Counter-Extremism Strategy

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful for the question and the way in which the noble Lord put it. Again, I am slightly constrained in outlining the conclusions of the review before it has been completed. But let me say to him that online extremism and online radicalisation, whatever forum they come from, are extremely important issues and will be a focus of government. Going back to the point my noble friend made earlier, we have to look at a cross-government strategy on this; what happens in communities through local government departments, for example, is as important in preventing radicalisation as what the Home Office and the security services do, and we need to be aware of that. When the conclusions are published and my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has announced and opined on them, I will be able to report back to this House in more detail.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am sure that Ministers and Members on the Government Benches remember the election in July fondly. But lest we forget, it was marred by ugly episodes of intimidation and harassment. Can the Minister update us on promises from the Home Secretary to specifically investigate, for example, the openly anti-Semitic supporters and red paint-wielding pro-Palestine activists hounding and abusing candidates and canvassers alike? In the context of attempts to use fear to distort election results, can the Minister outline which of the recommendations for safeguarding democracy in the review by the noble Lord, Lord Walney, will be enacted, and when?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

There is a Defending Democracy Taskforce comprising a number of Ministers, led by my honourable friend Dan Jarvis, the Minister with responsibility for security and counterterrorism. It is reviewing a range of issues and working across government to ensure that the integrity of elections is maintained. By “integrity” I mean elections being free of interference from abroad and from intimidation at home. I hope that will help satisfy the noble Baroness.

Hezbollah: Threat to the United Kingdom

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Godson. I would like to follow his excellent introduction by raising concerns about the very same ideological threat posed by Hezbollah to the UK that we just heard about. It is extraordinary how normalised it has become at demonstrations on UK streets that, alongside aggressive, inflammatory anti-Israel chants, we are likely to see placards or hear slogans lauding Hezbollah as freedom fighters and rebranding its recently killed, warmonger leader Nasrallah as a brave warrior. We might ask: are such attitudes solely the spontaneous reactions to a brutal geopolitical conflict?

Something that might give us pause for thought are the words of Mohammad Raad, head of the Hezbollah group in Lebanon’s parliament, who boasted in an interview with Russia Today in June:

“We’re currently investing in protests and demonstrations in Western countries, especially among college students. We already have Muslim students agitating, but it’s the Western students themselves who will destabilize their own countries”.


No doubt there is a bit of hyperbole here, but it is really chilling to hear this explicit threat to the stability of western society, and it needs to be taken seriously. Can the Minister respond to the claim that Hezbollah is investing in demonstrations in the West? Do the Government have any knowledge of such financial support for UK street protests and campus encampments?

There seems to be a concerted attempt by agitators to give popular legitimacy to proscribed organisations, such as Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and so on, whose USP is the destruction of Israel and whose propaganda is dripping in visceral anti-Semitism. Can the Minister explain how the criminal offence of supporting a proscribed organisation such as Hezbollah is understood? When it is so brazenly vocalised on our streets, but seemingly ignored by the police or authorities, it causes public confusion.

I am resistant to criminalising such verbal support, not only because of the importance of freedom of speech—one of those western values that Hezbollah and other Islamists want to destroy—but because I think we need more speech to counter this threat. If pro-Hezbollah propagandists are agitating on campus, we need to join that battle of ideas to win hearts and minds; but it feels like there is some inconsistency here. The Government seem unabashed at calling out some forms of extremism—rather promiscuously, in my view, calling too many people far right—but where is the high-profile government campaign to name and shame and expose the ideas of those peddling Hezbollah et al’s hateful anti-Jewish ideologies?

In a week that has witnessed the daubing of red paint on Jewish charities, for God’s sake, and respectable opinion calling for boycotts of Jewish authors, perhaps we must take more seriously the bigotry being peddled in the West and realise just how urgent it is that we tackle radical Islamist ideas in public.

Violent Disorder

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful for the noble Lord’s welcome to me coming to this position. The Member for Clacton, if that was the Member he was referring to, is responsible for his own comments, in his own way and in his own time. He should be held to account by people in Clacton and by the wider community for any comments he makes. It is not for me to comment on that; it is for him to make those comments. What I will say is that, whenever things happen—as they do—we need to look at, and take action on, that criminal behaviour and close it down. Sometimes, it happens with summer activity, with people having too much to drink over long nights; sometimes, it is fuelled by right-wing violence and, other times, it is fuelled by other activity. If, underneath that, there are long-term trends of Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, right-wing ideology or, indeed, extreme left-wing ideology, we need to look, in a cold, calm way, at what has caused that, how we deal with it, how—following the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe—we intelligently police it and, ultimately, how we bring people to court if they have committed criminal offences. What Ministers can do is put the architecture together for that. The Prime Minister has been trying to look at the lessons learned from the initial response, which surprised many of us in that week after Southport, to see how we can improve that response and listen to what the police say about their own lessons. If that involves action by the Home Office in support of policing, that is what we will do.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I know that the Government are very conscious of the UK’s international reputation. I want to know whether there is any ministerial concern about the many free speech and civil liberties organisations around the world expressing shock about the degree of state- backed censorship being greenlighted in the wake of the riots. There is a worry that there is too easy a slippage and conflation between physical violence, which we can all condemn, and speech offences. The majority of people have not been incarcerated for incitement. They may have put out bigoted memes that we can deplore; none the less, people in the UK are being imprisoned not for what they do but for what they say. As there seem to be threats of more censorship, I want the Minister to reassure me that we will not end up in a situation where these riots, which were tragic enough, will chill legitimate debate and lead to a censorious, authoritarian atmosphere where people are frightened to speak freely.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

There is freedom of speech, and I made it very clear in the wake of the riots that people are entitled to criticise the UK Government’s asylum policy, immigration policy or any aspect of UK government policy. What they are not entitled to do is to incite racial hatred, to incite criminal activity, to incite attacks on mosques or to incite burnings or other criminal, riotous behaviour. That is the threshold. The threshold is not me saying, “I do not like what they have said”—there are lots of things that I do not like that people have said; the threshold is determined by criminal law, is examined by the police and is referred to the CPS. The CPS examines whether there is a criminal charge to account for, which is then either made through a guilty plea and a sentence, which happened with the majority of people who now face time in prison, or put in front of a court for a jury of 12 peers to determine whether an offence has been committed. There is no moratorium on criticism of political policy in the United Kingdom. There is free speech in this United Kingdom, but free speech also has responsibilities, and one responsibility is not to incite people to burn down their neighbour’s property.

King’s Speech

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I give a warm welcome to the noble Lord, Lord Hanson of Flint. I went to school in Flint, so there is a special connection there. Also, I am full of hope listening to how the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, handled the earlier Statement on the prison crisis, especially on hearing his previous knowledge of and engagement with the nearly 3,000 IPP prisoners still languishing in jail indefinitely. A friendly warning: the Minister should expect to be pestered by many of us on this issue until Parliament’s admitted mistake—an actual miscarriage of justice—is put right.

This focus on prisoners is pertinent while discussing criminal justice in a debate on the humble Address. As legislators, we should be suitably humble about nodding through laws that can potentially imprison ever-greater numbers of our fellow citizens and turn erstwhile innocent people into criminals for activities that have to date been lawful. In that context, the proposal for the full trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices, as we have heard, is worrying. The law is unnecessary, as gay and trans people are already protected by existing laws from those vile abuses described by campaigners for the legislation. The dread is that, instead, we risk criminalising medical staff, teachers, therapists, religious support workers, even parents—and even free speech—for helping gender-confused young people and not simply affirming the disquieting and wrong-headed notion that they are born in the wrong body. Meanwhile, hard-pressed shopkeepers in the future could be punished for selling tobacco products to a 28 year-old and a 27 year-old—one legally, the other illegally. This is a recipe for chaos, let alone creating a thriving black market in cigarettes. As a non-affiliated Peer, I look forward to lampooning this particularly daft law, pushed as a flagship piece of legislation by Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Government and now enthusiastically embraced by the new Labour Government.

Sometimes we should ask: are we creating new laws as a substitute for tackling deeper problems? In his speech on the humble Address, referring to the proposed crime and policing Bill, the Prime Minister declared that we will take back control of our streets. That is good, but how? By giving the police new powers, he says. But are the undoubted problems we have on our streets really because the police do not have enough powers? Would the recent grotesque and disturbing scenes of violence and rioting in Harehills really be solved by the police waving around those proposed new respect orders when, on the night, officers retreated from the streets of Leeds, seemingly abandoning the local community to frenzied criminality?

It is just not serious to suggest that you can solve the deep-seated cultural problem of declining respect in society—a crisis of authority, as it were—by resurrecting those discredited Blairite ASBOs, rebranded as respect orders. What is more, over recent years there has been a proliferation of these quasi-criminal behaviour orders, about 30 at the last count, yet anti-social behaviour is soaring. In terms of civil liberties, these behaviour orders do not specify particular offences, which means that the police can use them in a subjective, expansive and arbitrary fashion, often reinforcing a sense of unfair two-tier policing. On the night of the Euros final, the Met issued a killjoy anti-social behaviour dispersal order banning football fans from the Westminster area, yet it claims that it does not have enough powers to disperse Just Stop Oil or pro-Gaza activists from anti-social disruption here at Westminster on a regular basis.

Finally, it is only weeks since we witnessed one of the most chilling examples of out-of-control streets. That was, sadly, in the build-up to the general election. We saw unprecedented levels of ugly intimidation that mired electoral campaigning. To give a few examples: a trembling rabbi, a Conservative candidate, was surrounded by a hostile mob, screamed at and called a snake; a Labour candidate was hounded off the streets to chants of “Zionist devil”; young female leafleteers were harassed and filmed by older men bellowing “genocide” in their faces; tyres were slashed; campaign offices were daubed with blood-red painted anti-Semitic libel, “Zionist child killer”. This Islamist sectarianism that has burst into public life and poisoned the democratic process must be confronted, not by laws but by courage. Those who try to silence concerns with the accusation of Islamophobia ignore that many Muslims were themselves threatened with Allah’s wrath if they voted for Labour’s infidels. We cannot allow this menacing trend to be swept under the carpet, so it was gratifying to hear the maiden speech by the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, addressing extremism and to hear the Secretary of State, Shabana Mahmood, defiantly declare that:

“British politics must … wake up to what happened at this election”.


Hear, hear. Taking back control of our streets means more of this honest plain speaking and political leadership, and rather less of mealy-mouthed platitudes and performative lawmaking.

Jewish Community in London: Safety

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My noble friend makes some good points. Of course, as has been often stated from the Dispatch Box, the Government do not comment on ongoing matters of possible proscription. The police can of course impose conditions on protests where they believe the protest may result in a variety of civil offences, serious disorder, damage to property and so on and so forth, but the ability to actually ban protests is a complex one under the Public Order Act. Of course, I agree with my noble friend, but it is incumbent on all citizens to reassure the Jews, who are feeling so under pressure.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am sure that noble Lords have been following the events at Columbia University and the encampment there, where there have been some pretty horrific scenes of students screaming rather maniacally to exclude “genocidal Zios”, and using other very offensive and anti-Semitic slogans, and so on. It has just completely got out of hand. The global student movement is coming to the UK: “From Gaza to Columbia to London” is the slogan, and it starts at UCL at 1 pm on Friday 26 April. I am not saying that as an advert, and I am not particularly worried about people protesting or about their interpretive dance against colonisation that they are bringing over. However, I am worried about anti-Semitism on London and other British campuses. Safety is not just a policing question. Can the Minister assure us that guard is being taken against what is happening on campuses, where the levels of anti-Semitism are now routine and normalised?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My noble friend from the Department for Education assures me that there is protection on British campuses. However, I also acknowledge the points that the noble Baroness made and share her concerns; these trends are very disturbing.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Wednesday 20th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, what a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, with whom I agree. I felt that the Minister’s opening remarks were so full of mistakes that I shall go through them tomorrow in Hansard with a red pen and pass them back to him, if that is all right, so he can see exactly where I think he went wrong.

It was expected that the other place would take out all our important amendments, but at the same time you have to say that it was not the move of a democratically minded Government but that of an authoritarian, tyrannical one. This Government are choosing tyranny over democracy in this instance. We now have the job of revising the Bill again. As the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, said, the British public are actually kinder and more concerned than this Government. The Government do not represent the public any more, and it is time they went.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am not a fan of the Bill but I think it is time for it to pass.

I want to respond to the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, who asked if it is always right that the elected House must prevail. The truth is that the elected House must prevail and that yes, that is always right. We are an unelected House. We have a job to do, but at some point it has to be the elected House that decides in a democratic society.

I want to comment on the remarks made about compassion. I too disapproved of Members of the other place who tried to suggest that anyone arguing against the Bill lacked compassion. That is a ridiculous accusation and does not hold. However, I also make the point that the inference in reply—that anyone who is trying to push the Bill at this point lacks compassion—is equally low politically. It is irritating to have a situation where people start to try to compete with each other in the kindness stakes. The big political issue is that this country has lost control of its border and the asylum system is not fit for purpose. This Bill—not one that I support—is trying to tackle that. No one is doing it because they are lacking in compassion.

There are double standards here. I have heard that anyone who supports this Bill must be verging not just on the right but on the far right, does not care about anyone crossing in the boats and is actually a racist. I have heard that said by people active in political life. I ask that, for the remainder of the discussion that we have, we take each other seriously enough not just to dole out insults but to say that, if we are genuinely committed to tackling the problem of border control, this is the Bill that is on the table now and has been accepted by the House of Commons a second time, and, even if we disagree with it, we have to go along with it.

As for the people who have argued that this was not in the manifesto, the suggestion that there is no public concern about control of the borders has no finger on the pulse of any public. However, it is true that there will be elections shortly. It seems to me that people who feel strongly that this is the worst piece of legislation ever passed will stand on that in their manifesto and will commit, here and now, to overturning the Bill once it goes through. Then we will see where the votes lie and, if the Opposition become the Government, whether they stick with that and tear up the Bill. Fair dos if they do.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to answer one question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. He asked your Lordships to ponder the position of the Rwandan Parliament and said that we must not second guess what it may do. What he forgot to mention is that Rwanda has a monist system, so a treaty entered into by the Government of Rwanda is capable of being relied upon in their domestic courts. As I previously informed the House, the Chamber of Deputies of Rwanda has ratified the treaty, and we now learn from my noble and learned friend the Minister that the Senate of Rwanda has also ratified it. The only matter that remains is for the president to agree the ratification and when that happens, the safeguards in the treaty will apply.

Anti-Semitism in the UK

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Wednesday 21st February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My noble friend asks a number of questions which I am afraid impinge on the operational activities of the police. I am obviously not able to comment on those. On whether we are satisfied that the police are sufficiently aware and have sufficient powers to stop marches and control public protest, we are, and I went into that in some detail earlier. Crowd policing is a very difficult thing to do, for obvious reasons. In some cases, I would absolutely defend the police’s right to carefully gather evidence and consult the experts whom they have available to them before potentially inflaming tensions—this is me dangerously straying into operational areas; I probably should not say even that—because the decisions that the police take have to be context-specific. It is not right for us to second-guess those decisions; the police could of course be challenged on them afterwards if they are found wanting.

We need to be careful when talking about these things, but we are confident that the police have the right powers. I am not aware of any particular incidents today. I did not feel particularly intimidated, although I completely accept that my noble friend might well have done. I am sure all those feelings and thoughts are being taken into account by the House authorities and by other police when they keep us safe.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I really thought that the noble Lord, Lord Mann, spoke very powerfully and that it was not hyperbole. We almost cannot describe how serious the mood is at the moment. This is a serious time, historically, in terms of anti-Semitism, and this is not just some rhetorical flourish. I want to have that on record.

I am not frightened by the phrase “Free Palestine”, and I do not want to give the Minister any more excuses to clamp down on demonstrations or free speech, because goodness knows he has done a fair amount of that over the period I have been here. However, it is grim, or maybe fitting, that this Statement on the frighting rise of anti-Semitism is against the backdrop of the debate today on a Gaza ceasefire in the other place—albeit performative, because I note that not one life will be saved and there will not be a ceasefire as a consequence of this. That debate descended into a nasty mood of sectarianism. Worse, tonight we are hearing dark allegations that physical threats were made to elected Members, poisoning the democratic procedures of this Parliament. You associate anti-Semitism with those kinds of dark stories. We are in a building that has witnessed it today, never mind the protestors outside.

A much smaller incident that I would like the Minister to comment on is one that cheered me up. It might sound minor, but, after the unpleasant incident earlier this week of the Star of David necklace on the statue of Amy Winehouse being covered up, which the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, rightly referred to—it was so shocking, even though it seemed so small—I was pleased to see that a non-Jewish member of the public had gone out of their way to skive off work and scrape off the sticker from the statue. I know that because it was reported by the group Our Fight, a new grass-roots campaign of non-Jews challenging British anti-Semitism, which was set up after 7 October.

Would the Minister agree on the importance of such solidarity, which cuts across identity politics and all sorts of party tribalism? This was summed up by the New York mayor, Eric Adams, when he said in a speech:

“Israel, your fight is our fight”.


So much of the anti-Semitism we are seeing today, and much of the reaction to the war in Gaza, is, I am sad to say, around religious and racial identity and some of the most divisive, regressive sides of society. We should call for a universal condemnation of the racism of anti-Semitism.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I agree entirely with the noble Baroness. She will know that I am not brave enough to restrict her freedom of speech in any way. I think this goes back to what I said when I quoted Rabbi Sacks. He pointed out that anti-Semitism may begin with the Jews but it does not end there, so it is for all of us to combat it.

Protest Measures

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Tuesday 13th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

First, I did not say that it was irrelevant. I said that this is a very specific set of circumstances and I accept that there is a whole separate debate about facial recognition that we need to have in the near future—I accept that it is a matter of urgency. I cannot honestly recall seeing the noble Baroness’s letter to the Home Secretary. I will track it down and, if I may, I will come back in writing on that question because I genuinely do not know the answer.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, one of the reasons why there is this problem is that the police appear over a period of time to have been confused about what is a criminal act or not, sending messages on social media defining jihad in the most peculiar way, as some kind of inner struggle, or more recently saying, “We have looked at that flag, checked it out, and it is not a threat”, even though it is being used by ISIS. This makes the public more inclined to think that the criminal law might be needed, rather than the enforcement of existing laws.

Does the Minister concede that we have a deeper problem than climbing on statues? We earlier discussed the horrors that children in Gaza are enduring—weaponised by demonstrators walking around with dolls covered in blood, shouting “Blood on your hands” at our fellow Jewish citizens. We talked about disinformation earlier and we now know that conspiracy theories are mainstreamed to political parties—no facemasks required. Would the Minister concede that maybe we should enforce the laws we have, but avoid criminalising other behaviour? There is the bigger problem of a growth of anti-Semitism in society, which really needs to be challenged as much as any other racism that is a scourge.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I agree entirely with the remarks of the noble Baroness about anti-Semitism which I find personally disgusting, as do the Government, as she will know. On police confusion, it would be unwise for me to comment on the matters the noble Baroness describes, not least—as we frequently say from the Dispatch Box—because of the operational independence of the police, which I am very happy to defend. As for glorification, which she effectively talks about, the UK has a strong counterterrorism framework —one of the strongest in the world. It is important to recognise that. It is an offence to encourage an act of terrorism, and that includes glorifying—including by praising or celebrating—action in committing or preparing acts of terrorism where others may be encouraged to emulate that action, and that offence can be committed recklessly. As I said earlier in answering the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, some 30 people have been arrested since the start of these protests for offences under the Terrorism Act. The police are not confused when it comes to policing those sorts of marches; the statistics prove otherwise. These measures are proportionate to the sorts of activities we are describing.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 29th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, for that speech. He did not pull any punches, which I liked, but I did not like anything else that he said. I find myself with “Sophie’s Choice” here. This is a Bill that I intensely dislike, but I dislike the Opposition’s arguments against the Bill even more.

I am no fan of the Rwanda plan. The absence of a much-promised review of safe routes means that there is no flexibility about who is permanently deported, and there is no ability to appeal. The Bills feels performative, very expensive and unworkable, but mainly I object to a narrow discussion on Rwanda as a substitute for tackling what should be obvious to all by now: the need for a complete overhaul of our current asylum system and a review of often outdated international laws and treaties that are regularly used to limit sovereign law-making.

Here is my dilemma: too often, opposition to any or all government proposals on migration—certainly since I have been in this House—leads to swathes of immovable blocks that effectively tell voters, “You can’t do that”. I am worried when this House plays that role itself, of being one of those blocks. Certainly, treaties and laws internationally made that no one in the UK voted for feel like a slap in the face of the electorate. I am glad to hear that, across the House, there is an understanding that the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord German, is potentially improper overreach, a sort of cancel culture applied to the scrutiny of legislation. Despite this, however, when the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, told the House that the Labour Benches would treat the Bill like any other Bill, I am just not convinced that this Bill is being treated like any other Bill. In fact, all migration legislation and debates that I have sat through have felt less like scrutiny and revising in good faith, and more as though they are opposing because of a fundamental disagreement on immigration. Amendments that are being put forward even now, I fear, will gut the original aim of the legislation, and that seems to me to be anti-democratic.

There has been a lot of noise ahead of today’s debate. In fact, I was reading Politico, and one anonymous Labour Peer told that publication that the Lords were preparing for “trench warfare.” He then listed the Bill’s sins: overturning the Supreme Court, being contrary to international law and human rights and so on. He said:

“All these things are likely to put lead in the Lords’ pencil.”


It is interesting that those tools of governance are what excite the juices of noble Lords in this House and get them worked up, whereas they seem rather indifferent to public concerns and rarely reference them, and then only to dismiss with a sneer the “will of the people” phrase.

The most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury stressed the important issue of individual dignity and the value of each and every individual, and of course, he is right. However, that was very much with a focus on those seeking asylum. I ask noble Lords to broaden their focus. It insults the dignity of the British public when their concerns about the potential security threat posed by those entering the country illegally in the absence of proper checks are given second-class status versus international treaties. I can also imagine how vulnerable people feel when they discover that, for example, universities are offering visas to overseas students for lower grades than their kids need to get on to a degree course in this country.

Just a few other issues are bothering me. We are trapped here for hours and hours debating the safety of one African country. I feel uncomfortable reading the plethora of briefings sent out by NGOs detailing horror stories from Rwanda full of human misery, even with accusations of torture, but I seriously worry about demonising a country for the purposes of opposing a UK policy and defeating a Bill. Maybe I am being too cynical, but I cannot help but notice that, only recently, many of the same NGOs and commentators were cheering on and lionising another African country for taking Israel to The Hague. Why did they then turn a blind eye to South Africa’s horrendous record of corruption, massacres of its own workers and standing by during pogroms of Zimbabwean immigrants, and so on? It just seems a bit like picking and choosing.

Then there is the focus on whether the Bill will damage our reputation with international institutions. Should such institutions be treated as sacrosanct? Much play has been made of the condemnation of the Bill by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and the fact that he denounced any UK lawmaking that wants

“to keep people away from your borders”,

saying that that “will always meet” with the UN’s disapproval. It would mean we would never be able to control our borders. However, I object to taking moral instructions from the UN on refugees after the weekend’s exposé that one of its agencies was implicated in the 7 October anti-Jewish pogrom. I will leave it there.

Abortion Clinics: Safe Access Zones

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Monday 20th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My noble friend should probably consult some of the providers to find out the precise types of behaviour happening outside their clinics. Plenty of examples are available online. The most recent I saw was on 4 November from BPAS. However, training will have to reflect Article 9 of the ECHR; as the House knows, that is around the freedom of expression and manifestation of religion and belief. I also say that those rights are heavily qualified.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, having spent many an hour debating the clause, I think it requires careful consideration. I want to talk about context. First, people have been arrested for praying outside abortion clinics. However wacky we might consider it, that is a free-speech matter. Secondly, as the police do not seem to be able to know what intimidation is—whether outside a Labour MP’s office or on the streets in terms of anti-Semitism—I hope the consultation will be as helpful as possible so that they arrest the right people and do not end up policing easy targets instead.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

The noble Baroness invites me to speculate on operational policing. As we discussed many times from this Dispatch Box recently, I cannot and will not do that. What I can say is that, in my understanding, some of the context around previous arrests is that they are more to do with breach of PSPOs than with the behaviour that she describes. In that case, I think it was repeated breach of a PSPO, so I am not sure that she is completely correct in her assertion, but I take her point.