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Threats against female MPs like Jess Phillips 'could amount to terrorism', UK's terror watchdog warns
8 January 2025, 17:15
The UK's terror watchdog has told LBC that threats against female MPs such as Jess Phillips could amount to terrorism.
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Jonathan Hall KC told LBC's Tom Swarbrick that he hoped authorities would "look as strong as possible" at the threats made against Labour's safeguarding minister Ms Phillips.
It comes after a man was charged with sending malicious communications to Ms Phillips, after she was attacked by X owner Elon Musk, who accused her of covering up for grooming gangs in the UK by refusing to back an inquiry.
Jack Bennett, 39, from Seaton in Devon, was charged with three counts of sending malicious communications, to three separate people, including the Birmingham Yardley MP.
Mr Hall told Tom during an LBC phone-in on Wednesday: “The threats and attacks on MPs, particularly women, can amount in certain circumstances to terrorism.
Terror watchdog Jonathan Hall speaks to Tom Swarbrick
“I hope that the authorities look as strongly as possible at people who carry out threats to people like Jess Phillips.”
Speaking on Tuesday, Ms Phillips said the “misinformation” spread by Musk has “endangered” her and “turned her world upside down.”
Mr Musk took aim at Ms Phillips after she rejected calls for a national inquiry into grooming gangs that abused young girls across England.
There has already been a seven-year national inquiry into child abuse in England and Wales, commissioned in 2015.
Elon Musk has 'split apart' British politics
She described his social media posts as "ridiculous" and said the social media mogul "knows absolutely nothing" about the subject of grooming gangs.
Speaking to ITV News, Ms Phillips said: "It's ridiculous isn't it? The things that he's saying are so ridiculous as to initially make me just go what?
"But then you wake up with the realisation that that's millions of people that he has said that to and you feel immediately like this is going to turn my world upside down and I have to try and limit for how long that is the case.
"But you know, your immediate, my immediate thought was like just, it's sort of like, what a joke. And then the realisation of what this is probably going to mean for you."
Asked how his accusations have affected her, she said: "Yeah a little bit, a lot. Well, a lot actually it's... it's not great."
She added: "The thing that annoys me the most about it is it takes up so much bandwidth of my time from a man who knows absolutely nothing about the subject he's talking about, when the only thing I ever want to be doing is being able to use all of my brain power to focus on the hundreds of girls I have supported over the years who have been victims of grooming gangs and what needs to happen to make their lives better and to stop what is still happening today."
Speaking to Sky News, Ms Phillips said she has “more important” things to deal with than Elon Musk, including protecting women and girls across the UK.
She said: "You know, Elon Musk is going to [do] Elon Musk. I've got bigger and more important things to be thinking about."
Labour has thrown its support behind Ms Phillips, with the Prime Minister hitting out at the “far right” rhetoric used against her.
He said: "Those attacking Jess Phillips, who I am proud to call a colleague and friend, are not protecting victims.
"Jess Phillips has done a thousand times more than they've ever dreamed about when it comes to protecting victims of sexual abuse.
"I'm prepared to call this out for what it is... the whipping up of intimidation and threats of violence, hoping that the media will amplify it."
Musk had argued that "rape gangs were allowed to exploit young girls without facing justice", in just one of a string of posts on X.
But Starmer has argued that "more people are interested in the NHS than what happens on Twitter."
He added: "I enjoy the cut and trust of politics, the robust debate that we must have but that has got to be based on facts and truth, not on lies, not on those who are so desperate for attention that they are prepared to debase themselves and their country."
Phillips said she recognised the "strength of feeling" for a Home Office-led inquiry into grooming gangs but the Government will not "intervene", in a letter to Oldham Council.
