King’s Speech

Lord Godson Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Godson (Con)]

My Lords, antisemitism is rightly at the top of the national agenda at the moment. Given the comments of both the Prime Minister and the leader of the Opposition, this matter clearly enjoys cross-party consensus in both Houses. This is not simply a question of physical protection; antisemitism has now also impacted on the public sector across a range of areas, including the NHS and—of particular relevance to today’s debate—the criminal justice system and policing.

Members of the House will well recall the West Midlands Police’s lamentable approach to “community engagement” during last year’s Maccabi Tel Aviv football match debacle. The handling of the matter rightly led to the involvement of the present Home Secretary and resulted in the departure of the then chief constable. The police obviously have a crucial role to play in the fight against terrorism, but when it comes to extremism more broadly, and particularly to non-violent extremism, they also have a long pedigree of getting themselves into pickles, owing to an obsession with finding what are seen as “credible” partners to reach out to vulnerable sections of some Muslim communities. Too many of these partners turn out to be sectarians and antisemites.

Perhaps the starkest example of this was the support given by the Metropolitan Police, many years ago in 2004 under the commissionership of the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, to the visit of the late Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an extremist cleric and hate preacher who openly supported suicide attacks against coalition forces in Iraq as well as against Israeli civilians. Strangely, he too was seen as a credible figure who could persuade angry young people in this country not to become jihadists on these shores.

More recently, after 7 October, the Metropolitan Police’s London Muslim Communities Forum was dogged by controversy. If noble Lords have never heard of that body, it is perhaps of little surprise. A full list of its members, minutes of its meetings and record-keeping of its advice to the police have never been published. What we do know is that its chairman was forced to stand down from his role in November 2023, after footage of him chanting the slogan “From the river to the sea” went public. Subsequently, the Metropolitan Police stated that it was working on a new advisory group “charter” that would include a

“shared commitment to engage through mutual respect and inclusivity”.

Yet two and a half years later, that charter does not seem to have been made public. I ask the Minister: why not?

There are ample precedents for Home Secretaries to intervene when policing is getting it wrong. The then Home Secretary, acting under her powers contained in Section 54 of the Police Act 1996, commissioned a report from His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services into activism and impartiality in policing. This highlighted a lack of clarity around the purpose, administration and governance of police “staff networks”, which are too often consulted on policy matters, as well as on legitimate welfare matters.

Since the last King’s Speech, things have changed significantly for the worse. We need to re-evaluate the Government’s approach to operationally independent bodies, and their policies, in the light of the antisemitism crisis. The Government have made it clear through their recent White Paper on police reform that they intend to:

“Solidify the boundaries of operational independence”.


The key question now for Ministers, therefore, is what such a solidification might mean for holding police forces to account for the policies that they themselves forge and create, leading to bias and sectarianism in their own ranks. The present Home Secretary herself recognised the role of Ministers in her previous role as Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, when she addressed the questions of the sentencing guidelines. As she pointed out, it is for Ministers to be responsible for policy. Likewise, we now have to ask whether policy on these vital matters, including the impartiality of the police, is too important to be left to the police, just as war has always been said to be too important to be left exclusively to the generals.