There can be few more surreal moments as an MP than being a victim in court listening to a judge convict someone for a law they themselves helped to write. Last week a non-constituent who had never met me or my family admitted harassing us and received a suspended sentence. In our increasingly toxic public realm, we should stop asking if politicians have enough security and start challenging those who seek to silence their opponents not with witty repartee, but wearing campaigns of hate.
If he had the courage to meet my gaze, the perpetrator would have seen I was hugging my arms to stop myself shaking. Determined not to show emotion, I listened as his advocate claimed I “triggered” him into maliciously reporting me to social services because I had not engaged with his barrage of incoherent angry emails. His argument was that my political views on equality were so extreme that my family were at risk.
When the police visited him to tell him to stop, he didn’t, continuing to make malicious complaints about me to other agencies knowing full well his actions were causing distress. Having worked on stalking legislation as a shadow minister, I knew how dangerous such a fixation could be — and that even if the police initially failed to investigate because he was “entitled to his views”, his refusal to stop when asked meant he’d broken the law. I’m grateful to the second Leicestershire police team who rejected his defence that because I was in the public domain, my family’s welfare was fair game for his political ire.
The judge said having dealt with multiple incidents involving harassment of public officials, this was one of the worst he’d seen. He also explicitly recognised that cases like this deter people from seeking public office. I wish I could say it is rare, but in the past few days alone another threat has come in and at least two other individuals are hassling my office. I’m also not the only MP whose family members have been targeted by someone who disagrees with their votes or campaigns, reflecting why “don’t feed the trolls” misses the point: if someone is obsessing about you to the point they are seeking out those around you, ignoring them won’t disrupt their behaviour before it causes more damage.
No one in any parliamentary leadership has offered any support to me or my family, but I hope in pursuing this prosecution those who may seek office can take comfort that there is some legal precedent that can be used to protect their family. Legislators must also consider whether to make it an aggravating factor for offences where individuals explicitly target public officials and their staff and families to intimidate them, as we have with emergency workers. I doubt any MP seeking re-election would wish to propose this for fear of being accused of trying to shut down their opponents, but with a divisive election on the horizon we have to protect our democracy from those who seek to suppress it.
While the trial may be over, the harassment continues because his reports are required to be retained. Every time I have contact with an official organisation, questions will be asked: “Are they known to social services?” Until their record is struck out, even a locked file generates the suggestion there’s no “smoke without fire”. On Monday all MPs can back a cross-party amendment we have proposed to the Victims Bill that would enable the removal of such data when its existence is patently mischievous. This isn’t just about those in the public domain — many perpetrators of abuse also use malicious complaints to third parties to cause harm that cannot then be deleted and so cause distress.
I rarely block anyone on or offline — I frequently defend the right of others to disagree with me, explicitly and in the face of a culture where “cancelling” has become a starting point not end-reaction to disagreement. Yet none of these incidents refers to any form of debate we should normalise if we want to protect free speech — it should never be acceptable to drag someone’s family into an argument or to target their loved ones to get their attention. Even if they can’t face us when we confront them, if we want diverse and open politics we can’t ignore these bullies any longer.
