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Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered e-petition 728715 relating to penalties for offences arising from social media posts.
It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. As Chair of the Petitions Committee, let me say that it is always encouraging to witness public participation in politics. With more than 100,000 signatures, it is evident that this petition has engaged a large number of people all across the country.
This e-petition was created by the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe). This is the first time that an elected Member of the House of Commons has the e-petition system in this way to garner enough support to secure a debate, making this a unique instance. He explained to me that he believes that this Government have taken a two-tier approach to policing, which needs to be urgently reviewed.
When I use the phrase “two-tier”, I am referring to the belief that police in this country are overtly lenient towards protestors in favour of progressive causes and racial minority protestors, compared with others. To put it simply, those who subscribe to this criticism of our justice system do not believe that citizens are being punished fairly or impartially. That is why the signatories of this petition believe the system needs to be reviewed. Specifically, they are calling on the Government to urgently review the possible penalties for non-violent offences arising from social media posts, including the use of prison. During our meeting, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth explained that it is his belief that, when it comes to punishing individuals for something they have posted on a social media platform, previous sentences issued for offences under this Government have risked encroaching on the individual liberty of the defendant, particularly their freedom of speech.
Freedom of expression has always been a cornerstone of our democracy. In the UK, people are free to demonstrate their views regardless of any discomfort caused to the majority. However, the freedom to express these opinions does exempt any criminal motivation behind them from being prosecuted. Just as we are a country that takes pride in our citizen’s liberties and freedoms, we also take pride in a criminal justice system that protects our citizens from harm. The former will never override the latter.
Under section 22 of the Online Safety Act 2023, a statutory duty to consider free expression protects the rights of users within the law. Crucially, the Act explicitly defines “freedom of expression” in terms compatible with the European convention on human rights. That is the right
“to receive and impart ideas, opinions or information…by means of speech, writing or images”.
However, section 59 of that same Act makes it clear that the boundary of that freedom extends only as far as the legality of the content. In other words, content is judged not just by whether it is unpopular, offensive or controversial but, crucially, whether it violates criminal law. Examples of such violations include—to name but a few—types of intimate image abuse, harassment or the incitement of hate crimes.
That brings us to the question of criminality and prosecution for such an offence, which I believe is the very crux of this petition. When I spoke to the Sentencing Council, it made it clear to me that intent matters a lot in many of these offences. The Sentencing Council’s definition of intent ranges from the highest culpability, for a deliberate intention to cause harm, to lower levels of culpability, for recklessness, knowledge of risk or sheer negligence.
The council considers an offender’s intent to be a key factor in determining the seriousness of an offence and the appropriate sentence, which will often be based on the level of harm that was intended even if it was not actually caused. In our modern age of social media, where communication is instant, rapid and far-reaching, the question of culpability, intent and widespread dissemination does indeed hold serious weight. It is reasonable to assume that all citizens realise that when using sites such as X, Instagram or Facebook.
When it comes to calling on the Government to review the penalties for non-violent offences arising from social media posts, it is imperative to clarify the particulars of existing sentencing guidelines. In the UK, the Government on their own cannot simply change criminal penalties, because the power to set or alter penalties is controlled by Parliament and the courts, not Ministers. Any change to maximum or minimum penalties for an offence must be made through primary legislation. That means that a new law or amendment must pass through the full parliamentary process: drafting, scrutiny, debate and, of course, approval by both Houses—the Commons and the Lords. The Government may propose changes, but they absolutely cannot impose them without Parliament voting them into law.
Even after Parliament sets the legal penalty ranges, the Government still cannot decide individual sentences, because those are often carried out independently by judges, who must follow the Sentencing Council’s guidelines and not—absolutely not—the preferences of Ministers. The Government also cannot order judges to give harsher or more lenient sentences in specific cases, because judicial independence, as we know, protects courts from political interference; indeed, I would suggest that it is a crucial pillar of our political and justice systems. Neither the courts nor Parliament stand alone; that ensures that balanced decisions are made independently in the public interest.
All of that is seriously complex, and addresses a large scale of harm and, in some cases, prejudice. That is to say that I am absolutely certain my colleagues will debate this question with respect, rationality and indeed nuance this evening. I can see that lots of them hope to speak, so I will bring my remarks to a close to allow as many as possible to participate.
Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)
There appear to be other attractions in the main Chamber today, and a number of Members who indicated that they wished to participate are not present. For that reason, I have no need, I think, to put any time limit on contributions.
Emily Darlington (Milton Keynes Central) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger.
The first duty of Government is to keep their citizens safe. We do that with the police and our court system; and, although they are not perfect, we could not do it without them. The online space is an integral part of our modern lives, and we need to treat it as such, because what happens online does not stay online.
Online safety naysayers want us to think that regulating the online space is a conspiracy to end freedom of speech. Some, such as the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), try to make that case, while his online followers send women and members of minorities death and rape threats when they speak freely, and that includes Members of this House—like many women MPs, I receive at least one a week.
Rather than taking away free speech and democracy, we are ensuring that everybody has a voice, so that people, including the alleged victims of Andrew and Tristan Tate, can one day have an online profile again, without getting their home addresses splashed all over the internet and being doxed, as young people like to call it.
Democracy should be about ideas and debates, yet the online environment that some Members of this House want is one where people can make deepfakes, misleading the electorate; where they can threaten women with rape, to shut up those they do not agree with; and where they can make £300,000 by making 128 Facebook pages, spreading racist and AI-generated misinformation, which is then amplified by members of the Reform party—monetising hate, as the piece in The Times exposed this morning. Without an extension of our election laws to online spaces, single platforms or platform owners with specific political or financial agendas can continue to spread lies and misinformation, even going so far as to incite violence in another country. That is not democracy; that is not free speech. It is up to this Government to ward against it and ensure that our laws and sentencing are appropriate. As I said, the first duty of any Government is to keep their citizens safe.
In real life, a 12-year-old cannot go to the cinema to see a film if it is rated 15, and pornography is put on the top shelf at the newsagents, out of reach. Kids cannot buy a video game that is adult-only rated without identification. Online, however, our kids can find any kind of graphic or sexual content, of any level of extremity, as easily as they can text their friends.
The Online Safety Act is there to protect everyone. It is there to put porn back on the top shelf and out of reach of kids. It works to prevent 10-year-olds from finding graphic depictions of violence, being encouraged to become violent themselves or being groomed by strangers. Those who want to scrap the Act and the sentencing that goes along with it actually put at risk our free speech—the free speech of those who are intimidated every day for trying to express their views online—and, even more so, they put at risk our democracy. Let us bring back common sense and protect this country.
Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)
As the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) said, this is the first time that an e-petition debate has been instigated by a Member of this House, so it gives me great pleasure to call the culprit, Rupert Lowe.
Rupert Lowe (Great Yarmouth) (Ind)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I am grateful to the Petitions Committee for granting time for this extremely important debate, following our successful petition. Most importantly, I thank the more than 190,000 British people who signed the petition that we initiated, which calls for an end to the creeping use of prison as a punishment for what people say online. We would not be here today without their support, which is a credit to the petitions system, one of the better-functioning arms of Parliament.
I welcome Lucy Connolly and her husband, who are here today. She is one of the many ordinary citizens who has been swept up in the chaotic and inconsistent enforcement of our online speech laws. Her courage in speaking openly about her experience has helped to expose a growing problem: namely that the British state is now more willing to imprison somebody for a social media post than for a rape. That is not justice, that is not proportionate and that is certainly not the mark of a free country.
Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing this petition to the House. On what analysis does he base his comment that people are more likely to be in prison for a social media tweet than for rape?
Rupert Lowe
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman has heard of the Pakistani rape gangs, which are currently the subject of my crowdfunder. When he reads the report that is coming out in March, I am sure he will agree with me.
We are witnessing the steady expansion of what are essentially speech crimes—offences where there is no violence, no real threat of violence and, often, no identifiable victim at all. Yet people face dawn raids, criminal records, ankle tags and even lengthy prison sentences—for words, for arguments, for opinions that somebody somewhere claims to find offensive.
I had my own experience: a late-night police raid, initiated by false allegations from former Reform party colleagues, relating solely to words I had allegedly spoken—the party of free speech, indeed. The Reform leadership’s bitter attempt to see me in prison failed, but too many others do not escape the consequences of such vile misuse of the system. We now have laws being used to punish subjective offence, based on the most fragile interpretation of “harm” and enforced through discretionary and—far too often—politically skewed policing. A post that is deemed sharp criticism one month somehow becomes grossly offensive the next. It is arbitrary, it is inconsistent and it is fundamentally incompatible with a healthy democracy.
I receive multiple death threats, yet the police take no action. To take just one example, online influencer Shola Mos-Shogbamimu recently posted on X:
“I’m against the death penalty but for you @RupertLowe10 I’ll gladly make the exception.”
This post currently has 2 million views. The Met police have said no action will be taken. I do not want people in prison for social media posts; I also do not want such obvious two-tier policing. Shola walks free, yet Lucy Connolly was imprisoned for one foolish social media post, soon deleted. Where is the fairness in that? If these ludicrous laws are to be implemented, it must be done fairly, with no political bias. Evidently, that is not currently happening.
Is our prison system so efficient, so functional and so unoccupied that we have the capacity to put a young mother like Lucy in prison for more than 300 days? I think not. When rapists and murderers are walking free—even being released early—there is zero justification for imprisoning Lucy and the many others like her, particularly when the influence of such questionable legal aid is so heavily involved.
We must be clear: no free society can survive with a people afraid to speak. Democracy depends on robust argument, dissent and the ability to challenge orthodoxy. As George Orwell so presciently stated:
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
Parliament needs to draw a deep line in the sand: in Britain, nobody should ever be sent to prison for an offensive social media post—full stop. That requires legislative reform. We need clearer thresholds in law, a robust statutory requirement that prosecutorial decisions consider freedom of expression, and a prohibition on custodial sentences for pure speech cases.
The poison of two-tier justice must be forensically extracted from our judicial system. This debate is not about whether we are prepared to live in a country where liberty exists only for those who never cause offence—an impossible and undesirable standard. To Lucy and to every other person who has found themselves dragged through the system for a post online: you deserve better from your Government, and I sincerely hope today marks the beginning of a serious rethink in this House.
Mr Richard Quigley (Isle of Wight West) (Lab)
I will come as no surprise to you, Sir Roger, to hear me say what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairship.
I want to be transparent: I do not believe that the law has always got it right in these cases—there have been failures, and there must be room for scrutiny and reform. But I am compelled to speak in this debate because of the hypocrisy and double standards perpetuated by many on the Opposition Benches—those who brand themselves as defenders of free speech, yet who seem to confuse freedom of speech and freedom from consequence.
Something I taught my children from when they were very young was, “You are free to use your words, but you must be prepared to face the consequences of them.” People may think that writing an offensive post—which takes only seconds and is quickly forgotten—is inconsequential, but as we have seen over the past year, and especially in recent months, such words can have devastating effects. They can fuel radicalisation, target minority communities and make individuals feel unsafe in their own homes, schools and streets. Although some demand the right to speak without restraint, they ignore the reality that others lose their freedom to live without fear—a freedom that was hard fought for by those we pay tribute to on Armistice Day.
I find it genuinely astounding that parties such as Reform UK, and many in today’s Conservative party, espouse the importance of personal responsibility and accountability, yet are fundamentally unable to stomach it when individuals on their side of the political argument are held accountable for their words. My personal position —and, I think, that of many of my Labour colleagues—is clear: hate speech is hate speech; words have consequences. No matter whether someone passionately disagrees with someone else politically, if they use social media to call for the death of or harm to another, they should be held accountable by any means the law deems fit.
Regretfully, I do not believe that the same clarity exists on the Opposition Benches. It has been astonishing to watch some Members tie themselves in knots—on one hand decrying Britain under Labour as a return to Soviet-style communism, while on the other hand demanding the removal of the Oxford Union president-elect for comments made in a private group chat, not on social media. It seems that, for the right wing, free speech is not a two-way street: it is Schrödinger’s version of free speech.
Nowhere has the hypocrisy and knot tying been clearer than in the case of the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), who rightly disavowed, and welcomed the imprisonment of, an individual who used social media to threaten his life, but readily platformed during his party conference a woman who said:
“Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care...If that makes me racist, so be it”.
I am genuinely intrigued as to whether free speech is deemed acceptable only if it is used to threaten the lives of refugees and not the Reform party leader.
James McMurdock (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Ind)
Will the hon. Member give way on that point?
Mr Quigley
No.
My point is this: it is completely wrong to call for the death of the hon. Member for Clacton, just as it is completely wrong to call for hotels housing refugees to be burned down. In both cases, the law rightly intervened, and justice was served. What is deeply concerning is the warped suggestion that the law should be applied differently depending on who says something rather than what is said. That is not justice; it is politicisation. Our legal professionals are not the enemy. Our justice system, widely regarded as one of the foundational models of fairness and due process, is not the enemy. And our police, who enforce the law but do not create it, are not the enemy. We must defend the principle that the law applies equally to all, regardless of political affiliation, background or platform.
That should not be controversial. It is in fact one of the oldest principles in our democracy. Magna Carta, the cornerstone of our unwritten constitution, states:
“To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.”
That commitment to fairness and equality before the law is not just historical; it is foundational. Ultimately, if we in this Parliament believe that the law needs to change, we have the power and the responsibility to change it through the proper democratic process. Those who seek to twist justice, who argue that the law should be applied differently depending on who says something rather than what is said, should ask themselves this: are they defending the spirit of British democracy, or are they defending a warped version of it, shaped not by principle but by popularity on X?
Zöe Franklin (Guildford) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger.
Freedom of speech is a vital right, but it must end where harm to another begins. Online freedom cannot mean the freedom to exploit, to encourage self-harm or to destroy lives. I appreciate that I am taking the debate in a slightly off-piste direction, but this is relevant to the debate we are having today, because suicide forums and other user-to-user platforms are also part of what Ofcom counts as social media. If this debate is about the proportionality of penalties applied to offences arising from social media posts, we must address the stark reality that the most harmful content online is actually the least likely to attract enforcement. Nowhere is that clearer than in the case of unregulated suicide forums, which The Telegraph recently described as a terrifying online world where users share methods, encourage one another to die, and prey on the vulnerable.
The Molly Rose Foundation, founded by bereaved parents after losing their daughter Molly, has exposed the scale of the threat. Its report “Missed chances, lost lives” links at least 133 UK deaths to a single pro-suicide forum that operates overseas. On that site, young people—many just teenagers—are encouraged, instructed and groomed into taking their own lives. The forum hosts detailed methods, promotes poisonous substances, shares advice on bypassing UK regulations and even enables suicide pacts between strangers, which facilitates the abuse of vulnerable women. That is not free speech, as the site moderators claim; it is the deliberate facilitation of harm—fatal harm.
I first became aware of the foundation’s work when I met a local family who had lost their daughter, Hannah. She had been on that forum, where she found links to poisons and guidance on how to obtain them outside UK restrictions. Her father, Pete, warned me that harm is out there waiting to be found by teenagers. No parent should ever have to bury their child because of an unregulated user-to-user forum or social media.
What makes this even harder to accept is how many missed chances there were to act. Coroners issued 65 prevention of future deaths reports to three Government bodies—65 formal warnings that the site and its content were putting people at risk. Had those warnings triggered action when they should have, many of those 133 people might still be with us today.
Ofcom eventually opened a formal investigation under the Online Safety Act, but only in 2025—long after families had begun sounding the alarm. Its own letter acknowledges serious risks to UK users, including children, yet despite that Ofcom initially accepted a voluntary geoblock, which could be easily bypassed with a simple VPN. It took the discovery of a mirror site, and determined, unrelenting pressure from bereaved families, to escalate the case to priority.
That goes to the heart of today’s debate: if we are examining how penalties are applied for offences arising from social media posts, we must ask why the quickest and toughest enforcement does not fall on those creating the greatest real-world harm. The Online Safety Act creates strong penalties for encouraging suicide and serious self-harm—up to 14 years’ imprisonment and up to five years’ imprisonment respectively. Those penalties must not be weakened; they must be used, and they must be supported by regulators who treat the loss of life due to online harms with the urgency it demands.
I have met too many parents, siblings, friends and loved ones whose lives have been shattered. Their message is simple: protect young people, target the real harms, and use the penalties to save lives. If proportionality is the principle, let it be proportional to harm, because our young people deserve a system that protects them, not one that leaves the deadliest corners of the internet untouched.
I thank the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe), in part, for the debate today, which has enabled me to raise this part of the important conversation about penalties for offences arising from social media posts and user-to-user platforms.
Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)
What a pleasure it is to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Roger. I thank the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) for so ably introducing the debate. Although the hon. Member for Guildford (Zöe Franklin) described her speech as being a little off-piste, I thank her for raising an important subject—she is welcome to raise it in any debate I am part of.
The only two-tier justice system I know of in the UK is between the rich and the poor, and between the powerful and the powerless. That is why I am so pleased we have been able to introduce the Hillsborough law. What we are not talking about here are posts that arise from differences of political opinion: whether rail should be nationalised, or whether we should invest more money in the NHS. What we are talking about are posts that contain elements of racial hatred, which is completely unacceptable and is not a political issue—unless we are arguing that somehow racial hatred is a political philosophy.
Last summer, we saw tragic violence right across the UK. I think Edinburgh was spared only through the hard work over many years of the Edinburgh Interfaith Association. We saw British people attacked because of their faith or the colour of their skin—utterly reprehensible. I spoke to parents who were worried about their children —of all ages—going to school or going to work. It was an horrendous time, and the violence was being amplified and accelerated online.
Many of those who carried out those violent acts argued that their actions were solely in response to the tragic events that occurred in Southport. But it is clear that the fury we witnessed was encouraged by online instigators, who stirred racial tensions and spread false information before the public had a true and complete understanding of what had occurred that awful day—just as we saw a couple of weekends ago after the attack on the London North Eastern Railway train, when people online were quick to link it to immigration and also to Islam, which I found utterly unbelievable. By the time a statement was made to the House of Commons, we knew there was no link to immigration or Islam, so there were no Reform MPs in the Chamber to talk about it—an utter disgrace.
As MPs, we have all had our fair share of online abuse and unpleasant comments, although I absolutely recognise the point made earlier about women attracting much more of that abuse than men. We know that the internet is a challenging and complex place, but when posts tip over into threatening communications, inciting violence against specific groups, provisions must be in place for prosecution. Opposition Members argue that prison sentences are given for comments that were maybe mistaken or intended as humorous. But we know that for some of the people who were imprisoned, this was merely one of many racially motivated comments that they had made over a period of time. Opposition Members called these posts foolish, clumsy or misunderstood, yet many of those people actually pled guilty to inciting racial hatred.
Let us be clear: the posts that led to prosecution were an incitement to violence and outright racial hatred, which is why those people pled guilty. The Crown Prosecution Service is clear that the state must act when there is a clear threat to public order and safety—online or in the real world. Employment law applies to online. Thankfully, we have procedures in place to protect children from online harm. Fraud is a crime online, as is defamation of character. So I do not understand why people argue that racially motivated hatred should not be covered by a law online, when it is in the real world. Why should we be able to say something online that we would not say in the pub? It is utterly unbelievable that people put that argument forward —it is unacceptable. It is right that these things apply across our society. The recent case of the man imprisoned for making threats towards the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) shows that our judiciary act when faced with criminal online threats of violence. Does anybody want to say that they oppose that gentleman being jailed for five years? Of course not.
Freedom of speech is central to our democracy. I understand that all our police forces face stretched resources, but those who incite violence on our streets against vulnerable people can never go unchallenged, whether it is online or in person.
Luke Taylor (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)
It is, as always, a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger.
The text of the petition makes specific reference to “posts on social media”, as if this modern medium is somehow separate from every form of speech that came before. Social media posts take seconds to write and publish, and then they are everywhere. They are seen by our parents, grandparents and kids, with no fact check and no filter. Terrifyingly, a 2025 Ofcom study found that three quarters of 18 to 24-year-olds use digital platforms and social media to get their news.
The sort of reach once available only to professional journalists, filtered through editors and media owners, is now available to anyone with a phone. We can post with a moment’s thought during our morning coffee break, with the same ease as world leaders with armies of speechwriters, fact checkers and lawyers to craft their statements. One impulsive tap on an app can land in the timelines of tens, thousands or millions of people.
Let us be honest: who has not posted online something they later regretted? I know I have, and I challenge anyone these days to have an unblemished record online. The incredible reach that modern social media has enabled, compared with the guardianship and control of legacy media sources for centuries, has rightly been compared with the unleashing of the evils of the world from Pandora’s box. We must recognise that attempting to reverse the exodus is as futile for us as it was for the Pandora of myth.
To keep with an historical allusion, the story of the sword of Damocles described how a single hair of a horse’s tail held a sword over the head of King Dionysius, threatening to take away all that he enjoyed as a king, without notice. A second’s misplaced rage, or a misjudged reaction to somebody else’s message, can cause the thread to break and the sword to fall, with the nationwide media sent to a person’s doorstep, their career and life torn apart. That is the reality of casting our thoughts into the social media forum.
The fragility of the risk cannot be used to diminish the impact, and hence the responsibility that must be held by users who can reach millions around the world in seconds. The ease of posting cannot be allowed to dilute the seriousness of the impact. I return to my earlier argument: I invite us to replace “posts on social media” in the petition with “words in a national newspaper” or “speech on national television”. Would there be the same uproar or calls for clemency if a journalist or TV presenter had urged their audience to set fire to hotels full of people? I suggest not.
In the case of Lucy Connolly, her post inciting violence against a hotel full of people, as riots raged throughout the country, was seen by more than 300,000 people in the three and a half hours before it was deleted. That is roughly the same number as the combined daily circulation of The Daily Telegraph and The Times newspapers. I cannot agree with treating social media differently from incendiary violence elsewhere. There were 9,000 followers and it was viewed more than 300,000 times in three and a half hours.
We cannot keep pretending that what happens online stays online. The digital world is now shaping how people think, speak and act, and the consequences are now impossible to ignore. The very power that social media holds is exactly why so many people wield it with such vigour.
Let us not forget that it is a nice little earner for some, too. The hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe) has earned over £40,000 from Twitter since his election, showing the huge potential of the site, and potentially why he is incentivised to defend so enthusiastically people’s right to say inflammatory and shocking things to drive engagement, clicks and views. The online world has become a place where hate speech—or, as the petition puts it, “opinion…speech”—is allowed to spread like wildfire. Too often, social media platforms shrug their shoulders and walk away from the responsibility of monitoring it or, worse, they actively encourage disinformation.
Twitter is the most obvious offender. I am told that, for those who still do, scrolling through Twitter feeds feels like stepping into the wild west. Abusive comments and dangerous posts are left to fester without consequence. A factual error is twisted and retold as the gospel truth before anyone has had time to draw breath. Communities are put at risk by conspiracies that proliferate like a virus.
Twitter must do far more to tackle the surge of hate speech that we see on our phones and tablets every single day. Since Musk took control of the company in 2022, Twitter has rolled back on safeguards designed to prevent misinformation and dangerous rhetoric. The same Elon Musk suggested that America should liberate the people of Britain and overthrow our democratically elected Government. Incidentally, the US customs and border protection guidelines for allowing non-citizens to enter the USA state that if an immigration officer knows or believes that someone would be entering the country to attempt to overthrow the US Government, they are inadmissible. If we applied that reasoning to Mr Musk’s next trip to our country, I wonder whether he might have complaints about his treatment. There is free speech, but not without consequences. This is a foreign billionaire, armed with his global megaphone, fanning the flames of division and calling for the overthrow of our democratically elected Government. We call that treason here.
We cannot allow tech oligarchs to set the rules for British society. Instead of allowing the world’s richest man to decide what toxic content floods national conversation, the Government must wake up and intervene. We Liberal Democrats call on the Minister to properly equip Ofcom to enforce tough regulations to clamp down on the spread of misinformation online. Online safety cannot rest solely on the shoulders of individual users, as algorithms push controversial content for views and shares. Legislation must be tightened to hold social media platforms accountable for the dangerous rhetoric they allow to thrive.
Social media is simply the latest chapter in humanity’s long history of communication, and vectors for incitement, from clay tablets to the printing press to broadcast news. Because it is so accessible, it arguably needs more accountability from its users and operators—not less, as the petition proposes.
Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society. We have always, and will always, stand up for freedom of speech. However, that does not mean no accountability for hate speech or speech that incites violence. Those who use violence, racist abuse or hate speech must face serious consequences. We do not support the suggestion in the petition that social media posts should be treated any differently from any other types of speech.
Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I thank the Petitions Committee for enabling this debate, and the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) for opening it. I am also grateful to the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe), who launched and promoted the petition. Like others, I thought it was the first time I had come across a petition from a Member, and it turns out that it is. The number of signatures that the hon. Member managed to secure shows that this issue is of great interest to our constituents, and it is right that we, as elected representatives in Parliament, debate these matters.
I want to begin by talking about something that was not given sufficient focus in the debate: priorities and choices. Police officers cannot and have never been able to investigate and solve all crimes, all the time. They will never be able to do that, so choices and priorities have always been at the heart of policing since it was introduced in this country. The Opposition would rather that our police officers prioritise catching burglars, car thieves, shoplifters and violent offenders, and it seems clear to me that the public agree.
It also seems clear that this is an issue on which the police, the CPS and the courts do not get it right all the time. As always, we cannot be led entirely by the worst examples, but they inevitably raise public concern. I will not focus overly on individual cases, many of which have been well publicised and often, thankfully, not taken forward in the end, but that begs the question: what would have happened to less high-profile individuals, or in cases that were less well publicised? The outcome may have been different, so this issue clearly needs our attention. That is not to say that there should never be any restriction on what people can put online. We need to find a balance akin to the one that we manage, as a whole—although certainly not perfectly—to keep more consistently in what we might call the real world.
The criminalisation of hate speech and incitement is not new; what has changed is the scale and immediacy of communication in the digital age. Social media allows anyone with a mobile phone to reach potentially millions of people within seconds, and their words are essentially permanent and traceable. It exposes individuals to a constant stream of content, often stripped of context, and sometimes designed to provoke. Social media also strips away the manner in which something is said and the demeanour of the person—details that are often key to the prosecution of these sorts of cases in the real world.
We have a responsibility to ensure that the law keeps pace with technology but remains fair, proportionate and grounded in common sense. Those who use social media to clearly and obviously promote hatred, threaten individuals or genuinely incite violence must not be able to act with impunity. But we must also ensure that sentencing reflects the seriousness of each case, that it distinguishes between genuine threats and offensive opinion, and that it maintains public confidence in both justice and freedom of expression.
The judiciary has discretion to consider the context, harm and intent behind each offence, and proportionality is key. Sentences must be transparent, consistent and seen by the public to be fair. We know that the vast majority of people in this country value free speech deeply, but they also expect accountability for those who cross the line into criminality. The balance is delicate and must be protected. Social media has created new forms of harm, but also new forms of expression, and the justice system must navigate these novel complexities carefully. However, when the response appears to some to exceed what is necessary to deter or rehabilitate, it is right that Parliament examines whether the framework that guides decisions remains appropriate.
There have been increasing anecdotal reports of the police arriving in disproportionate numbers to arrest children, parents and older people who may have said “the wrong thing”—as they might describe it—online. One example, widely reported in the press, was the arrest of Graham Linehan by five armed police officers at Heathrow in September. His alleged offence was a series of social media posts in which it seemed apparent to most dispassionate observers that he joked about punching transgender women in the genitals if they refuse to leave female-only spaces. That is a good example of the sort of joke that would not be welcome, and that many people would think was displeasing or inappropriate, but it should have been carefully considered before it was put forward as a possible crime. It was hardly worthy of the time of five armed police officers.
Such use of police time and resources was completely disproportionate when officers’ efforts could be focused on dealing with the crimes that our constituents care more about—such as knife crime, shoplifting and burglary—that regularly go unsolved and do not have the same level of attention in all circumstances. I welcome the fact that in response—and in clear support of the fact that there is an issue—the Metropolitan police announced that they will no longer investigate non-crime hate incidents. I direct those who think there is no issue to the decision by an independent police force to make a major change in how it polices these sorts of things and to
“focus on matters that meet the threshold for criminal investigations”.
We need to see that approach applied across the whole country. The Conservatives put that idea to a vote in the Crime and Policing Bill Committee earlier this year, but sadly the Government voted it down.
The National Police Chiefs’ Council, supported by the College of Policing, has reviewed the use and effectiveness of non-crime hate incidents. Subsequently, in September, the NPCC and the college wrote to the Policing Minister urging her to immediately scrap non-crime hate incidents in their current form, but the Government have not acted. They have ignored the authors of the review that they commissioned, and kicked the issue into the long grass. Will the Minister work with the Home Office to implement the recommendations of the NPCC and the College of Policing?
More broadly, the Government are not being transparent about this issue. They do not collect data on non-crime hate incidents and they do not publish data on the number of arrests made for online malicious communications offences. Accurate quantitative data on arrests and prosecutions for offences on social media are therefore hard to come by. Does the Minister agree that the Government should do more to assuage concerns by collecting and publishing data that might help to illuminate the issue?
We do have some data. In April, The Times published an article using data collated from freedom of information requests, setting out the number of arrests made in recent years under section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988 and section 127 of the Communications Act 2003. The newspaper reported that police officers are making more than 12,000 arrests a year under the legislation, equating to more than 30 a day. I remind hon. Members about the issue of priorities: police officers are going out and making 12,000 arrests a year for these sorts of offences. The paper also claims that the number of arrests in 2023 represented an almost 58% increase from before the pandemic, and that forces recorded 7,734 arrests in 2019.
Dr Arthur
I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman’s summing up; he is doing a great job. Those numbers invite some further investigation. Thirty per day does sound like quite a lot of arrests, but in how many cases was the communication the sole reason for the arrest? Was it just a matter of there being many other factors combined, and that was just one point in the arrest schedule?
Dr Mullan
That is a good example of the sort of question we cannot answer. We have had to rely on a media organisation putting forward FOIs to get some information. If the Government took ownership of the issue and published proper data, which might be able to pick out the nuances, we could have a more realistic debate. The hon. Gentleman is right that that could be the explanation, but we are none the wiser.
We cannot simply blame this spike on rank-and-file officers. They are often only following orders from their superiors, who point to guidance from the NPCC and the College of Policing. Another key issue is that many people I have spoken to who perhaps thought that people such as Lucy Connolly had done the wrong thing and should be punished, but were concerned about the length of the prison sentence. At the same time as the Government will not budge on this issue, they are passing legislation that will let thousands of violent sexual offenders out of prison early. Very many thousands of them will serve only a third of their sentences. The Government say that there is not enough prison space, yet their proportionate response is to say that we have plenty of prison space to arrest other people.
Emily Darlington
Does the shadow Minister recognise that when his Government were letting out rapists and violent criminals, they put in place no protections whatsoever, whereas this Government have brought in protection orders and domestic violence orders to ensure that victims are protected in these cases? Does he also recognise that the prison crisis was caused under his Government?
Dr Mullan
It may come from a man, but it is just an explanation. The early release schemes that we used, and that the Minister was previously using, excluded all sexual offences. We excluded sexual offences, and the early release schemes that continued excluded sexual offences. The Sentencing Bill makes no exclusion for sexual offences—none. We would not let out rapists earlier, and the Labour Government initially would not let out rapists, but they are now going to do so. We would not let out people who raped children, and initially the Labour Government would not let out people who raped children, but they are now passing a Bill that will let out people who raped children.
Some people say that the scheme addresses a short-term crisis, but, again, there are existing schemes that could be used for short-term prison capacity issues, such as the ones that I have talked about, which exclude sexual offences. We agree that those should be excluded. Instead of carrying on using those schemes, this Government are legislating to let rapists, child rapists and paedophiles out of prison earlier on a permanent basis. Ninety per cent of people who go to prison for child grooming will be serving a third of their sentence. If that is something that the hon. Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington) thinks is defendable, I encourage her to go away and read the detail.
As I said, the Sentencing Bill will let out thousands of violent and sexual offenders, even if Government Members pretend that that is not what is going to happen. I would also point out that some Labour MPs understand that and would not vote for it. They understand what their Government are persuading them to vote for. They really should not vote for it. I hope the Minister will commit to looking again at the sentencing framework to ensure it better reflects the concerns that colleagues have laid out today. Otherwise, this will be a missed opportunity.
We are clear that we can restore democratic accountability to sentencing only through the abolition of the Sentencing Council and the restoration of its activities to the Lord Chancellor’s office. That is the sort of wholesale reform that is needed. We introduced an amendment to the Sentencing Bill to enable that, but Labour voted it down, proposing instead a halfway house that will not achieve anything like the radical change we need.
The right choices are there and a better way forward is available. It is true that this is a new area for our law and for society; perhaps we were always going to take time to get this right. I welcome the campaigners and individuals affected driving politicians of all parties to do so. We have had some clear proposals for reform, which are a start, but in the meantime it will sadly take more cases, more public concern and more demands for change for the Government to get this right.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jake Richards)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. We are here to debate whether to review the penalties for social media posts, as put forward by the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe). Freedom of expression is a cornerstone of our democracy, but so too is the right of every citizen to live free from abuse, intimidation and harm. The role of Government and Parliament is to uphold both—to protect rights and responsibilities online and offline.
It has long been a principle in this country that people are free to express their views even when those views are uncomfortable, unpopular, challenging or even offensive. However, we must also recognise that freedom of expression must be balanced against the need to uphold public safety and ensure that our laws are equipped to deal with the realities of modern communication. That balancing act is not set in stone or fixed; it is a constant challenge for our society, as it should be. Any tension or conflict between these principles must be carefully considered and monitored. This debate plays an important and symbolic role in doing that, and I welcome contributions from all different perspectives.
Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
I will always defend freedom of expression, but one feature I am concerned about is the proliferation of disinformation content online—particularly by hostile states—that is designed to divide us and undermine our democracy. Will the Minister comment on that, and the approach the Government will take to tackling and enforcing against it?
Jake Richards
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Technology and social media have become more complex and difficult, but that does not mean we should shy away from attempting to ensure the principles that we hold so dear, including democracy. I will deal with that important point later in my speech.
This Government are committed to ensuring that penalties for these types of offences are proportionate and uphold freedom of expression. Sentencing is and must remain a matter for the independent judiciary. We all—particularly Government Ministers—have a responsibility to take extreme care when discussing individual cases. I will not be commenting on any, although we all take our own personal views on cases that capture the public imagination. But a sentence in the court of public opinion is not as rigorous as those imposed by courts of law. Each case is different, and the full circumstances are often not reported widely. Media stories of cases rarely convey all the information that the court had before it when deciding on its sentence.
Where an individual is convicted for an offence related to online speech, the independent judiciary is responsible for determining appropriate sentences, based on the facts of each cases and the relevant sentencing guidelines. An independent judiciary is vital to the rule of law and the functioning of a democratic society. It ensures that justice is administered fairly, impartially and critically, without political interference.
The independence of our judiciary from political influence is a vital part of our constitution, and I for one am determined to protect that in my role. The proposals by the Opposition to simply scrap the Sentencing Council amount to constitutional vandalism and have been described by previous Conservative Attorneys General as completely absurd.
Dr Mullan
Does the Minister accept that our proposals, which were not just to abolish the Sentencing Council but to create a number of bodies that advise the Department, are essentially exactly the same proposal that existed before the Sentencing Council was introduced by the Labour Government. Did he think there was constitutional vandalism prior to Labour’s reforms?
Jake Richards
The shadow Minister is completely incorrect. The Conservative party’s current proposals are not what was in place before the Sentencing Council was established. They propose to bring the sentencing of every type of criminal case into the Executive. That is a completely new, innovative and wholly dangerous proposal that has been criticised by Conservatives themselves. I remember when Conservatives used to stand up for our constitution and the separation of powers, rather than simply following the populist flame.
The sentencing framework is important, because it provides courts with a range of sentencing powers to deal effectively and appropriately with offenders in addition to imprisonment, including through discharges, fines, community sentences and suspended sentences. The law also makes it clear that imprisonment should only be imposed as a last resort and where no other sentence would be appropriate.
When deciding what sentence to impose, courts must consider the circumstances of the case, including the culpability of the offender, the harm they caused or intended to cause, and any aggravating and mitigating factors. They have a statutory duty to follow any relevant sentencing guidelines developed by the independent Sentencing Council for England and Wales, unless they are satisfied that it would be contrary to the interests of justice for them to do so. Therefore, differences in sentencing outcomes will be the result of a number of factors, including whether the offender has previous convictions or whether an early guilty plea was entered, as well as any particular aggravating and mitigating factors. They may also include circumstances surrounding the offence, as well as circumstances personal to the offender.
It is right that courts have the discretion to consider these factors and to tailor sentences accordingly, but that does not mean—and none of my argument should give the impression—that sentencing is not subject to democratic accountability. Parliament is sovereign. The Sentencing Bill, which we are taking through the House, makes changes to ensure that the Lord Chancellor and the Lady Chief Justice agree to new guidelines before they come into effect, which is a new mechanism for bolstering accountability. We do not want politicians handing down sentences on each given case, leading to wild inconsistencies and unfairness. But of course, sentencing has a democratic function, and in my submission this change strikes the right balance.
The Government commissioned a comprehensive review of sentencing powers through the independent sentencing review, chaired by David Gauke, the previous Conservative Lord Chancellor. This was wide-ranging and evidence-led, examining the full spectrum of sentencing options. The aim of the independent sentencing review was to ensure that the framework is robust, proportionate and fit for purpose. The review was guided by three core principles: sentences must punish offenders and protect the public; sentences should encourage prisoners to turn their backs on a life of crime; and we must make greater use of punishment outside of prison.
The Government accepted the majority of the review’s recommendations in principle, many of which are now being delivered through the Sentencing Bill, which is currently progressing through the House of Lords. Our focus remains on ensuring that the justice system protects the public, upholds fundamental rights and uses custodial sentences only where they are necessary and proportionate.
The Government have made it clear that we need to focus our law enforcement efforts on preventing crime in our communities—more police on our streets, rather than more policing of our tweets. But the Government do not feel that there is any case for a change in legislation at this stage, as proposed by the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth.
Freedom of expression is a right that must be protected, but it is not an absolute right; it carries a responsibility to use that freedom honestly and decently. Freedom used irresponsibly corrodes democracy; responsibility without freedom weakens it. The Government’s job is to protect both, and the Online Safety Act and our wider sentencing framework reflect that balance. They are designed to protect individuals, uphold justice and preserve the freedoms that define our society.
The Online Safety Act has been designed to safeguard legal free speech, uphold privacy and support innovation. It does not prevent adults from accessing legal content, nor does it restrict people from posting content that others may find offensive. It involves the regulation of systems and processes that platforms have in place for tackling illegal content and, critically, protecting children. There are also protections against the over-removal of content, where platforms take down content that they should leave on their sites.
As use of the internet has expanded, there has been an increasing awareness that online content and activity can cause serious harm to users. From disinformation to targeted harassment, what happens online now shapes lives offline. The public are right to expect protection online from abuse that would never be tolerated on our streets. There are some circumstances where the criminal threshold is met for genuinely harmful and dangerous material, whether that be online or through other forms of communication. That is why the Online Safety Act introduced three modern communication offences—harmful communications, false communications and threatening communications—ensuring that our legal framework is fit for the digital age.
We have now seen that the new offences introduced by the Act are being applied proportionately and effectively. Earlier this year, an individual was convicted under section 184 of the Act for encouraging a child to undertake serious self-harm through online grooming—the first case of its kind. We have heard about the real dangers that exist online for children, and we must clamp down on them. The case demonstrates the importance of having modern, digital-age offences that are capable of protecting the most vulnerable from genuine life-threatening harm.
The Act also delivered Zach’s law, named after a young epilepsy campaigner, which rightly makes it a criminal offence to send malicious flashing images intended to trigger seizures. It is a clear, common-sense and compassionate example of how the law can evolve to protect people with disabilities from cruelty and real, demonstrable harm online. We should remember that the Online Safety Act is not the only legislation that can lead to custodial sentences for online speech: recent convictions, including that of the individual jailed for issuing death threats against the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), show that existing laws on threats and harassment are being applied robustly where speech crosses into criminal intimidation.
Democracy cannot function when intimidation replaces debate. That is the balance we seek to strike in regulating an increasingly influential online world to protect the public—between freedom of expression and the safety of individuals and communities. I thank all Members for their contributions. This is an issue that is important not only to this House but clearly to many people across the country, and it is vital that we allow, and indeed encourage, rigorous debates about the relevant legal framework.
Jamie Stone
As colleagues are aware, the Chair of any Select Committee is elected by the House. Therefore, this evening I am rather more the servant of the House than of my party. I therefore speak, I hope, impartially— as I should as Chair of the Petitions Committee. We have heard some verbal jousting in this debate, but it is no bad thing to air an issue out in the open and in our democratic forum.
I thank the petitioner himself, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe); it is indeed a historical first—it has never happened before, that I am aware of, in the history of this place—that the petitioner is a Member. I also thank you, Sir Roger, and all the Members who have spoken.
I also want to thank the members of the public in the Gallery. I do not know whether they have felt this too, but I have felt a rather chilly draught behind me—I think we ought to offer Parliament a shilling for the meter, to get heating turned up a wee bit. But I thank them for coming; I think they have witnessed something rather special that we do in this place.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered e-petition 728715 relating to penalties for offences arising from social media posts.