Tulip Siddiq and Rupa Huq, UK's prominent Bangladesh-origin female MPs, have spoken out against sexual harassment in the British Parliament circles as the storm around the issue continues to build up.
Tulip, daughter of Sheikh Rehana and niece of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, warned that the cases of sexual misconduct involving politicians could run into hundreds.
“It's gone past gossip or scaremongering or whatever you want to call it. It's not gossip anymore. I'm hearing first-hand from people who are saying that they have been either sexually abused, or if you like people who have tried it on with them who are MPs," she said.
Describing it as a "serious problem", the Labour Party lawmaker for Hampstead and Kilburn added: "People I’ve heard it from is in the tens, but that’s people telling me personally. But if you investigate this and delve deeper into it, I think it probably will be in the hundreds. And that’s deeply worrying."
She also raised the issue in parliament with the House of Commons leader Andrea Leadsom, demanding that steps be taken against the culture of silence over the issue.
“Senior members of [the] government held information about sexual misconduct by their own MPs, but stayed quiet because of fear of sabotaging their career and bringing their government into disrepute,” she said in the Commons soon after Leadsom made a statement on how the British Parliament planned to “beef up” its response to allegations of sexual misconduct.
"It is a right, not a privilege, to work in a safe and respectful environment - these plans will ensure that parliament takes a zero-tolerance approach. Parliament must take action in days, not weeks," Leadsom said in her statement.
Siddiq’s intervention was followed by another fellow Labour party MP, Rupa Huq, speaking out for the first time about being sexually harassed by a male member of the European Parliament (MEP) when she was a student in her 20s back in 1995.
She recalled: “The MEP's wandering hands found their way onto me, which I did not like and I did not do anything about because it was such an imbalanced power relation.
"It shocked me when I felt these hands slithering towards me and I think I was quite startled more than anything else, and I can't believe I'm the only person he did that to, to be honest."
She has called on fellow British MPs to start policing themselves and set their own house in order to ensure a tough stand against harassment. “We need robust, transparent processes with an independent adjudicatory body whose staff are fully trained in sexual abuse issues,” she said.
The issue of sexual abuse within politics and political parties' response to it has been dominating headlines in the wake of recent allegations about sexual harassment in the UK Parliament. Prime Minister Theresa May has called for cross-party action as the issue threatens to shake up her leadership of the government.
Thursday, June 04, 2026
