Mahmood will be ‘just as tough’ on Palestine Action as Cooper, Healey says

Shabana Mahmood will be “just as tough” on Palestine Action as her Home Office predecessor, a Cabinet minister has said after more than 400 people were arrested while protesting against the group’s terror ban.

Defence Secretary John Healey suggested that supporters of the organisation, which has been proscribed by the Government, would need to face consequences in order to avoid “two-tier policing”.

Ms Mahmood took over as Home Secretary from Yvette Cooper, who moved to the Foreign Office, as part of Sir Keir Starmer’s wide-ranging Cabinet reshuffle on Friday.

The major shake-up saw the Prime Minister tell his new-look team to “go up a gear” in delivering policy, including on key issues like immigration and the search for economic growth.

Asked whether there would be a shift in Government policy on the group, Mr Healey said: “I expect Shabana Mahmood to be just as tough as Yvette Cooper and I expect her to defend the decision the Government’s taken on Palestine Action, because of what some of its members are responsible for and were planning.”

More than 425 people had been arrested by around 9pm on Saturday after a Parliament Square rally, Scotland Yard said.

The force condemned “intolerable” abuse it says its officers suffered while policing the demonstration, which organisers Defend Our Juries said was “the picture of peaceful protest”.

The group said the Metropolitan Police’s claim was “astonishing” and that the people being arrested on Saturday were sitting and holding signs.

“If we want to avoid a two-tier policing and justice system in this country, when people break the law, there have to be consequences,” he told Sky News’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips.

“That’s what was happening yesterday, and I, we, almost everybody shares the agony when we see the images from Gaza, the anguish when we see the man-made starvation, and for people who want to voice their concern and protest, I applaud them.

“But that does not require them to link it to support for Palestine Action, a proscribed group.”

Palestine Action was banned as a terror organisation in July after the group claimed responsibility for an action in which two Voyager planes were damaged at RAF Brize Norton on June 20.

The Home Office is set to appeal against the High Court ruling allowing Palestine Action’s co-founder, Huda Ammori, to proceed with a legal challenge against the Government over the group’s ban.

Ms Ammori took legal action against the department over then-home secretary Yvette Cooper’s decision to proscribe the group under anti-terror laws, which made membership of, or support for, the direct action group a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison.