Policing bill: What are the new powers to ‘manage’ protests?

Governments of whatever party seem to come up with a new “law and order” bill almost every year, and these often turn into great caravans of minor legal changes, many of which are uncontroversial. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which will be debated by MPs on Monday and Tuesday, is the latest of its kind – and it has suddenly become intensely topical because of the debate over the policing of the vigil for Sarah Everard on Saturday.

The bill was originally intended to fulfil the promise in the 2019 Conservative manifesto to “back our police”, by increasing sentences for assaulting workers in the emergency services and by introducing “tougher sentencing for the worst offenders and [ending] automatic halfway release from prison for serious crimes”.

But it also gave Priti Patel, the home secretary, and Robert Buckland, the justice secretary, the chance to legislate for changes to police powers that Cressida Dick, the Met Police commissioner, had asked for after the Extinction Rebellion protests in April 2019. Dick said her officers needed new powers “specifically to deal with protests where people are not primarily violent or seriously disorderly but, as in this instance, had an avowed intent to bring policing to its knees and the city to a halt”.

Even before last weekend, some backbench Labour MPs opposed provisions in the bill that they saw as an attack on the right to protest. Coming in the wake of coronavirus legislation that initially appeared to ban protest altogether, before explicitly allowing it and then appearing to disallow it again, the bill is now being attacked from both left and right.

So what do the public order provisions in the bill actually say? The government’s policy paper claims they will “strengthen police powers to tackle non-violent protests that have a significant disruptive effect on the public or on access to parliament”. But the way the bill is drafted has raised concerns about sweeping and vague wording, with the main focus of criticism being the criminalisation of making “noise” and causing “serious annoyance”.

The bill gives the police the power to impose conditions on “processions” and public assemblies if “the noise generated by persons taking part ... may result in serious disruption to the activities of an organisation which are carried out in the vicinity”.

It also widens the definition of a “public nuisance”, which is an offence if caused “intentionally or recklessly”, to include acts or omissions which cause someone to suffer “serious annoyance, serious inconvenience or serious loss of amenity”. The penalty for this offence includes jail sentences of up to 10 years.

The bill includes a clause about “one-person protests” – which were not covered by the Public Order Act 1986 – which includes the same wording about generating “noise” as applies to processions and assemblies.

Finally, it also contains new rules giving the police powers to remove “unauthorised encampments”, which date from the difficulties faced by the authorities in removing protesters permanently camped in Parliament Square, which were revived by Extinction Rebellion setting up permanent structures as part of its demos.

When MPs debate the bill and before they vote on it on Tuesday, they are bound to ask hard questions of the government as to how the courts can be expected to define terms as unspecific as “serious inconvenience”. Backing the police is one thing; giving them sweeping and ill-defined powers that could be used to curb free expression is quite another.