Dover and Portsmouth: Protests

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)]

The sight of massed far-right thugs causing mayhem and disruption on the English south coast was as nauseating as it was frightening, and it was so reminiscent of a dark period in our history that we thought was long behind us. Does the Minister agree that the growth of the far right is the most dangerous development in our politics, and if so, when will the Government start to take it seriously? There were no arrests at all over the weekend, and there is no real challenge to the disinformation that the far right puts out to all our communities to cause this disruption and division. When will this Government stop pandering to this right-wing agenda?

[Sarah Jones]

We are not pandering to the right-wing agenda at all. The police will come down hard on criminality, as we would expect. No one was arrested in Dover on Saturday, or in Portsmouth, but as I just said, the police will review all the evidence from the weekend. Where crimes have occurred, they will make the appropriate arrests.