Free speech laws need to be reviewed after Linehan arrest, says Streeting

Online speech laws need to be reviewed after Linehan arrest, says Streeting

PA Media Linehan outside court in May, looking at the camera wearing glasses and a white T shirt.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said ministers need to “look at” laws concerning online speech, following the arrest of comedian Graham Linehan.

The health secretary said such laws had put “more expectation on police” and “diluted the focus and priorities of the public”, adding “that’s obviously something we need to look at”.

Streeting told the BBC it was “very easy for people to criticise police” who were only enforcing laws that had been passed by MPs, saying ministers wanted officers to focus on street crime rather than posts on social media.

His comments come after the Father Ted co-creator was arrested at Heathrow Airport on suspicion of inciting violence in posts on the X website.

The arrest prompted a backlash from figures such as author JK Rowling and opposition parties including the Conservatives, who branded the arrest an “absurd infringement of free speech”.

In a statement, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said “officers involved in the arrest had reasonable grounds to believe an offence had been committed” under a law called the Public Order Act.

Sir Mark said “reasonable people would agree that genuine threats of physical violence against an identified person or group should be acted upon by officers”.

But the police chief said in “lesser cases…policing has been left between a rock and a hard place by successive governments”.

He said: “I don’t believe we should be policing toxic culture wars debates and officers are currently in an impossible position.

“I have offered to provide suggestions to the Home Office on where the law and policy should be clarified.

“Greater clarity and common sense would enable us to limit the resources we dedicate to tackling online statements to those cases creating real threats in the real world.”

When asked about Linehan’s arrest at Prime Minister’s Questions, Sir Keir Starmer said “we must ensure police focus on the most serious issues”.

“That includes tackling issues like anti-social behaviour, knife crime and violence,” he prime minister said. “We have a long history of free speech in this country. I’m very proud of that and I will always defend it.”

When asked about the Linehan case on the BBC’s Today programme, Streeting echoed those words.

“As the prime minister and home secretary have been clear, we want the police to focus on policing streets rather than tweets,” the health secretary said.

“But the thing we are mindful of, as a government that backs the police to keep us safe, is that police are there to enforce the laws that we as Parliament legislate for.

“So if over the years, with good intentions, Parliament has layered more and more expectation on police, and diluted the focus and priorities of the public, that’s obviously something we need to look at.”

Pressed on whether the law should be changed, Streeting said: “When it comes to speech, context is king. We do have to, as legislators, tread really carefully when it comes to boundaries of free speech.”

Streeting said it was “hard for the police sometimes, because they have to apply the law as written, not the law as it was intended”.

He also said “we are all - let’s be honest - quite anxious” about some of the arrests and prosecutions over comments online.

Streeting added: “And you think, is that really what Parliament intended when we wrote these laws? So we’ve got to get the law right. Police are there to enforce the law that parliament makes.”

Mr Linehan, 57, said he had been detained by five armed officers at Heathrow Airport after flying in from the US.

He said in an online Substack article that officials then became concerned for his health and took him to hospital.

The Metropolitan Police said that a man in his 50s had been arrested on 1 September at Heathrow Airport and taken to hospital.

The police said his condition was not life-threatening and he was bailed pending further investigation.

In his Substack article, Mr Linehan said his arrest was related to three posts on X from April.

The first post, from his X feed, said: “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.”

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch was critical of the arrest, saying: “Sending five officers to arrest a man for a tweet isn’t policing, it’s politics. Under Labour, we routinely see burglary, knife crime and assaults go unsolved, while resources are wasted on thought-policing.”

But new Green Party leader Zack Polanski told BBC Newsnight the posts were “totally unacceptable” and the arrest seemed “proportionate”.

Sir Max Hill, the former director of public prosecutions for England and Wales, said police use various laws, such as the Public Order Act, to prosecute people accused of breaking the law through their speech.

Sir Max said people can be prosecuted for inciting violence.

“If you don’t have that mechanism, then I’m afraid chaos ensues,” he said. “It is possible to cross over into criminality by words alone.”

Shami Chakrabarti, a Labour peer and former director of Liberty, a civil liberties group, said “the public order statute book and speech offences in particular do need an overarching review”.

She said some offences related to alarm and distress were “too broad”.

“But inciting violence must always be a criminal offence,” Baroness Chakrabarti added.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage is expected to raise the Linehan case and rail against “censorship” in the UK, when he gives evidence to the House Judiciary Committee in the US on free speech on Wednesday.

Senior American politicians, including US Vice President JD Vance, have raised concerns about freedom of speech in the UK and prosecutions over comments posted online.

Since coming to office this year, the US vice president has repeatedly criticised measures like the UK’s Online Safety Act and claimed free speech in Europe was “in retreat”.

The case of Lucy Connolly, who was jailed for stirring up racial hatred against asylum seekers following the Southport attack last year, has been highlighted by some politicians in the debate about free speech in the UK.

Separately, Mr Linehan is also facing a separate charge of harassment - which he denies - and is due to appear in court on Thursday.

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