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Even people inside the Home Office are worried the government has seriously overreached with its ban on Palestine Action.

According to The Guardian, a member of the Home Office’s own homeland security group has warned that proscribing the direct-action network is already generating confusion, wrongful referrals and the risk of innocent people being criminalised simply for engaging in Palestine advocacy.

This official works closely with Prevent – the anti-terrorism scheme that has become notorious for hauling in schoolchildren for drawing pictures, questioning university students over reading lists, and generally encouraging overreaction wherever frontline workers fear being blamed for not reporting something.

Now, because supporting Palestine Action is suddenly a terrorism offence, teachers, NHS staff, local authorities and counter-terrorism officers are reportedly unsure whether they must refer people for simply voicing views about Palestine – even if they have nothing to do with the proscribed group.

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The warning could hardly be sharper: Prevent, which is already under what the official calls “unprecedented” pressure after the Southport attacks, risks being “overwhelmed”. And that is before the legal challenge to the ban has even been heard.

The most troubling aspect of all this is the one The Guardian’s report only touches indirectly: the government has justified the proscription of Palestine Action using secret evidence.

Ministers have said they relied on intelligence they cannot disclose, meaning the public – and even many Parliamentarians – have no way of assessing whether the ban is proportionate, necessary or even credible.

That is the core democratic deficit. If the government can criminalise an entire protest movement on the basis of information that cannot be examined, challenged or even understood, then nobody outside Whitehall has any reason to believe the ban is legitimate.

It becomes a matter of trust – and trust is precisely what the Home Office official says has already been damaged.

Once a group is proscribed, mere support becomes a terrorism offence.

Yet the state is refusing to show the evidence that turned those actions into crimes.

That is why this Homeland Security Group official’s concern matters so much: Prevent referrals, wrongful arrests, and the criminalisation of people engaged in general Palestine advocacy all stem from a decision whose justification is hidden from the public.

Combine those factors and the picture becomes even more alarming. You have:

• a ban based on undisclosed intelligence;
• frontline confusion about what is lawful;
• rising Prevent referrals and strained resources;
• young people at risk of being treated as terrorism suspects for comments they may not realise now carry criminal weight; and
• a counter-terrorism framework losing credibility even among those who operate it.

In short: secret evidence has allowed the government to create a new category of “terrorist” overnight, and even its own officials are warning that the consequences are spiralling beyond control.

It fits the wider pattern. David Anderson KC, the independent Prevent reviewer, told the Lords that the government’s move means anyone “young and foolish enough” to say Palestine Action “has its heart in the right place” could be prosecuted as a terrorist.

That is an extraordinary threshold – effectively criminalising political opinion, not conduct. The Thought Police are no longer a science fiction concept – they have arrived in force.

The Home Office, of course, responded with the familiar line that supporting Palestine is lawful. But the warning from inside its own walls is that this distinction is already being lost in practice, and young people in particular could be dragged into counter-terrorism systems without understanding that an overnight change in the law has turned a slogan, a share or a careless comment into an imprisonable offence.

And the sting in the tail: according to the official, the ban has damaged trust in government and in Prevent itself, making vital counter-terrorism work harder, not easier.

In other words, this is exactly what critics predicted: by trying to crush a disruptive protest group, ministers may have compromised their own security apparatus, muddied the legal landscape, and created yet another pathway for innocent people to be watched, reported or criminalised.

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