City A.M. The Notebook: Labour is charting a dangerous course on free speech

Three policies to watch out for

The new Labour government has started to chart a dangerous course on free speech in Britain, which could roll back free speech rights by decades. As the gears of the new government get into motion, here are three policies in the pipeline to watch out for.

First, senior Labour figures are calling for an expansion of the Online Safety Act, which promised to be a much-needed bill to increase transparency but fast became a censor’s charter, inventing loose concepts like “legal but harmful” speech that must be censored. Ministers recently held discussions with the Centre for Countering Digital Hate on expanding the Act to create alarming new ‘emergency’ online censorship powers.

Second, the new home secretary is planning to expand police recording of so-called ‘non-crime hate incidents’ – a U-turn on the last government which sought to reduce petty non-crime reports. Big Brother Watch’s recent FOI investigation found police are still recording ‘non-crimes’ such as a man putting Israeli flag stickers on lamp posts, and children drawing with chalk on pavements – which can show on individuals’ criminal history checks. The plans are likely to make this pointless recording far worse.

Third, Labour have rebooted the secretive Counter Disinformation Unit (now renamed the ‘National Security Online Information Team’) and tasked it to snoop on online discourse about controversial topics such as Israel and Gaza. Given the Johnson government used the unit to flag his critics, from former Green MP Caroline Lucas to ex-minister Sir David Davis MP, could Starmer’s government task the unit to snoop on opponents of his plans to take winter heating support from thousands of pensioners?

Excessive censorship never benefits the public – it always benefits the powerful.

Why is Labour lagging on AI laws?

This evening, parliament will hear for the first time from victims of AI harms.

Thirty-eight-year-old Londoner Shaun Thompson, who was wrongly stopped and questioned by the Metropolitan Police this year following a misidentification by live facial recognition surveillance cameras, will address parliamentarians in an event about the need for laws to prevent AI harms.

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