Online Abuse

Debate between Hannah Bardell and Helen Jones

Monday 29th April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Helen Jones]

My hon. Friend is exactly right, and I will come to that point later in my remarks.

Online, those with visible disabilities are often mocked for how they look. Those with learning difficulties are targeted for sexual or financial exploitation. Some of the terms used—I will repeat them only to show how vile they are—such as “mong”, “retard” and “spastic”, are as vile as the worst terms of racist abuse; yet they are often not treated in the same way. People even join Facebook groups that disabled people use for support so that they can steal images and transform them into so-called jokes or memes online.

My hon. Friend is entirely right; the disabled people we spoke to were very clear that the abuse that they get online reflects attitudes in society. That is why our report called for more education. We found that 21% of young adults would avoid speaking to a disabled person. Unless we break down those barriers, things will not change. I am sorry that the Government were rather dismissive of that recommendation in their response.

Disabled people were also clear that the abuse had increased since 2010, when certain politicians started to ramp up the rhetoric about benefit fraudsters and scroungers, despite knowing that, even on the worst estimate, benefit fraud is only 1% of the spending. In many estimates, it is less than that. That should be a reminder to everybody that such rhetoric has an impact on real people living their day-to-day lives.

We were clear that part of the way to counter the abuse is to promote more positive images of disabled people. After all, they are 20% of the population, and 19% of the working-age population. They are our friends, neighbours and work colleagues; yet they are seldom visible, either in the media or Government campaigns. That is why we recommended that the Government ensure that there are positive images of disabled people in all their campaigns, events and advertising.

The Government’s response says that they used a picture of a disabled person in a campaign on transport because disabled people often have problems with transport. It would be an understatement to say that that comprehensively misses the point. We do not want always to see pictures of disabled people who have problems—indeed, sometimes they themselves are seen as the problem. We want to see pictures of disabled people going about their everyday lives at work, at leisure and contributing to society, as they do.

That kind of misunderstanding is everywhere. It leads to a situation in which disabled people who report abuse are often told to go offline. That is as unacceptable in the 21st century as it would be to tell a black person or a disabled person not to go down the high street in case they get abused. When that happens, disabled people face a double whammy: first, their health is damaged by the constant abuse—Members of this House ought to know how that feels—and then they are denied opportunities that would improve their health, in volunteering or in work, and their social circle is narrowed. For those who are in work, constantly having to change their details to avoid abuse leads to loss of employment opportunities or promotion.

We cannot do anything about this problem until we start to understand it, but people do not. For example, we became aware during our inquiry that a lot of the abuse related to football, with people using disability terms as insults. Shockingly and appallingly, they were using the name of Harvey Price, who is a child and a football fan, to insult someone on their ability as a footballer. We wrote to the footballing organisations—the Professional Footballers Association, Kick It Out, the Football Association, the Premier League and the English Football League—but only one replied before our inquiry concluded. The Premier League’s reply was about access to football grounds and abuse at the grounds—it just did not get it. It is shocking that some of those organisations did not reply at all; it is shameful, in fact, because clubs and footballers have a great influence on their fans. I hope that in future they will use their position to call out hatred of disabled people in the same way that they have rightly called out racism associated with the game.

It is that lack of understanding that leads to disabled people being categorised as children and to their voices not being heard. We have therefore recommended that in future the Government should consult disabled people explicitly and directly on all matters that concern them—not those who claim to speak on their behalf, but disabled people themselves.

We were bemused about why social media companies have failed to engage with people who could be among their strongest advocates. What engagement there has been has come too late and has often been too little. For example, where people with learning difficulties are concerned, Facebook told us that it thought its how-to videos made easy-read guidelines unnecessary, while Google said that it thought its community guidelines met the easy-read guidelines. Disabled people disagreed: they do not.

Twitter told us that it thought that simplifying its policies would make them harder to understand, yet easy-read versions are frequently produced of complex documents such as health consultations, tenancy agreements and even—dare I say it—Select Committee reports. It is not that the guidance and expertise needed to produce easy-read versions are not available; it is that social media companies have never thought to seek that guidance and act on it.

We also found that most disabled people, like the rest of us, were confused by the fact that policies are called different things on different sites. Even more importantly, reporting mechanisms are often not accessible to disabled people. Shockingly, we heard again and again that when disabled people have reported hate speech, often nothing has been done.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech and is setting out some really unbelievable issues that need to be taken on board and tackled to protect disabled people online and offline. Does she agree that some of the issues result from the fact that the legislation that covers these crimes is so old? I see from the Library briefing that the most recent applicable legislation is from 1997, and some of it goes back to 1861. That is not to say that it is not good or appropriate legislation, but it is clear that our legislative guidelines are so out of date that they cannot take into consideration the modern world and the challenges that disabled people face online.

[Helen Jones]

The hon. Lady makes a very valid point. I will move on to legislation shortly.

Our inquiry has led us to conclude that social media companies do not employ enough moderators, or enough suitably trained moderators, to deal with this abuse. Given how much profit they are making, that is frankly scandalous. We also found that there is a lot of confusion about what is the responsibility of social media companies and what is the responsibility of the police. That confusion is often fed by the social media companies themselves.

Relationships and Sex Education

Debate between Hannah Bardell and Helen Jones

Monday 25th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 235053 relating to relationship and sex education.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon.

It is often said that the British have a funny relationship to sex; we certainly have a very strange relationship to sex education, sometimes. We live in a society where explicit imagery, pornography and material that demeans and degrades women is available at a few clicks of a mouse, yet there are still some who resist teaching our children the facts about not only their own bodies, but emotions, relationships and all the things they need to keep them safe while they are young and to enable them to form healthy relationships as they get older.

I wondered why that was, so before the debate I had a look at some of the material circulating about these proposals. I must say that some of it misinterprets what the Government are proposing and is designed, I think, to alarm parents. The petition itself is not specific. It refers to

“certain sexual and relational concepts”—

I think that was designed to avoid the rules about material that is offensive to certain groups—and suggests that some of the material produced for children does “more harm than good”.

Let me say that there is absolutely no evidence for that whatever—zilch. In fact, the research that has been done, mostly in America, shows that young people who receive good relationships and sex education are less likely to form early sexual relationships, less likely to have an unwanted pregnancy, less likely to get pregnant early and less likely to get a sexually transmitted disease. For me, that is a whole series of wins.

However, we do not need to look far to find a great deal of propaganda directed at parents about this. I found on YouTube a programme called “The Makinations”, in which a presenter introduces a lady who he says is a teacher, and she presents a number of books that she says are available in schools. They then go on to object to those books. For instance, they object to one that I presume is intended to talk to young children about differences, which says that girls can have long or short hair; I am guilty of that. They also talk about gay people “posing”—their word, not mine—as parents, and about “state-sanctioned child abuse” and even “graphic cartoon porn”.

I found that chilling, but not for the reasons the authors intended. If stuff such as this is being directed at parents, I am not surprised that they become alarmed. Honestly, the fact is that it was vile and homophobic, but it was also not true. I speak in this debate not only as a parent, but as someone who used to be a teacher—in fact, two of us here, myself and my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane), have taught sex education in school, although in my case it was some time ago. Schools do not use books about a penguin with two daddies—the first penguin in the zoo with two daddies—with all children. They use them when children ask questions, or with children who might have two parents of the same sex, just as they would use a book about a single-parent family with a child who came from a single-parent family.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

The hon. Lady is making some excellent points. I remember my mum telling me how frustrating it was, as a single parent, when she went to the bookshop to find some books about single parents and there was only one book about a little boy with a single mum and about building a bed. One book—and I was born in 1983. We have come a long way, but does she not agree that inclusive education on sexuality and all kinds of families is vital?

[Helen Jones]

I do, and I will come to that later in my remarks. Those of us who are long in the tooth will remember the controversy over a book called “Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin” in the 1980s. That book was available to teachers to use as necessary; it was not used routinely in schools.

It is important to say what is and is not being proposed by the Government. The Children and Social Work Act 2017 requires all maintained primary schools to teach relationships education, and all maintained secondary schools to teach relationships and sex education. Importantly, it qualifies that with the words “age-appropriate”, because teachers know that we cannot teach children concepts that their mind cannot grapple with. They simply do not take it in. Learning how children’s brains develop is part of a teacher’s training. We would be wasting our time trying to teach them things they cannot possibly understand at a young age.

Following the 2017 Act, the Government put out a call for evidence on the teaching of RSE and personal, social, health and economic education, and then issued draft guidelines last year. I have not yet seen the final guidelines—well, I have seen them, but they are under an embargo until the Secretary of State has finished his statement to the House. I will come on to that in a minute.