The government has been in talks with social media companies, the Electoral Commission, and representatives from Britain's "Five Eyes" intelligence partners — Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States — in a bid to find ways to tackle the harassment of MPs.
On Tuesday, BuzzFeed News reported that there had been a huge increase in the numbers of crimes reported to PLAIT, the special Met Police unit dedicated to investigating crimes against MPs.
"I'm really glad that BuzzFeed broke the story," Chloe Smith, minister for the constitution at the Cabinet Office, said on Thursday, "because this stuff really matters. You've got a significant rise being shown by this data this week and it underlines how serious a problem this is in our democracy at the moment."
Smith told MPs in a statement to the House of Commons that the government had been working with the Five Eye countries to establish a network of learning to identify and tackle online hate crime and intimidation.
Discussions with the social media companies and the Electoral Commission centered around how a "pop-up" social media team for elections could provide support for users to report inappropriate behaviour, she said.
Smith also said that the government has written to local authority chief executives to ensure that in local elections the home addresses of candidates are not being made public.
The Met Police unit was set up in August 2016 after the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox, and since its inception it has received four reports of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, four of common assault, 41 of harassment, 379 complaints of malicious communications, seven instances of hoax noxious powder being sent to parliamentarians, and five bomb threats or hoaxes, FOI data disclosed to BuzzFeed News revealed.
In its first year of operation, between August 2016 and July 2017, the Met unit received 102 complaints, in the year and a half since then, a further 456 reports were made — an increase of almost 350%.
Smith said that tackling the problem is crucial because if it continues, she fears harassment and threats of violence may hamper democracy by discouraging people from standing for election, adding: "This is about protecting public service itself."
In her ministerial statement Smith set out what the government had been doing and also "the steps that are still ahead of us to try to protect the debate and encourage people to be involved".
"What this [BuzzFeed News] data shows us is how serious this is, and how much that action is needed," she added.
Smith told MPs that the government would continue to work with others, including public bodies, social media companies, policing and prosecution authorities, and political parties as it looks to tackle the problem.
She also told BuzzFeed News that failing to address the issue could lead to a less representative Parliament as women and minorities are more likely to be on the receiving end of abuse.
"There really can be a problem about diversity and that's just not on — that is not the way that any of us want our politics to be and so it's right that we're taking this range of action to improve the culture here," she said.
"This is really about encouraging people to stay involved in politics and helping our democracy be a positive, attractive environment," Smith added.