One of the most uplifting events I hosted this week was a drop in with the Women's Institute to talk about their "Thinking Differently campaign, highlighting awareness of autism and ADHD diagnoses in women. We all know that you are more likely to be diagnosed with one of these conditions if you are male, and too often women with autistic spectrum disorders and ADHD go undiagnosed, or receive a very late diagnosis.
The WI is spearheading a campaign to raise awareness and came to Parliament with a group of WI members living with these conditions to talk about their own experiences and to meet their local MPs. It was a huge privilege to be able to spend the morning with them on Tuesday and to leave with one of their fabulous Thinking Differently brooches.
On Monday the big story in the Commons was about security and China, and the targeted attacks by those with links to the Chinese Government on MPs. As far as I know I am not one of the ones they have targeted. As I said on Politics Hub on Monday night if the Chinese have hacked my phone they too would have had to endure 27 minutes of HMRC hold music on Monday afternoon! But there is a very serious point. The next election is likely to be run and won on campaigns of disinformation, realistic looking and sounding fakery, and we cannot guarantee that despotic foreign regimes will not seek to play a part in that.
At the tail end of last week and whilst I was in New York the week before I had a number of discussions about AI, deepfakes and the impact they have on our lives. I am already aware of a number of deepfakes that have been created of me, including a video where even I cannot tell that it is not me speaking. That is deeply worrying and I am concerned existing safeguards are simply inadequate. Recent online harms legislation is undoubtedly a step in the right direction, but there is a long road to travel before any of us can have any confidence that we are well placed to tackle online abuse of our democracy.
At the end of the week we got the data from the Environment Agency and water companies about the extent of storm overflows over the last couple of years, which showed the extent of them last year. Of course 2022 was very dry and 2023 was an incredibly wet summer, so there was a very significant increase. But it does show the importance of the monitoring that has been introduced and the need for ever more action to protect our precious chalk streams.
