Good afternoon. I welcome all four of you. Mr Speaker sends his apologies, so you are stuck with me in the Chair, I am afraid. We are very grateful to you all for coming in and giving evidence. Shall we start with some introductions? We will start with Chief Inspector Duffy and move along the line, and then have some questions.

I am Bryan Duffy from Dorset police. I am now seconded into the Met as the national Bridger lead officer.

I am Simon Messinger. I am a commander from the Metropolitan police. I am the Commander, Protection. That includes parliamentary diplomatic protection, which has Operation Bridger within it.

I am Lee Barnard. I am a detective inspector, and I run the parliamentary liaison and investigation team here in Parliament.

I am Steve Jones. I am the lead intelligence analyst in the parliamentary liaison and investigation team here in Parliament.

Thank you all. Before you say anything other than your names, I should tell you that there will be a transcript made of the evidence that you give. You will have an opportunity to submit redactions for sensitive material, so please don’t worry about that. The intention is that you are able to speak freely to us this afternoon. We will ask all of you to respond to the initial few questions. If you do not want to respond to every question because you have nothing to add, please don’t feel obliged to add something for the sake of it. Equally, if you want to add something, please indicate and we will try to make sure that you have the chance. I will start with a fairly general question. Evidence given to us suggests that there is a perception, at least, that politicians are so-called fair game. In other words, we as politicians should simply absorb any concerns that we may have about harassment, intimidation or other types of threat, because of the job we do. First, do you agree that that is a perception at the moment, and that it is affecting the way in which you respond? Secondly, what can be done about it? We will start with Chief Inspector Duffy.

No, that is not a perception that I agree with or condone. As far as I am concerned, that has not been present in all my work so far with the Force Bridger co-ordinators or the FEOAs we have spoken to who understand all of this. If anything, the things against MPs that I read in the daily returns are awful, and I don’t think it is until people really read those that they understand the true nature of the issue. That perception is not something that I see. Whether that is the case from an individual perspective, I can’t say. I know this from a couple of years ago when the Speaker addressed the Bridger conference at Church House. We see Parliament as a village of 650 people and we see the crime rate against them. It fundamentally changes your perspective if you stop seeing people as individuals and look at the collective, and think about democracy and protecting it in that way. Those are my personal views.

I would agree. There is a culture or perception that this is part of the role, or part of the job, that I would wholeheartedly challenge. We see that across a number of agencies, not just with the criminal justice system but with Members themselves and their private offices, perhaps. I know my colleagues will pick this up later, but from a Bridger and a PLaIT perspective we would challenge the idea that these things should be tolerated. They should not be and when they breach the law we will pursue that and will advise, support and guide our colleagues across the UK to make sure that that is done. We will continue to put training out across the UK to make sure we try to get that consistency, which we will speak to later. We need that consistent approach from UK policing and the criminal justice process when dealing with some of these offences, but I wholeheartedly agree that there is more to be done.

From a societal point of view, there is potentially a cultural issue and an expectation that MPs will tolerate more than an average member of the public. As my colleagues have already said, we are trying to address that in policing. I think it sometimes feeds across into threshold-setting by members of staff in offices. We have evidence that some people delete the material they are sent, so we are trying to encourage them to send everything through for us to make the assessment, rather than being the person who does that internal threshold setting because they think we would not be interested. There is a challenge there and I think it is a challenge we are addressing. We are seeing our recording numbers go up year on year. Bizarrely, it is a kind of hidden offence type. There is lots of read-across into the public protection world, so we are trying to shine a spotlight on it and to encourage more reporting to us. We would rather see more coming through to us. Let us make that assessment rather than making that assessment for yourselves or letting your staff do it. Let us take that risk. We will make a judgment as to whether it is a crime or not, but that is part of the cultural challenge. It is part of that approach of see it, spot it, call it out: label it for what it is and report it to the police. It is probably outdated now, but there is still the thought that there are the slings and arrows of being on a platform—you are expected to take that abuse. We encourage everyone to challenge that and we are doing a lot of work with Members’ managers and staff members to encourage that stuff to come through to us. In policing, yes it is being recognised and we would not see it as an issue, but societally it remains quite a big challenge and I would say that it is a hidden offence type.

I would agree entirely with what has already been said. Societally, it is easy for people to go online and commit these acts—whether they are offences or not. That is something we would like to see more easily and simply, too. It is not necessarily about focusing on the crimes—it is also about the non-crime incidents that maybe do not reach the criminal threshold but are beyond the pale. If they are abusive or threatening but do not hit the threshold, if we are aware of these things we can start to put systems and processes in place to identify nominals and potentially link them back to more serious offences. I do not agree with it from a policing perspective, but I certainly think that societally there is an idea that Members of Parliament are seen as fair game.

I have a quick follow-up to all of you. On that perception of politicians as fair game, an article about me came out today in my constituency. Do you think that those targeted political ads that are put out with names and faces add to this culture of individuals being perceived as fair game?

Culturally speaking, I do not know if it is the “fair game” piece. Over the last four to eight years, we have just seen a change in society in terms of how debate and politics are conducted. It has veered towards one end of the spectrum: something more direct, attacking, that does not expect anybody to fire back, or for justice to follow, is now an expectation given how, as Steve says, debate is being conducted in the virtual world and in adverts. As for the risk of a culture of being fair game in a physical sense, if you look at the data it seems that people are not interested in having that debate with you face to face. They will do it from a distance, thinking that they cannot and will not be touched. I think that is the change, as opposed to the “fair game” element of you, one on one.

Others may want to comment on this, but following up on what Leigh is saying does it make a difference to you if you think that politicians are doing this stuff to each other? Does that change your view of where the appropriate threshold is for this kind of behaviour?

For me, no because this is about the possibility of the crime and the victim. That is the first consideration. I think it is potentially upsetting for all of us, in a way, when we see that “blue on blue”, if I can put it in those military terms, where Members say that they are victims—and they often really are—but the potential perpetrator of either the direct or the pile-on harassment is somebody from within their cohort. We are talking about standards of conduct, debate and everything else, and if we are going to hold members of the public responsible for what they are doing then, sadly, that bar has to be very high.

Understood. We will pick up on all these points but that is a helpful introduction.

In your responses, you have all indicated that you take these issues seriously, and you have sought to increase the number of cases that are brought forward, to train staff and so on. But would you accept that the perception among politicians is that there is, at least, inconsistency across different police forces in dealing with these issues?

Yes, I think there is. From the experience of the recent general election, and from meetings with former Members and serving Members about their lived experience, that was quite apparent. We found, through the general election, just using it as a good example, that how Bridger interacted with the candidates was far different from the first time we had had that responsibility. It was a little harder to drive that consistency across the UK. We worked extremely hard and learned an awful lot around that. I have no doubt that we will discuss some of the elements of the available legislation: there is a wealth of apt and proper legislation but getting consistency on how that may be dealt with is a little difficult with the 46 forces, each with a chief constable responsible for their own area. I think there is inconsistency. Through Bryan, Lee and the team at Bridger, we will continue to drive that consistency through increased training, advice, guidance and good practice, so that we can get a greater level of consistency. As the parliamentary lead and lead for the Bridger world, I cannot control how other forces may deem the legislation to work and that officer has to make that decision for themselves, with their own training.

Is that inconsistency due to a misunderstanding or lack of clarity about the existing legislation, and do we therefore need national legislation, rather than the present legislation or present rules? Or is it due to the fact that we just have so many different police forces across the United Kingdom that it is difficult to have a consistent means or level of dealing with these issues?

Through the general election we have learned, across the wider partnership, not just policing, is that there is a breadth and depth of legislation. We have some very good legislation, which is day-to-day business, not just at election time. There are things such as the Criminal Damage Act and public order offences, but there is more bespoke legislation that applies at election time that I think is far less understood across policing because it is infrequently used, so there is greater learning; I know that you have obviously heard from Kevin Ives last week around some of the election portfolio. It does come down to the individual officers and those force areas to deal with it at the time. I think there is a consistent drive. My view is that policing wants very much to be seen as independent and not taking sides, which is a difficult road to walk. With that comes further complexity and perhaps pressure on the thinking process of officers.

I do not want to come straight to the legislation, but with some of the legislation, the interpretation and guidance for forces can present difficulties for officers in where that threshold is set. For example, whether something is grossly offensive could be open to interpretation, so we see variations in whether people record something as crime or intelligence, based upon their assessment of “grossly offensive”. There are other bits of legislation that are not particularly helpful. One of the things we would like to do with the Chief Inspector is have an expert reference group so we can provide really strong national guidance with some case studies so that officers can say, “I recognise this, and this is the legislation we would use.” Some of the legislation is used only during election times, and you expect officers to understand the difference. In one of the Representation of the People Act offences, it says that heckling would be tolerated and repeated chanting would not. I defy anyone to tell me the difference in the heat of the moment. It is that kind of guidance that we need to make really clear for officers. We need to set it from the really low end of the spectrum all the way through to the more serious stuff, and we need to put some really clear, strong guidance in there, with case study examples, just to assist officers better on the ground. Across the UK, there is going to be an inconsistency in policing in general, so that is naturally going to feed across into this crime type as well. I accept the point, but we are looking to address it through this kind of national approach.

That is very helpful. While we are looking at what can be done to protect politicians, when police overstep the mark, we are the first to complain about freedom of speech and interfering with the electoral process. You have talked about the case studies and providing more clarity on the meaning of the legislation, but what about the training of police officers?

We are quite fortunate within Operation Bridger that we now have a dedicated resource to assist the strategic network, which has already been in place for a number of years. Now we have dedicated officers in each of these force areas, so effectively we have champions in each force area that are doing this full time. It would be the anticipation that those officers would follow a “train the trainer” approach, so they would be trained centrally by Mr Duffy’s team, and then that training would be rolled out nationally. We are way off that yet, because we need to have a meeting with the CPS also, because obviously our partners within the CPS would need to have some input just on what thresholds we would set.

We are about to come to that one as well.

And they would provide some specialist legal advice as well, to make sure that we are on the strongest possible ground. As you point out, everything we do needs to be balanced against that democratic right to protest. One of the areas that we are looking to explore more fully is antisocial behaviour legislation, which we would look at when dealing with that sub-criminal threshold. I find it unacceptable that somebody could repeatedly send a politician an email that is offensive, but not grossly offensive. They can keep sending that email to you, and we could look at the harassment legislation, but I would suggest that we potentially look at the ASB legislation instead. We have sought legal advice to treat Westminster as a community for the purposes of ASB, and some of this stuff just has not been tested in case law—there is a real lack of it. We did use ASB legislation successfully in a case to problem solve someone. There is something about that sub-criminal threshold, where it is not malicious communications or an Online Safety Act offence, but we could use that legislation as a softer approach, including community protection warnings and community protection notices, and then we can move up that scale. We are looking at the widest range of tactical options that we can give to our officers to deal with each of these cases in a bespoke nature. All the while, we are balancing that right to protest as well, so at least we can then be seen to have taken a balanced and proportionate approach, and to have weighed up their rights in conjunction with what we are doing. We do not want to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but we cannot tolerate this behaviour if it is repeated. I cannot keep sending an email to someone with really offensive, but not grossly offensive, stuff in it. It will just keep getting recorded as intelligence, and I just find that unacceptable, really.

That is very helpful. I do not want to stop Mr Jones answering that question, but two other colleagues want to come in, so perhaps this is the time to move on, and anyone who wants to can respond to those points.

I may be jumping ahead, but this inconsistent approach undermines confidence, to be brutally honest. I tend to deal with security on our side, for our MPs. People are being sent things that are quite threatening and serious. Some forces will see it as that; others will say, “Oh, it hasn’t crossed the threshold.” I do not know what that threshold is, because to me that seems quite serious. The problem is that people either do not report it or think that nobody particularly cares. Some other forces will be right on it straightaway, which is obviously the correct approach. There is this danger that each one is looked at individually and not as a pattern of behaviour. Some of these people are quite clever; they know that they can keep doing it—it is similar to the point you made about sending the same email. I know it is not easy, but how do you get it across that this is important? In my mind, the problem is that, unless that you do something early, people move on and go further; they think, “No one has done anything about that. Let’s keep on pushing.”

So it is the cumulative point that you were making a moment ago. I will bring Ben in and then you can respond to both points.

On the issue of inconsistency, I have received an awful lot of abuse in my time—probably more before I became an MP last July than since, in fact. I have probably well over a hundred examples of racist abuse that I have reported to the police—primarily the Met but latterly other forces as well. Whether the force takes it seriously really depends on which officer responds on which day. I have had people send identical racist images to me on the same day. One was dealt with by one force and one by another, and we ended up with one person being prosecuted and the other person not even being interviewed. The inconsistency is stark. Reporting things to PLaIT since coming to Parliament has actually been my least impressive experience thus far. When I have reported racist abuse to PLaIT, I have found that you guys just acted as a mailbox and sent it straight to my local constabulary in Cambridgeshire, rather than looking at it at all. You never asked me a single question about it. You never interviewed me about it. You never did anything. When I challenged that and said that I thought you should be investigating it because it had nothing to do with my constabulary in Cambridgeshire since it happened here, I was sent an offensive letter in the post here—I was given short shrift—and it was handed over to Cambridgeshire. They have never interviewed me about it either. I have never filled out a victim impact statement. Could you outline exactly what PLaIT’s role is in dealing with abuse that we send to you? I currently have zero confidence in PLaIT’s ability to investigate and potentially prosecute abuse sent to me. I probably would not bother sending anything more to you and would probably go via the civvy route to the Met.

We have the question about cumulative impact to pick up on. I think you have said to us already in relation to inconsistency that your answer is, broadly speaking, more guidance and more training, but if there is anything to add, please do. Finally, we have Ben’s point on the role of PLaIT, which perhaps Detective Inspector Barnard can pick up. Shall we start with the cumulative question, and where you impose a threshold when you are dealing with a cumulative case?

If I may, I will pass to Steve on some of the stuff on Mercury and the analysis that we will pick up, but I will try to cover that off. On the issues around the cumulative effect, I wholeheartedly agree—100%. There will be others in our system that we are aware of that will be singular and so forth. The key bit for me on the consistency piece is the work that is ongoing with criminal justice partners and Home Office partners to get that guidance across policing and across the CJ system to get consistency on where the thresholds are—where we would seek to intervene, and where the line in the sand is. I will pass to Steve on some of the analysis that we have from the Mercury system.

When a crime happens, there is a real set process that it should go through where it is agreed upon, it meets certain thresholds and it is passed to the CPS to make a charging decision. For the other pieces that come in as information or non-crime incidents or intelligence, previously that all went into one bucket; it was not really pulled out or broken down into certain bits. Working really closely with the Parliamentary Security Department, we have put together a categorisation system that is enabling us to better understand the information that comes into the system. That is how we are able to draw out things like abusive emails and threatening communications. Using that, and working out the nature of the incident, how they are getting in contact with the Member and what the motivation is behind it, if we can ascertain that, we are then able to work backwards and link the factors back to the people who are sending—I will use abusive emails as an example, because that is what we see a large volume of. That helps us identify lone actors, but also, if people are persistently contacting lots of different Members, if they are picked up by constabularies all around the UK, that would be really hard for individual forces to join up—

There are two questions here, aren’t there? The first is whether you are talking about multiple individuals contacting an MP, but the other is about one individual sending multiple communications to an MP, all of which, as Mark said, might fall slightly below the threshold. The question is whether Bridger and your methods of analysis allow you to put all of those together, in order to form a view about behaviour that would, cumulatively, cross that threshold.

We are doing a piece of work at the moment. Post the 2024 general election, we are able to group everyone in, so we are capturing the information for those individual people who are sending multiple messages to Members. We let them build up and then we feed that back into the policing system. We are also doing a piece of work around back data record conversion, for anything that has previously been captured that has not been linked. We are doing that to bolster any investigations or any process that would go forward.

In view of the time, unless anybody wants to add anything on the inconsistency question, to which I think, as I say, the answer is training and guidance, perhaps we can move, Detective Inspector Barnard, to Ben’s point about PLaIT’s involvement and what you do.

First, I can only apologise. I would be happy to take further communication from you outside of this meeting to see if we can resolve some of those issues. Without knowing the full details of the case, the only thing I can think of is that we are governed by the Home Office counting rules and the national crime recording standard. The Home Office counting rules say that it would be the constituency or county force where the offence took place that deals with the investigation. You can appreciate that we have national reach. A lot of stuff comes through to us, but if the crime originated in, for example, Police Scotland’s jurisdiction, then that crime gets investigated by Police Scotland. I can only assume that in your case, it originated in the Cambridgeshire constabulary, in which case it would be right that Cambridge police would deal with it. We deal with the cases that happen in London because we are the Met police. Where it happens outside of London, it has to go to the county force area, because they have got jurisdiction over that crime. That is a rule that is set by the Home Office. They are the Home Office counting rules.

I get that, and I have experienced that before, but this was literally sent to my address here in Westminster.

It is not the address that it gets sent to; it is the address it is sent from. The crime is recorded where it originated. If we cannot establish that, then it defaults to a victim’s home address, but it is where the crime originated. If we, for example, trace an IP address back to America, there is no offence because it has happened outside of the UK. That is another challenge of ours. The point of origin is where the crime gets recorded.

What about if that is online? You spoke about tracking an IP address. I know that you would need to do an Optica request to get an IP address. To my mind, this crime has never actually been investigated, because you have never taken a statement, you have never asked me any questions about it, and I am not sure that you would necessarily have gone and submitted an Optica request to find out the identity of a Twitter account without having done any questioning of me as the victim.

Again, I do not know the specifics of that case. If it was sent to Cambridgeshire police, we would have had a reason. If Cambridgeshire police did not want to accept it, they are not going to accept it, because we have not attributed it to their jurisdiction, so they would just send it back to us. That happens routinely around the country: if you cannot attribute it to a certain county force area, it gets passed back to the originating force. We are bound by the Home Office counting rules on that.

I think we may need to ask you to have a separate conversation with Ben about that specific case, but the broader point is this: what happens if there are several different people in different constabularies sending something to a single Member of Parliament? This goes back to the cumulative question, doesn’t it? Does PLaIT have a role in monitoring how many of those complaints are coming to a single individual? Otherwise, you might have 42 different police forces looking at 42 different complaints, but they are all coming to the same MP and all making a similar point.

Yes, and we also have single suspects who target multiple MPs across force areas—they reside in one force area, but they are not actually doing it to anyone in that force area. Of course, we then need to put pressure on that force area to take out things like stalking protection orders. We do that from a central point of view; we have a meeting on a monthly basis—a tactical tasking and co-ordination group meeting—that is chaired by a superintendent. That is where—to point to Steve’s work—we are improving on this and trying to become more nominal focused. On exactly those points, we are looking to implement a new IT system that will be able to provide those linkages for us. The new IT system will provide these links for us.

That is very helpful. Let us broaden it out slightly to the rest of the system. Sam?

One of the reasons why I asked Mr Speaker to come on to the conference is that, shortly after I was elected two years ago, I was a victim of stalking. I live in Cheshire police’s area. They handled it really well. The Bridger contact referred me into the stalking unit of the constabulary, which was superb. The unit then passed the case to the CPS. The CPS was superb. The CPS took it to court, and the perpetrator was sent to jail. This is about the wider criminal justice system. It was all really good until we got to the court, and the CPS and the stalking unit asked for screens for me and my staff. I fully expected that the judge would not accept that I needed a screen, but he said that my staff could not have a screen. That seemed really inconsistent to me. I do not see why my staff should be exposed to this particular perpetrator, but the judge did. From your experience of dealing with all the forces across the country and all the parts of the criminal justice system, how effectively do you think it is working?

I cannot speak on behalf of the court system, unfortunately, and I understand—

You can observe it.

I can observe it. I think the issue for us is, through Bridger, to learn and share from that, in order to give advice and guidance to those Bridger SPOCs and then those force areas, and to make stronger efforts through the judicial process around screens and special measures, as we would term them. It is another example of the inconsistency that you will see between force areas, different court areas and so forth. Again, we will continue to push on that through training and guidance. I think that the work I have mentioned already, through Home Office colleagues and the CJ process, will bring items like that out—not just from the general election, but from the lived experience of your good self and other Members—to be fed back into that system and put some pressure on the system itself.

Generally speaking, do you find that it is working? Your colleagues across the country investigate things and bring them to the CPS. Is the CPS working? Is that a smooth interaction, or is it too gritty?

My view is that over the last four years or so we have come on leaps and bounds in all those things; Bridger and our colleagues at the Parliamentary Security Department, who will give evidence after us, have come on a significant amount. There is always more to be done and to learn. On the previous point around learning about the drip effect of people consistently contacting one or many MPs, we are looking at that, and we are using intelligence and analysis to give us a greater understanding of the system and the ability to use different pieces of legislation. I think you will see from the paper we submitted that we are getting better outcomes through Bridger because there is a more bespoke approach. I will let Lee and Bryan come in on those very points, but, because we are focusing in more through Bridger, and supporting and advising those forces, there is a better outcome around some of these offences. I hasten to add that I take on board that it may not feel that way, but we are pushing, and will continue to do so, and the learning through the general election just gives more power to the elbow to push those boundaries a little bit more.

The CPS are definitely keen to get involved with us, and to see whether they can provide a dedicated point of contact within the CPS so that all cases involving Members will go through those specialist lawyers. I think you were quite fortunate in that Cheshire is one of only three places in the UK to have a dedicated stalking—

Lucky me!

In a previous role, I set up the stalking threat assessment centre in London, and I was part of the bid that set up the Cheshire one as well. Would I have that confidence if you were anywhere else in the country? I think you were quite fortunate to be in Cheshire and in safe hands there. That is one of the things that I am quite passionate about—stalking, and the increased use of things such as stalking protection orders to protect Members. We have successfully obtained a few of those in my time here. In the background, we are doing a lot of work with offenders. In my time here, I think we have had 86 offender management meetings involving some quite high-risk individuals. We sit on some quite senior, national security level MAPPA meetings as well. There is a lot of work that goes on in the background, which you probably are not aware of, to tackle and monitor the highest-risk offenders. As you can appreciate, lots of offenders come through at the lower level, but, obviously, our job is to pick out the higher-risk ones and to monitor and track those as well. I do think you were fortunate. Would everyone else be that fortunate? I don’t know.

What do you think we could do to make sure that that is not the case any more, and that everybody is as “fortunate” as I am?

I would like to see a multi-agency stalking approach in every force area, because you cannot really tackle stalking without having health involved, due to the high prevalence of mental illness within that cohort of offenders. If I had a magic wand, I would set up a stalking threat assessment centre in every force area, but there are obviously budgetary restraints around that.

I did take the Minister to visit them.

From our point of view, we certainly monitor, and would raise with—we have put pressure on force areas before to obtain stalking protection orders. That has to come from the force area where the suspect resides—they have to go and get them—so we have advised on how to obtain those before. I suppose, from that point of view, we try to use our expertise to inform the rest of the network, and then we have the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre, who we can call upon for expert medical advice, and they can lean into health services around the UK, as they have done in specific cases.

We only have 15 minutes left for this panel, and I am keen to get through some other questions. Sam, if you are content for us to move on, we will go back to Ben.

What are the main challenges to pursuing prosecutions against alleged perpetrators of intimidation, abuse or harassment of MPs and candidates, from the perspective of both the police and the victim? Do you have the digital forensic tools and capabilities needed to police virtual crimes, particularly, as that area is one of the most pressing?

This is a really big area of challenge for us. Personally, I do not think that these big social media companies are doing enough, and I do think that they are often facilitating offences as well. Just to start with, some of the challenges that my officers face are the times that we are taking to get results back from some of those companies. Some of them are so bad that we are actually expiring on statutory time limits for summary-only offences; they are taking over six months to provide the information that we need. There are huge things that they could do. I think that users should submit posts for screening; there should be almost like a cooling-off period before they are allowed to put something live. I think more should be done on verification of user details. They are real-life challenges for my team. Co-operation in the UK is generally good, but as soon as it is outside of the UK, we hit a bit of a brick wall. As I say, we can do an enormous amount of work and then it turns out that the sender originates from outside the UK and we cannot do anything.

I mentioned earlier an Optica request. What tools exist in that hierarchy to, effectively, accelerate the tools available to you? I appreciate that some of those will be confidential—at the higher end—but to look at the sort of abuse that we face, what tools do you have available to you? In the past, I have done my own digging, cross-referenced someone’s account, found them on Instagram, managed to find out their real name, date of birth and so on, presented all that to the police, and they still have not pursued it. They have said, “Well, because we didn’t find this information, we won’t include it.” What tools do you have to be able to identify an account?

That is part of the problem, because the majority of what the team deal with would be considered under the Malicious Communications Act, so it is summary-only offences that we are talking about. In terms of the priority level, they would be the lowest priority for subscriber checks—you mentioned Optica checks. Where we deal with something that is more high-risk, complex or sensitive, we would call on specialist resource. You are clearly very well read on the matter. The difficulty we have is that because these are effectively, in policing terms, beat crimes, they are the lowest priority, regardless of who the victim cohort is. They go by the crime type. That is why we have the really long delay. I still don’t accept the length of delay, because you would have thought these are relatively quick inquiries for them to do. It’s kind of a digital service, so you would have thought—I just can’t understand why some of these can take up to six months. It is just beyond me that it can take this long to come back to us. But in terms of the tools, we effectively outsource to specialists, and they would be better placed to answer that question than me—sorry.

So in your view, there is an inconsistency between the allocation of technical resources, which takes no account of who the victim might be, and the other things that you have talked about, where Bridger and everything else is designed to give a better response because somebody is a Member of Parliament. That is essentially what you are saying.

Yes.

My question is about some of the legislative frameworks for this. When people are released on undertakings and they are going to appear in court at some point in the future, can you ensure that there is consistency in the conditions that are placed on them—for example, they should not be allowed to approach the MP or the MP’s office? I know that you do not have any say over what the procurator fiscal or the Crown Prosecution Service do, or what happens at the end, but what about a level of consistency? I believe that somebody should no longer have representation from their MP in that situation, because they have lost that right. Can you ensure that there is a level of consistency both with the undertakings that happen from the police when somebody is bailed, and with whatever powers you have to make them not contact somebody? For me, the most important thing is that the police or justice system tell them that they cannot contact me, because that makes me feel safer—if that makes sense.

It makes perfect sense. From a policing perspective, or a Bridger perspective, we can provide advice and guidance and best practice through the Bridger SPOC network. We cannot control centrally what the officer in the case may be doing around that, but to support Members of Parliament, we can seek to make sure that the officer has good guidance about what we would ask and that they are asking pertinent questions of the custody sergeant and then through the judicial process.

The Parliamentary Security Department has told us that more should be done to reduce the threats. What are the police doing to help reduce threats against MPs? In your opinion, is it working? What are the problems with threat reduction?

I will step in to give everybody else a break for the moment. From the Bridger SPOC perspective, the work we are doing with PSD—with Mr Jones and with others—is what we might euphemistically call prevention work and getting after the threat. A lot of what we have had in the past is data that might tell you how a job is being managed and its outcome, as opposed to getting ahead. We are creating a new taxonomy around the threat to understand what is out there and what people are doing. We have changed the nature already of the tactical co-ordination group, which I will be chairing tomorrow, to encourage the teams and the SPOCs in relation to what they are asking your staff and office managers on their visits, bi-weekly or otherwise, as opposed to just accepting whatever it is your management are willing to tell us, because we can spike that. We can drive the activity to look at certain things such as addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers and what is coming up. We can ask, “Have you had contact with this?” because it may not have been enough to trip the wire with, “That is out of order. That is offensive. I recognise that email for what it is.” If it does not do that, but it comes from the same location, these are the dots that we need to start joining together. They may be able to send lots but sail under the radar. We need to be able to pick up on that. Those are relatively recent changes with Steve and his team about the capability and capacity to get behind that. It threatens to really change the game for us.

Can you actually do anything though? Once you identify that individual who is flying under the radar with lots of different things to different MPs, is there anything you can actually do?

If we understand what the underlying threat, person or anything else is, then, as Lee alluded to, within force areas we can ask, “Is this person on your radar? Are they part of your safeguarding practices?” They may not quite be hitting crime, but what is the other? If we have identified that person by gradually putting the pieces of that jigsaw puzzle together, there may be other opportunities to either deal with or understand what is going on. Lee has alluded to some of the background in terms of mental health state for a lot of people, which causes a high volume of traffic in this sphere. Prosecuting them is probably not always going to be appropriate, so what are the other methods? Being able to identify them and even visit or engage ahead of waiting for the crime to occur allows us to box that off and understand what the risk might have been, thereby preventing it. That is the bottom line. Nobody wants to talk about the issue after it has happened. Why do not we try to stop it? I would much rather deal with a Daily Mail headline that talks about the thought police than the other end of that, because nobody did anything.

You talked about spotting things that may be coming. Do you make any assessment of the domestic implication of overseas events? You also said at the beginning that the nature of how politics is conducted has changed. The obvious one is the Saturday Gaza protests. There was also something at the end of January—Mark Tami knows of this—where a kind of graphic was circulating around a protest about me to get me to stand down. It was because I had spoken on the subject of Bangladesh. It was people affiliated with one side of the argument there, whose aim was to shut me up. The demonstration then happened—I think on the 29 January. There are pictures of it; there was about 10 people, and they had made a big banner of my face. Maybe it does not tip into illegality because protest is completely allowed, but it is not super-pleasant to make something very personalised against one individual who is a democratically elected Member of this House. Far-away events seem to be landing in MPs inboxes, and on College Green where they had their protest.

Can I tie that to Clive’s question? I think it may be sensible to deal with these together, because it is about the cumulative effect of lots of different things all connected to MPs. Clive, do you want to ask your question?

I apologise for being late. Inspector, before I came, you were saying that MPs should not be trying to second-guess whether things are relevant but should be passing them on to Op Bridger and yourselves to make that decision based on your greater expertise in these matters. If that happens, and therefore some trivial issues are thrown into the system for you to look at, have the police got the resources to be able to handle what could be a flood of referrals from MPs and their staff?

I will start with the initial question on the implications or impacts of overseas events and politics. Yes, we are very aware of that for obvious reasons. I think we touched on it before around social media. Again, there are issues in policing aside from this—things can be on the net within moments, perhaps even before the 999 call is made, that will have international ramifications, and we are very alive to that with our PSD colleagues. That will be brought into daily management meetings—the wider tasking meeting that Brian has spoken about. The expectation through that Bridger network—through those fortnightly meetings—is to understand yourselves, your local area, your interests and so forth, so we will be aware of key things that you are passionate about and debating hotly. There will be others who wish to come to see you and perhaps confront you. We will ask you and make sure we have that intelligence around those key issues and build it into the intelligence picture, if that makes sense.

I’d be interested to follow up on that. I have had it on other issues that I have spoken on—abortion, for example. I think it is to stop women saying stuff.

That is a fantastic example. Several Members speak on that key issue. We are very aware of that and ensure the local Bridger SPOC is aware, so we can give advice and guidance.

Right. It just feels like it is going into a black hole. You forward it on, and nobody ever replies or anything.

The second question was about whether we have enough resources. To Brian’s point, I would rather have too much information than not enough, and as a police officer, I am always going to say, “Can we have more staff please?”

Please don’t let that be a reason for you or your staff not to send stuff through to us. If we need to get more resource, then I will go to Mr Messinger and ask for more staff. Don’t let that put you off, please. If something awful were to happen, people are going to start looking in waste baskets—metaphorically—for what was missed. You don’t want to be in that position, so just send it through to us and let us make that assessment. As we have said before, with the cumulative stuff, once we get our new IT system online, it will basically join up all the dots for us. That is where we will pick out these linked series and this course of conduct—rather than having to do a manual trawl, it will do it for us. So please do send anything through.

We are slightly over our time, so forgive me if I cut this off there. But if there is something that any of you wish you had said but did not have the chance to, please do say it in writing. We are very happy to receive any further submissions on anything we have covered, or anything else within the confines of the inquiry. I thank you all for your evidence. You are very welcome to stay and listen to the next evidence if you want to, or you can go back to policing the country if you’d prefer. Witnesses: Alison Giles and Olly Davis.

Welcome, and in view of the time, we will crack on. Alison, thank you, we know you have already given some evidence, and we are grateful for that, but we would like to get into some of these questions in a little more detail. A transcript of the evidence will be produced, but you will have the chance to submit redactions based on any sensitive material, before it is published. Let us start with some introductions.

I am Alison Giles, director of security for Parliament.

I am Olly Davis, deputy director of security for Parliament—I work for Alison, and I am in charge of Members’ security.

You are both very welcome. I will start with a general question and then we will move on to other areas. Can you tell us about your current assessment of the threat level to MPs? Looking at the situation today, and as you expect it to develop over this Parliament, what worries you most?

We all saw in October 2023, in the wake of the Israel-Gaza confrontation, the impact of those global events on community tensions in the UK, which also had an impact on Members’ perception of security and their actual security. We brought in more measures at that point. It does fluctuate in accordance with global issues and, as we have all seen in the past six to nine months, domestic policy as well. There is a level of harassment and intimidation—of which 80% is online—which has not recently translated into a comparable level of real-world intimidation and harassment. The majority is online, but just because it has not found its expression physically, does not mean it is any less toxic or injurious to democracy, because that level of abuse and harassment is, I am sure, making many people think, “Do I want to stay in the democratic process?”, and it is making other potential candidates think, “Do I want to get involved in the first place?” What is going to happen over the remainder of this Parliament? The assessment of threat is certainly not going to come down—that is my opinion. What concerns me is the way in which social media has evolved in recent months. All the drivers overseas are against us now. At the end of this month, we have the Online Safety Act coming into force. I do not know, yet, if that is going to have the impact it needs to have. I think there is a degree of scepticism about whether it will be sufficient, and whether further action will be required. That then means there will need to be a very difficult debate about balancing freedom of expression and the rights of the individual. I feel that that debate needs to happen.

Understood, thank you. Olly, do you have anything to add?

I have nothing to add.

As we go forward, if you feel you have something to add, please feel free to—we will not ask both of you every question.

Your evidence says: “We are nearing a point where a further step change in vulnerability reduction measures would be neither desirable nor deliverable” and the next step has to be threat reduction. This feels a bit like you are pushing it into the future and that it is turning long-term. We have heard that MPs feel unsafe today. What can be done to increase their sense of safety in the short term and what does successful threat reduction look like?

Why did we say that? It was because I wanted to put that on the record. There are always things we can do to improve the performance of our suppliers of measures—absolutely. But following the Israel-Gaza confrontation, when we saw some individual MPs’ threat profile rise far above, we introduced a further level of protection. For some Members, that enhanced close protection is very restrictive. Some Members, even if they were at high risk, would not necessarily want to have it because of how they connect with their constituents and the public generally. We said it would neither be “desirable nor deliverable” to have that as there are approximately 12,000 trained close protection officers in the country. We are busy working with the Home Office to send a heavy demand signal to the industry.

Are those the SIA operatives for advice surgeries?

Yes. We are currently delivering up to 600 close protection events for MPs each month, and in order to deliver an enhanced close protection package for individual MPs at higher risk, that requires really significant resource.

But what is the focus?

We are working at the moment to clarify that policy. Chair: We are probably being slightly unfair to you, because this is a contraction of what you have said on this subject. To give it its slightly longer form, I think your argument is that, yes, of course there is a resource constraint, but even if there was all the money in the world to pay for every MP to have a close protection team, you have observed that there is an issue around democratic accessibility and changing the lives of Members of Parliament, which might make that undesirable.

Chair, you have put it far better than I did.

I think there is another issue. We have talked a bit about anti-democratic behaviour and the corrosive effect on people wanting to stand as MPs. Even if you have security with you, that does not stop people shouting obscenities at you or posting stuff online. It does not protect you from that feeling of fear. What we are also trying to say is that, as you say, even if resource was not an issue, it does not address the root causes that prevent people from wanting to stand, which can change the complexion of the people who are represented in our democracy. That is not acceptable.

That is very helpful.

For many of us, our concerns extend beyond our own safety, so it is worth thinking about whether, as people have been saying, the focus is too narrow, in terms of the protection and support that is offered.

The operative should certainly be looking after your staff too. That is fundamental. Thank you. We will take that away. Olly, would you likely to talk about how we quality-assure our operatives?

All the operatives we use need to be vetted to a certain level. That hopefully provides some reassurance. We are trying to make sure they do not have criminal backgrounds, but that restricts the pool to some extent. In terms of the numbers, close protection operatives have to be trained to a certain level and accredited by the Security Industry Authority. That applies less for the door supervisors that you may have used. That is separate because they act as a bouncer, if you like, whereas the close protection operatives move with you, and therefore they have to be trained in a different way.

Understood. Thank you. I will bring in Kirsty, and then Zöe, who has a question on the broader subject of who else the protection might go to.

Just quickly, on the SIA operatives at surgeries, would you be able to do a refresh by sending out to MPs what they are for, so we have an understanding of what we are asking of them and what they are supposed to be doing? I get one for surgeries, but I probably don’t know what they would do in the event of any problems. That would be really helpful.

That is a really helpful suggestion. We will take that away. Thank you.

In many, many ways!

We are currently developing guidance for families of Members to address this very thing. We have heard loud and clear that people have concerns about the impact on families and staff, as you mentioned, and the way in which that can be difficult, especially when they are observing stuff online. You worry about them and what they consume online—doubly so if people are being aggressive, intimidating and abusive online. So we are developing that and the way we are approaching it is to try to signpost existing resources. There is a lot out there: charitable foundations and others that provide really good steers for MPs. We need to put an additional gloss on that to make sure it is super-relevant to the MP’s scenario. Your point about staff and whether we should provide support to them directly is a really good one. Many of them work in offices where we provide security. It works whoever is in the office. The MP does not need to be there. That is provided to staff.

A couple more things. We make security awareness training available to the Member, their family and staff. That is available as a package. Online vulnerability assessments are particularly pertinent if you have a teenager posting left, right and centre. They help you manage your profile. We can help you reduce your exposure and help you engage with your teenagers on safe digital behaviour. There is a lot that we are working on. It is a priority at the moment for us.

I am thinking particularly of colleagues who get themselves into difficulties, shall we say, and how their families are exposed to the nastier side of the national newspapers that tend to use regional people so there is some denial if it all goes a bit wrong. A lot of these people are very harassing. They hammer on doors at all times of the night. They target people’s children, take photographs and try to get neighbours to do this. It is harassment. The problem at the moment is that we focus on the Member—I know why—but their families feel very exposed to that sort of behaviour. It is literally people camping outside people’s houses day in, day out. For people who have been subject to that it is quite frightening and there is also the mental health side for the Member who feels, possibly rightly, “I brought all this on my own family”. Again, I suppose it goes back to the beginning, which was where is that line? Where is it crossed? And is anyone prepared to do anything about it?

We have done. I would not say that we always get this perfectly right, but, for example, in the most recent case that you are probably thinking about, we worked with our policing colleagues to ensure that there were drive-bys and that people were moved on from outside the house. We think about this, and when things go wrong for Members for whatever reason, we are very concerned and engage with the support service team. Of course, we also work with your good selves.

Yes, but it is where you have an incident of someone’s young child being targeted to try to get information out of them, and that was by a national newspaper, which would no doubt write an article telling us how dreadful this behaviour was and that others were doing it.

Is that not criminal?

I think this is part of the problem, isn’t it? These things are slightly circular. There are provisions of various Acts that say you can move someone along if what they are doing amounts to harassment, but then you are back to the definition of harassment and whether it crosses that threshold. One of the questions that we want to consider, and we want you to help us with, is whether there are legislative gaps here.

Would you mind if I slightly jump in and talk about the policing issue on this?

Perhaps before you do, because I am conscious that we do not want to get too far away from whatever Jessica wanted to raise, do you want to raise your point now, Jessica, and by all means we can pick that up as well?

Yes, but I am not going back to before Mr Tami’s point. Does that matter?

No, but do it now, otherwise we will forget.

Just quickly, on Zoe’s point and your point about teenagers, one of the bits that has worked really well is the service you mentioned about looking through your family’s social media. That is very helpful and well worth underlining with our colleagues—I found it really useful.

Thank you; back to the police point.

You heard an awful lot about what the Met was doing, as well as Bridger and PLaIT. The point I really want to land is that the Met, for all its power, has quite limited power when it comes to commissioning work from different forces across the country. One of the things that would be really useful for this Conference to consider is how we collectively better leverage some of the national bodies, such as the National Police Chiefs’ Council, where there is greater leverage around chief constables. If you think about it, you all have a Bridger SPOC. That is one person, or maybe two, if one of the additional people who was brought in last year has a deputy. If we can properly leverage the chief constables across the country, that is when you will start getting a more consistent approach. It is not necessarily going to be a Bridger contact who is actually following through on crimes against you, especially during election periods, when frankly it is so difficult to strike that right balance between freedom of expression and harassment and intimidation. Until you have your constables attending those meetings with real clarity about where those thresholds are, the powers are there but they are not understood, and they are not communicated and trained in a way that is going to result in a consistent response. I always focus on Bridger, but understand that, for this to work, it has to go out in a different way.

Yes, that is very helpful. I think you have neatly anticipated a question that Clive was going to ask. I will bring him in at this point, and then I will bring in Kirsty.

How satisfied are you with Bridger and PLaIT in delivering you, or delivering us, the sorts of service that you think should be there, so that you can work with them constructively in harness to make sure that we are safer? With what you just said about the police and Op Bridger, it strikes me that, in the end, there are still a lot of areas in the police where there is not understanding of the threat to MPs, what constitutes a threat or what to do about it. It falls back to the bottom line, in the end, of “When in doubt, do nothing.” Is that a fair assessment?

I think for untrained, fairly junior police officers across the country, whose bread and butter is not looking after MPs, that may be the case. There is a bit of qualification there. After covid, or during covid, the Bridger network was somewhat neglected. Following the murder of Sir David Amess and the review of MPs’ security that we undertook jointly with the police and the Home Office, one of the key priorities was to reinvigorate the Bridger network. That is why, for instance, Chief Inspector Bryan Duffy, or his predecessor, was brought in as the national Bridger co-ordinator to really engage and enhance consistency across the network. That part is going very well. I think PLaIT form a very important liaison role with the rest of the police and following up in constituencies. Obviously, as we have heard this afternoon, there is always scope for improvement. The bit I would like to see a lot more of is offender management—nominal management. It is getting after the threat. We were hearing a bit about whether the data and the systems are properly aligned to drive that nominal management piece. One area where it does work quite well and where we and the police have really worked hard over the last few years is on FTAC—the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre. They are looking at stalkers and fixated individuals. It was primarily for the royal family. It has now expanded to MPs. That takes a very offender management—nominal management—perspective. I am keen to take more of the lessons from that approach. When you have one actor going across various forces and against various MPs, the national policing construct does not lend itself to that approach, so we are really working against the grain of what the systems give us.

In fact, it strikes me that PLaIT and the Bridger network are the only parts of the system that do genuinely consider the corrosive effects of some of these what have been called “low-level” crimes. They are not low-level, not cumulatively. When you look at the wider system in which they have to work, we have heard about the emails going to the bottom of the pile because it is just a routine offence or the judge who says, “No, you can’t have a screen because that is not how we do things around here.” It strikes us that the entire system needs to all be taking cognisance of the fact that these crimes have a cumulative effect on democratic engagement and the make-up of our Parliament. How do we achieve that? I think we draw it into the centre. I think we have a stronger centre that does not just co-ordinate but leans in and lines these things up so the marble rolls all the way through down to the bottom into the mousetrap, as opposed to getting stuck in the bit that does not realise it is dealing with something important.

Right, that is a really honest answer about what the challenges still are. How do we get them addressed? You are right that it might be the PC who was in the area who gets handed this. They have never dealt with a case like this before and do not necessarily know the legislation back to front—why would they? But everyone is okay, aren’t they, because Op Bridger is dealing with it.

I am certainly looking for greater accountability on the part of chief constables for their individual forces and better understanding. The federated nature of the system is problematic, not only in the police but also in the Crown Prosecution Service, and the lack of consistency around prosecution thresholds. You were asking for a solution though, weren’t you, Clive?

I was.

This is all in the threat reduction bucket for me. Although the vulnerability reduction measures are not easy, they are relatively easy, but those levers are not in my power. That is why I welcome the Speaker’s Conference, because those levers belong to the Home Office, the Government, policing more widely and the judicial system. For all our efforts here in the Parliamentary Security Department, we need amplification and the force-multiplying effect of the Speaker’s Conference.

Clearly, there are things that can be done from the centre; are there things that, as individual MPs, we should be doing with our own chief constables and the Crown Prosecution Service? Perhaps we could have some help in doing that, to raise it at that local level. As you say, it is a federated system, so should we be getting in at that level as well?

I think that would be very welcome.

We are really up against it—we have only 10 minutes left and some more questions. Sam, very quickly.

I have a quick observation to make. The reason why I am here is that so many of our colleagues are, quite rightly, prepared to talk about how badly wrong things can go, but I think we also have a responsibility to say when it goes well. The chief constable I know is very grateful to me for the fact that I am saying that publicly. The Crown Prosecution Service is rightly taken to task many times, but we have to acknowledge when things go well—learn from that.

That is a very fair point. May I summarise one thing? We were going to ask you a question about this, but we can probably deal with it briefly. We heard the police say that, essentially, they think it is best if we send everything their way, and they assess the threat, rather than try to do it ourselves. Do you agree?

Yes, wholeheartedly. It is not just about your own security; it is about the security of the cohort as a whole. It is important to share.

That brings us on neatly to Leigh’s question.

It does. What lessons have been learned following last year’s general election? What can be done to mitigate the challenges for the next general election?

I ask you to keep your answers as brief as you can. We would appreciate that.

What lessons have been learnt? First, we prepared at length and increased our resource, both within Members’ security support, and in our partners in particular, which puts the measures in homes. The quickest way to reduce vulnerability is to get measures particularly in constituency offices, but also in homes. I would like to have gone faster on that. There is something about capacity across the country and where it has the engineering capability. We monitor the bottlenecks in the system. Some of the material we have given you shows who has had the survey done, how long it takes to sign off that survey specification and how long it takes to arrange a visit. One of the things that really struck us—blooming obvious—is the availability of an MP, so they can actually be in place at the installation. That is a real bottleneck, and of course in some instances, MPs will say, “My member of staff could do it”, but if you are a new Member and have a new staffer, you do not necessarily trust them yet. That is problematic and it is one of the biggest blockers. At half-term, we suddenly get them—we have huge amounts of availability from MPs during recess—so how do we get on top of and exploit that availability? That was a big lesson learnt. Olly, do you have more?

One of the things that has been floated—it might be a terrible idea, and I do not even know if it is feasible—is the idea of Parliament supplying offices. What if those offices came fitted with security measures? There might be all sorts of issues tied up in that.

If they could do flats as well, that would make our lives a lot easier.

That would be wonderful and better value for public money, because you are not turning it around so much.

The effect of the security measures at home is on the family as well. I am very grateful for them, they are great, but one of the things that should be considered is more understanding in advance of just how many visits will be needed and how much time. I had to be there for that, and it was very difficult to make that work, as you have already alluded to. The effect on the family and anything we can get in advance should be considered. It probably was made clear, but if it could be made even clearer that would be wonderful because it stresses out family members when they suddenly see people turning up and changing things and putting boxes on the wall and all of that.

Could the witness note that rather than respond to it? John, please go on to ask your question.

In your paper, you said that in July you raised the social media referral threshold to “actionable material” and threats only, yet 20% of the referrals were still not actioned. Witnesses on the previous panel alluded to that. Is it because of the behaviour of the social media platforms, are some worse than others and are there any other comments you would care to make?

Essentially yes. The journey has been one of certain platforms going from being willing to work with us to take some of the worst abuse and intimidation down to the point where I do not think it has any interest whatsoever. We have tried to minimise the amount of time wasted by sending stuff we know it will not action, which has meant that the proportion of successful stuff has gone up, but it is not a success story because overall the amount it is willing to action has gone down. We have considered things like writing on behalf of the Speaker to the companies to invite them in and they do not even talk to us anymore. Some are better than others. The unique issue with X is that it has an outward-facing broadcast focus, and therefore, if you want to get to your constituents, you want to be on there—it is different from Facebook which is connecting networks of individuals—but it also means there is zero consequence. It is simply not in its business model to want to get rid of users. It actually wants the controversy because that draws in people to look at the adverts which is where its business revenue comes from. I do not know how you make social media a safer place. The only thing I would say, going back to Dr Huq’s question, “What can we do now?” is that we are piloting something called social media moderation. That is not monitoring and giving it to the platform but using whizzy software to automatically delete offensive posts on your behalf. To a certain extent that lowers the temperature online and minimises the chances of people piling on and enables you or your staff to not look at this stuff and then feel concerned about it. Hopefully it will address that fear factor. We are piloting it to see if it will work and whether it is worth rolling it out more broadly.

To reassure everyone, these things do not get deleted, they are quarantined so that we and the police can look at them.

Understood, thank you. We only have a few minutes left. We have two more questions.

I will go very quickly. The Operation Bridger documents do not really take into account that Scotland has a different jurisdiction, and the law was totally different, so it is not just different thresholds but different laws. Some of them apply across the UK, like the Representation of the People Act, but some of the other laws do not. Therefore, there is clearly going to be inconsistency, but the way that the police are dealing with an individual should still be the same—if you see what I mean. With any of the four guys I have had in court, I have never had the Operation Bridger contact be the person that was taking me through any of the stuff. It has always just been the bobby on the beat who happened to be closest at the time that was sent. In terms of the fortnightly visit that was supposed to happen, I did not know that that existed until I read the Operation Bridger document. I have never met my Operation Bridger person. They seem lovely and I have talked to them on the phone, and I have emailed them, but I have never met them. I say that just so you are aware of all that. I want to ask about the information and data around Members. In order to provide the measures that Members need in order to be safe and to feel safe, do you feel that you have got all the data and information on Members that you need, or is there more that you need from us as a group, or us as individuals, in order to be able to provide that level of support and reassurance?

Very briefly, in terms of Members, I think we have enough data about you. The House holds a lot of it on the Members’ Names Information System, so that is fine, and obviously, we collect data on the basis of the security that we have and we protect that very closely. This isn’t really about data, but one of the things we mentioned earlier is that we find it very difficult to engage with you, and I really want to understand how we best do that. You are very busy and you have too many emails to read. How do we best make sure that we do have that moment when the survey gets signed, or we agree the installation date? We need to make that as easy as possible for you. To a certain extent, the only people in this process who are not dedicated to security is you and your staff. How do we make it as easy as possible for you to do that? It is about customer service, and us encouraging that. In terms of data more broadly, it goes back to Alison’s comments and what I said about the system working end to end. I think we have said a little bit, in our evidence, about having an aspiration to have better data on offenders, moving from right at the beginning of the process, when they come into our view, all the way through the court system, into probation. Also, are they reoffending? It gives us a sense of what is happening, in terms of the offender cohort, and what we most need to do in terms of asking: do the deterrents we have work? I think the conversation we have had and the comments we have made about a stronger centre, and a better, more focused, more proactive and strategic approach to offender management, encompass better data about the sorts of people who commit offences against MPs. That is where I would go.

Do you know which of us have got kids, for example? Surely, or possibly, that makes a difference to some of the security that we would be provided with. Things like that might help you make better decisions about how to help us.

We would engage individually. We have local security advisers—hopefully some of you will have seen them. They talk about your security. In that conversation, it might come out in the wash that: “This is my domestic set-up, and this is why I need these things.” What we don’t do is hold cohort-level data about people’s children. I think that would probably be inappropriate and there would be some data protection issues around that. We do draw on the data that has already been collected by the House, which you all volunteer when you come into Parliament. It breaks down things like gender, party and locations. I think that if there were a specific set of data that would enable us to give better security, and it was justifiable and everyone would stand over that, we would explore a way of getting it.

In true “Question Time” style, we will squeeze in one more question, but we will need brief answers.

We have talked about social media platforms and how they stoke toxicity to encourage advertising. I have had stuff in the post. I have also had voicemail. Someone was incarcerated last year for leaving 17 repetitive voicemail messages, which my staff, sadly, had to listen to. Then obviously, there is email. You talk a lot about email in your evidence. I just wondered, aside from social media, do you know how seriously you take those three things, and how upsetting they are for us? Do you evaluate those things, and what are you doing to tackle them?

I will break that down. The vehicle by which that sort of thing comes is, to a certain extent, irrelevant as to how seriously we take it. It is about the content. Whether it is a phone call, an email or a social media message, to a certain extent, in terms of assessing that, we will make sure that it goes into the “machine” and the police will make a judgment about whether there is a criminal offence. You have discussed some of the issues with that. They will also look at whether a protective security response is required. That is something that Parliament needs to do to provide additional security for that individual, or to reassure them about the measures that they have. However, it does tell us, I think, a little bit about the sorts of tools we might need in order to deal with some of those offences. For instance, if a lot of those things are essentially being emailed to your public email address, is there anything we could and should do about blocking those things that are just routinely offensive? There is a question there about—

It is the easiest thing to do. In previous ages, people would have to find an envelope, a letter, a stamp and all the rest of it, but it is pretty easy to bang one of those off.

There are issues about democratic accountability and about who has access. We would have to look at the content to decide whether or not it was offensive. There are all sorts of issues baked into that, but the fundamental idea—that there are different channels of these messages being sent, and whether could we treat them differently and block them—is definitely one worth pursuing.

Thank you very much indeed. I thank you both very much for your evidence. I will say the same to you as I did to the other witnesses: if there is anything that we have cut you short on or that you haven’t had a chance to say, please write to us with that further evidence. I know you have submitted some, but any more is welcome.