Terror arrests in the UK have increased by 1,553% and hit a record high, with the overwhelming majority linked to support for Palestine Action, new Home Office statistics show.

3,867 arrests were made for terrorism-related activity in the year ending June 2026, compared to 234 arrests in the year ending June 2025, according to data released by the Home Office on Thursday.

Of those arrests, a whopping 3,630 – 94% – were linked to support for Palestine Action following the group’s proscription.

The Labour government under Keir Starmer proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist group in July 2025, making it the first direct action group to be banned under the Terrorism Act in British history.

Protests against Palestine Action’s proscription, organised by campaign group Defend Our Juries (DOJ), have seen elderly and disabled people arrested and carried away by police after holding up paper signs with the words “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”

Since the ban, terrorism-related arrests are up 1,525% on the historical ten-year median of 238 arrests.

The Home Office’s report also confirmed that 704 arrests had so far resulted in a charge, with 634 of those charges made under Section 12 or Section 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000 and linked to supporting Palestine Action.

A spokesperson for DOJ told Novara Media:
“History shows that unjust laws become unenforceable when they are met with mass opposition, until governments are eventually forced to abandon them. The statistics released today are a clear indication of just how unpopular and unenforceable the government’s ban on Palestine Action is.

“Over a year on, and hundreds of regular people are still prepared to be arrested as ‘terrorists’ to demand that the new Labour leadership to do the only sensible thing and lift the ban on Palestine Action.”

In a statement, Amnesty International UK’s law and human rights director Tom Southernden said: “The vast majority of the enormous increase in terrorism arrests are of grandparents, teenagers and everyone in between for peacefully holding placards.

“We are seeing a shameful attack on our right to protest. It’s past time to end the proscription of Palestine Action and with it the use of counter terrorism power to punish direct action protests.”

Dozens of peaceful protesters opposing Israel’s genocide and the ban on Palestine Action – including a 94-year-old Jewish human rights lawyer – were arrested outside the Labour party conference in Liverpool at the end of September.

The next day, foreign secretary Ed Miliband replied to a question about the proscription from Andrew Marr on LBC about “all those elderly people and vicars and grannies and so on” by saying: “I don’t think anyone’s intent was to have those people criminalised.”

Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori has been granted permission to challenge the ban in the Supreme Court.

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