Palestine Action ban is risk to free speech, watchdog says, as UK gov’t appeals to bar group

Lawyers for anti-Israel group tell court that government should have taken criminal measures against it rather than ban it, as state argues such steps would have been insufficient

LONDON, United Kingdom — Britain’s terrorism watchdog on Wednesday said the government risked stretching counterterrorism laws beyond their original purpose, as the government appealed in court to uphold its ban on the anti-Israel group Palestine Action.

The watchdog said using such powers against activist groups could blur the line between protests and national security threats.

In his annual report examining the use of Britain’s terrorism legislation in 2024, independent reviewer Jonathan Hall said the subsequent banning of Palestine Action had exposed “real uncertainty” over whether serious damage to property alone should qualify as terrorism.

The law’s broad wording could, without clearer limits, risk pulling protest activity into terrorism policing, even where there is no intent to harm people, Hall said.

“There is no legal authority on what ‘serious damage to property’ means,” Hall wrote, saying the definition could extend beyond violent attacks to acts such as criminal damage, depending on how courts interpret the threshold.

While he said it was unthinkable to remove property damage entirely from the legal definition of terrorism, he suggested lawmakers could narrow the test, for example, by requiring a risk to life, a national security dimension or exclusion for non-violent protest.

The ban on Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act 2000, which began on July 5, made membership of or support for the direct action group a criminal offense punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

His report comes as the government appeals a High Court ruling that found the banning of Palestine Action unlawful on the grounds of free speech. The ban, imposed in July 2025, remains in force pending the outcome of the appeal.

On the second day of the appeal hearing on Wednesday, Raza Husain, the rights lawyer representing Palestine Action’s co-founder Huda Ammori, told the court that the ban had had a “colossal impact on individuals, a colossal impact on rights.”

The ban “has very serious consequences for free speech on a matter of the most acute public interest,” and as a result, there is a “risk of over-broad police action,” Husain added.

Ammori herself suffered a “severe” impact and had been dropped as a speaker at public events “because organizers are scared of committing offenses,” he said.

The vast majority of protests were “low-level civil disobedience” such as sit-ins and lock-ons, the lawyer claimed, while “a smaller cohort engaged in more serious damage to property.”

In 2025, two activists broke into the Royal Air Force Brize Norton base in southern England and sprayed two planes with red paint.

The previous year, six Palestine Action members raided Israeli defense firm Elbit’s UK factory. During that attack, one member of the group hit a police officer with a sledgehammer. The officer suffered a fractured spine from the attack and remains on restricted duty.

Criminal damage caused by activists at military facilities “has historically not been regarded as terroristic,” Husain said.

“Criminal, yes, terroristic no.”

Another lawyer for the group, Owen Greenhall, argued “there were plenty of alternative measures that could be used,” including charges for criminal damage and trespass and civil injunctions.

In a written submission to the court, however, James Eadie, who was representing the government, said that the High Court’s previous ruling had “ignored” the Home Office’s explanation of why criminal charges would be insufficient.

He said that counterterrorism police had “specifically advised” that existing criminal options against Palestine Action would be “insufficient,” prompting the government to pursue proscribing it instead.

One final hearing in the appeal is expected to be held behind closed doors on Thursday, according to Scottish newspaper The National.

UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk warned when the ban was imposed that using counterterrorism legislation to implement the ban on Palestine Action risked “hindering the legitimate exercise of fundamental freedoms across the UK.”

Hall’s report also highlighted growing reliance on counterterrorism laws to police online propaganda and political expression.

The independent reviewer also looked at the 2024 banning of Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir and the extreme right-wing online Terrorgram network, describing both as cases where organizations were banned primarily for online rhetoric rather than operational violence.

Terrorism offenses linked to proscribed organizations rose in 2024, driven in part by arrests following Britain’s ban on Hamas after its October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, with Hall saying that prosecution numbers would rise further after Palestine Action’s ban in 2025.

Interior minister Shabana Mahmood said in a statement that she would review Hall’s recommendations before responding.