Kim Leadbeater's emotional Sir David Amess tribute speech

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In the past five years, two MPs have been murdered in broad daylight as they were undertaking duties in their constituencies. Harassment and intimidation are also common factors in many MPs’ lives, for example, the abuse hurled at the secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities Michael Gove in the street last week by anti-lockdown protestors. These incidents, plus countless more have opened up a wide debate on what can be done to protect the safety of MPs.

The Jo Cox Foundation was started in September of 2016, following the murder of the Batley and Spen MP it was named after, and aims to build her a positive legacy.

Su Moore the Ceo of the foundation said that its members work across three main areas, “we work to build stronger communities, we work to encourage a better public life, and we advocate for a fairer world, and we do all of those things in Jo’s memory,” she said.

The annual Great Get Together is one of the foundation’s best-known initiatives.

Every June, on the weekend closest to what would have been Jo’s birthday, the foundation asks people in communities around the country to come together to celebrate what they have in common.

Ms Moore said: “One of the phrases that Jo used in her first speech in Parliament was that we have more in common than that which divides us.

“And we really firmly believe that.

“To date, over all of the Great Get-Togethers that we’ve done, we’ve had over 20 million people coming together to do amazing fun stuff like picnics and barbecues and sports days.

“And we think that’s a really brilliant way of remembering Jo by celebrating the fact that we’ve got great communities all around the country.”

Ms Moore said the Jo Cox foundation believes there is so much more that can be done to protect the safety of MPs.

She said: “We think there is a responsibility on all of us to make a change. So, there is a responsibility on the general public, there’s responsibility for politicians and elected officials to maintain a civil level of discourse and conduct amongst themselves.

“There is a responsibility on the police, there’s a responsibility on social media firms.

“There are lots of people who need to make a change to stop this culture of abuse and intimidation, which has become the current norm.

“I think there has been a general issue around public discourse over the previous years in this country, we are less good at remembering how we can disagree agreeably.

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“And I think there has been much more toxicity around public life which does sadly sometimes spill over into the tragic events that we saw with Sir David’s and Jo Cox’s murders.”

Ms Moore said the foundation has been working on tackling the problem for a number of years and has worked on two separate projects which focus particularly on party members and candidates.

She said that although the foundation believes everyone has a responsibility to make change, change has to begin at the highest levels.

The first initiative that the foundation has worked on is the creation of a joint statement on the conduct of political party members, which sets out a minimum standard of behaviour that can be expected by party members who sign on to it.

The statement has been signed by most of the major political parties in the UK and impacts all of those party members.

The foundation also launched a civility pledge for the 2019 general election and the 2021 local elections, which candidates shared on their social media channels to say they would be behaving in a respectful manner throughout the campaign.

Ms Moore said; “By those candidates saying that they’re going to be really respectful in their campaigning, what we think that does is it encourages other people around them both other candidates, and the voters to realise that actually, a level of robust debate is fine.

“But when that slips over to abuse and intimidation, that’s not fine.”

Ms Moore also said that work needs to be done to ensure that constituency surgeries are safe for MPs.

She said the surgeries are a “bedrock of our democracy” and that in many countries people don’t have the same level of access to MPs.

She said: “I think that there does need to be a reconsideration of how those meetings can work in a way that MPs feel safe, but also so that that level of access can be maintained and the MPs still remain not only abreast of what’s happening in their constituencies, but also a familiar face to those that they’re representing in Parliament.”

Ms Moore said that in light of Sir David’s murder on October 15, the foundation will do more to target this issue.

She said: “We’ve been hearing from MPs and from other elected officials that this problem is getting worse.

“And I think the tragedy of Sir David’s murder last week, just shows how relevant and necessary that is in planning what our next steps are.

“We knew that we needed to do more, now we know that we definitely need to do more.

“We do really think that violence and abuse against elected representatives endangers not just people but democratic life so we’re really committed to making change.”

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