Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) Order 2025

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Pannick

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, I have a few short points. I entirely agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has just said.

First, I hope that when we vote, if we vote, we will entirely put out of our minds whether we sympathise with the Palestinian cause, as most of us do, and whether we regret what Israel has done in various respects. We are concerned with a violent group. It really does not matter whether the cause it articulates and supports is justified. The law in a civilised country simply cannot accept people using violence against people and property in support of a cause they believe to be right. No such law can survive in a civilised society.

Secondly, if I understood him correctly, the Minister has explained why it is not sufficient for the law simply to prosecute people who commit criminal acts of the sort that are alleged—I agree that we have to be very careful here, for sub judice reasons—against members of Palestine Action. The point, if I have understood the Minister correctly—and he will say if I have not—is that there is a vital public need to prevent these people organising and recruiting, and the only way in which the law can do that is to take the action that the Minister is proposing today, which I strongly support.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am a little concerned about how the sides are being laid out in this discussion. I have some serious worries about proscribing Palestine Action and have a lot of sympathy with the regret amendment, but not because I consider Palestine Action to be some idealised, cuddly, heroic campaign for peace. I have no sympathy with its destructive, wanton, often violent and nihilistic assaults on factories, air bases and so on. The individuals deserve criminal prosecution and punishment. God knows, we have enough draconian laws on the statute book to throw the book at them.

What we are challenging here is whether the concept of them being proscribed as a terrorist organisation is appropriate, not whether they are nice, peace-loving, wonderful Greenham Common types. That is the wrong way to look at it. In an earlier intervention, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, asked whether these could indeed be terrorist acts. I think that they could well be assessed as acts of terrorism without proscribing a whole organisation.

These are my reservations. I am worried about criminalising the vocalising of support for this organisation. Vocalising support for a reprehensible law-breaking protest group is one thing, but once it is proscribed, we are talking about the possibility of prison sentences of up to 14 years. All of this was brilliantly explained legally by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson. You could, even if you only say that you support them, end up in prison.

The problem we have is that it is true that Palestine Action’s cause and its broader support are very popular —we have heard it here today. I do not mean that it is populist; I mean that many young people support that outlook. I do not. I spend a lot of time at the moment going around arguing with those young people about what I consider to be the growth of casual antisemitism and an intense hatred of Israel that seeps into Jew hatred. I talk a lot about that wherever I go, but it is certainly the case that I am not on the winning side on this one. If you go into universities and sixth forms, many support them. I am worried about the consequences of proscribing this organisation because it can threaten free speech. There are also going to be a lot of people who could be classified as in breach of it.

We should note that, for the first time since records began, this week the UK is no longer classified as an open country in the global expression rankings, which is shameful. In case noble Lords think the global expression rankings are some JD Vance-like prejudice or something, it is actually an annual report by Article 19, which noticed that free speech is seriously deteriorating in this country, so I put that warning out. We have to be very careful that this proscription does not have a chilling effect or, even worse, give some credibility to the idea that supporters of Palestine Action are some kind of free speech heroes and martyrs along with, undoubtedly Bobby—what is his name?

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Pannick

Committee stage
Wednesday 15th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, and other noble Lords have made a powerful presentation of concern, which I understand, about the financial costs of regulation. It is a short point. It really is. The question is whether the amendment is a sensible way in which to address this matter. I suggest that if there is to be a review of the financial impact on regulated clubs of complying with the provisions of the Act, the best people to conduct that review are the clubs themselves and the leagues to which they belong. They can collate the material, assess the costs and provide a report to the Government, which they can publish. Everybody will be able to debate it. It is all transparent. There is absolutely no need, so far as I can see, to have a specific provision in the Bill that addresses this matter.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, there stands a contribution that does not know how tedious, time-consuming and expensive it is to write reports. Now we are putting on the same people, whom we have just said are going to be drowning in bureaucracy, another report for which they have to compile all the information and write. That was my view.

Although that is a simple point, it should be in the Bill because it is an underestimated threat of the Bill. I have no doubt that the Minister and the Government do not intend—

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Pannick

Report stage
Monday 17th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I tried to say that I think we do not want to muddle up too many things. The Bill might have been brought forward in order to deal with the popular revulsion at things such as the M25 sit-ins or getting on top of the Tube, and we have heard that from a number of noble Lords.

The point about this set of proposals, though, and things such as the triggering noise, is that they do not solve that problem. That is what drives me mad. The second lot of amendments—which were brought in anti-democratically in terms of process—at least looked like they referred to that set of egregious demonstrations. So that is that bit.

One thing that has been said which I think is very important is that there is a fractious atmosphere in society, which the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, talked about last time we had this discussion, which is that people feel very strongly about some of the issues of the day. They are not prepared to always say that they support the right of demonstration; they think that something else is going on.

But one thing they definitely think is that the police are biased. They think that the police are erratic. Some people will say, “Well, the police won’t intervene because they’re all too busy taking the knee or driving around in rainbow-coloured vans”. Other people will say, “The police are acting like far-right stormtroopers protecting different types of people.” There is a public debate going on about the role of the police.

So, my objection to these amendment is that not only does it concentrate on noise, which nobody has ever complained about—who has brought that up?—but it puts the police in an even more invidious position. I do want to know how the Government will deal with that. The SOAS policy briefing, which I thought summed it up well, said that the Bill

“compels the police to make decisions about whether protests can go ahead, and therefore forces the police to become a visible and controversial actor in ordinary political debate.”

I think that this will make the position of the police much worse, so even if you are not on the side of the right to protest with no ifs and no buts—as I am—from the Government’s point of view and the Home Secretary’s point of view, who say they are doing it to help the police, they are actually putting the police in a position where they are wandering around assessing noise levels and therefore choosing which demos go ahead, which everybody will think is to do with politics and not procedure. So there seem to me to be some unintended consequences of that approach.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, I share many of the concerns that have been expressed—particularly the absence of a sufficient mischief here and the absence of proper definition of the ingredients of the offence.

I will add just one further point: the ability to demonstrate, and the ability to demonstrate while making a noise, is a very valuable safety valve in our civil society. If you close off that safety valve, you are going to cause a far greater mischief than is currently the case.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Pannick

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Monday 15th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness’s speech ranged very broadly indeed. We are in fact debating a complex penal issue where we have a policy that addresses the matter very sensibly, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, explained.

I will add just one point to this debate. It is not difficult to see the danger to people who were registered as male at birth but who are now registered under the Act as female if they were required to be placed in a male prison, as this amendment would require, irrespective of the particular circumstances of their case, as long as they are a sexual or violent offender. It should not need to be emphasised, but I will emphasise it because it is the fact, that many of these people have had hormone treatment, and some of them have had reconstructive surgery that has given them primary and sometimes secondary sexual characteristics of a physical nature. What do the proposers of the amendment think will happen to such people if the Home Office is obliged to place them in a male prison?

Of course we would all agree that, if there is an offender in custody for a suspected violent or sexual offence who is in possession of a gender recognition certificate and poses a risk to others in custody, then specific steps should be taken to isolate and deal with them. But that does not justify or require ignoring a gender recognition certificate in the way the amendment proposes.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it has to be said that when I talk to members of the general public and tell them that it is MoJ policy to allow prisoners of a male sex to be housed according to their self-declared gender identity in a women’s prison, irrespective of whether they have taken any legal or medical steps to acquire their gender, that they do not need to have gone through any physical transformation and still retain male genitalia, which we have heard lots about already in this debate, and that they do not even need to have obtained a gender recognition certificate—they need just to declare that they are women and demand that they are moved to the women’s estate, and it is seriously considered—they are aghast. It falls under the category of, “Has the world gone mad?”

That common-sense response might not feel appropriate when discussing legislation, but in this instance it may help us to look at this issue in practical, real-life terms, not just in abstractions. That is why I welcome the amendment very strongly. Although it does not resolve all my concerns, I welcome its modest, narrow aim of removing the most egregious aspect of this situation: allowing male prisoners who identify as trans but have convictions of violence or sexual offences against women to live with women prisoners. There really is no point in the Government issuing strategies and grand words about violence against girls and women if the same Government have no qualms about letting rapists share the same confined living quarters as vulnerable women in prison who, let us be frank, cannot leave or escape because they are locked up by the state. This amendment’s focus is on convicted sex offenders and it is urgent that the Government take notice.

It is important to note that when gender-critical commentators and academics raise qualms about the general policy of housing transgender prisoners in the women’s estate, they are often dubbed transphobic and accused of holding a prejudiced view of all trans women as sexual predators, but this is a malign caricature. At this point I give a shout-out of solidarity to Professor Jo Phoenix, an esteemed and conscientious criminologist who has been harassed and traduced for raising such legitimate concerns.

Wherever one stands on the general issue, this amendment is specific and cannot be accused of implying that all natal men, however they identify, are a sexual threat to women, because that would not be true. We are talking only about convicted sex offenders and those guilty of violence. I still hope this probing amendment might encourage the Government to look more closely at a range of issues in this area. I particularly want the Government to consider whether the Ministry of Justice’s involvement over a period of time with the controversial lobbying group Stonewall, which has already been referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, as with so many public bodies, may—just may—have led to the skewing of policies in a particular direction.

For example, I know how keen this Government are on data and statistics, but as Kate Coleman, the founder of Keep Prisons Single Sex, has noted—this just seems incredible to me—the MoJ admits that it does not know how many prisoners identify as trans because, with a gender recognition certificate, they are counted by their new legal gender. I am not sure how the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, can be so sure of the statistics she quotes, because the tools designed to assess any threat posed by male prisoners who identify as trans women cannot be picked up accurately. If someone with a GRC attacks a female prisoner, it will be recorded as an assault by a woman on another woman.

I also want to query who is listened to in this discussion on what is obviously a clash of rights. In the course of the recent High Court ruling we have heard about, Lord Justice Holroyde outlined the need to balance

“the subjective concerns of women prisoners”

with

“the rights of transgender women in the prison system.”

This made it sound as though the women, the biological women, were all being overly subjective, and the transgender women had rights. Describing one side as subjective and the other with rights misses a crucial point, because that transgender woman has an identity that is not an objective fact but a subjective desire and then a declaration. Why are women prisoners’ subjective but rational concerns afforded less weight here?

When the High Court acknowledged that women prisoners may well be worried and “scared” about sharing prison accommodation with male-bodied prisoners, the court said that that fear was not enough to outweigh the desire of some male prisoners to be housed with women. I wonder: when did the prison estate, or indeed the law, allow its policies to be dictated by prisoners’ desires? I have worked with prisoners over a number of years, particularly with Debating Matters Beyond Bars. Many of the prisoners I have worked with have declared that they desire decent prison education. They desire retraining and better conditions. The prison authorities certainly did not accommodate their desires, so why are these desires accommodated when it comes to the trans issue?

Finally, I am keen that the Government look carefully, and use this probing amendment to do so, at how staff in prisons understand the issue of sex and gender in the context of training. The MoJ policy entitled The Care and Management of Individuals who are Transgender advises staff to complete an “eLearning module” on transgender identity. One of the training courses is named intersecting identities. I have looked at these, and it all rather terrifies me. It is one-sided, jargon-ridden and ideological. I hope this amendment might point the Government to raise and review the whole issue. For now, at least, a very modest amendment should be taken seriously if they really mean they care about protecting women from violent men.