Cyber-bullying and Digital Anonymity

Mike Penning Excerpts

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims (Mike Penning)]

It is an honour and a privilege to respond on behalf of the Government this evening to this very important Adjournment debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) not only on securing the debate but on getting colleagues to come in on a Thursday evening and support him.

I apologise because I am probably not the lead Minister who would normally deal with this debate, but it is important that my Department—I sit in two Departments—which has responsibility for part of the work that needs to be done to address this important issue is represented at the Dispatch Box. The cross-governmental responsibilities here include the Department for Education, the Ministry of Justice, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the Home Office and the Cabinet Office to name a few. There are probably other Departments that feel they have responsibilities, not least given the Prime Minister’s interest in recent years.

An Adjournment debate this evening will not allow the issue to have the time it deserves. Far be it from me to suggest what the Backbench Business Committee should and should not do, but this is a very important debate that needs more air time than an Adjournment debate in the House can give.

It is also my belief, and that of the Government, that there is no difference in law between what one does online and what one does in public: what one does face to face is identical within law to what is done online. My hon. Friend quoted at least three Acts. My officials think that five Acts may be in place to help with the issue: the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, the Malicious Communications Act 1998, the Communications Act 2003 and the Defamation Act 2013. They all apply to online trolls.

Perhaps I can address early on some of the specific points that my hon. Friend raised, particularly education. Education is very important. Since September 2014, not so long ago, e-safety has to be taught at all four key stages within the curriculum at our schools. It is massively important that young people have the education and knowledge that they need reinforced at every key stage going forward so that while they use the wonderful new media as much as possible, they understand the problems and dangers of internet bullying.

As my hon. Friend suggested, there are no boundaries or borders in this type of abhorrent behaviour. The internet is a wonderful thing, but I know as Minister responsible for child protection how dangerous the internet is in particular to young, vulnerable people.

I was in Washington at the beginning of the week before last, where I attended the global alliance conference on child online protection, and it was very obvious where the problems occur. It is an international problem; that is the case not only with trolling, but also with some of the other abhorrent things we see on the internet these days. People are earning huge amounts of money out of other people’s grief and poverty, and just getting a kick, frankly, out of abusing people online.

May I therefore reiterate again that in law there is no difference between standing in front of someone and abusing them and doing it online? That is very important, and we have seen some significant cases coming before the courts recently to make sure everybody understands that.

Let me touch briefly on three points, and in particular the anonymous nature of trolls. It is an obvious thing to say that someone should have their anonymity removed—or should they not have it in the first place? In the international spectrum, however, I do not want people living in Syria to have their anonymity taken away. I want people around the world who are living under repression to have the ability to tell the rest of the world what is going on in their countries—what is happening to them, to their families, to their political parties—without fear that their identity will be known.

In saying that, the police do have a way of finding out very quickly where such a communication came from. I know that myself as, sadly, my bank account was hacked fairly recently, but the IP addresses were made available enormously quickly by my internet bank to the police and subsequently arrests have been made. They cannot hide, therefore: “If you abuse someone using the internet, no matter what technology you use, invariably you will be discovered, and if you break the law, you will be prosecuted.” What we must do, however, is ensure people have the confidence to come forward, not necessarily directly to the police every time because it can be very difficult for young people to do that, but to someone they trust within their school or family or community, to tell them what is going on so we can prosecute.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

Is not the problem that this would be regarded by the police as a pretty low priority unless it had reached a level of great seriousness, and therefore is not the solution, as I suggested before, that the main companies must have easy ways of reporting abuse before it gets to that level and that they should be likely to block it irrespective of whether or not the person’s identity is known?

[Mike Penning]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and he has touched on a point I was coming to in the next few minutes. On his first point, this sort of offence can now be heard in the High Court and it does carry a penalty of up to two years. That is relatively new, but that actually happens. Standing here not as a Justice Minister but as the police Minister from the Home Office, I can say that the police should, and will, deal with this in the same way as they would deal with an offence offline. That is vitally important, and perhaps a message from the Dispatch Box from the police Minister to the police on that point this evening will not go amiss.

This country leads the way in working with these big companies. While I was in Washington the American Administration said to me that we have a rapport and a relationship and get things done with the big companies in a way that they do not. We need to use that relationship, and of course in early December there will be a global conference here in London, headed by the Prime Minister, on online protection of children and these sorts of issues will be discussed.

Trolls need to know that they will be prosecuted and that the action that will be taken is international. I can assure my hon. Friend that I will have international meetings in this difficult area. I will also let the Ministers in all the different Government Departments know what I have said at the Dispatch Box today, and tell them that we are coming together as a Government to ensure that we do this in a departmental way and that the lead Department leads the process. I can assure my hon. Friend that we are doing something about this.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

I should like to thank the police in Merseyside for taking an online hate crime against me very seriously. This resulted in a conviction last week. What more can the Minister do, along with colleagues in other Departments, to encourage as many people as possible across the country to report any hate crime that they might experience, confident in the knowledge that the authorities will do something about it?

[Mike Penning]

I reiterate that that is exactly what we want people to do. We want them to have the confidence to come forward. In a perfect world, everyone—particularly young people—would have the confidence to go directly to the police. However, some people might not have the confidence to do that, and they might instead share the problem with their teacher, their tutor or their parents.

We have not touched on the responsibilities of parents. I speak as the father of two young ladies who would probably tell me that they are now much too independent to be given advice by their father. That does not mean that they are teenagers; they are slightly older than that. It is important that everyone takes responsibility for knowing what is going on. Earlier today, a victim was talking to me about this issue. The only reason that the problem had come to light was that her mother had noticed a sudden change in her behaviour. She had become quiet and secretive, and she was not as extrovert as she used to be. Her mother then found a diary that revealed what was going on.

I am conscious that many Departments need to pull together on this issue. We also need to pull together internationally. This is an enormously difficult subject for many people, whether they are famous and in the public arena or not. This also affects the forgotten ones, the youngsters and the little ones at school who are being abused by cyber-bullies. It is not acceptable and we will do everything in our power internationally and at home to ensure that cyber-bullies are removed from the internet.

Question put and agreed to.