A Westminster Hall debate on 6 July 2026 will call for people convicted of terrorism offences in the UK or abroad to be disqualified from standing for elected office.

The debate will be opened by the Conservative MP for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk John Lamont. The Petitions Committee agreed to the debate as the e-petition has attracted over 200,000 signatures.

E-petition 759385 states:

"Introduce a new legal disqualification so people convicted of terrorism offences (in the UK or abroad) cannot stand as candidates or hold elected office, including local councils."

This is needed because current local election disqualification rules focus mainly on recent imprisonment thresholds (for example, being sentenced to 3 months or more within the last 5 years) and therefore may not prevent individuals with serious historic convictions from standing today. The Electoral Commission notes that the returning officer cannot confirm whether a candidate is disqualified and candidates self-declare their eligibility when submitting nomination papers.

The petition is open until the 6 September 2026. At the time of writing, the petition had over 203,000 signatures. If a petition gets 10,000 signatures, the government will respond to it. If a petition gets 100,000 signatures, it will be considered for debate in Parliament.

In its revised response the government said:

"We currently have no plans to change the disqualification criteria for these offences.
 

"Currently anyone who has been convicted of any offence in the UK and receives a custodial sentence of three months or more, suspended or not, is disqualified for five years from standing or sitting as a member of an English local authority. Candidates must declare that they are not disqualified from standing for or holding local office. Making a false statement is potentially a criminal offence."

Other disqualification criteria applying to councillors in England include:

• Those under certain bankruptcy restrictions.
• Those disqualified for illegal or corrupt election practices.
• Those subject to certain notification requirements or a relevant order relating to sexual offences.
• Those disqualified when convicted of certain intimidatory criminal offences against certain persons, including candidates of a relevant elective office.

The UK's counter terrorism framework includes a range of specialised counter terrorism powers which support detection and disruption of terrorist risk, as well as a toolkit for managing terrorist offenders upon their release.