Online abuse is hindering democratic participation whilst the Government fails to act

As the UK faces the fallout from a crushing defeat to Labour at the local elections last week, parties have reported “the worst year in memory” for abuse of candidates, both online and in-person. The Guardian reported on 8th May that:

"Candidates and political parties have described a climate of abuse in this year’s local and devolved elections, including death threats and intimidation while campaigning”.

This followed concerning reports in the run up to elections that an MLA candidate was dropping out of the electoral race due to the misogynistic online attacks she was facing, as well as news that young people had been put off entering politics as a result of the online abuse candidates experienced.

Unfortunately these reports are just the tip of the iceberg. We have witnessed the shocking rise in online abuse over the last decade, as detailed by both the Electoral Commission and the Speakers Conference, which is leading to candidates leaving the democratic process altogether. Female candidates, disabled candidates, LGBTQ+ candidates and candidates from Black and minoritised backgrounds are disproportionately more likely to experience online abuse than their White male counterparts. It is therefore unsurprising that this year nearly twice as many men stood in the May elections than women. Yet action to tackle this abuse, and the silencing impact it is having on candidates, has failed to keep pace with the issue.

The Representation of the Bill, also known as the ‘Elections Bill’, will carry over to the next parliamentary session, containing key manifesto commitments from the Labour Party to improve elections. These include new measures to:

• Lower the voting age to 16-year-olds
• Introduce more automated forms of voter registration
• Expand the list of accepted voter ID
• Strengthen political finance controls
• Give candidates more protection from abuse
• Strengthen the enforcement of political finance laws

With voting turnout the lowest it had been in over 20 years at the last election, the Bill comes at a critical time to modernise the electoral process and encourage greater participation in the democratic process. However another key barrier to the democratic process, the online abuse of electoral candidates, has been entirely absent from the debate and represents a glaring gap in the legislation. Crucially, the King’s Speech contained a reference to the importance of promoting women and girls’ full political participation in our society, yet was devoid of measures to tackle the abuse that holds them back from participating.

At the end of 2025, the Speakers Conference published their second report on the security of MPs, candidates and elections, which found that the vast majority of abuse of candidates was happening online, and that online abuse had risen over the last decade. They also noted that this was being exacerbated by existing and emerging forms of technology, pointing to the particular design of certain platforms, which amplify content that is divisive and often abusive, that encourage abuse and disinformation. They therefore concluded that the responsibility for tackling this abuse should lie with the platforms.

To address this harm, the report made a number of key recommendations, including that the government “should consider the merits of mandating Ofcom to produce an elections code of practice for social media platforms, and the feasibility of introducing this requirement as part of the Bill it has said it will bring forward during this Parliament on electoral reform”. This would put particular duties on platforms to ensure electoral candidates are safe from abuse on their platforms, and provide clear reporting mechanisms as well as user empowerment tools to control their feeds. However the Government rejected the recommendation in March, claiming that they would continue to actively review the effectiveness of the Online Safety Act for ensuring candidate safety and engage with stakeholders to understand where the Act can be strengthened through evidence-based measures. These delay tactics from the Government are coming at the expense of candidates.

In the run up to elections in Wales, Scotland, and local elections taking place in some parts of England, Ofcom published advice to online service providers on actions they expect platforms to take to ensure candidate safety during the UK election period. We were pleased to see Ofcom send a clear message to service providers that they should not tolerate abuse on their platforms, and should actively mitigate against the risk of online abuse, as well as misinformation. The letter contains many key duties regarding risk assessment and mitigation that civil society has advocated for. However the letter failed to set out clear parameters for the period in which platforms should be monitoring this, as well as who it applies to. This fails to encapsulate the risk to candidates’ staff and families, who often unfairly bear the brunt of this abuse. Additional measures such a specific triage process for complaints, recommender tools or crisis response features were not included in the letter.

Furthermore, Ofcom could have gone further to remind services of relevant non-priority offences, including Section 179 of the Online Safety Act that says if a person conveys a message that the person knows to be false, and the person intended for there to be harm, they are committing an offence, as well as Section 106(1) of the Representation of the People Act 1983 which relates to false statement as facts about candidates. Other relevant non-priority offences include section 127(1) of the Communications Act or the Malicious Communications Act. Whilst the letter signals the approach Ofcom expects platforms to take, which is a timely and necessary intervention, the nature of the open letter means that there are limits to how far they can go to mandate action from tech platforms.

The Online Safety Act Network, alongside partners at Demos, The Jo Cox Foundation, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), Elect Her, Westminster Foundation for Democracy, Fawcett Society, Full Fact and the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) developed an elections code of practice to provide a template for tech platforms that provides a list of targeted measures, set within the framework of the Online Safety Act, to ensure candidate safety online. The code of practice could easily be adopted by Ofcom to hold platforms to account over abuse and harmful content that often drives engagement and profits.

This approach is backed by civil society and has cross-party support, yet, despite this, the Representation of the People Bill fails to include measures to address the online abuse of candidates, despite the Government’s press release suggesting that it would address “harassment and intimidation”. It makes no mention of any online aspect, whether threats, intimidation, abuse or other means by which online platforms and services can be used to target candidates or subvert electoral processes. Moreover, the long title of the Bill is also narrowly scoped to refer only to the provisions the Government itself wished to bring forward. This has meant that attempts by supportive MPs from different parties to table the amendments we have proposed have been blocked by the Public Bill Office as being out of scope. The advice given by the PBO is that the RoP Bill relates only to elections and the work of the Electoral Commission and therefore cannot be used as a means to amend the OSA nor can it give any new powers or responsibilities to Ofcom.

The consequence of this is not just that the amendments we - and others - have proposed cannot be tabled for debate and scrutiny, but that the issue which was the primary focus of the Speaker’s Conference’s 18 month inquiry - online abuse and harassment of candidates and campaigners - cannot be debated in Committee either, nor at any other stage of the Bill’s Commons progress. This is either an unfortunate oversight by the Government or a deliberate attempt to avoid taking the necessary legislative steps to address it. In either scenario, in presenting the Bill in this form to Parliament, the Government has constrained itself from action on these issues - undermining the commitments it has made to addressing them - and providing no alternative legislative vehicle through which this issue can be addressed.

Whilst we await the passage of the Bill through the Lords to attempt to progress this issue, more candidates are facing a torrent of abuse on a daily basis. Reports of online abuse during the May elections are just more evidence that we need direct interventions from tech platforms, and proper accountability mechanisms, to ensure that every candidate is able to take part in the democratic process without fear of harassment, abuse, intimidation or misinformation online.