Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Hain Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, made her point so ably that I was not tempted to speak, until I heard the counter-speech from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. It is simply ahistoric to suggest that the suffragettes—those protesters who everybody loves now but who were once incarcerated and tortured by the British state—

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

They went on hunger strike.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

Indeed, they went on hunger strike. It is simply ahistoric to suggest there was not a significant clandestine element to their operations. I am sure that, if one were to examine other examples the noble Lord gave, one would find greater complexity than he offered us in his very glib comments about protest.

Just minutes ago in this Chamber, noble Lords from across the House expressed their horror at what has been happening in Iran. On any given day in your Lordships’ House, similar comments will be made about Hong Kong or protests anywhere else in the world. It is of concern that organisations that many of us respect, such as JUSTICE, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and so on, are now writing very concerning reports about silencing the streets of the UK.

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[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with and endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Polak, said about Bondi and the Manchester synagogue, because those terrible attacks were modern examples of the persecution and pogroms that Jewish communities have suffered for centuries. He was right to remind us about that.

I wish to speak to the amendments to Clause 124 tabled by my noble friend Lady Blower, to which I have added my name, and, most importantly, on my opposition to the new clause tabled as Amendment 372 by my noble friend the Minister. He has been a long-standing friend for decades, as a fellow Welsh MP and a valued member of my ministerial team when I was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

Freedom of expression and the right to peaceful protest form the bedrock of any liberal democracy like our own. These rights are not a mere courtesy granted by the state; they are a fundamental part of British liberty, also enshrined by the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act. These freedoms are deeply woven into our history, through iconic protest movements from the Tolpuddle Martyrs and Peterloo to the Chartists, the suffragettes and the Anti-Apartheid Movement. Each of these causes, I stress, was disruptive—indeed, vilified—at the time, but they are now recognised as vital movements, successfully winning fundamental rights for millions of British citizens and others abroad. Yet that long tradition of assembly and free protest is now, sadly, under threat.

Any proposal that hands the police unprecedented powers to restrict this right should give this House and every British citizen serious cause for alarm. That is precisely why I find Clause 124 so worrying. First, it would allow protests to be banned and restricted in the so-called “vicinity” of places of religious worship, yet this House is being asked to legislate without clarity. As my noble friend Lady Blower said, “vicinity” is undefined; the term “may intimidate” is equally vague. Such imprecision invites arbitrary interpretation and risks handing law enforcement sweeping discretionary powers to curtail lawful protest. It may also put police officers in an impossible position when doing their jobs.

Secondly, let us be honest about the context here. Clause 124 does not arise in a vacuum. It is clearly framed as a response to national demonstrations in support of Palestinian rights, demonstrations that have been repeatedly and wrongly labelled as hate marches. These protests have never targeted places of worship; they never would and indeed never should. What is more, Jewish campaigners and organisations have been integral to many of those marches and, despite hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets, arrests have routinely been fewer than at most football matches. Indeed, the police themselves acknowledge that there has been no evidence of any threat to places of worship linked to these marches and, across more than 33 national demonstrations, not one has targeted or deliberately passed a synagogue.

Of course, the appalling antisemitic attack on a synagogue in Manchester and the Islamophobic attack on a mosque in Peacehaven remind us why our Jewish citizens and all religious communities must be properly protected, but surely Ministers must agree that those terrible attacks were entirely unrelated to protest. Crucially, the police already possess robust and extensive powers to safeguard places of worship and individuals under genuine threat. We must also ask: would these powers be applied to far-right mobilisations outside asylum hotels, where vulnerable refugee communities are explicitly targeted and intimidated, or is enforcement selective?

Clause 124 risks introducing political censorship through the backdoor. The right to worship freely and the right to protest peacefully are not competing freedoms; both must be upheld. This clause sets them against one another and, in doing so, weakens both. Existing powers have already been used repressively against campaigners and at great public cost. Clause 124 would further entrench that approach in law. For these reasons, I support the stand part notice tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lady Blower. I ask the Government to think again. If there is no such rethink and if it comes to it, I will vote against Clause 124.

The proposed new clause after Clause 124, although presented as a response to public inconvenience, poses a serious danger to freedom of speech and peaceful protest. Expanding the definition of serious disruption by introducing the concept of so-called “cumulative disruption”, it imposes a sweeping duty on the police to restrict or prohibit protests based not on their conduct but on their frequency or persistence in a particular area. Restricting protest simply because it disrupts daily life undermines the very mechanism that gives protest its power. It was precisely cumulative disruption over many years that made early trade unionists, the suffragettes and the civil rights and anti-apartheid movements so effective. No protest movement has ever brought about change through a single demonstration; it is through cumulative protests. To criminalise that principle is to hollow out that very right itself.

The new clause re-characterises protest as an inconvenience to be managed rather than a democratic right to be protected. Its language is dangerously broad. It fails to define when disruption becomes “cumulative”, over what timeframe this is to be assessed or how significant that disruption must be. Such elasticity gives the police sweeping powers to apply arbitrary and inconsistent enforcement, and creates a serious chilling effect on free expression. It would also allow the police to relocate protests to areas of minimal visibility or impact, permitting demonstrations for politically favourable causes in prominent locations while pushing unpopular dissent to the margins.

If this power had been statutorily available from 1969, when I was leading protests at Twickenham rugby stadium and Lord’s cricket ground, among many other sporting venues right across Britain, against touring apartheid all-white South African teams, surely they would have been blocked—thereby blocking the subsequent sports boycott almost universally imposed against whites-only sports tours from apartheid South Africa, which Nelson Mandela, among others, judged to have been decisive in bringing about the downfall of apartheid.

The term “area” is to be widely interpreted. Would restrictions be imposed on entire towns, or even the whole of central London? Non-violent disruption is often the only way that marginalised communities and civil rights protesters can make themselves heard by those who would otherwise ignore them. Neutral policing is a laudable objective, and I upheld that principle when I was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, but this new clause would make policing politically oppressive.

It is difficult to ignore the political context. The amendment follows sustained marches in support of Palestinian rights and in opposition to the war in Gaza. I have already opposed the proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist group—I am not going to rehash those arguments—because that proscription equates it with the appalling terrorism of al-Qaeda and Islamic State. For objecting to the shameful proscription, it is no surprise—to me, at least—that hundreds of peaceful protesters, including disabled people, the elderly, the young, retired vicars and magistrates, have been arrested as terrorists. Now there are protesters in prison on bail on hunger strike. If they die, that will be an even more shameful stain on this Government and this Parliament.

The new clause contained in government Amendment 372 risks compounding those injustices rather than correcting them. It is oppressive and unjust. Yet it will not just be marches for Palestinian rights that are affected; the impact will be much more wide-ranging. The amendment is also open to abuse by future Governments—Governments of the right, which could urge the police to stamp out political demonstrations.

This House has been here before. In February 2023, your Lordships rejected a similar Conservative amendment to the Public Order Act, which sought to restrict protests on the basis of cumulative disruption. In May 2023, the then Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, attempted to introduce the same concept by statutory instrument, only for the High Court to rule it unlawful a year later. I am afraid the new clause contained in government Amendment 372 is simply the latest chapter in a familiar and troubling pattern.

While I acknowledge that some protests can be upsetting or experienced by some as intimidating, sweeping restrictions on peaceful assembly are not the solution. Freedom of expression is not absolute and the police already possess a huge range of extensive powers to deal with hate speech, incitement to violence and serious threats—as indeed they should. The new clause contained in government Amendment 372 goes much further, allowing the state to pre-emptively silence thousands of people based on an ill-defined and speculative concept of disruption that is disproportionate, dangerous and profoundly undemocratic. Eroding protest rights weakens accountability between elections and risks fostering authoritarianism. Once such powers exist, they rarely contract. They expand, often exponentially, and could well do so, especially under future Governments if they were less committed to the right of democratic dissent.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Wilson of Sedgefield) (Lab)]

Can I ask I the noble Lord to bring his remarks to an end? He has gone well over 10 minutes.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

This amendment invites misuse and undermines trust in both policing and Parliament. That is why, in a joint statement, trade unions, charities, non-governmental organisations, and faith, climate justice and human rights organisations have been vocal in their opposition to it only this week. In rejecting it, I hope noble Lords will honour our democratic heritage and safeguard those freedoms for future generations. I urge your Lordships to vote against the new clause contained in government Amendment 372 if it is retabled on Report.

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak as these amendments deeply affect places of worship and religious practice. It is always an honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hain, whose track record around protests over so many years is one we can all learn a great deal from.

Noble Lords have referred to the attack in Manchester on Yom Kippur. That took place 15 minutes’ walk from my house. I know that because I walked there the day after to meet people. The rabbi is Daniel Walker. We share a surname and an initial, but we do not think we are related—the noble Lord is quite right to say that he has more beard than me. He and I have been good friends for many years. He is an extraordinarily brave man, and I am glad that we are able to reflect on that tonight.

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[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, the Committee is in the business of precision and proportionality. Those two concepts have rightly been raised by a number of noble Lords and my noble friends. It is because of reasons of proportionality and precision that I agree that the concept of “the vicinity” is too vague and too broad. I say that while completely acknowledging that places of worship are sensitive places and that it is completely proportionate within the European Convention on Human Rights to give them some extra protection.

There is precedent in Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 for the concepts of “area” and “vicinity” being too flabby and too broad. Noble Lords may remember that this allowed an area not defined to be designated for the purpose of suspicionless stop and search. In 2003, in response to the anti-arms demonstrations at the ExCeL centre in the Docklands, a number of protesters were stopped and searched and issued notices. Only through the parliamentary debates and litigation that followed did the public become aware that all of England and Wales had been designated during the Iraq war. That was the breadth of the area for suspicionless stop and search—a power that was used as an anti-protest power.

That does not mean that there cannot be limitations, but they need some definition. After many years of litigation in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, the UK Government were found wanting because of that breadth and the blanket nature of the power, because there was no definition. I am trying to help my noble friends in government by suggesting that concepts such as areas and vicinities will be better for definition, so I support my noble friend Lady Blower and commend her remarks in speaking to her amendment.

I also commend my noble friend Lord Hain and remind the Committee that he was not just an anti-apartheid activist in his day, digging up sports fields and whatever else he was digging up—

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

I was sitting on them, not digging them up.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am sorry. He was sitting on them. I do not mean to defame him.

My noble friend of course went on to be Northern Ireland Secretary and therefore has some understanding of the need to balance rights—the rights of peaceful dissent but also the rights of people to go about their business, particularly in their homes and places of worship and so on. That is proportionality and precision.

This vice of vagueness with the concept of “vicinity” is mirrored in the concept of “area” for the purposes of cumulative disruption. As with the Section 44 provision that ended up being impugned in the Strasbourg court, “area” for the purposes of cumulative disruption is not defined, so we are looking at a very broad power here. I say to noble Lords, with all solidarity with their concerns about, for example, synagogues and places of faith and worship, that provisions such as these can be applied as much to a counterprotest as to a protest, and to one group or another group at different times. When we legislate, we need to have a mind to how these powers might be used in the future.

To those noble Lords who spoke of a new quasi-terrorist proscription but for groups that do not quite meet the threshold—

Gaza Protests: Anti-terrorism Legislation

Lord Hain Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The police do have discretion; it is not for Ministers to order arrests or bring forward charges. It is for the police at a local level to interpret the legislation that has been passed overwhelmingly by the House of Commons and this House to proscribe the organisation. I say “proscribe the organisation” because, on advice, the organisation has met those tests.

If people wish to protest in support of Palestine, they can do so. They can march, protest, criticise Israel and make their views known on Palestine, but Palestine Action has crossed that threshold. As the noble Lord is a former Home Secretary, he will know that it is now for the police to make their judgments on that, and for the CPS to decide whether charges should be brought forward and for individuals to be prosecuted accordingly. We have put in place legislation that draws a line in the sand on the actions of Palestine Action. I hope people will not mistakenly support those actions while still supporting the state of Palestine, if they wish to, and making any criticism they wish to of the State of Israel.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, can I ask my noble friend how exactly the arrests on terrorism charges of over 1,000 peacefully protesting retired magistrates, as well as vicars, priests, war veterans and descendants of Holocaust survivors, help combat real terrorists like Hamas, al-Qaeda, Islamic State and, in the past, the IRA, who have deliberately targeted and murdered innocent bystanders? He and I worked together in Northern Ireland, so he will know about this. Should our hard-pressed police not be prioritising real crime, such as shoplifting, burglaries and anti-social behaviour, instead of being forced to frog-march normally law-abiding middle-Britain citizens into further clogging up our courts?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

My noble friend and I have worked in Northern Ireland and on terrorism-related issues. If he received a report from the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre saying that Palestine Action had met a threshold for terrorist activity, I doubt very much that he would not have signed that order as my right honourable friend the Home Secretary did. We have done that because Palestine Action has already had people convicted of not just criminal damage but intimidation and physical threats. There are cases about which I cannot comment that are before the courts; there are allegations around a range of other behaviours and there is strong evidence from JTAC about underground cells and plots against defence organisations and others.

Again, if people wish to hold up a placard saying, “I support Palestine Action”, that is an offence under the terms of the terrorism prevention order that we have. People are sometimes mistaken in their conflation of support for Palestine and support for Palestine Action. That is where the dividing line should be.

My noble friend says that we should concentrate on neighbourhood policing, shoplifting and other things. I just say to him that ensuring 13,000 new police officers will be on the beat over these four years, introducing measures on shop theft in the Crime and Policing Bill and conducting a drive to tackle anti-social behaviour are all things that this Government are doing. But we in this House and in this Government have a duty to protect our citizens against terrorism activity. When we get advice that this threshold has been crossed, it would be irresponsible of me and other members of the Home Office Ministerial team to ignore it.

Palestine Action Protests: Arrests

Lord Hain Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Hain]

To ask His Majesty’s Government how many people have been arrested for participating peacefully in Palestine Action protests since its proscription.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

My Lords, this Government uphold the democratic right for people to be free to express their views, but they should do so within the bounds of the law. The proscription of Palestine Action does not diminish the right to lawfully protest or support Palestinian rights. The use of police powers and the management of protests are operational matters for the police, who are operationally independent of government.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, more than 200 people have been arrested across the UK, protesting entirely peacefully for Palestinian rights, one a retired woman priest aged 83 and another for holding up a Private Eye cartoon. Surely this is an unjust, perverse but entirely predictable consequence of the proscription of Palestine Action, or are the police getting it wrong, as was argued in the High Court on Monday? How on earth do the police distinguish between those supporting Palestine Action, now an offence, and those objecting to its proscription without necessarily supporting it? How have we got to the point where peacefully holding up a placard about the carnage in Gaza is equated with terrorism by al-Qaeda on 9/11 or Islamic State on countless occasions? Should not the police be concentrating on stopping real terrorism and real crime, not targeting peaceful protesters?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

As I have said to the House, both at the time of the proscription order going through this House but also now, peaceful protest around the issue of Palestine is entirely legitimate if people wish to make that protest. The question is what is defined under the proscription order. The proscription order ensured that action was taken because Palestine Action has perpetrated attacks in which it has forced entry on to premises armed with weapons and smashed up property, and members of the organisation have used serious violence against responding individuals. That judgment has been given to us by the security services as part of the proscription order.

A High Court judgment is being considered; the judicial review took place on 21 July and the judgment will be handed down on 30 July, but in the meantime the police have to enforce the proscription order—but they also have to ensure that peaceful protest is allowed. The decisions are taken by the police, and they will be accountable for them in due course.

Companies House: Filing of Annual Accounts by Small Companies

Lord Hain Excerpts

Tuesday 8th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. It is important that people must be able to rely on the data that is on file with Companies House, whether they are doing business with a particular company or to determine whether the company’s financial statements are accurate. Most companies file their accounts on time and accurately. A small minority of companies do not file their accounts on time or, perhaps, properly. This Act hopefully will go after those small companies. We are not imposing burdens on small businesses. We just want to tackle economic crime.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, on the Economic Crime Act 2023, can my noble friend explain what the Government are doing to block the £90 billion that is laundered through the United Kingdom annually, often by kleptocrats buying properties or via “onshore London” as a means of tax avoidance in UK Overseas Territories or Crown dependencies, labelled “Britain’s second Empire”, such as the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands especially, the Bahamas, Gibraltar, Bermuda and the former UK colonies of Singapore and Hong Kong?

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

My noble friend makes a very important point. The cost of economic crime and financial opacity is staggering. It costs something like £350 billion a year to this country. Tackling illicit finance has been a top priority for this Government from day 1. We welcome the progress that has been made by many overseas territories in improving access to beneficial ownership registers to boost transparency. For those that have yet to deliver, we have made clear the importance of meeting their agreed-upon commitments and have offered technical help. However, our position is firm. Rapid and robust action is expected. The UK will not tolerate any part of its network being used to conceal dirty money or hinder law enforcement.

Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) Order 2025

Lord Hain Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

No, I am sorry; I will not take interventions. There is an opportunity at the end.

Some 53% of British people agree with stopping sending arms to Israel, and I would expect any Government with a sense of morality to do that. Instead, it has been left to groups such as Palestine Action to take the lead. If you want Palestine Action to disappear, stop sending arms to Israel and giving military support to a foreign Government engaged in ethnic cleansing. Palestine Action has done many things that I do not agree with, but spraying paint on refuelling planes that campaigners believe are used to help the ethnic cleansing in Gaza is not terrorism; it is criminal damage, which we already have laws for. It is gesture politics, and the MoD itself has declared that it did not block any planned aircraft movements or stop any operations. Palestine Action would have been in court to face justice, but so would the Government on that basis, and I think that is what Ministers have actually been rather concerned about.

Palestine Action has a five-year history of things it has done, but as soon as Ministers realised that a jury might not convict it of spray-painting at Brize Norton, they declared it a terrorist group. The Government were very aware of how likely it was that a jury would free Palestine Action campaigners because of the public’s horror over our involvement in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. They would remember that the Prime Minister was the lawyer who defended the “Fairford five” after anti-war protesters broke into RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire to sabotage United States bombers before the Iraq war. He argued that while their actions were unlawful, they were justified as an attempt to prevent war crimes, asserting that the Iraq war lacked legal basis under international law due to an absence of a clear UN resolution. I can easily see why a jury might choose not to convict the campaigners at Brize Norton in the same way. Subsequent legal appeals, based on the legal threshold of terrorism when events do not endanger life, could cost us, the taxpayer, a lot of money. This Government have clamped down on civil liberties in many ways, through many laws, and for me this is a step too far. I deeply regret that we have reached this point, and I beg to move the amendment.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, I have supported my party for nearly 10 years since I joined this House, sometimes late like the last two nights, but I cannot support this Motion, as my noble friend understands. That gives me no joy because I have been a long-standing colleague of his as a Welsh MP. Indeed, he was a very effective Minister when I was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. To be absolutely clear, I support the right of Israel to exist and of Israelis to enjoy full security. I am also a long-standing supporter of Palestinian rights to self-determination in their own state. I was vehemently opposed to the antisemitism tolerated under Jeremy Corbyn’s ill-fated leadership and, as far as I remember, I have never participated in any Palestine Action protest or been on any of its platforms. I sought advice from the clerk of the Table Office to amend this Motion so that it proscribed only the two Nazi-like paramilitary groups it lists and not Palestine Action but was advised that this was not procedurally possible.

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[Lord Pannick (CB)]

Is there not a fundamental distinction between Nelson Mandela and the suffragettes on the one hand and our society today in which everybody has the right to vote? We live in a democratic society in which there are ample means of expressing your views.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

Of course democracy did not exist in South Africa at the time and women did not have the vote at the time. I concede that point but, frankly, Palestine Action members spraying paint on military aircraft in Brize Norton seems positively moderate by comparison with what the suffragettes did, and those alleged to have done this are being prosecuted for criminal damage, as indeed they should be.

[Lord Harper (Con)]

I simply want to make what I hope is a helpful point to the House. In case noble Lords have not seen it, four individuals have now been charged with the alleged offences at Brize Norton. As a new Member of your Lordships’ House, I have to confess that I am not entirely certain what the sub judice rule is in the House, but it seems to me that we ought to exercise a certain level of caution in commenting on that specific offence for fear of prejudicing the trial of the four individuals who have been charged with those offences as of last night.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

I totally agree with the noble Lord, but it is like that that they have been charged. There are plenty of other criminal offences that such activity could attract rather than treating young people as terrorists because they feel frustrated about the failure to stop mass killings and bombings of Palestinians in Gaza. That is the point I am making. There is plenty of ammunition in the legal armoury to do that.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

I may have a helpful interjection. The charges brought against the four are all criminal charges, not terrorism charges, which is an important distinction that points exactly to what the noble Lord is saying. Protests can be unlawful but not necessarily terrorism.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

I am making exactly that point. By the way, someone should be disciplined for permitting such an easy breach of security at a key military airfield such as Brize Norton. What if the Palestine Action protesters had been real terrorists? Imagine what would have happened then.

[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

There is nothing in this order that will prevent young people protesting about what Israel is doing in Gaza. It is pretty shocking to hear people compare Palestine Action with the suffragettes and Nelson Mandela. Is the noble Lord seriously suggesting that it is non-violent when people smash their way in armoured vehicles into factories where ordinary working people are at work and when security guards and police have been injured in such attacks with sledgehammers? That is not non-violent protest.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

I am not suggesting that it is. I completely agree with the noble Lord, but there is a difference between that kind of action and the action generally taken by young supporters of Palestine Action. Whether or not I agree with it—I have never supported its activity—there is a great difference between that and terrorism. If you start labelling people as terrorists willy-nilly right across the board, you go down a very dangerous route.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

I have great regard for the noble Lord, but will he answer a simple question in a simple way? Does he accept that the actions of Palestine Action as described by the Minister are criminal actions that fall within the definition of terrorism and therefore are available, if the Director of Public Prosecutions so decides, to be prosecuted as terrorist offences?

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[Lord Hain (Lab)]

The acts at Brize Norton were certainly criminal acts and should be prosecuted, as they are being at this very moment. As has been described, it is a matter of sub judice.

Please remember that the suffragettes were arrested and subjected to harsh terms of imprisonment, including force-feeding when they went on hunger strikes. We are trying to discuss the contemporary situation, but we should consider it against the background of historical reality. I seek to make that point, because it is very relevant. They went on hunger strikes and were subject to force-feeding for doing so.

Now look at the real terrorists: al-Qaeda and Islamic State. Members of al-Qaeda suicide-attacked New York’s twin towers on 11 September 2001, killing 2,753 people. That is real terrorism. Islamic State deliberately targeted its civilians in public spaces to instil fear, spread panic, gain media attention and punish any groups or Governments opposing them. ISIS became notorious for filmed beheadings and executions. It engaged in widespread sexual slavery, particularly of Yazidi women. That is real terrorism. In 2015, Islamic State members killed 130 people in Paris. In 2016, its suicide bombers struck Brussels Airport and the metro system, killing 32, and it attacked Istanbul Airport, killing 45. In Easter 2019, Islamic State terrorists bombed churches and hotels, killing over 250 people, in Sri Lanka. That is real terrorism, real terrorists.

Nazi-like US racists and, here in the United Kingdom, the IRA also committed terrible terrorist atrocities, targeting or killing innocent civilians. They are properly and rightly labelled terrorists. This Government are treating Palestine Action as equivalent to Islamic State or al-Qaeda, which is intellectually bankrupt, politically unprincipled and morally wrong. Frankly, I am deeply ashamed, which is why I support the regret amendment.

[Lord Beamish (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome my noble friend’s statement but start with a sense of disappointment that the Home Office did not see fit to give the intelligence assessment behind this, which he rightly says cannot be made public, to the ISC. He is a former member of the ISC, so he knows our remits. I understand that, yesterday, his colleague in the other place, Dan Jarvis, made attempts to contact certain privy counsellors to give them a Privy Council brief. The committee met this morning and was quite angry that the Government had not given it this information before this legislation was put forward; no attempt had been made by the Home Office to do so.

My noble friend well knows the remit of the committee under the Justice and Security Act, so I ask him to remind his colleague in the other place and his civil servants that the ISC is not a Select Committee of Parliament; it is a parliamentary committee set up by statute, which has a right to information. I think we agreed this morning that we expect this intelligence assessment as soon as practically possible.

I welcome the inclusion on the list of the Russian Imperial Movement. This appeared in the ISC’s Extreme Right-Wing Terrorism report in 2022. It is a neo-nationalist paramilitary organisation based in St Petersburg. It has defined links to international white supremacist movements throughout the world and it is a clear danger. As we said in our report, in April 2020, the Americans proscribed this organisation. At the time, from the intelligence we saw, it did not meet the threshold, so it will be interesting, when we get our briefing from the Home Office, to see what has changed over that period. I have no problem at all with proscribing that horrible, detestable organisation.

I turn now to Palestine Action, and I think the Minister’s point is right. I would defend to the death the right of anyone in this country to protest peacefully. That is something that we should celebrate in a democracy, but it is not what we are dealing with in Palestine Action. It is progressing a false narrative that the UK is arming Israel to bomb innocent civilians—the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, used the word “genocide”—in Gaza.

Arms exports from the UK to Israel in 2023 were worth £8.2 million. The Government have already moved to restrict some exports to Israel after the conflict, but this narrative justifies in the minds of members of that organisation attacking defence industries across the UK—and they are not even very good at it. Some of the sites that they are attacking have nothing to do with Israel and do not export anything to Israel. There was an issue around the F35, but we do not export F35s to Israel. We do produce components, and I am proud that 15% of the content of every F35 in the world is from the UK, but we are not directly exporting them. The court upheld that view. If we suddenly said that we are not going to be part of that contract, it would affect our security, because not only our allies use that plane; the UK does as well. So that is complete nonsense. Palestine Action is attacking companies legitimately involved in the production of instruments and pieces of kit that keep us and our allies safe.

The noble Lord, Lord Hain, asked whether he would have been included in this legislation when he was protesting against apartheid. It crossed my mind that he was a liberal many years ago and that, clearly, in older age he is reverting back to his youth. In answer to him I say yes; if he were damaging property and attacking the national security of this country, he would be included in this legislation. As the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, pointed out, it meets the threshold in this legislation.