Dover and Portsmouth: Protests

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

We are keeping all these things under review. There is no intelligence to suggest that people who leave France from further west want to land anywhere other than where they normally do, but we keep all these things under control. Today I have spoken to multiple people at the National Police Co-ordination Centre and in Border Force, and to the police more widely, and these things are kept under review. There is no evidence of what the hon. Gentleman suggests, but the criminals are being disrupted over here, and we know that they will try to change tactics. However, there is no evidence at the moment about where they are trying to land.

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool Riverside) (Lab)]

The far right and the British fascists reared their ugly heads on the streets of Dover and Portsmouth this weekend. The protests were allegedly spontaneous, but hundreds of people were mobilised. They were dressed as fascists of the past, hiding their identity. Their behaviour was not just thuggish and intimidatory; it went far beyond that. Their protests were about hate, division and racism. Even though the police had powers, the protests went largely unchecked. Can the Minister tell us why there appears to be a two-tier system? If people sit quietly with a banner, they get arrested, but if they are masked up and attack the police, no arrests are made.

[Sarah Jones]

There was no two-tier policing in this situation. My hon. Friend is right to say that if people hold banners supporting a proscribed terrorist organisation, they will get arrested, and she is right to say that the protests were not spontaneous. The Dover incident was obviously planned, and was obviously a tactic by a nasty organisation called Patriot Platform or South-East Patriots—I think it calls itself various different things. No notice was given to the police—that is why it was described as “spontaneous”—but it was clearly planned and intended to be intimidatory. I have talked to the police today, and I know that they are reviewing the closed-circuit television footage, the automatic number plate recognition data and all the evidence to see where criminality has occurred, and they will take action where it has occurred.