The right to protest is not a gift of whichever government is in power. It’s one of our most fundamental, democratic rights.
But this Government wants to take away that right, stifle dissent and undermine our right to freedom of assembly, freedom of expression and protest.
The Policing Bill, a dogs dinner of a bill which covers a huge range of issues from knife crime to sentencing limits, contains draconian powers that are dangerous, disproportionate and racist.
Buried in the bill are proposals to give the Home Secretary and police sweeping powers to ban protests they don’t like simply because they’re too noisy or disruptive.
Tactics used by peaceful protesters since the days of the Suffragettes, for whatever cause – like attaching yourself to a fence with a bike lock to delay the bulldozing of a playground by developers - will be criminalised with a prison sentence of up to 51 weeks.
Protests will be banned in Parliament Square – presumably so that elected representatives aren’t “disturbed” by the noise made by their constituents outside.
The police will have the powers to stop and search anyone on their way to a demonstration or protest. If they’re carrying a banner, let alone a loud hailer, they could be criminalised.
There’ll be a new trespass offence that will criminalise the way of life of nomadic Gypsy and Traveller communities.
This Policing Bill is a major assault on our civil liberties and it undermines a key principle of policing in this country: that it is done with consent. The role of the police should be to protect citizens’ basic rights, but they’re being used by the Home Secretary to crush those rights.
These are dictatorial powers that the Government is seizing. If this were happening in any other country, we would be calling out the attack on democratic freedoms. Opposition to this bill has come from groups from the TUC to the Quakers. It’s been criticised by a former Conservative Attorney General, a former police chief and more than 700 legal scholars and 350 charities who have called for it to be scrapped because they recognise that this bill puts Britain on the road to an autocracy.
What makes it worse is that many of the most draconian aspects of the bill have been introduced by the Government in a series of last-minute amendments which were slipped in at a late stage, after the bill had completed its passage through the Commons, in a cynical attempt to avoid parliamentary scrutiny.
Are peers right to reject measures in the new Policing Bill?
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But this gives peers an opportunity to stop some elements of this bill in their tracks. Because these amendments haven’t been debated in the House of Commons, if peers vote against them, they will fall.
Peers from across the political spectrum must follow the lead set by Green party peers in voting down these amendments – not use precious time allocated to the debate to add more of their own.
One of our most precious civil liberties is at stake. Everyone who believes in our democratic rights needs to come together to kill this bill.