The PayPal Amendment

As regular readers will know, I recently had a run-in with PayPal after the payment processor cancelled the account of the Daily Sceptic, along with the Free Speech Union and my personal account. After I kicked up an almighty fuss, all three accounts were restored.

However, that’s not the end of the story. PayPal has deplatformed hundreds of individuals and organisations who still haven’t had their accounts restored, including the U.K. Medical Freedom Alliance, a group that campaigns against vaccine mandates which is run by Elizabeth Evans, a contributor to this site. Why? Because PayPal routinely closes the accounts of anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy, whether about the mRNA vaccines or the war in Ukraine. We need to rein in these global financial services companies and stop them from engaging in this sinister new form of censorship.

Here’s how you can help to do that. Sally-Ann Hart, the Member of Parliament for Hastings and Rye, has tabled an amendment to the Financial Services and Markets Bill, which is currently at the Committee Stage in the House of Commons, to make it illegal for a financial services provider to withhold or withdraw service from a customer on purely political grounds. We hope the Government will accept that amendment, but to encourage it to do so I’m urging everyone who values free speech to email their MP using the Free Speech Union’s campaigning tool, asking them to tell their whip that they support New Clause 15 of the Financial Services and Markets Bill. (You can see the amendment here. It’s on p.20 and labelled NC15.)

This is a critically important battle. If this amendment isn’t passed, we will soon see the emergence of a Chinese-style social credit system in the U.K., except instead of ideological dogma being enforced by the Communist authorities it will be enforced by woke capitalist corporations.