UK Elections: Abuse and Intimidation Debate
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David Jones
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UK Elections: Abuse and Intimidation
David Jones Excerpts(7 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) on securing this debate.
I have stood in six general elections and I can say that, frankly, this was by a long chalk the most unpleasant one in which I have ever participated. I have no doubt at all that much of the behaviour that my hon. Friend outlined was co-ordinated, because the patterns of behaviour that I witnessed in my constituency have been repeated across the country and have been reported to me by a number of colleagues.
One issue that I want to raise, to echo what the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) said, is that of social media. Frankly, if ever there were a misnomer, “social media” is it; it is deeply antisocial media. Twitter, in particular, has a lot to answer for. The anonymity in which a lot of participants on Twitter clothe themselves encourages the sort of behaviour that we have heard about today. Logging on to Twitter nowadays is much like wading through sewage; it is a deeply unpleasant experience. The sort of commentary, abuse and language that one sees on it, which is regularly used against everyone but in particular candidates for election, is the sort of thing that no one would dream of saying to another person face to face.
That is the nub of the issue. We now have this new phenomenon of social media and it has not been adequately addressed. It is certainly not being addressed by the social media companies. My hon. Friend is right: someone who makes a complaint to Twitter gets completely ignored. Twitter, in fact, has a huge amount to answer for, so in the brief time available to me I ask the Minister whether he will please give consideration to the impact that social media have had on the behaviour of many people during the election campaign. What proposals do the Government have to address that, because at the moment anarchic media are causing misery to untold numbers of people, not least colleagues here in this House?