Shadow Armed Forces Minister claims Commons is 'most unprofessional' workplace - 'Westminster is not safe!'

"We know there are predators around Westminster that are sometimes allowed to continue, or a blind eye turned and I want to see that changed. Westminster should embody the very best of our country.

"It should be a place that people aspire to get elected to and then want to change the world from a position of strength. And I'm afraid that at the moment I sometimes feel Westminster lets the rest of the country down."

Explaining how he believes victims of abuse are being failed, he continued: “I think we let far too many of them down, and that's because we don't have a robust system that protects victims. We don't have a culture that challenges it.

“I think the Commons is the most unprofessional workplace I've ever worked in.

"The Chamber has, over many decades, been allowed to become a bear pit where people are deliberately shouted down, where insults are thrown at people, and that is what passes for mature political debates. Our politics, broadly, is broken.”

The MP for Plymouth also movingly spoke out about the mass shooting in his constituency in August 2021.

He stepped back from politics following Jake Davison’s attack to support his constituents and admitted he wasn’t prepared for the mental trauma the incident would cause.

Pollard also slammed Devon and Cornwall Police for letting Davison have access to a gun, and he explained why he is fighting for new laws in this area.

He said: “He (Davison) ripped apart our community. About one third of the eyewitnesses were children. It has just torn our community apart. There's now huge amounts of grief for the people we lost. It's still very raw in my community, it still hurts.”

Explaining the changes he’d like to see, he added: “We were let down by our local police force. They gave a gun to someone who should not have been eligible for a gun.

"They took it off him after he assaulted someone and then they gave it back and so it's a catalogue of failures locally. But it's not just about what Devon and Cornwall police did. It needs to be about a bigger picture because our gun laws are outdated.

“I don't think people should be able to keep pump action weapons in their homes. But I also think we need to revisit the whole system and I think a review of gun laws is one way of doing that.”

Detailing the personal impact the incident had on him, he said: “As an MP, I wasn't prepared for a mass shooting like this, I don't think anyone is. I'd like to think I was quite a resilient character.

"I'm always kind of a Duracell Bunny, but when you have those types of experiences shared time and time again, that does take its toll.

"I was in the Shadow Cabinet at the time and I remember sitting with families just thinking, I can either do my Shadow Cabinet role properly or I can look after my community. So I asked Keir if I could step back for a month. That's really, I think, the job of an MP.”

Pollard, who is openly gay, also spoke about his own experiences of abuse in politics, with his constituency office being vandalised on two occasions, including one incident where sickening graffiti was left branding him a paedophile.

Yet, Pollard said he offered to have a cup of tea with the person who did it.

“Those types of slurs towards openly gay people like myself is sadly something that you live with when you're out," he said.

"There's far too much hate in our community. I had a choice straight away when I saw that paint dumped on the office. It's like, right? Are they going to make me a victim?

"Am I going to be the person who has to explain what's going on? I said, no, they're not making me a victim of this. And I think when you're confronted with hate, and there's a lot of hate around in politics at the moment and in our society as a whole, I think you've got a choice about whether you confront it with more hate, more anger, more division, more energy.

"But that just creates more heat, it doesn't create more light. And that's the reason I offered to have a cup of tea with them. Let's sit down. Let's talk about why they think that is appropriate.”

He has also received abuse when he posted a picture of himself and his partner last year on Valentine’s Day.

“There's quite a lot of abuse online, and people sitting in their pants at home just being able to tweet whatever they like or post anonymous comments. That's pretty nasty," Pollard added.

"But we're in a culture where that is being increasingly normalised. And you know, I'm Plymouth's first ever out Member of Parliament, I think that is a special responsibility I have, to be authentically me and I've got a wonderful fiancé now and I'm really happy with him.

"He's everything I could ever dream of. And because of that, I don't want to let online trolls have a go at me to take away some of that love.”

Pollard said he was planning to marry his partner - and that they wanted to start a family.