UK Elections: Abuse and Intimidation

Simon Hart Excerpts

Wednesday 12th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered abuse and intimidation of candidates and the public in UK elections.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I should start by saying that since the election the Conservative Whips Office has been dealing with at least three credible threats to colleagues every week, including death threats, criminal damage, sexism, racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism and general thuggishness around and after the election. For all I know, other parties’ Whips Offices may be having similar experiences, and I look forward to hearing cross-party contributions on that score. It is for that reason, and a few others, that I thought it was appropriate to call this debate now.

When I first entered the House seven years ago, it never crossed my mind for one minute that I would end up making a speech like this. As far as I was concerned, elections were four or five weeks of robust banter followed by a shake of the hand and a pint in the pub, yet now it all seems so different, with swastikas on election boards and offensive slogans and language on posters.

[Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this important debate. I have been an MP for just over two years, and I cannot remember a single day that has gone by without me receiving some sort of abuse, whether that is death threats or a picture of me mocked up as a used sanitary towel and various other things. The last election was the most brutal I can imagine. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we have to look at this issue with a non-partisan view and accept that in all our parties, as much as it hurts us, there are people who do not represent our values? For some to suggest that it is only one party doing it is wrong.

[Simon Hart]

I absolutely recognise that point, and I will come to it later in my speech. There will be individual contributions from Members who might have had particular experiences that defy that challenge, but I agree with the hon. Lady, and I am grateful to her for making that point so early in proceedings.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way so early in his speech, and I congratulate him on securing the debate. While I understand why he has brought forward a debate with particular regard to general elections, does he not agree with me that the recent research done by BBC Radio 5 Live—it found that half of British female MPs have been threatened with physical abuse, nine out of 10 have been abused online and 80% have been verbally abused—shows that the issue is not restricted to election time?

[Simon Hart]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her timely contribution. One thing that has struck me—I know it has struck people in our Whips Office, too—is that when I started uncovering this topic, I found out about stuff that I simply did not think existed. I have been astonished by the quantity of evidence I have received from all sides. As she said, I had assumed that the issue might just be around election times, when we are perhaps a higher profile community, but it is not. Actually, it seems to be going on all the time, and a number of colleagues are suffering in silence. I hope that they do not have to suffer in silence.

I mentioned swastikas on election boards, offensive slogans and language on posters, but there have also been scratched cars, broken windows and posters of the bleeding heads of some of our political leaders on stakes at marches and demos. There has even been the occasional police officer or teacher joining the overall fray. That is not the rule, but it is occasionally the exception.

Retailers and hoteliers have felt that they cannot support a candidate publicly or make a donation to the party or candidate of their choice, because they are worried that they might be attacked on online review sites or, even worse, in person. There are elderly voters who will not put up a sign in their windows. There are volunteers who worry about handing out leaflets and having abuse hurled at them. There are colleagues whose sexuality or religion has resulted in them being spat at—not once, but regularly. We will hear more on that later in the debate. These people form the core of democracy and our election effort, yet they are being steadily put off getting involved in politics at a time when their contribution has never been more important.

Of course, the abuse is online, too, and we will probably spend quite a bit of the debate talking about that. For Government Members—I am sure it is similar for colleagues in other parties— #toryscum is a regular feature of our lives, and that is just the bit I can repeat in the Chamber. I chose my words carefully. I do not know how many colleagues have read the report from BCS—the Chartered Institute for IT—and Demos. It contained a survey showing that over a three-month period MPs received 188,000 abusive tweets. That is one in 20 tweets received by MPs.

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that legislation already exists to protect those who are abused online, but that legislation is often ignored or not enforced. Will he join me in putting pressure on the Government to launch a review to see why that is the case?

[Simon Hart]

The hon. Lady is psychic, among many other things. What she said was going to be my next comment. I absolutely agree with her. There is another element with the existing laws, which is how few people know that they exist. Indeed, some law enforcement agencies do not know that they exist. The questions I will be putting to the Minister in a few minutes are partly intended to get a greater understanding of what legislation is there, where the gaps are and what we can do to fill them.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

My hon. Friend might be aware of the Home Affairs Committee’s report from last year that looked at the online abuse MPs have to suffer. There was an issue about the threshold we have to endure as Members of Parliament, which is different from that of members of the public. If abuse is persistent and falls over into real-life activities, surely social media companies have to be held accountable, too.

[Simon Hart]

I am sure that a number of colleagues would agree with that contribution; I certainly do. I will be coming to some proposals and thoughts on social media in just a moment.

I want to take a moment to describe the example of our former colleague Byron Davies, who until recently was the MP for Gower. During the election campaign he was subjected to a sustained attack on Twitter that contained absolutely unfounded allegations about a criminal investigation for electoral fraud. That was not an embellishment or exaggeration of a story; it was simply made up. Whether Members supported him or not, he was a colleague defending a majority of 27, and he had to do that against a constant drip-feed on social media of people simply making things up as they went along. Could it have contributed to the loss of his seat? I do not know. It was certainly blatant defamation—that much we do know. The Electoral Commission could not help, social media platforms would not help, and the police investigation, like all police investigations, will take time. It is grinding slowly on, but our former colleague Mr Davies is having to do all that himself, and he is bearing the cost. When that inquiry eventually reaches its conclusion, what remedy will he really have?

I could mention my hon. Friends the Members for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray), for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans), for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer), for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach), and for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) and the many others who have suffered similar or vaguely intimidatory experiences during the election campaign. Almost more worrying than that is the number of colleagues I have spoken to in the past few days who do not even want to come to this Chamber to make a contribution, lest it compound the intimidation and abuse they have been receiving in recent weeks. I hope that we are all in a sense making our contributions not to ease our bruised egos, but on behalf of colleagues who have put up with a lot of this nonsense over quite a long time, and are looking, as the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) said, for a lead from the Government.

Having said all that, I want to make the point that this debate is not about thin-skinned politicians having had a bit of a bruising time and feeling rather sorry for ourselves. Nor is it, as the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff) mentioned, about left versus right or right versus left, or whatever it might be—the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) made an interesting contribution on that particular score in her speech to the Fabian Society at the weekend. It is actually about families, staff, helpers and volunteers. For those of us who have teenage children who might follow us on Twitter and Facebook, it is about being able to say to them, “Don’t worry about the death threat; don’t worry about the abuse and the false accusations.” It is also for them that we speak.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

I have had death threats for a number of years—I now have panic buttons and a restraining order against somebody. What is different about what happened at this election—in which I was subjected to anti-Semitic abuse, my staff were spat at and my boards and property were attacked—is that the abuse has been politically motivated. The elephant in the room is that it has been motivated by the language of some of our political leaders, when they accuse people of one political side of murder, and when they dehumanise them in the way that is happening at the moment. There is something more sinister to this. Yes, it affects left and right, but we have to deal with the issue of what is happening on our side of politics.

[Simon Hart]

One of my most important recommendations is about the role of political leadership and what political leaders need to do, rather than what they need to say.

I wanted to mention the example of our former colleague Charlotte Leslie in Bristol, whose parents became victims of abuse. Their entire oil heating supply was drained into their garden by somebody who had an objection to Charlotte’s position on fracking—a slightly ironic way of dealing with an environmental consideration, but none the less one that caused enormous distress, as did the scratching of “Tory scum” into her elderly parents’ car. That is not something that anybody in this House should condone. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) has just pointed out, when it comes to leadership, it is exactly such an example that should trigger a robust response from everybody who has the benefit of a high profile in politics.

It is about religion, sexuality, social background—it is about people who might have been to public school and sound a bit posh. It is about anybody who might have a political leaning one way or the other, and who might be thinking of becoming a local councillor, or of a career at some future stage in some branch of politics, not even necessarily as an MP, an Assembly Member or a Member of the Scottish Parliament—whatever it might be. We have to ask ourselves: why would they want to take that step when they see what Members of this House have to put up with and, worse still, what Members’ families, friends, relations, campaigners and donors also have to subject themselves to?

To the social media platforms, to the left, to the right, and to groups such as Momentum, which has been mentioned, rather than taking the lazy way out and saying that they are responsible for this, I say, “Help us. If you are on the left, help us. If you are on the right, help us. If you are a social media platform, help us. Help us identify what has triggered the increase in abuse, the smear campaigns, the intimidation, the harassment, the thuggish behaviour on and offline, and the general criticism of people simply because of an inability to match or contest their arguments.”

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is quite right: this behaviour is reprehensible. He is right to identify social media. Does he also think that the traditional print media, particularly newspapers such as The Sun, has had a role in creating a climate in which it is okay to abuse politicians? Perhaps we need to look at the traditional print media as well.

[Simon Hart]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. Of course, print media is governed by a rather different and more visible level of regulation. There is a line between robust challenge, the cut and thrust of politics and the sort of stuff that we know we are letting ourselves in for when we take on this job—some papers would argue that they are on the right side of that line—which is a mile away from the stuff we are talking about. People being made to feel a little shamefaced or guilty because they have cocked up—if I can use that expression—their particular contribution to politics is one thing. If there is an example of a newspaper inciting racial hatred, anti-Semitism and that sort of thing, the regulators ought to be looking at that, without impinging on the free press.

[Ms Ghani]

My hon. Friend is making a strong case. I am a little concerned that this debate might blur the lines between criticism of the performance of a Member of Parliament or a stance they take and actual abuse. My concern is that the abuse particularly stops women entering politics. I will give the example of a candidate who stood in Ealing and was unfortunately not elected. Candidates have to declare their addresses when they stand for Parliament. She said that she started becoming nervous during the election campaign when opponents started standing outside her door, spitting in her face and following her. That is the threatening behaviour that she wants to highlight. This is not about criticism in the press.

[Simon Hart]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that contribution. Legislation of course already exists to deal with such incidents but, as we touched on before, it is not always easily accessible. It is not always entirely advantageous to be distracted by that during an election campaign.

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman and I have been sparring partners on many occasions, but on this one I congratulate him on raising this issue. I agree that all it takes for evil to prosper is for good people to do nothing. On the other hand, it is very easy for us in this place to make the case and put the arguments down—we are protected by privilege and have the means of putting our views on the record—but there are councillors and ordinary people out there volunteering for political parties and charities up and down the country who are not protected in anything like the same way as we are in Parliament.

[Simon Hart]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that contribution, which touches on the reason we are here: the degree of collateral impact from which we may fairly visibly suffer, and the knock-on effect on people who want to do good things for their community, charity or cause, but who are beginning to ask themselves whether it is worth the effort. What plans do the Government have to assess the extent of the issue, because I do not think that any of us here know what it is?

It almost seems that the age of reasoned argument in elections is under threat. All of us, in our own particular way, have experienced situations in which we mention immigration and are instantly labelled a racist, or we mention welfare and are instantly labelled as having some extraordinary dislike of the disabled, or we want to talk about complicated and sensitive issues around the economy, which is interpreted as simply wanting to starve the poor. Absurd, extreme, ridiculous, lazy and trite comments are assigned to Members who simply want to tackle a complicated social problem in the way we were sent here to do. The fact that there is no room for reasoned argument any more is a cause of this debate. It seems that it is not really about winning votes or arguments anymore.

The manner in which some of those campaigns are conducted—I am obviously trying to steer a careful, non-partisan line here—is about driving people out of politics altogether. It is not about votes and arguments; it is about the single-minded determination to do away with anybody who happens to hold a contrary view. That is a big difference between 2015 and 2017, and it is an unattractive development that will simply reduce the gene pool from which we recruit our politicians and volunteers. I cannot believe that any member of the public, however vociferous they might be online, actually thinks that reducing the number of people from which we choose our representatives is a good thing.

What is all this doing to society? How is it impacting on candidate recruitment? What is it doing to the retention of good people in the House? Have we reviewed the recommendations that the Law Commission made 18 months ago? I am hopeful that the Minister has views on that. Are we doing enough to bring the existing provisions to the knowledge of the enforcement agencies and, indeed, to candidates? I hope that when the Minister gets to his feet in a few minutes he will be able to give us some indication of the Government’s view on an independent assessment of the extent of the problem—what is going on out there, what is the cause and what is the remedy.

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

Four years ago the all-party parliamentary group against anti-Semitism produced a detailed set of recommendations on an all-party basis about conduct in elections and asked every political leader to endorse it. To date, none has. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if the political leaders themselves drew up a code of conduct and a way of addressing behaviour during elections, that would go a considerable way towards dealing with the most difficult period? If there is a transgression by a candidate or their supporters, they face the issue of votes at that time, and therefore there is a tendency to try to dampen it down or ignore it during elections. That is precisely why we produced that report.

[Simon Hart]

I could not have put it better myself. In fact, I would expand it to outside election times, too. As we have heard today, this problem is not limited to that four or five-week period every three or four years.

My second question to the Minister is about reviewing existing laws and seeing which work and which should work but are not being enforced. Where there are gaps, we should recommend how to fill them. Then, as the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) said, we should ensure that there is cross-party support for legislation to achieve that aim.

We need to look at the responsibilities of the social media platforms, which, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) and I discovered not long ago, all too often wring their hands and say, “It’s all too difficult.” Actually, it is not all too difficult. It is all too important that they now adopt the same responsible attitude to what they publish in their name— although they deny they are publishers—which is, on occasion, the sort of material that is completely unacceptable. Earlier I raised the example of Byron Davies and the Gower, who asked a social media platform—I think it was Twitter—to remove an outright lie that was possibly going to affect the outcome of the election. It refused and said that what was going on was within the guidelines. It cannot be with the guidelines simply to sit back and allow people to publish utter nonsense with the aim of artificially disrupting the outcome of an election. I suspect that everybody in this Chamber is of that view.

When the then Minister responded to a debate on online bullying last year, he said:

“There needs to be partnership, and I do not rule out regulation…We need to work with the companies, and we need clear guidelines on, and definitions of, online abuse. Even more importantly, we need very quick reactions, so that all of us as constituency MPs do not have to sit in surgeries with people who are clearly utterly distressed because of online material”.—[Official Report, 7 July 2016; Vol. 612, c. 1107.]

That applies just as much to electoral behaviour as to behaviour outside that time.

Finally—thank you for your patience, Mr Hanson—we need a political lead, as other colleagues have said. That means that the leaders of all parties and groups need to stand up and not just send out warmly worded tweets about bad behaviour or transmit mealy-mouthed messages of condemnation, but take a “not in my name” approach. All of the groups we have talked about overtly and by insinuation need to say, “Not in my name. Nobody who is a member of this party or this group should engage in online or offline abuse, either during an election or at any other time.” The leadership of those organisations have the opportunity today to stand up and say that they will deal with this robustly. If they do not, they are complicit in the problem. That is why there have been rumours and this whole thing has gathered momentum—with a small “m”—over the past few months and years.

Thirteen months ago our colleague Jo Cox paid the ultimate price for this kind of stuff. It shook the nation and sent a message that I hoped people would listen to, whether they are in a position of political leadership or just able to vote at elections. One year on, the problem seems every bit as bad as it was back then. Unless we have joined-up, co-operative leadership from the Government—I hope we will hear about that now—and from all the Opposition parties and the groups that support them, all of the extraordinary work that has been done in Jo Cox’s memory will have been wasted.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hart]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Cat Smith]

I cannot—I am really short of time.

I want to stress the responsibility for social media as well. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) said on “Daily Politics” yesterday, it is not right that Facebook can remove a picture of a woman breastfeeding within minutes, but it takes it two weeks to remove a fake social media profile.

I see you urging me to draw my remarks to a close, Mr Hanson.

[Simon Hart]

rose—

[Cat Smith]

I therefore urge the Minister to work on a cross-party basis. We would like to see a code of conduct by way of which we can work together to ensure that this abuse is not accepted.

[David Hanson (in the Chair)]

The hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) will get a chance to wind up at the end for one minute.

[Simon Hart]

I’m already wound up! [Laughter.]

[David Hanson (in the Chair)]

I call Chris Skidmore.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hart]

Thank you very much, Mr Hanson, for your role this afternoon. I also thank colleagues from both sides of the House for such useful contributions and the Government for taking such immediate action on this. We even got a letter from the Prime Minister before the Minister had got to his feet, so things are working well.

I apologise for going on too long at the beginning, particularly to my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti), who was making a really moving speech. I hope he will have an opportunity to complete those comments, perhaps in the other Chamber. If I had had a chance to intervene on the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith), I would have asked how many people the Labour party has already sanctioned for offences in this area. Perhaps she could write to me with that information.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered abuse and intimidation of candidates and the public in UK elections.