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

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

At end to insert “but this House regrets that the proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation (1) undermines civil liberties, including civil disobedience, (2) constitutes a misuse of anti-terrorism legislation, given that offences such as property damage can be dealt with under other criminal law, (3) suppresses dissent against the United Kingdom’s policy on Israel, and (4) criminalises support for a protest group, thereby creating a chilling effect on freedom of expression.”

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, when I tabled this regret amendment yesterday, my noble friend Lady Bennett of Manor Castle gave me some advice. She said, “Don’t lose your temper”. I am going to try to do my best to heed her advice. I thank the Minister for his engagement; he has been very kind and polite, and I thank him for that. I had better state for the record that I am a protester of many decades, but I believe in non-violence: that is a limit for me.

However, there are many reasons why proscribing Palestine Action is a bad idea. Listening to the Minister, I thought that his descriptions of the three organisations had very distinct differences and that the actions of Palestine Action did not appear to have the same calibre of evil as those of the other two. Therefore, collectively organising these three into one SI is perhaps a little bit sneaky of this Government. Palestine Action is not like any other group that the British Government have so far declared a terrorist organisation. I was 12 years on the Met Police Authority and in that time I had lots of anti-terrorist briefings. To me, the actions of Palestine Action do not ring true as terrorist activities.

This SI also goes against the promises—

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

Would the noble Baroness give way momentarily?

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I am so sorry, but no. If the noble Lord does not mind, I would like to finish my speech.

[Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)]

Let him intervene.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

No.

This SI goes directly against the promises made by Ministers when the anti-terror laws were introduced. The then Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, clarified that if direct action groups

“do not engage in serious violence … the new definition cannot catch them”.—[Official Report, Commons, 14/12/1999; col. 227.]

The current definition of terrorism includes property damage to cover

“actions which might not be violent in themselves but which can, in a modern society, have a devastating impact”.

Based on what the Minister has said and what the Government have told us, Palestine Action’s activities have not had the potential for a “devastating impact” on society, and nor have its activities included a pattern of serious violence. Yet the Government are putting it into the same category as Islamic State and al-Qaeda, setting an incredibly dangerous precedent that will impact on numerous peaceful campaigning groups. There is a long and noble tradition—

[Lord Harper (Con)]

Is the noble Baroness prepared to answer questions about—

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

No, sweetie. Noble Lords can come in at the end, okay?

There is a long and noble tradition of the use of direct action by protest movements, including the suffragettes—yesterday we celebrated the anniversary of the Equal Franchise Act, when women were finally given the right to vote—anti-apartheid protests, Greenpeace and peace campaigners such as CND and the women of Greenham Common. I ask the Minister: under the Government’s proposal, would they also be retrospectively branded as terrorists? What about Queen Boudicca, a freedom fighter for the British tribes under the Roman yoke? This Government would call her a terrorist and say there is no place in British society for her, either.

Campaigners committing criminal damage have been annoying the public and Governments for well over 100 years. The police take them to court, the newspapers owned by rich people condemn them and occasionally we get a change in government policy. That is rather how our damaged democracy has been working.

I completely agree that democracies have to defend themselves against violent attacks on their citizens aimed at furthering a political cause, which is why we should be uniting to proscribe the other two groups that the noble Lord has described. But democracies have to defend themselves against politicians choosing censorship as a way of silencing opposition to unpopular policies, which is what I think the Government are doing here.

That brings me to my most important point. This proscription order undermines the entire consensus behind our country’s anti-terror laws. I ask the Minister and every noble Lord whether they can name another group that they are about to proscribe that has hundreds of thousands of British people following it on social media. What exactly does the Minister think will happen to that support for Palestine Action from such a large swathe of British people who suddenly feel, after Wednesday, when the order takes place, that they might be affected if they morally oppose genocide and the terrorism laws being used to defend what is morally wrong? I do not agree with everything that this group has done, not by any means, but when I hear that businesses have been stopped supplying arms to the Israeli military in Gaza, I feel happy that that has happened.

[Lord Walney (CB)]

On that point—

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

No, I am sorry; I will not take interventions. There is an opportunity at the end.

Some 53% of British people agree with stopping sending arms to Israel, and I would expect any Government with a sense of morality to do that. Instead, it has been left to groups such as Palestine Action to take the lead. If you want Palestine Action to disappear, stop sending arms to Israel and giving military support to a foreign Government engaged in ethnic cleansing. Palestine Action has done many things that I do not agree with, but spraying paint on refuelling planes that campaigners believe are used to help the ethnic cleansing in Gaza is not terrorism; it is criminal damage, which we already have laws for. It is gesture politics, and the MoD itself has declared that it did not block any planned aircraft movements or stop any operations. Palestine Action would have been in court to face justice, but so would the Government on that basis, and I think that is what Ministers have actually been rather concerned about.

Palestine Action has a five-year history of things it has done, but as soon as Ministers realised that a jury might not convict it of spray-painting at Brize Norton, they declared it a terrorist group. The Government were very aware of how likely it was that a jury would free Palestine Action campaigners because of the public’s horror over our involvement in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. They would remember that the Prime Minister was the lawyer who defended the “Fairford five” after anti-war protesters broke into RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire to sabotage United States bombers before the Iraq war. He argued that while their actions were unlawful, they were justified as an attempt to prevent war crimes, asserting that the Iraq war lacked legal basis under international law due to an absence of a clear UN resolution. I can easily see why a jury might choose not to convict the campaigners at Brize Norton in the same way. Subsequent legal appeals, based on the legal threshold of terrorism when events do not endanger life, could cost us, the taxpayer, a lot of money. This Government have clamped down on civil liberties in many ways, through many laws, and for me this is a step too far. I deeply regret that we have reached this point, and I beg to move the amendment.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, I have supported my party for nearly 10 years since I joined this House, sometimes late like the last two nights, but I cannot support this Motion, as my noble friend understands. That gives me no joy because I have been a long-standing colleague of his as a Welsh MP. Indeed, he was a very effective Minister when I was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. To be absolutely clear, I support the right of Israel to exist and of Israelis to enjoy full security. I am also a long-standing supporter of Palestinian rights to self-determination in their own state. I was vehemently opposed to the antisemitism tolerated under Jeremy Corbyn’s ill-fated leadership and, as far as I remember, I have never participated in any Palestine Action protest or been on any of its platforms. I sought advice from the clerk of the Table Office to amend this Motion so that it proscribed only the two Nazi-like paramilitary groups it lists and not Palestine Action but was advised that this was not procedurally possible.

--- Later in debate ---

In summary, this is not a decision that Governments take lightly. It is a government decision, based on legislation and on clear tests. It is designed to protect the public, not to stifle public concern, demonstrations or activity around the causes linked the organisations being proscribed today. It is an evidential test, and we believe that the three organisations have passed that evidential test. I therefore commend this order to the House.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I thank the Minister for his response, and every noble Lord who has spoken in the debate, especially those who have been kind about me. I will just say that I do not normally take interventions because, in my 12 years’ experience of your Lordships’ House, most interventions can be a speech after mine. I just do not see the point in being disrupted all the time—I think it is rude. Admittedly, there were two points of information that I should probably have taken, so I apologise to the noble Lords, Lord Harper and Lord Scriven.

This is a regret amendment, and I have heard enough regret from various of your Lordships to want to test the opinion of the House.