Over 12,000 people were arrested in a single year in the United Kingdom for what they said online. Thirty arrests a day. Let that sink in. In the country that gave the world the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights and free speech itself, you are more likely to be arrested for a tweet than a burglar is to be convicted for breaking into your house.

This is not a drill. This is Britain in 2026. And the government that is presiding over this quiet evisceration of ancient liberties does not even have the decency to admit what it is doing. Labour promised change. The change it has delivered is a country where free speech is policed by officers who cannot be bothered to investigate real crime.

The Communications Act Has Been Weaponised

The arrests are happening under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and Section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988. These are old laws designed for obscene phone calls and abusive letters. They are now being used to police dissent, offend-ability and lawful opinion online. The Times established through Freedom of Information that over 12,000 people were arrested under this legislation in 2023 alone. The numbers have not come down.

Meanwhile, shoplifting is effectively decriminalised below £200. Burglars are almost never caught. Knife crime has become an everyday occurrence in parts of our towns and cities. The state has decided it has the resources to police opinion but not to police property or persons. That is a choice. A disgraceful one.

Europe Is Watching, and So It Should

The situation has now become so serious that the European Parliament has tabled parliamentary questions about UK arrests for online speech and their implications for EU digital regulation. Let me repeat that. The European Parliament is asking about British free speech. We have arrived at the point where the continent that produced the Gestapo is worried about British policing of speech. That should be a national embarrassment.

Lord Young of Acton has accused police forces of being over-zealous in pursuing people for alleged speech crimes. He is right. But "over-zealous" is too polite a word. What we are seeing is the use of police resources to intimidate ordinary people out of saying what they think. That is not policing. That is repression.

The Chilling Effect Is the Point

People notice. Small business owners stop posting on social media because they are worried about a knock at the door. Journalists self-censor. Councillors like me watch what we say not because we might cause offence but because we might be arrested for it. A country that cannot speak freely is not free in any sense that matters.

And the most insidious part is that this is not happening through some grand authoritarian statute. It is happening through the casual, bureaucratic application of ambiguous laws by officers who know perfectly well they would not get away with doing this to every viewpoint. There is a political slant to who gets arrested. Everybody can see it.

What Reform UK Would Do

Reform UK would repeal the communications offences being used to arrest people for speech. We would write into law a strong statutory protection for free expression, beyond anything in the Human Rights Act. We would instruct Chief Constables that police resources must be focused on real crime. And we would make it very clear that no Crown Prosecution Service prosecution will ever again be brought against someone for an opinion lawfully expressed.

Free speech is not a luxury, and it is not negotiable. It is the foundation of every other freedom. Labour is letting it die. Reform UK will defend it.