Tory conference to open as Home Office announces plan to strengthen anti-protest laws – UK politics live | Politics
Shabana Mahmood announces plan to make it easier for police to ban regular protests like pro-Palestine ones
There used to be an informal convention in Westminster that, when the main opposition party was holding its annual conference, the government would hold off on major announcements. But, like many of the customs associated with the “good chaps” approach to politics, this has broken down and the Home Office has just announced a big story that will gobble up some, but not all, of the attention the Tories were expecting.
Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, is going to tighten the law to make it easier for the police to stop certain protests. They will be allowed to consider, not just the one-off impact of a planned protest, but the “cumulative impact” of regular marches organised to promote the same cause.
This is a response to the regular pro-Palestine marches that have been taking place since the Israel-Gaza war started two years ago, and in particular to the decision of organisers to go ahead with protests yesterday even after ministers suggested they should be called off out of respect to the Jewish community following the Manchester synagogue attack on Friday.
In a news release, the Home Office says:
Police forces will be granted new powers to put conditions on repeat protests as the home secretary orders a fresh look at how protests are policed and organised.
The new powers, which will be brought forward as soon as possible, will allow senior officers to consider the ‘cumulative impact’ of previous protest activity.
If a protest has taken place at the same site for weeks on end, and caused repeated disorder, the police will have the authority to, for example, instruct organisers to hold the event somewhere else. Anyone who breaches the conditions will risk arrest and prosecution.
The home secretary will also review existing legislation to ensure that powers are sufficient and being consistently applied. This will include powers to ban protests outright, and will also include provisions in the crime and policing bill, which is currently going through parliament.
Allowing police forces to take into account “cumulative impact” when deciding whether to ban a march is one of the proposals in a report published last year by John Woodcock (Lord Walney), the former Labour MP who was appointed by the last government as its independent adviser on political violence and disruption. Woodcock’s proposals were condemned by human rights groups, and many of his recommendations were ignored by the Tories.
Commenting on her announcement, Mahmood said:
The right to protest is a fundamental freedom in our country. However, this freedom must be balanced with the freedom of their neighbours to live their lives without fear.
Large, repeated protests can leave sections of our country, particularly religious communities, feeling unsafe, intimidated and scared to leave their homes. This has been particularly evident in relation to the considerable fear within the Jewish community, which has been expressed to me on many occasions in these recent difficult days.
These changes mark an important step in ensuring we protect the right to protest while ensuring all feel safe in this country.
UPDATE: Here is Peter Walker’s story on this.
Key events
The polling firm Opinium has released some research this morning suggesting that some Conservative party policies are popular with voters – but that, if people are explicitly told that they are Kemi Badenoch policies, their popularity goes down.
There is some evidence that Keir Starmer’s unpopularity has the same effect – and that, once a policy is associated with him, voters are less inclined to back it.
Mahmood says Tories have ‘zero credibility’ on migration, and ‘barely’ used existing removal powers when they were in office
Q: The Tories say they will deport 150,000 illegal immigrants a year and leave the European convention on human rights. Would you do that?
Mahmood says the government won’t do that. It has decided it is not necessary. ECHR membership underpins returns agreement.
She goes on:
The Tories have zero credibility in this area. They were in government for 14 years. They’ve suddenly discovered a zeal for reform that they did not have when they were in office, and they really do need to explain why with immigration enforcement which we already have in this country – they might not know about it about it because they barely availed themselves of it when they were in government.
Removals were down under the Conservative party. Removals of foreign offenders were down under the Conservative party. They’ve all gone up under the first year of the Labour government.
Mahmood rejects suggestion police should just ignore people holding placards saying they support Palestine Action
Mahmood says she has “no truck” with the argument that people should not be arrested for holding up signs saying they support Palestine Action (a proscribed group – which means just holding a sign in public saying you support them is an offence). She says:
I have no truck with this argument that suggests that merely holding up a placard somewhere in central London somehow shouldn’t have a police response.
If you’re supporting a proscribed organisation, you are breaking the law of our land.
That organisation has been prescribed. It is an offence to show support for that organisation.
People might not like that decision. They might have questions about the way that the anti-terror laws work in this country. But there is no excuse for holding up placards supporting a banned organisation. That will always be met with a police response.
Q: Would the new powers that you are giving police have stopped the repeated pro-Palestine demonstrations in London, and the demonstration yesterday?
Mahmood explains what she is doing – allowing the police to take into account the cumulative impact of protests.
She says conversations in the past couple of days have made it clear to her that there is a gap in the law.
(She does not mention the pro-Palestine protests directly, but this makes it clear that this initiative is aimed at them directly.)
Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary is on Sky now.
Asked if Jihad al-Shamie, the man who carried out the Manchester synagogue attack was acting alone or if he was part of a conspiracy, Mahmood said it was too early to say. The police investigation was continuing.
Q: What do you say to Jews who do not feel safe in this country?
Mahmood says:
This entire situation is absolutely devastating for us as a country. It’s devastating that an antisemitic terrorist attack took place in our country at first time in a very, very long time, that Jews have been murdered in our country for being Jews.
And of course it’s devastating to hear people of our Jewish community say that they do not feel safe in what is their own land, their own country, the place where they have been living for a very long time.
And I think that that is a challenge to all of us across society, and us in government as well, to think carefully about what we do to stem the rising tide of antisemitism in this country, and to give confidence to the British Jewish community that Jewish life will continue to flourish here in the United Kingdom.
Mahmood says security around synagogues has been tightened.
And she says she is strenghtening the law on protests as well.
Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, is being interviewed this morning on Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, and on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.
What Tories say about how their plan for Ice-style removals force will work
Back to the Tories, and here are more details of the plan for an Ice-style removals force. The party has announced a borders policy, set out in a 15-page document (which does not seem to be available online yet).
There are seven elements to the plan, which the Tories have spelt out like this.
1) Ban asylum claims for illegal entrants
2) Out of the ECHR and ECAT, and repeal HRA
3) Removals Force established to remove 150,000 per year
4) Deport all new illegal arrivals within a week, and all foreign criminals
5) End the Immigration Tribunal, Judicial Review and legal aid for immigration cases
6) Returns agreements backed by visa sanctions
7) Support our allies abroad to prevent illegal entry to Europe
(Sometimes it can be a good idea to use a mnemonic to help promote a policy, but this one seems over-contrived.)
And this is what the Conservative party document says about the removals force (point 3 of the plan).
We will create and fund an enhanced Removals Force modelled on the recent successful US approach (US ICE), with a goal to remove all illegal arrivals, all foreign criminals and those already here illegally, as well as to monitor illegal working. This will replace the current Immigration Enforcement entity in the Home Office, with a relentless focus on removing those with no right to be here.
Removals Force will have double the budget of current Immigration Enforcement (costing an extra £820m a year, or £1.6bn in total). This will be funded from closing the asylum hotels and the wider costs of our out-of-control asylum system, which amount to £4.76bn a year.
This Removals Force will have sweeping new powers. For example, we will change the law to allow Removals Force to use facial recognition systems without warning signs to identify, detain and remove illegal immigrants. The police will be mandated to check all those they stop or arrest against biometric borders data and all those who are not here legally will then be deported by Removals Force. We would expect Removals Force to integrate closely with the police.
Priorities for removal will be:
1. New illegal arrivals – who should be removed within a week at most.
2. Foreign criminals.
3. Those who recently entered the country illegally and whose protection claims have not yet been processed.
4. Those whose humanitarian / asylum visas expire and are not renewed, including those previously granted asylum or other forms of protection who do not qualify under the new rules set out here.
5. Others identified or encountered who are here illegally, which will include visa over-stayers, failed asylum seekers and illegal entrants who remain in the UK without immigration status.
Removing the legal barriers, and doubling the resources available, should lead to a roughly five-fold increase in the number of removals from 34,000 to around 150,000 per year.
Shabana Mahmood announces plan to make it easier for police to ban regular protests like pro-Palestine ones
There used to be an informal convention in Westminster that, when the main opposition party was holding its annual conference, the government would hold off on major announcements. But, like many of the customs associated with the “good chaps” approach to politics, this has broken down and the Home Office has just announced a big story that will gobble up some, but not all, of the attention the Tories were expecting.
Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, is going to tighten the law to make it easier for the police to stop certain protests. They will be allowed to consider, not just the one-off impact of a planned protest, but the “cumulative impact” of regular marches organised to promote the same cause.
This is a response to the regular pro-Palestine marches that have been taking place since the Israel-Gaza war started two years ago, and in particular to the decision of organisers to go ahead with protests yesterday even after ministers suggested they should be called off out of respect to the Jewish community following the Manchester synagogue attack on Friday.
In a news release, the Home Office says:
Police forces will be granted new powers to put conditions on repeat protests as the home secretary orders a fresh look at how protests are policed and organised.
The new powers, which will be brought forward as soon as possible, will allow senior officers to consider the ‘cumulative impact’ of previous protest activity.
If a protest has taken place at the same site for weeks on end, and caused repeated disorder, the police will have the authority to, for example, instruct organisers to hold the event somewhere else. Anyone who breaches the conditions will risk arrest and prosecution.
The home secretary will also review existing legislation to ensure that powers are sufficient and being consistently applied. This will include powers to ban protests outright, and will also include provisions in the crime and policing bill, which is currently going through parliament.
Allowing police forces to take into account “cumulative impact” when deciding whether to ban a march is one of the proposals in a report published last year by John Woodcock (Lord Walney), the former Labour MP who was appointed by the last government as its independent adviser on political violence and disruption. Woodcock’s proposals were condemned by human rights groups, and many of his recommendations were ignored by the Tories.
Commenting on her announcement, Mahmood said:
The right to protest is a fundamental freedom in our country. However, this freedom must be balanced with the freedom of their neighbours to live their lives without fear.
Large, repeated protests can leave sections of our country, particularly religious communities, feeling unsafe, intimidated and scared to leave their homes. This has been particularly evident in relation to the considerable fear within the Jewish community, which has been expressed to me on many occasions in these recent difficult days.
These changes mark an important step in ensuring we protect the right to protest while ensuring all feel safe in this country.
UPDATE: Here is Peter Walker’s story on this.
Badenoch claims voters will like plan for Trump-style deportation force to remove 150,000 illegal migrants per year
Good morning. The Conservative party conference is starting in Manchester today – although you could be forgiven for thinking it’s another Reform UK conference, because Kemi Badenoch has already made two huge policy commitments that are straight out of the Nigel Farage manual.
First, on Friday night, she announced that the Tories would withdraw from the European convention on human rights.
And, last night, she said that if her party wins the election it will set up a new immigration taskforce, modelled on Donald Trump’s beefed-up Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), with the intention that it will deport 150,000 people who are in the UK illegally every year.
Given the way Ice is now operating in the US – like an autonomous militia, with masked goons violently abducting migrants, or anyone who looks like one, with little or no regard to due process – Guardian readers, and other progressives, may assume that this is about the worst idea imaginable. But this is where concerns about illegal immigration are pushing the policy debate for rightwing parties (Reform propose something similar, only they have not fleshed it out in so much detail), and Badenoch herself thinks this will prove popular.
In an interview with Ben Riley-Smith for the Telegraph, she was asked if the plan for an Ice-style removals force was a bit Trumpian. Badenoch replied:
I wouldn’t be surprised if he [Trump] loved it.
But what’s really important is that people in this country will like it.
Within the next few days we might find out.
Here is the agenda for the day.
8.30am: Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, is interviewed on Sky’s Sunday with Trevor Phillips.
9am: Kemi Badenoch is interviewed on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.
9.30am: Badenoch is interviewed by Camilla Tominey on GB News.
1.30pm: James Cleverly, the shadow housing secretary and former home secretary and former foreign secretary, takes part in a Q&A at a Tony Blair Institute fringe.
2pm: The conference opens. The speakers include Kevin Hollinrake, the Conservative chair, Matthew Syed, the Sunday Times columnist who recently revealed that he has joined the Tories (having in the past tried to get elected to parliament as a Labour candidate), Russell Findlay, the Scottish Tory leader, and Darren Millar, the Welsh Tory leader.
2.45pm: Kemi Badenoch, the party leader, gives a speech that is expected to focus on the party’s plans to leave the European convention on human rights. Her main speech is on Wednesday.
3.15pm: Members hold a debate on the proposition that “freedom of speech is a fundamental pillar of democracy, and we need to create stronger protections for it in law”.
3.30pm: Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, takes part in a Q&A with Robert Colvile, the Centre for Policy Studies director, at a fringe meeting.
5.15pm: Philp speaks at a fringe meeting on policing.
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