Harassment in Public Life

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Monday 18th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

I say to my hon. Friend that there is no pussyfooting on this side of the House. We are determined to ensure that the social media companies are held to account. As I said earlier, we are pleased that Google has announced that it will publish transparency reports. Twitter has taken action. It is not enough, but it is an important step in an area that we care about so much. We need to make sure that the people who do these sorts of things and make these sorts of posts are held accountable. We will achieve that by leaning into the social media companies.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

The Government regularly state that what is illegal in the real world is also illegal in the virtual world. Effective laws need effective enforcement, yet the Home Office has allocated only £200,000 to the online hate crime hub. Now that exercising the sovereignty of this House is resulting in death threats, will the Government make sufficient financial resources available to protect all victims?

[Amber Rudd]

The hon. Lady has drawn attention to one element of our strategy—the online hate hub, which is staffed by police officers who centralise and act on reports of hate—but that is by no means the only activity. The CPS has increased the number of prosecutions by 68% over the past three years and we have put £17 million from the police transformation fund into proper engagement with different police forces to ensure that they have the right skills for the digital recording of the evidence. I reassure the hon. Lady that the online hate hub is only one part of a strategy and we will take action.