How can the punishment for a social media post be more severe than for raping a child, asks Lord Young
20 May 2025, 15:00
I was deeply disappointed when I heard earlier today that Lucy Connolly’s appeal has been denied.
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Connolly is a childminder and mother who was sentenced to 31 months last year after posting a rant against illegal immigrants on the day three schoolgirls were murdered in Southport, which she wrongly blamed on an asylum seeker.
She was particularly angry by what had happened because she had lost a 19-month-old child herself. She quickly regretted posting the tweet, deleting it and apologising in less than four hours. Nevertheless, it was reported to the police and she was duly arrested, prosecuted and sentenced to more than two-and-a-half years.
With the support of the Free Speech Union, the organisation I run, Lucy appealed the sentence last week in the Court of Appeal. Her barrister, Adam King, argued that Lucy pleaded guilty to a level of culpability she should not have done because she wasn’t properly advised by her solicitor – an argument the Court has rejected – and that the judge in the case failed to give due weight to various mitigating factors, such as the death of her 19-month-old son and the fact that she deleted the post within hours. That, too, was an argument rejected by the Court of Appeal.
For Lucy’s sake, and the sake of her husband and child, I had hoped for a different judgment. Her tweet was undoubtedly offensive, but the sentence of more than two-and-a-half years seems ridiculously disproportionate.
Lucy received a longer jail term than Philip Prescott, who joined a racially aggravated mob attack on a mosque and threw missiles at the police in a riot in Southport. A man who pleaded guilty to paying for sex with a child prostitute in Telford in 2013 received a lighter sentence, as have many members of grooming gangs convicted of child sexual exploitation. And the same judge who jailed Lucy, HHJ Melbourne Inman KC, gave just 20 months to Haris Ghaffarr, who pleaded guilty to violent disorder during a riot in Birmingham last summer.
No one is defending Lucy’s tweet, least of all Lucy. But how can it be right that the punishment for a single social media post, however offensive, should be more severe than the punishment for raping a child? The Court of Appeal has decided the sentence was in line with the sentencing guidelines for the offence Lucy pleaded guilty to, but if that’s the case then we need to change the law. I can think of few people who believe being guilty of a speech offence should mean a longer spell in prison than being guilty of child sexual exploitation.
Lucy should be at home with her family — not locked up in jail while her husband, Ray, battles bone marrow failure and her 12-year-old daughter is struggling to cope without her mother.
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Lord Young of Acton is the General Secretary of the Free Speech Union.
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