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We were unable to meet Hall, but were able to enter into a good-natured, if highly revealing, correspondence with him. You can examine this in the two pages set out below.  Here we set some overall conclusions.

 

​​​We started corresponding in June 2025, putting to Hall that as adviser on State Threats legislation he should not only concern himself with threats to the UK from official enemies, countries like Russia, China and Iran, but with threats from countries like Israel and the United States that are officially our allies. He would not engage in discussion of this point, showing his role to be heavily circumscribed by official thinking.

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He then justified Government clamping down on Palestine Action on the basis of the concept of threat neutrality, that took no account of the context in which the action occurs, nor of the fact that Palestine Action does not seek to engage in violence against humans, only against property used to commit genocide. We found this a very weak argument. 

 

We found further illogicality in Hall’s use of the precautionary principle to insist that it was justified to ban pro-Palestine marches in the wake of the Golders Green stabbings – on the ground that they demonise Jews. He does this without establishing a causal link between the marches and the violence against Jews, by classifying as antisemitic slogans, banners etc. without evidence of intent, and by failing to put numerical data behind his assertions.

Notwithstanding these critical observations we believe Hall made a positive contribution to the Channel 4 Dispatches Episode Palestine Action, the Truth behind the Ban of Feb 2026. He exposed Government's true motive for proscribing Palestine Action, i.e. that it had caused damage to property (as opposed to harming humans), and gave short shrift to Government insinuations that the proscribed organisation depended on support from foreign powers, notably Iran.

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After corresponding with Hall for over a year, we conclude that he would like to act correctly but is trapped in a doctrinal straight jacket that prevents him from owning up to obvious flaws in his arguments. We cannot account for his motivations, though family ties might conceivably play a part. His father-in-law is a patron of the highly aggressive and litigious pro-Israeli group, UK Lawyers for Israel.  

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Hall's role as Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation expires in November 2026, but we are unsure whether this also applies to his role as Reviewer of State Threats Legislation. Whatever he does, we thank him for entering into a dialogue with us, and hope that both he and his successor(s) will seriously consider the points we make on these webpages. ​​​​​​​

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