One of the preachers responds: “If I was doing a happy, clappy song it would be ok?”

The officer replies: “I just think it’s all wrong,” before walking away.

Preacher Mon B, who leads Mad 4 Jesus Ministries, told the Mail she was initially instructed not to stand in front of the station barriers before the officer gave what she described as an “unnecessary” opinion.

This exchange echoes other recent confrontations between police and Christian street preachers across the UK. In another widely publicised incident, the Metropolitan Police apologised after Christian singer Harmonie London was told to stop performing Christian music outside a church.

The pattern extends beyond informal interventions. When the Free Speech Union (FSU) recently investigated arrests for public order offences committed while preaching in public places, it identified approximately 100 cases, all of which involved Christian preachers. The search specifically looked for reports involving individuals of other faiths or none, but found no equivalent cases involving other religions or atheistic street preachers.

High-profile cases aren’t hard to find. In 2024, Avon and Somerset Police issued a Community Protection Warning to Christian street preacher and FSU member Dia Moodley for criticising other religions – conduct later deemed “disproportionate” by the force itself. The warning attempted to prohibit Mr Moodley from “passing comments on any other religion or comparing them to Christianity,” and from displaying “graphic material”. With our support, Mr Moodley mounted a legal challenge that ultimately led the force to admit it had overreached.

Commenters on the video of Mon B’s confrontation outside King’s Cross were unimpressed by the officer’s actions. One asked: “I’m sorry is this officer paid to give out her opinions? Or is she paid to protect the public.” Another said: “You are not breaking the law. She should be out catching criminals not bothering you.” A third added: “Luckily you’re not paid for your opinions. You’re paid to do your job and stopping peaceful preachers is not part of it.”

While the officer didn’t threaten arrest, issue a dispersal order, or physically intervene, she also failed to cite any statutory power. She may have believed her intervention was a discretionary form of engagement consistent with “words of advice”. The College of Policing’s Public Order Public Safety Authorised Professional Practice (APP) allows officers to “take innovative actions that are not included in this guidance to resolve incidents”, provided those actions are lawful and comply with human rights. The APP applies to both pre-planned and spontaneous events involving perceived risks to public order, making its principles relevant even in brief interactions in crowded public settings like King’s Cross.

However, any such action must still meet core professional standards. Officers are required to act in ways that are proportionate, legitimate, accountable, and in accordance with the Code of Ethics, the Standards of Professional Behaviour, and the Seven Principles of Public Life. The officer’s morally loaded remark – “I just think it’s all wrong” – is difficult to reconcile with those expectations, particularly the requirement in the Code of Ethics that officers “are aware of – and challenge – the influence that biases (such as stereotypes, ‘group think’ or partiality) can have on our actions and decisions, and ensure that we act with impartiality”. As the APP itself makes clear, police intervention short of arrest can still interfere with the right to freedom of expression (Article 10) under the European Convention on Human Rights, which extends its protection even to speech “that others may find insulting or offensive”.

Whatever the legal justification (if any), the footage of this latest incident adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that Christian street preachers are being disproportionately targeted under the guise of maintaining public order.

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Now business groups are now warning that Angela Rayner’s new Employment Rights Bill could push the system over the edge. The Deputy Prime Minister’s plan to grant rights to claim unfair dismissal after one day in the job (rather than two years) is one major driver, as is the proposal to extend the time limit for bringing harassment claims from three months to six. However, Clause 20 – the ‘banter ban’ – which dramatically expands employers’ legal liability for harassment by customers, clients and audience members, may well prove just as consequential.

Clause 20 revives, and radically expands, a provision that was scrapped from the Equality Act in 2013. Back then, employers could in theory be held liable if their staff were subjected to non-sexual harassment by a customer on three separate occasions and they failed to act. Labour’s proposal removes that safeguard entirely. Under the new regime, a single remark – whether overheard, unintended, or not even directed at anyone in particular – could trigger a claim for harassment. And if a tribunal finds that the comment created a “hostile environment” related to an employee’s protected characteristic, employers could be liable for unlimited damages, unless they can prove they took “all reasonable steps” to prevent the ‘harm’ caused.

That defence sets an exceptionally high bar. In the existing framework, employers must already meet this threshold in relation to their own staff, typically through detailed and regularly refreshed EDI training. But Clause 20 extends that same duty to cover what members of the public say. As a result, employers could now be held liable if a customer, student, audience member or guest says something that upsets an employee, unless they can prove they did everything reasonably possible to stop it.

That’s a near-impossible standard, and it’s one of the reasons Clause 20 is expected to drive thousands more claims into a tribunal system already at breaking point. According to our own estimates, this provision alone could result in 4,750 additional claims each year, with 875 proceeding to full hearings.

The good news, though, is there’s still a chance to fix the situation. A group of peers, led by FSU General Secretary Lord Young, have put forward a suite of targeted amendments designed to blunt Clause 20’s worst effects. The arguments have now been heard in the Lords, but before those amendments return at Report Stage in a few weeks’ time, it’s vital that peers hear from you.

The window to act is still open. Please use our quick-write tool to contact a peer and urge them to support the changes needed to protect free speech.

The post The employment tribunal system is cracking – help stop the ‘banter ban’ from breaking it beyond repair appeared first on The Free Speech Union.

At its core is a principle the Free Speech Union pressed for during the consultation: that speech is presumptively lawful unless specifically prohibited by statute or common law. The guidance confirms that internal policies, institutional values, or codes of conduct – including equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) frameworks – do not have the force of law and cannot justify restrictions on otherwise lawful expression.

This carries significant implications. Universities must now approach questions of freedom of speech through a three-step framework. First, is the speech lawful? If so, second, are there any “reasonably practicable steps” the institution can take to secure it? The OfS makes clear that this is no box-ticking exercise. A wide range of measures – including what the guidance refers to as “negative steps”, such as declining to investigate frivolous complaints from the perennially offended, removing restrictive policies, or simply allowing an event to proceed – may fall within the scope of what is “reasonably practicable”. Crucially, the guidance emphasises that concerns about reputational risk, institutional values, or the offensiveness of a viewpoint are not valid grounds for withholding protection. Unless allowing the speech would interfere with an essential university function, institutions are under a positive legal duty to facilitate it. Only where no such steps are available should the third stage be reached: assessing whether the restriction would be lawful and proportionate under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The guidance also offers detailed illustrations across a wide range of university functions – including hiring and promotion, event management, disciplinary processes, codes of conduct, and the use of anonymous reporting mechanisms that risk suppressing lawful expression under vague categories such as “microaggressions”. Universities will be expected, for instance, to remove political litmus tests from recruitment and promotion processes, such as requirements to submit personal statements affirming commitment to EDI. They are also advised to triage complaints early to prevent vexatious or politically motivated investigations, and to ensure that speech is not curtailed merely because it is controversial, unpopular, or offensive to some.

Alongside the guidance, the government has confirmed that the OfS will soon be empowered to operate a new complaints scheme, albeit with a narrower remit than originally envisaged, following Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson’s decision last year to stop commencement of the Act as passed, opting instead for a watered-down version that strips out key enforcement mechanisms. The scheme will now cover staff and visiting speakers, but not students, who will remain under the jurisdiction of the Office of the Independent Adjudicator. Nor will it extend to students’ unions, which were excluded from the Act’s statutory duties following Ms Phillipson’s intervention. Nonetheless, universities and colleges will remain accountable for protecting free speech across their campuses, and the OfS is likely to regard robust oversight of students’ unions as a “reasonably practicable step” in fulfilling this duty.

The publication of this guidance represents a clear setback for the higher education lobby that had sought to preserve a discretionary framework in which duties under the Equality Act 2010 – particularly the Public Sector Equality Duty and protections against harassment – could be interpreted as overriding the statutory duty to secure freedom of speech. For too long, that approach has enabled universities to curtail lawful but contentious viewpoints and to impose professional penalties that have chilled the exercise of academic freedom as defined in law. Whether the new standards set out by the OfS can be sustained will depend, in large part, on the authority and resilience of the complaints scheme. Preserving that mechanism now becomes the next battleground in this regulatory contest.

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Lord Toby Young, founder of the Free Speech Union, said: “The OfS’s new guidance is reassuringly robust, but it’s a great shame that the new free speech duties won’t apply to student unions. We know from the Free Speech Union’s case files that student unions are among the worst offenders when it comes to silencing dissenting voices on campus.”

Craig Simpson, The Telegraph, 19th June 2025.

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Toby Young, director of the Free Speech Union, said: ‘Warning fans of musical theatre that they may hear loud music and sudden noises is beyond parody. Just how stupid do theatre owners think their customers are?’

Brooke Ivey Johnson, Metro, 19th June 2025.

The post Rachel Zegler’s Evita faces backlash over trigger warnings – but critics miss the point appeared first on The Free Speech Union.

By 2023, at least 52 local authorities in England — approximately one in six — had adopted the APPG definition. In several of these areas, including those directly affected by grooming gang scandals, councillors and council staff are subject to internal disciplinary codes that incorporate its terms. The Free Speech Union, which has defended individuals in such cases, has documented multiple instances of councillors being investigated for speech that, while perfectly lawful, was alleged to fall foul of the APPG standard.

Freddie Attenborough, The Critic, 18th June 2025.

The post The grooming gangs scandal shows the importance of free speech appeared first on The Free Speech Union.

The claim inevitably drew outrage from rightwing commentators. Toby Young, founder of the Free Speech Union (FSU), wrote to the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, pointing out that Prevent’s definitions of “extremism” and “terrorist ideologies” expand “the scope of suspicion to include individuals whose views are entirely lawful but politically controversial”, and that “right-of-centre beliefs risk being treated as ideologically suspect”.

Prevent, the FSU’s Freddie Attenborough wrote in The Critic magazine, “has shifted from focusing on conduct (acquiring weapons, making threats, inciting violence) to treating political ideologies as indicators of risk – the problem being that ‘risky’ ideologies are both vaguely defined and culturally loaded”.

Kenan Malik, The Observer, 15th June 2025.

The post What is being Prevented here – terror or free speech? appeared first on The Free Speech Union.

And then there are the armies of police officers who spend their days trawling through social-media accounts in the hope of locating a non-crime hate incident. This is the practice whereby officers record speech or incidents that, while not criminal, are perceived as hateful. The Free Speech Union estimates that up to 65 of these are secretly recorded every day, against people who have not committed any crime or harmed anybody.

Hugo Timms, Spiked, 15th June 2025.

The post Defund the thoughtpolice appeared first on The Free Speech Union.

The event, held at the Backyard Comedy Club in Bethnal Green marked a new phase in our “Say No to the Banter Ban” campaign, which has so far focused on the impact Clause 20 could have on the hospitality sector. This time, the spotlight fell on another cornerstone of Britain’s cultural and night-time economy: the comedy circuit.

During the evening, Lord Young spoke to comedians including Andrew Doyle and Francis Foster, as well as members of the public, about the risks Clause 20 poses to freedom of expression in live performance spaces. There was widespread concern among performers and punters alike about the chilling effect the proposed law could have – not just on what comedians are allowed to say, but on the spontaneity and irreverence that live comedy depends on.

You can watch the video we’ve made about this here.

Clause 20 would make employers liable for harassment by third parties – including customers, audience members, and performers who aren’t employees – if they fail to take “all reasonable steps” to prevent it. That means comedy venues could find themselves on the hook for off-colour jokes or contentious remarks, even if comments weren’t directed at anyone, and even if no complaint is made. With no clear guidance from the Government on what “reasonable steps” entail, many businesses will err on the side of over-enforcement.

We’ve already seen what this kind of risk-aversion looks like. In 2022, the Pleasance Theatre cancelled Jerry Sadowitz’s Edinburgh Fringe show after complaints from the audience, despite clear content warnings. But under Clause 20, if staff had taken offence at his routine, they would have been legally entitled to sue the venue for ‘harassment’ unless it had taken “all reasonable steps” to prevent it. The result would be a formal legal incentive for bosses to avoid booking anything likely to provoke complaints from easily offended staff.

That’s exactly the kind of overreach Lord Young and a cross-party group of peers are seeking to prevent, having tabled a series of amendments ahead of the Bill’s Report Stage in the House of Lords. These include exempting certain venues from the clause’s scope; reinstating a safeguard from the original 2010 Equality Act so that employers are only liable after at least two prior incidents of harassment, not for a single overheard remark; and clarifying that conversation or speech involving political, moral, religious or social views cannot be treated as harassment, unless the opinion is indecent or grossly offensive.

The Bill is currently progressing through Parliament, with the House of Lords having just heard the key arguments. But the window to act is still open. Our ‘Write to a Peer’ tool makes it easy for members and supporters to contact a member of the second chamber and urge them to support these amendments, which Lord Young hopes to bring back at Report Stage in a few weeks’ time.

Click here to use the campaign tool and make your voice heard.

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Certainly, the Free Speech Union (FSU) knows of plenty of people referred to Prevent when lawful but controversial views were misread as signs of extremism: a Christian teacher who stated that marriage is between a man and a woman; a schoolboy who declared in a YouTube video that “there’s no such thing as non-binary”; a 24-year-old autistic man whose social worker reported that he’d been viewing “offensive and anti-trans” websites and “focusing on lots of right-wing darker comedy”.

Freddie Attenborough, The Critic, 10th June 2025.

The post We have to prevent Prevent from undermining freedom appeared first on The Free Speech Union.