Lee Scott tells Commons, I was called a ‘dirty Jew’

A Conservative MP has said he was called a ‘dirty Jew’ ahead of the last election and that he still received regular death threats from people who say he is an ‘enemy of Islam’.

Ilford North MP Lee Scott, who is Jewish, told a parliamentary debate last week that two A Conservative MP has said he was called a ‘dirty Jew’ ahead of the last election and that he still received regular death threats from people who say he is an ‘enemy of Islam’.

Ilford North MP Lee Scott, who is Jewish, told a parliamentary debate last week that two men ‘called me a dirty Jew and said they were going to kill me,’ but that he shrugged it off, saying: ‘I’ll put you down as a possible then.’

Scott said the next week someone began distributing leaflets showing him wearing a yarmulke, saying he was ‘an enemy of Islam’.

‘I still regularly get e-mails saying that I should be stoned to death,’ he said. ‘The consequences of what is stirred up at a general election goes on for years after.’

Labour MP Natascha Engel, who chaired the investigation, said some insults directed at MPs was so extreme it could not be published, and that the level of abuse was having a huge effect on those interested in public office.

‘Whether the tensions were religious, ethnic or based on their sexuality or gender, we found that people who would have been good candidates for elected office at any level were not putting their names forward,’ she said.