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As Sir Robert Buckland, speaking to the Hansard Society on its July 17 podcast, put it; the killing of the former Conservative Shadow Home Secretary turned prominent Reform supporter Ann Widdecombe made people stop in their tracks and ask, ‘what sort of democracy are we becoming if this sort of behaviour can happen?’
In March the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood appointed Sir Robert, a former Conservative Justice Secretary, to head a review of the murder of the Conservative MP Sir David Amess. That, and the 2016 murder of the Labour MP Jo Cox on the eve of the Brexit vote, continue to be the most prominent cases of violence against political figures. The August 2026 edition of Professional Security Magazine reports on the anguished debate by MPs on the tenth anniversary of Jo Cox’s murder. In a statement to the House of Commons on Ann Widdecombe, Shabana Mahmood acknowledged that it raised questions about the security of those in public life. She told MPs that security measures are kept under constant review to ensure MPs can carry out their duties safely; and that she will look at what security guidance can be provided to former members of Parliament.
In a leading article on July 15, Democracy’s Price, The Times concluded: “In this increasingly perilous time, criteria for granting protection to politicians, inside and outside Parliament, must be more flexible. More bodyguards. more cameras; these cost money. But if that is the price of democracy, then so be it.”
Sir Robert speaking to the Hansard Society said that he noticed in his 14 years in Parliament (from 2010 to 2024) ‘quite a ramp-up in security efforts, particularly in the years after Jo Cox’s killing, and then more markedly so after David’s murder, to the extent that Parliament then decided to fund greater security measures for MPs, both in their offices in their constituencies, and in their homes’. While that was welcome, and training and awareness improved, he added that ‘I’m not getting a sense that we are there yet.’ He spoke of equipping and preparing not just MPs, but their families and indeed staff who work for them to deal with the realities of the almost weekly threats, in some cases daily, that accompany life as a Member of Parliament.
Numerous MPs have spoken of working under physical and online threat, such as the former junior Home Office minister for VAWG (violence against women and girls), Jess Phillips, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer in her 2020 book Women of Westminster, who noted that MPs might avoid online abuse directed against them by having staff deal with it.
Online
As for online abuse, Sir Robert singled out the social media platform X as a particular problem ‘in the sense that it does tend to spew up quite a lot of very, very nasty and often criminal content. I think that women are more exposed than men, and that’s led to not just physical threats, but sexualised threats in particular towards women. I think that with the rise of ease of accessing communications to MPs has become a rise in the sort of kneejerk hostility that can have a real effect on staff and MPs’ morale. One threat is one thing, but to get a constant drumbeat of threats, even low-level abuse, can really grind down MPs and their staff and make them feel that the world is just not a very friendly place, and that being an MP might not even be worth the candle any more. It’s as bad as that.’
Access and democracy
Sir Robert said that for every MP to have bodyguards – provided under Home Office contract by Mitie, and praised for one by Jess Phillips – would be impractical ‘and would change the nature of our democracy’. He said: “Representative democracy in Britain has prided itself on the accessibility of MPs to their constituents. The relationship that an MP has with their constituents based upon the constituency system is huge. I felt it strongly in my 14 years. I know colleagues feel the same. If you put a barrier between the MP and the people in their communities, that I think changes the nature of representative democracy itself.” Sir Robert recalled starting his MP work in 2010 and not giving a thought to security. “Sitting in quite small rooms in community centres, often perhaps furthest away from the door. My staff, the only barrier between me and somebody who wished me ill, I didn’t give it a second thought. By the time I came towards the end of my period in Parliament, I had security guards at every constituency surgery.”
