MPs and candidates who faced abuse on the campaign trail have pressed ministers to act over intimidation around polling stations and via social media algorithms that push incendiary material.
Half a dozen MPs and candidates attended a roundtable meeting with Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, Dan Jarvis, the security minister, and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, on Wednesday.
Ministers have spoken of an alarming rise in candidate intimidation during the election campaign. Several candidates have said they were hounded at campaign events and needed police protection.
At Wednesday’s meeting, candidates and MPs discussed the potential for buffer zones to restrict campaigning and protesting near polling stations, and action to tackle social media algorithms that promote incendiary material to voters.
“Within 100 yards of polling stations there were massive screens saying a vote for Labour is a vote for genocide, and protests right outside,” one candidate who attended the meeting said.
Buffer zones have been established near abortion clinics in England and Wales to stop protesters from harassing women entering the buildings, and Scotland passed a similar law this summer.
TikTok also featured “heavily” at the meeting with ministers, the candidate said, with voters who viewed material by pro-Gaza independents being fed increasingly problematic and incendiary content. “A lot of this was borne out on TikTok – the algorithms just point towards more hatred and more hatred.
“It’s not OK to take it with a job because we’ve not signed up to be threatened and intimidated in that way. Robust accountability, yes, but not that.”
The discussion touched on candidates’ personal security, social media and democracy as a whole. Jarvis has offered to continue meeting concerned candidates and MPs next week.
The issue was touched on at the new government’s first meeting of the defending democracy taskforce on Thursday. The weekly meeting was established in 2022 to bring together Whitehall agencies and departments to discuss threats against democracy.
Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons speaker, said earlier this month that he was exploring the possibility of establishing a speaker’s conference to assess security matters for politicians and put forward recommendations. Parliamentary officials are now drawing up plans.
The idea was initially proposed by Harriet Harman, the veteran former Labour MP, and was among recommendations made by Lord Walney, the government’s independent adviser on political violence.
Lucy Powell, the Commons leader, said it was “a real challenge to our democratic freedoms and that’s the context in which we need to consider it. There’s not a quick fix to that, but it’s something that a lot of colleagues have come in with experiences of after this election.”
On election night Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, and Jess Phillips, a Home Office minister, gave victory speeches detailing the abuse they received.
In an interview with the Guardian on Saturday, Phillips said: “If we advertised any door-knocking sessions they’d turn up and film the people we were speaking to, screaming about us being genocidal baby killers … The people behind the doors don’t want to be filmed, so they have isolated you from being able to talk to the people you represent. I couldn’t go to hustings because they’d have people shouting at me so they could film it.”
Walney said there had been “widespread” intimidation and the government should examine the “degree of coordination and the degree to which there was a common ideology or groups or individuals behind a pattern of intimidation”.
“We need to be much clearer and potentially codified about where the line is between people having their say and registering protest in an often impassioned and sometimes angry way, and where that trips over into unacceptable and potentially criminal intimidation,” he said.
During the election campaign, candidates were offered additional safeguarding measures, including full-time protection officers, extra security at hustings and advice on online protections. These were made available on a case-by-case basis and paid for via a £31m government package.
A TikTok spokesperson said: “We have strict rules in place against hateful content or harassment that are enforced by our 40,000-strong global trust and safety team, and have taken action against violating content whenever we have found it. Unlike any other platform, our algorithm is subject to independent oversight from a third-party US company.”
