Green Party peer Jenny Jones has urged the Lords to stop the government’s ‘pre-crime’ laws in a vote on the Public Order Bill today (30 January).
The Government has proposed a series of late amendments to the Bill that will give the police the power to ban protests – or a series of protests – before they take place. This power disregards whether the organisers have ever been convicted of a crime and if the planned protest is non-violent. The police will be able to declare an event illegal if they feel it will ‘seriously disrupt’ someone's life.
A protest only has to be ‘more than minor interference’ to be counted as a serious disruption’ but the judgement over this classification will be in the hands of the police.
As these pre-crime amendments have been submitted late and in the Lords, the Lords can vote them out of the Bill. This will take place this afternoon at 3:15 pm.
Green Party peer, Baroness Jenny Jones, who previously wrote about the amendments for Green World, commented: “The Lords have a rare opportunity to stop the draconian shift towards pre-crime. Under these proposals, the police will be able to ban protests that they think might cause more than minor disruption.
“A government that bans strikes, introduces voter suppression and stops effective protest is destroying democracy from within. I hope the Labour peers will pull out all the stops and join with the rest of us who aim to stop pre-crime and these other draconian proposals from becoming law.
“The practicalities of enforcing pre-crime are fraught with problems for the police. For example, the million-strong protest against the Iraq War caused serious disruption, but there has never been a law that allows the police to ban such a gathering.
“The police might have to guess at the numbers attending a demonstration and what the protestors might, or might not, do. Pre-crime laws give the police a huge discretionary power to decide what is a good or a bad protest. It puts the police in the position of making political choices with Government Ministers applying pressure to ban protests that are embarrassing to them.”
The Public Order Bill was first read in the House of Commons on 11 May 2022 and is in its ‘Report Stage’ in Lords.