Unlock Democracy has joined forces with over a hundred other organisations to call on MPs to block the Government’s new Crime and Policing Bill. 

The bill includes proposals that will directly restrict the basic human right of free assembly and peaceful protest.

You can read our joint letter to the Home Secretary and Justice Secretary here.

The bill includes plans to give police significantly more power to restrict non-violent protests that cause ‘significant disruption to the public or to access to parliament’. If passed, the police will have the power to impose the same conditions on static protests that it can already impose on marches, such as start and finish times and maximum noise levels.

Police will be able to use such powers “where noise causes a significant impact on those in the vicinity or serious disruption to the running of an organisation”.

It will likely lead to more terrible scenes as we saw at the weekend with the Police taking unnecessary action against a peaceful protest. It’s the kind of law that you would expect in an authoritarian dictatorship, not a modern democracy.

It is clear what the Home Secretary wants this Bill to deliver - a clampdown on peaceful protest. The current holder of that position has described Black Lives Matter protests as “dreadful” and has spoken of Extinction Rebellion as “criminals” who threaten the UK’s way of life.

We believe that the right to protest peacefully must be protected. Unlock Democracy will strongly support efforts to block a bad bill that is being rushed through Parliament with indecent haste.

You can read more about this bill and the danger it presents here.