‘I hope your children die of cancer’: MPs tell of rise in abuse after crimes in parliament soar

MPs have told how they have received a fake bomb and messages calling for their children to die of cancer after a sharp rise in the number of crimes reported in parliament.

Offences reported on the parliamentary estate in Westminster rose by nearly 50% between 2016 and 2018, with crimes including assault, robbery, blackmail and drug possession, according to police figures obtained by Sky News.

The number of reports of threatening and abusive letters at parliament more than doubled over the same period amid fears MPs are being increasingly targeted due to their beliefs on Brexit.

International Trade Secretary Liam Fox said anonymous social media accounts had given people the ability to be “deeply unpleasant, abusive [and] even illegal in a way they wouldn’t be able to do face-to-face”.

Asked about hate mail and abusive tweets he had received, Dr Fox told Sky News: “There’s been some pretty unpleasant ones.

“When you get an email that says: ‘I hope your children die of cancer’, you do wonder what sort of people would sit down and type something like that out and then want to be anonymous in the sort of venomous way that they do.

“I personally find it very difficult to understand why people would want to behave like that but I imagine we’ve always had people in our society of that ilk – it’s just made it easier for them with social media and they can do it anonymously in the way they couldn’t do in terms of any other behaviour.”

Tory peer Baroness Wheatcroft, a vocal Remain campaigner, said she received “horrible abuse” and “veiled threats” by mail and online as she called for anonymous social media accounts to be banned.

“My PA and I used to really hate opening these things and my emails were flooded and they were extremely nasty,” she told Sky News.

“Once Brexit is out of the way, I really do believe there should be a campaign – that I would like to get involved with – to do away with anonymity online because I think it’s really changed the discourse in our society.

“There used to be a time that when if you got an anonymous letter you’d go straight to the police – it was a crime, Miss Marple would have been appalled at an anonymous letter.

“Now we all get anonymous letters online all the time and they’re cowardly and they’ve got to stop.”

Describing the threats he had received, Labour MP Stephen Doughty told Sky News a fake bomb was sent to his office and social media companies had not acted quickly enough to tackle online abuse.

He said: “In the last six-and-a-half years of being an MP, I’ve received pretty horrific abuse.

“I’ve received a fake bomb sent to my campaign office, we’ve all received some pretty grim threat… that’s across the parties and across the house.

“The Brexit referendum was clearly significant part of that but I saw some pretty horrific stuff going on in the Scottish referendum, for example.

“We’ve seen a pretty significant rise in online abuse and hate, particularly involving social media companies, and they haven’t acted quickly enough on that.”

Labour MP Yasmin Qureshi, who was the victim of a campaign of online harassment by a man who was later jailed, told Sky News that she had received “heartbreaking” abuse which regularly referred to her being Muslim and her Pakistani heritage.

“I’m sure this high spike is linked with the Brexit issue which has been very toxic,” Ms Qureshi said.

“I mean our post bags and emails… we’re constantly being told, you’re not following the will of the people, you’re being traitors.

“I’ll take these people on, they’re bullies – that’s all they are. They’re bullies and I’m not going to let them intimidate me, and I’m not going to let them change the way I live my life.”

A parliamentary spokesman said it was working closely with police to ensure “the highest possible levels of safety and security for everyone on the parliamentary estate”.

(c) Sky News 2019: ‘I hope your children die of cancer’: MPs tell of rise in abuse after crimes in parliament soar