A Labour MP has launched a campaign to make 2026 the “summer of sex” and said she even hopes to bring sex toys into parliament.
Samantha Niblett, the MP for Derbyshire South, is campaigning for more open, inclusive and lifelong sex education, under the title “Yes Sex Please, We’re British!”
Tackling stigma is important because “humans have a natural interest in sex… [this] feels like there is an opportunity to remind people that it is a joyful thing,” she said.
She is working with Cindy Gallop, a sextech entrepreneur who founded an adult video website that aims to offer an alternative to hardcore pornography called MakeLoveNotPorn.
In an interview with the PoliticsHome website, she said she wants to make 2026 the “summer of sex”.
As part of the push, she hopes to bring sex toys into parliament to encourage more conversation around sexual pleasure, although the devices may not be allowed in by security.
The 46-year-old MP said as part of the campaign she had learned that “as well as making you feel good, [masturbation] is good for your health”.
She added: “The first time I remember seeing pornography, I was 10, I saw it on a videotape, I saw it in magazines.
“And I sometimes wonder, having seen it so young but without being able to talk about it, whether that has shaped the person that I am today. It’s funny, just because I’m doing a campaign on sex education, it’s not because I’m this massively empowered, sexually flamboyant person. I’m not. I wish I were.
“If I could rewire my brain… It’s not too late, I’m hoping that, actually, this summer of sex is also an education for me.”
She described her sex education at school as “pretty medical”.
“It was all focused on what you shouldn’t do, not what you should do,” she said. “Pleasure certainly didn’t play a part in it. And as a girl, you’re just worried about either getting an STD or getting pregnant. I don’t remember talking about contraception much either.”
She said she has watched porn herself, “like lots of people”, and has recently watched content on Gallop’s website, which she said featured “real people who are having messy, funny, intimate, sensual sex together”.
She said: “The sections that I always prefer [are] the most are the intimate sections. I am not saying that anybody else’s preferences are wrong, but I think if you’re desensitised to think that some things are normal, it skews your view about what real sex is like with real people who are not acting in a porn film.”
On why she wants to fight against societal stigma surrounding sex, Niblett said: “We just need to acknowledge that humans have a natural interest in sex. It’s one of the things that nearly all of us want to do, nearly all of us do.
“It just feels like there is an opportunity to remind people that it is a joyful thing.”
