Debate contribution: Palestine Action: High Court Ruling

Debate contribution by Mr Jonathan Buckley on 16 February 2026.

MLA

Mr Jonathan Buckley

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

16 February 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Matter of the Day

Heading

Palestine Action: High Court Ruling

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5390990

Read the official Assembly record

Text

The irony will not be lost on many people in Northern Ireland when Sinn Féin lectures them and says that the British should:

"get on the right side of global humanity".

Tell that to the hundreds of innocent victims across Northern Ireland whose loved ones were killed by its barbaric Provo wing. Tell that to those who have empty places at the dinner table and still suffer the consequences of a long war of terror imposed on them by members of Sinn Féin's armed wing. The courts are a pillar of our democracy. Their independence should be closely guarded. However, judicial independence does not place the courts above scrutiny, particularly when decisions affect national security. I believe that, in this instance, the High Court overstepped its remit when it ruled that the ban on Palestine Action was unlawful. There is now a pending judicial review (JR). The judgement was not simply a technical legal exercise; it touched directly on national security assessments made by Ministers who had access to classified intelligence, security briefings and operational advice that the courts do not fully see and cannot fully test in open court proceedings. There is a constitutional balance to be struck in all of this. Parliament makes the law. The Government, who are accountable to Parliament, make national security judgements based on sensitive intelligence. The courts then review the process and its legality, but they are not — I repeat it clearly — an intelligence agency. They are not elected to weigh up security risks in the way in which Ministers are. The Terrorism Act 2000 — something that Sinn Féin knows about very well, given the number of former terrorists in its organisation — allows for proscription not only where there has been violence causing injury or loss of life but where there has been serious, politically motivated damage that is intended to influence government policy. That threshold exists precisely because we should not wait until such escalation results in violence. With regard to Palestine Action, we are not discussing peaceful protest or the use of a tin of spray paint, as Mr Carroll said, but coordinated, repeated attacks, including industrial sabotage that targets defence-linked facilities, causing significant property damage and deliberately seeking to disrupt operations tied to national security. That must be our central focus when discussing such matters.

389 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Second assessment

Jev’s answers did not settle this record, so a second model, claude-opus-5-5, read the same text (without the MLA’s name or party) and gave its reasons on 21 October 2026. How the second assessment works

Verdict

Not flagged

Public interest or divisiveness

Mixed

Against the published rubric

Most of the contribution is a substantive argument that the High Court "overstepped its remit" on the Palestine Action ban. It covers the balance between courts, Parliament and Ministers on national security, and the Terrorism Act threshold for serious property damage. This meets the test for legitimate scrutiny, and the foreign conflict is not mapped onto communities here. However, the opening and one aside are legacy point-scoring against a party, referring to its "barbaric Provo wing" and "the number of former terrorists in its organisation", which goes beyond criticism of policy.

Public interest or divisiveness

The core of the speech engages with a real legal and security question about proscription and judicial review, and someone who disagreed would still recognise it as a policy argument. The jibes about the Troubles add nothing to that argument and serve to score a communal point against an opponent on a recognised flashpoint. Both elements are substantial, so the contribution is mixed. On balance, its main function is the security and constitutional argument rather than division.

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 14:53 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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