UK Elections: Abuse and Intimidation

Debate between Rehman Chishti and Chris Skidmore

Wednesday 12th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Chris Skidmore)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) on securing this important debate. I welcome the opportunity to address some of the issues that he and other hon. Members from both sides of the House have raised. My hon. Friend put his points across in powerful terms, as have others today, and this is clearly an extremely serious matter that Members feel strongly about. As he said in his opening remarks, this is not just about ourselves as Members as Parliament; it is about all those close to us—our family, our friends and our supporters.

The Prime Minister has been very clear that there is no place in our democracy for the harassment of parliamentary candidates and that abuse will not be tolerated. That is why today she has asked the non-partisan Committee on Standards in Public Life to carry out a review of the intimidation experienced by parliamentary candidates, including those who stood to become Members of Parliament at the 2017 general election. The review will gather evidence of harassment and consider what action needs to be taken to ensure the integrity of the future of our democratic process.

This is clearly an issue that has the potential to impact on people’s wish to stand for office and therefore has a negative impact on standards in public life more broadly. It is also about protecting the integrity of public service itself and that of the offices that we hold. The independent, non-partisan Committee on Standards in Public Life is well respected and, I believe, well placed to lead that work. It has conducted many detailed reviews on conduct and ethics and operates independently from Government, regulators and politicians.

[Rehman Chishti]

The Minister refers to responsibility in relation to conduct. Does he therefore agree with my earlier point that if a third party makes to someone in office a threat of violence directed towards another person running for office—myself in this case—and makes points that are grossly offensive, anti-Semitic and homophobic, the individual to whom that is reported has a responsibility to notify the authorities? To do nothing, as the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) said, is completely unacceptable.

[Chris Skidmore]

I entirely agree that we, like all legislators, cannot be silent on this issue. I hope that, as the committee begins to set up its review, all Members will wish to partake some of the evidence they have given today and do so confidentially, without risk of somehow glorifying the perpetrators. It will be for the committee to determine the exact parameters of the review, but we anticipate that it will want to examine the nature of the problem and the protections and measures currently in place, and whether those need to change.

The committee may also consider the broader implication of other office holders—the role of councillors was mentioned. Foremost, the review will look at intimidation experienced by anyone who has stood as a parliamentary candidate. I am sure the committee will want to progress that work as quickly as possible. It will produce a report for the Prime Minister with specific recommendations for actions, and we look forward to its findings.

On the issue of abuse and the current parameters of legislation, as was pointed out legislation is in place to deal with internet trolls, cyber-stalking and harassment and with perpetrators of grossly offensive, obscene or menacing behaviour. As a Government, we are making changes where necessary to ensure that the legislation we have is as effective as possible. For example, in the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 we made changes to relevant offences to help ensure that people who commit them are prosecuted and properly punished.

The 2015 Act amended section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988, which makes it an offence to send certain articles with intent to cause distress or anxiety. The amendment allows prosecutions to be dealt with in either the magistrates court or the Crown court, with the maximum penalty in the magistrates court for the offence being 12 months’ imprisonment and two years in the Crown court. The amendment also removed the previous requirement that prosecution be brought within six months, extending the time within which prosecutions for offences under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 can be made to up to three years after the offence. As has been said, the key point is that legislation is in place; it is a question of communicating the fact that our legislation now needs to be used by the police when offences are committed and claims and accusations about those offences are brought to them.

The law is clear that what is illegal offline is also illegal online. Robust legislation is in place to deal with internet trolls, cyber-stalking and harassment and the perpetrators of grossly offensive, obscene or menacing behaviour. Section 127 of the 2003 Act created an offence of sending or causing to be sent by means of a public electronic communications network

“a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character”.

The Crown Prosecution Service also recently revised its guidelines on social media to incorporate new and emerging crimes being committed online and to provide clear advice, to help the prosecution of cyber-enabled crime.

The recently enacted Digital Economy Act 2017 will also help to ensure that online abuse is more effectively tackled by requiring a code of practice to be established. The code will set out guidance about what social media providers should do in relation to conduct on their platforms that involves bullying or insulting an individual or other behaviour likely to intimidate or humiliate them. The Government are considering how to take forward the social media code of practice as part of the newly established digital charter, and we will provide more details shortly about when the consultation with social media will take place.

Hate crime of any kind, directed against any community or any person, has absolutely no place in our society; I am sure we all agree on that. As a Government, we are utterly committed to tackling hate crime. The Prime Minister has made it very clear that hate crime of any kind is completely unacceptable. It divides communities, destroys lives and makes us weaker. Britain is thriving precisely because we welcome people from all backgrounds, faiths and ethnicities, and that is something we must strive to protect.

The fact that one of the first actions the Home Secretary took in her new role last summer was to launch the hate crime action plan shows how important tackling hate crime is for the Government. The Home Secretary has also asked Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary to carry out an inspection of all five monitored strands of hate crime, to build up a national picture of how effectively and efficiently police forces are dealing with it. The inspection will take place during 2017-18, and the Government will be keen to see the findings and then consider how they should be taken forward.

The Government are determined that no candidate—regardless of their party, background, race, ethnicity or sexuality—should be forced to tolerate abuse, online or offline, whether it is physical abuse or the threat of violence or intimidation. It is utterly unacceptable in our modern democracy, which we believe is an inclusive and tolerant one, for the incidents of abuse discussed today to be allowed to go on unchallenged. I met the Law Commission this week and the Electoral Commission last week to raise the issue of candidate abuse. I look forward to the Committee on Standards in Public Life’s review of intimidation experienced by parliamentary candidates and the eventual conclusions of its report.

We, as Members of Parliament and as a Government, cannot be silent on this matter. The law exists to protect candidates, and I urge anyone who has evidence of abuse to present it to the committee as part of its review, to the Electoral Commission as part of its review of the general election and, above all, to their local police force, which must take this issue very seriously.

I thank Members on both sides for contributing to this important debate, which I hope will mark a turning point, not only assisting increased detection of intolerance and abuse in all forms, but marking a cultural shift, whereby we, across all parties, work together to stamp out these vile forms of abuse and tackle the fundamental point that this is not acceptable or permissible. We owe it to our democracy to make clear that intimidation and abuse have no part in our society, not only for candidates who stood at the recent general election but for future generations of men and women who are considering entering public life and standing for election. No one must be deterred from playing their part in our democracy, which is why we must seek to end the corrosive effect that abuse and intimidation has of actively discouraging future generations from standing as our representatives.

Dangerous Driving

Debate between Rehman Chishti and Chris Skidmore

Monday 27th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the law on dangerous driving.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allotting the time for this debate. Members in all parts of the House feel strongly on this issue and I recognise that I am not the only Member to have raised concerns regarding the law on dangerous driving. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay) launched a “Stop Dangerous Drivers” campaign and my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) gathered a significant petition relating to a case in his constituency. Many other Members are on the record as being committed to changing the law on dangerous driving. The hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) recently introduced a ten-minute rule Bill, supported by 12 Members from all political parties, calling for the Government to consider the sentencing guidelines as they relate to penalties for dangerous driving offences that lead to death or serious injury.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

I applaud my hon. Friend for his work on this matter. He talks about sentencing for dangerous driving. Does he agree that we also need to consider offences linked to dangerous driving? For example, the maximum sentence for causing death by dangerous driving is 14 years, but for causing death while disqualified it is two years. Does he agree that the latter sentence should be 14 years, in line with that for dangerous driving?

[Chris Skidmore]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. I will address that issue later in my speech. I wanted to ensure that we had a general debate on the law on dangerous driving so that Members of all political parties could have their say on individual cases in their constituencies, giving them an opportunity to raise matters important to them and to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Skidmore]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that case from his constituency. I entirely agree that it is shocking and inconceivable that we have so many cases in many constituencies where the penalty does not reflect the severity of the incident—violent death as a result of dangerous driving.

I will not take any more interventions at the moment. I want to carry on with my speech and raise a case in my constituency. Today is the first anniversary of that case.

The Government are committed to reviewing the law surrounding offences of dangerous driving, and I hope the debate is able to influence their position in the next few months. Already, as part of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, a new offence of causing serious injury by dangerous driving has been established, with a penalty of five years. It came into force on 3 December 2012 and received cross-party support. I hope that the tone of this debate reflects the cross-party support for reviewing and changing the law on dangerous driving.

The debate is topical not just because there are so many Members who want to raise individual constituency cases, but because of the current situation. On 28 August 2013, the Government announced that the Sentencing Council would review sentencing guidelines for the recently introduced offences of causing death by careless driving; causing serious injury by dangerous driving; and causing death by dangerous driving. It was with that review in mind that I wanted to hold the debate, so that the will of the House, and the views of Members from all parts of the House, could be heard and made known to the Sentencing Council. I hope that the Minister will take note of the various issues raised, and that they will inform the Government’s own decisions, once the Sentencing Council has conducted its review, so that they are aware of the strength of feeling about the fact that the laws on dangerous driving need to be changed.

I know that many Members are committed to campaigning for a change in the law as a result of tragic constituency cases of deaths caused by dangerous driving, and they will have met families of victims of dangerous drivers who have had their loved ones cruelly torn from them, often at a young age, only to find that the law is not on their side. The pain and suffering of losing a family member to such a violent death at the irresponsible hands of a dangerous driver are unthinkable, but for the perpetrator of so great a crime then to be given a custodial sentence of a few months or years, or even just a fine and a suspended sentence, is an injustice that few could agree is acceptable. It is in their memory that we hold this debate.

Today is the first anniversary of one of the most tragic cases of death by dangerous driving—a case that made national headlines and led to a campaign involving thousands of people in the Bristol region demanding that the law on dangerous driving be changed. On the afternoon of Sunday 27 January 2013, Ross and Clare Simons were riding their recently purchased tandem bike along Lower Hanham road in my constituency. The couple, 34 and 30, were in the prime of their lives and had been married just 18 months. Only the previous day, they had celebrated the news that they were about to begin IVF treatment to start a family. With everything to live for, they had their entire future together to look forward to.

Elsewhere in Hanham, Nicholas Lovell, 38, was driving his partner’s Citroen Picasso at speed when he was spotted by police, whose sirens quickly indicated to him to pull over. It was not the first time Lovell had been confronted by the law. Having amassed 69 previous convictions, he was well versed at showing blatant disregard for the rules of the road. Taking part in road races throughout his youth and 20s, he had been in and out of the revolving doors of the courts. Repeatedly, he had shown no interest in either his own safety or anyone else’s. In December 1998, high on drugs, he drove at 70 mph on the wrong side of the road as he fled police in Bradley Stoke, speeding all the way to Downend, before crashing head on into another car. During the ensuing court case, he predicted:

“If I don’t deal with this problem now, I am either going to kill myself or kill someone else.”

It was perhaps the only real truth he had ever uttered. Fourteen years later, on the afternoon of 27 January 2013, he did not know that his chilling prophecy was about to become a reality.

What Lovell did know, speeding in his partner’s Citroen Picasso through Hanham, the police now on his tail, sirens blazing, was that he should never have been in that car in the first place—he was serving a driving ban, having been disqualified from driving. It was not ignorance of the law that had driven him to take the wheel of a car that afternoon; he had simply chosen to ignore it. Neither was it the first time he had been banned from driving. He had committed 11 offences of driving while disqualified and been convicted for dangerous driving four times. Not that he seemed to care: two weeks earlier, he had met an acquaintance, John Fleming—nicknamed “Johnny Fireball”—outside the Jolly Sailor pub on Hanham high street, where he challenged him to a race. “He said, ‘Come on, Johnny Fireball. Let’s have a race. I’ve got a fast car put down’”, Fleming later recalled, adding that Lovell also told him, “I don’t care if I do 90 mph and hit someone.”

At 3.50 pm exactly a year ago today, as Lovell sped into Lower Hanham road, with the police in pursuit, he was driving too fast to control his car. Clipping a parked car, his vehicle launched itself across the other side of the road. Call it what you like—the wrong place, the wrong time, that split second moment that can make the difference between life and death—the uninsured car hit a newly purchased tandem bike being ridden by Ross and Clare Simons. They did not stand a chance, and their deaths were almost immediate. Lovell, on the other hand, was still very much alive—alive enough to run away on foot from the scene of the accident, leaving his partner to claim that she had been driving the car at the time, giving the police a false name.

The deaths of Ross and Clare Simons quickly made the national headlines, and their loss shook the entire local community I represent. I never met them, but no one had a bad word to say about this couple, who lived their short lives to the full, touching so many people along the way. A week later, I attended the vigil at the site of their deaths on Lower Hanham road, where easily over 500 people stood silent as we marked the minute when they had been struck. I made a pledge then to Ross’s father, Edwin, that I would do everything in my power, as the local MP, to help them and to ensure that they achieved justice for their tragic loss.

Only when Lovell was finally tracked down and charged did the enormity of his crime become known. As I have already stated, he had 69 previous convictions, including for four offences of dangerous driving, for which he was disqualified from driving completely back in 1999, only to be given a further 11 convictions for driving while disqualified.

[Rehman Chishti]

My hon. Friend paints a shocking picture of a horrific offence by an individual who had 11 convictions for driving while disqualified. The maximum sentence for that is six months, whether it is someone’s first, 15th or 11th offence. Do we not need to ensure a stiffer sentence for repeat offenders, as I proposed in a private Member’s Bill?

[Chris Skidmore]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. Indeed, it is the basis of my speech, and I will talk later about what needs to happen to toughen up the law and make driving while disqualified at least an aggravating factor, if not something more, in cases of death by dangerous driving. In Canada, for instance, while causing death by dangerous driving can incur a penalty of 10 years, causing death by dangerous driving while disqualified can incur a life sentence. We should be going down that route of much tougher penalties for these people, who should not be let out of jail in the first place so as to be able to commit these crimes.

Back in 1999, Lovell was banned from driving essentially for life. The horror of previous crimes included fleeing from the police in 1998 after being spotted at the wheel of a stolen car and, as I have said, driving at speeds of 70mph. In August 2000, he again fled from the police and drove on a public footpath and subway before crashing into a tree, and eight years later, he was spotted by police who wanted to question him about two robberies, but reversed at speed into their vehicle, causing damage, before mounting a pavement to undertake vehicles waiting at traffic lights, forcing two pedestrians to jump out of the way in order to avoid being hit. He was a ticking time bomb. Given the number of his offences, it was inevitable, as he prophesised himself, that he would one day cause death by dangerous driving.

At first, when these details were revealed in court, it seemed inconceivable that someone with so many convictions and disqualifications could have been allowed to kill in this way. How had he managed to flout the law so many times? How had the justice system, for more than a decade and a half, allowed this man persistently to slip through the net and to treat the police, the courts and the laws of this land with contempt? Perhaps there will never be an answer, but that we have even to ask these questions highlights the need for the law to be changed.

Lovell pleaded guilty at the trial, and received the maximum possible sentence for causing death by dangerous driving of 14 years—in fact, he was the first person to be given this sentence since its introduction in 2004—but as a result of his guilty plea, it was reduced by a third to 10 years and six months. Both sentences were then ordered by the judge to run concurrently. The result is that, pending good behaviour, Lovell could be out of prison after six years. Ross’s father, Edwin, summed up the mood at the end of the trial, when he said:

“he’s going to serve three years for each of our children’s lives.”

History Teaching

Debate between Rehman Chishti and Chris Skidmore

Tuesday 10th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Chris Skidmore]

Yes. Let me take a few more interventions.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this very important debate. I studied history at A-level. Let me suggest where we should go from here. Certain schools, such as Chatham grammar school where I am currently a governor, have now brought in the E-bac system in which the humanities, history or geography, have to be taken by students up to the age of 16 for GCSE. That is the way forward. Under this Government, people are being pushed to take history and there is a recognition of its importance in our curriculum and in our understanding of our country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Skidmore]

One of the reasons why I wanted to secure this debate was to try to get some form of agreement and to have a discussion about more than the nature of history. We can talk about “what” history or “whose” history—whether it is local or national history—and we need to talk about history in terms of the curriculum and examinations, but let us start from a baseline that we can never deny, namely “why” history. Historians have probably come at things from the wrong end, in that they are, as Isaiah Berlin would have put it, foxes rather than hedgehogs. We often focus on the minutiae, and so we start focusing on what should be in the curriculum and how we should frame it without coming to an agreement that we should have history to 16, as most other countries in the world do. That is where I want to get to, and then let us fill out things and colour in the blanks.

[Rehman Chishti]

I want to follow the question put by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). With regard to teaching history, it is linked to the use of essays, in promoting critical thinking, vocabulary and one’s communication skills. Nowadays, however, modern assessments are much shorter and therefore essays are not used, so the communication skills and increased vocabulary that a student would otherwise have got from writing history essays are not there.

[Chris Skidmore]

That is a very good point. When we look at the curriculum and the historical content that is being taught, at the moment history teaching obviously finishes for most people at 14. The problem with that approach is that trying to fit into the syllabus the broad span of British history becomes almost impossible and in fact we get a situation where, instead of having a narrative and chronological approach, there is a sort of “Dr Who” time travel fantasy of going from the Tudors back to ancient Egypt, forward to the Romans and then to the Victorians. As a Tudor historian myself, I know that the wars of the roses are rarely taught in schools. Equally, I see that we have a civil war historian in our midst today, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), and he will probably agree that the protectorate is rarely taught in schools and neither is the Glorious Revolution. Unless students have some broad form of a chronology, it is impossible for teachers to get across a genuine interest in history. If history is taught in bite-sized chunks, we are not only doing history a disservice but history students, because they cannot understand the very framework of history itself.

We need to look at that issue, and I believe that making history compulsory to 16 would aid that process of creating a chronology, because for the first time we would then be able to integrate key stage 3 and key stage 4. When we were at school, we actually learned more British history in key stage 3 and even in key stage 2 than we did later on. At the moment, I am writing a book about the battle of Bosworth, an event that is a compulsory part of the curriculum in key stage 2; students have to learn the dates, the framework and what happened then. However, the battle of Bosworth is not part of key stage 3; instead, in key stage 3 students go back again to the mediaeval period. I think that key stage 3 covers the iron age to mediaeval times, with no reference to the Anglo-Saxons or to the Vikings. We need to look at that issue. We should leave the detail up to the national curriculum review within the framework of history being compulsory up to the age of 16.

Immigration

Debate between Rehman Chishti and Chris Skidmore

Thursday 18th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Skidmore]

We have certainly been left with a legacy, and we have to play the cards that we have been dealt. I might like things to have been different, if that were possible. However, we must accept that the European Union covers 47% of our trade and is therefore a major player that we have to deal with, and we need to operate within that framework in terms of border controls.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

My hon. Friend talks about the future, but we also need to look at the existing system. Before coming to this place, I practised as a barrister and prosecuted cases for a number of years. An illegal immigrant or an immigrant who had committed an offence would be served with an IM3, an order for deportation, and a judge then made a recommendation. From that point to the point of deportation—and in the time it took to put that into practice—the left arm of the Home Office did not know what its right arm was doing, and in the meantime the taxpayer was paying for it. Before looking to the future, we need to ensure that the problems with the previous system, which has been in place for several years, are put right.

[Chris Skidmore]

I defer to my hon. Friend’s expertise on this matter, but thank him for raising that valuable point.

I want to return to the issue of employment. While hundreds of thousands of British citizens are still seeking a job, and when 10% of recent British graduates are still looking for jobs, the economic recovery must begin here. Although it is important that low-skilled jobs are filled in order to encourage growth in the economy, there are hundreds of thousands of British citizens who can fill them. If we are to build an economic recovery, it must be on the back of the talents of the British people.