Palestine Action: Proscription and Protests

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Monday 8th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis]

First, the Home Secretary is meeting our Five Eyes allies who are here for the five-country ministerial. That is incredibly important work in securing our alliances with our United States, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand allies. These are important partnerships that this Government value and that this Home Secretary is investing in on almost her first full day in office.

On the other points the hon. Lady seeks to raise, she has an absolute right, as everybody does, to protest in a lawful way. There is nothing that this Government have done to prevent her or anybody else from doing that. What this Government have done is ensure that we are best placed to protect the public. I am sorry that she does not agree with that—that is her absolute right—but I maintain that support for freedom of speech is a cornerstone of our democracy, and this Government will always enable people to have their say.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Ind)]

I absolutely condemn any action or violence taken against the public or, indeed, the police. However, I wrote to the former Home Secretary twice on this matter, because many legislators here have yet to see evidence that satisfies us about the proportionality of the proscription of Palestine Action and how the Government balance that with the public’s right to protest and freedom of speech. Could I encourage the Minister to review this law, not least because it has an impact contrary to what the Government want, in that the more arrests there are, the more it draws attention to Palestine Action?

[Dan Jarvis]

I entirely understand why the hon. Lady may wish to raise concerns in the way she has. She made an important point about evidence, and I give her an assurance that we have put into the public domain all the evidence we have been able to. I hope she will understand that there are strict limitations on some things we are able to say for a variety of reasons, not least that there are ongoing police investigations and ongoing criminal proceedings. That limits the ability of Ministers to talk about this issue, but within those constraints we have tried to be as clear as we possibly can about the reasons for this decision. On a number of occasions, the previous Home Secretary and I have laid out the reasons why we took this decision.