Dover and Portsmouth: Protests

Vikki Slade Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

As I said earlier, I cannot comment on the intelligence situation of what happened with these two incidents, but we will of course learn lessons. What we knew in advance, and what was or was not done about that, will be a very important lesson for us to learn. As well as the intelligence that the local police are able to gather, we now have the national co-ordination of the NPCC, which has extra resources for things such as internet intelligence investigations. We can reach further and co-ordinate better than we could before, but I am sure there will be lessons to learn. I will take away my hon. Friend’s question about the uniform of political parties.

[Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

Over the past year or so, Poole has seen planned protests by groups calling themselves patriots that have been travelling to the town and specifically targeting the RNLI headquarters because they, like firefighters and other emergency crews, rescue those at sea without fear or favour. Concerns have been raised with me that no arrests were made this weekend, despite serious intimidation, injuries to the police and criminal damage, in sharp contrast to the treatment of elderly people holding placards. What message does it send to our brave RNLI rescue crews if the police stand aside during these events while they put their lives at risk day and night?

[Sarah Jones]

As I have said, any lessons we need to learn from these cases will be learned. However, I know from conversations I have had that the police were dealing with an emerging problem in quite a difficult geographical area, particularly in Portsmouth, with one road going in and out. The police had a lot of vulnerable people—I am speculating about their physical health, because I have not yet had a full briefing, but I suspect they were having to deal with hypothermia and all kinds of issues—and they were having to deal with an increasing number of about 200 people protesting. They definitely had to use batons and other interventions, so that may not have been the right point at which to arrest those people, but there will be investigations, with CCTV. So I genuinely ask the hon. Member not to draw any conclusion from the fact that no arrests were made at that point, because there may well be arrests. The police have to do the right things at the right time and in the right order, and in that emerging difficult situation, they may have taken a decision to do those things for the safety of everyone there and to turn to investigations afterwards.