My Lords, Amendments 3 to 5 to Clause 164 are in my name. They relate to a matter that I raised in Committee: threats of a more indirect nature. As I explained at that time, I chaired an inquiry in Scotland into misogyny and the manifestations of deeply unpleasant behaviour that women experience, some of it in the public arena and some of it online.
Based on that experience, I came to realise that many women who are parliamentarians, are in local authorities, head up NGOs or are journalists and, for some reason, annoy or irritate certain users of social media in any way receive horrible threats. We know about those from the ugly nature of the threats that Diane Abbott and many women parliamentarians have received. Sometimes, the person making the threat does not directly say, “I’m going to rape you”—although sometimes they do: Joanna Cherry, a Scottish Member of Parliament here in Westminster, received a direct threat of rape and the person who threatened was convicted under the Communications Act. Very often, threats of rape, death or disfigurement sound like, “You think you’re so pretty. We can fix that. Somebody should fix that”. It is the indirect nature of the threat that provides comfort to the person making it. They imagine that they cannot be prosecuted because they are not saying that they will do it; they are saying, “Somebody should rape you. Somebody should just eliminate you. Somebody should take that smile off your face; a bit of acid could do it”. That is how many of the threats presented by witnesses to the inquiry—we saw them on their phones and computers—were made; they were of an indirect nature.
One woman in my own chambers is acting for Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong publisher who is currently in custody awaiting trial under the national security law. She has received death threats, threats against her children and threats of rape. I do not imagine that we can inhibit what is done by people under the auspices of the Chinese Government with this legislation; all I can say is that these sorts of threats are experienced by many women and are not always of a direct nature so the law often does not encapsulate them. I am seeking to introduce some way in which we could, through careful drafting, cover the possibilities.
Take someone such as Andrew Tate: he is a good example of someone with a massive following who clearly puts out to boys and young men horrible ideas about how women should be treated, much of which involve detriments to women. As has been described by others in this House, a pile-on happens in relation to this. Women do not just receive a message saying, “Somebody should rape you”; they receive thousands of messages from the followers of the contributor and communicator.
I have had the benefit of meeting the ministerial team. I am grateful to the Minister and his team, including the lawyers who advise him. We sought a way of dealing with this issue. I particularly wanted to include specific mention of “rape, disfigurement or other” in terms of threats because, in the language of statutes, they are sometimes missed by young junior prosecutors or young policemen. When they see messaging and women come forward with complaints, they do
not automatically think that the threat is covered because of the rather oblique nature of statutory language. I wanted it really spelled out, with rape and disfigurement specifically included in my amendment. However, I am persuaded that this issue was in the minds of those who drafted this Bill.
I am pleased that it has been recognised that this specific issue is of a different nature when it is applied to women and girls. It is happening in schools and universities. Young women put their heads above the parapet—they express a view about feminism or describe the fact that they are a lesbian—then, suddenly, they receive a whole range of horrible insults, abuse and threats on social media. I am mindful of the contribution made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, in Committee. She was concerned, in essence, about people being rather wet about this and how this measure would inhibit free speech; really, it was about protecting rather gentle feelings. However, that is not what this is about. It is about threats of serious behaviour and serious conduct towards women. The indirect nature of it is not something that should put us off attempting to have law to deal with it.
As I said, I have had an opportunity to meet the ministerial team. We came to the conclusion that we might be able to insert something covering the fact that the carrying out of the threat could be done by persons other than the person who is sending the message. That is the important thing: women receiving these messages saying, “Somebody should rape you”, know that the message is carefully drafted in that way by the Andrew Tates of this world because they imagine that the police cannot then do anything about it, but they also know that these people have followers who may well decide to carry out the suggestion. It is really important that we find a way to deal with this.
As a result of our discussions, I hope that the House will see that this issue is something that we must deal with in this Bill because the opportunity will not come again. This is happening day in, day out to girls and women. If we are going to send a message about what is unacceptable, it is important that the law declares what is unacceptable. These threats are serious, as is the way in which women then have to change their lives. They stop staying out late. They worry about being in places where they might be subjected to some of these threats. They start limiting their behaviour.
Just earlier this morning, someone told me that his niece was a member of a football team’s fan club and had been elected to the board. She suddenly received a whole range of threats from men who felt that no woman should be in that position. She received a pile-on of a horrible kind, and said to her uncle that she wanted to step down and did not want to be on the board if she was going to receive that kind of messaging.
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Women start changing the opportunities in their lives and stop doing things that they might want to do: they stop deciding to be Members of Parliament or to stand for election in any capacity, or, if they are lawyers, to take cases that will be inflammatory. They start inhibiting and limiting their own potential because of this kind of threat coming from men who resent the idea that women should be aspiring to hold positions
and be equal to men. Some of it is of a very unpleasant and nasty nature, and law has its place in sending out clear messages of what is acceptable and unacceptable. It is then up to us—in schools, other educational settings and everywhere else—to spread the word among our young men and young women about what is acceptable and what they must not accept, and about the right way to behave decently towards other human beings.