Online Abuse

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Monday 29th April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. I will take a few minutes to talk about the absolutely wonderful work of a rather new organisation called Glitch, which draws attention to the absolute blight of online abuse that my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) spoke about so powerfully.

Glitch has highlighted some of the facts that demonstrate how urgent a matter online abuse is. As we all know, last year’s consultation from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport found that four in 10 people had been affected by abuse and that globally, women are 27 times more likely to be affected by abuse, while women of colour face yet more abuse on top of that. Glitch was founded by Seyi Akiwowo, who I am proud to call a friend. I have known her for about 10 years, and first met her at her sixth-form college. She did work experience in my office, and with that experience, become the youngest local councillor in Newham. I am proud to say that she now regularly visits Parliament to talk to us about her experiences and what she does, and also visits other Parliaments and the United Nations.

Glitch was founded because of Seyi’s personal experience and the experiences of many others who have suffered abuse online. Such abuse could easily have driven them out of online spaces entirely; destroyed their mental health; and ended their careers before they had even started. To be honest, that could have happened to Seyi when she first put a tentative toe in the waters of politics. A video of her speaking at the European Parliament was reposted on Twitter and became a magnet for really vile racist and sexist abuse.

Seyi is an amazingly talented young black woman who dared to participate, and she was abused online in such an appalling way. She was called the n-word. Obviously, there were death threats. There was appalling misogyny. The trolls absolutely delighted in referring to female genital mutilation, rape, and even lynching. Of course, Seyi was distraught, but being who she is, she decided to do something about it. That was when she learned how poor the support for people who are being abused can be and how long it can take for anyone to do anything about it.

I remember clearly the day that Seyi rang me to let me know what was happening. I remember her calling and telling me how she felt violated and let down. She was so angry, but proud. I remember how I felt: I was absolutely furious, and I was so much more furious about being completely and utterly impotent when I tried to get the abuse taken down. I am a vocal, committed, determined and clear MP. Anybody who has heard me advocate on behalf of constituents knows that I can be clear, yet I could not get that abuse taken off the internet, and it went on for days. My office and I repeatedly phoned Twitter to try to get the trolls taken down.

Seyi was rightly determined not to let that keep happening to others unchallenged, so she founded Glitch and has helped to ensure that the issue that we are discussing is recognised as urgent and receives an urgent response from the Government. Glitch has some clear and sensible asks, three of which I will highlight.

First, Glitch points out that although legal reform through the White Paper on online harms and beyond is welcome, no law will do the job unless it can be enforced. We therefore need a sustained commitment to training and funding our police teams properly so that they can expand the work that they do currently.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Much social media abuse is organised in secret and closed groups. The trolls then dogpile and harass people, and it sometimes takes a physical form, when employers are contacted, for example. The police do not have specialist teams or the legal force to deal with that. Should that not be taken up as part of the legislation?

[Lyn Brown]

My hon. Friend is right. When I was shadow Minister of State for Policing, I visited police forces that raised that issue, and they talked about how they just do not have the resources to deal with it. They also talked to me about how that type of abuse is totally organised and is not something that just happens randomly. There are little offline cabals of bad people who collude and conspire together to troll and show hatred, misogyny, racism, you name it—the kind of things that our communities can well do without. Yes, we absolutely need to fund our police and give them the tools that they need to enforce our laws.

Glitch also argues that the prevention of abuse should be put first, which means a digital citizenship education. That is something that Glitch is involved in, to empower young people to interact positively and safely with others online. There is evidence of the impact of that strategy in Australia and from organisations such as the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. If the Minister is interested, there is proper evidence out there, and all we have to do is look at what has worked elsewhere, so that we can import the best of it. Frankly, we need it.

Finally, Glitch is one of more than 100 organisations that are campaigning for just 1% of the new digital services tax to be used to support the work of diverse civil society groups. An extra £4 million for that work would not change the face of the internet overnight, but I am sure that we all agree that it would build capacity and world-leading expertise. I honestly think that that would be a great investment in a flourishing digital economy, in healthier communities and in a healthier democracy. I hope that the Minister will respond to those three requests specifically.

Amazing young people like Seyi have grown up with the internet, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North rightly said in her excellent contribution, online spaces are too often filled with abuse that simply would not be tolerated in other public spaces. By treating the online world like the wild west for so long and refusing to get to grips with the difficult questions about regulation, we in this place have let those people down. Online abuse has to stop and we have to stop it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lyn Brown]

I am delighted to hear what the Minister has just said, and I know that Glitch will be, too. Should she launch a quiet campaign—we know that is how politics is often done—in the Treasury and DCMS to ask for better enforcement and whether we can take a percentage of the money from the digital services tax, she will find that she has friends on the Labour Benches, and we will do our best to give more power to her elbow.

[Margot James]

I thank the hon. Lady very much for her support. It is very important that we work across parties in this area. We have welcomed the Labour party’s input to these deliberations, and some of the ideas that it put forward found their way into the White Paper.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Jones]

I thank all the Members who have spoken this afternoon for their useful contributions to the debate, and their suggestions for going further with the task. I know that the Minister takes the matter extremely seriously. However, some of the changes to the law that are required are of course not within her Department. I hope that she will convey to the Home Office the strength of feeling from the debate, particularly about the need to strengthen the legislation on disability hate crime.

There were useful suggestions about, for example, making sure that the people employed by technology companies are diverse and understand the issues, and about ways of looking at digital citizenship education. All those suggestions were welcome and I am sure that the Petitions Committee will do follow-up work and take them into account. However, we need changes in the law. The online harms White Paper is a useful step in the right direction, but other changes are also needed. I might make a comparison with a number of other issues that we have dealt with in the past: sometimes the law follows changes in society, but sometimes the law itself changes people’s perceptions. The Race Relations Act 1965 did not get rid of racism but at least it stopped some of its overt manifestations. It used to be considered acceptable to drink several pints and get behind the wheel of a car, but it is not any longer, because the law changed. Sometimes we need changes in the law to lead people to change their attitudes. That is what we are asking for in the present case.

We also need, as some hon. Members said, to make sure that the police have the right technology and skills, and the right number of people to make sure that the law is enforced. Digital companies must bear their responsibility: that is exactly right, as the Minister said. However, when a crime is committed the police need the resources to pursue the crime and bring people to justice for it.

[Lyn Brown]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and to the Minister for what she has said today. I want to mention, again, that the police service in my constituency has had major difficulties in trying to get offensive drill music taken down. It was being used by gang members to call each other out; it was inciting violence on the street. The police tell me that despite the fact that they asked YouTube to take the videos down it did not happen, and that they did not have enforcement powers. We need the powers to do what is right. We need to give our police not only the resources they need but the powers they need to keep children safe.

[Helen Jones]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Today’s debate is perhaps an example of how debates should be conducted in the House—civilly, and with useful contributions—and it has been clear that there is support across the House for change. Most of all, we have to be clear that we are changing attitudes and that things that have previously been considered acceptable, at least by some sections of society, are not acceptable. We have to make sure that the concerns of disabled people and others are finally heard and attended to. They have not been heard in the past and I hope that we have changed that today, and that we shall go on to ensure that the law is changed so they no longer feel excluded.

Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) (Amendment) Bill (First sitting)

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Committee Debate: House of Commons
Wednesday 27th February 2019 Public Bill Committees

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

May I say what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David? I thank all Members present for agreeing to serve on the Committee.

This is a simple two-clause Bill with a simple objective: to retain on the statute book the Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) Act 2009. Section 4(7) of that statute is a sunset clause, and means that the legislation will cease to apply after 11 November this year. Clause 1 of the Bill would repeal section 4(7) and thus leave the 2009 Act to continue in operation indefinitely. This private Member’s Bill enjoyed strong cross-party support when it was introduced as a ten-minute rule Bill and on Second Reading. No amendments have been tabled.

For the following reasons, I hope the Committee will feel able to support the passage of Bill to Report and Third Reading on Friday 15 March. The 2009 Act was introduced as a private Member’s Bill by Andrew Dismore, the then Member of Parliament for Hendon. Mr Dismore was noted for talking out many such Bills, but thankfully on that occasion he was strongly supportive. He was backed by both sides of the House, and by the other place. His legislation allows 17 UK national museums and other institutions listed in section 1 to return cultural property lost, seized or stolen during the Nazi era to its rightful owners. Those institutions include the British Museum, the British Library and the National Galleries of Scotland.

Property can be returned following a recommendation by the Spoliation Advisory Panel, with the agreement of the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. That panel of experts was established in 2000 by the Government to advise on claims for cultural objects lost or stolen during the Nazi era. It formed part of the follow-up to the historic Washington conference, where 44 Governments pledged to redouble and renew their efforts to return cultural property removed during that era, defined as 1933 to 1945.

Until the 2009 Act became law, certain national institutions were unable to give effect to a recommendation to return an object, because their governing legislation prevented them from transferring ownership of items in their collection, except in very narrow, specified circumstances. An example of that kind of legal constraint can be found in section 5 of the British Museum Act 1963.

Clause 2 covers territorial scope and commencement. The 2009 Act and the Bill both extend to England, Wales and Scotland, but not to Northern Ireland. A number of the institutions specified in section 1 of the 2009 Act are located in Scotland. I am pleased to inform the Committee that a legislative consent motion has been passed by the Scottish Parliament in relation to the Bill, and I am very grateful to the devolved Government for their support. None of the institutions covered by the 2009 Act is located in Wales or Northern Ireland, so no legislative consent motion is necessary from those parts of the United Kingdom.

Although much information is available about the items held in our national art collections, research into the provenance of items that changed hands during the Nazi era is ongoing, and potential claimants may still be unaware of the location of objects that used to be in the possession of their families. I also emphasise that the narrow and specific nature of the 2009 Act means that it has not had a destabilising effect on collections held in our national museums, with only a modest number of cases being determined under its provisions, and nor has this narrowly drawn piece of legislation had an impact on wider debates about the potential return of cultural objects to their countries of origin. There is widespread acceptance that the horror of the holocaust and the systematic attempt to wipe out an entire race and its culture make it a unique case that justifies a unique response.

There is significant support for retention of the 2009 Act among the museum community. For example, Sir Nicholas Serota, the former director of the Tate Gallery, has said:

“In recent years, new claims have become less frequent, but there is a strong moral case to remove the ‘sunset’ clause that provides for a time limit on cases being considered. It is important that potential claimants should not feel that the door is being slammed in their face.”

The Government expressed support for keeping the legislation on the statute book at the London spoliation conference in September 2017, and that announcement was warmly received. The Commission for Looted Art in Europe, which does excellent work in this area, has also given its backing to the legislation that is under consideration today.

I hope I have been able to outline clearly how this two-clause Bill will operate and why it should be supported today. In closing, I reflect on Second Reading, when hon. Members spoke movingly about the important reasons they had for supporting the Bill. A number of them made the point that, in addition to the appalling mass murder that took place, the Nazi persecution of Jewish people involved a deliberate and systematic attempt to wipe out all trace of Jewish culture. As my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) put it:

“We must remember that the goal of the Nazis was not just to murder their victims, but to annihilate all trace of them…They did not just murder those who were living; they demolished cemeteries, burned down synagogues and sought to erase the entire culture from Europe. That is why it is so important that where these artefacts are preserved and retained, they are returned, so that they can be exhibited and be shown by families again as a reminder of what once existed.”—[Official Report, 8 February 2019; Vol. 654, c. 562.]

I believe that provides a powerful summary of why this Bill is needed, and I close my remarks, as I did on Second Reading, by quoting a family involved in this type of case. One family seeking restoration of property told the Commission for Looted Art:

“Whether it’s a painting or a book or a porcelain jar, every object represents the life and lives that were lost. Their restitution restores a personal connection, a link with those lives so utterly transformed or destroyed by the Nazis. Hitler’s project was to erase the Jews from history. But by recovering objects and documenting their owners, restitution also returns those people to their families and to the historical record.”

There is no justification for applying an arbitrary time limit to the Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) Act 2009. That legislation has worked well and it is still needed, and I commend this Bill to the Committee.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

As we all know, the theme of Holocaust Memorial Day this year was being “Torn from home”. In the speech I made that day, I took the opportunity to speak about the way the Nazis’ attacks on Jewish people began slowly and escalated painfully. The attacks on lives were harrowing, because each new law, each new confiscation and each new theft of property was compounded by the awful, awful events that followed. We talked about how being torn from home was about the destruction of a whole way of life and a whole culture.

Of course, what was lost can never really be recovered, but we have a duty to respect, to remember and to understand that history, and to keep those memories alive. That takes a lot of work. Tragically, it is important to say that that work has never been more important than it is today. Each year, we lose more survivors of the holocaust—people of exemplary courage, resilience and moral fortitude who have suffered so much. We lose those who have taught us so much about not only the horrors they were subjected to but the ways in which the disease of antisemitism spreads: through lies and conspiracy, through baseless and manipulative accusations of disloyalty, and through an insidious, creeping and escalating dehumanisation of a people.

In recent years, we have seen a sharp rise in antisemitism across Europe, at home in our communities and, tragically, in our political parties. On the Friday we discussed this excellent Bill, other hon. Members mentioned the Community Security Trust, a group that I admire and thank. It has provided me with so much personal support in the work I have done over the years on community cohesion. The trust has released its report on antisemitic incidents in the UK in 2018, in which it has recorded a massive 1,652 incidents. That is the highest annual figure on record—more than 100 incidents every single month. I can only imagine how scary that must be.

We must all redouble our efforts to reject the politics of fear, division and conspiracy. As the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet said better than I, that change starts here, and it continues with this Bill. In that spirit, we are expecting to have a new holocaust memorial near Westminster in 2022, and like other hon. Members here today, I hope it will be very near here. The Imperial War Museum is due to open a new permanent holocaust gallery in 2021, which I also warmly welcome.

Returning stolen cultural objects wherever possible is an important part of this project. Returning artworks and cultural objects is not just about undoing the past but about recognising it and, frankly, about justice. Millions of people had their lives and their futures stolen by the holocaust, but we must remember that property was stolen too, and tens of thousands of objects stolen at that time are likely to remain hidden. Ultimately, we do not know how many cultural objects stolen and looted from the Jewish community by the Nazis are still in collections here or how many have not been returned within the lifetime of the 2009 Act so far.

That is why it is absolutely right that the Act is extended by this important Bill. The destruction wielded by the holocaust was intended to destroy a culture, a history and all the rich memories of that culture, that history and that people. For those who have lost family, the testimonies show what an important emotional experience it can be to have possessions returned to them. It is right that the named 17 institutions are able to make these experiences possible, as I am sure they will all want to.

In my final remarks, I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet, who has spoken so passionately and articulately about this Bill, for her tireless work on this issue. We must all ensure that what was stolen and can still be returned is returned, and we must create every single chance for some fragments of justice—however small in comparison with the enormous injustice of the holocaust—to be done.

[Paul Masterton (East Renfrewshire) (Con)]

I want to speak briefly, partly to put on record my thanks and the thanks of the Jewish community in East Renfrewshire to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet for bringing this Bill forward.

More than 50% of Scotland’s Jewish community live in East Renfrewshire, and I can say without hesitation that this Bill has their unequivocal support. The local Jewish community strongly opposed the sunset clause when it was first introduced, partly for the reasons explored in today’s debate. It is no surprise that claims are still coming forward only sporadically; given that some holocaust survivors have only recently found living family members, it is hardly surprising that it has taken longer and been harder to find objects that were in their families’ possession.

There is a worry that if holocaust survivors or their heirs were prevented from having property restored to them simply because they became aware of an object’s continued existence and location only after several decades, we would be doing a huge disservice to all those who lost their lives in the holocaust. As was explored by the hon. Member for West Ham, a completely arbitrary time bar entrenches one aspect of the holocaust in perpetuity. Property was stolen, expropriated, forced to be sold or transferred under duress, with the sole intention of destroying any memory of the Jews, their culture and their history. Being able to continue to return property is a very small part of what is a hugely important process for our Jewish communities.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2018 Commons Chamber

The Attorney General was asked—

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

1. What recent discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on the effectiveness of contempt of court proceedings.

[The Attorney General (Mr Geoffrey Cox)]

The institution of court proceedings for contempt is by me in relation to each case on its own merits. I institute proceedings when there is sufficient evidence, and when I, as guardian of the public interest, decide that it is in the public interest to do so.

[Lyn Brown]

Contempt of court proceedings are very important to ensuring fair trials and the rule of law. Contempt of Parliament proceedings have been crucial in enabling the House to have the information to which it was entitled. Is the Attorney General not ashamed that his Ministers were found to be in contempt?

[The Attorney General]

It is always a serious matter for any Minister to find himself at odds with the House, particularly over an important question of constitutional principle. On reflection, and the opinion of the House having been tested twice, the Government took the decision to disclose the advice, but I must stress to the hon. Lady that successive Governments have defended that principle robustly. I have a list of very eloquent articulations of it by Opposition Members who have defended it against demands for the disclosure of confidential advice. It is an important principle, and I hope that the House will look again at the procedures relating to the motion for a return.