MPs do not need a special law to protect them from harassment, Diane Abbott has said, after Theresa May announced plans to consult on a new law against intimidating candidates.
The shadow home secretary, who faced sustained racist and misogynistic abuse during last year’s general election said the pledge would not help victims. “As someone with more than enough experience of personal abuse and threats, in my judgment this seems to be a thoroughly misguided intervention and the prime minister should have a rethink,” Abbott wrote in a piece for the Guardian.
At a speech in Manchester to mark 100 years since women over 30 won a parliamentary vote, May said the government would consult on whether to introduce a specific offence of intimidating a political candidate.
May said she was concerned that public debate was “coarsening” and that it was becoming harder to disagree without public debate descending into abuse, with women, LGBT, and black and minority ethnic candidates most at risk of abuse.
However, Abbott said after her experience during the 2017 election, she believed the new offence would not prevent future harassment. Research by Amnesty International found Abbott had received almost half of all abusive tweets sent to female MPs in the run-up to the general election and that she was personally targeted by numerous Conservative attack adverts.
“It is unclear why MPs or other elected representatives should have special treatment in law to protect them,” Abbott said. “There are already laws against violence, threats, intimidation, harassment and stalking. But the experience of victims shows that too often the law is a dead letter. Too often it is only when the situation has escalated beyond control that there is effective police intervention.”
Abbott said MPs and people in public life did face real danger, shown by the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox. However, she said the harassment and threats received by some MPs were already currently illegal. She said the country was in desperate need of additional police funding so officers could use laws already in existence to pursue aggressors. “Laws become redundant if there aren’t the police to enforce them,” she said.
The committee’s report recommended that the government should “consult on the introduction of a new offence in electoral law of intimidating parliamentary candidates and party campaigners”.
In her speech, May said British democracy had always been “robust and oppositional” but sometimes debate crossed the line into abuse. “Women in the 19th century had to contend with open hostility and abuse to win their right to vote. In the 21st century it cannot be acceptable for any women – or any person – to have to face threats and intimidation simply because she or he has dared to express a political opinion,” she said.
Some legal commentators have also expressed scepticism that new legislation is necessary to specifically protect MPs. Human rights barrister Adam Wagner, of Doughty Street Chambers, said: “The recommendation is to create a new offence ‘in electoral law’ of intimidating parliamentary candidates. The committee that recommended it asked the police if they needed any new offences. It turns out that the police were very clear – they don’t.”
Wagner said a huge range of offences were available to the police to manage harassment or violent threats against politicians, whether on social media or not. “It’s nonsense on stilts,” he said. “It is clearly a case of ‘something must be done’ and this is something so it must be done.”
Martha Spurrier, director of Liberty, said: “As the prime minister herself said, harassment and intimidation are already criminal offences, which is why the police have said they don’t need new laws. It’s difficult to see what making something that’s already an offence into an ‘electoral law’ offence could possibly add.”
Speaking to reporters after her speech, May said the consultation would look at whether a new offence was really necessary. “We are going to consult on it,” she said. “Of course, as I said in my speech, there are already laws about intimidation. I think what was clear from this report was that there had been significant intimidation particularly of women, BME candidates and LGBT candidates during the election.
“So I think it is right that we ask ourselves the question, should we make this a specific offence?”
May did not mention Abbott in her speech, but said she had been concerned by violent scuffles at a speech by Jacob Rees-Mogg in Bristol on Friday and claims by the former leader of Haringey council, Claire Kober, that she was targeted for abuse by some Labour members.
