15 minutes made a lot of difference to unfit participants

This might help to explain why exercise is so good for our brains

An overhaul of the family courts system means that children will be better protected from abusive parents under a new law that MPs are set to debate today at a second reading of the Courts and Tribunals Bill.

Under the new Courts and Tribunals Bill, the government will revoke the law that judged a child should have contact with both parents, which campaigners argued has put the rights of abusive parents over a child’s safety.

The move follows a decade-long campaign by Claire Throssell MBE, whose two sons — Jack, 12, and Paul, 9 — were both killed by their father despite her warnings he was a danger to them. She has since campaigned to prevent unsafe child contact with dangerous perpetrators of domestic abuse.

The Women’s Aid ambassador said:

For a decade, I have been campaigning with Women’s Aid to change the family courts system to make sure that no child is ever again placed at risk of further harm from abusive parents.

Seeing that the presumption of parental contact will finally be repealed, and in the memory of my sons, Jack and Paul, is deeply meaningful.

No child should have to hold out a hand for help in darkness, saying that they were hurt by someone who was meant to protect them. No parents should have to hold their children as they die from the abuse of a perpetrator, as I did 11 years ago.

Family courts dismantle ‘pro-contact’ culture

The Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales, Claire Waxman OBE, paid tribute to Throssell’s “extraordinary bravery and determination in the face of unimaginable grief and pain”.

She welcomed the government’s landmark decision which marks a decisive shift away from a pro-contact culture in family courts that has historically placed children at risk of harm from abusive parents, Waxman explained.

She said:

[Throssell’s] success in removing this dangerous presumption from family law is a vital step in dismantling the dangerous ‘pro-contact’ culture that is so deep-rooted in our courts.

This is a hard-won victory for Claire, but more importantly, it is a lasting legacy for Jack and Paul — ensuring a new era of protection and justice for every woman and child seeking safety from abuse.

The presumption of parental involvement was introduced into the Children Act 1989 to help ensure children could maintain a relationship with both parents after separation.

However, evidence shows the current process can leave children at risk of harm from abusive parents.

The current law contains safeguards that allow involvement to be restricted where it harms a child’s welfare, but repealing this provision is what campaigners have advocated for.

Featured image via Unsplash/Suzi Kim

Over 100 Labour MPs have co-signed a letter to the CEO of Travelodge to request a meeting to discuss a sexual assault that occurred in the hotel chain. According to the letter, a woman was sexually assaulted after making a solo booking at the hotel – only for staff to give her attacker a key to her room. The perpetrator of the sexual assault, Kyran Smith, told staff he was her boyfriend and needed another key card. Despite not being present on the booking, the hotel gave him that key which enabled his abuse.

Smith has since been convicted and sentenced to 7.5 years in prison. Nevertheless, the letter addressing this serious incident also refers to a woeful response from Travelodge in light of their security error was to offer a measly £30 compensation to the victim.

Travelodge have serious questions to answer

However, as these Labour MPs highlight, the Travelodge played an intrinsic role in enabling this abuse and their remedial response should be far stronger. Once again, corporates have little compassion for ordinary people even whilst they play a hand in their very real trauma.

A woman was sexually assaulted in a Travelodge. Staff gave her attacker the key to her room after he pretended to be her boyfriend. She was offered £30 in compensation. Appalling.

Along with 100 Labour colleagues, I’ve written to Travelodge’s CEO & asked to meet. pic.twitter.com/1pxjVqZvn3

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— Anneliese Midgley MP (@anneliese_midge) March 8, 2026

This letter paints an appalling image of this corporate hotel company. It details how the abuse was able to have taken place, and highlights how little safeguarding is present for women, or frankly anyone, staying at Travelodge’s across the country. Apparently, despite the victim of assault having made a solo booking, the hotel staff didn’t think it was appropriate to double-check the abusive man’s claim by speaking directly to the guest. No, a man walking in and laying claim to her is enough to invade her privacy without question, according to shady-as-fuck Travelodge.

The MPs listed four areas of focused discussion:

We would also welcome the opportunity to discuss:

1. Travelodge’s security policies and procedures relating to providing a key card and/or room number to someone not named on a booking
2. Travelodge’s safeguarding training processes
3. Any training relating to Violence Against Women and Girls that Travelodge provides for staff
4. Changes that Travelodge will make to the above to ensure the safety of women staying at your hotel chain

I’m a signatory.

This case is sickening. My thoughts are with the victim following this sexual assault.

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We need urgent answers from @TravelodgeUK who did not take VAWG seriously.

What are their security procedures? How do we stop this happening again? https://t.co/kCE2ImnOmP

— Dawn Butler ✊🏾💙 (@DawnButlerBrent) March 9, 2026

‘We want to apologise to the victim’

Travelodge have said that they recognise the £30 compensation offer was ‘inappropriate’. Since, they have told the BBC:

The safety and security of our guests is our priority and we were deeply concerned to hear of this distressing incident and our sympathies are with the victim.

We want to apologise to the victim for the way this incident has been handled.

Travelodge adopts industry standard security procedures which were followed at the time of the incident in 2022.

We will carry out a full review of our room security policies to learn from this incident and further strengthen our procedures.

We covered the rising fear in women and girls as figures continually rise back in October, pointing out how men are seemingly more emboldened than ever. Discussing this terrifying rise, we wrote:

Domestic abuse is a serious issue, accounting for 54% of rape crimes between April 2024 and March 2025, with the remaining being committed by men over the age of 16. There is also a marginal difference between the likelihood of being attacked by a stranger or an acquaintance, making it a minefield for vulnerable women and girls.

In the last 20 years, sexual offences have increased: from 970 against young girls under-13, and 8,192 against women over 16 to 5,067 and 49,075 respectively. When looking at all rapes, crimes have increased by 511%.

In fact, rape offences doubled between 2014 to 2019, rising from 29,420 to a horrifying 59,999. There is a slight reduction seen in 2020/2021 down to 55,685, during COVID and lockdown periods, before shooting up to 70,031 the following year.

Women have enough to fear without fearing our safety and security in hotels

Privacy and security are human rights and protected by civil law. Nonetheless, women and girls have continually suffered abuse at some point, if not multiple times in their lifetimes. Abusive men have long believed they can do whatever they want to their victims, often getting off on the most invasive and traumatising ways they can do so.

This incident is horrifying and will spark fear in every woman across the country. Equally terrifying is the feeling that other men may see this and get ideas of their own, leaving more women in harm’s way. The fact Travelodge’s security procedure is supposedly ‘industry standard’ suggests this must be levelled across the hotel industry as a whole.

Therefore, Labour MPs are completely right to press this deplorable incident, but they must push further. We hope they push hard against the Travelodge to take action that truly shows they recognise the trauma inflicted by the sexual assault they played an essential role in making possible. As a woman myself, I know that I won’t feel safe until I hear all hotels have safeguarded against this life-changing risk of abuse.

Frankly, I’d have thought something as egregious as this could not be possible in the first place. More fool me, I guess.

Featured image via the Canary

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A few years ago, a reviewer of a book I’d edited complained that it was not so much full of conversation starters but conversation stoppers. When this was reported back to the academic contributors, it was not taken as criticism. “We are,” one of the authors said, with a little too much enthusiasm, “the sort of people who like to say: ‘It’s a bit more complicated than that’.”

This exchange came to mind as the petition calling for automatic by-elections whenever an MP changes party sailed past 100,000 signatures; it is now scheduled for debate later this month. On the face of it, it seems fair enough – if an MP is elected under one party but then changes affiliation, why shouldn’t voters get a say? – but it is, yes, a bit more complicated than that, involving some fundamental questions about the role of an MP, and ones that could easily have unintended consequences if we are not careful.

There have been two Private Members’ Bills on this issue in recent decades, in 2011 and 2020. Both attempted to introduce a recall petition if an MP voluntarily changed affiliation. The voluntary bit is important, else we could be giving the party whips the sort of disciplinary tool of which they can currently only dream.

“If you don’t vote with us on the Murder of the First Born (No 2) Bill, then we will remove the whip, and you will have to fight a by-election.”

“Ah, well, yes, I wasn’t in favour initially, but I do now see the wisdom of the government’s position.”

Yet I am not sure this voluntary/involuntary distinction works. It is always worth asking: how might someone – someone who was perhaps a bit sneaky – use this to their advantage? In this case, what is to stop an MP staying within their party but behaving differently? You don’t need to defect from the Conservatives; you just start wearing turquoise, telling people to vote Reform, voting the Reform line and so on.

New Zealand offers an interesting lesson. It passed laws against party-hopping in both 2001 and 2018. They have a great term for it: ‘waka-jumping’, after the Māori word for canoe. The creators of the 2001 law were rightly suspicious that not all MPs would voluntarily announce they were defecting – so they created a system by which the party leadership could also report an MP as having de facto left their party, subject to some procedural hoop-jumping and the support of two-thirds of the parliamentary group.

As Andrew Geddis notes in his account of the legislation, this effectively changes the ownership of the seat from the MP to the party. Even if it is not the intention, it is easy enough to see how such rules lead to a tightening of party discipline. Indeed, one of the many curiosities of this issue is that there are many people who feel negatively about defections but positively about rebellious MPs. Yet many of the arguments used against allowing MPs to defect can easily be deployed against MPs being allowed to vote against their party whip. In India, MPs are barred from both.

Debates on this are not helped by the hypocrisy frequently involved. If you have a spare five minutes, look at the supporters of those two previous Private Members’ Bills. You might note that several were later to switch parties; you might also note that not one of them then resigned their seat. Rules for thee, not for me.

A final note: don’t call it crossing the floor, unless they actually cross the floor. Most changes of party label take place on the same side of the House; they are much less consequential. 

Further reading: A Geddis, Proportional Representation, ‘Party Hopping’ and the Limits of Electoral Regulation: A Cautionary Tale from New Zealand, Common Law World Review (2006) and his Standards of MP Behaviour and Aotearoa New Zealand’s ‘Party Hopping’ Law, Public Law Review (2025)