Threats against female MPs having ‘chilling effect’ on women in public life, minister says

Threats against female MPs are having a “chilling effect” on talented women thinking of going into public life but deciding not to, security minister Dan Jarvis has said.Warning that there was an “unprecedented” volume of threats against elected representatives – including assaults, vandalism, stalking and a “blizzard of online abuse” – Jarvis announced new security measures ahead of the local elections.“Women and ethnic minority representatives report the highest volumes of abuse, including overtly sexualised and racially charged threats, which has a chilling effect on who feels able to stand for public office,” he told MPs.The government announced the appointment of a deputy chief constable from Cambridgeshire police, Chris Balmer, as the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for defending democracy.Other measures announced include the creation of a new threat assessment centre – modelled on an existing one for MPs – staffed by a specialist team based in counter-terrorism policing who will monitor and respond to threats against councillors and candidates in the upcoming local elections. A protective scheme already in place in England will be extended to representatives in the Welsh and Scottish governments.The update on the work of the government’s Defending Democracy taskforce came as MPs shared their own experiences, while Jarvis and others referenced wall-mounted shields dedicated to Jo Cox and Sir David Amess, MPs who were murdered in 2016 and 2021 respectively.Chris Webb thanked Jarvis for being in contact after an incident last month at a jobs fair set up by the Labour MP for Blackpool South, which led to a man being charged with a public order offence.“Unfortunately, since becoming a member of this house, I have received a barrage of constant threats and death threats from the far right in my constituency and that seems to be growing, which is a real concern,” said Webb, who won a byelection in 2024.Also in the Commons chamber was the new Green party MP, Hannah Spencer, who had to be ushered into a police car after she was targeted when clashes broke out at an anti-far-right event in Manchester on Sunday.Katie Lam, the shadow security minister, used her response to Jarvis to call out ‘the threat of extremist Islamist violence’. Photograph: House of CommonsThe announcements come against the backdrop of varying degrees of confidence among MPs in the measures put in place to protect them. However, there was a breakdown of cross-party consensus when the shadow security minister, Katie Lam, used her response to the Jarvis ministerial statement to attack the government’s recently announced action plans on social cohesion and hate crime.“We must be honest about the fact that, while violence against elected politicians can come from a wide variety of groups, the single biggest extremist threat to our country remains the threat of extremist Islamist violence. That threat is intimately tied up with a growing tendency towards sectarian politics in some parts of our country,” she said.Dawn Butler, a Labour MP who told Lam that she was “a disgrace” as the Conservative frontbencher made her statement, later said: “I hope the shadow minister will get to her feet and correct the record, because there’s a far greater threat in the far-right than there is from Islam.”Reform UK was criticised during the debate over its campaign tactics, including a social media advert targeting the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, that was described as “racist”.Liberal Democrat Al Pinkerton told the Commons that the threats to MPs were very real. “I was physically attacked, or at least an attempt was made to physically attack me, during the 2019 general election, when a beer glass was thrown at my head,” he said.