St Paul's stop preacher from read The Bible outside Cathedral

A preacher has claimed St Paul's Cathedral would not let him read aloud from the Gospel for fear of breaching the peace.

Alan Coote, 55, said he was reading scriptures aloud outside St Paul's Cathedral on Saturday when he was arrested for “breaching the peace” after security staff complained to the police.

Having initially been asked to move on by the cathedral's security staff and then police officers, the preacher refused and was subsequently arrested before being released "just round the corner".

Coote, a bus driver from East London, said: "Nobody was complaining about me. People are quite happy for me to do it, in fact, they waited for me to finish and came up to me asking me questions about it.

"The security staff were not happy for me to read it as they claimed I was on private property. I quoted to them that there is a constitutional position, the Epistle Dedicatory, that encourages The Bible to be read in the Church of England and on its land.”

While many people do preach in the area, they normally do so on the public land which surrounds the Cathedral.

Mr Coote added: "They called the police and I was arrested and driven away, but they just drove down the road and released me just round the corner."

Coote has had a long-running battle with the Cathedral's security staff since he began preaching there back in January. He said that staff have tried to move him on 10 out of the 11 times that he has tried to preach there this weekend alone - but he has remained steadfast in his view that he is not doing anything wrong.

St Paul's Cathedral staff have relented now, but only to the extent that they will allow him to preach on the site for half an hour each week, an offer Coote refuses to be satisfied with.

"They have allowed me to have half an hour a week to preach there but there should not be a limit,” he said. “If I want to go all week, I should be allowed to do this without interruption.”

"If I want to read from Genesis, which would take me all week as it contains around 50 chapters, then I should be allowed to that.

"I may go and do that. I may want to go there and read for three days a week at least."

On a later occasion, police refused to arrest the preacher.

Sergeant Marcus Allen said he told security that "he was "not causing a breach of the peace" and that “it would be remiss of me to move him on in a place of worship”.

The treatment is very different to when, in 2011, St Paul's Cathedral hosted anti-capitalism protesters as they set up camp outside for over three months.