Local Councillors: Recruitment, Retention and Well-being

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I am at a slight disadvantage in this debate. I am one of the few participants who has not served as a local councillor, so I do not have the coalface experience that others do. I will talk about this issue from the point of view of my work as director of the Free Speech Union. Since I set it up six years ago, we have taken 317 cases—I checked yesterday—coded “local government” in our case database. Of those, 141 were about members of the public who had been complained about by councillors or council employees.

The pattern we encounter again and again is that when members of the public say things that councillors find disagreeable but that would nevertheless be protected speech under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, they are complained about, sometimes with devastating consequences, on the grounds that what they have said constitutes harassment, misinformation or hate speech, even though it is clear-cut that their comments are protected.

I have time, so I will give one or two examples of people we went to bat for. Last year, two police officers from Greater Manchester Police paid a visit to a grandmother in Stockport who had posted in a Facebook group calling for the resignation of two local Labour councillors, after the Mail on Sunday had exposed comments in a WhatsApp group in which they expressed the hope that a troublesome member of the public in their ward would die. This scandal involved Andrew Gwynne when he was a Health Minister, and he had to resign as a result. Nothing she said could possibly have been perceived as meeting the threshold for harassment, yet two police officers, having been tipped off by the partner of one of these councillors, paid a visit to her house. There are countless such cases. In another case we are dealing with at the moment, a member of the public objected at a meeting of his parish council to the imposition of a 20 mph zone in his village. Two Green councillors promoting this proposal complained that they felt his comment was harassment.

We have to be careful in creating the various mechanisms that the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, proposed in his opening speech. How do we safeguard against them being weaponised for political purposes to suppress legitimate criticism of elected officials?

Social Cohesion Action Plan

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Monday 16th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend not just for his very important question but for all his work on this during his career. We are setting out a bold new approach here, not just tackling hate speech but countering extremism by adopting and implementing definitions of extremism. We will publish the annual state of extremism report. That is one way of making sure that we are keeping a focus on the issue. We are strengthening Charity Commission powers to tackle extremist abuse, including the power to shut down charities and suspend trustees—and there are the measures I have already mentioned on tackling extremism on university campuses and in health.

We will work to implement the definition to make sure it has real effect, making sure that public bodies do not confer legitimacy, funding or influence on extremist groups. We will work with the Crown Prosecution Service and the police to ensure robust use of existing legislation on that harmful extremist conduct. As my noble friend said, the consequences of not taking action here are critical and dangerous. We will make sure that all organisations, now that they have this definition, can take action and monitor what is happening.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as the director of the Free Speech Union. It is not particularly helpful to accuse those who have expressed concern that this definition will operate like a Muslim blasphemy law by the backdoor of spreading dangerous disinformation, not least because knowingly spreading dangerous disinformation is a criminal offence under Section 179 of the Online Safety Act. Suggesting that those who raise the alarm about the chilling effect of this definition on free speech should be prosecuted makes the point far more eloquently than we could.

I note that when the Communities Secretary unveiled the definition of anti-Muslim hatred in the other place, he said that he hoped it would be taken up by the police; the Minister just expressed the same view. Is it the Government’s intention that when someone is found to have said or done something that meets the definition of anti-Muslim hostility, it will be recorded by the police? Could it then be disclosed in an enhanced criminal record check if that person applies for a job as, say, a teacher at a school in a Muslim neighbourhood?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I set out very clearly that this is a non-statutory definition. It is there to assist organisations to understand what we mean by anti-Muslim hostility. I remind the noble Lord that there is no blasphemy law in this country and that this Government have no intention of introducing one.