Stella Creasy

Creasy campaigned successfully for better regulation of payday loans companies.[35] In an article published by The Guardian, she stated that just six companies controlled lending to 90% of the seven million Britons without a bank account or credit card. Her disclosure that the average cost of credit charged to these customers was 272% APR, as in the rest of Europe, and that there was a fourfold increase in payday loans since the start of the recession in 2008 led to cross-party parliamentary support for a cap.[35] Creasy also highlighted in a speech to the House of Commons the lack of competition in the market, leading to Government support for a cap of loans which exploit the poor, which in some cases reached 4000% APR.[36] Creasy won The Spectator magazine's Campaigner of the Year prize in their Parliamentarian of the Year awards in 2011 for her work on the issue,[37] and was also acknowledged by the coalition government's Chancellor George Osborne for having contributed to the government's change of policy.[38]

In 2012, a Wonga employee used company equipment to make offensive personal attacks against Creasy.[39] Wonga made an "immediate and unreserved apology" following these malicious attacks, and Creasy also managed to get the firm to promote one of her constituency events in aid of struggling families.[39]

Abortion law in Northern Ireland is more restrictive than elsewhere in the United Kingdom, resulting in many women travelling from Northern Ireland to Great Britain to access abortion services. In 2017, a potential amendment to the Queen's Speech, organised by Creasy, calling for the Government to allocate adequate funding for women who are forced to travel to England to have an abortion, gained cross-party support and was ultimately signed by 100 MPs, threatening a government defeat.[40] Conservative MP Peter Bottomley was a co-signer of Creasy's amendment. In answer to a question from Bottomley in the Commons on 29 June 2017, Philip Hammond, Chancellor of the Exchequer, said the government would support free abortions on the mainland for Northern Irish women.[41][42] Earlier in June, a Supreme Court ruling upheld the legal basis for a charge of £900 for women from the province seeking an abortion on the mainland, whereas other necessary treatments on the NHS would have been free.[41][43] Creasy was cautious in her response to the development. "The devil will be in the detail", she said.[42] She was reported to have received threats from some anti-abortion activists.[44][45]

At the end of July 2013, Creasy received numerous rape threats and other misogynistic messages on her Twitter timeline[46] after expressing support for the feminist campaigner Caroline Criado Perez, who had lobbied the Bank of England to put a woman on the £10 note and received similar messages.[3] On 2 September 2014 at the City of London Magistrates' Court, Peter Nunn was found guilty of sending menacing messages to Creasy,[47] and was subsequently jailed for eighteen weeks.[48]

Creasy wrote in an article published on 27 July: "Twitter tell me we should simply block those who 'offend us', as though a rape threat is matter of bad manners, not criminal behaviour."[49] She appeared on Newsnight on 30 July 2013 with Toby Young, the Conservative commentator, over the validity of addressing harassment on the social networking site.[50][51] She criticised him for a previous tweet about an MP's breasts.[52] Young has objected to Twitter's subsequent change in policy, writing that the company, "shouldn't change its abuse policy in response to being brow-beaten by a politician".[53]

Creasy allegedly received threats via social media following her vote for extending UK military action against ISIS to Syria after the parliamentary debate on 2 December 2015.[54] Creasy was undecided until the day of the vote, while staff in her Walthamstow constituency office had to deal with what they referred to as harassing telephone calls.[55] Protesters had gathered outside the closed constituency office the previous night urging a 'no' vote.[54][55] On Facebook, Creasy defended their right to peaceful protest.[56] Reports that protesters had gathered outside her home proved to be unfounded.[57][58]