Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool Riverside) (Lab)]

Today’s push to proscribe Palestine Action, a non-violent direct action group, as a terrorist organisation is a disastrous turning point of historic proportions. It risks undermining existing prosecution cases against activities by Palestine Action activists and is legally dubious. Human and civil rights organisations, lawyers and UN experts have all spoken out against the misuse of terrorism laws, calling the move unjustified and warning of a chilling effect on protest and advocacy generally, especially in relation to the defence of human rights and international law in Palestine.

We have already seen the chilling effect on protest. Palestine Solidarity Campaign has been prevented from protesting outside Parliament this evening, with police placing restrictions on the demo and pushing it further down Whitehall. For hundreds of years, protests outside Parliament have gone ahead. Limiting dissent in this way should concern us all, and we have seen that in the last couple of weeks in relation to the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, abortion and the empty welfare cuts.

The question that Members of this House must ask ourselves today is whether non-violent political groups should ever be designated as a terror threat. If Palestine Action is proscribed this week—

[Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)]

Will she give way?

[Kim Johnson]

No, I will not.

By the weekend, anyone with a branded t-shirt or bag could face a terrorism charge. Amnesty International has flagged that if Palestine Action is proscribed this week, even meeting their lawyers to discuss intervening in judicial review proceedings could see its members fall foul of counter-terror legislation. Those are all examples of potential grounds for prosecution under counter-terrorism laws if Palestine Action is proscribed, which could come to constituents who are not members of the organisation and have never engaged in direct action. The scope of what we are talking about is insanely broad. Will the Government really demand that we vote to criminalise our constituents in that way?

Proscribing Palestine Action today would set a dangerous precedent for future Government misuse of counter-terror laws. It would be the first group proscribed mainly for serious damage to property and the first proscribed direct action group. Proscription is neither necessary nor proportionate. We already have sufficient criminal legislation that has always dealt with this when necessary and the Home Secretary has provided no impact assessment as

“no, or no significant, impact on the private, voluntary or public sectors is foreseen.”

However, we have received no reassurances about how the proportionality test has been applied or whether unintended impacts on the wider pro-Palestine movement were considered by the Home Office and the proscription review group. Indeed, we have heard from civil rights groups that there have allegedly been meetings with representatives from the Israeli Government and arms companies such as Elbit, but none with human rights groups.

Whether or not Members of this House debating and voting on this statutory instrument today agree with the methods or aims of Palestine Action, we should all be able to agree that lumping Palestine Action together with the other two obscure groups to ensure that it is proscribed is a disgraceful manipulation of parliamentary procedure. Searching Hansard, I see that neither of the other two groups has been mentioned, as they are so obscure. This manoeuvre is transparent, and it shows that the Government know just how shaky this proscription is. Today they come for Palestine Action. If this measure is passed today, who and what will be next? I look forward to the Minister answering the concerns we have raised, particularly about the three organisations being grouped together.