Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the effectiveness of section 12(1A) and 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

The UK has one of the strongest counter-terrorism frameworks in the world, but we keep this under continuous review. The Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation provides recommendations to HMG on the effective functioning of the counter-terrorism framework.

In January 2025, the Government published post-legislative scrutiny on the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019, which introduced the offence in section 12(1A) and made changes to section 13 to ensure it could apply to online displays of support as well as introducing associated police seizure powers.

This explained that the section 12(1A) offence has been useful in practice in supporting charging decisions and convictions of individuals whose conduct stopped short of deliberately inviting others to support a proscribed organisation, but rather expressed their support recklessly in such a way that there was a risk of others being influenced to support the organisation, whether online or offline. It also explained that the introduction of seizure powers under section 13 has been particularly important in protest settings, as it offers the police an additional route to deal with displays of support for proscribed organisations, such as flags. However, the police can still arrest individuals under this offence if they consider it necessary to do so.

The Government takes proscription offences very seriously, including sections 12 and 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000. Investigations into the activities of proscribed organisations or individuals who demonstrate support for proscribed organisations are an operational matter for the police and intelligence agencies.