The Labour peer Peter Hain, who was a leading anti-apartheid campaigner in the UK and who led the direct action protests that disrupted South African rugby and cricket tours in 1969 and 1970, told peers that he was “deeply ashamed” that his party was banning Palestine Action,If he was doing that today, he would be “stigmatised as a terrorist, rather than vilified, as indeed I then was”, he said,He went on:That militant action could have been blocked by this motion [the order banning Palestine Action] as could other anti-apartheid activity, including militant protests to stop Barclays Bank recruiting new students on university campuses, eventually forcing Barclays to withdraw from apartheid South Africa,Remember also that Nelson Mandela was labelled a “terrorist” by the apartheid government, by British prime minister Maragret Thatcher, by the United States and other Western governments during much of the Cold War,Mandela even remained on the US terrorism watchlist until 2008, many years after becoming South Africa’s first democratically elected president and receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.

After his African National Congress had been banned, Nelson Mandela was convicted for sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the apartheid government when he backed armed struggle despite strongly opposing the very essence of terrorism: namely violent and indiscriminate attacks on innocent civilians,Nevertheless, he became a global icon and in 1996 President Mandela addressed both Houses of this Parliament in Westminster Hall,Hain said the suffragettes would have been banned under the same logic,The suffragettes too have gained iconic status, treated as heroines today,Yet they could have been suppressed under this proscription,They used violence against property in a strategic manner to demand voting rights for women as part of civil disobedience protests when their peaceful protests seemed futile.

They intended to highlight the injustice of denying women the vote and to provoke a reaction that kept the issue in the public eye.Like Nelson Mandela, they were vilified at the time, including in strident denunciations by members of this house …They even hid small homemade bombs inside mailboxes and attempted to bomb Westminster Abbey and Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s uncompleted house.Frankly Palestine Action members spraying paint on military aircraft at Brize Norton seems positively moderate by comparison.And those alleged to have done this are being prosecuted for criminal damage – as indeed they should be.Hain said that “real terrorists” were groups like al-Qaida and Islamic State, who have killed thousands of people.

He ended:This government is treating Palestine Action as equivalent to Islamic State or al-Qaida, which is intellectually bankrupt, politically unprincipled and morally wrong.Frankly I am deeply ashamed.And that is why I support this regret amendment.Rachel Reeves has said she is “cracking on with the job” of chancellor, after a very public show of unity from Keir Starmer after her visible distress in the Commons.Keir Starmer has outlined a 10-year plan for the NHS based on a shift from hospitals to community health hubs, a renewed focus on prevention and an embrace of technology, which was billed as perhaps the last chance to save the health service in its current form.

The Labour peer Peter Hain, who was a leading anti-apartheid campaigner in the UK and who led the direct action protests that disrupted South African rugby and cricket tours in 1969 and 1970, has told peers that he is “deeply ashamed” that his party is banning Palestine Action.(See 4.48pm.) He was speaking in a Lords debate to approve the order banning the group.Peers have just voted, and the amendment condeming the ban was voted down, by 144 votes to 16.

The order has just been passed.Jeremy Corbyn has hinted he could launch a political party alongside other leftwing independent MPs in an attempt to offer “an alternative” to Labour, before the next general election.Jenny Jones calls for a vote on her amendment.(See 4.25pm.

) Peers are now voting,The government is expected to win comfortably,In the Commons yesterday 382 MPs voted to ban Palestine Action and only 26 MPs (nine of them Labour) voted against,Addressing the point made by David Anderson (see 5,08pm), Hanson says banning Palestine Action will not stop people expressing support for the Palestinian cause.

Back in the House of Lords, David Hanson is winding up the debate for the government.He says he has been carried out of buildings in the past while taking part in peaceful protests.He says the ban on Palestine Action is not about banning peaceful protest.It is about stopping violence and intimidation.He says this decision has not been taken lightly.

It has been taken on the basis of expert advice.And he says Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, and Dan Jarvis,the security minister, did not just accept the advice of officials.They tested the arguments and the evidence, he says.He says Palestine Action passes the evidential test for proscription.Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, is interested in hearing the views of “synthetic voters”, in AI focus groups, Tim Shipman says in his long read on Labour in this week’s Spectator.

Shipman says:McSweeney is exercised by the fact that the civil service has 7,000 communications officers, 4,500 of whom work for arm’s-length bodies and quangos and frequently attack what the government is trying to do.Like Dominic Cummings, he is enthused by the possibilities of technology to speed change, such as AI in the NHS or gamers being hired by the Ministry of Defence to fly drones.He is now experimenting with ‘synthetic voters’ – essentially fake focus groups of AI voters who can tell ministers more quickly and cheaply what the public thinks of policies.In the last week he has been reading The Technological Republic by Alexander Karp, co-founder of the tech firm Palantir, which argues that the West’s technical dominance over the past century has been down to collaboration between governments and tech firms.Commenting on this on Bluesky, Stephen Bush from the Financial Times says:What I think is.

...interesting about the ‘synthetic voters’ stuff is Labour HQ has its own focus groups with very real voters, and it is IMO not obvious why you would want synthetic ones, unless the real ones aren’t giving you the Right Answers.David Anderson, the government’s former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, told peers that he did not object to terrorism laws being involved in relation to any of the three groups covered by the proscription order being debated (Palestine Action, Maniacs Murder Cult [MMC] and the Russian Imperial Movement).

But he said that this move would have serious consequences,He explained:The consequences of designation for individuals misguided enough to approve, for example, of Palestine Action are rather more draconian than the explanatory memorandum to this order suggests,That document states: “It is a criminal offence for a person to belong to or invite support for a proscribed organisation,It is a criminal offence to arrange a meeting to support a proscribed organisation,”That is an accurate summary of section 11, section 12(1) and section 12(2) of the Terrorism Act 2000.

If you are a member or a promoter of a proscribed organisation, you can face up to 14 years in prison,But since the Counter-terrorism and Border Security act 2019 introduced section 12(1)(a) to the Terrorism Act 2000, you could also be looking at up to 14 years if you “express an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation”, without even needing an intention that your listener or listeners should agree,Being reckless about that suffices,So by bringing Palestine Action, for example, within the ambit of the terrorism laws anyone who is young and foolish enough to say that their heart is in the right place, or that the government should listen to them, is committing a very serious offence for which they could be prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned as a terrorist,It’s not their right to protest that is the issue here.

It’s the right of freedom of speech.Anderson said the minister should tell peers whether this point was considered by the government before it decided to ban Palestine Action.The Labour peer Peter Hain, who was a leading anti-apartheid campaigner in the UK and who led the direct action protests that disrupted South African rugby and cricket tours in 1969 and 1970, told peers that he was “deeply ashamed” that his party was banning Palestine Action.If he was doing that today, he would be “stigmatised as a terrorist, rather than vilified, as indeed I then was”, he said.He went on:That militant action could have been blocked by this motion [the order banning Palestine Action] as could other anti-apartheid activity, including militant protests to stop Barclays Bank recruiting new students on university campuses, eventually forcing Barclays to withdraw from apartheid South Africa.

Remember also that Nelson Mandela was labelled a “terrorist” by the apartheid government, by British prime minister Maragret Thatcher, by the United States and other Western governments during much of the Cold War.Mandela even remained on the US terrorism watchlist until 2008, many years after becoming South Africa’s first democratically elected president and receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.After his African National Congress had been banned, Nelson Mandela was convicted for sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the apartheid government when he backed armed struggle despite strongly opposing the very essence of terrorism: namely violent and indiscriminate attacks on innocent civilians.Nevertheless, he became a global icon and in 1996 President Mandela addressed both Houses of this Parliament in Westminster Hall.Hain said the suffragettes would have been banned under the same logic,The suffragettes too have gained iconic status, treated as heroines today.

Yet they could have been suppressed under this proscription.They used violence against property in a strategic manner to demand voting rights for women as part of civil disobedience protests when their peaceful protests seemed futile.They intended to highlight the injustice of denying women the vote and to provoke a reaction that kept the issue in the public eye.Like Nelson Mandela, they were vilified at the time, including in strident denunciations by members of this house …They even hid small homemade bombs inside mailboxes and attempted to bomb Westminster Abbey and Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s uncompleted house.Frankly Palestine Action members spraying paint on military aircraft at Brize Norton seems positively moderate by comparison.

And those alleged to have done this are being prosecuted for criminal damage – as indeed they should be.Hain said that “real terrorists” were groups like al-Qaida and Islamic State, who have killed thousands of people.He ended:This government is treating Palestine Action as equivalent to Islamic State or al-Qaida, which is intellectually bankrupt, politically unprincipled and morally wrong.Frankly I am deeply ashamed.And that is why I support this regret amendment.

Here is John Crace’s sketch on Wes Streeting, Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer at the launch of the NHS plan this morning,Jenny Jones, the Green party peer, has tabled a motion to regret as an amendment to the Palestine Action order,It would add these words to the motion passing the order,but this house regrets that the proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation (1) undermines civil liberties, including civil disobedience, (2) constitutes a misuse of anti-terrorism legislation, given that offences such as property damage can be dealt with under other criminal law, (3) suppresses dissent against the United Kingdom’s policy on Israel, and (4) criminalises support for a protest group, thereby creating a chilling effect on freedom of expression,As well as banning Palestine Action, the order also bans Maniacs Murder Cult (MMC) and the Russian Imperial Movement, two white supremacist groups.

She told peers that Palestine Action were not in the same category as this group.She said that the current definition of terrorism includes property damage in order to cover actions which might not be violent in themselves, but which can, in a modern society, “have a devastating impact”.But this did not apply to what Palestine Action do, Jones said.She said their activities did not have the potential to cause “a devastating impact”, and their activities have not involved “a pattern for serious violence”, she said.She went on:If you want Palestine Action to disappear, then stop sending arms to Israel and giving military support to a foreign government engaged in ethnic cleansing.

There are many things Palestine Action has done I don’t agree with, but spraying paint on refuelling planes that campaigners believe are used to help the ethnic cleansing in Gaza is not terrorism.It’s criminal damage, which we already have laws for.Yesterday MPs voted to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation.The order proscribing the group has to be passed by the House of Lords too, and in the Lords David Hanson, a Home Office minister, has just opened the debate on this.He stressed that the government was not banning “the legitimate campaign for Palestinian rights and statehood which has existed in our country and indeed across both Houses of Parliament for more than five decades”.

And it was not banning protests in support of Palestine, he said.He said the government defended the right of people to engage in peaceful protest.But that did not involve giving this group “a blank cheque for this particular group to seriously damage property or subject members of the public to fear and violence”.He went on:Palestine Action has orchestrated a nationwide campaign of property damage, featuring attacks that have resulted in serious damage to property and crossed the threshold from direct criminal action into terrorism,Palestine Action members have used violence against people responding at the scene of attacks for their role in coordinated attacks.Members of the organisation have been charged with serious offences, including violent disorder, grievous bodily harm with intent, aggravated burglary, which is an offence involving a weapon.

Despite some of the rhetoric to the contrary, the group’s own materials have stated that the organisation is not non violent.This is echoed in the actions of its members who have committed atrocious attacks.On the basis of all the evidence, the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, and the security minister, Dan Jarvis, have concluded the group should be proscribed, he said.Here is the text of Wes Streeting’s statement to MPs that he delivered earlier about the government’s 10-year plan for health in England.And here are some of the points that came up during the exchanges.

Streeting said that the government expected to open around 40 to 50 new neighbourhood health centres by the end of this parliament, and up to 300 over the next 10 years,In response to a question about who would run them, he replied:They will be NHS providers and we’ll be doing a combination of new builds and also refurbishing and rejuvenating underutilised existing estate both in the NHS and in the public sector, and therefore the cost of each neighbourhood health centre will vary from the low millions to around £20m depending on whether it’s an upgrade, a refurb, an expansion, or indeed a new build,He said that the government would be using private finance for some capital projects, particularly in neighbourhood health,But it would do this “with care and caution, and keeping in mind the mistakes that were made by the private finance initiative”,He said a new workforce plan would be published in the autumn.

Edward Argar, the shadow health secretary, questioned how the measures would be implemented, but said the plan “by and large does say the right things”,In response, Streeting thanked Argar for his constructive approach and said Argar was “rather more serious and sensible than the display we saw from the opposition yesterday”,