Jack Coulson is Head of Advocacy at Big Brother Watch.
A ‘fortuitous’ leadership election timetable saved Andy Burnham from facing Parliament back in July, but five heatwaves and one inane emergency alert later, we are soon to see the new PM in full.
On free speech, we can only hope he has more to say than his predecessor, which was close to nothing. Kemi Badenoch has been more vocal, for instance, on non-crime hate incidents and digital ID. But there is a distinct lack of concrete plans from all sides on how to rebuild Britain’s proud culture of upholding free speech.
Like all traditions, freedom of speech can be lost due to negligent upkeep as easily as to conscious revocation. The trend for years has been a creeping normalcy of state interference, even if nobody consciously chose to take us where we are.
One day you think you are in a free country, the next day a police officer is asking for your “papers, please” or urging you to take a ‘thinking skills’ course.
Big Brother Watch has just launched a major new report into the state of free speech in the UK: Britain’s Free Speech Problem How growing restrictions are stifling speech online and offline.
It makes for grim reading.
Three battlegrounds have emerged for those of us campaigning to reverse the trend: the police must be pushed out of everyday online conversations; the government’s work to control the internet, often under the guide of countering ‘disinformation’, must be brought into the light of public scrutiny; and politicians must be made brave enough to speak up for the rights of those with whom they do not agree.
The first battle is to re-establish the obvious: the police, in a free country, ought not to interfere with everyday discourse. Yet in the UK, some constabularies seem intent on policing the public square. I say some, because the reality is a postcode lottery – Cumbria Police, for instance, are arresting people for malicious communications at more than double the average rate.
Some of this is simply the police misallocating their time, hence trials for tweets and schoolchildren being accosted for TikToks while myriad serious crimes go unsolved. The root cause, however, is poor legislation.
The Communications Act 2003 and Malicious Communications Act 1988 are still doing most of the work policing what Britons say online. Their vagaries create the farcical situation of your chances of arrest for a joke in poor taste rising significantly depending on where you live.
With both Acts predating the iPhone, the job of balancing freedom of expression with the new realities of the social media age has been left to incidental amendments and a knee-jerk online authoritarianism. The police are left to enforce the result.
The second battle is to put the government under real scrutiny for its attempts to regulate the internet.
Under the cover of national security, the Government operates a ‘Counter Disinformation Unit’, exposed by Big Brother Watch in our 2023 Ministry of Truth report, which monitors and interferes with the public discourse without oversight. This snooper squad has drawn criticism from Parliament for its lack of transparency.
It is legitimate for governments to want to know what the public is openly saying online. Good governments listen. It is not legitimate for governments to use the cover of national security to try to decide, without oversight, whose speech the public can hear and whose speech is recorded in the government’s black books.
The unit has been transformed, since its inception during the pandemic, into the ‘National Security Online Information Team’ (NSOIT). Going from “sinister-sounding” to “sinister-and-Soviet-sounding” in a rebranding exercise, one can only assume they codenamed ‘operation out of the frying pan’.
Foreign disinformation campaigns are a problem, one the democratic state should tackle, but you cannot convince people to ignore foreign government entities with shady oversight, unclear powers and seemingly politically partisan thinking by interfering with their rights using a domestic government entity with shady oversight, unclear powers and seemingly politically partisan thinking.
Sunshine disinfects, secrets corrode.
This willingness to interfere is all the more chilling when you realise it comes with plans for ID checkpoints for the internet. The state is watching what you say, and they want to know who you are.
The fervour for a social media ban seems to have blinded even hardened civil liberties campaigners to the reality that it necessarily means universal checks for all internet users. The French Constitutional Court has struck down a similar ban partly on these grounds.
It is not a matter of if, but when we see a massive data breach including the ID or biometrics of potentially millions of British internet users.
While we wait, we will live with the end of anonymity online. For the mothers on Mumsnet who thought they had a place to share their troubles without fear of their partners or employers discovering them, the end of online anonymity is a heavy toll.
The Government must change their approach towards one that focuses on empowering individuals and being honest with them about the role we all need to play in making the online world safer. In doing so, they will also make progress on the third battle: reminding the public that freedom means more than comfort.
Successive Governments have clamped down on protests. The most disturbing change is new. Section 165 of the Crime and Policing Act 2026, in force since June, requires police to weigh the “cumulative disruption” of any protest against every other demonstration held in the same area, regardless of whether the earlier protests were at all connected.
A vigil against grooming gangs could be restricted because of a climate march the week before. A British farmers’ rally could be stopped because of an anti-monarchy protest. A UN Special Rapporteur on human rights has called the concept “of primary concern,”. She warns it grants police “excessive discretionary powers” while disregarding the principle that peaceful protest is inherently, and legitimately, disruptive.
We got here because politicians are quick to promise convenience and slow to stand up for speech with which they disagree. Each side is eager to say they will curtail the chosen tools of the other, or are at least happy to stay silent where they might once have stood for something more than election.
Battling the culture of the police, the Government, and the political class may seem a foolhardy ask, but supporting free speech comes with an optimism about humanity. Through discourse, society can change.
Andy Burnham may have escaped PMQs in July, but the mandatory Digital ID scheme did not escape him. In one battle for freedom, he has seen sense. Now it is up to us all to make the case for reviving free speech.
Big Brother Watch will be discussing these, and a number of other concerns raised in our forthcoming report on the state of Free Speech in the UK, at Conservative Party Conference, Tuesday 6th October, 18.00 – 19.30, in the Disraeli Theatre.
Jack Coulson is Head of Advocacy at Big Brother Watch.
A ‘fortuitous’ leadership election timetable saved Andy Burnham from facing Parliament back in July, but five heatwaves and one inane emergency alert later, we are soon to see the new PM in full.
On free speech, we can only hope he has more to say than his predecessor, which was close to nothing. Kemi Badenoch has been more vocal, for instance, on non-crime hate incidents and digital ID. But there is a distinct lack of concrete plans from all sides on how to rebuild Britain’s proud culture of upholding free speech.
Like all traditions, freedom of speech can be lost due to negligent upkeep as easily as to conscious revocation. The trend for years has been a creeping normalcy of state interference, even if nobody consciously chose to take us where we are.
One day you think you are in a free country, the next day a police officer is asking for your “papers, please” or urging you to take a ‘thinking skills’ course.
Big Brother Watch has just launched a major new report into the state of free speech in the UK: Britain’s Free Speech Problem How growing restrictions are stifling speech online and offline.
It makes for grim reading.
Three battlegrounds have emerged for those of us campaigning to reverse the trend: the police must be pushed out of everyday online conversations; the government’s work to control the internet, often under the guide of countering ‘disinformation’, must be brought into the light of public scrutiny; and politicians must be made brave enough to speak up for the rights of those with whom they do not agree.
The first battle is to re-establish the obvious: the police, in a free country, ought not to interfere with everyday discourse. Yet in the UK, some constabularies seem intent on policing the public square. I say some, because the reality is a postcode lottery – Cumbria Police, for instance, are arresting people for malicious communications at more than double the average rate.
Some of this is simply the police misallocating their time, hence trials for tweets and schoolchildren being accosted for TikToks while myriad serious crimes go unsolved. The root cause, however, is poor legislation.
The Communications Act 2003 and Malicious Communications Act 1988 are still doing most of the work policing what Britons say online. Their vagaries create the farcical situation of your chances of arrest for a joke in poor taste rising significantly depending on where you live.
With both Acts predating the iPhone, the job of balancing freedom of expression with the new realities of the social media age has been left to incidental amendments and a knee-jerk online authoritarianism. The police are left to enforce the result.
The second battle is to put the government under real scrutiny for its attempts to regulate the internet.
Under the cover of national security, the Government operates a ‘Counter Disinformation Unit’, exposed by Big Brother Watch in our 2023 Ministry of Truth report, which monitors and interferes with the public discourse without oversight. This snooper squad has drawn criticism from Parliament for its lack of transparency.
It is legitimate for governments to want to know what the public is openly saying online. Good governments listen. It is not legitimate for governments to use the cover of national security to try to decide, without oversight, whose speech the public can hear and whose speech is recorded in the government’s black books.
The unit has been transformed, since its inception during the pandemic, into the ‘National Security Online Information Team’ (NSOIT). Going from “sinister-sounding” to “sinister-and-Soviet-sounding” in a rebranding exercise, one can only assume they codenamed ‘operation out of the frying pan’.
Foreign disinformation campaigns are a problem, one the democratic state should tackle, but you cannot convince people to ignore foreign government entities with shady oversight, unclear powers and seemingly politically partisan thinking by interfering with their rights using a domestic government entity with shady oversight, unclear powers and seemingly politically partisan thinking.
Sunshine disinfects, secrets corrode.
This willingness to interfere is all the more chilling when you realise it comes with plans for ID checkpoints for the internet. The state is watching what you say, and they want to know who you are.
The fervour for a social media ban seems to have blinded even hardened civil liberties campaigners to the reality that it necessarily means universal checks for all internet users. The French Constitutional Court has struck down a similar ban partly on these grounds.
It is not a matter of if, but when we see a massive data breach including the ID or biometrics of potentially millions of British internet users.
While we wait, we will live with the end of anonymity online. For the mothers on Mumsnet who thought they had a place to share their troubles without fear of their partners or employers discovering them, the end of online anonymity is a heavy toll.
The Government must change their approach towards one that focuses on empowering individuals and being honest with them about the role we all need to play in making the online world safer. In doing so, they will also make progress on the third battle: reminding the public that freedom means more than comfort.
Successive Governments have clamped down on protests. The most disturbing change is new. Section 165 of the Crime and Policing Act 2026, in force since June, requires police to weigh the “cumulative disruption” of any protest against every other demonstration held in the same area, regardless of whether the earlier protests were at all connected.
A vigil against grooming gangs could be restricted because of a climate march the week before. A British farmers’ rally could be stopped because of an anti-monarchy protest. A UN Special Rapporteur on human rights has called the concept “of primary concern,”. She warns it grants police “excessive discretionary powers” while disregarding the principle that peaceful protest is inherently, and legitimately, disruptive.
We got here because politicians are quick to promise convenience and slow to stand up for speech with which they disagree. Each side is eager to say they will curtail the chosen tools of the other, or are at least happy to stay silent where they might once have stood for something more than election.
Battling the culture of the police, the Government, and the political class may seem a foolhardy ask, but supporting free speech comes with an optimism about humanity. Through discourse, society can change.
Andy Burnham may have escaped PMQs in July, but the mandatory Digital ID scheme did not escape him. In one battle for freedom, he has seen sense. Now it is up to us all to make the case for reviving free speech.
Big Brother Watch will be discussing these, and a number of other concerns raised in our forthcoming report on the state of Free Speech in the UK, at Conservative Party Conference, Tuesday 6th October, 18.00 – 19.30, in the Disraeli Theatre.