PayPal lifts ban on free speech chief Toby Young's accounts

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PayPal lifts ban on free speech chief Toby Young’s accounts after outcry from MPs

  • Paypal last night reinstated accounts run by a free speech campaign group
  • Three accounts run by Toby Young, from Free Speech Union, were frozen 
  • Angered MPs, who called on Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg to intervene
  •  The finance company found that Free Speech Union had broken its terms of use

Paypal last night reinstated accounts run by a free speech campaign group after MPs said the ban was ‘politically motivated’.

Three accounts run by Toby Young, the general secretary of the Free Speech Union, were frozen on September 15.

The move angered MPs, who called on Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg to intervene.

Last night PayPal said it would reinstate the accounts in a statement in which it declared its support for freedom of expression. It apologised to Mr Young for the ‘inconvenience’.

Accounts owned by the FSU and the Daily Sceptic blog were frozen earlier this month, along with an account run by UsForThem.

The move to un by freeze accounts run by a free speech campaign group angered MPs, who called on Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg to intervene

UsForThem is a campaign group that called for schools to reopen during the Covid lockdown. The group’s account was reinstated after a review but the FSU’s remained closed until yesterday. Mr Young told The Daily Telegraph he would not use PayPal until it reinstated all other accounts closed for political reasons.

 It is understood that the finance company found that FSU had broken its terms of use but decided to reinstate the account after criticism from MPs and the media, according to the Telegraph.

Last night PayPal said it would reinstate the accounts in a statement in which it declared its support for freedom of expression

Former ministers Michael Gove and David Davis, ex-Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith and the 1922 committee chairman Sir Graham Brady wrote to Mr Rees-Mogg about the controversy.

They said it was ‘hard to avoid construing PayPal’s actions as an orchestrated, politically motivated move to silence critical or dissenting views on these topics within the UK’.

Mr Young told the Telegraph that the controversy has been a ‘nightmare’.

‘In the meantime, I’m going to be lobbying the Government to change the law so companies like PayPal cannot demonetise people or organisations whose perfectly lawful views it disapproves of,’ he said.

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