THE RICHARD J MURPHY YOUTUBE CHANNEL
DEBATE AMMUNITION
The National Security (State Threats) Bill:
A Threat to Information Itself
Funding the Future | July 2026
Topic
Why the National Security (State Threats) Bill's sweeping new designation power threatens journalists, bloggers and researchers: restricting information in this way damages democracy itself.
The video that this Debate Ammunition supports is available here.
The Core Argument
This bill gives the Home Secretary a new power to designate any organisation a state threat, modelled on terrorist proscription, and makes it an offence, carrying up to fourteen years in prison, to support or benefit from a designated body.
Because obtaining information from a designated body counts in the bill as a material benefit, journalists, bloggers and researchers who report facts sourced from such an organisation risk prosecution, even where no other source of that information exists.
Restricting the flow of information in this way is not a narrow national security measure. It damages the public good that information provides, undermines the informed consent that democratic government depends upon, and leaves the field open to rumour and unaccountable power.
Key Statistics
|
Statistic |
Figure |
|---|---|
|
Maximum prison sentence for supporting or benefiting from a designated body |
14 years |
|
General reasonable excuse defence included in the bill for those affected |
None |
|
Source of Gaza casualty figures relied upon since 2023 that could become illegal to report if the supplying body were designated |
Hamas-supplied data |
The Argument Structure
Step 1 — What the bill actually does:
The bill gives the Home Secretary the power to designate a body as a state threat, a system modelled on terrorist proscription law.
Once a body is designated, supporting it or benefiting from it becomes a criminal offence carrying a maximum sentence of fourteen years, and the bill defines securing information from a designated body as a material benefit.
Step 2 — The Gaza casualty data problem:
If a body such as Hamas were designated as a state threat, reporting casualty figures supplied by that organisation could become a criminal act. Yet that data is what journalists have relied upon since 2023 to report what is happening in Gaza, because there is no other source. Lawyers are concerned because the bill contains no general reasonable excuse defence, so a journalist reporting in good faith has no statutory protection.
Step 3 — Journalism has always needed contacts on every side:
Reporters have always had to speak to every side of a conflict to understand it properly, and back channels persisted even when the IRA was proscribed in the UK.
Information from one side alone can create a dangerously misleading picture, so understanding a conflict often requires speaking to people who work for the side we do not like. This bill risks turning that necessary contact into a crime.
Step 4 — Information is a public good, not a threat to be managed:
Information explains why conflicts happen, helps the public judge government policy, and allows competing claims to be tested.
Restricting it restricts understanding, and journalists who cannot test official claims will produce fewer facts, leaving public opinion to form on weaker foundations.
That is why Parliament should amend this bill before it reaches Royal Assent, rather than allow rushed, broadly worded legislation to criminalise the flow of information itself.
Their Argument → Your Rebuttal
|
They Say |
Your Response |
|---|---|
|
The bill is only aimed at genuine hostile state actors, such as the Iranian-backed organisations named as its target, not at journalists. |
The bill's reach extends far beyond spies and terrorists to any body the Home Secretary designates, and organisations such as Hamas could plausibly be designated under it. Independent reviewers have already warned that the drafting is too broad, and that journalists may end up relying on prosecutorial discretion rather than any statutory protection to avoid prosecution. A power this wide, with no general reasonable excuse defence attached, cannot be relied upon to stop only at the actors ministers currently have in mind. |
|
Ministers have promised that legitimate journalism will be protected, so there is nothing for reporters to worry about. |
Those protections exist only in the explanatory support notes accompanying the bill, not in its operative text, and that means no court is required to rely on them when deciding a case. A promise made outside the law itself is not a legal defence. Anyone charged would be relying on the discretion of a prosecutor rather than a right written into statute, and that is a poor substitute for a proper reasonable excuse defence. |
|
Given the genuine and growing threat from hostile states, fast-tracking this legislation is a proportionate response. |
There is a genuine need for effective protection against hostile state activity, and that is not in dispute. But fast legislation receives less scrutiny than it needs, and broad wording is much harder to correct once it has become law. Important safeguards in this bill have simply not been properly debated because of the pace at which it has been pushed through. Security and informed democracy should reinforce each other rather than being treated as opposites, and a bill rushed through without full scrutiny achieves neither goal well. |
|
If a designated body's data cannot be trusted, journalists reporting it are not providing reliable information anyway, so little is lost by banning it. |
In conflict zones such as Gaza, journalists are often not choosing between reliable and unreliable sources. They are choosing between the only data available and no data at all. Organisations including the United Nations have themselves relied on figures originating from parties to a conflict when no independent alternative exists, and it remains unclear whether reporting a UN figure that in turn originated from a designated body would itself become an offence. Removing imperfect information does not produce better information. It produces silence, and silence is filled by rumour and speculation rather than by understanding. |
The One-Liners
“This bill makes information itself the offence.”
“You cannot report a war you are forbidden from investigating.”
“A law with no reasonable excuse defence asks journalists to gamble fourteen years of their life on a minister's discretion.”
“Security and informed democracy should reinforce each other, not be pitted against one another.”
“When protections live only in the notes and not in the bill itself, no court has to honour them.”
Questions to Ask
If reporting a casualty figure becomes a fourteen-year offence, who decides which information the public is allowed to know?
Why does the bill contain no general reasonable excuse defence when ministers say journalism will be protected?
What happens to public understanding of a conflict once journalists are too frightened of prosecution to contact every side of it?
If broadly worded legislation like this is fast-tracked into law, who reviews it afterwards, given that its safeguards were never properly debated?
Further Reading
|
Post |
Date |
What it covers |
|---|---|---|
|
28 Sep 2025 |
Sets out why free speech and the right to disagree are foundational to democracy, and warns against the authoritarian pattern of relabelling dissent as extremism. |
|
|
13 Nov 2025 |
Argues that truth-making institutions and a free press are a public good essential to democracy, and that attacks on them are attacks on accountability itself. |
|
|
18 Dec 2024 |
Discusses confirmed state surveillance of journalists aimed at uncovering their sources, and why that undermines the fourth estate's role in holding power to account. |
|
|
Nigel Farage wants to abolish the UK Human Rights Act of 1998 |
28 Aug 2025 |
Explains the legal protection for freedom of expression and press freedom that this bill puts under strain, and what is at stake if such rights are eroded. |
|
2 Oct 2025 |
Traces the pattern of redefining critics and dissenters as security threats in both the US and UK, directly relevant to how this bill's designation power could be used. |
|
|
30 Jul 2025 |
Covers an earlier instance of proscription powers being used against protest, and the anti-democratic risks of stretching terrorism law beyond its proper scope. |
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
This law seems to go against article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. It’s bad enough for the Opposition Conservatives and Reform, want to diminish our freedoms but when the party in power is singing the same song, it’s bad.
Totally agree Richard.
It is a great disappointment to me that Green Party MPs seem to be supporting this bill.
It would be very charitable to suggest that the government has simply been incompetent and rushed into drafting this terrible legislation. I fear the truth is far more sinister and they know exactly what they’re doing.
I was brought up thinking that government exists to serve the people. Increasingly it seems to me that it sees its role primarily as one where it seeks to control the people. It’s another brick in the wall of our slide towards totalitarianism.
Thanks for continuing the fight for reasonableness, common sense and democracy.
Regards…Bob
Thanks, Bob.
Why are they doing that? Utterly bizarre….
I have just been reading that this legislation met even affect the City of London bussnis.
So it is said
But who wouild prosecute them?