Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of increasing the restriction on people linked with (a) Palestine Action and (b) similar groups from going near civilian defence manufacturing sites.

The Government fully supports the police to use all the powers available to them to prevent crimes occurring as a result of unlawful direct-action tactics, and to ensure those who do commit them face the full force of the law.

It is important to note that the police are operationally independent from government. This means that the Home Office are unable to direct the police to take any particular operational decision, including those around the management of direct-action protest groups.