General Election Campaign: Abuse and Intimidation

Debate between Lord Swire and Graham P Jones

Thursday 14th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)]

Something is rotten in the state of Britain. I underline that opening remark by highlighting and referring to what the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) has just said in a remarkably concise and powerful speech, in which I found nothing to disagree with.

I stand here this afternoon as one who has fought six parliamentary elections, the first being in 1997—in that watershed year for the Scottish Tories—in Greenock and Inverclyde and then, more luckily, in East Devon, which I have represented since 2001. Although I know that some Members believe that the changed way of politics—this growing bullying, harassment and intimidation that we see on social media—has been growing over a period, I do not actually believe that. I think that there is absolutely no question at all but that 2015 and, worse, 2017 saw the highest levels of personal abuse that we have seen.

We need to put this into some form of context. As elected representatives, we are not above the law. We should be held to the highest standards, and we should not put ourselves on a pedestal. We are open to criticism. Some of our constituents like to criticise us on a regular basis. It gives some of them enormous pleasure to berate us when they see us in our constituencies and tell us that we have not answered an email or a letter. If that gives them pleasure, that is part and parcel of the job as far as I see it. However, what we and our families should not be subject to is anonymous attacks. Granted, when I said that we should put this into context—I do not believe that we should be precious—we should look back at elections fought by our predecessors in the 17th and 18th centuries. Look at the cartoons around this House by Gillray, Rowlandson and Hogarth. They were much more physically intimidatory. Street fights and candidates getting beaten up were a regular occasion. I am not suggesting for a minute that we should return to that rather uncivilised way of going about our business. What I am saying is that there is a history of holding politicians to account during election campaigns.

I do not know what has happened. I look forward to the forthcoming review because that will better inform us. Perhaps it is the result of new people coming into politics for elections. The referendum in Scotland and the referendum over Europe were both very divisive; maybe that has engendered some rage that we had not hitherto been aware of or tapped into. Maybe it is because people no longer accept the democratic will of elections and feel that they have been cheated in some way.

My constituency is normally a very civilised place in which to go about one’s electoral business, but we have seen an increase in such activity. Our political opponents historically were the Liberal Democrats. We used to say that the Liberal Democrats were ripping down our posters and so forth but, amazingly, the Liberal Democrats lost their deposit in the last election. They were replaced by an independent candidate who hoovered up all the anti-Conservative vote. Regrettably, this candidate—either advertently or inadvertently—attracted a huge amount of people online who were very abusive towards me. That did not matter so much, but they were often abusive to those canvassing on my behalf. The candidate was backed up by independent councillors and a website that I will not dignify by naming. It is all part and parcel of a group of disaffected people who believe that personal abuse is the best way of attacking the sitting Member of Parliament. They are people for whom the glass is always half empty. If one target fails, they move on to another. That is not particularly healthy.

Earlier, I asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton), how many people had been prosecuted for such abuse and intimidation, and the answer was 15,000. I now ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore), who in his place, how many people have actually been sentenced for this vile behaviour. How many people have been given a custodial sentence? You see, I can take it; I do not mind this level of attack. I did point it out on election night—that did not go down particularly well with some of the propagators or with a local newspaper that supported them—but I can take it. However, the levels of racist abuse that some Members and candidates have had to put up with, and the levels of attack on women, are unfair and completely unacceptable.

We were talking only yesterday in Prime Minister’s questions about how many women there are in Parliament. It is something we can all celebrate. The Conservative party is enormously proud that we were the first party in the country to have a female Prime Minister. We now have a second female Conservative Prime Minister. I have daughters who may one day want to come into this House. Indeed, I very much hope that they will consider it, but why should they if they know they are going to be subjected to these vile, anonymous goings-on on the internet?

We need to look carefully at the existing legislation and protections and at how the police handle these things. It is almost tempting to say that the police have a lack of resources, but I think it goes much wider than that. During the recent general election campaign, a large number of my posters were regularly vandalised and disappeared. We reported that to the police but, frankly, they did not seem particularly interested—although, in all fairness, there is not much they can do if the poster has disappeared.

We want to attract people into this place. It should be full of short people, fat people, white people, black people, gay people and straight people—it does not matter. It is meant to be representative of the country. But people look at this place and see the levels of abuse to which we are subjected. They must think to themselves, “Do I really want to subject myself to that level of abuse? If I want to represent my community, is it worth subjecting me and my family to those levels of abuse?” The answer must be no. We should be able to go about our business without fear or favour and without being hounded by anonymous bloggers or other people online. So we need the defamation and libel legislation that follows the newspapers to be mirrored online, and we need the sanctions to be the same.

As the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Graham P. Jones) said earlier, there is a very, very narrow balance. On the one side, there is the freedom of speech, and I think all of us in this House would fight to preserve people’s right to criticise us in good faith and with reason, because we should be held to account—we are the people’s representatives here at Westminster. However, on the other side of the divide is something that is not about the freedom of speech, but about people who seek to undermine others by slander, libel, bullying and intimidation. That is where the line is—it is a very clear line—and it is about time we took it a little more seriously.

[Graham P. Jones]

I am listening intently to the points the right hon. Gentleman is making, and he refers to the point I made earlier, but does he not accept that we are in danger of losing a degree of freedom of speech because of bullying online? It is simply not possible to engage in a broad-minded and open debate when a volume of people insist on handing out personal abuse.

[Sir Hugo Swire]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I do not want to be party political at this point, but I would just say this: it is also incumbent on us to say the right things and to behave in the right way, and it is regrettable when we have people such as Len McCluskey and the shadow Chancellor seeking to cherry-pick which laws of the country should be obeyed, and encouraging, at times, civil disturbance if they do not get their way. That, in turn, engenders a feeling that the people have been cheated of the electoral result that was their due and, again, creates a whirlwind of abuse online.

[Graham P. Jones]

I am simply not going to disagree with the point the right hon. Gentleman has just made.

[Sir Hugo Swire]

This is not really a political point, but I also feel tremendous sympathy for my friends on the Opposition Benches—and I do have friends of long standing on the Opposition Benches—who have come under horrendous criticism from the Momentum movement in their own party. Some of that has been absolutely vile, and I feel extremely sorry for them, having to operate with that going on as well.

Whether it is Momentum or people on the right criticising, let us try not to be parti pris over this. Let us get some regulations, and let us get some convictions of people who are making it extremely difficult, particularly for women and people from ethnic minorities, to come into this Chamber and to operate in this environment, because if they do not, Parliament and the country will be weaker.