Elected Women Representatives: Online Abuse

Siobhan Baillie Excerpts

Tuesday 20th April 2021 Westminster Hall

[Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) for securing this really important debate.

How free do we think online speech is at the moment, when posting something on Twitter results in comments such as:

“I’ll beat you like a ginger stepchild”

or

“I hope that you have the worst Christmas, you Tory-supporting”—effing—“freak”?

Those are the experiences of my friend Charlotte, who is standing for the council. How often has a woman not posted a thought or view because they cannot be bothered to, or cannot, deal with the fallout? And what greater impediment to their freedoms than dealing with rape threats and death threats, just because they either want a job or have a job?

When Annabel Tall stood in Bath, she received trolling about her son. They said that he looked like he was in the Hitler Youth. Another candidate, standing for the first time in May this year, describes the posts she receives as “eye-wateringly cruel”. She removed herself from Twitter. She is a strong and fantastic military veteran. She is exactly what we need in our local authorities, and exactly what we hope to have in Parliament in the future, if she continues.

Nothing naffs me off more than seeing people with #BeKind or #MentalHealthMatters in their titles who then go on to give people the worst, most vicious attacks just because they do not agree or they are feeling morally superior on that particular day. It absolutely has to stop. People are not applying for these jobs. We heard the figures from my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke. We have to get those women into Parliament and into our local authorities.

Whenever I visit schools in my constituency, I leave so inspired. The young women from Stroud High, Thomas Keble, Rednock, Maidenhill and Marling—they are fabulous. It is not just because all of us here know that, in local authorities and in Parliament, we can make real changes to our communities and our country; it is because those women are already campaigners. They are already leading the way on so many important issues. They teach me things and they inspire. It is no longer that we want them here; we need their voices here and we need them here, so we have to make changes.

I am very supportive of the proposals that many Members have put forward today. To be honest, I think the Government should be looking at everything, and I really applaud what they are doing. The Minister and I have had lots of conversations about this issue and the online harms Bill. While I do not want to see that Bill dressed up like a Christmas tree so that it falls down, because what it is trying to achieve is too important, it can do more.

One area that I have spoken about on a number occasions is anonymity, and I support the previous comments about that. I suggest that we should look at verification. I was very disappointed that there was no meaningful consultation on the impact of anonymous abuse accounts or the options to tackle them in the online harms consultations. That is something that should be rectified, however the simple steps that I suggest would not mean banning anonymous accounts or people losing their sassy username—they can be Princess Whatsherchops if they so want to.

In my view, we should do three things. First, we should give all social media users the option to verify their identity. Secondly, we should make it easy for everyone to see whether or not a user has chosen to verify their identity—we have already done that with Twitter’s blue ticks, so we know it can happen. Finally, we can give users the option to block interaction with unverified users if that is what they want to do.

This is not about blocking, but about choice and the future of our country and our democracy. We need those women in Parliament and in our local authorities, and do not want them to be put off.