Online Abuse

Helen Jones Excerpts

Monday 29th April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Joan Ryan (in the Chair)]

I draw hon. Members’ attention to the fact that our proceedings are being made accessible for people who are deaf or hearing impaired. The interpreters are using British Sign Language, and parliamentlive.tv will show a live simultaneous interpretation and live subtitling of the debate.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 190627 relating to online abuse.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. The petition was started by Katie Price following the abuse of her son Harvey online. The Petitions Committee set up an inquiry into the subject, throughout which we have been led by the experiences of disabled people. We held an event in Westminster to listen to their experiences and scope out our inquiry, as well as six further events around the country. We took formal evidence from the police, technology companies, charities, the Minister and disabled people themselves, and we published draft recommendations and consulted on them. I think we were the first Select Committee to do so, and we held further events around the country to make that work.

I place on record my thanks to all the people who gave so generously of their time to engage with us, and to the Select Committee staff, who not only worked extremely hard on the inquiry but travelled widely throughout the country to do so. That engagement was very important to us because, despite the fact that other Select Committees have done excellent work on both hate crime and internet safety, we found that the voices of disabled people were often not heard, and that became even clearer to us as the inquiry proceeded.

We found that rather puzzling; after all, disabled people are more likely to be in contact with a range of services—from council services to the Department for Work and Pensions and the health service. They therefore should be easy to contact, although, as one of our witnesses said:

“We’re not hard to reach, only easy to ignore.”

That leads to a misunderstanding of what disabled people are facing online, and what their problems really are.

When we asked both the technology companies and the Minister questions about disabled people, we often got answers about children. The Government’s Green Paper on internet safety said very little about the experiences of disabled people. When we raised that with the Minister, she kindly wrote to us in April last year saying that the Government planned to hold a roundtable with disability organisations and social media companies. The only problem with that is that the inquiry closed in December 2017.

Most disabled people are not children; they are adults who are able to make their own choices and decisions, and they deserve to have their voices heard. What we found out when talking to them was truly shocking. Disabled people are less likely to use the internet than the majority of the population but, among those who do, many are avid users. To be frank, the internet has been a boon to many disabled people. It has allowed them to connect with others with similar conditions, which is very important, especially if they have a rare condition. It has allowed them to widen their social circle, progress in their careers, organise, campaign and challenge stereotypes. However, while doing that, they face the most horrendous abuse—not occasionally, but day in, day out.

Such abuse is, frankly, a stain on our society. Disabled people are regularly told that they should have been aborted. They are targeted with requests for explicit images—the implication being that disabled women, in particular, ought to be grateful for any attention. They are told that they are benefit scroungers or fraudsters, and a drain on our society. That leads to a culture of fear among many disabled people who post about their lives online.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

I thank the Chair of the Petitions Committee for giving way. She and I worked together on the report, and I commend her for the speech that she is making. Almost all of us in the Chamber know that people say things online that they would never say directly to someone’s face. However, one of the most distressing aspects of the report—this was shared with me during one of the outreach events that we held in Newcastle—is that the abuse that disabled people receive online often reflects the abuse that they receive out and about in their daily lives in the real world. Does my hon. Friend agree that, as is set out in a conclusion of the report, the Government need to amend hate crime legislation to ensure that disability hate crime is dealt with on a par with other hate crime offences, to send a very clear message?

[Helen Jones]

My hon. Friend is exactly right, and I will come to that point later in my remarks.

Online, those with visible disabilities are often mocked for how they look. Those with learning difficulties are targeted for sexual or financial exploitation. Some of the terms used—I will repeat them only to show how vile they are—such as “mong”, “retard” and “spastic”, are as vile as the worst terms of racist abuse; yet they are often not treated in the same way. People even join Facebook groups that disabled people use for support so that they can steal images and transform them into so-called jokes or memes online.

My hon. Friend is entirely right; the disabled people we spoke to were very clear that the abuse that they get online reflects attitudes in society. That is why our report called for more education. We found that 21% of young adults would avoid speaking to a disabled person. Unless we break down those barriers, things will not change. I am sorry that the Government were rather dismissive of that recommendation in their response.

Disabled people were also clear that the abuse had increased since 2010, when certain politicians started to ramp up the rhetoric about benefit fraudsters and scroungers, despite knowing that, even on the worst estimate, benefit fraud is only 1% of the spending. In many estimates, it is less than that. That should be a reminder to everybody that such rhetoric has an impact on real people living their day-to-day lives.

We were clear that part of the way to counter the abuse is to promote more positive images of disabled people. After all, they are 20% of the population, and 19% of the working-age population. They are our friends, neighbours and work colleagues; yet they are seldom visible, either in the media or Government campaigns. That is why we recommended that the Government ensure that there are positive images of disabled people in all their campaigns, events and advertising.

The Government’s response says that they used a picture of a disabled person in a campaign on transport because disabled people often have problems with transport. It would be an understatement to say that that comprehensively misses the point. We do not want always to see pictures of disabled people who have problems—indeed, sometimes they themselves are seen as the problem. We want to see pictures of disabled people going about their everyday lives at work, at leisure and contributing to society, as they do.

That kind of misunderstanding is everywhere. It leads to a situation in which disabled people who report abuse are often told to go offline. That is as unacceptable in the 21st century as it would be to tell a black person or a disabled person not to go down the high street in case they get abused. When that happens, disabled people face a double whammy: first, their health is damaged by the constant abuse—Members of this House ought to know how that feels—and then they are denied opportunities that would improve their health, in volunteering or in work, and their social circle is narrowed. For those who are in work, constantly having to change their details to avoid abuse leads to loss of employment opportunities or promotion.

We cannot do anything about this problem until we start to understand it, but people do not. For example, we became aware during our inquiry that a lot of the abuse related to football, with people using disability terms as insults. Shockingly and appallingly, they were using the name of Harvey Price, who is a child and a football fan, to insult someone on their ability as a footballer. We wrote to the footballing organisations—the Professional Footballers Association, Kick It Out, the Football Association, the Premier League and the English Football League—but only one replied before our inquiry concluded. The Premier League’s reply was about access to football grounds and abuse at the grounds—it just did not get it. It is shocking that some of those organisations did not reply at all; it is shameful, in fact, because clubs and footballers have a great influence on their fans. I hope that in future they will use their position to call out hatred of disabled people in the same way that they have rightly called out racism associated with the game.

It is that lack of understanding that leads to disabled people being categorised as children and to their voices not being heard. We have therefore recommended that in future the Government should consult disabled people explicitly and directly on all matters that concern them—not those who claim to speak on their behalf, but disabled people themselves.

We were bemused about why social media companies have failed to engage with people who could be among their strongest advocates. What engagement there has been has come too late and has often been too little. For example, where people with learning difficulties are concerned, Facebook told us that it thought its how-to videos made easy-read guidelines unnecessary, while Google said that it thought its community guidelines met the easy-read guidelines. Disabled people disagreed: they do not.

Twitter told us that it thought that simplifying its policies would make them harder to understand, yet easy-read versions are frequently produced of complex documents such as health consultations, tenancy agreements and even—dare I say it—Select Committee reports. It is not that the guidance and expertise needed to produce easy-read versions are not available; it is that social media companies have never thought to seek that guidance and act on it.

We also found that most disabled people, like the rest of us, were confused by the fact that policies are called different things on different sites. Even more importantly, reporting mechanisms are often not accessible to disabled people. Shockingly, we heard again and again that when disabled people have reported hate speech, often nothing has been done.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech and is setting out some really unbelievable issues that need to be taken on board and tackled to protect disabled people online and offline. Does she agree that some of the issues result from the fact that the legislation that covers these crimes is so old? I see from the Library briefing that the most recent applicable legislation is from 1997, and some of it goes back to 1861. That is not to say that it is not good or appropriate legislation, but it is clear that our legislative guidelines are so out of date that they cannot take into consideration the modern world and the challenges that disabled people face online.

[Helen Jones]

The hon. Lady makes a very valid point. I will move on to legislation shortly.

Our inquiry has led us to conclude that social media companies do not employ enough moderators, or enough suitably trained moderators, to deal with this abuse. Given how much profit they are making, that is frankly scandalous. We also found that there is a lot of confusion about what is the responsibility of social media companies and what is the responsibility of the police. That confusion is often fed by the social media companies themselves.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

rose—

[Helen Jones]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, but then I must make progress.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Lady for making a very passionate and capable speech. Does she agree that perhaps we need someone to be a spokesperson for disabled people online, in a similar way to what has been done for racism and hate crime? Does she feel that perhaps the online companies should set aside a figure such as 1% of their earnings to address the issue? Maybe it is because online abuse as a result of racism and hate seems to be—I use the word very loosely—“sexy”, whereas abuse of disabled people is not. We need someone to be a spokesperson; does the hon. Lady agree that we should set somebody aside for that purpose?

[Helen Jones]

Whether there should be a particular person charged with that is one issue, but I think disabled people are well able to speak for themselves about this, and have been doing so when people choose to hear them.

Social media companies should certainly do more. For example, we found that Twitter talks about dealing with threats of violence by removing an offending tweet or suspending an account, but nowhere does it say that threats to kill are a serious criminal offence and should be reported to the police. That in itself is breeding confusion. We often found that the police were having to pick up things that should really have been dealt with by social media companies. We think it quite wrong that police resources should have to be used in that way because the social media companies are failing.

Social media companies need clear rules, policies, mechanisms and settings that are accessible to all disabled people. They also need to be much more proactive in removing hate speech from their sites and reporting potential criminal offences, including the theft of images, which was one of the worst things that we found—particularly images of children that were used to create so-called memes or jokes.

Rightly, the Government’s White Paper on online harms commits to imposing a duty of care on social media companies and making them responsible for harmful or illegal content on their sites. However, the document refers repeatedly to

“children and other vulnerable users”.

We must understand that many disabled people resent the categorisation of all disabled people as vulnerable. They are not. Like the rest of us, some are vulnerable and some are not. Mostly, they are disadvantaged by how society treats them, rather than by the intrinsic nature of their condition. I hope that the Minister’s reply will reassure us that those things will apply to all kinds of abuse.

What is very clear is that self-regulation has comprehensively failed disabled people in the same way that it has failed many other people who use the internet. Unfortunately, so has the law, as the hon. Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) pointed out. The Government tell us constantly that what is illegal offline is illegal online. That is true as far as it goes, but it does not go very far. There are potentially 30 statutes that could apply to online offences. Some offences, such as the theft of images or instigating pile-ons, can occur only online.

The fact that, as one of our witnesses put it,

“not all the pieces of the jigsaw join up”

is leading to a low rate of prosecution in this area. If the law cannot deal with the creation of fake child pornography to mock a disabled child and his family, as happened in the case of Harvey Price, it is simply inadequate. We need a new law that is fit for the digital age, which is why we have recommended that the Government bring forward legislation as a matter of urgency and consult disabled people before doing so.

The Government should make disability hate crime an offence in the same way that crime against someone due to their race or religion is an offence. At the moment, it is only an aggravating factor at sentencing, and it is necessary to prove that someone committed a crime because of hostility to someone due to their disability, which is a very high threshold. Both the Crown Prosecution Service and Detective Inspector John Donovan of the Metropolitan police’s online hate crime hub pointed us to the research by the University of Sussex, which shows that disability hate crime was under-reported and under-prosecuted due to the current state of the law.

In their White Paper, the Government include hate crime in a list of harms that they say are clearly defined. I am afraid that it is not clearly defined on disability hate crime, and it urgently needs to be. As our inquiry proceeded, it became clear to us that disabled people do not feel adequately protected by the law, and do not feel that they are heard when they report crimes. People not being heard properly was a recurring theme throughout our inquiry.

Some good work has been done at senior levels of the police and the CPS, but the law will not work properly unless that percolates down through the organisations, and unless the person on the desk in the police station or the officer who comes out to see people understands it. That is why we have recommended more training for police officers, including in dealing with people who have learning disabilities or autism, so that they are not automatically pigeonholed as being unreliable witnesses.

[Catherine McKinnell]

My hon. Friend is being generous with her time. From the most appalling case in my constituency—the abuse and murder of Lee Irving—I know that so-called mate crime is an enormous danger, particularly for people with learning disabilities. The phrase does not adequately describe in any way the serious financial, physical and often sexual exploitation faced by far too many disabled people at the hands of those they are led to believe are their friends. Does my hon. Friend share my concern that although many disabled people can feel isolated in the real world, the friendships that they develop on social media platforms can actually pose a real danger and harm? Social media companies do not have a grip on this, and the legislation does not reflect the seriousness of such offences.

[Helen Jones]

I agree. We say in our report that

“mate crime is hate crime”,

and it should be treated as such. There is a real risk to people from the activities of those vile individuals who target them for exploitation.

We have been asked, and were asked in the petition, whether we thought that a separate register of offenders was necessary for online hate crime. We came to the conclusion that there is no need for a separate register if our suggested changes to the law and to disability hate crime legislation are to be instigated, because those crimes would show up through a normal Disclosure and Barring Service check. We should make it very clear that at the moment, they do not. Often it records the offence but not that it was motivated by hatred of a disabled person. In organisations that are employing someone to deal with disabled people, there is a problem with being unable to check whether they have a record of not instigating any hate crime. That is a real problem, which we think needs to be addressed by changes in the law.

The other thing that we encountered and felt very strongly about during our inquiry was the fact that disabled people do not feel adequately protected by the law, as I said. We were so concerned that we recommended in our report that the Government should commission an overarching review of disabled people’s experiences of the law, including their experiences of reporting crime and giving evidence.

Disabled people are already marginalised by society. They are being marginalised even more by being abused or driven away from one of the key tools of the 21st century: the internet. That really cannot carry on, and I hope the Minister will commit to consulting disabled people on the proposals in the White Paper, just as I hope she will commit to ensuring that internet and social media companies consult them on their policies, settings and so on. In my view, saying simply that that is an example of good practice is not strong enough. We need to ensure that it will happen, because time and again it is clear that disabled people are not heard when they raise issues that concern them. They are not heard when they talk about this kind of abuse, which they get all the time on the internet. It is time that they were fully heard, and that we grasped this issue and did something about it. I hope the Minister will commit to doing that today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Margot James]

I certainly agree with the right hon. Gentleman. I am sorry if I gave that impression; I wanted to offer up some hope that over time more and more solutions for removal will be technological so that moderators, who have a terrible job to do, do not have to spend their working lives wading through this horrendous content. To clarify, that is absolutely not at all to say that companies are doing enough. They are doing more, but it is by no means enough as yet.

[Helen Jones]

One thing that tech companies need to do, as the police, GCHQ and other authorities do, is provide regular counselling for the people who have to deal with such appalling content. At the tech companies, moderating is often done by poorly paid people in very poor countries, and no support is provided for them.

[Margot James]

The hon. Lady makes a good point; people would need that. I believe more and more counselling is being offered, but I am not aware of whether that offer is consistent across the industry or provided only by the better-performing companies.

I reassure the hon. Lady that the Government have engaged with disability organisations and will continue to do so. Last year I held a roundtable with organisations focused specifically on online abuse of people with disabilities, and next month I will chair a roundtable focusing on adults with learning disabilities. I really am very sorry if the Government have given the impression that we think these problems are confined to children and young people, because they most certainly are not, as the hon. Lady said eloquently in her speech. I completely agree. In fact, the organisations with whom I had the roundtable mostly represented adults, and the next one will be mostly about young adults with learning disabilities. That is what I will do to follow up the debate and the petition.

I want to say a few words about the online harms White Paper. I reiterate my earlier point that self-regulation has failed—the shadow Minister is right about that. We all agree on that, and that is why the Government will establish a new statutory duty of care to make companies take more responsibility for the safety and security of their users and tackle the harm caused by the content and activity on their services. Compliance with the duty of care will be overseen and enforced by an independent regulator. Companies will be held to account for tackling a comprehensive set of online harms, including behaviours that may or may not be illegal but none the less are highly damaging to individuals and threaten people’s rights online. The Government are consulting on the most appropriate enforcement powers for a regulator.

[Ian Austin in the Chair]

My right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs, who is a former Policing Minister, mentioned the structure of policing and whether there are capability as well as resource issues. I should have mentioned that the White Paper is in fact a joint Home Office and DCMS White Paper. We have therefore had input from Home Office Ministers, and I will raise his point with them. [Interruption.] I am somewhat distracted by a lot of noise—I do not know where it is coming from.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Jones]

I thank all the Members who have spoken this afternoon for their useful contributions to the debate, and their suggestions for going further with the task. I know that the Minister takes the matter extremely seriously. However, some of the changes to the law that are required are of course not within her Department. I hope that she will convey to the Home Office the strength of feeling from the debate, particularly about the need to strengthen the legislation on disability hate crime.

There were useful suggestions about, for example, making sure that the people employed by technology companies are diverse and understand the issues, and about ways of looking at digital citizenship education. All those suggestions were welcome and I am sure that the Petitions Committee will do follow-up work and take them into account. However, we need changes in the law. The online harms White Paper is a useful step in the right direction, but other changes are also needed. I might make a comparison with a number of other issues that we have dealt with in the past: sometimes the law follows changes in society, but sometimes the law itself changes people’s perceptions. The Race Relations Act 1965 did not get rid of racism but at least it stopped some of its overt manifestations. It used to be considered acceptable to drink several pints and get behind the wheel of a car, but it is not any longer, because the law changed. Sometimes we need changes in the law to lead people to change their attitudes. That is what we are asking for in the present case.

We also need, as some hon. Members said, to make sure that the police have the right technology and skills, and the right number of people to make sure that the law is enforced. Digital companies must bear their responsibility: that is exactly right, as the Minister said. However, when a crime is committed the police need the resources to pursue the crime and bring people to justice for it.

[Lyn Brown]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and to the Minister for what she has said today. I want to mention, again, that the police service in my constituency has had major difficulties in trying to get offensive drill music taken down. It was being used by gang members to call each other out; it was inciting violence on the street. The police tell me that despite the fact that they asked YouTube to take the videos down it did not happen, and that they did not have enforcement powers. We need the powers to do what is right. We need to give our police not only the resources they need but the powers they need to keep children safe.

[Helen Jones]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Today’s debate is perhaps an example of how debates should be conducted in the House—civilly, and with useful contributions—and it has been clear that there is support across the House for change. Most of all, we have to be clear that we are changing attitudes and that things that have previously been considered acceptable, at least by some sections of society, are not acceptable. We have to make sure that the concerns of disabled people and others are finally heard and attended to. They have not been heard in the past and I hope that we have changed that today, and that we shall go on to ensure that the law is changed so they no longer feel excluded.

[Ian Austin (in the Chair)]

Before we proceed, we should all thank the sign language interpreters, who have been ensuring that everyone is fully able to follow what has been said in the debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered e-petition 190627 relating to online abuse.