I understand that some people have concerns about the measures being introduced through the Public Order Bill to reduce the impact of protests on people's day-to-day lives. I wrote to the Minister to raise these concerns and, in his response to me, the Minister Chris Philp MP, said:
“This Government fully supports the right of individuals to engage in peaceful protest. However, the serious disruption caused by a small minority of protesters has highlighted that more needs to be done to protect the public and businesses from these unacceptable actions. This is why the Public Order Bill has been introduced. The measures in the Public Order Bill will improve the police’s ability to manage disruptive and dangerous protests, and take a proactive approach to prevent such disruption happening in the first place.
This in turn will ensure that police can better balance the rights of protesters against the rights of others to go about their daily business and to focus their resources on keeping the public safe. Through an amendment tabled to the Public Order Bill, the Government planned to clarify the meaning of ‘serious disruption’, giving police greater confidence of when it is lawful for them to intervene to stop highly disruptive protests.
The majority of protests in England and Wales are peaceful and non-disruptive, therefore, these would be unaffected by the Bill.”
I can therefore assure you that the Government is not eroding people's rights but making sure that highly disruptive protests do not cause misery to the public. At the moment hard-working people across the UK are seeing their lives brought to a standstill by some activist groups.
Stop and search - the new powers contained in the Public Order Bill seek to enable the police to proactively tackle highly disruptive protest offences by searching for and seizing items which are made, adapted, or intended to be used in connection with protest-related offences. In their 2021 report on the policing of protests, His Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services agreed that such powers would have an operational benefit to police.
The Bill provides for both a suspicion-led power, amending section 1 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, and a suspicion-less power. Suspicion-led stop and search is where a police officer suspects that a person is carrying an object that they intend to use in connection with a protest-related offence. When the suspicion-less stop and search power has been authorised, it will allow a constable to conduct a stop and search without the need for suspicion.
The suspicion-less stop and search power uses a similar framework to that found within section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 to ensure consistency in terms of police powers and safeguards.
Buffer zones - at Report Stage, MPs agreed to add a new clause to the Public Order Bill which introduced areas around abortion clinics and hospitals (buffer zones) where interference with, and intimidation or harassment of, women accessing or people providing abortion services would be an offence.
Matters related to abortion are a free vote for MPs, meaning the Government does not ask members to vote a certain way.
I recognise that there are very strong views from both sides of the debate on this subject. I am aware that there are existing protections for women outside abortion clinics but there was some evidence that these were not consistently applied across the country. It is for this reason that I voted for the amendment and I believe it is right that, as with other matters of conscience, the Government adopts a neutral stance on abortion and allows Conservative MPs to vote freely according to their moral, ethical, or religious beliefs.
(March 2023)
