Elected Women Representatives: Online Abuse

Selaine Saxby Excerpts

Tuesday 20th April 2021 Westminster Hall

[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) for securing today’s debate.

More women stood in the 2019 general election than ever before, and more female MPs came through as a result. This is progress, but to keep more women coming forward, we need to do more urgently to tackle the abuse that politicians have to deal with online. Forty-nine per cent. of candidates in the 2019 election reported that they suffered some form of abuse, harassment or intimidation while campaigning—up 11% from 2017. Worryingly, female politicians face far more abuse than male ones. We also report more acts of intimidation, threats, physical violence and mental abuse. Is it any wonder that the average female MP resigning in 2019 had served a full six years less than the average resigning male MP?

At my selection to represent North Devon, I was given an article entitled “Abuse, stalkers, death threats—who’d be a female MP?”. I did not read it. Indeed, that is how so many of us deal with the abuse—we ignore it. Heaven forbid that we should choose not to, read what is written about us, which bears no resemblance to the truth, and attempt to fight back. We do our best to joke with other female colleagues about how many death threats we have received. My voodoo curse was a particularly unusual one. Although MPs have to be thick-skinned, that should not be a normal conversation.

We do our best to laugh it off, but others read the comments. A charity that I was supporting this weekend observed on my arrival how much hatred people must have to write abuse on my Twitter feed following my support of its charitable event. On moving in, my new neighbours popped their head over the wall and said how sorry they were for the dreadful comments I received on Facebook. They could not believe what people wrote. More important still, other women and girls who might aspire to follow in our footsteps read the comments and have to assess that as part of their decision to put themselves forward.

Local female candidates in North Devon have stood down, and it is pretty hard to get female candidates to stand up in the first place, but why would they want to put their friends and families through such abuse? I speak today not for myself or even for my constituents, but for women everywhere. I am speaking to ensure that our Parliament continues to better reflect the wider population. I am speaking to encourage more to be done to tackle the cowards who hide behind anonymous profiles. I am speaking out because it is the right thing to do. Although I am proud to be the first female MP for North Devon, I do not want to be the last.

The analytical mathematician in me wonders why people do it. It is unpleasant, unnecessary and upsetting. We must call it out wherever we see it. We must not let it go unchallenged. We must not accept that this is normal. As a former teacher, I say that we should call out the online abuse that we all endure as the bullying it truly is. If we want Parliament to better reflect society, retain the additional women elected in 2019 and go on to achieve a 50:50 ratio, we cannot accept that ignoring our social media feeds is the new normal.

The silent majority believes that too. I hope it will find its inner keyboard warrior and speak up, particularly for female politicians of all political persuasions, the great majority of whom work tirelessly for the people who elected them. In the words of the great Michelle Obama,

“When someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don’t stoop to their level. No, our motto is, when they go low, we go high.”