Palestine Action: Proscription and Protests

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Monday 8th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis]

As always, I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his question, and I acknowledge his assessment of the decision as being finely balanced. As I know he will understand, should this or any Government have taken a different approach, we would no doubt have been in this Chamber debating why the Government had decided to not proscribe. These are difficult judgments, but under the circumstances I have described, the then Home Secretary did exactly the right thing in taking the decision she did.

As for the right hon. Gentleman’s point about regional disparities, he will have heard the comment I made just a moment ago about the operational independence of the police. However, if he has seen particular occurrences that he thinks are not in that spirit, I ask him to write to me. I would be very happy to look at them.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds Central and Headingley) (Lab/Co-op)]

So many people, myself included, are looking at the famine in Gaza and the planned annexation of the west bank with a sense of complete desperation and a lack of agency. People want to demonstrate that desperation through peaceful protest, and it is difficult for many of us to see the mass arrests of people holding placards. I understand that the nature of proscription means that showing support for a proscribed organisation is a criminal offence, but the acts are peaceful, and the cause is so desperate. At the time of voting, the effect of arresting demonstrators was not made clear to us; we must reflect again on the effects of proscription. When assessing whether to proscribe Palestine Action, to what extent did the Government take into account the rights to free expression and free association, including under articles 10 and 11 of the European convention on human rights—not the rights of the proscribed organisation itself, but of the wider cohort who will be criminalised for peacefully expressing support for it?

[Dan Jarvis]

Of course I agree with my hon. Friend’s point about peaceful protest, and I can give him an absolute assurance that in taking this or any decision, the Home Secretary acts on advice and very carefully considers a range of different factors. He is right to talk about peaceful protest. Peaceful protest took place in London over the course of this weekend, which was very good to see, but at the particular demonstration at which there were a significant number of arrests, 33 people were also arrested for separate offences, including 17 alleged assaults on police officers. None of us wants to see that kind of violent activity. We will work closely with the police to ensure people have the ability to protest in a peaceful way—that is a cornerstone of our democracy—but it is entirely unacceptable that anybody should seek to assault a police officer.