Lucy Connolly has been mistreated by prison officers who have handcuffed and stripped her of privileges, Richard Tice has claimed.
Reform UK’s deputy leader claimed Connolly was ‘manhandled without provocation’ after visiting her today at HMP Peterborough, where she is serving a 31-month sentence for posting a racist tweet in the wake of the Southport attacks.
The former childminder, who is the wife of Tory councillor Ray Connolly, posted a 51-word online rant about migrants hours after Axel Rudakubana murdered three young girls in Southport on July 29 last year.
Misinformation that the attacker was a Muslim asylum seeker who arrived in the UK in a boat – when he was in fact born in Cardiff to Rwandan parents – spread rapidly online and led to riots breaking out across the country.
Connolly’s sentence, which she unsuccessfully appealed last month, has been at the centre of a free speech row, with critics including former PM Boris Johnson and Tory leader Kemi Badenoch claiming it was too harsh.
Mr Tice has even proposed a bill – named ‘Lucy’s Bill’ – which would allow people to mount mass appeals against punishments they deem to be too severe or lenient.
Connolly was allegedly mistreated after she was told she wouldn’t be transferred to an enhanced wing with full privileges, but would instead be thrown into a 23-hour-a-day lockdown with the most violent prisoners.
When she challenged the decision, she was allegedly restrained by officers with handcuffs and taken to her new cell in what Mr Rice claimed was a ‘politically motivated’ response.
After visiting Ms Connolly in prison, Mr Tice told reporters: ‘Five days after the incident, the bruises on her wrists are still significant – yellow. It was obviously horrible what she went through.
‘On Thursday, she was manhandled, mistreated with no provocation. She was denied enhanced accommodation to which she was entitled and they gave her, frankly, the Nutters Wild Wing – druggies, violence.
‘You have to think it’s politically motivated. I think the next few weeks before her release are going to be very challenging, worrying. I think it would suit the authorities to want to provoke a violent reaction from Lucy. I told Lucy to be very careful.’
The deputy Reform leader said he met with HMP Peterborough’s head of security, explaining: ‘He is looking at the complaint seriously. When we get the result of that complaint – if they have ‘lost’ the bodycam footage or any of that funny business then I will escalate the complaint and meet the Governor.’
Mr Tice added: ‘I genuinely fear that she is actually being treated as a political prisoner for political purposes.’
Sodexo, the private prison firm which runs HMP Peterborough, has been approached for comment.
It comes after Connolly was jailed for posting on X: ‘Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the bastards for all I care … if that makes me racist so be it,’ in the wake of the Southport stabbings.
At the time, she had about 9,000 followers on X. Her message was reposted 940 times and viewed 310,000 times, before she deleted it three and a half hours later.
An appeal against her sentence was dismissed at the Court of Appeal last month.
Mr Tice said he would be raising his ‘serious concerns’ in the Commons tomorrow when he introduces his ‘Ten-minute Rule Bill’.
The ten minute rule allows a backbench MP to make a case for a new Bill in a speech lasting up to ten minutes. An opposing speech can also be made before the House decides whether or not to introduce the Bill.
If Mr Tice is successful, the Bill is taken to have had its first reading.
The Bill will be introduced to the House of Commons on Wednesday and would mean campaigners could get the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) to reconsider cases deemed unduly harsh.
He said he hoped the Bill would enable a ‘treble check’ on sentences.
‘The whole point about justice is it has to have the confidence of the British people,’ Mr Tice said.
‘We’re not calling into dispute the brilliance of our legal system and our judges.
‘What we’re just saying is, sometimes, however good you are, you might not quite get it right, and it’s not unreasonable to have a treble check of the sentence itself.’
He said that the number of people required to sign the petition could be up for debate.
He added: ‘To get 500 signatures on a form is not an easy thing. You’ve got to explain it to 500 people, and they’ve got to be convinced.
‘You can always say at the margin something might be abused. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t talk about it.’
When asked why the public should get a say in legal cases, Mr Tice said: ‘Never underestimate the common sense of the Great British public and their gut instinct for where something is fair or not fair. We’re all human, judges can get things wrong, and sometimes there can be political pressure.
‘In this situation, we had a prime minister that effectively ordered the judges to give very strict sentences, and people have very serious concerns about that.
‘There’s a lot of concern amongst the British public that Lucy Connolly and others were the victims of two-tier justice.’
Under the Bill, campaigners would need to get 500 people to sign a petition against a punishment handed down in Crown Court.
Those cases would be considered for eight weeks by the CCRC, which may refer them to the Court of Appeal for a decision.
Mr Tice said of choosing the CCRC over the Attorney General: ‘The Attorney General is a busy person and ultimately a political person, whereas the (CCRC) should not be that.
‘It could potentially be extra work but it wouldn’t be very many cases a year. It might be an opportunity for the CCRC to say ‘We actually need to relook at our competences, how we operate, our procedures. Are we getting it right? Can we improve ourselves?’.
He did not say how much the proposal could cost the taxpayer but added: ‘I want to have the debate and the discussion and give the British people the ability to have ever more confidence in our justice system.
‘If you lose that confidence, if you lose that trust, that’s a very bad place to be.’
