Ms Stella Creasy
MP for Walthamstow · Labour (Co-op) · United Kingdom
“I thank the Foreign Secretary for his clear-sighted commitment not only to talk about a two-state solution, but to actually try to act to achieve it, as the only foundation of a safe Israel and a free Palestine.”
“Could he reassure the House that we will not acquiesce and bend to such pressure, and that the only action that could ever be acceptable to us to make us contemplate reversing this ban would be a halt on the E1 development and a permanent end to settler violence?”
“I start by paying tribute to the new Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), for all the work she did on the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee on these issues. I know that she will do a brilliant job in this role.”
“I do not really understand the technology, but I know that he does, and I understand and share his fear accordingly. We come here today to debate this Bill because we all know that trust is a bygone issue in our politics.”
“We would welcome her having that conversation, which might be more illuminating than whether she is concerned about Zach Goldmsith’s leaflets. I add my support to the amendments tabled by my hon.”
“From today, if we do not take a stand with this Bill to tackle the ways that money has infiltrated our politics, the risk is that they will think we are acting in the interests of our own back pockets.”
The complete record
Every one of 4,976 lines we hold for Ms Stella Creasy, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 39 of 100.
“I hesitate to stop the Minister in full flow, because it is very interesting to hear what he is saying. I just want to come back on a point he made about businesses being entitled to rates relief automatically. Of course, that does require businesses to know about that. I agree with him, and I think we all agree, that differentiating businesses—often small businesses —and consumers does not make any sense in terms of the expectation of protection, which is the reason why we have consumer regulations. However, might he be convinced that it would be helpful in these instances for Government to be proactive in telling people that they might be entitled to rates relief? One reason why this company has been able to exploit people is a lack of awareness of the scheme.”
“The evidence is clear: women who are pregnant who get covid are twice as likely to have a premature birth and twice as likely to experience stillbirth. Other countries have recognised this and have ensured that pregnant women of any age are a priority for vaccination, but in this country the conversation about the data has not even happened yet, despite months of asking. There will be thousands of pregnant women in the areas where the variant is on the rise, and across the country, terrified about what might happen if they get covid. What can we do to help them get hold of the vaccine, regardless of age, so that we are protecting the youngest members of our community?”
“The Minister says that justice is being dispensed in our courts. Well, in April this year a convicted rapist who named and blamed his victim on Facebook got a paltry £120 fine. We rightly give victims of rape anonymity for life. What message does he think it sends to victims when this important protection is being abused and the penalty for it is less than someone would get for fly-tipping? And if he agrees that it is not acceptable, what is he doing about it?”
“I ask the Minister to think clearly about those people, who need our voices in this House to ring out loud and clear. We have 54 MPs across the House backing this amendment, saying, “Let’s get it right now.””
“It means making sure that we put this right for every child and every family in this situation, including those who brought the court cases, and making sure that no family is punished by the tax or benefit system, by having that money put right. This is not just about those children; it is also about the domestic violence victims who are paying the bedroom tax because they have a panic room in their house. Again, the courts told us several years ago that this was wrong and that the Government should act, but they have not yet done so. Let us be clear about what remedying that means. It means helping those already affected, who have spent years struggling as a result, so that whenever regulations are made, they do not have to pay this.”
“It is estimated that 3,000 children a year—eight children a day—find themselves losing a parent and then possibly losing their home or family circumstances. The courts said in 2018 that it was wrong to deny children in that situation that funding. In 2020 the Jackson ruling made that point again. Children, such as the children of Joana and Ros in my community, are being divided simply by whether their parents were married or not. The Government know that they have to remedy this situation, because otherwise we are punishing children for the decisions that their parents have made, and I do not think anybody in this House would want that. Let me be clear what remedying it means.”
“Sadly, the Government have yet to act on those court rulings. Let me tell the House about these two particular instances. Every 22 minutes in this country, a child loses a mother or father. It is estimated that 26,000 children become orphans each year. I know that stat from the Child Bereavement Network, not because this country monitors that—we monitor how many children might be affected by divorce, but we do not recognise death as damaging for children, yet we know that clearly it is. It is estimated that 2,000 families a year who find themselves in that horrific situation—many more will have done so because of covid—are not then eligible for financial support, and the reason for that is very simple: the state has decided that, because their parents are not married, those children must be pushed into poverty.”
“I join the hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) in thanking the NHS for all the work it does, but I would ask him to look at the cost of using the private sector, because the lesson we have learnt in London is that it is not always the best value for money. In the short time available to me, I wish to speak to amendment (g), which is about the groups of people who have been forgotten in this Queen’s Speech. If we do not speak for them in this place, nobody else will. I am talking about some of the most vulnerable people in our communities, particularly children who have been orphaned and victims of domestic abuse. They are people for whom the courts in this country have spoken. I am sure everybody in this House would agree that if we do not uphold the rule of law, how can we ask constituents to do so?”
“I welcome the Woolard review, which was clear that the “buy now, pay later” industry needs to be regulated because people were in financial distress and difficulty because of these products, that the products were not good value for money, and that many of the things their lobbyists had told MPs were simply not true. Indeed, the review also found that consumers may not be applying “the same level of scrutiny to their decision-making as they would for other credit” companies, “including consideration of the potential consequences of failing to repay”, because they were not getting the right information. The Minister will know—we tried to tell him at the start of the Financial Services Bill—of the case that we needed to take to the Advertising Standards Authority about the way in which Klarna was advertising its products.”
“Klarna, perhaps the most well known, reports that its worldwide revenue for 2020 grew by 40%, to $1 billion. The founder of Laybuy expressed concern and surprise that fraud in the UK market was huge in comparison to that in New Zealand and Australia. That just shows the problems of the industry coming and exploding at such a rate in our communities without regulation. Compare the Market tells us that “buy now, pay later” schemes are being used 35% more than they were in the pandemic, with most customers saying that it is because they cannot afford to make purchases outright. We are a nation with a massive debt bubble underneath our economy and we need to ensure that, when these companies operate, they do not exacerbate it.”
“I know that the Minister shares the concerns I am outlining. That is why I have been a terrier when it comes to the “buy now, pay later” industry—because of my concern about the way in which it engages in lending to our communities. The Minister knows the speed at which the industry has grown during the pandemic. The FCA found that 11% of consumers in this country—roughly 5 million people—have used a BNPL product since the start of the covid outbreak, and many of them say that they use “buy now, pay later” credit because they cannot manage their financial distress, which is directly related to the crisis, without it. BNPL companies have exploded. Within a year, Clearpay now has 1 million customers in the UK, lending to them on average eight times a year.”
“The question for us is whether the Bill is going to do enough to make sure that that credit is offered at a fair and affordable price for people. Given that 6 million Britons have already fallen behind on a household bill, this is a question for the state as well as for our economy. Mothers, lone parents, those from black and ethnic minority backgrounds, the young and the disabled are most at risk of debt. In April, a quarter of all mothers from minority community backgrounds reported that they were struggling to feed their children, and 32% of young women reported finding it hard to pay for essentials. That is not just a financial problem; it is a mental health issue. There is a mental health crisis coming to our country, with one in every 12 people who are over-indebted experiencing mental health problems.”
“That is mainly because of furloughing but is also true among the self-employed. It is crucial to get financial services right as we come out of the pandemic to help to make sure that people are not stuck in interminable circles of debt. We knew that one in five people were already struggling to pay for housing, food and energy and were unable to meet their credit commitments. That proportion has now risen to two thirds among people who were already suffering from financial problems before the lockdown. There has never been a more important time to get right how we regulate our financial services. StepChange points out that 26% of those affected by coronavirus have borrowed money to make ends meet, usually using their credit cards or an overdraft facility. At least £3.3 billion of new debt has been taken on since the start of the crisis.”
“I associate myself with the powerful speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra). I understand where the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) was coming from, but I really believe that we could make some progress on this issue this evening. That would be of great benefit to many people affected by the issue, so I will certainly support the relevant amendments. We know how important this legislation is. I pay tribute to the Minister, who has been listening to concerns throughout the Bill’s passage. I wish to comment on two particular issues in respect of which I would like him to tell us further information; I hope he might be able to. We know that this legislation matters desperately because between a fifth and a quarter of adults have experienced a reduction in income in the past year.”
“Like others, I welcome the pilot scheme, but, like the bishops, I am concerned that it can run out and we will be back at square one, where women are frightened to come forward, or are pushed back into the hands of perpetrators because of their immigration status. We will therefore not meet our conditions under the Council of Europe requirements for the Istanbul convention, and we will see women living with their perpetrators as a direct result of our failure to include them in this legislation.”
“I recognise the progress that has been made on these issues through the process with the other House. But as somebody who has been in the House for 11 years seeking to amend legislation to effect change, I gently say to the Minister that every Minister has told us that a Bill is at threat because of the parliamentary process and every Bill seeks to be a landmark Bill, so we are asking her to go the extra mile on these final issues in this Domestic Abuse Bill. In my short contribution, I want to look at the counterfactual: what happens if we do not include these amendments? Will the Minister tell us the conditions under which she would want somebody’s immigration status to be a factor in whether they can access help?”
“Eight years ago, my constituent Tyrell Matthews-Burton —a young man with a bright future ahead of him—was brutally murdered in Greece. His family have fought tirelessly to bring those responsible to justice, yet despite convictions, the Metropolitan Police tell us that the Greek authorities are the stumbling block. Will the Foreign Secretary meet me and Tyrell’s family, so that we can prove that it does not matter what colour a person’s skin, this country will always fight for justice for its citizens?”
“We know that this Bill has been a marathon, but we are asking the Minister to keep going that extra mile, to use this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, to stop trying to defend the indefensible and the status quo, to change the conversation so that we can stop the violence and not allow perpetrators of these crimes to use the loopholes—those that the amendments would close—to continue the abuse. The evidence base is already there. It just needs the political will to act. I say to the House that if the Minister will not listen, we must, and we must vote for the amendments.”
“It means that we can finally hold the police, not the victims, to account, because they would have direct accountability for the management of their behaviour. It makes stalking something that the police have to recognise in its own right as something they need to stop, rather than something that women have to prove and manage. I pay tribute to the work that Laura Richards has done tirelessly to expose the situation and fight for these changes and to Baroness Royall, Baroness Newlove and Lord Russell for their work in the other place on this issue.”
“The court heard how a restraining order had been taken out by an ex-girlfriend of his just three years earlier, but at the point at which Alice was begging the police for help, Northumbria police had no knowledge of that. Janet Scott, Pearl Black, Linah Keza, Maria Stubbings, Kerri McAuley, Molly McLaren, Hollie Gazzard, Justene Reece, Kirsty Treloar, Jane Clough, Linzi Ashton—all those cases involved serial perpetrators who had been violent and abusive to other women before they were attacked. No one joined the dots. No one asked whether they were at risk and acted. These women were sitting ducks. That is the system that the Minister is defending today. The right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) says that putting someone’s name on a list does not make a difference. Frankly, I disagree.”
“I understand the point that she is making, and I can see that there is some truth in her argument about how services need to work together, because the evidence shows time and again that serial offenders and serial stalkers were left to target women without intervention. For years, women have lived in fear and begged for help from the police to protect them, only to be told that they were being overdramatic. That is not me being overdramatic. Research shows how the constant dismissing and downplaying of stalking’s serious nature means that, on average, victims of the crime do not report to the police until the 100th incident. Shana Grice was fined for wasting police time before she was murdered by her stalker—a man who had been reported by 13 other women for stalking. Alice Ruggles was murdered by her ex-partner in 2016.”
“We are one of the few countries left in Europe that has yet to ratify the convention, and I ask the Minister to talk to her counterparts in Europe, and to recognise how this will be a barrier to doing that and will leave women at risk in our communities. Finally, I turn to Lords amendment 42, another matter on which there is much agreement in the House that we need to act. It is the best example among the amendments of how we can change the conversation and stop the violence caused by serial perpetrators and stalkers. The Minister tells us that the amendment is not needed, that it is not about the category of an offender but how MAPPA processes work, and that her proposals for reform will address that.”
“I also say, as a former member of the Council of Europe who had the privilege to serve on it alongside Dame Cheryl Gillan and learn from her in that institution, that we cannot ratify the Istanbul convention while we try to draw a distinction between women in the help they can access. Ministers told us that women in Northern Ireland were not treated differently when it came to their reproductive rights, and quite rightly, the Council of Europe told them otherwise. It is the same when it comes to drawing a distinction between migrant women and whether they can access support for being victims of domestic abuse. It is long overdue that we ratify the Istanbul convention. We cannot let this prevent us from being able to do that.”
“I tell her, as somebody who has had to deal with these cases in my constituency and who is a big fan of the work that Southall Black Sisters does, that we do not need more reviews and more evidence, because the evidence is painfully already there. The Minister says there is support, but we know that in 2019, for example, four in five migrant women were turned away from refuges due to their “no recourse to public funds” status. We have seen at first hand the women kept in violent relationships because of their immigration status. We have given testimony of the culture of fear they experience—fear of not only their abuser but the officials who are supposedly there to help them.”
“The Minister said that migrant victims should be seen as victims first, yet as she can see from the super-complaint and the evidence that it reveals, the reality is that they are all too often treated as potential criminals first and foremost when they come forward. We need to not only safeguard them from having their data shared but give them protection from being exploited full stop, and that is what Lords amendment 41 does. There are contradictions already exposed in this debate. The Minister says in one breath that the key consideration for migrant victims is not their immigration status and then says that victims of domestic violence should not have an automatic right to status in the UK. She says she needs more information and claims that the amendments are unnecessary as a result because she is reviewing the matter.”
“There is a speech for another day about the dysfunctionalities of the UK Border Agency and its ability to manage our immigration service, but it is a simple matter of fact that many victims of domestic abuse cover the cost of getting support, help and access to a refuge through their ability to access public assistance. When we deny women access to that assistance due to their immigration status, we consign them to having no way out of harm. Indeed, as Refuge pointed out, the number of survivors of abuse with no recourse to public funds is likely to increase post-Brexit under our new immigration proposals, so the need to address this will become even more pressing.”
“For too long, those affected have been telling us about reviewing their evidence, how somehow they have to prove their case and why they cannot keep themselves safe through existing legislation. If we want to stop violence and abuse, we need to act and change how we think about domestic abuse accordingly. That is what Lords amendments 1 to 3 do. Many have already spoken about Lords amendment 41, because that ensures that we give migrant victims of abuse the help that they need to leave abusive relationships, whatever their status. Without it, the Government are asking us to make a decision on whether to keep a victim of violence safe not on whether she is at risk, but on whether she has the right stamp in her passport.”
“Disabled women are twice as likely as their non-disabled counterparts to experience abuse, so we seek to support our disabled sisters from those who are their intimate contacts—people we trust to undertake some of the most sensitive acts, whether that is personal care, or emotional or financial matters. The Minister says that she cannot accept these amendments because giving those who are abused by their carers the protection of the Bill would change the common law understanding of domestic abuse and somehow dilute the purpose of the legislation, but the amendment is exactly about changing our understanding of abuse, where it happens and who suffers from it. This abuse takes place in a domestic setting and it is the result of an intimate relationship.”
“This also includes the changes on revenge porn, treating crimes that are motivated by misogyny as hate crime and ensuring that the police act to record how hostility towards someone’s sex or gender means that women are targeted for assault, abuse and harassment. However, in the time I have today, I want to urge the Minister to go further and drop the Government’s opposition to amendments where we ask a victim to fit a particular box rather than recognising that they all need our assistance to stop the violence. Lords amendments 1 to 3 recognise the abuse of disabled people by paid or unpaid carers.”
“The bitter reality is that whatever political perspective we come from, we have all known, in the many years that we have worked on this legislation, that it is a once- in-a-lifetime opportunity, because the conversation has all too often been about how women should keep themselves safe, rather than our responsibility to free them from harm. I welcome the Government’s agreement to many changes to this legislation along its journey—just today, we are discussing their acceptance of Lord Kennedy’s amendment to stop doctors charging domestic abuse victims for medical evidence, for example.”
“May I associate myself with the comments today about the Duke of Edinburgh and Dame Cheryl Gillan? If we want to tackle violence against women, we need to change the conversation. We need to stop asking how we keep women safe and start asking how we stop the violence. I pay tribute to the many organisations and many Members across the House who have devoted time, effort and energy to the Bill and to that conversation—SafeLives, Refuge, Women’s Aid, Southall Black Sisters, Laura Richards, to name but a few of the many.”
“I understand and share my colleagues’ concerns about lobbying, but, like other corporate financial scandals such as Enron, we need to follow the money. We know that it was the German Greensill Bank that made the loans to Sanjeev Gupta and also supported the use of the private jets on which our former Prime Minister made many journeys, and that the bank is now under criminal investigation as many thousands of German people face bankruptcy. What conversations has the Minister had with the German prosecutors about the CLBILS loan scheme, and will they be invited to give evidence to the inquiry?”
“But truthfully, nothing in the Bill will help those at the mercy of either factor—unless they happen to have shares in Amazon or Google, or possibly the Chancellor’s private phone number. Austerity has weakened the very foundations of our economy, but it is a political choice that the Chancellor is making in this legislation to use straw dust, not concrete, to try to repair them. Parliamentary time is valuable, and tax and spending is crucial to get right in such a context, so I propose to the House that we reject the Bill today and instead demand better for all our constituents.”
“Combined with the approach in the Bill, that will simply confirm what a lot of companies and investors have already suspected for some time—that it is unwise to expect any UK Government to stick to a programme of supply-side reform for more than a couple of years. Frankly, the UK has generally got away with muddling through economic crises in the past, but the scale of the challenges that we approach makes that inadequate at this point in time. And we have not even today even really begun to understand how the B-word—Brexit—interacts with these longer-term challenges, hitting as it does our high-productivity export sectors while covid hurt our employment-rich domestic service sector.”
“This Government have no answer to our research and development sector, which is crying out for support while they use this Bill to give a tax break that will go to the biggest corporations and venture capitalists. Our charity sector is on its knees, but it gets nothing from this legislation. Charities cannot claim the super deduction tax for their IT equipment, whatever the hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami) might suggest. Other nations are investing in their people and infrastructure, yet our Business Secretary has chosen this moment to abandon the industrial strategy enacted just four years ago and replace it with something that is neither industrious nor strategic.”
“Our economy was so hard hit by covid because it was over-reliant on services, which made up as much as 80% of our GDP, whereas just 14% was based in construction and just 6% in manufacturing. The Bill shows that the Government still have not learned the lessons about how we are able as a nation to handle future shocks and diversify; to invest alongside business and academia in new technologies; to learn from the vaccine programme and encourage co-operation and innovation alongside the state and not in spite of it; or, in the run-up to COP26, to provide the incentives to renewable energy manufacturing and production that could futureproof our economy for decades to come.”
“The Bill suggests that this will somehow generate jobs and growth in communities that were struggling long before anyone had heard of covid-19, but no one can explain why, if regulation is bad for business in the Thames Gateway, it is not bad for businesses in my community in Walthamstow. This is not the levelling-up agenda we need. It does not recognise that we stand alone among OECD economies in the extent to which our productivity problems are regional rather than sectoral, or that a super-deduction scheme will do little to invest in the children of Hartlepool, Harwich or Hendon. We need not just to build back better, but to build back for all. Andy Haldane has highlighted that around 10 million people in this country are on insecure contracts.”
“The Chancellor might think he is being clever by using the least visible taxes to raise funds, but I tell him this: the public will notice. They notice when nurses get a pay cut, when VAT goes up and when they have even less money left at the end of the month with which to pay their bills. They notice just how segregated this country has become, with the haves and the have-nots not just in income terms, but in the divides between town and city, north and south, because of our failure to invest in the people of this country. “Freeports!” the Government cry in answer.”
“Anyone who questions why that extra £20 matters should look at that information and realise that it needs to become permanent. In total, £10.3 billion of debt and arrears attributable to covid have built up in the UK, most often by those who were already struggling before the pandemic—people such as renters, young people, single parents and low earners; people who, now that evictions have restarted, have few options when it comes to keeping a roof over their head; and many who were excluded from Government help altogether. I see nothing in the Bill to change those facts. Indeed, instead of helping, the Bill is walloping them with a tax rise. It squeezes family finances by freezing the personal allowance, after many families will have struggled to pay their increased council tax bills as well.”
“The Institute for Fiscal Studies found that last year the richest fifth of households swelled their bank balances by over £400 a month, while the poorest were about £170 worse off each month. This is not people spending to entertain themselves during lockdown. Citizens Advice shows that roughly 6 million people have fallen behind on at least one household bill during the pandemic. Most people visiting the citizens advice bureau for debt advice are not coming to ask about credit card debts or rent-to-own purchases; instead, they are in debt to the public sector because of tax credit overpayments, benefits overpayments, council tax arrears or utility bill arrears. The Trussell Trust tells us that over half of food bank users struggle to afford food and clothes because they are repaying universal credit debts.”
“We should be trying to tackle tax avoidance, although I always tell Treasury Ministers that it would be simpler to ask my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) what they should do next. The truth is that the Bill takes a nut to a sledgehammer. We would do better if we were to start again, rather than continue on with the fantasy that, with a few tweaks here and there, everything can go back to normal—whatever normal is. My worry is that relying on the fantasy the Bill creates will leave millions of families abandoned who may have weathered the shock of the pandemic, but were always going to be sunk by continued austerity. While millions have benefited from working from home and being able to save, millions more are struggling to make ends meet, having lost their job or seen their income fall.”
“We cannot go back to normal when normal means 23% of our population living in destitution; when millions of people are sitting on debts and rely on insecure work in industries that will never be the same when furlough ends; when our health inequalities have worsened so dramatically over the last year. In addressing those underlying problems in our economy, I can welcome much in the Bill. I recognise that it is right to look at corporation tax, given that those with the broadest shoulders should help the most with repairing our fractured economy. We should be tackling the devastating impact on our environment of plastics; with some amendments, the proposals could drive not only a reduction in use, but new industries.”
“But to say that we are heading out of the woods and just to keep going is to fail to recognise why we are so vulnerable in the first place, why the UK economy collapsed so badly over the last year and why our communities were so at risk of harm from the virus that our death rate has been so high—the underinvestment and austerity that mean that our productivity rate is so sluggish, our poverty rate is rising and our people are not waving but drowning in their debt. We do a disservice to our communities if we underplay these issues or the scale of the task ahead. We need a Finance Bill made not for the here and now, but for the long term.”
“They are the ones the Chancellor is counting on to spend their savings and make his sums work—the people to whom short-term measures to keep pumping up our housing market and spending on DIY will appeal. Thanks to the Chancellor’s efforts and legislation such as this, everything is neatly in place for a classic short-lived consumer-led boom. Cheap borrowing costs and the stamp duty holiday mean that the residential property market is red hot. Indeed, last November, this country paid back more than it had borrowed on its credit cards for the first time since July 2013.”
“This week the shops have opened, many of us have finally had a haircut and some have even had their eyebrows done. Vaccines are being given out and unemployment has started to fall, which we all welcome. We know how hard this year has been for our constituents and the challenge of how to help weighs heavily on the minds of many across the House. Some would say that that challenge is just about the impact of the pandemic and that this week shows that it is slowly being addressed—that it has been a horrific year with the loss of loved ones, and the shutdown of businesses made necessary to prevent transmission, but we are making it through. And let’s be honest, some people have done well in the last year. We have seen them: the ones who have been able to spend time with their families and to work from home okay—wi-fi willing.”
“I thank the Secretary of State for his efforts to uphold the human rights of all women in the United Kingdom. The Department of Health in Northern Ireland has said that, because this is a new service, it will need additional funding to provide it. Will the Secretary of State confirm that his officials have spoken to the Department of Health and that the funding will be provided, so cost will not be a barrier to ensuring that the women and girls of Northern Ireland can access abortion should they wish to do so?”
“It must listen to organisations such as Glitch!, HOPE not hate and the Jo Cox Foundation—for goodness’ sake, it must listen to that—when they argue that we must recognise who is being targeted. In a free and fair democracy, we must fight to reclaim not just our streets but our social media too.”
“It is not free speech when 50% of the conversation is living in fear of what someone might do, or of being found or being terrorised, and it is not free speech when we are not hearing those voices—that diversity of voices that improves our debates and discussions. I started off using kittens to try to take the heat out of conversations; now I have moved on to capybaras, but the problem in the last eight years has got worse. It has been state-sponsored, it is organised and it requires us to come together and hold the media companies accountable, just as we would hold a pub landlord accountable if we were being abused in a pub while just going about our business. The online harms Bill must recognise the intersectional nature of the issues we face.”
“It is also about the experience of women and people of colour across our country, and we know that that has got worse during the pandemic, with a 50% increase in the abuse, according to Glitch!, which has been monitoring this. It is not just the words; it is the sheer volume of abuse we get. And it is not just online any more; it is leaching into our offline world, and it is increasingly not anonymous, with people feeling emboldened to use abuse as it becomes commonplace. Every year that we delay enacting this legislation is another year when we see voices being removed from our public domain, so let us kill the idea that this is about free speech.”
“One of the things we have to recognise is that this it is not an equal experience. Women, particularly women of colour, and people from non-binary backgrounds are especially at risk of being abused online. Some 82% of women politicians from around the world report experiencing psychological violence, and half of them have had rape or death threats. In the 2017 election, MPs who were women of colour were particularly targeted, receiving 35% more abuse than their white colleagues, with my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) receiving half of all the abuse online during that election. It is little wonder that by 2019, many colleagues from across the House cited the abuse that they had faced as the reason they were standing down. This is not just about people in the public domain.”