A shocking dossier on Britain’s free speech crisis was shared with the White House before Sir Keir Starmer’s visit last year.
Ahead of Sir Keir’s trip to Washington DC last February, the Free Speech Union (FSU) prepared a five-point briefing for the Office of the Vice President.
The document in full – which detailed “attacks on free speech” under the former Prime Minister’s watch – has now been revealed to the public by the campaign group.
The FSU said it has shared the dossier “not just so our members and supporters can see exactly what we told the Vice President, but also because all of the attacks on free speech we alerted him to are still very much alive”.
The organisation added: “If he raised any of this with Sir Keir, the Prime Minister clearly didn’t listen.
“Should Andy Burnham visit the White House, we intend to send a follow-up briefing.”
The three-page document begins with a warning that since Labour came to power in July 2024, the right to free speech in the UK has been significantly eroded.
The briefing then establish five proposals tabled to No10 “to help restore this essential right”.
The five-point briefing was shared with the White House ahead of Sir Keir Starmer’s visit in February 2025
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The first point called on Labour to pause further implementation of the controversial Online Safety Act – which was signed into law by the previous Conservative Government.
Describing the legislation as “more draconian than the EU’s Digital Services Act”, the FSU warned JD Vance that American companies would be forced to “not just to remove content flagged by the regulator as unlawful, but to proactively police online content”.
In August last year, Elon Musk’s social media platform X issued a stark warning that the Online Safety Act poses a serious risk to freedom of expression through overly aggressive implementation.
“We think the Vice President should push for a pause in the Online Safety Act’s further implementation with a view to reviewing it in full as part of ongoing US-UK trade talks,” the FSU said.
The second point called on Sir Keir to amend the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA) to “protect privacy” in Britain.
A shocking dossier on Britain’s free speech crisis was shared with the White House before Sir Keir Starmer’s visit last year.
Ahead of Sir Keir’s trip to Washington DC last February, the Free Speech Union (FSU) prepared a five-point briefing for the Office of the Vice President.
The document in full – which detailed “attacks on free speech” under the former Prime Minister’s watch – has now been revealed to the public by the campaign group.
The FSU said it has shared the dossier “not just so our members and supporters can see exactly what we told the Vice President, but also because all of the attacks on free speech we alerted him to are still very much alive”.
The organisation added: “If he raised any of this with Sir Keir, the Prime Minister clearly didn’t listen.
“Should Andy Burnham visit the White House, we intend to send a follow-up briefing.”
The three-page document begins with a warning that since Labour came to power in July 2024, the right to free speech in the UK has been significantly eroded.
The briefing then establish five proposals tabled to No10 “to help restore this essential right”.
The five-point briefing was shared with the White House ahead of Sir Keir Starmer’s visit in February 2025
| GETTY
The first point called on Labour to pause further implementation of the controversial Online Safety Act – which was signed into law by the previous Conservative Government.
Describing the legislation as “more draconian than the EU’s Digital Services Act”, the FSU warned JD Vance that American companies would be forced to “not just to remove content flagged by the regulator as unlawful, but to proactively police online content”.
In August last year, Elon Musk’s social media platform X issued a stark warning that the Online Safety Act poses a serious risk to freedom of expression through overly aggressive implementation.
“We think the Vice President should push for a pause in the Online Safety Act’s further implementation with a view to reviewing it in full as part of ongoing US-UK trade talks,” the FSU said.
The second point called on Sir Keir to amend the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA) to “protect privacy” in Britain.
‘Should Andy Burnham visit the White House, we intend to send a follow-up briefing,’ the FSU said
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The campaign group warned the IPA “grants UK law enforcement the right to issue legally-enforceable demands to US tech companies to facilitate access to encrypted user data in the course of investigating people, even in cases involving non-British citizens”.
The FSU called on Mr Vance to push ministers to make sweeping changes to the Act, including blocking “backdoors to encrypted user data” and to scrap Technical Capability Notices – one of which was issued to Apple by the Government last year.
The third point urged the Vice President to pressure Labour to halt state funding to “shadowy” UK-based organisations that lobby for “the suppression of online content”.
“This is the British wing of the global censorship-industrial complex and much of it is funded by the UK taxpayer, either directly because its personnel are paid by the state, or indirectly via grants from different departments of state such as the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office, or via grants from foundations that are themselves part-funded by departments of state,” the document noted.
The Vice President raised the issue of censorship to then-Foreign Secretary David Lammy just months after being handed the briefing, warning him that Britain risked walking down a “very dark path” of “censoring rather than engaging with a diverse array of opinions”.
Mr Vance raised the issue of censorship to then-Foreign Secretary David Lammy just months after being handed the briefin
The fourth suggestion called on ministers to stop prosecuting people for “hurty words”, with the FSU warning Mr Vance that dozens of Britons were jailed for social media comments made about Axel Rudakubana’s Southport murders in July 2024.
The FSU outlined the cases of a man jailed fpr eight weeks after sharing three “offensive” memes on Facebook – and ex-Royal Marine Jamie Michael, who was prosecuted after sharing a video urging Britons to raise concerns about illegal migration to elected officials.
The document also raised the alarm over plans to draw up a legal definition of Islamophobia.
Ministers were forced to drop the plans over fears it could threaten free speech after the dossier was handed to Mr Vance.
A working group would go on to drum up new wording replacing the controversial definition, changing the term “Islamophobia” with “anti-Muslim hate”.
The three-page document called on Labour ministers to stop prosecuting people for ‘hurty words’
| GETTY
The final point raised by the FSU was the highly controversial issue of Non-Crime Hate Incidents (NCHIs) in Britain, with the campaign group calling on Mr Vance to urge the Government to “scrap this Orwellian practice altogether”.
“The British police should not be harassing people for committing ‘non-crimes’ when there are so many actual crimes that go unpunished,” the briefing noted.
NCHIs are doled out when police investigate a report of a “hate crime” and conclude no crime has been committed – but are retained on police databases indefinitely and can appear on enhanced background checks.
In January, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood finally announced plans to scrap NCHIs in their current form, insisting police must stop monitoring Britons’ perfectly lawful social media activity.
The decision followed a number of high-profile cases, including that of Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan, who was arrested by five armed officers at Heathrow Airport after making a series of gender-critical posts on social media.