Business of the House

John Hayes Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Powell]

My hon. Friend should be standing steadfastly at the front of the campaign to save his local post office, because such local post offices provide vital services for constituencies such as Redditch. I know that Post Office officials closely followed much of what I said in business questions last week, so hopefully they will have heard what he said today. As I said last week, the Post Office is in need of serious cultural change and it has not been fit for purpose for some time. I do not see the case for closing Crown post offices as part of that change.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

The shocking arrest of Allison Pearson, The Telegraph journalist, has caused outrage, as the Leader of the House knows, and as most recently expressed by her distinguished Back-Bench colleague, the hon. Member for Blackley and Middleton South (Graham Stringer). Will the Leader of the House arrange for the Home Secretary to come to the House to address this attack on free speech, which is wider and deeper than Allison Pearson’s arrest? The Director of Public Prosecutions has said that he “had no idea” what non-crime hate incidents are and that he had “to look them up” in the light of her arrest, and yet 11,600 such “crimes” have been recorded. Does the Leader of the House understand that, far from being the antithesis of a civilised society, the right to alarm, to disturb and, yes, to offend is the essence of an open society? If I did not alarm, disturb and offend every Maoist, Marxist, Bolshevik and belligerent Islamist, I would feel I had failed.

[Lucy Powell]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that question. The offences he talks about were actually introduced a couple of years ago under the previous Government—not by the current Government—by the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) who is now the shadow Home Secretary. The right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) is absolutely right that we have to consider the balance between free speech alongside protecting people who suffer from the wrong end of abuse and misinformation and disinformation online which, as we saw over the summer, can cause real damage in our communities if left unchecked. That balance is one I am sure the police and others are grappling with on a daily basis.