Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people in the UK have been prosecuted for publishing an image or another article in support of Hamas since that group was fully proscribed.

The Government takes proscription offences seriously. Hamas’ military wing (Hamas Izz al-Din al-Qassem Brigades) has been proscribed since 2001. This was extended to cover the organisation in its entirety in November 2021.

Data on arrests, charges and convictions for the proscription offences in sections 11 - 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000 can be found in the quarterly Home Office publication ‘Operation of Police Powers under the Terrorism Act 2000’. Data is not published on the specific proscribed organisation that the arrest, charge or conviction relates to. The most recent publication up to year ending June 2022, was published on 8 September 2022: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/operation-of-police-powers-under-the-terrorism-act-2000-quarterly-update-to-june-2022

The quarterly publications establish transparency by ensuring that data is publicly available on the use of police powers in a consistently categorised way. As with all crime statistics published by the Home Office, the data published in the Terrorism statistics are offence based, where police provide a count of the number of offences recorded. Data providers are not required to provide further detail on events leading to the arrest, as to do so would place a disproportionate burden on the organisations responsible. This includes the National Counter-Terrorism Police Operations Centre, the Crown Prosecution Service’s Counter-Terrorism Division, the Metropolitan Police Service and the National Counter-Terrorism Policing Headquarters. As with all Official Statistics, we continually review outputs taking account of user needs.