A senior cabinet minister has criticised the police after comedian Graham Linehan was arrested over tweets about transgender people.
Health secretary Wes Streeting said that the government wants to see people being kept safe by “policing streets, not just policing tweets” and suggested legislation could be looked at if the law was “not getting the balance right” on free speech.
He said: “It’s very easy for people to criticise the police. The police enforce the laws of the land that we as legislators provide”, he told Times Radio. “So if we’re not getting the balance right, then that’s something that we all have to look at and consider.”
Mr Steeting’s intervention followed intense controversy following the arrest of Father Ted writer Linehan at Heathrow airport on arrival on a flight from the US.
While signalling disapproval of Linehan’s treatment, Mr Streeting said it was wrong to blame police for what had happened.
“They were simply acting in accordance with laws on combating online abuse which had been approved by Parliament”, he told BBC Radio Four: “They are there to enforce the laws Parliament makes and if we aren’t getting the law right we cannot have a go at the police.”
Mr Streeting said It was right to outlaw those who used social media to harass and abuse others, or sell drugs and weapons illegally. However, when dealing with free speech online, “context is king,” he added: “We have to tread really carefully when it comes to the boundaries of free speech.”
Mr Streeting was proud to “live in a country where we come down like a ton of bricks on racism and discrimination”, but there had always been: “legitimate boundaries when it comes to free speech – which is about protecting others from harm… Sometimes those boundaries are blurred”.
Mr Streeting’s intervention follows the Irish comedian’s claims on Tuesday that he was arrested “like a terrorist” by five armed police officers as he arrived from Arizona in Heathrow Airport, who told him he was “under arrest for three tweets”.
The Metropolitan Police have said that a man in his fifties was arrested at the airport on Monday at 1pm on suspicion of inciting violence relating to posts on X, although they did not confirm the identity of the figure.
Linehan claimed on his blog that he was arrested for three tweets, originally posted in April, one of which called on people to “call the cops” on trans-identifying people and “if all else fails, punch him in the balls”.
Another post showed a crowd of people at a protest, many holding transgender and LGBT+ Pride flags, which he wrote over the top: “A photo you can smell.”
The third post he claimed had led to his arrest was in response to someone who commented under this photo, where he said: “I hate them. Misogynists and homophobes. F*** em.”
Linehan claimed that he was making “serious point made with a joke”. He wrote in his blog that his single bail condition is that he is not to go on X, and he faces a further interview in October.
The controversial comedy writer already faces trial at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Thursday over two separate charges. One is in relation to harassing transgender activist Sophia Brooks on social media, and the other is for damaging Ms Brooks’s mobile phone in October. He denied the charges at a hearing on 12 May.
Linehan has become increasingly known in recent years for sharing anti-trans rhetoric online that has attracted significant criticism from LGBT+ groups. In 2020 his Twitter account was permanently banned for “repeated violations of our rules against hateful conduct and platform manipulation”.
While his account was later reinstated in December 2022 when Elon Musk took over the social media platform, Linehan has said that his “unfashionable” views on trans rights has led him to be blacklisted from the entertainment industry and has cost his marriage.
Mr Streeting has faced criticism himself from transgender activists after he walked back claims in 2024 that “trans women are women, trans men are men” and gender-critical feminists are “bigoted”.
