The people who came to this question did not treat preaching and prayer as one thing: No won by 540 votes to 333, with the decisive instinct being to leave peaceful expression legal while relying on existing rules against intimidation, harassment and obstruction. The platform’s voters were not endorsing every street preacher; they were resisting a ban broad enough to catch ordinary worship.
The floor’s most-respected No case drew that boundary plainly: “If someone is causing a nuisance or intimidating people with a megaphone, police already have public order laws to stop them.” Other No voices went further, calling themselves “a free speech absolutist” while still carving out violence, physical interference and disruption, and several proposed permits or tighter rules for amplified voices and mass gatherings.
The Yes case was not simply anti-noise regulation. Its sharpest formulation called public proselytising “a strategy for religions that rely on converts” and “hostile use of our Public spaces”; another demanded, “Whether it's 1 or 100 people, preaching or praying, intimidating or not, obstructive or not, ban it all.” The argument ranged from keeping religion in homes and places of worship to explicitly targeting Islam or exempting Christianity, leaving a side that wanted one universal rule alongside voices seeking a much narrower prohibition.
That exposed the question’s central ambiguity, which several No voters treated as decisive: “The question should really have been in two parts.” They distinguished silent or small-scale prayer from loud preaching, blocked paths and mass prayer, while Yes voters answered that public visibility itself could feel coercive and that “the loud, obnoxious ones” were the problem.
In the end, this was a rights argument with a practical limit: protect public space from conduct that intimidates or obstructs, but do not ban the expression before it crosses that line.
37 Opinions
If someone is causing a nuisance or intimidating people with a megaphone, police already have public order laws to stop them. The moment you let the state ban peaceful speech on high streets, you destroy centuries of British liberties...
Whether it's 1 or 100 people, preaching or praying, intimidating or not, obstructive or not, ban it all. If you want to do missionary work, knock on doors the old-fashioned way, or do a tiktok if you prefer. But keep religion out of neutral public spaces.
It’s a tradition going back 100s of years. Problem is Islam which wants to dominate and its practitioners claim to be scared oppressed offended or fearful to have non Islamic preachers arrested & prosecuted. It is the everlasting shame of the Police that they wilt & comply with what is often unlawful demands & coercion. Islamic preaching & mass praying is funnily enough allowed ‘culturally’ although it’s a naked move to claim the public space.
The question should really have been in two parts. I have no problem with street preaching, that should come under our right to freedom of speech irrespective of whether it offends anyone. Praying in public is a different matter. If any one of any religion wishes to actually pray in outside, in public then that should only be permissible in spaces where the public is not inconvenienced.
Public proselytising is a strategy for religions that rely on converts. This is hostile use of our Public spaces.
I am a free speech absolutist, I need say no more. Providing you are just speaking, not inciting specific violence or interfering physically with anyone's trade, home or belongings. Free speech is an inalienable right.
Just ban islam and we wouldn't need this debate
Whilst I am happy to be preached to by a Christian street preacher - the rise of foreign cultists abusing our hospitality by preaching their sick foreign religion has made it essential to ban all religious worship and evangelism in public spaces. So exempt Christianity by all means - but blocking streets with tows of bums in the air needs to be broken up with Billy-clubs.
Use place of worship for that and stop forcing kids to learn it at school,
There are many instances of groups gathering to pray in remembrance of the dead, usually once a year, sometimes it's due to a fatal road accident. It's our right to do so on the odd occasion, and it's acceptable to most. Street preaching has also been around for a long time, Speakers Corner? We deal with crowds at football matches, demonstrations, which can annoy. I feel the problem is the Call to Prayer and praying on the streets, more than once a week, it's invasive.