Elected Women Representatives: Online Abuse

I remind hon. Members that there have been some changes to normal practice in order to support the new hybrid arrangements. Timings of debates have been slightly amended to allow technical arrangements to be made for the next debate. There will be suspensions between debates. I remind Members participating, physically and virtually, that they must arrive for the start of a debate in Westminster Hall and are expected to remain for the entire debate. I must remind Members participating virtually that they are visible at all times, both to one another and to us in the Boothroyd Room. If Members attending virtually have any technical problems, they should email the Westminster Hall Clerks’ email address. Members attending physically should clean their spaces before they use them and before they leave the room. I remind Members that Mr Speaker has stated that masks should be worn in Westminster Hall—although, of course, not when you are speaking. Members attending physically who are in the latter stages of the call list should use the seats in the Public Gallery initially and move on to the horseshoe when seats there become available. Members can speak from the horseshoe only where there are microphones to facilitate Hansard.

It is my pleasure to call Maria Miller to move the motion.

I beg to move,

That this House has considered online abuse of elected women representatives.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I start by thanking the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate, which was called for by members of the all-party parliamentary group on women in Parliament. It is a great privilege for me to be able to open the debate. May I, in advance, thank hon. Members for their overwhelming support for the debate today? I also thank the organisations that have provided briefings, including the Local Government Association, the Centenary Action Group, the Fawcett Society and Compassion in Politics.

Parliaments are at their best when they are diverse. King’s College London’s global institute for women’s leadership, chaired by Julia Gillard, put it well when it showed the evidence that equal participation of men and women strengthens our democracy. We have made huge progress here: one in three of our Members is now female. Record numbers of women stood for election in 2019, and record numbers were elected to this place. They were inspired to make a difference to their community and their country; inspired not to accept the world as it is but to put themselves forward, despite the barriers that remain, to be here and to be able to change things; and inspired by many of the right hon. and hon. Members taking part in the debate today. Many Members, including in this debate, do not want to accept politics as it is today —a politics in which aggression and abuse are part and parcel of our working day. That is not the democracy that we have signed up for. We want a democracy that relies not on that, but on reasoned debate.

The evidence is also clear that online abuse is not only a factor in preventing women from taking on careers in politics; it is also cutting short the careers of those who stand and are successful in being elected. Members of the APPG on women in Parliament called for this debate because tackling online abuse, particularly when it impacts the freedom of speech of elected Members, needs to be a bigger priority, not only for the Government but for Parliament.

Before I call our next speaker, who will be Caroline Nokes—just to give her early warning—Members will have four minutes to speak.

Thank you, Mr Paisley. I pay tribute to my near neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) for leading this important debate today.

The Women and Equalities Committee has recently launched an inquiry into the cultures underpinning male violence against women and, sadly, I see the online abuse of female parliamentarians as part of that same culture. Trolling might lead somewhere, and the reality is that none of us either in this debate today or in Parliament more widely knows which of our online trolls might turn into a stalker or who, indeed, might in due course turn into somebody who attends our office, our surgery, our home and threatens us physically. This week’s troll could be next week’s attacker. While I will always glibly say that the solution to the online abuse that we receive as female parliamentarians is simply to use the block and the mute button, the reality is that we cannot do that in every case and, in so doing, we might miss the person who is a physical threat to us .

I was pleased to hear my right hon. Friend talk about diversity, but I regret that she stopped short at one point. We know that female parliamentarians are more abused than their male counterparts, but we also know that black female MPs receive the most abuse of all, and that the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) receives more abuse than every other parliamentarian put together. That is a stark reminder that there is still in our country an undercurrent of misogyny and racism. We also know—my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke was right to point it out—that those who have disabilities and are LGBTQ also face more abuse. We have to stamp out these awful discriminatory, bullying, harassing tactics for good.

I do not pretend that the block and the mute button are the solution—they are not. They may be part of it on an individual level, but we need effective legislation. I am pleased to see the Minister in her place, but I have grave concerns that the online harms Bill will not do the job. We know that it aims to crack down on the illegal, which is good, and prevent young people from accessing harmful content on the internet, but we will have to be explicit about what we are trying to achieve when it comes to stopping the abuse that we all receive on a daily basis.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I applaud the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) for introducing this debate and once again drawing attention to this important matter. I know she has spoken and written extensively on this subject and we are all grateful for that.

While the debate is focused on elected representatives, perhaps we should again recognise that women across public life are being bombarded by abuse on a daily basis, whether they are journalists, police officers or politicians. On International Women’s Day when speaking about cracking the various glass ceilings, my party leader and First Minister of Northern Ireland, Arlene Foster, said:

“The biggest obstacle to being a woman in public life today is the constant stream of commentary on your appearance, the hourly trolling, and monthly idiot who makes a ‘this is what I’d like to do to you today’ threat. … What concerns me more is the growing evidence of online lynch mobs controlled by dark forces who are unleashed on female public figures like a pack of lions to do as much damage as they can to the public figure and the cause that they represent.”

Such lynch mobs exist to spread misinformation and destabilise their opponents. Their existence is to be condemned, and those who sponsor the mass trolling of women in public office must be exposed and condemned.

Such mobs are able to exist only because social media platforms permit anonymous accounts. I join others in calling for verified accounts, whereby users can interact incognito if they need to, but the platform knows their true identity. Although we have redress through defamation actions in Northern Ireland, we must first identify the troll. Then it is slow and very costly, and the threshold for success is high.

Finally, online abuse directed at females is serious, because in my experience it is like an addiction. The addict needs a monthly fix, then a weekly fix, and eventually an hourly fix. Sadly, as the abuse gets more regular, it also gets more poisonous. We need to send a stern message to those poisoning the public space that they cannot abuse with impunity.

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.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) on being a continual champion of women in Parliament and on bringing this extremely important debate to Westminster Hall today.

This debate is timely, of course, because we currently have our elections in the Scottish Parliament, and only recently a survey undertaken by Holyrood magazine found that nine out of 10 female MSPs had feared for their safety. These are absolutely catastrophic figures, and I believe that things are only getting worse, so many fine prospective female candidates are likely to be put off entering public life, as we have heard today.

I would also like to draw the Minister’s attention to the importance of intersectionality in these matters, particularly with religion. Unfortunately, as a practising Christian and an individual with a Jewish family history, I can speak from personal experience regarding this abuse. Personal abuse and attacks often focus not just on my being a woman, but on those very aspects of my being and religion.

Since 2015, I have received numerous death threats online, like many others who have spoken today. Unfortunately, and unacceptably, this has even extended to death threats towards members of my family. After conscience votes, I have openly been targeted for abuse and harassment. In relation to antisemitism, I recently received an email from an individual citing themselves as SS, saying that Jews are witches and calling for extermination of the Jews as a mandate of the United Nations.

However, this does not just happen online, unfortunately. What I want to emphasise—I hope that the Minister can recognise this, because we are working on the online harms Bill collectively in Parliament—is that online abuse is very much a gateway for some individuals, whose behaviour escalates to direct harm. Online abuse has changed our culture and, with the anonymity that has been spoken about, is now almost considered acceptable, because there are no consequences. People continue, become emboldened, and, for a significant proportion of individuals, it is very much a gateway to behaviour that escalates towards direct harm.

For example, I await the sentencing next month of an individual who harassed me and my staff via emails, then acted aggressively in person at my surgery. During the 2019 election, my election leaflets were posted back through my door to me covered in swastikas. In fact, it was being investigated by the police at the same time that the local newspaper editor wished to run a story on where election candidates lived, and I had to raise fears for my family’s safety once again.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) for securing the debate.

Since my election in December 2019, I have seen horrific abuse of colleagues of both genders, but I have been especially disturbed by the nature of the abuse targeted at my female colleagues. We need to separate the standard political online abuse from the sort of messages that are aimed specifically at women, typically involving threats of sexual violence or insults about their physical appearance, or questioning whether they should be in politics at all because they may want to have children or because of their other family circumstances.

Sadly, it is not just in the UK that female representative face such abuse. A quick bit of internet research shows the extent of abuse faced by female colleagues around the world. I spent a thoroughly depressing evening reading all about it in numerous articles from Canada, Kenya, Finland, the USA, India, Chile and Japan—every single country that I could think of. A study by the National University of Ireland in Galway last year found that 96% of female politicians in the Republic of Ireland had faced online abuse. Shockingly, 40% of those interviewed reported being threatened with sexual violence as part of that abuse.

Study after study shows that such abuse puts decent, community-minded people off politics. I speak to those people regularly. If I meet a fantastic community activist, I will ask them why they do not think about standing as a councillor or Member of Parliament. The abuse is raised as one of the main reasons that they do not step forward. I have faced abuse. I am sure that we all have our little mantras that we repeat. In order for someone to upset me I have to respect their opinion, which wipes out a lot of the abuse, but we all have bad days when we are exhausted and it is difficult to brush it off. Sadly, many women leave politics, and cite the abuse that they have received as the reason.

Another result of the abuse is that it makes politicians more distant from the people we represent. Many people are leaving social media platforms. Social media should and could be a brilliant way to keep people informed and engaged with their community, but I fear that without further action we will have less engaged politicians. What more can social media providers do? I do not support a blanket ban on anonymity. Online anonymity is sometimes very valuable, if someone is seeking help for a highly sensitive matter or is a victim of domestic abuse.

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairship, Mr Paisley, for the first time. I echo everyone else’s words in thanking the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) for all that she does in this area.

Almost six years ago, on 3 June 2015, Jo Cox, our much-missed colleague, made her maiden speech. She famously said that the thing that

“surprises me time and time again as I travel around the constituency is that we are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us.”—[Official Report, 3 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 675.]

I owe a lot to Jo, from a place on the leadership scheme set up in her name following her tragic murder to the courage to attempt to follow in her footsteps just a few months later. The least I can do is remember her words, and I have done so every single day—a phrase to remember before walking into a room or attending an event, which has never failed me, from the times I have talked with Brexit-voting constituents who share my frustration at the reality to meetings with Conservative parish councillors who share my love of the Kent countryside and also want to protect our green spaces. It is not difficult. We all share something and can empathise with others’ stories or their lived experiences.

Against that approach the futility of online abuse is brought into sharp relief. What a moronic and infinitely stupid waste of energy it is for someone to use their precious time to indulge in the equivalent of playground bullying on a keyboard, because they shot to fame on a reality game show or consider themselves an intellectually superior media commentator who is always right. They would be better off challenging themselves to live with Jo’s words ringing in their ears, rather than having the baying roar and constant applause of their echo chamber confirming their absolute correctness over and over again in the gladiatorial arena and narcissistic hall of mirrors that is social media.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) for securing this incredibly important debate.

As we have heard, social media is getting out of hand, and it is intimidating. It was fine when Facebook and Twitter started—just 17 years ago for Facebook and two years later for Twitter. I mention them as they are the most popular platforms, and have been useful for engagement in discussion—but no longer. Like others, I have come off Twitter. There was no point in looking at comments designed to hurt one personally rather than deal with politics.

I know that Twitter brought in measures to help, but I shall not be returning as a public figure for the foreseeable future. I have learned to hide abusive comments on Facebook and will continue to do so until people write in a polite and considerate way. As the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), has said, we would not be that rude in person, so why do it online? We are all open to criticism, and we accept that others do not agree with our view, but there are ways of putting it.

My concern is that what is happening puts people, and especially women, off entering public life. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke has already mentioned, the Fawcett Society sent some figures this week stating that the number of women unlikely to stand as an MP has risen to 74% from 59% in 2019, and in relation to standing as a councillor it has risen to 62% from 44%, with 69% citing abuse or harassment from the public or other parties as a reason for not pursuing a career in politics. That is appalling. If it stays on that trajectory, we will not have any women who want to stand and we will go back to the days of men dominating the corridors of power, just as we were beginning to make inroads with female representation, even if it is only at 34%.

If a woman raises her head above the parapet, it triggers even more abuse, so many of us wonder whether it is worth talking about a controversial topic. That is stultifying discussion, especially given that the diversity of a woman’s perspective is often helpful. The online harms Bill will help, but we need more recognition that online abuse is harassment that is affecting our workplace, our decision making and our wellbeing.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Paisley. I thank the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) for securing the debate.

When I gave my maiden speech in the House, I made a promise to my constituents that when I saw injustice, I would turn anger into action. What is the point of our being here today if that is not our aim? I do that to the best of my ability. When I do, I often have to advise my staff not to read our emails on a subject, not to check my Twitter mentions and not to take the contents of my postbag to heart. I know that it affects my staff, not just me. We face a sewer of hateful, racist and misogynistic abuse not once in a blue moon or on an individual issue, but regularly. It is normality; it is a fact of life. You get up, you check your phone and you try not to let the hatred get to you.

In research by the Centenary Action Group and the Equal Power campaign, 69% of the women surveyed said that abuse and harassment by the public or other parties was a barrier to pursuing a political career and seeking election. Colleagues have echoed that throughout the debate. In the six weeks before the 2017 general election, Amnesty International found that black and Asian female MPs received 35% more abusive tweets than white women. Online abuse is disproportionately experienced by women from an intersectionality identity. The statistics are alarming and unacceptable. The online harms Bill is a pivotal opportunity to tackle abuse against women and girls. It must include gender-based abuse as a priority harm rather than the categorisation of separate issues.

The Labour Women’s Network, which I have worked on, supports and trains women for public office. Half of our gold standard training programmes now focus on resilience and self-care because online toxicity requires it. LWN’s campaign to defuse abuse against women in public life calls for cross-party action to stem the escalation of misogynistic abuse, especially that aimed at ethnic minority MPs and councillors. We support calls to use 10% of the digital services tax to fund measures to reduce online hate against women and girls and to support the Jo Cox Foundation’s work to improve standards in public life.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Paisley. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) on securing this hugely important debate.

While it is an immense privilege, as a feminist I am conscious of what it means to be the first female Member of Parliament for the constituency of Leicester East in my home city of Leicester, and the first black woman elected to represent the entire county of Leicestershire. The 2019 general election had the highest number and proportion of female MPs ever recorded, yet still only 34% of the House is female. I am incredibly proud to be part of that cohort alongside many inspiring colleagues, but we cannot be complacent. We must ensure that women, women of colour and women from disadvantaged and marginalised communities feel empowered to engage in the political system. Only 35% of local councillors in England and Wales are women.

Women face unique, unacceptable challenges in political life. I have faced horrific, violent, misogynistic and racist online abuse throughout my time in Parliament and in politics. That has intensified since becoming an MP to include death threats, trolling, threats of rape and lynching, targeted far-right hate and organised attacks from the worldwide web. My perpetrators hide behind pseudonyms, and it is even more shocking when the mainstream media embolden and give oxygen to the abuse with attacks that ridicule my politics. History tells us that it does not take long for intimidation, bullying, threats and psychological violence to lead to actual physical harm or even death. They want me to be silent, but while I genuinely fear for my safety every day, I refuse to be silenced.

In 2016, a study for the Inter-Parliamentary Union of 39 countries found that 82% of the women politicians surveyed had experienced some form of psychological violence, 44% had received threats of death, rape, lynching or abduction, and 65% had been subjected to sexist remarks.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Diane Abbott) has been crucial in facing down many of the problems facing women in politics since she was elected as the first black woman MP in 1987, and she is a true giant of the feminist and activist movement. We are all indebted to her. The unprecedented level of vile racist and sexist abuse she endured as shadow Home Secretary accounted for half of all online hate directed at female MPs. That shows how much work there is left to do if we are to end the twin evils of racism and misogyny.

An analysis of tweets undertaken by Amnesty International found that in the six weeks prior to the 2017 general election, women MPs in Westminster from African, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds received 35% more abusive tweets than white women MPs, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington received 46% of all abusive tweets sent in the run-up to the election.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) on securing this debate.

I will quote briefly from a 23-year-old candidate who is standing in the election in Scotland:

“I think that online abuse was one of the biggest things in my mind when I was preparing to stand. I have grown up with the internet and I think I was prepared for what I was getting into, and when I thought about standing I did think that this was going to be quite tough from a social media point of view. This is something that many women will think about, and it’s not an easy decision. However, I don’t think anyone is quite prepared for the first time you get piled on with abuse on Twitter. I think of myself as being pretty resilient, but who I worry about are my friends and family, because they didn’t sign up for any of this.”

That person is Molly Nolan and, as I said, she is 23 and a candidate in the Scottish election. Colleagues might be pardoned for thinking that I am making a party political point; I am not and I want to broaden it out.

In 2016, I stood for the Scottish Parliament and was beaten fair and square by the Scottish National party candidate Gail Ross, who for the past five years has served the constituency of Caithness, Sutherland and Ross. The online abuse Gail has suffered is beyond belief. I have seen some of it and it is disgusting. At one point, somebody stole her Facebook identity, masqueraded as her online and started dealing with vulnerable constituents. Nobody like Gail deserves anything like that.

I am glad that Gail and I have stayed friends throughout all this. This morning, I asked her permission to mention her in this debate, which she gave with alacrity. That is the nature of our deep and lasting friendship. She made a point that I had not thought about before. The highlands are made up of small, scattered communities. Wick, where she lives, is one of the bigger ones but most people there know each other. What really hurt Gail and drew blood was the fact that people known to her in her community were saying and doing these dreadful things. That must be a sickening thing to live with.

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.

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

Women are under-represented at all levels of decision making, which means that action is urgently needed from the Government and all political parties to ensure that the voices of women in all our diversity are heard. Only 34% of MPs, and only 35% of elected councillors in England and Wales, are women. Those statistics matter because when women are not equally represented in positions of power, we do not get an equal say in policy making, which inevitably leads to unequal outcomes.

It is crucial that we do all we can to remove the barriers to women’s representation in politics, including online threats and the experience of violence, abuse and harassment. Violence and abuse against women in politics, both online and offline, not only prevent women from standing for election; they drive those who have already been elected to leave politics early, as we have heard. I am pleased to see the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) contributing to this debate. It is a real shame that his is the only contribution from a male colleague, other than my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson), of course.

It is a sad fact that women politicians who are black, Asian or from an ethnic minority background face an increased risk of abuse based on their race, as well as their gender. As highlighted by Amnesty International, in the six weeks prior to the 2017 general election women MPs in Westminster from those backgrounds received 35% more abusive tweets than white women MPs.

Those statistics become even more shocking when we consider that there are just 37 ethnic minority MPs in the House of Commons right now. That is just 5.7% of all MPs. Once again, the well documented disproportionate impact of the pandemic on BAME communities highlights why it is important that barriers preventing women of colour from standing for office are also broken down so that policy can be effectively influenced in this area by those with a diverse lived experience.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Paisley. I was not planning to speak in this debate. It has been my preference not to speak about the online abuse that I face, because frankly I have never really wanted to give these people credence by even acknowledging it. That is my choice, which suits me. Others, as we have heard very eloquently, have chosen differently, and I say good for them. We should all deal with this nonsense in whatever way we feel is best.

I decided to speak today because I had agreed to speak in an event later this week organised by Women 5050. I felt that were I to stand up and tell them that it was all fantastic being a public representative and not mention the cesspit that is online commentary, I would be a bit dishonest and a bit of hypocrite. Just to be clear: I love my job. Let us also be clear that we know, as politicians, that we have chosen to be in public life. That brings with it an acceptance of public criticism, but that should not be an acceptance of threats or abuse.

Although it is the biggest privilege of my life to represent people in my local area and to be part of a party and movement that I believe in so strongly, and I would obviously encourage others to take that step too, it is not all sweetness and light. Maybe calling it out, at least sometimes, makes the road for the next woman coming along a little smoother.

I will dwell a little on Women 5050, whose website makes stark reading. It says:

“Today, despite making up 52% of the population, in Scotland women only make up 42% of public board members, 25% of public board chairs, 35% of MSPs”.

That is not good enough, and I am delighted by the steps that the Scottish National party has taken and is taking, whether that be on our gender-balanced Cabinet; Nicola Sturgeon, who works so hard to push on equality; the central focus on women in our Holyrood manifesto; or our gender balance in candidate selection.

I do not know whether Hansard reporters know the word “scunner”, but I will try to inform them from across the sheugh what it was you actually said. Thank you for your contribution. I call the Opposition spokesperson, Christian Matheson.

It is always a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I thank all hon. Members who have taken part in today’s debate, particularly my hon. Friends the Members for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield), for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare) and for Jarrow (Kate Osborne). I congratulate the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) on securing this debate. I pay tribute to the consistent leadership that she has shown in this House and in public over many years. I know it is appreciated by hon. Members across the House.

Let me reflect on two matters. First, the issue goes to the heart of our democracy. If hon. Members in this Chamber went on an election monitoring visit and they were outside a polling station where there was an armed militia outside preventing a section of society from either voting or getting involved in democracy, they would give a black mark against the quality of democracy in the country they were monitoring. That is exactly what is happening here—a section of our community is being prevented from full participating in our democracy.

Three years ago we remembered the 100th anniversary of universal women’s suffrage. That of course referred to women having the vote. I like to think that these days suffrage means full participation as well. If we have not got full participation, we do not have the women’s suffrage that we celebrated the 100th anniversary of. It goes to the heart of the quality of our democracy and should be a matter for us all.

I also want to reflect on something that my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow mentioned. I am a white male MP. The truth is that I do not know the half of it. I know there is a problem, but I cannot claim to know the half of it. You, Mr Paisley, and the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) might feel the same, but we do not understand the intensity, the ferocity and the incessant nature of the abuse that women and also black and minority ethnic MPs receive day after day. I lay down a challenge to male hon. Members from across the House: let us understand how incessant and ferocious the abuse is, or at least accept the fact that we do not understand it and listen to our female colleagues. Male Members understand there is an issue, but the severity, the ferocity and incessant nature of it is not understood.

Before I call the Minister, I thank every single Member who has contributed to what has been a powerful debate. These things needed to be said, and they have been very well said.

It is a great honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) on securing this incredibly important debate. I know that she has always been a passionate campaigner in this area, and she is also the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on women in Parliament, which leads such important work to protect women in Parliament—online and offline. I thank her for everything that she does in this space, and I also thank all Members who have taken part in the debate.

All the speeches were incredibly heartfelt and brave. They show the will across the House to address this pernicious and distressing issue. Sadly, this is one of those issues that bear out the words of our former friend and colleague Jo Cox in a most unpleasant way, because we

“have far more in common than that which divides us.”—[Official Report, 3 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 675.]

Is it not tragic that that is the case? It is sometimes hard to fathom how the faceless and cowardly abuse of those in the public eye has almost become part of the job description. It has become a fact of life. It has become something that almost goes with the territory. How messed up is it that we feel that way?

As many Members, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke, have said, the word “abuse” seems almost insufficient to describe what so many female MPs and others in the public eye experience: threats of rape, violence and death to themselves and their family members. The number of contributions to the debate highlights the scale of the problem. Of course, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), who chairs the Select Committee, said, it is always impossible to know whether such online threats will tip over into real life. That is what is most chilling.

When I quoted my friend Gail Ross, I was also thinking about her small boy. I hope he does not know what was said, but if he did, would that not put another generation off politics? They would not touch it with a barge pole.

That is such an important point, and it is actually something that I was thinking about as I was listening to the contributions to the debate. I took an almost conscious decision not to put my children on my social media, for that very reason. I do not want what I do as a job to have an impact on them. How messed up and crazy is it that we feel that we cannot share things about our lives because of the impact that it will have? Of course, that has a dramatic impact on democracy when it puts people off standing for election at every single level. That affects women and stops their voices being heard in this Chamber and in society more broadly. As other Members have said, our success as a Parliament utterly depends on our having elected figures who better reflect the communities that we represent.

I know there are organisations that have led studies on abuse targeted at women, such as Glitch, Amnesty International and the Centenary Action Group. This work has such an important role to play in strengthening our understanding of the scale and prevalence of abuse targeted at women representatives and others, and my Department has been supporting research led by the University of Sheffield that assessed online abuse during the 2019 general election campaign and the covid-19 lockdown. The findings suggested that abuse directed at MPs has increased. I think we all recognise that. From the 2017 and 2019 general elections it was clear that there are some MPs who are more affected, and that particularly includes, as the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) said, those with intersectionality. Women from minority backgrounds were particularly targeted. Bizarrely, as we have been sitting here I have noticed that a colleague in Parliament has tweeted:

“Today’s mailbag with photos and photos of beheadings that would make you sick. It’s not unusual for MPs to be dealing with racists and this stuff isn’t new to me, but today I feel exhausted.”

I think that we all feel exhausted by it, Mr Paisley.

We normally have to rise at five to the hour, but I will give Mrs Maria Miller one minute to wind up.

I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for taking part in the debate. The Government need to get the law right, and we have heard from the Minister, but Parliament and the House of Commons need to play their role, too. Online abuse is an affront to our democracy, and it is a workplace safety issue. We cannot allow women to be bullied out of public life by online abuse, because that weakens our democracy. The House of Commons needs to up its game in monitoring and supporting Members and their staff, and the APPG stands ready to assist with that work.

That this House has considered online abuse of elected women representatives.