Police are to be given powers to stop protests before any disruption begins, under Rishi Sunak’s plans for a public order crackdown aimed at preventing tactics such as “slow marching”.
Infuriating civil liberties activists, the government said it would amend the Public Order Bill to step up its crackdown on “guerrilla” tactics used mainly by environmental protests.
It is designed to deal with the changing tactics of protest groups, such as slowing traffic to a crawl by staging pedestrian protests through major cities.
The Just Stop Oil protesters used foot protests to draw attention to the climate emergency after the government introduced laws to stop other forms of pop-up demonstrations.
Sunak said the proposals would be tabled through an amendment to the Public Policy Bill, which will be debated in the House of Lords this week. The change will broaden and clarify the legal definition of “serious disturbance” and allow police to treat protests by the same group on different days or in different locations as part of the same wider action.
Number 10 said it would mean police “wouldn’t have to wait for the disturbance to happen and could stop protests before chaos breaks out”. The amendment will now be debated in the House of Lords, where it is likely to face a battle, and its passage will depend on whether it attracts the support of Labor and the Crusaders.
Civil liberties campaigners and protest groups last night said they feared the government’s overly draconian approach.
Shami Chakrabarti, a Labor and former director of Liberty who has challenged some elements of the bill in the House of Lords, said the government’s attempt to gain even more powers was “very disturbing”.
“The definition of what counts as a serious disturbance is key to this bill because it is used as justification for a whole range of new offences, stop and search powers and restraining orders. If you set the bar too low, you’re really giving the police a blank check to shut down dissent before it even happens,” she said.
Patsy Stevenson, who was arrested at the Clapham Common vigil for murdered Londoner Sarah Everard, said the bill was “outrageous”.
She added: “I think this bill will do so much damage. This bill is basically like the government saying, ‘We’re going to do whatever we want, regardless of what the public thinks about it,’ because once you ban protest, it totally bans free speech.”
Martha Spurrier, director of Liberty, said the new proposals were “an attack on our rights” that “we must oppose”. She added that they “must be seen for what they are: a desperate attempt to close down every avenue for ordinary people to have their voices heard”.
She said: “Allowing the police to stop protests before any disruption has occurred, just on the off chance that it might, sets a dangerous precedent, not to mention making the job of the officers policing the protests very difficult.” more complicated.”
Leading protest groups said the new laws would not deter them. A spokesman for Just Stop Oil said: “Just Stop Oil supporters will continue; stopping, giving up is not an option. It doesn’t matter what the government does.
“They can arrest, fine or jail ordinary people for walking on the road or they can take meaningful steps to protect people in this country and start by stopping new oil and gas, isolating people’s homes and protecting the NHS.” “
Sarah Jones, Labour’s shadow police minister, suggested the party believed the police already had the tools they needed to deal with the disruptive protest.
“The police have powers to deal with dangerous, disruptive protests and Labor supports them using those powers,” she said.
Alastair Carmichael, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, described the move as “shameless” and “part of the Conservative government’s anti-democratic attempts to silence any opposition to its policies”.
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Last year, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act imposed tough new restrictions on protests – giving, among other measures, the power for police to ban demonstrations they believe will be too noisy.
The Public Order Bill goes even further in creating new offenses of “lockdown”, where protesters tie themselves to things to cause a disturbance. It will also introduce new orders to prevent serious disruption to impose restrictions on individual activists and new powers to stop and search at a protest.
Announcing plans for even greater measures, Sunak said: “The right to protest is a fundamental principle of our democracy, but it is not absolute. A balance must be struck between the rights of individuals and the rights of the hard-working majority to go about their daily business.
“We cannot have protests conducted by a small minority disrupting the lives of the common public. It is not acceptable and we will put an end to it.
“The police asked us for more clarity to crack down on these guerrilla tactics, and we listened.”
He was backed by Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, who added: “Increasingly, the police are embroiled in complex legal disputes about the balance between this right to protest and the rights of others to go about their daily lives free from serious disruption.
“The lack of clarity in the legislation and the increasing complexity of case law make this more difficult and contested.
“Parliament needs to decide on the law and I, along with other police chiefs, have argued for a clearer legal framework around the laws on protest, obstruction and disorderly conduct. We have not sought new powers to curb or limit protests, but we have asked for legal clarity on where the balance of rights should be struck.
But Anna Burleigh, co-founder of Reclaim These Streets, said: “Giving the police new powers to decide who has the right to protest is incredibly dangerous – the High Court case we won against the Met showed how ill-equipped they are to make those judgements.
“We cannot claim to live in a healthy democracy if our government curtails our basic human rights and if new powers to suppress dissent are handed over to police forces fighting institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia.”
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