Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 370A, which seeks to grant the Secretary of State the power to designate and restrict extreme criminal protest groups—and I declare an interest as the director of the Free Speech Union.

Last Monday, the Free Speech Union was the victim of an attack by a group that meets the definition in this amendment of an extreme criminal protest group. It is a group called Bash Back, which is a militant pro-trans group; it broke into the website of the Free Speech Union, stole confidential information about some of our donors and then published that information on its website and its social media accounts. To get that information removed, we had to apply for an emergency injunction; we then had to go back to court to put that injunction on a firmer footing; and there will be a third hearing or trial at which we try to make that injunction permanent. In the meantime, even though the information has been removed from the group’s website and social media accounts, that website and those social media accounts are still up. It has been extremely traumatic and disruptive—our website is still down. Applying for emergency injunctions and seeing that process through is by no means cheap; it is not entirely covered by our insurance.

One of the arguments we have heard this evening as to why the Secretary of State should not be granted this power is that the existing criminal law framework is adequate to deal with extreme criminal protest groups. I am glad to say that the Metropolitan Police does appear to be taking seriously what is a criminal offence—the data breach and the publication of that confidential data, in our case. The pro-trans group Bash Back has been active for at least six months and the criminal law as it stands has not been adequate to restrain it. This group took responsibility for vandalising the constituency office of Wes Streeting, the Secretary of State for Health. In addition to smashing up his constituency office in Ilford North, it daubed the words “Child Killer” on the wall of his office because he said that he does not want the NHS to prescribe puberty blockers any longer. No one, as far as I know, has been interviewed by the police in connection with that violent assault on the offices of a Member of Parliament: certainly, no one has been arrested. The group followed up with an attack on a feminist conference in Brighton, and the threats and intimidation meant that that conference could not take place.

More recently, the group launched a violent attack on the offices of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, presumably because of the guidance note that the commission submitted to the Government about how to interpret the Supreme Court’s judgment about the meaning of the word “sex” in the Equality Act, which presumably the group does not agree with. It daubed graffiti on the walls of the office and used hammers to smash the glass on the office’s front. I do not suppose that I need to remind noble Lords that the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission at the time was the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, and one of the commissioners at the time was my noble friend Lady Cash. This is an extreme criminal protest group which has seemingly been allowed to operate with impunity because the existing—

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

Forgive me for interrupting—and I have hiccups, which is why I am trying not to interrupt—but the more important point about the attack on the EHRC’s London offices is that it is in a large building shared by several other organisations. Not only were the staff of the EHRC threatened by the very act of the attack, but the other organisations that use the building were also extremely disturbed by what happened, and there have been repercussions for the EHRC as a consequence as a tenant. I cannot say any more than that, but I wanted to make that point.

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[Baroness Cash (Con)]

My Lords, mindful of time, I will limit my comments to the first amendment of the group, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Walney, and spoken to by my noble friend Lord Young.

A few people have mentioned that laws already cover the incidents referred to by groups such as Bash Back; I will focus on Bash Back because, as my noble friend Lord Young referenced, I was a commissioner at the EHRC at the time of that attack. There are laws that currently cover those incidents. There are criminal laws: there is aiding and abetting, criminal damage, attempted criminal damage, intimidation, harassment—all sorts of laws cover those attacks. But they are not implemented, and that is the second point I will come to in a moment: the behaviour of the police currently.

At the moment, when you have an organisation such as Bash Back advertising, encouraging, boasting about and celebrating criminal plans and then executed criminal acts, the police have a mountain to climb in order to identify all the individuals, all the individual offences, and the means by which to prosecute each one. I support this amendment because the noble Lord, Lord Walney, has very thoughtfully set out a means by which, when a group is advertising and encouraging criminal behaviour, and when a group—let us be honest—is seeking not to express an opinion but to close down the opinions of others using criminal behaviour, we have a means of addressing that, and doing so early, facilitating a way of managing the safety of the others.

I will just add that, for the individual members of staff in the building, and within the EHRC, in the particular incident of violence referenced by my noble friend Lord Young, all the windows were smashed in what was quite a large building owned by other people. It was really very frightening for the mostly young people who were there. I cannot say more than that at this time, but it was frightening. My noble friend Lord Young and I are both quite tough cookies, so for us it was probably easier to manage, but for the individual young people who experienced that, it was quite something, and it leads them to a situation where they have to question where they are working, what they are doing, how they are going to behave, and how they are going to express themselves in their workplace.

At the moment, although laws exist to address those individual events, they do not assist the police in the way that they need to be assisted, and nor do they assist the Government in the way they needed to be assisted to address Palestine Action. This is a step in between which would assist greatly, whether with Bash Back, Extinction Rebellion or any of the other groups that deploy criminal activity.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

I wonder if I might interject. The noble Baroness has raised Bash Back, as did the noble Lord, Lord Young. In its advertising, it makes a great deal of face coverings—which we discussed earlier today in the debate on whether Clause 118 stand part of the Bill—and the fact that no one needs to worry about being detected for this criminal damage because they can wear face coverings.

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

I am grateful for that reminder. It is another point in support of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Walney. The overall position of the group is much more easily managed by the police when there are deliberate attempts to evade any type of prosecution.