Police are to be given powers to shut down protests before any disruption begins under Rishi Sunak’s plans for a crackdown on public order, which aim to avoid tactics such as “slow marching”.
Sparking outrage from civil liberties advocates, the government said it would introduce an amendment to the public order bill to toughen its crackdown on “guerrilla” tactics used mainly by environmental protesters.
It aims to counter the changing tactics of protest groups, such as bringing traffic to a grinding halt by staging foot protests in major cities.
Just Stop Oil protesters have used the foot protests to draw attention to the climate emergency after the government introduced laws to stop other forms of emerging protests.
Sunak said the proposals would be introduced through an amendment to the Public Order Bill, which will be debated in the House of Lords this week. The change would broaden and clarify the legal definition of “serious disturbance” and allow police to consider protests by the same group on different days or in different places as part of the same wider action.
Number 10 said it would mean police “won’t have to wait for disruption to happen and can shut down 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 support from Labor and the cruisers.
Civil liberties campaigners and protest groups last night said they fear the government’s approach is too draconian.
Shami Chakrabarti, the Labor and former director of Liberty, who is challenging some elements of the bill in the House of Lords, said the government’s attempt to get even more powers was “very worrying”.
“The definition of what is considered a serious disruption is key to this bill because it is used as justification for a whole host of new offences, stop and search powers and banning orders. If you set the bar too high low, you’re really giving the police a blank check to shut down dissent before it’s happened,” he said.
Patsy Stevenson, who was arrested at the vigil in Clapham Common for the murder of Londoner Sarah Everard, said the bill was “outrageous”.
He added: “I think this bill is going to cause so much damage. This bill is basically the government saying, ‘We’re going to do whatever we want, regardless of how the public feels,’ because once it bans protest, it bans completely freedom of expression”.
Martha Spurrier, director of Liberty, said the new proposals were “an attack on our rights” that “must be resisted”. He added that they “should be seen for what they are: a desperate attempt to close any avenue for ordinary people to make their voices heard.”
She said: “Allowing the police to shut down protests before any disruption has occurred, just on the off chance that they can, sets a dangerous precedent, not to mention making the job of police officers policing protests that much more complex “.
The main protest groups said the new laws would not deter them. A Just Stop Oil spokesman said: “Just Stop Oil supporters will carry on – stop, quit is not an option. No matter what the government does.
“They can arrest, fine or jail ordinary people for walking on the road or they can take meaningful action to protect the people of this country and start by ending new oil and gas, isolating people’s homes and defending the NHS” .
Sarah Jones, Labor’s shadow minister for policing, suggested the party believes the police already have the tools they need to deal with disruptive protests.
“The police have powers to deal with dangerous and disruptive protests and Labor supports them to use those powers,” he said.
Alistair Carmichael, the Lib Dem home affairs spokesman, called the move “shameless” and “part of the Tory government’s undemocratic attempts to silence any opposition to its policies”.
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Last year, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act put onerous new restrictions on protests, giving, among other measures, the ability for police to ban demonstrations they believe will be too noisy.
The Public Order Bill goes even further in creating new offenses of “blocking”, where protesters stick to things to cause disruption. It will also introduce new Serious Disruption Prevention Orders to place restrictions on individual activists and new stop and search powers to protest.
Announcing plans to crack down further, Sunak said: “The right to protest is a fundamental principle of our democracy, but it is not absolute. A balance must be struck between people’s rights and the rights of the working majority to go about their daily lives.
“We cannot have protests carried out by a small minority disrupting the lives of ordinary members of the 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 have listened.”
It was backed by Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, who added: “Increasingly, the police are getting involved in complex legal arguments about the balance between that right to protest and the rights of others to make your daily life free of serious disturbance.
“The lack of clarity in the legislation and the increasing complexity of the jurisprudence make this more difficult and more controversial.
“It is for parliament to decide the law and, along with other police chiefs, I advocated for a clearer legal framework in relation to the laws on protest, obstruction and public nuisance. We have not sought any new powers to restrict or restrict protest, but we have asked for legal clarity on where the balance of rights should be struck.”
But Anna Birley, co-founder of Reclaim These Streets, said: “Handing new powers to the police to decide who is allowed to protest is incredibly dangerous – the high court case we won against the Met showed how ill-equipped they are to make these judgments.
“We cannot claim to live in a healthy democracy if our government is curbing our fundamental human rights and if new powers to suppress dissent are being handed to police forces who are struggling with institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia “.