Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood during a tour of the Lambeth Central Communications Command Centre, south London, January 22, 2026
CIVIL liberty campaigners pledged to fight plans to roll out facial recognition technology to all police forces across England and Wales.
Overriding concerns, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood claimed that the technology would cut crime, despite often being entirely inaccurate.
Boosting camera vans from 10 to 50, Ms Mahmood claimed: “New technology has the ability to help us go after criminals and bring more people to justice.
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Liberty slammed the government for announcing the rollout while supposedly still in the midst of a public consultation.
External relations director Ruth Ehrlich said that “rolling out powerful surveillance tools while a consultation is still under way undermines public trust and shows disregard for our fundamental rights,” adding: “The government must halt the rapid rollout of facial recognition technology, ensure safeguards are in place to protect each of us, and prioritise our rights.”
Elizabeth Tower, part of the Palace of Westminster, is seen between two Metropolitan Police officers in Parliament Square, London
More than 45 civil society groups oppose plans to give police sweeping new powers
MORE than 45 civil society groups including the TUC and Palestine Solidarity Campaign today opposed “extreme” and “dangerous” government plans to give police sweeping new powers to restrict protests in England and Wales.
Greenpeace, Amnesty International UK, Liberty, Quakers in Britain and unions also denounced the “draconian crackdown on our rights to freedom of expression and assembly.”
Police will be required to consider the “cumulative impact” of repeated protests in the same area when imposing conditions on demonstrations under an amendment in the Crime and Policing Bill introduced in the House of Lords.
The size of an area is not specified and police would not be required to take into account whether the protests are for the same cause or involve the same people, the statement warned.
“Although government statements make clear these powers have been brought forward in response to the mass national marches for Palestinian rights, the impact of this change of law would be wide-ranging,” it said.
“An anti-racist march could be blocked from Whitehall because of a previous farmers’ protest, or a Pride march restricted because a far-right demonstration was recently held in the same town.
“Clamping down on peaceful protests will not protect anyone’s rights or safety, and we reject cynical attempts by government to present this repressive proposal as protection for vulnerable groups.”
It said that the Suffragette and anti-apartheid movements in South Africa all relied on the “cumulative” impact of protests in an area.
Zarah Sultana speaking after a march organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, from Russell Square to Whitehall in central London, June 21, 2025
This week, MPs shamefully approved the proscription of Palestine Action. Several challenged the move in the Commons. Zarah Sultana, Independent MP for Coventry South, gave an outstanding speech in condemnation. Because of the exceptional gravity of the issue, we reproduce her speech, lightly edited, here.
TWENTY-ONE years ago, a human rights barrister … defended an activist who broke into RAF Fairford trying to disable a bomber to prevent war crimes in Iraq. That became a landmark case in lawful, non-violent direct action against an illegal war. That barrister is now our Prime Minister, Keir Starmer KC. He argued that it was not terrorism, but conscience.
Fast-forward to June 20 2025: two Palestine Action activists entered RAF Brize Norton and sprayed red paint — red paint, not fire — on aircraft linked to surveillance flights over Gaza. Instead of prosecuting them for criminal damage, the Home Secretary is using the Terrorism Act 2000 to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist group.
This is an unprecedented and dangerous overreach of the state. Never before in Britain has it been a crime to simply support a group.
Palestine Action’s real crime is shutting down Elbit Systems sites that arm the Israeli military; its true offence is being audacious enough to expose the blood-soaked ties between this government and the genocidal Israeli apartheid state and its war machine.
Let us be clear: to equate a spray can of paint with a suicide bomb is not just absurd; it is grotesque. It is a deliberate distortion of the law to chill dissent, criminalise solidarity and suppress the truth.
Amnesty International, Liberty, over 266 senior lawyers and UN special rapporteurs have all opposed these draconian measures. Under this order, anyone expressing moral support for a proscribed group could face 14 years in prison. That includes wearing a badge, wearing a T-shirt, sharing a post or calling for de-proscription.
And journalists have no exemption either: there is no legal protection for reporting favourably, even factually, about Palestine Action.
Let us not forget what is happening in Gaza, where the real crimes are being ignored: hospitals bombed, children starved, and tens of thousands of people killed. Palestinian children now suffer more amputations per capita than children anywhere else on Earth.
Israel is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice, and the Israeli Prime Minister faces an International Criminal Court arrest warrant, yet the government’s response is to criminalise solidarity and to continue exporting lethal F-35 jets that are decimating Gaza.
We also have to understand the history of this country and what built our democracy: the tradition of civil disobedience that includes the suffragettes, without whom I would not have the vote, let alone the privilege of being here as an MP.
Even those who oppose Palestine Action’s tactics must recognise the vast gulf between criminal damage and terrorism. If this order passes, what and who is next — climate protesters, striking workers, feminists in the street?
Already we have seen a wider crackdown on our civil liberties — musicians censored, journalists arrested, and demonstrators, including MPs sitting here, harassed — and now this government want to use anti-terror laws to make peaceful protest itself a crime. If our democratic institutions functioned as they should, none of this would be necessary.
If this proscription passes, we have to understand that no campaign will be safe tomorrow. We have to recognise that this will go down as a dark day in our country’s history … People will ask, “Which side were you on?” and I stand with the millions of people who oppose genocide, because I am one of them. I oppose the blood-soaked hands of this government trying to silence us. So I say this loudly and proudly: we are all Palestine…
UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone obect to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities,mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Keir “I support Zionism without Qualification” Starmer supporting genocide.
The UK government has quietly dropped its legal battle to uphold a law that allowed police to arrest peaceful protesters | Seiya Tanase/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Labour has quietly dropped legal fight over unlawful crackdown on protest. But what about those already arrested?
Two years ago, Suella Braverman made a law she had no power to make.
Her new law fundamentally changed the threshold at which police could impose conditions on a protest in England and Wales. It went from anything that caused ‘serious disruption’ – itself a vague phrase that Braverman was asked to define but didn’t – to anything that caused ‘more than minor’ disruption.
Now, finally, those laws have been quashed. We at Liberty launched legal action against the government in June 2023, and five judges over two hearings have since agreed with us that the measures were unlawful and should never have been introduced in the first place.
This week, the Labour government quietly dropped its appeal over those court rulings. The law now reverts back to what it originally was. Police can no longer intervene in protests on trivial grounds, such as a person blocking the entrance to a hotel where a fossil fuel conference is taking place for a matter of minutes – an act for which Greta Thunberg was arrested and later acquitted.
At Liberty, we took action against these laws not just because they were undemocratic and unlawful, but because of the real human impact they had on protesters and non-protesters across the country.
Take Susan* for example, who was wrongly arrested in January. Susan had gone to a vigil for Palestine in the morning, but left to go for lunch. As she was on her way to the shops with friends, she asked the police which way to go, and they directed her back into the protest area. A few minutes later, Susan was caught up in a kettle as the area had conditions imposed on it under these laws.
Susan was arrested, held in custody first on a coach for three hours, and then in a cell for the rest of the 24-hour period that a person can be detained for without charge. She was unable to even call home to tell her son she wouldn’t be allowed home that evening until 10pm.
Eventually, Susan was told that no further action would be taken against her, as was the case for dozens of others who got caught up in this injustice. Despite this, there have been long-lasting effects. In her own words, this has had a huge impact on her mental health. She feels scared for her family’s safety. She has lost all optimism, when she did nothing wrong in the first place.
What makes Susan’s case even worse is that the legislation had already been ruled unlawful at the point she was arrested. Just a few months earlier, the Labour government had chosen to appeal the court’s original decision that the Conservatives acted unlawfully. This is despite Labour’s home secretary, Yvette Cooper, having vocally opposed these same laws when she was in opposition.
Now, the government has finally accepted defeat and has decided to drop its appeal. This is a huge victory for democracy and our right to protest.
Conservative ministers loudly championed free speech – right up until they outlawed it. Now, we’re all at risk
Through successive government acts and rhetoric, the ways in which we can protest have been narrowed. Restrictions have been placed on how we protest, and even how noisy a protest can be. And as we’ve seen recently, the sentences given out to protesters have only got longer and harsher.
This cannot go on. We need a reset on the way protest is treated, because it is leading to situations like Susan’s, where vague laws are causing very real damage.
If we’ve learnt anything from our legal action, it is that justice is possible. But, as Susan’s experience shows, there is still further justice that needs to be gained.
These laws should never have been made, and so, quite clearly, every incident under them must be looked at. There has to be an urgent review of every arrest and conviction made under these regulations.
Later this year, new laws will be introduced giving anonymity to firearms officers who shoot someone, unless they are convicted. Photograph: Grant Rooney Premium/Alamy
Review into accountability soon to report as police seek greater protection from prosecution over use of force
Police want changes to the law giving them “a licence to kill”, leading rights groups have warned as the government prepares to give officers new protections from prosecution.
A government-ordered review into police accountability is expected to report within weeks. It followed fears of a walkout by angry armed officers in London after a police marksman, Martyn Blake, was tried for murder over the shooting of Chris Kaba. Blake was acquitted in October by a jury in three hours.
Police say they want the system to be fairer and protect officers who use force as part of their duties. Rights groups believe the system holding police to account is already too weak, and diluting it would “undermine public trust”.
In a letter seen by the Guardian, groups including Inquest, the Centre for Women’s Justice, Liberty and Black Lives Matter warn the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, against weakening police accountability.
“This review is less a kneejerk reaction but rather a dangerous and calculated attempt to use a high-profile case to push for less scrutiny and accountability of police actions,” they said.
“The number of cases where police officers are prosecuted for a death is vanishingly small (since 1990 there has only been one successful prosecution of an officer for manslaughter and none for murder).
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood during a tour of the Lambeth Central Communications Command Centre, south London, January 22, 2026
