I thought it
would be helpful if I published my complaint I made to the Parliamentary Commissioner
for Standards about Lucy Allan earlier this month, even though, like many other
complaints, it was not taken up for investigation by the Commissioner.
The statistics of
complaints made last month to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards are now available online and they make astonishing reading. There were more
complaints received in the month of December than the whole of the previous 12
months added together. I had previously presumed that most of these related to Lucy Allan but I have now learned that they related to a different MP.
I think the
conclusion that it is fair to draw from this is that complaints about Lucy Allan
just don’t fall within the Commissioner’s remit! How mad is that? As I see it MPs
do not appear to be accountable for their conduct during their term of office and
they expect the electorate to wait up to 5 years before they are held to
account at the ballot box. Clearly reform is well overdue.
I set out my
complaint below, except that where I had enclosed a hard copy of documentary
evidence with my complaint I have either given the online link or stated that it is not
available online.
Office of the
Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards
House of Commons
London SW1A 0AA
6th
January 2016
Dear Madam
COMPLAINT
AGAINST LUCY ALLAN MP
I am writing to
complain about the conduct of my Member of Parliament Lucy Allan MP in respect
of the doctoring of a constituent’s email. I appreciate that you have
previously ruled that this matter did not warrant an investigation but I
believe that an investigation is now required in view of fresh evidence.
The fresh
evidence is that Mrs Allan has now provided conflicting explanations of the
source of the words ‘Unless you die’ which she admits adding to the email of
Adam Watling. In addition, she has
demonstrated that she is avoiding the question of why she does not publish the
email which she claims contains the words ‘Unless you die’.
This as yet
unseen email which Mrs Allan claims to have been sent to her on 27th
November 2015 is the only evidence that Mrs Allan has to support her claim that
the words ‘Unless you die’ came from a separate anonymous email and yet she has
failed to publish that email in spite of widespread calls for her to do so.
I believe that
Lucy Allan MP has breached Paragraph 16
of the Code of Conduct.
I believe that through
the doctoring of a constituent’s email and the lack of a credible explanation
for adding the words ‘Unless you die’, which have been widely interpreted as a
death threat, Lucy Allan has damaged the reputation and integrity of MPs
generally. The condemnation of her conduct has been from voters across various
Party allegiances and has been national rather than just restricted to her
constituency, with wide coverage in most national newspapers and on social
media.
Voters do not
expect their MPs to be perfect and we all make mistakes. However, voters do expect their MPs to offer
credible explanations for when they have done something wrong and to be accountable
and open. By failing to provide any evidence to support her claim that the words ‘Unless you die’ came from a
separate email, Lucy Allan MP has left me and many others believing that her
explanation is untrue, especially when there is substantial evidence which
already points to her explanation not being credible.
I personally have
always voted for the Conservative Party until now and, although I did not vote
for Lucy Allan MP in the May 2015 election because I lived in a neighbouring
constituency at that time, I did support her on social media and felt that she
deserved her election victory because she conducted a very energetic campaign.
However, Lucy Allan’s conduct, in doctoring a constituent’s email including
adding the words ‘Unless you die’ without a credible explanation, has reduced my
trust and I believe other voters’ trust in MPs generally and I can now fully
understand why so many people do not feel it is worth voting at all in
elections. I believe that Lucy Allan’s conduct has worsened voters’ perception
of MPs generally and it will have made more voters feel disaffected and not
wish to be engaged with the political process.
Evidence
The evidence enclosed
is categorized as follows:
A)
Evidence
of the widespread public interest in this story by reference to national media
B)
Evidence
of the conflicting and confusing explanations given by Lucy Allan MP for the
doctored email
C)
Evidence
of Lucy Allan’s lack of openness in avoiding questions over the non-publication
of the email she says contains the words ‘Unless you die’.
D)
Other
evidence of the lack of credibility of her explanation that the words ‘Unless
you die’ came from a separate email
I comment on each
item of evidence below:
A)
Evidence
of the widespread public interest in this story
1.
Exhibit A/1 is an online BBC report dated 7th
December 2015 shown under the news for England. It sets out Adam Watling’s
(using the pseudonym of Rusty Shackleford) original email of 27th
November 2015 and how it was later presented by Mrs Allan four days later on 1st
December 2015. The report provides Lucy Allan’s explanation for her actions and
it states that ‘the BBC is yet to see the email, which Mrs Allan said police
were investigating’ which demonstrates that the BBC clearly felt that this
email was important in understanding Lucy Allan’s explanation.
2.
Exhibit A/2 is an online article from The Telegraph written
by Brendan O’Neill dated 7th December 2015. Towards the bottom is reference to the action of
Lucy Allan MP. Mr O’Neill mistakenly used the word ‘Until’ rather than ‘Unless’
but states ‘To my mind, such dishonesty from an elected parliamentarian is
infinitely more worrying than the fact that some members of the public say
maddening things online’. Mr O’Neill’s use of the word ‘dishonesty’ in my view
demonstrates the seriousness of Mrs Allan’s actions.
3.
Exhibit A/3 is an online Metro article dated 8th
December 2015. This includes some examples of comments made on Twitter. One is
from Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy which was re-tweeted 662
times in which he says that Channel 4 are trying to contact Lucy Allan MP for
comment. Another twitter comment states
‘What’s the betting she’s gone and ‘accidentally deleted’ the original email
with the death threat in it, eh?’ which I believe reflected how people were
feeling sceptical about Lucy Allan’s explanation.
4.
Exhibit A/4 is an online article from The Independent dated 9th
December 2015. The article concludes with these words from the writer Mikaela
Brunt: ‘I hope that the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards looks into
this, because when MPs vote in parliament on our behalf and post publically on
their social media platforms, they should be accountable to their electorate. ‘
B)
Evidence
of the conflicting and confusing explanations given by Lucy Allan MP for the
doctored email
1. Exhibit B/1 is an online
article from the well-known right-wing political blogger known as Guido Fawkes.
It is dated 2nd December 2015, a day after the publication of the
doctored email by Lucy Allan and Guido Fawkes therefore appears to have been
the first journalist to have reported the news of the doctored email . The
article includes the initial explanation of the doctoring given by Lucy Allan
on her facebook page which says:
‘Comments were added to the post as they came in. I posted
them to show examples of the type of unacceptable online abuse that comes in
most days and that most people tolerate silently’.
It is not at all clear what is meant by ‘ Comments were added
to the post as they came in’. This begs the questions of ‘from whom did those
comments come ?’ and ‘which comments are
Mrs Allan referring to?’ It also seems
odd that Mrs Allan should refer to the words ‘Unless you die’ as
‘comments’.
Guido Fawkes then
quotes a further explanation that Lucy Allan gave to him on 2nd
December 2015:
‘I took the unpleasant stuff from one of his emails and
posted it on my Facebook to expose some of the relentless stuff we get. More
stuff then came back by response, which I then added to my original post. I
added more of the abuse received to my facebook’
It is not clear what is meant by ‘More stuff then came back
by response’. Guido Fawkes himself comments
that Mrs Allan would not say whether or not ‘unless you die’ also came from
‘Rusty’.
2. Exhibit B/2 is the official
statement on the website of Lucy Allan MP dated 12th December
2015. It makes it clear that Mrs Allan’s
facebook posting of 1st December 2015 in which she quoted Rusty from
Dawley ‘drew upon two separate anonymous communications’.
3. (Link not available online-post now taken down by Lucy Allan) is a screenshot of Lucy
Allan’s facebook page which shows the statement dated 11th December 2015. The
wording is the same as the statement on Mrs Allan’s website except that the
following words are included in the facebook statement:
‘I did not claim that
either anonymous message was a threat of any kind’.
4
Below is a copy of facebook comments made on
Lucy Allan’s facebook page on 11th December 2015, which Mrs Allan
subsequently deleted. Facebook user Pogle Jones asked Lucy Allan a question,
Lucy Allan replied and then Pogle Jones made a further comment that Lucy Allan
did not reply to.
Lucy Allan clarified the position by saying:
‘as previously stated it was two online
communications which I quoted from. Thanks for pointing out that is not clear’.
This therefore reaffirms Lucy
Allan’s official statement which is that the words ‘Unless you die’ came from a
single separate online communication.
5
Exhibit B/5 is the trail of emails between Lucy Allan
and myself in which I asked her about the non-publication of the email which
she claims contains the words ‘Unless you die’.
Lucy Allan’s email of 24th December to me states:
‘Please note the police have a file containing various online
malicious communications, which include communications containing the words to
which you refer’.
This statement left me baffled because rather than saying
‘which include a communication’ Mrs Allan stated ‘include communications’. By
writing these words Mrs Allan is now being inconsistent with her previous
statements which is that the words ‘Unless you die’ came from a single separate
email.
I was very frustrated with this answer as it did not add any
clarity but simply added confusion. I emailed Mrs Allan on 4th January
2016 seeking clarification and received an automated response, but I do not expect a reply in the near future and when Mrs Allan
does eventually reply I have no confidence that her answer will be any clearer,
based on her previous correspondence to me.
C)
Evidence
of Lucy Allan’s lack of openness in avoiding questions over the non-publication
of the email she says contains the words ‘Unless you die’.
1. (Link not available online-post now taken down by Lucy Allan)are comments that are currently still on
Lucy Allan’s facebook page as of today underneath the statement originally
posted by Mrs Allan on 11th December 2015 which she then reposted on
14th December 2015 after taking it down. I enclose this as evidence that many
people were feeling unhappy about being blocked from using Lucy Allan’s
facebook page and having their comments deleted simply because they challenged
Lucy Allan over the issue of the doctored email. Many of these people,
including myself, remain blocked, even though we were supporters of Lucy Allan.
It is clear from these comments that outrage is felt by people with different
Party allegiances.
As examples, please see the comments from Kate Rutkovski,
Paul Alan Taylor, Alana Pugh,
Nate Spencer, Gavin
Mattocks,, Ken Marshall
Stringer, David Yapp, Diana Wright and Phil Marsh.
2.
Many
of the several hundred comments of 11th December that were deleted
by Lucy Allan were simply asking Lucy Allan why she did not publish the email
which contains the words ‘Unless you die’. Rather than explaining this to
everyone by issuing an additional statement Lucy Allan responded by deleting
their comments and blocking them from her facebook page. I am one of many
people who have been blocked simply because I posted the following comment on
Lucy Allan’s facebook page on 11th December 2015:
Neil
Phillips Hello
Lucy, I am one of your constituents and I supported you at the election in May.
I hope therefore you will be good enough to respond to me. I believe that much
of the criticism you are receiving can be addressed if you publish the email
you received in which you say someone stated 'Unless you die''. If for some
reason you cannot publish it you should explain why. You have released the
phone call of the verbal threat and so I do not understand why you cannot
release the email with the words 'Unless you die'. Until you do so I am afraid
that many people will just not understand where these words came from and will
believe that you simply made them up. You were, of course wrong to attribute
these words to Adam Watling (Rusty) and that is something I have never seen
before in my life. You have put Telford in the national media
(Telegraph,Independent,Daily Mail,Spectator,BBC to name but a few) for the
wrong reasons and I believe that unless you now give us the full picture with
the explanation of the second email that you must now step down.
3. Lucy Allan has so far failed to explain why she will
not or cannot publish the email which she says contains the words ‘Unless you
die’. What Mrs Allan has told us is that ‘the Metropolitan Police are investigating
a cyber harassment campaign’ (her statement of 11th December 2015) and
that ‘the police have a file containing
various online malicious communications, which include communications
containing the words to which you refer.’ (her email to me of 24th December 2015). However, she has failed to confirm
whether or not the police have advised her not to publish the email. It would
seem unlikely that the police would advise against publication for the following reasons:
a)
According to Mrs Allan the email is
anonymous
b)
According to Mrs Allan the email does
not constitute a threat
c)
Mrs Allan published ‘Rusty’s’ email
and so it is hard to understand why she cannot publish the other email
d)
Mrs Allan was very quick to release
the tape recording of the telephone death threat which was reported to police
on 7th December 2015 and so it seems inexplicable that she cannot
release the email with the words ‘Unless you die’ which did not amount to a
threat.
e)
Even if Mrs Allan did not feel she
wanted to publish the whole email she could publish enough of it to make people
understand the context in which the words ‘Unless you die’ had been written
Although, according to Mrs Allan, the
unseen email with the words ‘Unless you die’ is amongst others with the
Metropolitan police, Mrs Allan presumably still has a digital copy on her email
account, which she could publish to back up her claims.
4.
Exhibit B/5 shows my email to Lucy Allan of 12th
December 2015. I was shocked to receive the reply from Lucy Allan on 22nd
December 2015, which avoided my question altogether. Clearly
my own MP was not being open with me and so I emailed her again on 22nd
December 2015, As
I was feeling very anxious that I was just being ignored by Lucy Allan, I
emailed her again on 24th December 2015. I wished to give Lucy Allan an urgent deadline
because I felt she was taking this matter too lightly and I felt that she thought
it was acceptable not to be open and accountable. Her reply was sent later that day, but rather than
clarifying the position on the unpublished ‘Unless you die’ email, it clouded
the picture even more by suggesting that the words ‘Unless you die’ did not
come from one single email. Hence, I felt in necessary to send my further email
of 4th January 2016, which I do not expect a clear answer to because I feel Mrs Allan does not wish to
be open.
D)
Other
evidence of the lack of credibility of her explanation that the words ‘Unless
you die’ came from a separate email
In addition to the non-disclosure of the email which
allegedly contains the words ‘Unless you die’, I believe that the following evidence points to
Lucy Allan MP’s explanation lacking credibility.
1.
Lucy Allan introduced her facebook post by
saying ‘This is from Rusty from Dawley’
Straight
away Mrs Allan represents that ‘Rusty’ was the author of the whole of the text
she quotes. Not only does she name ‘Rusty’ as the only author of the text
without naming the other anonymous author of the words ‘Unless you die’ but she
says ‘This is from Rusty’ making it very clear that she wants us to believe
Rusty wrote the whole of the text including the words ‘Unless you die’.
2.
Lucy Allan’s use of quotation marks makes us
believe Rusty wrote ‘Unless you die’
Lucy Allan introduces the alleged extract of Rusty’s email with a double
quotation mark and then there is no further quotation mark until right at the
end of her quotation, which gives the clear impression that the words ‘Unless
you die’ came from Rusty. There is no quotation mark after ‘hope’ and before
‘Unless’ which should have been the case if Lucy Allan wanted us to
believe the words ‘Unless you die’ came from a separate author.
3.
Simply quoting the three words ‘Unless you
die’ is meaningless
Lucy Allan has said that these words were posted as an example of
‘unacceptable online abuse’. However these three words on their own make no
sense. Surely, if Mrs Allan had received an anonymous email containing those
words she should have published the whole of that email or enough of that email
to allow us to understand the context in which the words ‘Unless you die’ had
been written.
4.
Adding ‘Unless you die’ fits perfectly with
Rusty’s email to turn it into an apparent death threat
I find it hard to believe that, out of all the examples of daily online
abuse that Lucy Allan says she receives, Mrs Allan chose to extract only the
three words of ‘Unless you die’ from another single email and, rather than
quoting other parts of that email, she decided to add just those three words to
Rusty’s email, the effect being to turn three words which are meaningless on
their own into something that appears like a death threat from Rusty. Those
three words were added immediately after Rusty’s words of ‘in which case there
is no hope’. They were not shown in a separate paragraph and they were not even
shown on a separate line as the words ‘Unless you’ immediately followed ‘ in
which case there is no hope’ on the same line with the word ‘die’ then
appearing on the next line.
5.
Lucy Allan altered Rusty’s email to make it appear worse than it was
Lucy Allan did not just add the words ‘Unless you die’. She actually
misquoted Rusty’s email as follows:
(1) Lucy Allan omitted altogether the first 5 paragraphs of
Rusty’s email which in my view were polite and made valid points, even if Mrs
Allan did not agree with them. Rusty’s comments, which Rusty took from a
template from anti-bombing campaigners, appealed to her to oppose Syrian air
strikes while offering an alternative approach to defeating ISIL.
(2) Lucy Allan omitted the
signing-off words that Rusty had put on his email which were:
‘Think about it, yeah?
Love
Rusty’
(3) In the text from
Rusty’s email that Lucy Allan did publish she changed Rusty’s text of:
‘Look, I know that you’re probably just a robot or at the very least a
person so detached from reality that they have no empathy for anyone but their
super rich buddies and benefactors…’
to her altered version of :
‘Look, I know that you’re just a robot or at least a person so detached
from reality that you have no empathy for anyone but your super rich buddies
and benefactors…’
Mrs Allan must have spent some time consciously making these changes,
the effect of which was to make Rusty’s email appear more like a personal
attack on her. I cannot imagine why else Mrs Allan would have changed ‘they’ to
‘you’ and ‘their’ to ‘your’.
In my view Lucy Allan’s conduct in, not only
doctoring a constituent’s email, but then failing to provide a credible
explanation for what she did, has damaged the reputation and integrity of MPs
generally. This is reflected by the widespread outrage expressed across the
United Kingdom and from people and news organizations with varying political
allegiances.
I very much hope that you will investigate this
complaint.
Yours faithfully
Neil Phillips
