MPs facing 'overwhelming' levels of abuse

"Overwhelming" levels of threats and abuse are creating a "dangerous" environment for politicians, their staff and families, an MP has warned.

Labour's Lizzi Collinge, who represents Morecambe and Lunesdale, said anger was being "whipped up and personalised" as part of everyday political debate with staff members having to shield her from violent correspondence.

She was speaking days after fellow Labour MP Bridget Phillipson, of Houghton and Sunderland South, said she had turned off comments on her Facebook page over abusive comments.

The House of Commons said MPs' security arrangements were subject to "rigorous risk-based" assessments which were under continous review.

Last month, Reform UK spokeswoman and former Conservative minister Ann Widdecombe was found dead in her Dartmoor home and a man has been charged with her murder.

Collinge told BBC Radio Cumbria that safety was "a really big concern" for her with significant time and effort put into arranging security measures "that could be better spent helping constituents".

"The volume of abuse and threats that me and my staff have to deal with can be really overwhelming.

"It's really frustrating when a staff member has to spend hours going through CCTV footage or spending several days making police reports.

"The threat is always there and the abuse is always there. It can be anything from someone vandalising my office to having to sift through Facebook comments and dealing with emails that come in. It takes its toll on people."

Collinge, who was elected in 2024, said she had been advised not to advertise her surgeries with constituents "because it's not safe", while having to explain security measures such as panic alarms to her children was "difficult" and "exhausting".

She partly attributes the situation to social media and is calling for political debate to focus on policy rather than personalities.

"People seem to think certain language is acceptable on the internet when I'm pretty sure they wouldn't say it to my face and the tone of the political debate in some arenas has contributed to that.

"I've had opposition people say things that aren't true like claiming I wanted to jail all Northern Ireland veterans or that I voted against the grooming gangs enquiry.

"We've had people shouting 'baby killers' at staff when I wasn't in the office.

"The way it gets whipped up and personalised I think is really dangerous."

She also pointed to the example of Jess Asato, the Labour MP for Lowestoft, who had fake sexualised images and videos of her created by Elon Musk's xAI chatbot Grok.

Collinge's fellow Cumbrian MP Tim Farron, who was Liberal Democrat leader when Labour's Jo Cox was murdered a week before the 2016 EU referendum vote, said he was not convinced society was more polarised than in years gone by.

However, he believes "we seem to have lost the art of disagreeing well".

"What I think may have changed is we're a less civil society," the Westmorland and Lonsdale representative said.

"We live in an online word where people are whipped up into the most ludicrous levels of hatred and unpleasantness towards one another and politicians.

"We see a level of hostility and violence that we didn't a couple of generations ago.

"People who make our society less safe don't deserve the victory of separating MPs from the people they're meant to serve."

Meanwhile, as reported by the Sunderland Echo last week, Phillipson, who is Minister for Women and Equalities and chair of the Labour Party, explained she had disabled interaction on her Facebook page due to "the volume of abusive and misleading comments, including the use of foul language, increasingly from bots and fake profiles".

She said the issue had "made it impossible to maintain a constructive space for everyone".

In 2021, a 50-year-old mentally ill man was jailed for 18 months after pleading guilty to making death threats against her.

A House of Commons spokesperson said: "Any assessment of an individual MPs' security arrangements or advice is subject to a rigorous risk-based assessment, conducted by security professionals and with input from the police and a range of professional authorities.

"These are naturally kept under continuous review. All MPs are offered appropriate security measures."

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