Protest Policing

Debate between Andrew Murrison and Shabana Mahmood

Wednesday 11th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

First, on the European convention on human rights, the right hon. Gentleman is right that articles 9 to 11 are relevant to the matters we are discussing. However, those are qualified rights—they have always been qualified rather than absolute rights—which means that the state can limit them in specific circumstances as long as the legal tests of proportionality and so on are maintained. I am confident that the legal arrangements we have in this country, as set out in the Public Order Act, are fully in compliance with our convention obligations, and that there is a very high bar for the powers in section 13 of the Public Order Act. I am satisfied that that high bar has been met on this occasion.

The Met police have been policing the al-Quds Day procession for many years. It is an annual event, and they have policed it even when there has been huge opposition to its going ahead. They have faced a lot of pressure over many years to seek a ban, and they have never done so. I am very confident that they have assessed the risk posed by this procession in the current context, particularly the range and number of counter-protesting marches planned for the same day; managing five different marches at the same time in the same bit of London presents a unique challenge for policing. I think they have made a fair point and a strong case, and I have agreed with them on this occasion.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I very much welcome the statement and I commend the Home Secretary’s judgment on this occasion. The Islamic Human Rights Commission will seek to exploit the loophole offered up under section 13, around the ability to protest in a static way. Has a likely location yet been identified for the static protest? Does she agree with me that it should be away from where it would discommode the general public and somewhere that will not place undue burdens on our policing resources, which are finite?

Police Reform White Paper

Debate between Andrew Murrison and Shabana Mahmood

Monday 26th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

My hon. Friend is 100% right—that is exactly the intention of the reforms, and it is how we will ensure that we have a new model for policing that can serve every community and deal effectively with every type of crime.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

There are a lot of things to welcome in this statement, but police licence to practise is probably not one of them. I say this because other trades and professions that have licencing, annual appraisal, or periodic revalidation have found that it simply becomes a time-sapping industry. I am sure that is not the Home Secretary’s plan for the police, particularly since my constituents want our police to be on the frontline and dealing with online fraud, not ticking boxes.

[Shabana Mahmood]

Let me assure the right hon. Gentleman that we will work closely with the police as we develop the new licence to practise. We will obviously want to strike the right balance between ensuring that our officers are up to date on training and investing in their skills, but not creating a bureaucracy that then gets in the way. At the moment, we already have quite a bureaucracy when it comes to training. It is right that we move forward to a more professional model by having this licence, but we will consult and work with policing as we roll it out.

Asylum Policy

Debate between Andrew Murrison and Shabana Mahmood

Monday 17th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. The whole purpose of the new safe and legal routes is that those individuals are accepted as refugees before they enter the United Kingdom. The point is that they never pay thousands of pounds to illegal smugglers along any sort of route on which they may travel. In fact, exactly as she says, we want to accept people as refugees before they set foot on UK soil, and once they are here on a safe and legal route, they will access permanent settlement more quickly than on any other route in this country. It is good that the Government are seeking to incentivise people to come through safe and legal routes, not pay thousands and thousands of pounds to criminals along the way.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

It was a genuinely good statement—as far as it went—from which we learnt that countries could be determined to be safe at some point in the future and refugees from them returned home. What would be the Home Secretary’s criteria for safety, and which countries does she have in her sights? For example, would they include the Council of Europe and NATO member, ECHR signatory and EU candidate, Turkey?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I am not going to provide a running commentary on countries. The right hon. Member will know that I referenced Syria specifically in my statement. Many thousands of Syrians were making claims related to the regime that was in place before, during the conflict, but it has fallen and there is a new regime, so we have already made a small number of voluntary returns to Syria. Other countries are exploring enforced returns to Syria, given the change in circumstances there, and we will of course look at doing the same. In the normal run of things, when it comes to considering whether a country is safe for a person we will keep such matters under review, as I know he would expect us to do.

Manchester Terrorism Attack

Debate between Andrew Murrison and Shabana Mahmood

Monday 13th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

Let me assure my hon. Friend that while in the initial aftermath of the attack it is important that we focus on reassurance measures and security measures, we are clear that in the medium to long term, the only way to make sure that all our Jewish community is safe and that Jewish life in Britain can thrive—as it has every right to do—is to ensure that we tackle the scourge of antisemitism across our country and deal with those wider questions of integration and community cohesion.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I congratulate the Home Secretary on an excellent statement, in which she said early on that the police officers involved are being treated as witnesses. That is absolutely right, but does she understand that many members of the security forces involved in this kind of work fear that they will be hung out to dry? Many of them will not have their fears assuaged by the written ministerial statement today on the legacy of the troubles, on which more anon. Will she reassure me that everything is being done by the Greater Manchester police to put an arm around those officers who were directly involved in this incident, and that they will be given every support necessary?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that those officers are being supported. That is why I wanted to make it clear to the House that they are being treated as witnesses. It is why I have asked the Independent Office for Police Conduct to ensure that it concludes that part of its investigation as quickly as possible. There are wider issues about firearms officers in our country having the confidence to do their job. We will soon publish our police accountability review, which is designed to ensure that we meet the scale of the challenge in giving our officers the confidence they need to put themselves in danger for the rest of us. There are sometimes questions that have to be answered, and I think we can all accept that to be the case, but we should do that in a framework that commands public support as well as the support of the professionals, with things done in a timely way, so that we can get answers as quickly as possible and not have a debilitating impact on policing confidence in the long term.