Left image: Alliance Defending Freedom UK, Right image – Wikimedia Commons: VancePortrait
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been warned by President Donald Trump’s State Department that there will be no trade deal with the United States if the UK insists on criminalising pro-life free speech.
The US is observing the case of Livia Tossici-Bolt who is on trial for allegedly breaching a “buffer zone” in Bournemouth. A verdict is expected on Friday.
Retired scientist Tossici-Bolt, 63, was put on trial for standing with a sign that read, “Here to talk, if you want to”, near an abortion facility in Bournemouth, allegedly breaching a buffer zone that outlaws pro-life activity, including speech.
“There’s nothing wrong with two adults engaging in a consensual conversation on the street. I shouldn’t be treated like a criminal just for this”, Tossici-Bolt said after being charged.
Commenting on Ms Tossici-Bolt’s case, the US State Department said on Sunday that it was “concerned about freedom of expression in the United Kingdom” and was “monitoring” the situation.
The Telegraph was also informed by a source involved in trade negotiations between the US and the UK that there should be “no free trade without free speech”, implying that the curtailing of pro-life free speech in the UK threatened a deal.
A representative from the US Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL), which is part of the State Department, recently met with Ms Tossici-Bolt in the UK.
A DRL statement said that “US-UK relations share a mutual respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.
“However, as Vice-President Vance has said, we are concerned about freedom of expression in the United Kingdom. It is important that the UK respect and protect freedom of expression.”
Speaking at the Munich Security Conference in February, JD Vance specifically alluded to buffer zones as an example of how, “in Britain, and across Europe, free speech I fear is in retreat”.
Vance cited the case of Adam Smith-Connor, a British veteran who was found guilty of praying silently for his dead son near the same abortion facility in Bournemouth where Tossici-Bolt was charged.
“I wish I could say that this was a fluke, a one-off, crazy example of a badly written law being enacted against a single person”, Vance said. “But no… The backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons, in particular, in the crosshairs.”
Buffer zones of 150m came into effect across England and Wales last year. Subsequent Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) guidance states that silent prayer is “not necessarily” criminal, but actions inside buffer zones that “influence” a woman in the context of abortion are.
A similar law is also in force in Northern Ireland, where one woman, Claire Brennan, was recently prosecuted for kneeling in prayer inside a buffer zone.
In Scotland, where buffer zones are also active, it may even be a crime to pray at home if the residence is inside such an exclusion zone, as Vance also mentioned in Munich.
The Times reports that, while ministers had not discussed buffer zones in negotiations, Whitehall officials had been told that the Trump administration was monitoring the Tossici-Bolt case.
On the matter of free speech, a Whitehall insider also told The Telegraph that “we know it is something they have a bugbear about. We are happy to have discussions on our broader, wide-ranging relationship.”
Ms Tossici-Bolt commented that her case “is but one example of the extreme and undeniable state of censorship in Great Britain today… It deeply saddens me that the UK is seen as an international embarrassment when it comes to free speech”.
She is thankful that the US is “prioritising the preservation and promotion of freedom of expression and for engaging in robust diplomacy to that end”.
President Trump’s global tariffs are set to come into effect today, 2 April, though there had been hopes that Britain could agree a trade deal with the US, which has not yet transpired.
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