Online Abuse

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes the increasing number of cases where the internet, social media and mobile phone technology are used to bully, harass, intimidate and humiliate individuals including children and vulnerable adults; calls on the Government to ensure that clear legislation is in place that recognises the true impact and nature of online abuse, as distinct to offline abuse; and further calls on the Government to put in place appropriate legal and criminal sanctions, police training, guidance to the CPS and education for young people relating to such abuse.

Without digital connectivity and an online world, our lives would be poorer. The reason for this debate today is that our responsibility as elected representatives is clear: the internet needs to be a force for good, not for ill. I believe we all have a clear duty to come together and demand of the Government that they do more to address the problems of online abuse in all its forms. More than three quarters of our constituents use the internet almost every day, and more than half use their mobile phones to access it. Half of all crimes committed in this country have a digital component, and the police are overwhelmed by its scale and diversity, particularly the nature and impact of online abuse.

Rightly, the focus of the Government in the past has primarily been on online abuse that involves child abuse images, and I applaud the Prime Minister for his clear and personal resolve to outlaw that abhorrent crime. However, online abuse is much more than that, for both children and adults, and includes homophobic, transphobic, anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic hate crime, and image-based sexual abuse, to name but a few. Too often, those forms of online abuse and others continue to go unchallenged, because reporting mechanisms are unreliable or obscure, because the law was designed for an analogue age, and because the police are not properly trained to identify online abuse and then collect the evidence to make a case stick. We have to reject all forms of online abuse and show zero-tolerance through our legal systems, our police force and the things that we teach our children in schools.

It is for us to determine what sort of society we live in, not faceless corporate organisations, often many thousands of miles away. We cannot sit by and simply allow online abuse, in all its forms, to become an accepted norm in our society. With the blurring of the online and offline worlds, it is very easy to see how that might end. What is allowed to become an accepted form of online abuse could simply spill over into face-to-face life.

Like every other Member of this House, I believe in freedom of speech, but that freedom of speech has never been an unqualified right. Freedom of speech comes with responsibilities. At present, we are not ensuring that people who are expressing themselves online understand that fact.

The facts show the direction of travel. Today, one in four young people say they have been targeted with online hate because of their gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, disability or transgender identity. Three quarters say that that has had a chilling effect on how they then used the internet in the future for their free exchange of ideas. Teachers have reported a 40% increase in cybercrime in the past five years, with the perpetrators openly finding new ways to abuse their victims by skirting around the law. Parents have found it almost impossible to get rid of “baiting out” footage on YouTube, making the lives of many teenagers unbearable.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the right hon. Lady for bringing this vital issue to the House for consideration. There will not be one MP who has not had a constituent—especially young people—approach them about this very issue. I commend the right hon. Lady for making the point about young people being trolled in the digital world. It impacts not just upon that young person’s personality and how they respond, but in some cases in Northern Ireland and across the United Kingdom it has led to suicide. Is it not time for legislation that responds to this, so that we can put those trolls behind bars, where they should be?

[Mrs Miller]

I know from our conversations that the hon. Gentleman has a long-standing interest in the matter. He is right to say that the law is not protecting many young people who feel vulnerable, and that has led them, in some tragic cases, to take their own lives. We have to take this issue far more seriously and make sure that our laws are robust.

We have to deal with some very unpleasant truths, particularly the growth of peer-to-peer trading of sexual images. That is going unchecked in many cases, for fear of criminalising teenagers, but we know that about one in 10 of those cases could well involve an adult. That leaves young people at real risk of sexual exploitation, while the police find it difficult to know how to cope.