Palestine Action: Proscription and Protests

Florence Eshalomi Excerpts

Monday 8th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis]

The right hon. Gentleman is an experienced Member of this House and has served as a Minister in the Home Office, so I am sorry to have to put my response to him in this way, but he will understand why I do so: we never comment about matters relating to future proscription. I know that his words will have been heard by colleagues in other Government Departments, as well as in my Department. He makes his points with great consistency—he has raised them with me previously—but I know that he will understand that there is a long-standing protocol, across a number of Governments, that we do not talk about future proscription activity.

[Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall and Camberwell Green) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Minister for his response to the urgent question, but I concur with some of the comments from my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) about people being arrested, including my constituents, some of whom were protesting peacefully.

I want to come back to the issue of the impact on frontline policing. As a central London MP, I am seeing resources being drawn away from my local police to deal with the protests. My constituents want those frontline police officers to be solving crime on their streets; the Minister will understand the sheer scale of their concerns about ensuring the police can get to grips with that locally. Returning to the point made by the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, will the Minister assure me that those ongoing discussions with the police are happening, including with the chair of the Metropolitan Police Federation, who said on the “World at One” today that the protests are “not sustainable”?

[Dan Jarvis]

My hon. Friend raises a very important point, as did the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee. She will absolutely understand the importance that this Government attach to the safer streets agenda. I can give her an assurance that we are working very closely with the Metropolitan police and other police forces around the country to ensure that they have the resources they need to police these kinds of protests and activities, alongside the other activities that they are required to police. The Home Secretary, the Policing Minister and I take these matters very seriously. We met senior representatives of the Metropolitan police just last week, but I give my hon. Friend an absolute assurance that we will ensure that the police have the necessary resources to do the job that we ask them to do.