Sir John Hayes

Sir John Hayes

Conservative — South Holland and The Deepings

Speaking in the House of Commons on 17 June 2026

Debate

National Security (State Threats) Bill

Contribution

I hesitate to interrupt the flow of my right hon. and learned Friend, but the key point is legitimacy, as he and I have discussed. A state can be conducting legitimate activity by definition, whereas the bodies that have been proscribed previously are never legitimate implicitly. It is a difficult tightrope for Governments to walk, and that is why historically they have tended not to defer to a place where they chose to proscribed state bodies, because the implication is for the state as a whole. Where states take a “whole-state approach”—China being a good example—it is hard to walk that tightrope.

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