as part of the campaign was not a mistake.

“A significant part of sex between people… is communication and it is pleasure. And one of the ways we can get pleasure is through the use of sex toys.

“Trying to take away the stigma or shame around even talking about them is why the campaign is absolutely talking about sex toys,” she says.

Niblett adds people are expected to speak in court about “horrifying things that have happened to them, when we don’t openly talk about good sex”.

She says: “How can we talk about bad sex if we can’t talk about good sex?”

Niblett says she has checked with Parliament’s security team ahead of her event there in the autumn, and has confirmed that sex toys are not on the banned items list to bring on to the estate.

She believes while access to pornography was “ruining” experiences of intimacy, “we need something more than just blocking and banning“.

“We need to be educating,” she says.

Niblett says another reason people needed to talk openly about sex and pleasure was because “it can be used as a weapon”.

“When it can be used as a weapon against us, we need to be able to take that weapon off people.

“And women are so frequently on the receiving end of those weapons,” she says.

Going forward, she hopes the new Prime Minister Andy Burnham will be supportive of the campaign, including her calls for a ministerial post to be dedicated to the issue of sex education and wellbeing.

The MP added despite initial reluctance, a number of her colleagues on her own Labour backbenches were beginning to come around to supporting the campaign.

Niblett said she believed a lot of minds had “changed already” and added her backbench debate, due to take place in the autumn, had cross-party support.

She said: “An initial giggly response has turned into ‘well, this is quite serious isn’t it?'”

Niblett says she has also received support from people working within the NHS and the probation service, as well as high-profile figures like actress Emma Thompson.

In a video shared by the MP last month, Thompson said: “I’m backing Samantha and Cindy’s campaign for lifelong sex education, which is not party political, but it is critical.”

Reflecting on the fallout amid the launch of her “summer of sex” campaign, Niblett says more and more are starting to recognise her for this work.

“It’s just been wonderful,” she says. “People are now starting to recognise me… it’s, ‘oh, you’re that sex MP, aren’t you?’

“I think as it picks up support across the country, you’ll probably find more of my colleagues feeling comfortable to put their head above the parapet and talk about it.

“It’s really important – that when somebody else tries to grab the microphone and diminish what you’re doing – you grab it back.”

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