Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

Shockat Adam Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Harriet Cross (Gordon and Buchan) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Minister for his speech and for bringing this important and very necessary measure to the House. I also thank him for the briefing I was provided with earlier today.

Let us be clear what these measures are and are not about. Do we support free speech? Yes. Do we support the right to protest? Yes. Do we support freedom of expression? Yes. However, the very freedoms that make our democracy what it is are exactly the freedoms that the groups we are considering are putting at risk, which is why this order is needed. The groups we are discussing—Palestine Action, Maniacs Murder Cult and the Russian Imperial Movement—have nothing whatsoever to do with legitimate protest. They would not be facing proscription if they were demonstrating peacefully, respectfully or legally, as so many groups and organisations across the country do and must continue to be able to do freely. These groups have chosen a different path entirely, and for that reason this action is rightly being taken against them.

[Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)]

Does the shadow Minister agree with me that, if the only acceptable form of protest is polite protest, that is not protest, but permission?

[Harriet Cross]

The right to protest is a hugely important part of our democracy. We support the right to protest and the right to free speech. We do not support a right to commit criminal damage or to intimidate or threaten the public, but that is exactly what these groups are doing and why they are quite rightly being proscribed.

We must be clear-eyed about the broader threat landscape we face. Terrorism remains one of the most serious threats to our national security. Whether it comes from international networks, those radicalised online or extremist groups operating on our soil, the threat is real and evolving and it must demand our constant vigilance. Our security services work tirelessly day and night to keep us safe. They have disrupted countless plots that the public will never know about, but we cannot be complacent. The nature of terrorism has changed—from sophisticated networks to lone actors, from physical attacks to attacks on cyber networks, and from foreign battlefields to our own communities—and our response must evolve accordingly.

We should reflect on what terrorism is. As defined by the Terrorism Act 2000, it occurs when an action’s

“use or threat is designed to influence the government…or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and…the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause.”

The full list of actions are detailed in the Act, but they include serious violence against a person, those that endanger life or health and safety, and those that seriously damage property.

Proscription is not a step taken lightly, but it is a strong and necessary tool that the previous as well as the current Government have used and should use to protect the public, and to ensure that our police and security services have fuller access to the resources they need to keep the public, our institutions and our way of life safe. No one could hear the Minister’s description of the actions of Palestine Action, MMR and RIM and consider them to be those of peaceful, legitimate protest groups.

--- Later in debate ---

[Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)]

I came to this country as a child; it nurtured, educated and embraced me. I love this country for so many reasons, but for two reasons more than anything else, I suspect. The first is for its sense of fairness, and the second is for the freedom to express how we feel democratically. That is why I speak specifically about Palestine Action when I say that if we proscribe this organisation under the Terrorism Act, we will for the first time in this nation’s history outlaw a domestic protest group as a terrorist organisation.

Britain has a proud and often hard-fought tradition of civil resistance. We remember with reverence the suffragettes, who were branded as criminals for smashing windows but are now celebrated as heroes of justice. We remember the civil rights movement, in which protesters occupied streets and broke unjust laws to dismantle segregation. We remember the global campaign against apartheid—which included Ministers in this House—where people of conscience defied authorities, trespassed and disrupted in the name of ending a brutal system. The very freedoms we hold dear today—votes for women, racial equality and the end of apartheid—were born not from men and women in suits in this establishment, but from people out there. It is that tradition that we are about to disrupt today.

This decision, which has been rushed through Parliament in a matter of days and bundled with unrelated, foreign neo-Nazi groups and debated for mere minutes, is a reckless abuse of process. It denies Parliament the gravity of deliberation that this issue so badly demands. The proscription has already been condemned by a vast range of people, from Sally Rooney to Lord Falconer, and that will continue.

Even worse, this statutory instrument risks criminalising anyone who supports, sympathises with or even publicly praises the aims of Palestine Action. It opens the door to the prosecution of journalists, filmmakers, campaigners and politicians for doing nothing more than expressing solidarity. This is Orwellian dystopia on steroids. Let us ask ourselves honestly: if we set this precedent, who will be next? History will judge harshly those who choose silence in moments of moral testing.

I urge my colleagues not to allow this dangerous step to go unchallenged. Do not allow a Home Secretary, in a moment of political expediency, permanently to expand the reach of anti-terror laws into the heart of a domestic protest. Do not let this House be the one that shrank the boundaries of freedom of expression. We owe it to those who fought so hard for our freedoms, dared to dissent and refused to be silent—let us summon their courage now. I urge colleagues to vote against this proscription, and to protect our democratic tradition and our right to protest.