To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of increasing abuse and intimidation on the recruitment, retention and wellbeing of local councillors; and what action they intend to take in response.

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have expressed a wish to speak in this debate. I draw noble Lords’ attention to my role as a non-exec director at MHCLG.

Four years ago, when I left local government, there was growing concern about the rising levels of abuse directed towards councillors and council candidates. I wish I could say that the situation has got better since then. Sadly, it is worse—much worse. My purpose in securing this debate is to continue to raise awareness of the scale of the challenge faced and to ensure that we do not simply accept it as the new norm for our democracy.

The evidence before us is stark: rapidly escalating levels of abuse and intimidation are having serious and detrimental effects on who is willing to stand for elected office, how long they wish to hold elected office and how they are being prevented from serving effectively during their term. An LGC survey last year revealed that online abuse and a lack of respect from the public are the biggest deterrents to people serving as councillors. When viewed alongside parallel evidence that women, LGBT people, Muslims and those from ethnic minority backgrounds face disproportionate abuse on social media, we should be extremely concerned at the chilling effect that this is having on the diversity and talent pool of those seeking to serve their local community.

This is not a theoretical challenge; it is happening now. One Labour councillor reports three colleagues taking time away due to abuse; one of them was

“very close to a breakdown”.

Another said:

“People are vile online … Facebook is particularly toxic”.

Women councillors report doxing, stalking and AI-manipulated images. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, president of the Local Government Association, relays multiple accounts of women facing the normalising of harassment, being photographed in public and having their locations posted online, with some now

“frightened to go to meetings”.

The LGA’s 2025 Debate Not Hate survey records many severe incidents: a councillor’s car firebombed; a parish chair’s predecessor assaulted and left with a fractured skull; death threats and slurs aimed at LGBT+ and Muslim councillors; and persistent co-ordinated misinformation and harassment on social media. Disorder and intimidation at meetings are escalating. Crowds menaced councillors, objects were thrown and serious damage was done to council buildings in Swale last December. In the same month, an effigy of council leader Councillor Alyson Barnes was burned in Rossendale.

Physical assaults on individual members are not rare outliers. In June last year, Councillor Jordan Tarrant-Short was repeatedly punched in the head in Rochdale. In September 2025, Councillor Paul Kendrick was assaulted in Norwich. In October 2025, Councillor George Finch, the leader of Warwickshire County Council, was assaulted and abused in Nuneaton town centre. Just a few months ago, during the election campaign in Kent, Councillor Thomas Mallon was attacked on a doorstep and suffered lasting nerve damage as a result.

I also wish to talk about two absolutely shocking incidents in the recent local election campaign in my home city of Newcastle upon Tyne. One late evening, a couple of weeks before polling day, Councillor Stephen Barry-Stanners had eggs thrown at his house. This was logged with the police, but it was only when he left the house the next day that he spotted, daubed in huge letters in red paint, the words “Peedos”—spelt wrongly—“live here”. Stephen said at the time that he was devastated by the incident, adding that

“the abuse has been escalating since this local election campaign started. It was initially just trolling and nasty comments, and soon I couldn’t post anything without getting the vile stuff under it, no matter what it was”.

On the Sunday, after losing her seat by just 22 votes, former cabinet member Juna Sathian’s home was pelted with eggs. She was not at home at the time, but her husband and two young sons were, and they were terrified by the experience.

Is it any wonder that a quarter of councillors tell LGC that they do not plan to re-stand, while many more are unsure? Women, younger people, minority ethnic, LGBT candidates and those with caring responsibilities are disproportionately deterred, especially when abuse mixes with deepfakes and pile-ons that never quite cross a criminal threshold but corrode well-being and mental resilience all the same.

The Government have tools to address this but, so far, consistency and pace are missing. Operation Ford created force elected-official advisers as single points of contact, yet support is patchy. The Elections Act 2022 created an offence of intimidation, but the bar is often too high to deter persistent harassment. The Online Safety Act is moving towards implementation, but risks overlooking activities that are “legal but harmful” at scale: doxing, synthetic sexualised images, targeted misinformation and co-ordinated trolling.

There are a number of steps that I would urge the Government to consider taking. The first is to make support consistent and accountable. They should establish a national councillor safety co-ordination unit, with real-time intelligence sharing and standards for forces, ending postcode lotteries in response. They should require every police force to provide a named, trained adviser for elected members, with service levels, escalation routes and Home Office oversight. They should also issue CPS and policing guidance to lower the practical threshold for action against intimidation around elections, so that swift and early intervention can prevent escalation.

The second step is to put teeth into online protections. Ofcom should be instructed, in its implementation of the Online Safety Act, to recognise elected local politicians as at-risk users and give them priority pathways for the rapid takedown of doxing, synthetic or sexualised deepfakes and impersonation. It should impose sanctions for repeat abusers and publish turnaround targets and league tables of how online and social media companies perform. It should develop a no-cost “trusted flagger” route for councils to escalate malicious content and impersonation accounts affecting members. It should also work with local government to establish proportionate mechanisms that address persistent, targeted harassment that stays just below criminal thresholds but drives people away.

The third is to protect meetings and democratic spaces. The Government should update the guidance to enable councils to provide proportionate security at meetings and give them powers to expel and bar those who demonstrate violent or persistently abusive behaviour. They should fund basic security measures for high-risk venues and members, including incident-logging tools, training and rapid liaison when threats spike.

The fourth is to support victims and prevent burnout. The Government should commission confidential mental health and trauma support for councillors, including post-incident care and 24/7 advice helplines. They should ensure that councils have the resources and training at induction to help people to take down offensive material.

The fifth step is to track this problem and our progress. The Government should publish an annual report to Parliament on councillor safety, recruitment and retention, disaggregated by gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability and age, with force-by-force performance of the police against service standards. That would go a long way towards tackling this problem.

We need to act now to make policing consistent, online platforms accountable, public meetings safe and support for those affected accessible. Local democracy should be a calling, not a hazard. Let us make it safe to serve.

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, for bringing forward this timely debate and for his powerful opening speech. The growing abuse and intimidation aimed at those who serve in public life is a fundamental threat to our democracy and the integrity of our democratic processes.

Having spent much of my 30-year career in political campaigning, I know at first hand that councillors are at the heart of our communities and, very often, our political parties. Yet, unlike many of those in national politics, they often operate with little support. They work from their homes, make themselves readily accessible to residents and balance public service with careers and families. That openness is a strength of our local government, but it leaves councillors uniquely exposed. We must consider the chilling message that this abuse sends to those considering public life. Why would talented people put themselves forward if it means exposing families to harassment and physical threats?

This challenge cannot be separated from the increasingly polarised political environment in which many councillors now operate. While people should be free to express their views on conflicts, political disagreement must never become a pretext for racial or religious hatred, including the alarming rise in antisemitism in recent years. This has been compounded by the rise in single-issue independent campaigns dominated by toxic identity politics and international issues, even when the office sought is a local one.

I urge the Government to ensure that the Defending Democracy Taskforce further examines these local threats. We also need concrete action now. We cannot simply ask for more reports, more recommendations and more delay. Will the Minister set out what further practical steps can be taken now to protect councillors from increasing abuse and intimidation? If we do not act now, I fear that fewer and fewer people will step forward to serve, and our democracy will suffer.

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, for bringing it forward. I declare that I am the head of the Labour office at the Local Government Association and I have been a councillor for 12 years. I have literally just come from the LGA this morning where we were discussing this very topic.

I am making my remarks with immense personal sadness that we are having to have this debate at all. I will not lie: following the recent elections, there have been moments when I have shed tears about the abuse that people who I call friends have had to face in these local elections. That in 2026 we must stand here and discuss the abuse, harassment and intimidation of elected councillors is a damning indictment of where our public discourse has arrived.

Councillors are not distant figures in Whitehall. They are neighbours; they run food banks; they sit on planning committees and housing panels. They are the most accessible tier of our democracy, and that accessibility is now being weaponised against them. I have examples from councillors and candidates I know personally: cars set alight, sustained stalking campaigns, a candidate punched and knocked out recently on the doorstep. Just an hour ago I heard of a 74 year-old councillor in Plymouth being attacked in a stairwell. These are not abstractions; these are the lived realities of people who put their names forward to serve their communities.

I come here today with some solutions. Three things must change. First, our institutions must do consistently better. Operation Ford was a welcome step, but it cannot be a one-off. Returning officers and monitoring officers at local authorities must be properly equipped, trained and empowered to act when elected members face threats. The Electoral Commission must play a more active role in setting and enforcing standards of conduct around elections. The Home Office must develop a far deeper understanding of the specific nature of this threat. Without that, enforcement will always lag behind the harm. I welcome the recent government proposals and action on councillors’ addresses being public on websites.

Secondly, we cannot have this conversation without confronting social media. Misinformation spreads at scale and abuse is industrialised. Co-ordinated campaigns of harassment can be mounted in minutes or hours, targeting individuals with a ferocity that would have been unimaginable a decade ago. This is not only a safety issue but a democratic one. It puts people off standing for public office, and the evidence is clear that women are disproportionately targeted. We need robust, enforceable regulation of platforms, and the Online Safety Act was a start.

Thirdly, perhaps most uncomfortably, we must look in the mirror. Culture flows from the top. When politicians at the highest level trade in contempt, when opponents are not just wrong but become enemies and when inflammatory language is rewarded with column inches, we should not be surprised that it filters down. We have a responsibility—every one of us—to model the public discourse that we want to see. Just because we have the right to say something, it does not mean that we should. Local democracy depends on ordinary people being willing to put their names on a ballot. We are making that harder and more dangerous. We can and we must do better.

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, for initiating this important debate. Abuse of local councillors is not new; I am afraid it goes back a long time. I was a local councillor for over 25 years—I chaired various committees and was leader of the council for 19 years—so I will talk about a few personal examples. From the moment there was a change of control, there were demonstrations at the town hall. People ran a gauntlet of abuse and threats, and many council meetings were disrupted by order papers flying through the air from the public gallery, which was usually subdued only when demonstrators were removed by the police. For a long period, the police kept crash barriers at the town hall, as they were there so much.

For individual councillors, demonstrations outside their homes and threats through the letterbox were common. At that time I had small children, and I had to contend with being burned in effigy outside my home on many occasions. Of course, I was not there—I was at the town hall—so it was my young children and my wife who had to suffer it. One particular demonstration comes to mind: when it was finished and they had taken their photographs—this shows my influence—the people in the wheelchairs were all able to get up and push their wheelchairs away. Obviously, I had some effect: the power of a councillor.

I am using my own examples, but even today much of this is organised by people in mainstream political parties, so I slightly feel that we are also reaping a bit of what our own political parties have sowed in the past. Now it is so much worse with social media, because they do not even have to show a bit of courage by showing up outside your house and shouting at you; now they can just do it online under a fictitious name and you will never know who they are.

Public anger over policies is often driven by government policies coming down to councils to implement. For most people, the layers of government are totally opaque. Making hard decisions goes with the job of being a councillor—except, of course, when councils do not do that and we have poor councils as a result. We have all seen the result of those poor councils that do not make decisions. The police and judiciary must take seriously the threats, they must take action and they must penalise as necessary. It is not, and never can be, normal politics to abuse someone. This has to be treated with seriousness and there has to be a price for that kind of behaviour.

Finally, much of this will be much better with local government reform, greater fiscal freedoms and real transparent powers, which I believe would create clarity. If, at the same time, we get robust action by the law, this problem will decline. It will also decline because people will start to believe that councils are actually a little more relevant.

I remind noble Lords of the advisory speaking time limit. If speakers run over, that will simply reduce the amount of time the Minister has to respond, because this is a time-limited debate. I would be grateful if speakers could stick to three minutes.

My Lords, I declare that I am a vice-president of the LGA. In the LGA it was a pleasure to work closely with the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, as leader of the Labour group, and subsequently with the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, as leader of the LGA.

When I became leader of the Welsh Local Government Association, I made a clear commitment: respect and equality would not be an option; they would come first. That commitment feels more urgent than ever, because intimidation in public life is not declining—it is evolving and getting worse. We have codes of conduct and processes, but process is not protection. People are staying silent because they feel intimidated, fear the consequences or are told that this is simply part of politics—it is not.

When abuse is dismissed as “banter” or ignored, it creates a culture that would not be tolerated in any other workplace. It does not stop at the council chamber door: it follows people home, online, anonymous and relentless. Many of us know that from personal experience. I have had paint thrown over my car and someone was arrested for threatening to kill me.

We say we want new voices in public life, but we are already losing them. Too often, it is younger councillors, particularly young women, who face the worst abuse and decide that it is simply not worth it. That is talent lost, representation lost and trust weakened. Leadership matters, culture matters and tone matters.

Zero tolerance cannot just be a slogan. It must be action in the moment—call it out, challenge it, stop it. Our systems must do more than just exist. They must be trusted to protect those who rely on them. I say to His Majesty’s Government: work with the devolved Administrations and local government to deliver stronger protections and real support. The reality is that if intimidation is tolerated, participation will fall. If participation falls, democracy is diminished. This is the test—act or allow that decline. That is a choice we cannot afford to get wrong.

My Lords, I am at a slight disadvantage in this debate. I am one of the few participants who has not served as a local councillor, so I do not have the coalface experience that others do. I will talk about this issue from the point of view of my work as director of the Free Speech Union. Since I set it up six years ago, we have taken 317 cases—I checked yesterday—coded “local government” in our case database. Of those, 141 were about members of the public who had been complained about by councillors or council employees.

The pattern we encounter again and again is that when members of the public say things that councillors find disagreeable but that would nevertheless be protected speech under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, they are complained about, sometimes with devastating consequences, on the grounds that what they have said constitutes harassment, misinformation or hate speech, even though it is clear-cut that their comments are protected.

I have time, so I will give one or two examples of people we went to bat for. Last year, two police officers from Greater Manchester Police paid a visit to a grandmother in Stockport who had posted in a Facebook group calling for the resignation of two local Labour councillors, after the Mail on Sunday had exposed comments in a WhatsApp group in which they expressed the hope that a troublesome member of the public in their ward would die. This scandal involved Andrew Gwynne when he was a Health Minister, and he had to resign as a result. Nothing she said could possibly have been perceived as meeting the threshold for harassment, yet two police officers, having been tipped off by the partner of one of these councillors, paid a visit to her house. There are countless such cases. In another case we are dealing with at the moment, a member of the public objected at a meeting of his parish council to the imposition of a 20 mph zone in his village. Two Green councillors promoting this proposal complained that they felt his comment was harassment.

We have to be careful in creating the various mechanisms that the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, proposed in his opening speech. How do we safeguard against them being weaponised for political purposes to suppress legitimate criticism of elected officials?

My Lords, like the noble Lord, I have not been a councillor, but I was married to one and am the mother of one. We have heard all the appalling facts and stats. As chair of the Jo Cox Foundation, I am deeply concerned about the impact that abuse and intimidation are having on councillors, their families and, ultimately, our society. No one should have to risk their safety to serve in public life, yet that is exactly what is happening across the United Kingdom, with damaging consequences for our democracy.

The political atmosphere is becoming increasingly hostile. Too many elected representatives and those considering standing are avoiding engagement, limiting their visibility or stepping away altogether because of safety concerns. Too many excellent change-makers are choosing not to stand in the first place. These pressures, as we have heard, fall disproportionately on women and those already underrepresented in our democracy—the very people whose participation makes our institutions more representative and resilient.

Our local councils should reflect the communities they serve, but instead this trend risks narrowing who feels able to take part. We are moving towards a culture where abuse is dismissed as part of the job, but it is not: it is a systemic problem rooted in wider inequalities and pressures across the political ecosystem, and it is worsening across democracies globally. If we fail to act, our councils will reflect an ever-narrowing section of society, with serious implications for the decisions made and the services delivered.

We need an inclusive democracy, one in which people feel safe and confident to participate in robust but respectful debate. Freedom of speech is a cornerstone of our democracy, but it must never be used to incite violence, spread hatred or justify harassment. We need a democracy that enables political parties to thrive. Councillors, who are the lifeblood of all political parties, are the people who are rooted in our communities.

The Jo Cox Civility Commission has made clear recommendations to address abuse, intimidation and violence, and there has been welcome progress, including Operation Ford, but more needs to be done. The Representation of the People Bill is a very positive step, and it is a great moment for us to amend that Bill where necessary. We need the Electoral Commission to publish and maintain candidate safety guidance and require returning officers to provide this to candidates as soon as possible; the Electoral Commission should have more powers for enforcement; and political parties must publish their codes of conduct and be held to them.

Finally, social media has amplified hostility. It did not create resentment towards politicians, but it provides a perilous platform to share it, with dangerous consequences. A clear code of practice under the Online Safety Act would help to provide consistent protection and give candidates the confidence to participate. I pay tribute to the LGA for all the work that it has done with councillors, but also with those who have lost their seats.

My Lords, I express my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, for bringing this subject before us today. I was shocked to hear many of the incidents that he relayed to us. For the first time in many years, I began to think that perhaps my decision to give up as a councillor back in 2014 was not such a bad one. It is a decision that I have regretted, really, ever since I made it. I served five terms, and I very much enjoyed them. One of the reasons I decided not to continue was that I felt it was becoming acceptable to attack elected members. I felt we were having targets painted on our backs, and it was not a situation that I was prepared to continue to be a part of.

When I left local government at Havering Council, I was invited to go abroad to help advise councillors there and see their culture—in Fiji, as it turns out. I was phoned up shortly afterwards by the organisers, who told me there was no space left in Fiji, so in fact they were sending me to Basra—and could I come into the Foreign Office for my kidnap training on Tuesday? I went and did it, and I found councillors there who were very keen on helping their community, but they all constantly accused each other of corruption and all required bodyguards. It was a culture that I really would not want to see developing here, a future culture that we do not want: there was a constant churn, a constant change of members, no learning from previous experience and very little progress for the citizens of that city, quite apart from the elected members.

In the little time left to me, I will speak in support of a comment made by my noble friend Lord Udny-Lister about part of this being about the lack of power that councillors now have. People expect us to be able to achieve things and yet, very often, we are just relaying bad news to them. That is creating expectations and then letting them down, which is bound to lead to problems.

There is no excuse for bad behaviour, but I remember chairing a planning committee about expanding a sixth-form college in Havering. It was an excellent application, worth £60 million, from the Government. A mass crowd turned up and did not want it. I understood them: if I had lived next door to it, I probably would not have wanted it either. But it was a case of the greatest good for the greatest number—a really good facility, there for the future for all the young people of our borough. So we approved it, and we got a lot of abuse from the people who had come to the meeting. We got accused of corruption. When we had finally cleared the room out, gone away and signed the whole thing off, the Government came back to us just a few months later and told us they were withdrawing the money, so we could not have our sixth-form college after all. We had taken that massive reputational hit for nothing. That is something we want to avoid in future.

My Lords, for my contribution, I wish to place on record a statement by Councillor Lisa Hinton, deputy leader of Cumbria—one of Cumbria’s finest councillors—on the scale of abuse that she has been receiving:

“The abuse I receive online is not abstract—it is personal, relentless, and at times shocking. I have been called ‘stupid’, ‘not intelligent’, and subjected to constant comments about my appearance—told I am ‘too fat’, mocked, dismissed, and reduced to something less than human. I have read comments blaming me for serious crimes, including statements that if ‘anyone is raped by an illegal, it will be your fault’ or ‘You are a risk to our women’.

Now people are feeling braver and the abuse is to my face. I have sat in council meetings and heard people shout at me ‘traitor’, ‘you are on warning’ and ‘you have blood on your hands’. I’ve started to fear going. It has been getting worse over the last 6 months; we see the questions coming in mainly framed around immigration. The response from Council is more police, more security at the meeting—but no pastoral support for us. No thought to the wider implications on us as councillors and our mental health, because after hearing fifty people shouting, you still have to go home, put tea on, help with homework, and be a mum. But it stays with you. It hurts.

If this is what public service looks like, fewer people will choose it. Why would you? I could write thousands of words with examples of the hatred I’ve received over the last few years, abuse towards councillors needs to be tackled and stopped before anyone is seriously hurt”.

These are the words of Councillor Lisa Hinton. Lisa is calling for more support. I want more than that: I want action against the bully boys. No councillor should have to put up with this bullying and abuse. I rest my case.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Forbes for ensuring that we have this very important debate, at a time when so many councillors are seriously at risk. I am sorry to say that not many police forces really understand what is happening, particularly to women.

I will address a subject that both speaks directly to my own political beginnings and represents the core of our democracy. In the 1970s, I began my own public career in local government, as the youngest woman elected for the London Borough of Brent. During my years on the council, we worked to advance the important campaign for a housing aid centre and a law centre, and we founded a housing association for the borough. That opportunity changed the course of my career and my life and taught me that local councils are not the places to administer, as they are often perceived to be, but where we learn how to serve our communities and improve the daily lives of the families in them. As it was for many other women and me, as well as other people generally underrepresented in public life, the local council was the first door to go to.

At that time, local councillors were respected. That is no longer the case today. This has been brought about by awful people who hide away behind social media, letters and so on. It is a disgrace. That is why this issue matters so deeply and why everyone in government, no matter their party affiliation, has an interest in ensuring that becoming a councillor remains an appealing and possible career choice for capable, diverse and public-oriented people. If abuse and intimidation make that career path seem unsafe, we will lose good councillors before they even consider standing for election. We know that through various networks, as my noble friend Lady Royall said.

The Local Government Association’s 2025 survey found that almost three-quarters of councillors—73%—reported feeling personally at risk in the previous 12 months. A quarter had experienced a threat of violence or death against themselves or someone close to them. These are not the minor discomforts of public life; they are serious and harmful, affecting well-being, family life and the capacity of elected representatives to do their jobs.

I particularly want to address the impact on women. The same survey found that 84% of women councillors reported being personally at risk, compared to 73% overall. Women are most likely to report abuse and intimidation, and the figure of 78% should concern every part of the Chamber. If women are driven away from local politics, local government, the vehicle through which we carry on many fundamental services, becomes less representative.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Forbes of Newcastle for bringing forward this important debate. It is a subject that matters deeply to me, not only as a politician but as someone from a ethnic minority background who has experienced these issues personally. This is not simply a political matter; it goes to the very heart of our democracy.

I speak not only from my principles but from my personal experience. I have been in politics for more than 30 years, with 22 years as a serving local councillor. I have witnessed at first hand the ugly reality of racial hatred in public life. At an election count, a returning officer would sometimes refuse to show me the spoiled ballot papers because they contained racial abuse directed at me. When I stood for Parliament some years ago, I received numerous racist email messages, and I quote just one of them. It said: “I’m not voting for that rag head”, referring to my turban and my Sikh faith. On another occasion, during an election campaign, a party stake board outside in my garden was vandalised with deeply offensive racial language scrawled all over it.

Despite everything I have experienced, I still firmly believe that politics is a noble profession. Serving the public and my community is the greatest honour of my life. Our democracy depends on ordinary people coming forward to represent their community. We should be encouraging more people from every background to stand for public office, not fewer. But that will only happen if they feel safe, respected and properly protected. Therefore, I ask the Government what steps they will take to strengthen the protection for councillors and candidates to tackle racial abuse, online harassment and intimidation, to ensure that those responsible for such behaviours are properly held to account. We cannot allow hatred and intimidation to become accepted as a part of political life. Our democracy deserves better.

My Lords, it is 53 years ago to the month that I was elected to my local authority in Torfaen. I fought four elections and I can honestly say that I had no abuse during the whole time I was a local councillor. There was a time I can recall knocking on the door and a factory worker was woken up because he had been on shift overnight. On another occasion, a German resident asked me why there was not a Conservative candidate. I was obviously the Labour candidate and I said that it was not my job to put up a Conservative. But that was it. Fast forward all those years later to a few weeks ago, at the elections that we have had, in our case in Wales for the Senedd, and for councils in England, and the world has changed.

I thought I would have been used to abuse, having served as Northern Ireland Secretary, but it came as a terrible shock a couple of weeks ago when I heard the stories of people who had knocked on the doors in the weeks before the election. There were stories of terrible, personal abuse on the doorstep and of online abuse on social media and the internet—neither of which was present 53 years ago. Politics has become so polarised that it is reduced to soundbites and, therefore, people do not read newspapers any more. I have never seen this vulgarity and ugliness in politics in my political life. We have to do something about it.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Forbes for raising this issue today and I look forward to hearing from my noble friend the Minister what solutions the Government have on this issue, particularly with regard to the Representation of the People Bill but also other measures, which need to be replicated in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Abuse does not stop at the border. I look forward to what she has to say, but I repeat what many of your Lordships have said: democracy itself is imperilled if we cannot find candidates to stand as a consequence of the level of abuse that they now have to put up with. It is a cheapening of politics and it is extremely sad.

My Lords, I join others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, for bringing this important topic to our attention and putting it on the agenda today. We have heard many powerful and moving contributions from all parts of the Room, which reflects how this is a genuine cross-party issue that should concern us all.

The Local Government Association survey of councillors, although not UK-wide, provides a helpful benchmark. It is shocking that just under 70% of councillors who took part in the last set of elections reported receiving abuse or intimidation. As we have heard from several speakers, not only is it a shocking figure in totality but it tends to affect particular portions of our society, which hugely hinders what should be a common desire for us all to have democratically elected politicians who represent all corners of society. Shockingly, according to the LGA survey, more than one in five councillors have had to report one or more issues to the police. To bring that number to life: that would be the equivalent of 174 Peers among us in the House of Lords having to report something to the police. That is a shocking number.

It is fair to say that, so far, we have not always seen a brilliant set of responses to these problems. Operation Ford has a rather mixed reputation among those who have sadly had recourse to it. Indeed, in the LGA survey, under half of councillors who have reported an issue to the police say that their response has helped either greatly or even just moderately. But there is also a need for action from the Government, including on the legislative front. We have already heard today that there is a wide mix of solutions available out there to pick from. That includes, for example, from the Speaker’s Conference; although it focuses predominantly on MPs, it obviously has wider applicability. There is also the Government’s own previous consultation on a new standards framework for English local government, for example. The LGA itself has made recommendations, and we have heard other proposals such as those put forward by the Jo Cox Foundation.

I worry that this issue will once again be caught up in that perpetual pirouette of prevarication that we sometimes have in Whitehall. We have promises of action, consultations, recommendations and promises of legislation, but then an absence from a King’s Speech, a ministerial reshuffle, an election and maybe even a change of Prime Minister. Round and round we go in that cycle, while the misery for councillors continues and the action fails to happen. I know the Minister has a strong commitment on these issues, and I hope we will hear from her a clear timetable for the action the Government will take so that we do not simply go round and round yet again.

I declare my interest as a councillor in Central Bedfordshire. This is an issue that I have spoken about many times with many people in this Room, particularly at the LGA. The terrible thing is that I cannot say it has got any better; it has actually got worse. I will not repeat all the terrible things that people have already mentioned, because I think we have all faced them. The one that has not been mentioned is the abuse of family members, particularly children. It is not just abuse of the councillor themselves; it goes beyond that. This is entirely and totally unacceptable.

When I first became a councillor—not 53 years ago but in 2009—most councillors were just good local people who wanted to help serve their communities. They wanted to get the bins emptied, fix the potholes, maybe build a new leisure centre and improve their town centre. They were not particularly political or politically motivated. They were motivated by their locale. I think we can all agree that most of those things are the sorts of things we should be doing. They are not very political issues; they are just desirable.

What has changed is that the whole firmament has become much more political with the advent of social media. It is a snowball effect. It is an echo chamber where anonymous or pseudonymous comment can spiral out of control. We are seeing national and even international issues being brought into local politics. This should not happen. The world has changed. Twenty-odd years ago, someone had to write a vitriolic letter. No one else would see it. You would get slightly upset, and you would throw it in the bin. Now, it is on social media, it is viral and it goes everywhere. A well-meaning councillor who is just trying to do the right thing will often, because of spurious or false information, be subject to huge abuse, which then spirals into the real world with physical threats, firebombing of cars and so forth. It is just not right.

Why would you become a councillor? You need real strength of character and motivation, and people are going off to do something else—very meritorious stuff. We need good councillors and we need to keep good councillors, so we need to protect them. The LGA did a lot of good work and I think the previous Government moved quite a long way, but it is not enough. My key question today for the Government is: what will we do to go further? What will we do to make it safe to be a councillor so that it becomes an attractive job where you feel safe, can serve your community and do those things—fixing the town centre, getting a new school built or whatever—without feeling that you and your family will be intimidated?

My Lords, I am very pleased to respond to this Question for Short Debate. I am very grateful to my friend and my noble friend Lord Forbes for securing the debate and to all noble Lords for some very powerful contributions this afternoon.

First, let me be absolutely clear that abuse and intimidation of local councillors, whether online or in person, are totally unacceptable. I am going to briefly outline some of my own experiences, because they are relevant. Throughout my time as a councillor, particularly as leader of the council, I experienced constant abuse on social media, as many other council leaders do. I had fictional accounts of meetings with me published online, which were very difficult to deal with, and online misinformation about members of my family, which the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, referred to. While I will put up with a lot myself, I do not think families should have to put up with this kind of treatment.

Lastly, I was a victim of a terrible incident that resulted in a court case. I have mentioned that simply because this is not just about the standards system or the policing system; it is also about the criminal justice system. If you feel victimised again when you get into the criminal justice system, that system is not working properly. So be assured that this Government will crack down on abuse in whatever form it takes—whether directed at an elected representative, a candidate or a campaigner.

Examples of abhorrent behaviour that councillors have been subjected to were given powerfully by my noble friend Lord Forbes, the noble Lords, Lord Campbell-Savours, Lord Udny-Lister and Lord Sahota, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Shah and Lady Wilcox. The particularly excruciating examples of racism given by the noble Lord, Lord Sahota, really strike home. The tales of terrible abuse on doorsteps given by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, and the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, are blood-curdling and chilling. All the cases that have recently been picked up by the media are so disturbing. We have some very brave people in local government who continue in their roles, in spite of what we hear about.

The Minister for Security, Dan Jarvis, in his March statement on the Defending Democracy Taskforce, has already put on record the Government’s view that

“we must challenge at every turn, the notion that abuse, threats and intimidation are now an inevitability for those working in politics and public life”.

Nor should we tolerate incitement to violence or normalise it as part of our political discourse. These actions, and those who choose to perpetrate them, fundamentally undermine our democracy, and we should not tolerate it. We have a clear responsibility to protect and strengthen our democracy. Local government is the grass roots of this democracy and will thrive if conditions are right for talented people to feel confident to come forward and stand for public office.

Of the 136 councils that held elections in May, 79 changed control. Many newly elected councillors have likely got their first taste of the cut and thrust of front-line political life—I hope it has not been a painful one for them. A robust exchange of views is one thing—democracy thrives on lively debate—but, given the evidence that online and in-person abuse is on the increase, we must ensure that the expression of strongly held views does not sink into divisive and toxic conflict, personal abuse, threats and intimidation. We stand shoulder to shoulder with local government on this issue. As the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, said, we must not allow this toxic discourse to become normalised. As the noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister, outlined, these actions can have a fundamental and dangerous impact on decision-making, with people not wanting to take the decisions they know are right for fear of reprisals.

Let me move on to what the Government have done and will be doing in relation to my noble friend’s Question for Short Debate. I will try to address as many of the points that have been raised in the debate as time allows.

First, Operation Ford and the Defending Democracy Taskforce were discussed by my noble friend Lord Forbes, the noble Baroness, Lady Shah, the noble Lord, Lord Mott, and others. We have committed funding as part of the Defending Democracy Policing Protocol to Operation Ford. This places a dedicated elected official adviser in every police force to provide security briefings and work with local authorities to co-ordinate appropriate security support where a heightened risk is identified. We must make sure there is a consistent and reliable response. I will take this back and find out what measures are being taken to ensure that this is not a patchwork across the country.

The noble Lord, Lord Young, and the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, both raised different issues about how we ensure that we have free speech. Freedom of expression and the right to protest are fundamental parts of a healthy democracy, and they are protected under law. The measures we are pursuing apply only to criminal intimidation or harassment, not to legitimate disagreement, protest or campaigning. It is important that we make that distinction. We are determined to ensure that people are not put off from campaigning and standing for public office, and we will continue to safeguard the strong legal protections on freedom of speech.

The noble Lord, Lord Pack, and others referred to the LGA survey, from which there was a very worrying and concerning set of outputs. I am pleased that, through the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act, we have now put beyond doubt that a councillor’s home address should not be published by default. In practice, this means home addresses are not published unless the member requests it. This small but vital legislative change will help ensure that local councillors and their families can at least feel more secure in their homes.

The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and others raised the issue of electoral reform. We are taking decisive action to tackle the harassment and intimidation of voters, electoral staff and campaigners. We are changing the law so that those convicted of intimidating or abusing electoral staff can be disqualified from seeking or holding elected office. This will bring electoral staff under the same protection already given to candidates, campaigners and elected representatives under the Elections Act 2022. The Representation of the People Bill will allow tougher sentences for those who abuse candidates, campaigners, elected representatives and electoral staff. In addition, we will remove the requirement for election agents, including candidates acting as their own agents, to have home addresses published on the notice of election agents.

Local government standards reform is a key issue, which was highlighted by my noble friend Lord Forbes and the noble Baronesses, Lady Shah and Lady Wilcox. The Government will reform the local government standards and conduct framework. In my brief I have the civil servant phrase, “as soon as parliamentary time allows”, but please be assured, colleagues, that I understand the importance of this and will be championing it to get it as soon as possible. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, clearly illustrated the need for that in his very powerful contribution.

We consulted last year on a suite of proposals and published the response in November. The overarching aim of the reforms is to strengthen ethical standards in every type and tier of local government. We will also make sure that authorities have the right levers to deal with misconduct swiftly, fairly and transparently. I have very much taken on the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, and the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, about the devolved Administrations. We will liaise with our colleagues on that.

The noble Lord, Lord Evans, gave us the illustration of an experience in Basra; we need to act now to stop the slide into instability. I was with a group of planning officers this morning. If ever a group of council officers suffer this kind of harassment, it is our planning officers. That has to stop. They need to be able to do their job and their consultations without risking harassment and intimidation and be able to make decisions according to law and their professional expertise without fear of harassment.

In conclusion, I reassure the Committee that I and this Government are committed to doing all we can to prevent abusive, intimidatory and threatening behaviours. For democracy to thrive, we need to make sure that we attract the widest range of people to seek to serve their communities. They should be able to do so without fear of intimidation or abuse. This is a shared responsibility that we must all embrace. The noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, said that serving as a councillor is the gateway to serving our community. I completely agree. As the Security Minister set out to the House on 12 March, we must draw a clear line together; by leading with respect, calling out unacceptable behaviour and working collectively, we can ensure that our politics remains open, resilient and worthy of public trust. I thank all noble Lords across the Committee for their contributions to this important debate. I look forward to working with them all as we move this forward.