'To be groomed and pregnant at 15 felt as bad as it could get. To be a nana at 40 is to hit the jackpot'

On her first Mother's Day as a grandmother, MP Natalie Fleet tells Rachael Healy of her very personal fight for thousands of children born as a result of rape

- Rachael Healy

Today marks Natalie Fleet's first Mother's Day as a grandmother - or nana, as she says. The Labour MP for Bolsover will spend the day in her constituency, surrounded by her children, her daughter's newborn baby, her husband, mother and sister.

Fleet is only 40 years old. Her eldest daughter, now 24, was conceived when Fleet was a teenager after she was groomed by a much older man. “To have a child conceived at 15 felt as bad as it could get. Being a nana at 40 feels like I've won the jackpot,” Fleet says. “So I'll spend my first Mother's Day as a nana with the baby... just enjoying the fact that she exists, that my daughter could choose who the dad was. It's something every woman should have.”

Last summer, a few weeks after being elected as an MP for the first time, Fleet spoke publicly about her grooming ordeal, and revealed that her eldest daughter was the product of statutory rape, where the victim is too young to consent. She is now campaigning for a change in the law to prevent rapists from having access to the children conceived as a result of an attack, which she says would remove one of the barriers to women speaking out when they become pregnant and offer greater protections for mothers.

This week, she will meet home secretary Yvette Cooper to make the case. She said: “How can we let children be the only proceed of crime that the criminal can have full access to?”